me please to the letter of Paul
to the Church of the Colossians. Colossians chapter 1. And I shall read verses 9 through
23. Colossians 1 verses 9 through 23. In order that we might read with
greater understanding, just a word of explanation as to why Paul
wrote to this church perhaps would be in order. It received
news of those that were plaguing this church, as most of those
churches were plagued with one form of heresy or another. And
though it may be a bit of an oversimplification, the basic
heresy that was being spread there at Colossia was the heresy
of two. As one man has said, the fatal
number in Christian theology is two. Paul had come preaching
his gospel of Christ alone as the way to God. In Christ, all
the fullness of God dwelling. In Christ, all the blessings
of God stored up. Christ alone. There is one mediator. And these Gnostic heretics came
along and would add to Paul's preaching of Christ and say there
must be other intermediaries, other things, beings, creatures
by which we approach God and by which God comes to us. And
so he writes to them with a view to correcting this heresy that
cut at the heart of the gospel even as the Galatian heresy cut
at the heart of the gospel. Now then, against that perhaps
oversimplified background, I now read from verse 9. For this cause
we also, since the day we heard it, that is, heard of your faith
and love, do not cease to pray and make request for you that
ye may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual
wisdom and understanding, to walk worthily of the Lord unto
all pleasing, bearing fruit in every good work, and increasing
in the knowledge of God, strengthened with all power, according to
the might of His glory, unto all patience and longsuffering
with joy, giving thanks unto the Father, who made us meet
to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light, who delivered
us out of the power of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom
of the Son of His love, in whom we have our redemption, the forgiveness
of our sins, who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn
of all creation. For in Him were all things created,
in the heavens and upon the earth, things visible and things invisible,
whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers,
all things have been created through Him and unto Him. And
He is before all things, And in him all things consist, or
adhere, or hang together. And he is the head of the body,
the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead,
that in all things he might have the preeminence. For it was the
good pleasure of the Father that in him should all the fullness
dwell. And through him to reconcile
all things unto himself, having made peace through the blood
of his cross, Through him, I say, whether things upon the earth
or things in the heavens, and you, being in time past alienated
and enemies in your mind in your evil works, yet now hath he reconciled
in the body of his flesh through death to present you holy and
without blemish and unreprovable before him. If so be that ye
continue in the faith, grounded and steadfast and not moved away
from the hope of the gospel which he heard, which was preached
in all creation under heaven, whereof I, Paul, was made a minister." In the midst of this tremendous
statement on the supremacy of Christ, for this is Paul's basic
way of attacking this heresy, He brings the Colossians back
to the fact of who Christ is and what Christ has done on behalf
of His people in fulfillment of the purpose of the Father.
Now, in the midst of this treatment of the supremacy of Christ, we
have the statement of verse 18, which will be the particular
focus of our study this morning, and He is the Head of the Body,
the Church. to state that we live in an age
of unbounded lawlessness is to speak of truism or to utter a
cliché which perhaps is quite overworked, but the truth of
which is acknowledged, I'm sure, by everyone gathered here in
this building this morning. And in every age, whatever the
prevailing sins of that age may be, the Church is never immune
from the influence of the spirit of that age. And just as the
Colossians were infected with the terrible heresy of the Gnostics,
some of the religious philosophers of their day, and Paul had the
right to correct the infiltration of that heresy, so we need in
our day to be immunized against the inroads of the trends of
our own generation which are contradictory to the Spirit and
to the truth of the Gospel. Now I say that the spirit of
lawlessness, the rejection of constituted authority, is one
of the prevailing sins of our particular generation. It is
a sin of any generation, but it is not always the prevailing
sin of that generation. And it's because of this spirit
of anarchy, this spirit against constituted authority, that we
who profess to be the people of God need constantly to remind
ourselves that there is a structure of authority within the Church,
and no matter how much the spirit of lawlessness abounds, we are
called upon to live, to think, to work, to worship, within the
framework of that authority which God himself has constituted. And so with that as sort of an
introduction as to why I'm focusing our attention upon verse 18,
we want to break down the statement of the Apostle in this text concerning
Christ as the head of the body, the Church. And as we do, we
shall consider first of all the reality of Christ's headship
asserted Secondly, the nature of Christ's headship explained,
and then the implications of Christ's headship apply. First of all, then, the reality
of Christ's headship asserted. The Apostle says that He is the
head of the body. And in the assertion of Christ's
headship, the first thing to which he addresses our attention
is the uniqueness of the person who is the head of the church. And because the Apostle is careful
to do this, I wish to be careful in doing it as well. To whom
is Paul referring when he says, he is the head of the body? Well, he's referring to the one
who is described beginning with verse 15, who is the image of
the invisible God, all the way down to the last part of verse
18 where he's described as the one who is the beginning, the
firstborn from among the dead. In other words, Paul did not
think of this person who was head of the church in any way
divorce from the description of who he was in himself as given
to us in verses 15 through the latter part of verse 18. And in thinking this way, the
apostle was simply reflecting the mentality of his Lord. You
remember in that well-known passage in Matthew 16, our Lord asked
a question concerning his person. He said to his disciples, who
do men say that I the Son of Man am? And you remember the
response, Peter speaking on behalf of the apostolate. Some say that
you're Elias, some say that you're one of the prophets, but who
do you say that I am? And you remember the answer of
Peter. Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. Our Lord's
response to that confession was this, flesh and blood hath not
revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven, thou
art Peter, and upon this rock, upon this confession of your
understanding of who I am, I will build my church, and the gates
of hell shall not prevail against it. In that statement, our Lord
indicates that His church, the church which He will build, the
church which He will preserve, the church which He will see
rising to His purposes of conquest, the gates of hell shall not prevail
against it, is the church which is built upon the foundation
of the reality of who He is in Himself. Thou art the Christ,
the Son of the living God. Upon this rock I will build my
church." Hence it should not be surprising that the first
and most fierce heresies that attacked the church after the
death of the apostles, and some of it even during their lifetime,
were heresies concerning who Jesus Christ was and is. And it was these heresies that
brought to the fore the keenest minds and the most devoted spirits
of the early post-apostolic period. And out of the wrestlings came
the great confessional statements of the person of Christ. the
Athanasius Creed, the confession of the Council of Nicaea, and
later on the further church councils, all of which were occupied with
this fundamental issue, who is Jesus Christ? Now why was the
devil so adamant in trying to undercut this foundational principle? For the simple reason that he
knew well what Jesus said. I will build my church upon the
foundation of my person. Who I am is pivotal to what I
do in the building and preserving of my church. And so when the
Apostle Paul would assert the headship of Christ over his church,
he is careful to buttress that assertion on the left hand and
on the right with these statements of the uniqueness of the person
who is the head. Look at some of the lines of
thought that he draws out for us. Verse 15, who is the image
of the invisible God? Here is an explicit statement
of the essential deity of Jesus Christ. He is the image of the
invisible God. Whatever the invisible God is
in Himself, Jesus Christ is visibly represented to us. He goes on
to assert that He is the Creator. He is the firstborn, the rightful
heir of the whole creation. Why? For in Him were all things
created, in the heavens and upon the earth, things visible and
invisible, whether thrones, dominions, principalities, powers, all things
have been created through Him and unto Him, and He is before
all things, and in Him all things consist." What is he saying about
this unique person who is the head of the church? He says he
is God. He says he is the creator. He
says he is the end of that creation. He goes on to say that he is
the present preserver and the cohesive element of that creation. That which baffles the atomic
scientists as they try to understand what it is that keeps all of
this energy bound up within the structure of the atom and keeps
all of that within its framework. Here is the answer. And so you
see, the whole matter of trying to divorce the Christian faith
from the biblical doctrine of creation shows a mentality that
is unbiblical. Once you destroy this concept
that the head of the church is God himself, The head of the
church is creator of the world and the universe. He is sustainer
and governor of that universe. It will not be long before the
very words Savior and church have no biblical meaning whatsoever. There is tremendous pressure
being brought to bear upon the visible church of Christ today
in the area of the doctrine of creation. People who say, look,
we don't want to mess around with the doctrine of salvation.
We're perfectly willing for Christ to be head of His church, but
they want a head of the church who's not creator of the universe.
And you can't have one without the other. The Apostle Paul here
asserts that that unique person who is the head of the Church
is God, He is Creator, He is Sustainer of His universe. Listen
to me, young people. When you're tempted to be bullied
into adopting an unbiblical theory, and that's all it can be, of
origins, that is how this world came to be, Remember, to flirt
with such unbiblical theories is to flirt with the salvation
of your own soul. For if Christ is lost as Creator,
He is lost as Savior. Never forget it. The whole idea
that we can relegate origins to the scientists and salvation
of the soul and forgiveness of sin to the theologian and to
the Bible is a dichotomy unrecognized in the Word of God. The Bible
that comes saying, God so loved the world, begins with the statement,
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And
it will not have him as creator, it will not have him as savior. And so in asserting the headship
of Christ over his church, the apostle begins with the statement
of the uniqueness of the person who is head. But then he proceeds
to describe him not only as creator, not only as God, not only as
the cohesive element of the universe. He describes him in these terms
in verse 18, the beginning, the firstborn from the dead. He describes him as the one who
went down into the jaws of death, who in his death swallowed up
death, who in his resurrection burst the power and the bands
of death. And in so doing, pledge the release
of all of his own from that very power of death. He's the firstborn
from the dead, and there will follow all those who died in
him and with him, and who were risen with him, and will one
day be manifested in glory with him. I say to think of the headship
of Christ over the church, it is fundamental to start where
Paul started, by thinking of the uniqueness of that person
who is the head, Jesus Christ the Lord, as set before us in
this passage. Now in the second place, under
this general heading of the reality of Christ's headship over the
church asserted, Think with me not only of the uniqueness of
the person who is head, but the uniqueness of that church over
which he is head. Notice how he describes it. He
is the head of the body, the church. Now all other human societies
are groups of people tied together, perhaps on the one hand with
a common leader, or the adoption of common goals, common beliefs,
common concerns, common ambitions. But this is what makes the Church
a completely unique society. The Church is a society. It's
a visible entity. We are a society here this morning.
We are gathered together in one place at an appointed time with
specific business in which we are engaging. But what makes
the Church utterly unique? That church over which Christ
is head, what makes it so unique? Well, Paul describes it in these
words. He is the head of the body. And what is the unique
aspect of the body that the Apostle is emphasizing here? Well, it
is this fact that the body shares a common life. Sure, we have
common goals, common beliefs, common concerns, but you can
have that in the Elks Club. You can have that in the local
society for the prevention of cruelty to animals. But what
you do not have in any other human society is a common life. A life given by the very head
of that society. And so the church is called here
His Body, of which He Himself is the Head. And so Christ has
constituted His church, His own body, I say it reverently, an
extension and an integral part of His own life. And He brings
all into that church by imparting not just His ideas to their minds,
not just His goals to their hearts, not just His rule and His law
to their wills, but He imparts His very life to their hearts.
Hence, later on in this very epistle, Paul can say in these
words, chapter 3 and verse 4, When Christ, who is our life,
shall be manifested by virtue of what He is, He is able to
impart His own life to men, and in so doing, incorporate them
into His own body. And that's what makes the church
so unique. It is the fellowship of those
who share in the life of Jesus Christ. Now do you see how these
things begin to tie together? to start thinking about the headship
of Christ over His church without baptizing it by these two concepts,
the uniqueness of the one who is the head and the uniqueness
of that over which He presides as head, is to completely muddle
the whole issue. How can people understand the
function of the church who neither know experientially who Christ
is or what the church is? And so we must start where the
apostle starts in the text that is before us. It is only as the
doctrine of the uniqueness of this person is known and loved
by the Spirit through the Word, or by the Word through the Spirit,
flesh and blood, if not revealed it, and as the doctrine of the
uniqueness of the Church, as a fellowship of those incorporated
into the life of Christ, only as those things are maintained,
understood, held to, loved, embraced, and if necessary, confessed unto
blood, that the headship of Christ will be a living, burning reality
in that which claims to be his church. Well, we move from a
consideration of this matter of his headship, the reality
of his headship asserted against the backdrop of who he is, of
what the church is, to consider now the actual statement, the
reality of that headship over the church. He is the head. Notice
how he states it as a fact explicitly. He is the head of the body, the
church, and the emphasis in the original is upon the he. As we've
explained before in the language in which Paul wrote, your subject
is bound up in the very way you write the verb. And if you want
to emphasize it, you use an extra word in front of it. And here
you have it. And he is the head. of the church. The statement
he delighted to make in other places, Ephesians 4.15, holding
fast to him who is the head, even Christ. Colossians 2.19,
not holding fast the head, referring of course to Christ. It's a fact
implied in other places. In chapter 5 of Ephesians, as
Christ is the head of the church and the Savior of the body, so
the husband is the head of the wife and is to show the same
concern for his wife as Christ shows for his body. Christ is
not asking to be head. The Apostle Paul is not pleading
that men will make him head. He is stating a fact. He is the
head of the body, his church. Now this helps us, you see, to
understand what a church is. A church is not something that
goes down to the group of people who go down to the local office
and apply for recognition by the state as a tax-exempt religious
body and then draft a constitution and gather together and have
stated times of worship and have officers and all the rest. No,
no. You may have all of that and have no church. The church
is found where there is a body of people to whom Christ has
become head, the Christ of biblical revelation has communicated His
own life to a people and has brought them into loving subjection
to Himself. There is a church. And He is the head of the church,
His body. Now having looked at the general
theme of the reality of Christ's headship asserted, consider in
the second place the nature of Christ's headship explained.
When Paul says he is the head of the body, the church, what
was the precise nature of that headship? May I suggest two lines
of thought. It is a headship that is organic
on the one hand and administrative on the other. Now those are big
words for you kids, but stick with me, alright? He is the organic
head. When we say something is organic,
we mean there is a life union. Your head has a life union with
the rest of your body. If you don't believe it, you
better not do this. You better not do this. Don't
take me seriously. If you could and then remedy it, I'd say try
it. But you can't. It's irreversible. If you tried
this, the results are irreversible. You get up with a headache some
morning and say, I feel miserable with this headache. I think I'll
just lay my head on my dresser and go off to school without
it. Well, there are times when your teacher probably thinks
you did come off without your head when she looks at your work.
But you see, you can't do that. The head is organically tied
to the rest of the body. There is a living relationship. These microphones are not organically
tied to this wood. It's inorganic material. I can
take them and place them somewhere else and they'll function just
as well. But you can't take your head
from off your shoulders and stick it on top of that humidifier
and have it function. You see, there's a life union.
And that's the concept that the Apostle is emphasizing here,
that Jesus Christ is the organic head of His body, so that we
may say in a real sense, my body is me. If you kids are out playing
and one of the neighbor kids gets upset with you and comes
around and whacks you good on the arm and puts a big black
and blue mark, you come home and you say, Ma, Johnny down
the street hit me. Well, he didn't hit you, he hit
your arm. Yeah, but you say, my arm's me.
Right. Why? Because you understand what
it means that your body is an organic whole. And if someone
hits your arm, they're hitting you. If they kick you in the
shin, step on your toes, spit in your eye, they're doing that
to you. And you come home and say, so-and-so did this to me. Why? Because your body is you.
And so when the Scripture says Christ is the head of the body,
it brings us into that mysterious and yet wonderful biblical doctrine
that we are organically joined to the Lord Jesus Christ so that
the body of Christ, the Church, is a living organism. and just
as the center of my physical life is here in the head where
the signals go out in this amazing computer-like mechanism of the
human mind and all the information is fed in by the various senses
of sight and sound and smell and in terms of the state of
my mind and my spirit, my desires and ambitions all of those things
fed into this computer and out come signals and impulses and
decisions are made and actions are initiated, where do they
all begin? There in the head. And the body
then in the head is one organic whole. Me accomplish this particular
goal or that particular task. And the Apostle Paul is emphasizing
to the Colossians that Christ, in all the fullness of His glory
and all the magnificence of His person, He is the organic head
of His body, and in Him all the fullness of the Godhead dwells.
Why do you Colossians need to introduce some other influence
to the body for its health. The Gnostics come along and say,
if you are to be a healthy church, a healthy body, you need this
influence and that influence. He says, no, no, Christ is the
head. What Christ? The Christ who is
God. The Christ in whom all the fullness
of the Godhead dwells. You are complete in that Christ.
Don't look elsewhere. He is the organic head of the
body. But there's a second line of
emphasis here. He is the administrative head
of the body. That is, the head gives the orders. The hand doesn't tell the head
what to do, but the head tells the hand what to do. My finger doesn't give orders
to my head. My head gives orders to the finger. Now, it may send signals to my
head, and if I touch something hot, it may send a signal saying,
please take me away before I get burned. But my head can overrule
those signals and say, no, I want to be a martyr. I can keep my
hand right on the stove until I smell the burning flesh. My
head can overrule my hand. My hand can't overrule my head.
It can send signals, but the boss is here. Now that's the
concept that Paul underscores in Ephesians 4, Ephesians 5.
He says, Wives, be subject to your husbands as the church is
subject to Christ. For as Christ is head of the
church, so the husband is the head of the wife. It's in the
concept, you see, of the administrative head. Now, it's in this second
area that I wish to do some application and draw out some implications
further on in our study this morning. But we must come to
understand this principle, and it must become a living conviction
to us that though Jesus Christ is not visibly present when we
gather as the Trinity Baptist Church, though He is not physically,
visibly present, His headship is to be just as real and experienced
to us, just as vital it is in our thinking, as though he himself
should rise up and stand in the midst to preside over every stated
gathering of this assembly. whether it's for worship, whether
it's for prayer, whether it's for business, Jesus Christ is
not only the organic head from which we derive our life, he
is the administrative head who rules in the midst of his people. Now having asserted then very
briefly the reality of his headship, the nature of his headship, what
are the practical implications of the headship of Christ? over
his church. And it is to this that I'll address
myself most fully this morning. And I would break down the applications
of this basic biblical doctrine into two categories. The applications
to us individually and the applications to us corporately as a church. Individually, it tells us something
about what a Christian is. Are you a Christian? Well, you say, what do you mean
by that question? Well, I mean, is Christ your
organic and your administrative head? You see, there's no salvation
outside of the church of which Paul is speaking here. And that
church was not some visible local community of believers, but that
church over which Christ is head is His body, all His redeemed,
known only to God. But listen, Everyone's part of
that church for which he gave himself. Ephesians 5, Christ
loved the church and gave himself for the church. He is the organic
and administrative head of everyone in that church. So what is a
Christian? A Christian is one who has had
the very life of Christ communicated to him and who has been brought
under the rule and the government of Jesus Christ. And if that's
not true of you, you're not a Christian. It's just that simple. Isn't
it amazing how woolly people's thinking can become in this subject
of what is a Christian? You're not a Christian if you
simply subscribe to what the Bible says about Christ. Paul
goes on to describe believers in chapter 3 as those who have
the life of Christ. There is an organic unity. 1
Corinthians 6, He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit with
the Lord. When Christ, who is our life,
I am the vine, ye are the branches. Without me ye can do nothing.
The concept of a shared life. Now, I'm not talking about this
in the sentimental, non-theological categories of deeper life teaching. I'm talking about it within the
full, vigorous framework of Trinitarian theology. Christ is at the right
hand of the Father in a place of glory and majesty. But wonder
of wonders, the Spirit that He sends into my heart according
to the Scriptures is the Spirit of Christ bringing to me the
very life of Christ. So that I may say with the Apostle
Paul, I have been crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live,
yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. How? In the presence and
person of the Holy Spirit. In the life which I now live
in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me
and gave himself for me. I know something of what it is
to be a constant source of amazement to myself. That's a Christian.
A man who looks in the mirror and says, that's you, but it
isn't you. A man who says, yes, that's the person that I've looked
at for years, but it's not the person. And he sees desires and
ambitions and abilities to face sin and face need and problems. And the whole spectrum of his
life is such, though he sees failure and he sees shortcoming,
he says, there's no explanation for the way I now live. but that
Christ lives in me. He's become my organic head,
and the very life of the head now flows through this member
of the body. And then he can also say, Jesus
Christ has become my administrative head. I've been brought by His
grace to capitulate to His government. I see that I was not made to
rule my own life. I see that the essence of sin
is going into the God business. I see that Jesus Christ is infinitely
worthy to rule my life. And when the Holy Ghost shows
you who Jesus is, the reflex response of the heart will be
like that of Paul, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? And
he becomes head. All this king and sovereign in
the life, that's a Christian. I ask you, is Jesus Christ your
head? Paul said He is the head of the
body, the church. And if you're in that church
that He's redeemed, the evidence will be He is your head. I press
it upon your conscience. Is He your head? Organically,
administratively, It has a second implication or application to
us individually, and I want to state it this way. The measure
of my growth in grace, if Christ is my head, is the actual subjection
of my life in all of its areas to the Word of Jesus Christ.
That's the measure of my growth. That His headship is being expressed
in ever-widening circles in my day-by-day experience. It's what
Jesus had in mind when he said, make disciples, baptize them,
teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded
you, so that ever-increasing aspects of my home life, my personal
life, the use of my time and my money and my energies are
being brought under the regulative principle of the Word of God.
That's Christian growth. It's not the ability to have
higher flights of ecstasy in my devotions. It's not the ability
to have more tingles up and down my spine when I sit with God's
people. No, no, the measure of my growth
is to what extent is there an unchecked line of communication
between the head to every member of my body. so that when the
Lord Jesus is the head, through his written word applied to my
conscience by the Spirit, speaks and gives directive to me to
what extent am I running in the way of his commandments. But
it's my concern to bring home the application more particularly
this morning to our life corporately as a church. During these summer
months, as most of you know, I break off our regular course
of exposition because we have such a transient congregation
with everyone going on vacations and visitors amongst us. But
knowing that Labor Day is sort of the pivotal point in getting
back to normalcy, And as my mind has been going into the fall
months and thinking of the normal, more regular schedule of church
life and activity, this is the concept that has come home to
my own heart with freshness, and I trust the Spirit of God
will bring it home to all of our hearts. As we face a new
church year in that sense, measuring it from September on through
to about the month of June, perhaps an artificial distinction, but
one that's been forced upon me through pastoral experience over
the past ten years. What should be the thing that
governs all of our thinking as we face these coming months,
the tremendous opportunities, the responsibilities of witness
that we have, of concern for one another, of outreach, of
expansion of the Kingdom of Christ? I say this concept needs to be
indelibly impressed upon our hearts. He, the Lord Jesus Christ
in all the glory of His person, He is the head of the body, the
church. And that has two great implications
to us in our corporate life together. If He is the organic head of
the church, then any reliance upon human strength and wisdom
for the life and ministry of the church is a denial of His
organic headship. All the life is to flow down
from the head. And oh, then the curse expressed
in the words of Jeremiah the prophet, chapter 17, Cursed be
he that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose
heart departeth from the Lord. And if there is anything I fear
with the gracious growth and increase that God has given to
us, It's that we might move away from the simplicity that is in
Christ Jesus. And that was the thing Paul had
to come back to with these Colossians. These people came along saying,
look, Christ and the preachment of Christ as being everything
was alright to start with, but you've got to go on now. And
we'll tell you how to go on. And they introduced something
other than Christ. And Paul says that was spoiling
you through vain philosophy and the deceit of men. A person who grows in grace does
not grow away from the fundamental concept that Christ is all. He
grows into an ever deepening conviction of the truth of that
concept. And so if our growth as a church
is growth given by the Spirit, And if it is to be sustained
by the Spirit, then this concept must become real to us as His
people. He is the head of the body, the
organic head, the source of all wisdom and of all life. Paul
emphasizes that later on again in this epistle. He says that
in Christ are hid all the treasures of wisdom and of knowledge. Let
no man spoil you, he says, with persuasiveness of speech. Chapter 2, verses 3 and 4. And
there are a thousand experts waiting on every corner to say,
quote, if the church would accomplish its mission, this is the path
she should walk. This is the path she should go. And so often the advice is nothing
but human wisdom, gilded over with some fool's gold of religious
and Christian terminology. But it's rotten to the core because
it does not flow out of the wisdom that is in Christ. That's why
Paul could say with great spiritual perception, the weapons of our
warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down
of strongholds. So if Christ is the organic head
of the church, then as we face a new year of responsibility
and privilege and demand and perplexing circumstances, and
we'll face them, oh, that we come to a new understanding that
Christ is all, and in Him are hid all the treasures of wisdom
and of knowledge. Then in the second place, if
Christ is the administrative head of the church, Then any
intrusion of human authority into the life of the church is
an insult to his headship. You know, there were men, women,
boys and girls who died for this principle. They were called the
Covenanters in Scotland. And you know why they died? They
didn't die because people were forcing them to deny the deity
of Christ. They didn't die because people
were saying, We want you to deny the blood atonement. We want
you to deny regeneration by the Spirit. No, no. The issue was
just this. We, as the governments of Great
Britain, want to usurp the right of giving directives to the churches
of Scotland. And these people said, no! The
church is part of Christ's crown rites. And we will now allow
no earthly potentate to usurp the crown rights of King Jesus. And little children ages 10 and
11 and 12 died, rather than deny the kingship
of Christ over the church. Would to God we had that kind
of conviction in our day. Intrusion of human authority
into the life of the church is an insult to Christ the head.
How does that human authority express itself? When human ideas
are given as doctrine instead of the pure word of the living
God. What should I preach in the coming
months? What should you receive as truth?
What should we confess to the world? The answer is, the whole
counsel of God, in all of its breadth and length and depth
and height, nothing less, but not one isle to more. To the
law and to the testimony, if they speak not according to this
word, it is because there is no light in them. And when human
ideas are substituted for the pure word of God, when human
evasions, when men feel that they must be wiser than God and
say, well, this truth of the Bible, it seems to be a truth,
but that's very offensive, and therefore we'll whittle it down
and reshape it and reform it to make it more palatable to
men. No, no. That's an intrusion upon the
headship of Christ. The head of the church is given
a deposit of truth, and our responsibility is to press on into ever deeper
understanding of that deposit, then by his grace to embody it
in life, and then in love to proclaim it to the world. When
human plans enter in to give directives to the church, this
is a usurping of the headship of Christ. How shall we reach
the lost? What shall we do to evangelize? The philosophy in our day is
just do something somehow, some way, but do something. As though
Christ were pleased by these spiritual sacrifices for which
there is no warrant in the Word of God, in terms of the activities,
in terms of how we shall worship Him. I'm often asked about the
form of worship in our own assembly. This happened a couple of weeks
ago when I was down in Pensacola at the Theological Institute
there. And when people say, well, why don't you, say, have a choir,
or why don't you this? My answer is, Will you show me
from the Word of God the warrant for the public worship of God
being conducted in such a manner? You see, and this immediately
puts the issue where it ought to be. Has King Jesus given directive
that he be worshipped? And this is not a polemic against
choirs. I believe they have a legitimate place in edification to people. The question is, is this warranted
in the public worship of God? Is there a warrant for this particular
thing or that particular thing? Well, you see, if we believe
Christ is Head, we cannot be content that even now, as we
meet this morning, that everything about our worship is pleasing
to Him. We must be willing to bring it all again and again
to the touchstone of the Word of God and say, Lord Jesus, Head
of the Church, are we pleasing You? Give us life, give us insight,
give us understanding to know your mind and to know your will. Ah, but someone says, has he
not given authority to those who are elders? Hebrews 13, 17,
Obey them that have the rule over you. Yes, but an elder is
only an elder when he's acting under the authority of that same
word given by the same Christ. And he's to be followed and obeyed
only to the extent that he administers the Word of Christ. And so, as
I've said so often, and I'll say again, and I hope it rings
in your ears if you look at me laid out somewhere someday, you're
no friend of your own soul or no friend to me if you believe
or accept anything, because it comes over this pulpit with enthusiasm
and with apparent conviction. You have the responsibility to
search the scriptures constantly to make your own conscience sensitive
to the whole teaching of the Word of God. I cannot forget
what I saw in the past weeks. Most of you who were here last
Sunday night will know something of what I mean by that. And the
reason whole churches and thousands upon thousands of people sit
in spiritual darkness today is because somebody became lazy
and began to think of the headship of Christ as an abstract concept. Christ stands His head here this
morning and He binds your conscience only to that which He has revealed
in His Word. And if anything comes over this
pulpit that is not true to the Word, Christ doesn't bind your
conscience to it. The preacher may try to, but
Christ hasn't bound your conscience. And if there is to be preserved
for an unborn generation a place where there will be the pure
preaching and pure worship and service that is acceptable to
God, all dear beloved people of this assembly, Pray that God
will make real to your heart in a fresh way that Jesus Christ
is Head of the Church. One of the beautiful things about
this concept being understood, it's illustrated again and again
in the book of the Acts, is that Christ then in a marvelous way,
ways that we cannot put in a test tube and trace out in mathematical
precision, communicates his mind, not just to the leaders, but
to the whole body of his people. We know something of that experience.
Many of us have testified that our congregational meetings have
been as a pure spiritual experience as our times of prayer and worship,
and it ought to be, and it will continue to be, if the headship
of Christ is ever before us, so that when we come to discuss
business, perhaps this will be the year that God will be pleased
to release land to us and we'll enter the matter of discussing
building and future plans and what we should do and how much
we should spend and what direction we should move. Tremendous decisions. But I don't dread them. I anticipate
them with joy if, If the prevailing spiritual mood of this assembly,
starting with its elders down to the newest babe in Christ,
if the prevailing mood is one in which Colossians 1.18 has
been inscribed upon our hearts, He is the Head of the Body, the
Church, And we come together to wait upon Him, that He'd reveal
His mind and His will to us through the Word and by the Spirit. What
a thrilling thing to see God take 85 people from such diverse
backgrounds and diverse tastes and opinions and natural inclinations
and bring us to one line so that we can say, it seemed good unto
us and to the Holy Ghost. Oh, is it too much to expect
that we can see and know that again as we've known it so often
in the past? It will be our experience if
we constantly acknowledge that He is the Head of His Church. May I suggest in closing that
the concept of Christ being the administrative Head of the Church
does not begin to be relinquished on its own. What happens is this.
We first of all begin to think lower thoughts of Christ's person
than we ought to think. Then we're softened up, as it
were, to relinquish his headship. That's why when Paul is trying
to bring the Colossians to a fresh realization of Christ's headship,
where does he start? He starts with the glory of his
person. Who is the image of the invisible God? Who is the Creator? Who is the end of creation? Who
is the One in whom all things hold together? He says you must
keep before you this biblical vision of the glory of Christ
in His person. Then it's relatively easy to
acknowledge Him as Head, for if He's all that in Himself,
what else can we do but acknowledge that all our life comes from
Him and all our direction must come from Him as well. But you
begin to think of him as something less than that, or begin to hold
those concepts in a mere theological abstraction. Oh yes, Christ is
God, Christ is Creator, instead of a burning inward worshipful
reality. And then it's easy to begin to
deny his headship in the experience of your own individual life and
in the experience of our corporate life. So let us pray that the
Holy Spirit, whose delightful ministry it is to take the things
of Christ and reveal them unto us, that He will give us from
week to week new and ravishing sights of the glory of Christ. And then, as a result of those
new insights of the glory of His person and the perfection
of His work, His headship shall become an increasingly practical
reality to us individually and to us as a body of his people. He is the head of his church. The reality of his headship is
asserted. The nature of that headship we've
sought to explain. It is organic and it is administrative. The implications we've tried
to lay before you. May God help us to receive his
word in faith and work it out in obedience as he applies it
to our hearts by the Spirit. Let us pray. Our Father, we do thank you this
morning for Him whom you have constituted Head of the Church. We do not understand how we have
been incorporated into Him, and yet we read in your Word that
we were chosen in Him. that we died in Him, that we
rose in Him, and that we have even been raised together with
Him, and that when He shall be manifested, so we too shall be
manifested with Him in glory. Oh, we thank you for all that
you have treasured up for your own in Christ Jesus. We acknowledge this day with
shame that we have at times insulted Him in His place of headship. Lord Jesus, forgive us when we
have mistaken our own notions and our own carnal ambitions
for the expressions of Your mind and will. We pray that You will
forgive us and that by Your own Spirit working in our hearts,
these coming weeks and months may be constant evidence that
you are indeed the head of this particular manifestation of your
true church. Lord, we cry to you that you
will work in us to preserve us from anything and everything
that would lower our estimation of Christ, that would then soften
us up for some strategic blow from the enemy, to move us in
a direction of self-will and self-confidence. O God, preserve
us, we pray. We acknowledge the folly of our
hearts and the waywardness of our feet. Come to us in preserving
grace, we pray. And then we would ask for those
to whom you are not head, those sitting here this morning, who
have, as it were, the bit in their own teeth, determined to
move in a course of self-will, who are monuments of the power
of the devil to blind and to deceive. Lord, have mercy upon
such today, and grant that they may be brought to see the folly
of the course in which they walk, and they may be brought to embrace
the Lord Jesus Christ as their only Savior and Lord. Hear us, our Father, in this
our prayer, and seal to our hearts your word. Dismiss us from this
place with your own blessing resting upon us, and enable us
to sanctify this day to our prophet and to your praise, through Jesus
Christ, our Lord. Amen.