Who is Jesus Christ - Part 1

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1 Samuel 17 Part 2

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I want to invite you to take out your Bibles and turn with me to Colossians 1, and hold your place at verse 15.
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This morning, the title of the message is, Who is Jesus Christ? And you'll notice that on the screen, it says, Who is Jesus Christ? Part 1.
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And that is because my intention is Colossians 1, verses 15 to 20.
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I intend to teach this in five parts.
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So we are literally going to take it one verse at a time through the section.
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And hopefully by the end of today, you'll understand why that is.
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What often separates cults and false religions from the one true faith is the answer to a simple question, who is Jesus Christ? The first 400 years of church history were spent in many ways defining and defending what the church believed about the person and work of Jesus Christ.
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And it did so because of so many heresies that had erupted during that time.
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Heresies known by the names of the individuals who began it, such as Sibelianism, named after Sibelius.
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Nestorianism, named after Nestorius.
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Apollinarianism, named after Apollinarius, and so on.
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And then, of course, one major event was in the fourth century with a man named Arius, and he led a movement called the Arians, and that led to what became known as the Council of Nicaea, a very important historical event in the history of the church.
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And today that battle still rages on.
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If you ask the average man on the street, who is Jesus Christ? The answers that you get will be phenomenally various.
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If perchance you were to ask a Muslim the question, who is Jesus Christ? They would say that he was not the Son of God, that he was not divine in and of himself, but that he was, in fact, a prophet.
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If you speak to a Jehovah's Witness about who Jesus is, they will say that Jesus is divine, but he is not the true God.
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He is a created divinity.
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He is the first created God, the first created being.
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If you ask a Muslim, I'm sorry, a Mormon, who is Jesus Christ? They will say that he is the offspring, the physical offspring of Elohim, and that he is the spirit brother of Lucifer, for we are all spirit children of Elohim, according to Mormons.
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If you ask the average person who Jesus is, if they have no religious background and no baggage to come with it, they may tell you that they think that Jesus was a political revolutionary, or that he was an example of love and kindness.
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Or one very popular answer, they will say Jesus was a good teacher, but they will be very quick to deny his divinity.
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Unless, of course, they are like in the New Age movement, where we're all divine, and we're all gods, and Jesus being God is no different than you being God, because all of us are gods.
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C.S.
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Lewis is famous for many things, but one of which, in regard to the subject of apologetics, is what is known as Lewis's famous trilemma.
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And the trilemma is this, when faced with the person of Jesus Christ, we have three answers which we could give.
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We could believe that Jesus is a liar, that everything he said was untrue, and he knew it.
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He knew he was saying things that were untrue.
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Thus, he would be a liar.
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He said, or we could say he was a lunatic.
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Everything he said was untrue, but he didn't know it.
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Somehow worse, I think, if he would say those things about himself, and they were not true, and he didn't know it.
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And Lewis said, the third option is he is the Lord, because that is who he claimed to be.
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He is the Son of God, very God of very God.
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He is the Lord, and therefore, when we face the person of Jesus Christ, we are faced with that trilemma.
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We're faced with the answer, he is either a liar, a lunatic, or the Lord.
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But let me say this about that.
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If you come to the wrong conclusion about Jesus Christ, nothing else matters.
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You can be wrong about many things.
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I've said it before.
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I know nothing about automobile mechanic.
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I don't even know how to say it.
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Nothing about automobile repair.
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I know very little about construction and home repair.
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As you can tell from my daddy jobs that I do at the house that Mike Smith has to come fix.
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I'm surprised he didn't amen that.
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It's okay to be wrong about many things.
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But when it comes to Jesus Christ, it is not okay to be wrong about him.
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So over the next five weeks, what we are going to do is we're going to seek to answer the question, who is Jesus Christ? And we're going to answer that question from Colossians chapter one, verses 15 through 20.
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Today, we're going to look at week one.
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We're going to see that Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.
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Next week, we're going to see that he is the creator of all things and him who which all things are sustained.
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Week three, we're going to see that he is in fact the head of the church.
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Week four, we're going to see that he is in fact the God man, very God of very God.
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And then finally in week five, which will be Christmas morning, we will look at Jesus, the reconciler, the one who makes peace between man and God.
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So with that being said, we're going to read this morning all six verses.
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We're going to read verses 15 to 20, but then we're going to focus on verse 15.
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So let's stand together and hear the word of the living God.
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Colossians 1, 15 in the English standard version says, he is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.
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For by him, all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through him and for him.
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And he is before all things.
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And in him, all things hold together.
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And he is the head of the body, the church.
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He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything, he might be preeminent.
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For in him, all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.
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Amen, let's pray.
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Our father and our God, we come to you in Jesus' name.
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And I pray even now, Lord, that you would keep me from error as I preach your word.
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I pray that your saints would be edified by the preaching of your word, that the message would be mixed with faith, that the Holy Spirit would be working in this place, that he would apply the text of scripture to the hearts of those who know you.
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And Lord God, for those who do not know you, I pray that today would be a day of reckoning, that they would face the true and living Christ for who he is, that they would be faced with the confrontation of the conscience to know that there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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And that today you might save souls by the preaching of your word, doing what only you can do, granting repentance that leads to life.
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And I pray this all, Father, in Jesus' name, amen.
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As always, when we study through a book, as we have been studying the book of Colossians for now for several weeks, it's important that we be reminded of the context that we are in.
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And the context that we are in in this book deals with what I call the Colossian condition.
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The Colossian condition is this.
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Paul has commended the Colossians.
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He has highly encouraged them.
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He has said that he remembers them always in his prayers and that he gives thanks for them.
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He has spoken well of them and of their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
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And up until this point, everything has been on the note of positive.
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And we spoke about all of those positive things that Paul has said.
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But this is much like some of his other letters where it begins on a positive note, but then at a certain point in the letter, he transitions to the body of the letter and the body of the letter is intended to focus on the issue or the condition or the problem that is going on in that particular church.
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Now, you'll remember when I gave the introduction to the book of Colossians, I spent a lot of time talking about the fact that it seems as if there is some form of heresy or threat of heresy that has arisen within the body at Colossae.
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And we said, there is no way of knowing for certain what that particular heresy is, but we can use context clues throughout the book to determine what the problem was, what the condition was, what the issue was that had risen in the Colossian church.
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And I told you my thought, I tend to agree with Doug Moo on this particular topic and D.A.
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Carson who wrote an introduction to the book of Colossians and they both agreed as do I, that the issue that had arisen in the Colossian church was syncretism.
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Syncretism is the idea that there was a mix mash of different religious views that had made their way into the church.
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Some people think it was Gnosticism, some people think it was Jewish mysticism, some people think it was asceticism and others think other different views had creeped in Greek philosophy.
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I think it was all of that.
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I don't think it was limited to Gnosticism or limited to asceticism or any of those things.
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I think all of those things had sort of converged in the Colossian church and had given rise to this idea.
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Christ is not enough.
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That's hard for me to even say.
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It's hard for me to even verbalize those words.
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But that seems to be the idea that has crept up in the Colossian church, that Christ is not enough.
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You have to add to him some type of mystical knowledge.
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You have to add to him some form of worship of angels or some sort of ascetic lifestyle.
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You have to add something to the Lord Jesus Christ.
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And so Paul begins the body of his letter with an exposition of the person of Jesus Christ.
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It makes sense that if the issue that you're raising is that Christ is not enough, well, I'm gonna start by telling you he is enough.
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I'm gonna start by showing you he is, in fact, enough.
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And what we end up with here in chapter one, verses 15 to 20, is in fact one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful statement on the person and work of Jesus Christ in the entire New Testament.
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In fact, the Bible knowledge commentary, which I'm becoming more and more fond of, said this about verses 15 to 20.
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It says, no comparable listing of so many characteristics of Christ and his deity are found in any other scripture passage.
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Can't find this concentration of Jesus's nature, work, and power in anywhere else where it's this much in this short amount of verses.
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It's like when you were a kid and mom would buy frozen, concentrated orange juice and you had to mix it with water because it made a whole pitcher.
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Well, this is concentrated Jesus.
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That may have been the worst illustration I ever gave.
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That was not in my notes.
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But the point is you understand this is Christ in six verses and it's meant to magnify Christ because what's gonna come after this is he's going to challenge any teaching that would put Christ as secondary to anything else or in need of addition of anything else.
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He's saying Christ is enough.
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Christ is supreme.
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Christ is preeminent.
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And any teaching that would diminish Christ is sub-Christian, non-Christian, un-Christian, it's heresy.
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And what's interesting about this section is that it also has been by many scholars considered to potentially be a early Christian hymn.
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And I did wanna take a moment just to talk about this because we actually see this throughout the New Testament.
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And if you ever read your New Testament, sometimes you'll come across sections of Paul's letters where the translators indent a section and it looks like they're offsetting that section for a certain reason.
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Well, the reason for that offsetting is this is the translator's way of indicating that this particular section has the style and the language of poetry or hymn or song.
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It's intended to be lyrical.
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And we see this in Philippians chapter two where we have what's called the Carmen Christi, also known as the song of Christ.
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The Carmen Christi, he who was in the form of God and not count a quality with God a thing to be grasped but made himself nothing, came in the form of man.
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Remember that portion of Philippians chapter two? It's easy for us to remember because it's lyrical.
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And what many people believe is that this was actually part of the church's confession.
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That these are the things that they confessed about Christ.
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We see this also in 1 Timothy chapter three where there's a doxology about Christ.
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1 Timothy 3.16, we see a section there which could very much be a section of poetry.
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Well, this section in Colossians likely is the same.
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It likely is circulating within the church as part of the church's confession.
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And I think it should continue.
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I think we should continue to confess that Christ is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.
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In him, all things were created in heaven and earth, visible and invisible, isn't that great? Those are things that every young person should remember.
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Every adult should put in their heart.
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These are things about Christ that are true and things that are worth remembering.
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We've been, as I've told you all, some of the young men and I have been trying to memorize Colossians.
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Some of the parts are a little more difficult.
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But this part here should be one that we all take the time to memorize.
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Because verses 15 to 20 is, again, the most concentrated focus on the person of Christ that we have in the New Testament.
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So now that we've talked a bit about verses 15 to 20, let's focus our attention today on the verse that we're going to look at, and that is verse 15.
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I've spent some time with it.
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I did, again, what I did last week.
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I made me a chart.
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I've just, I've been having fun with colors.
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I don't know, maybe I'm a child.
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I just, I've been doing these charts because what they do is they help me to see and visualize what the apostle is trying to do.
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And what we see Paul doing in this particular text is Paul is describing Christ in two relationships.
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Verse 15 is describing Christ in two relationships.
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We know that it is Christ.
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By the way, it says he is the image of the invisible God.
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The pronoun there has an antecedent, and the antecedent is in the previous text, verse 14, which says the kingdom of his beloved son is talking about Jesus there.
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Actually, verse 13 and 14 talk about the kingdom of his beloved son.
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And so we know that this is Jesus that it's referring to, and it says he is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.
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And what we're seeing there is we're seeing a relationship to God, and we're seeing a relationship to creation.
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That's how this breaks down into two parts, his relationship to God, his relationship to creation.
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So let's look first at his relationship to God.
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It says in the text that he is the image of the invisible God.
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Now, that being said, with that in mind, I wanna ask this question.
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You all have been here, many of you, for years.
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You probably have heard this stead, and hopefully you believe it.
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Jesus is God, amen? But, and that's a dangerous one to put but after.
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So calm yourselves.
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If we ask the question, is Jesus God? The simple answer is yes, but there is more to consider in that answer, because we have to begin to talk about the nature of God as he has revealed himself in regard to the Trinity, and we have to deal with the nature of Christ as has been revealed in the incarnation and what we refer to as the hypostatic union.
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So when we say Jesus is God, I actually think that statement is somewhat unhelpful in the basic, to just say Jesus is God.
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Brother Mike and I, when you go out and preach, you usually say Jesus is the God man.
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That's a little clearer because it does express a little bit more about the hypostatic union.
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Is it wrong to say Jesus is God? No, but it does require clarification, because when we say Jesus is God, what we are affirming is that the Bible says that God is one.
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The Bible affirms that there are three persons who are called God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
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Those three persons are co-equal.
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That means they share equality.
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They are co-eternal.
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That means they all three have been forever.
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One was not before the other.
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One did not create the other, right? So there is co-equality, but yet there is still distinction that the Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Spirit, the Spirit is not the Father nor the Son, and therefore there is a relationship, an eternal relationship within the Trinity.
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Now I see some of you, your eyes, whew, just got heavy.
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Stay with me now, because what I'm telling you is when we say Jesus is God, what we mean is that he is the second person of the Trinity.
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He shares the fullness of deity with the Father and the Spirit.
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But when we use just the phrase God in Scripture, when we use just the phrase God in Scripture, especially when it has Christ and God, it's referring to the Father.
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That needs to be understood for this passage, because he says Christ is the image of the invisible God.
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And what we need to understand is when it says the invisible God, that particular statement is referring to God's ontological nature, which cannot be seen, and in this particular context is referring specifically to the Father whom no one has ever seen.
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Turn in your Bibles with me to John 1, verse 18.
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This is an important parallel passage that we need to remember.
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Go over to chapter one of John and look at verse 18.
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It's always nice to hear Bible pages turning, so I'll let you get there.
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In John 1, 18, the English Standard Version says this.
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No one has ever seen God.
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Stop.
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Now it goes on from there, but we'll deal with the rest later.
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Let's just talk about that phrase.
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Does everybody say that? Does King James say that? What does the King James say? Okay, close enough.
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I mean, it wasn't different.
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It was just stated.
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Okay, I didn't know if it was like totally different.
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Okay, all right.
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No man has seen God at any time.
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No one has ever seen God.
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Anybody got anything substantively different than that in any translation? No, right? Because that's what it means.
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It means no man has seen God at any time.
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No one has ever seen God.
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Now that's an important truth because we begin to have to take a step back and say, wait a minute.
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There seems to be a lot of people who saw God.
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Abraham ate with God.
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Did he not? Did not Jacob wrestle with God? Isn't that what the very name Israel means? Wrestles with God.
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Do we not see manifestations of God in the cloud and in the pillar of fire? And do we not see manifestations of God in the various places in the Old Testament we see God showing up? Moses on the mountain.
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That's what I was thinking about.
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Moses on the mountain saw God's hinder parts, right? But this text says no man has seen God.
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But notice what else it says.
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It's very important.
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It says no one has ever seen God.
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The only God who is at the Father's side, he has made him known.
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Now there's a textual variant here and for the sake of not diving into textual variation, the King James says the only begotten son, right? He has made him known.
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The point of this text, and I wanna get into, because there's a variant between huos, and which it means son, and theos, which means God, and there's a tetragrammaton issue, or a textual issue there.
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Don't wanna get into that.
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Point of the matter is, there is one who reveals the invisible God.
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There's one who reveals it, and who is it? It's the God, or the son of God, who is by the Father's side.
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He says no one has seen God, but the one who reveals him, and by the word, the word reveal here is the word exegeto.
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It's the word where we get the word exegete.
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What I'm doing right now is I'm exegeting the scriptures.
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I'm showing you the scriptures.
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I'm diving into the scriptures and opening them up to you.
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That's what Christ does.
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Christ shows us God.
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He shows us the invisible God.
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And this is important, because without that we would have no, we would have no visible representation.
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We would not see God at all.
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But Christ exegetes him.
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No one has seen God, but the only begotten Son who is at the Father's side.
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He has exegeted him.
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He has made him known.
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So in that sense, the invisible God is made visible in the person of Jesus Christ.
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Now, just a few Bible verses.
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You don't have to look them up, but there are three different verses in the New Testament that say God is invisible.
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Romans 1, verse 20, 1 Timothy 1, 17, and Hebrews 11, 27, all say that God is invisible, but Christ is not invisible.
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Christ came into the world as a man.
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Christ came into the world as the God-man to show God to men.
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Do you remember what, in John 14, when Philip asked Jesus, show us the Father, what did Jesus say to him? If you've seen me, you've seen the Father, right? If you've seen me, you've seen the Father.
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Jesus is the incarnation of God, the manifest image of God, and therefore he is the visible image of the invisible God.
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That's the way it's translated in the New Living Translation.
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The New Living Translation actually says Jesus is the visible image of the invisible God in Colossians 1.15.
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But I wanna challenge us this morning on a little deeper level, because if we translate and interpret Colossians 1.15, he is the image of the invisible God, only to mean that Christ is the physical manifestation of the living God, or the visible image of the invisible God.
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I do think that we miss a part of what this word image means when it refers to Christ.
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Because the word image here, the Greek word, in fact, we have an English word that sounds a lot like it.
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The Greek word is icon, and we have in the English icon.
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That's what the word, where we get our word icon.
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And this text says Jesus, he is the icon of the invisible God.
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And there's more to that than just a physical manifestation.
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Because what is being stated there, it's being stated about the nature of Christ in regard to the Father.
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By the way, an icon meant something that was impressed into something else.
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If you remember when Jesus held up a coin, he says, whose image is this? Literally, he said, whose icon is this? And who was it? Caesar.
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And it had been pressed into the silver.
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The impression of Caesar was made into the silver.
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And therefore, Jesus was saying, whose image, whose impression, whose icon is this? It was Caesar.
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When we talk about Jesus being the image of God, what we are saying is not just that Jesus resembles God, or that he is his likeness.
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That's not the term.
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The icon or the image supposes a prototype, which it doesn't just resemble, but rather is the exact counterpart of that which it is the icon of.
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Christ is the exact counterpart of the Father, and it speaks of his equality with the Father.
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You might say, but wait a minute, we're image of God.
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No, you're not.
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You're made in his image.
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Christ is his image.
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There's a difference.
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Christ is the image of the invisible God.
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I like this.
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This comes from the Cambridge Bible.
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It says this, Christian antiquity has ever regarded the expression, the image of God, as denoting the eternal Son's perfect equality with the Father in respect of his substance, power, and eternality.
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The Son is the Father's image in all things, save only in being the Father.
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Christ is equal to God the Father in every way other than the fact that he is not the Father.
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There is an equality within the Godhead that God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit are all God.
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Now, can we talk about economic distinctions within the Trinity and the Father and the Son and the Spirit? Yes, we can.
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But ontologically, Christ is God.
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Therefore, when it says he is the image of the invisible God, it's not diminishing him.
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It's actually exalting him.
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It's saying this is he, the only one who has right to say he is the image of God.
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In the latter half of the first millennium, there was a controversy.
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There was a controversy in the church called the Iconoclast Controversy.
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If you've been in my history class, you'll remember I talk a lot about the Iconoclast Controversy.
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And what the Iconoclast Controversy was was there was a time in church history where the use of icons, and what an icon was, was a visible manifestation of Jesus or the apostles or some other spiritual leader, Peter or whomever.
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Icons were made, and those icons were used in worship as images in worship.
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The Iconoclast Controversy arose when two divisions within the church came.
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One was called the iconodules.
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The iconodules meant servers of icons or those who venerate icons.
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And the iconodules said, we need these things.
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And by the way, if you know anyone who's part of the Eastern Orthodox Church, they continue to this day to use icons.
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If you go into the home of a person who is Eastern Orthodox in their faith, you may even find on their wall an icon which is used in worship.
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But the iconoclasts, the opposite side, said no, and by the way, the iconoclasts means the smashers of icons or the breakers of icons.
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I think I would have been on that side.
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I just feel like it's more me.
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They said no, icons are not to be venerated.
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Icons are not to be used.
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Icons actually diminish worship because they focus the attention on the icon rather than on the true thing.
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And so within this controversy, there began to erupt debate.
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Should we have icons, should we not? And that division still rings in the church today.
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There are churches that have icons.
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There are churches that don't.
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I bring up this controversy for this very simple reason.
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This word, icon, in reference to Christ should tell us something about what is the right object of worship and the right aid to worship.
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And it is Christ and not a picture.
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It is Christ and not a statue.
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It is Christ and not some other design that we have created.
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Recently, I did a show where I debated or discussed the topic of whether pictures of Jesus represent a violation of God's command to not make images, right? I don't believe that every painting of Jesus or every picture of Jesus violates that command, but I will tell you this.
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There are people who have a picture of Jesus in their house and they pray to that picture.
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That is idolatry.
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There are people who have statues of Jesus.
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There are pictures.
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You can go online and you can find pictures of Jesus who people are hugging the bottom of the crucifix, grabbing the feet of that statue as if that statue is Jesus.
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There is no image that is to be worshiped except for He who is the image of God, Jesus Christ.
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And we don't need a statue or a picture or anything else to point us to Him.
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We only need Him.
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He is the image, the exact representation of Almighty God.
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You say, well, I can't see Him.
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Well, trust me, watching the chosen ain't gonna make that any better.
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And having a picture of Obi-Wan Kenobi over your refrigerator ain't gonna make that any better either.
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You know, the most common picture of Jesus people have in their minds is actually from a medieval painting which was commissioned by a king to paint the face of Jesus.
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It's the one you all know, long beard, long hair, white.
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Let's hang on to that one for a minute because Jesus was a Middle Eastern Jew.
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He probably didn't look like me or Mike Collier or Andy.
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Andy's a little darker than both of us.
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He goes fishing a lot.
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But He didn't look like us.
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But the picture most people have in their mind is a long face, long hair, long beard Jesus.
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And what it was was the king had commissioned the painting of his son as the representation of Christ.
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So the picture that most of us have in our mind of Jesus is not Jesus.
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It's a picture of a king's son, not the king's true son.
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So I do think that there is danger sometimes in having all of these images of Christ in our mind when there is only one who truly represented the Father in His person, that was Jesus Christ.
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He is the image of the invisible God.
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And you say, well, I can't think of what He looks like.
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You don't have to.
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God's invisible too.
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Just know that when you worship, you're worshiping God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, and the Son was manifest in the flesh.
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And He did say, when you see me, you've seen the Father.
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And this is something very helpful, maybe on a very practical level.
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People ask me sometimes, what do you think God is like? He's like Jesus.
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If you're really having trouble getting to know God, try to get to know Christ because Christ is the image of the invisible God.
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The more you know Christ, the more you will know God.
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So, oh, let's look at one, to finish out this section, go to Hebrews 1.
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This is a different word, but it still conveys the same idea.
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Speaking of Jesus, we'll begin in verse one.
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We're gonna read to verse three.
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It says in verse one, it says, long ago at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets.
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But in these last days, He has spoken to us by His Son, whom He appointed the heir of all things, through whom He also created the world.
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We're gonna look at that passage along with Colossians next week because Christ is the creator through whom God created the world.
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He, listen to this, He, this is Jesus, is the radiance of the glory of God, the exact imprint of His nature.
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That's who Christ is.
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He's not a statue on a shelf or a painting on a wall.
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He is the second person of the Trinity.
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He is the only begotten Son of God.
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He is the image of the invisible God, the exact imprint of His nature.
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He shares equality with the Father.
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And now, let us go to the second part of Colossians 1.15.
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We see the second relationship.
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The first relationship is to God.
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He is the image of the invisible God.
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The second relationship is to creation.
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It says He is the firstborn of all creation.
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Now, the word firstborn here is praetotikos in the Greek.
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And this is a favorite verse of the Jehovah Witnesses.
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And the Jehovah Witnesses follow the teachings, well, they follow the same errors as was taught by Arius in the fourth century.
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Arius taught that Jesus is not God, but Jesus is the first thing God created.
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You notice, I mean, that's a huge difference, right? You go from true God to being creature.
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And by the way, if I had a Venn diagram, you know what a Venn diagram is? Our vice president doesn't, but we, let me say, that was a bad joke.
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A Venn diagram is that when you have two circles and there's an overlap there in the middle, kind of shows the distinction.
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If you had God and creation, there would be no overlap.
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God is not part of His creation.
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God is over His creation.
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God is sovereign of His creation, but God is not part of creation.
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This is the difference between us and the pantheists.
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They say God is in everything.
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No, God is not in the trees.
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Now, God is everywhere because He's omnipotent and He's omniscient and He's omnipresent, but that doesn't mean that He's in there.
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But when they say Jesus, when they read this passage and it says Jesus is the firstborn of creation, their immediate thought is that somehow Jesus is part of creation.
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And I grant this.
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I grant if you don't know anything about biblical language and how words are used, then I grant that that would be a simple error that you could make.
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If you read the term firstborn of creation and you say, well, that must mean Jesus is part of creation.
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But understand, that is not what the word means.
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That is not what the apostle Paul intended.
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And I'm gonna show you why simply for two.
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One, by use of the word, praetotikos, he doesn't say first created.
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He says firstborn and I'll explain what that means in a moment.
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But also in the very next verse, he says Christ created all things.
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So Christ isn't part of creation, He is creator.
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So what he says here by saying praetotikos, by definition, this refers to Christ's position as being the preeminent of all creation.
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The word praetotikos is the idea of He who is over all things.
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In fact, the way that it is in ESV, it says He is the firstborn of creation.
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But I like the New King James on this one, because the New King James translates it and it's on the front of your bulletin.
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If you have the bulletin, you'll notice it says, He is firstborn over all creation.
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The word posses there in the Greek is actually in the genitive, and the genitive likely puts it in the position of being over all creation.
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He's not the firstborn in creation, He is the preeminent over creation.
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The word firstborn means the one who is over everything.
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It represented family and when a family had the firstborn, the firstborn had the right of promogenitor.
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The right of promogenitor was the right of authority over everything.
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And so when Paul says Christ is the firstborn, he's saying He is the one who has right over all.
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It speaks of His priority and His sovereignty.
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He's in the first place and He is in the position of power.
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In fact, and you don't have to turn there, but in Psalm 89 verse 27, written of the King David, it says these words in Psalm 89 verse 27, I will make Him the firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth.
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Now was David the firstborn in this house? Brother Mike's teaching 1 Samuel right now, have you gotten to David yet? Next week? I think he's number seven, right? Remember when Saul or Samuel went to his house? I get breaking your Sunday school.
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He goes to his house and he sees these, bro, well, that's a good looking fellow.
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Well, that's a good, you know, down, down, down, down, down and gets to the last one.
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So David was not the first born in his household, but according to this passage, God said, I will make him firstborn.
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I will make him highest of the kings of the earth.
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You see, firstborn is not about place.
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It's not about being part of creation or part of the order.
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It's about position.
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It's about priority.
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It's about power.
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It's about preeminence.
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Can I get another P? It's Christ.
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He is the image of the invisible God.
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No one else is.
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And he is the preeminent of all creation.
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No one else is.
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You see what Paul is doing is Paul is calling the Colossians to a higher view of Christ.
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Their view of Christ had been diminished by false religious ideas that had come in and had tried to put secondary Christ and his cross.
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And all of these things that had come in to try to replace Christ with asceticism and the worship of angels and the participation in Jewish ordinances and all of these different things, all of these things had sought to diminish Christ.
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And Paul says, no, we are not going to diminish Christ.
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We are going to see Christ for who he is.
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And Christ is the image of the invisible God.
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He is equal with the eternal God.
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And he is the preeminent firstborn of all creation.
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That's who Christ is.
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And so that is who Christ must be to us.
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Christ must be to us the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.
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You say, well, what happens? What does that, how do I apply that? Well, I wanna give you four ways to apply it and then we'll draw to a close.
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And these are very quick.
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The first thing that this passage should do is this passage should produce a proper theology.
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What did I say at the beginning? If we get Christ wrong, it doesn't matter what we get right.
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And if we get Christ right, even the things we get wrong outside of Christ aren't gonna matter in the end.
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And we must have a right understanding of Jesus.
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This passage and the passages we're gonna study in the weeks ahead should produce in us a proper theology, and I would add a proper Christology, a proper understanding of who is Jesus Christ.
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Number two, it should inspire proper worship.
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Again, going back to the iconoclast controversy.
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I think that was a controversy over improper worship.
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I think the debate continues to rage on.
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And the issue is this, how do we worship Christ rightly? We worship Him alone and we don't use statues or pictures or images to try to get to Him.
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But we know that there is one mediator between God and man and it ain't a picture.
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It's the man Christ Jesus.
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So it inspires proper worship.
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And by the way, when we come to worship, how do we worship? We worship in a Trinitarian way.
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We worship by the power of the Spirit.
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We worship the Father through the Son by the Spirit.
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The Trinity is involved in every bit of our worship.
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If we are, in fact, people say, well, does it matter if somebody believes in the Trinity whether or not they're a Christian? Yes, because they can't even worship properly if they don't believe that God is triune.
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So yes, it matters.
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Thirdly, it should encourage our priorities.
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It should encourage our priorities.
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Christ is preeminent in creation, but is He preeminent in your heart? That's a huge question.
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Because Christ can be sovereign over the nations, but is He sovereign over your life? You say, well, I don't get to make that choice.
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He's sovereign whether I choose or not.
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Yes, but you can choose to bow the knee or not.
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And many people choose not to in various areas.
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Christ does not become first placed in their life.
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Lastly, number four, it should eliminate the search for anything greater.
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That was the Colossian problem.
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Christ is not enough.
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Beloved, if you've come here today and Christ is not enough for you, I don't have anything else to give you.
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If you've come here today searching for something other than Jesus, I can only point you to the words of the apostle who says there is no other name under heaven given among men by which you must be saved than the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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And at the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that He is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
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That's what I give to you today.
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I give you a Christ who is not secondary, but I give you a Christ who is primary.
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I give you a Christ who is not to be set aside, but a Christ who is to be the priority.
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And there is to be none greater and there can be none greater.
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Again, go home and read the book of Hebrews.
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The theme of the book of Hebrews is He is greater over and over.
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He's a greater high priest.
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He's a greater sacrifice.
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He's a greater Israel.
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He's a greater covenant.
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He's a greater everything.
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Christ and Christ alone and nothing else, nothing else can take His place.
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There's a story from the life of Leonardo da Vinci, the great painter.
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Some of you may have heard this story.
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Leonardo da Vinci was painting the Last Supper and in the painting of the Last Supper, according to legend, he had painted the chalice in Christ's hand and one of his associates came in and was in awe over the intricate nature of the chalice.
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How amazing, how lifelike, how incredibly powerful is the chalice.
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And according to legend, da Vinci took his brush and he brushed over the chalice.
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And he says, for nothing should be more important than my Savior.
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Nothing should take attention away from my Savior.
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How many of us in our lives have allowed Christ to have second place? And while He be firstborn of all creation, He's not firstborn in our heart.
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Beloved Christ must be our priority.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for your word.
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I thank you for your truth.
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And I thank you for the opportunity to preach today about Jesus.
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I pray, Lord, in the weeks to come that as we see Him as creator and sustainer, as we see Him as head of the church, as we see Him as the God-man, as we see Him as the reconciler, Lord, that we would not in any way think for a moment to diminish this person of Christ, but that we would submit unto Him that He would have first place in our hearts.
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Lord, it is likely and always certain that there are those among us who do not know Christ.
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And perhaps today there are those who have come with the wrong view of Christ.
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Lord, that they might today in their moment of introspection be confronted by the power of the Spirit and be gifted the gift of regeneration.
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And that that would result in repentance and faith and a desire to follow Christ.
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Lord, only you can change a heart.
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And we ask you to do that now as we prepare to participate in the supper.
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In Christ's name, amen.