Now let's look at the book of
Colossians chapter 1. We're going to begin reading
at verse 13 and go through verse 20. Colossians chapter 1. For he has rescued us. Boy, that's
good news. He has rescued us. Not he's going
to, he has. He has rescued us from the dominion
of darkness. and brought us into the kingdom
of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the
forgiveness of sins. He, that is the Lord Jesus Christ,
is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created,
things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether
thrones or powers or rulers or authorities, or all things were
created by him and for him. He is before all things. And he is the head of the body,
the church. He is the beginning. and the
firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might
have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all
his fullness dwell in Christ, and through him to reconcile
to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in
heaven, by making peace through his blood shed on the cross. Now we read from Colossians chapter
one, but I'd like to start in Hebrews chapter two by way of introduction. In verse three of Hebrews chapter
two, we read, how shall we escape? if we ignore, neglect such a
great salvation. The salvation that we believe
and preach here is a great salvation, isn't it? There's nothing great about us,
but there's something great about what we preach. I was talking
with one of the men before we began Bible study about a desire
to maybe make some advertising, web advertising for the church,
in which various members kind of give a testimony, if you will,
as to why they go to church here. we're a small group, and we don't
have anything about us which would be naturally attractive
to religious people, and yet you all go to significant sacrifice
to worship here. You give more than would be required
of those who attend much larger churches, simply because there's
fewer of us to meet all the expenses, but you're willing to do it.
Some of you drive a pretty far distance to get here, and you
pass other churches on the way. Now, is all of this true? Does
all this happen because we're better people? Because we're
more committed or more devoted? No, others are quite committed
and devoted to the religion that they observe. Why would we go
to the efforts that we do to worship as we do? It's all in
this. A great salvation. A great salvation. It's great because of the greatness
of the God who planned it. This is not our salvation, that
is, we didn't make it up. It is not something that we got
together and in a business meeting decided this is what we are going
to call the gospel. Rather, God planned it, revealed
it, and had some men write it down. And we open that book and
we read it and believe according to what it says. And what we
read in there is a great salvation planned by a great God. It is
great for the deliverance it brings, because it delivers us
from that which is most dangerous to us, because it delivers us
from our sin. Now deliverance and salvation,
they're actually the same thing. But it is written of the Lord
Jesus Christ that he would be given the name Jesus, which means
Jehovah saves. He would be given that name because
he would save his people from what? From their sins. Now, we've got a lot of lesser
problems than sins. Of course, all our lesser problems
find their roots in sin. But there are many religious
organizations, churches, and then religious organizations
of even non-Christian religions, they are taken up with showing
people how to extract themselves from the difficulties of this
life. Well, you know something? There's nothing wrong with learning
how to avoid troubles, difficulties, sorrows, and doing what we can
to get ourselves out of them when we get into them, if there
is something we can do about it. But you could live a life
of strict conformity to doing the right things, and you can
have what the world would call a successful, pleasant, and happy
life, and die and perish forever in your sins. So what is the
more important issue here? Sin. And so we worship according
to a great salvation because it is a great deliverance from
a horrible problem, sin. Secondly, it's called a great
salvation. because of the blessings that
it brings with it. You say, well, isn't the blessing of the salvation
that we're delivered from sin? Well, yes, but I want to look
at the positive side of it. Because it's not merely that
sin is taken away, something is put in its place. Righteousness. God does not merely take us from
being negatives to being zeros. He takes us from being the horrible
negatives that we are and makes us, like His Son, the Lord Jesus
Christ, perfect, righteous, holy, acceptable unto God. That's quite a blessing. We who
are alienated from God because of our sin are reconciled to
God. We, the Bible says, your sins
have separated you from your God. This salvation brings us
near to God. You say, how near to God? The
old hymn writer put it this way. Near, so near to God, nearer
I cannot be, for in the person of God's Son I am as near as
He. It is written that he has seated
us in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. How much closer
to God can you get than that? As close to God as Christ. And it's great, a great salvation
because of the terms on which it is received or on which it
is given. Grace. Grace, for by grace you have
been saved. How many this day are laboring,
I mean truly laboring in their hearts to get God's salvation. They are laboring to get God's grace, to draw God's
grace out of him towards themselves. They have a complete misunderstanding
of the nature of God's grace. We don't draw God's grace to
us. He pushes it on us. But they are saying grace with their
mouths and yet they're doing works. How many people I wonder
are in church today because they think that God noticed that they
went to church and put a little tss by their name. Okay. He went
to church on March 20th, 2016. Guess I'll be a little nicer
to him than I might otherwise have been. There are forms of Christianity
that are based on that very thing. You go to church, you do the
ceremonies of the church, and each time you do this, you draw
to yourself or gather to yourself a little bit more grace. And
the more grace you get, the quicker you can get out of whatever semi-judgment
that comes afterwards, which they call purgatory, and the
quicker you can get up to heaven. And oh, how they work! and how
much of the energy of their lives is spent trying to draw this
grace to themselves. And while that is one form of
it that's really obvious, yet all religions, other than this
pure gospel of grace, is that kind of religion. It's us doing
something, thinking that by doing it, God's going to be happier
with us, more pleased with us, than he would have been if we
hadn't done it. Here's a great salvation. It's
got nothing to do with what I do. It is not founded in any way,
shape, or form upon my performance. It's utterly bestowed upon me,
bestowed upon sinners from the heart, purpose, and power of
God. Grace is not a water fountain.
God's grace is not a water fountain with a sign on it that simply
says, if you'd like a drink, here, you can have some. It is
a fire hose with irresistible power aimed at us by God's goodness. And like it or not, if we are
His, the grace is coming. And if we resist it, it's more
than capable of overcoming our resistance. It forgives our sins. It passes by the transgression
of the remnant of God's heritage. It pierces into the very heart
and takes that rebel, hateful heart and changes it. And we
repent and we believe and we draw near to God. Because God
in his invincible grace has reached out his hand and pulled us to
himself. But you know something? For all
that, for all the greatness of the God who planned it, of the
kind of deliverance it brings and the blessing it gives, and
the terms by which it is given and received, for all that greatness,
there would be no greatness were it not for this one other thing. It is a great salvation because
it has been worked by a great Savior. And when it comes right
down to it, and you all see if this doesn't ring true in your
heart, the only great thing about this church is her Savior. We have nothing else to offer
anyone. Yet, in setting forth Him, we
have set forth to them and to ourselves everything we need. Let's look back at Colossians
chapter one. All the greatness of the salvation
which we believe has been given to us, all that greatness is
wrapped up in the greatness of the Lord Jesus Christ. All the
glory of it is the glory of Jesus Christ. All the power of it is
the power of Jesus Christ. Who is this Savior? Who is this one that it says
in verse 13 of Colossians 1, He has rescued us? brought us
into the kingdom of the son he loves, this great savior in whom we
have redemption and the forgiveness of sins. Well, right away, Paul
begins to describe this Jesus. Verse 15, he is, now several
times we're going to see this phrase, he is. He is the image
of the invisible God. Now God is in his very nature
and essence invisible. You say, what makes you say that?
Well, because to be visible means that light strikes you, reflects,
and hits somebody's eyeballs It causes a reaction. How do
I know God's invisible? Because he existed before there
was light. It was this invisible God who
made light in the first place. It's this invisible God who made
the kind of stuff that reflects light that it might impact our
eyeballs and give us sight. So God is, in His very essence,
invisible, utterly undetectable to us. He lies completely outside
of this creation. He cannot be seen. His voice
is not heard. Why? Because He's out there and
we're not. Sight and sound. The tactile
senses and all that, those are part of this creation and he's
not a part of this creation. It says no man has seen God at
any time. That's what John says. Why? Because he can't be seen. Now
you say, well what about all these cases, particularly in
the Old Testament when it says that somebody saw God? For instance,
when Isaiah said, I saw the Lord high and lifted up. Well, we
understand that these are times when God manifested himself in
visions and in tokens of his presence, but you cannot see
God in his absolute essence. But God has made an image of
himself that we can see. That is, we can see if we're
in his general vicinity. And that's the Lord Jesus Christ.
You know, among the laws that God gave on Mount Sinai was this
law, you shall make no graven image to worship Him. Why? Well, there may have been several
reasons, but here's one of them. God made His own image, and that's
who we worship. That's how we worship God. You
know, over the course of the writing of the Bible, various
beings from the heavenly realms appeared to men. angels appeared
to men and it was if they appeared in the glory of their natural
existence, men felt inclined to bow down to them. John, the
beloved disciple, there in the book of Revelation, an angel
came to him and John started to go down to his knees and the
angel said, do it not, don't do that. You don't bow down to
me, you only bow down to God. I'm just a creature like you.
Yet, when Thomas bowed down before the Lord Jesus Christ, Christ
did not say, Thomas, don't do that. You're only supposed to
bow down to God. Why didn't the Lord correct him? Because Jesus is God. He is the image of God. He is,
as it were, the idol of God. And when Thomas bowed down to
Him, what did Thomas say? My Lord and my God. And it was perfectly suitable
that Thomas be there face down on the ground before this man,
because this man is the image of God, the invisible God. I was communicating with someone
via the internet here a couple years ago, and she was trying
to deny everything about the scriptures, you know, Jesus wasn't
born in Bethlehem. That was just a myth they made
up so that they could say that he was the fulfillment of prophecy
and all this kind of stuff. And he isn't God. He said, I
believe there probably was somebody named Jesus who was a Jewish
rabbi and had kind of an unusual message for his day. I always
think it's kind of funny when people live in 2,000 years after
the fact know better what was going on than the people that
lived right there and wrote it down. But nonetheless, she was convinced
that this Jesus, if there really even ever was a man named Jesus
who, you know, stands behind these stories, that he was nothing
more than a Jewish rabbi who had a unique message. That's
simply not the case. Jesus Christ indeed looked for
all intents and purposes as any man in his day might look. He
was indeed called a rabbi, that is, a teacher. It was just a
general word for teacher. And it's true that he had a unique
message, but you want to know the most unique thing about his
message? He said, I am God. That's pretty unique for a prophet. Not only was it a unique message
when he declared himself to be God, he could declare himself
to be God and prove the point. You say, how did he prove the
point? Well, how about standing outside the grave of a man that's been
in there for four days since he died, and he said, Lazarus
come forth, and a man dead and already been rotten comes out. I'd say that's pretty God-like. How about walking across water
like it's dry land? How about standing in the prow
of a boat on a stormy lake and I mean it's about to pitch the
boat over and he looks at the waves and the wind and he says,
calm down. And they calm down. How about taking five loaves
and two fishes and feeding five thousand men and their wives
and children with it? Yeah, that's a unique message
alright. How about this? He's nailed to a cross. He dies,
and three days later walks out of the tomb under his own steam.
Sounds pretty God-like to me. He is the image of the invisible
God. We don't just believe Jesus Christ,
we worship Him. And He'll never stop us. He'll
never say, that's not fit. He'll never say, worship God
alone. That fella came to the Lord Jesus Christ and he says,
good teacher. And the Lord Jesus says, why
do you call me good? Only God is good. It was a test. It was a test to see if that
guy would recognize and acknowledge that he is God. Well, the fella
didn't. And nobody else does unless God gives them grace.
He's the image of the invisible God. We can't worship the invisible
God because we can't see him, we can't hear him. But we can
worship him through his image, the Lord Jesus Christ. He's the
image of God. He's the firstborn over all creation. This doesn't mean he was the
first one created. That's just not so. Why? Because it says in the beginning,
the Word already was. Before anything was made, Christ
already existed. He is an eternal being. Why is he called the firstborn
over all creation? Firstborn didn't necessarily
mean the first one born. Normally, the first one born
would be designated the firstborn. That was the natural way. But
firstborn meant simply this, the one who inherits everything,
the one who is who manages the household, and this creation
is God's household, and Christ is the firstborn over it. He's
the one for whom the creation was made. He was the one by whom
the creation was made, and it was made for him, and he manages
it for the pleasure of his Father. He's the firstborn. By Him all
things were created. We read God said, let there be
light. Who was it said that? Our Savior
said that. Jesus Christ said that. He had not yet, of course, taken
on himself a human form, but it was the same person. It was
that eternal word who said, let there be light. And there was
light. It was that eternal word that divided the darkness from
the light, that divided the dry ground from the oceans. It was
this one who said, let the earth bring forth vegetation, who said,
let the sky and the water bring forth fish and birds and all
that. That's who did that. And he says, for by him, all
things were created things in heaven. Wait a minute. He didn't
just make the stuff on the earth. He made the whole universe and
he made everything that exists in whatever it is heaven is. And Paul goes on to give some
details. He says things visible and invisible. Whether they're thrones or powers
or rulers or authorities. Now why did he mention those
categories? Well he's not mentioning them as though they actually
exist. Here's the reason he brings them
up. In the book of Colossians, he was dealing with a specific
era of the day, you've heard me mention it before, Gnosticism.
And these Gnostics had this very complex view, in philosophy they
would call it a cosmology, their view of how things really are. And there was the visible world
and the invisible world, and in this invisible world were
all these rulers and thrones and powers and authorities, various
powers of angels, you know you had lesser angels and greater
angels, and all of this working up to where you finally get to
God. And here's the point that Paul's
making. He's not saying all these things actually exist. He's just
saying all these things that these Gnostics are boasting in,
that they got some kind of contact with them, that they're specially
far up, everything that they're professing, Christ made it. Whatever has been made, he's
the one that made it. And you may boast in so-called
authorities and powers and your connections to angels and all
this kind of stuff, he said that's nothing. I worship him who made
those things, if they even exist. You boast in things you think
you have seen which are invisible? Well, if such things exist, I'm
worshiping the One who made all of those things. Everything was
created by Him, and everything was created for Him. Do you realize
the only important person in all this creation is the Son
of God? The rest of us are here simply
to serve the purpose of His pleasure. Why were you made? For Him. Men, we haven't, don't we just,
I say men, humans of both genders, we have this tendency to think
we're pretty important. And a lot of modern religion
is trying to reinforce that opinion. Trying to comfort people in the idea that there is some
intrinsic worth in them. and that God sees them with this
intrinsic worth. There is only one who has intrinsic
worth. You say, what's intrinsic worth?
That means worth without regard to anything else. Our Lord Jesus
Christ was worthy when there was nothing but him. He's not worthy. Now we call
him worthy because of his work of salvation for us, but that's
not why he's worthy. That's what moved us to call
him worthy. But he was worthy before he ever redeemed us. He
was worthy before he ever took responsibility for us. He was
worthy simply because who he is, the Father counts him of
such great worth. He created or had Christ create
an entire universe simply to serve the Son. Everything on earth serves the
Son. Everything in the heavens serves
the Son. It is written, let all the angels
of God worship Him. That's why they're here. And then verse 17, and this is
what actually drew me to this scripture. He is the invisible God. He is
the firstborn of all creation. He is the creator of all things.
And He is before all things. Now, that just doesn't sound
right. You don't say, He is before all
things. If you want to talk in a way
that humans can understand, you would say, He was before all
things. And sometimes the scriptures
do speak of God in that fashion. He who was and is and is to come. But here Paul turns our standard
grammar upside down. Speaks in a way that makes no
sense. Why? Because what he is telling us
is really incomprehensible to us. He is saying that this Jesus
Christ, our great Savior, is none other than the great I Am. Paul just put it in the third
person. Instead of saying I am, he said
he is. And to make the point, he says he is before all things. Before there ever was anything,
he is. And I can't think of any other
way to put it. He still ising. And he shall forever is. Because
with him there is no time. There is no before, there is
no after, there is no during. It's one complete, all-encompassing
is. He is. Brother Timothy James, like me,
he kind of likes to play with language. And he calls God, and
that means he's calling our Lord Jesus Christ. the eternal isness. What you and I call existence
and what we experience within the framework of time and space
is nothing more and nothing less than the thought of God. God is the reality. We are the
story of his mind. And while we are passing through
what we call time, He dwells in that eternity in which there
is no such thing as the passage of time. He is before all things. Now, what's that mean to us? Why does that make it such a
great salvation, His eternal isness? It means He never changes. We change. Some of you, when I came here,
you're little kids. Now you're growing up with little kids of
your own. In fact, your kids are older than you were when
I got here. And I certainly look older. I've seen pictures of
me when I got here. I forgot that I once looked like that.
A lot of change. We go through
changes. We go through growth, we go through spiritual growth.
I hope that now at 61, I have a more mature understanding of
the things I knew even when I was 32 and came here. And I expect I do. We grow, we change, we're born,
we grow up, we grow old, we die, we pass from the scene. Jesus
Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever because he
is before all things. He is before all things and therefore
it is he that holds all things for it says in him all things
hold together. I looked this word up and looked
at every time it's used in the New Testament, that is the Greek
word that they translated whole together. What's interesting
is most of the time it's used to commend someone. Paul says,
do we commend ourselves? He's using the same word. But when you look at all the
ways it's used, what it means is something is set forward and
given its proper significance and purpose. Now there's a reason
for this universe, and that reason is the Lord Jesus
Christ. There is a purpose to which everything
that's happening, there's a purpose to which it's moving, and that
purpose is Jesus Christ. This universe, every moment of it, every event
in it, shall find its fulfillment as it brings itself, as it were,
to the Lord Jesus Christ. In the end, it shall be seen
by all that the reason the world, the universe exists is Jesus
Christ. And it means nothing apart from
him. He is before all things. He is
before the world was made. He is right now saving us. And when we come to
the end of our lives, which all of us will someday, we'll do
that, come to the end of this life anyway, we will discover
that He is He is as he's always been. Do you know why our salvation
never changes? Because he is. Do you know why
even though I sin, and I know you do too, but I'm not gonna
tell on you, I'll just tell on me. Even though I sin, my relationship
with God never changes because Christ is. I do not act like a good boy
one day, and God's all happy with me, and then mess up real
bad the next day, and God's all upset with me. That never happens,
why? Because He is, and there's no change with Him. He is. He said to the men of
His day, unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins. But he is. And therefore all who are in
him are without sin before God. And he is the head of the body
of the church. I'm glad he's the head, aren't
you? One of the big versions of Christianity
has a leader who is called the head of the church. I feel sorry
for a church of which any sinful man is the head. I serve in the capacity of a
pastor to this congregation. I'm not the head of this church.
If I am, tell you, the body's in a mess. The body's in trouble. Christ is the head of the church.
He's the head of every individual church. He is the head of the
church universal. He is the head of the church
that begins way back, at least as far back as Abel, and shall
extend to the very last of his sheep who calls upon the name
of the Lord and has his salvation. Christ is the head of all of
that. Not meaning the head only that he's in charge of it, because
quite frankly, in that sense, he's the head of everything.
But He is the head of the body, the church, the body, in the
same way our head is attached to us. He's just not Lord over
us, He is connected to us in a vital union, a living union.
God, Christ directs his church. Christ causes it to operate as
it should operate. Christ causes all his ordained
works to come to pass through the church because the church
is connected to him and gets all of its life and vitality
and direction from him. Someone said, I'd like to find
a good church. He says, well, don't go looking
for one. He said, what do you mean? He said, don't go looking
for church, go looking for Christ. Cause he's the head. And when
you find the head, you can be sure the body's not far behind. Look for Christ. You find a group
of people and you sit among them. And if while you're among them,
you find Christ, you have found the church. Cause where he is, the church
is. We are connected to him and we
live because he lives and cannot die unless he does. And remember,
he is, so he doesn't die. And he is the beginning and firstborn
from among the dead. Not only is it firstborn of the
old creation, he's the firstborn of the new creation. So that
in everything, he might have the supremacy. Why do we make
much of Christ here? Because He has a right to it. And because it's only fitting
that we should make much of Him who is everything. We're not perfect. No church
in this world is. But I can tell you this, the
more there is of the glory man, the less there is of Christ.
The more within a congregation there is an emphasis upon the
will, works, dignity, righteousness, and morality of the people, the
more there is praise and applause to what folks are doing, the
less there is of Christ in it. The whole thing was set up that
he might have the preeminence. And you know, people that claim
they go to heaven and come back and tell us what they see, I
feel certain of this, if they have much anything to talk about
other than the Lord Jesus Christ, it was not to heaven they went.
I don't know where they went, but it wasn't heaven. Because
in heaven, everything's about Christ. And the church is simply
the imperfect heaven. And heaven is simply the perfected
church. And we are perfected to whatever
degree Christ has the preeminence among us. To whatever degree
we see Him and only Him. To whatever degree we are able
to listen to preaching looking for Him and finding Him in the
message. To whatever degree we can look
upon our brothers and sisters and look upon them not because
of their faults and finding fault with them and being aggravated
with all those faults, but rather seeing them as they really are.
They are in Christ and perfect in Him. That means we're seeing
Him, not them. And you say, why would we want
to do that? Because that's what God does.
So you want to be godly? You want to act like God? Well,
do what God does. He looks upon His people on this earth. He
doesn't see them. He sees Christ. Do the same thing. And God was pleased to have all
his fullness dwell in him and through him to reconcile all
things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making
peace through his blood, shed on the cross. Remember all those
authorities, powers, thrones, and all that that the Gnostics
like to talk about? They were, to the Gnostics, kind
of like a ladder leading up to God. And you went through all
of those rungs getting up to God. And as kind of an exclamation
point at the end of all these glorious things Paul says about
the Lord Jesus, he says, it pleased God that that entire distance
from you to God be Christ. They called that the fullness,
that imaginary ladder they had. And Paul says that that fullness
is all in Christ. He is such a great Savior that
He reaches all the way from the eternal invisible God, holy,
righteous, dwelling in a light to which no man can approach.
He stretches all the way from there down to you and me and
all our depravity and weakness and filthiness and rebellion
and the whole distance between what we are by nature and what
God is by nature is spanned by this single person, Jesus Christ,
the living God. And we need nothing but Him. Now, that's a great Savior. That's
a Savior you can worship. That's a savior you can trust.
That's a savior that can save someone, even someone like you. Well, may God add his blessing.