Again, we're very thankful that
we have another privilege to be able to assemble
ourselves together and to hear the glorious gospel of God's
free grace. A couple of weeks ago, I was
talking to Brother Joe Terrell, and I knew that Joe would be
able to come down and see his parents down in Huntington area. And I was just telling him, I
said, Joe, if you get an opportunity to come down, let me know. Maybe Lord willing, you come
up and preach for us here. And he just kind of left it open-ended. We'd see how things would go. But what happened was his dad
had a stroke. And they called him and he had
to make a flight down to Huntington, spur of the moment. And he emailed
me and he said, I'm leaving right now. I'll have just no access
to any communication except my cell phone. And he said, we'll
just touch base with each other. But he said, if Lord will, he
said, I can maybe come up there and be with you guys." And I
told him, I said, if it works out, just keep me posted on how
your dad's doing and we'll see how things work out. Well, thankfully, he was able
to come up and be with us today. His dad is not doing well and
the medical team has told him that outlook does not look real
good. And so he's going to move his
dad and mom up to Rock Valley, Iowa with them on Tuesday and
just let them stay there with him. He and Bonnie. And Bonnie
is really the one that's trained and qualified to be able to take
care of someone that's in his dad's condition. We want to be
remembering Joe and Bonnie and his parents as they go up. But
I am thankful today that Joe's able to be with us. Pastor's
Grace Community Church in Rock Valley, Iowa. And Joe and I have
known each other for a long time. And this man, by the grace of
God, has been a faithful preacher. And for that, I'm thankful. We've
enjoyed the time that we had with him yesterday afternoon,
last night. And then even this morning to
be able to, I'm looking forward to. I've asked Joe to take both
services this morning. So before he comes, let's have
a word of prayer. And then I'll have Pastor Joe
Terrell come and preach for us. Our Father, we're indeed thankful
that in your mercy and grace, you've allowed us to be able
to have this time together. And we're thankful. for this,
your messenger that you've sent our way. Pray for Joe or pray
that you would bless the Word that is preached this morning.
Bless it to our heart and to our understanding. And we pray
that you would cause that which is preached to be a comfort and
a blessing to your people. Call out your own. We know according to your blessed
promise, your Word is not going to return void. It will accomplish
the purpose for which it sent. We pray for his dad. We pray
for his mom. We pray that you'd bless, Lord,
this time that they will be having together. We pray that you'd
help them as they do that which they can to be a help and a comfort
to them during this time. Lord, we ask these things for
Christ's sake. Amen. Pastor Joe Carroll. All right, you can be open in
your Bibles to Colossians chapter three. Now, my wife and my mother and
just about anybody that knows me. Will verify to you that. I tend to be a scatterbrained
and absent minded individual. And it is my well and the more
things I've got to think about the more scatterbrained I get.
So I do hope that I'll be able to collect some thoughts this
morning and pass them on to you. And I say all that simply in
an attempt to set the bar real low for your expectations so
that you won't be too disappointed. But I do pray I appreciate that
prayer. The Lord will give me something
that will honor his name and bless you. And that's not two
different requests. If you are the sheep of God that
which honors his name will bless you. So we're not asking for
two different things, we're asking for one thing that brings about
two blessed results. In verse 11 of Colossians chapter
3, we read this, where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision
nor uncircumcision, barbarian, civian, bond nor free, but Christ
is all and in all. Two or three years ago, I was
at the chiropractor. And she knows I'm a preacher.
And so she asked me a question, just something that had happened
there in her office that kind of surprised her, that a woman
had been there to be treated and she brought her little girl
in with her. And as the chiropractor's working, the little girl says,
where do you go to church? And the chiropractor, realizing it's
best to dodge questions like that in those circumstances,
says, well, well, kept trying to give her answers that would
just deflect, really, and Finally, she says, well, I go to church
in such and such a city. And she says, yes, but which
church do you go to? The little girl was pressing her real hard.
Finally, she says, well, I go to the Roman Catholic Church.
And the little girl said, well, then you're not a Christian.
And the chiropractor was not so much offended as surprised
that a little five or six-year-old girl would already be of strong
enough opinion to make a statement like that. And she wondered what
I thought of it. And we talked a little while. When I left the
office and I was going home, I thought, well, What is a Christian?
I mean, if you can say you're not a Christian or you are a
Christian before you can say something like that, there's
got to be a definition of what a Christian is so you can compare
it. Well, what I want to speak on this morning is very much
related to that, and that is what is Christianity? Because
essentially, a Christian is someone who worships according to Christianity.
Now you know there's a lot of definitions of Christianity.
I mean different ways you can look at it. If you if you look
on the world news tonight or whatever they call those evening
news programs and they'll talk about some of the warfare that's
going on in our world right now as a warfare between Muslims
and Christians. Between Islam and Christianity
and it's not. But that's how they view Christianity
as some kind of social or political system. and identification. Others will define Christianity
according to a moral system. Well, Christianity is that which
follows the moral commands of Jesus of Nazareth, such as that
which you'd have others to do to you, so do to them, the golden
rule. And so they think of Christianity
that way. They think of Christianity to
be an elevated level of humanity. That is, you're a better human
than others, and after all, you're a Christian. So that's kind of
how the world looks at Christianity. Of course, words such as this
always ought to be defined according to those who, at least humanly
speaking, established it. I mean, we can't just say a Christian
is whatever we want to say it is. Or Christianity is whatever
we think Christianity ought to be. Well, Christianity, as I
See it defined by the scripture is founded on two points, two
related points. It was the essential message
of the church. When the apostles were alive,
there were two things they preached, two related things, and in truth,
from the very first time God ever spoke a promise concerning
the gospel, This has been the message. There's two things and
I'll tell them to you right off. The first of them is Jesus is
the Christ. And the second is what we read
here, Christ is all. Now, you put those two together,
you have got the sum and substance of Christianity. If you have
those things, if they are part of your heart faith, then you
are a part of Christianity, whatever else may be attached to you.
If you don't have those things, if your form of worship and faith
does not include those truths, it doesn't matter what else you
have. You are not a Christian. You are not a worshipper according
to Christianity. Jesus is the Christ and Christ
is all. Now, what do we mean when we
say that Jesus is the Christ? Do you know that was the message
that the apostles went out with? It says of Paul that he went
from synagogue to synagogue teaching that Jesus is the Christ. The
other apostles did the same thing. What were they saying? Well,
they were identifying a man, Jesus, and they were saying that
he is something. He is Christ. Now, Christ has a particular meaning.
It's not the third name or last name of our Savior. You know,
we always thought we talked about the Lord Jesus Christ as though
that's his first, middle and last name. But actually, the
Lord has one name, Jesus, and two titles attached to it, Lord
and Christ. You remember Peter's declaration
on the day of Pentecost being known to all of you that God
hath made this Jesus whom you crucified to be Lord and Christ. Well, what it means to be a Christian
is tied up in what it means for Jesus to be the Christ. What
is it to be the Christ? Well, Christ means exactly the
same thing as the word Messiah. It's just Messiah comes out of
the Hebrew language, Christ comes out of the Greek language. And
both words mean the Anointed One. In the Old Testament system,
the old covenant economy of the Jews. There were three mediatorial
offices which were called Christ offices or Messiah offices. These
were offices that when a man was put into them, he was anointed
with oil to signify that he was the one. And these three offices
are prophet, priest, and king. And when we say that Jesus is
the Christ, we are saying that He is the human embodiment and
perfection of those three offices. Even the Jews realized that when
one of their number was chosen and set forth as a prophet or
priest or king and anointed with oil and put into their position,
that they were really just pointing to another one who would come
and embody all three offices in one man. And if they were
thinking of the prophetic office, they referred to him as that
prophet. If they were referring to him
as in his kingly office, they were looking for the son of David.
And in his high priestly office, they were looking for him in
all of these things, but to be one man. And the book of Daniel
speaks of Messiah in the singular. Now, there's lots of Messiahs,
but there's going to be this singular Messiah. And our Lord
Jesus Christ, and this is the essential point of Christianity
and of Christian faith, He is the Prophet, Priest, and King
of God's people. And brethren, He's the only one.
You know, the reason that the Old Covenant was done away with
when Christ came is because it had served its purpose. And it
was a covenant of parts, a covenant of almost like down payment,
if you will. All those men who served as prophets,
priests, and kings to that point, they never could do their job
perfectly. Hebrews is almost totally given over to the fact
that the high priest, because he dies, you've got to have more
high priests over and over and over. But then Jesus Christ comes,
you don't need any more priests after that. By one sacrifice,
He's forever perfected them that are sanctified. The job is done.
He is that prophet. And when He came and spoke, there
was nothing more to say. The apostles didn't teach us
anything new. They wrote down, essentially,
what the Lord Jesus Christ said. Hebrews begins with these words.
At various times and in various ways, God spoke to the fathers
through the prophets. But in the last of these days,
in the last of the days of God speaking, He has spoken to us
in Son. He has spoken to us by that prophet. And when that prophet spoke,
there was nothing more to say. Revelation was done. That's why
we don't keep adding to our Bible. It's done. All that the apostles
did was go out and preach the message which Christ had brought.
So Christ is prophet. He's prophet because He knows
the truth and He is of an appropriate nature to tell us the truth. You know, God out there, the
transcendent God, He can't speak to us any more than an author
can speak to the characters in his book. If He's going to speak,
He must become part of the story. And that's what God did. He wrote
Himself into His own story and spoke to us. And that's our Lord
Jesus Christ. Being God, He knows all things
about God. Being man, He can speak to men
in ways that men understand. He's the prophet. Perfect prophet.
He's the priest. There's always been priests.
I mean, First time, God showed them how to offer sacrifices.
There was the priest who would offer sacrifice on behalf of
the people. I said all these offices are mediator offices.
That means it's offices where one man stands between God and
men. And the prophet stands between
God and men, and he speaks to men on behalf of God. And then
the priest stands between God and men, and he speaks to God
on behalf of men. And then the king, what does
he do? He mediates the authority of God for the direction of God's
people and for their protection from their enemies. Well, the
Lord Jesus Christ, our high priest, what does it say? And this is
so important to understand about our Lord's priestly work. It
was not toward us. The Lord Jesus Christ never offered
anything to us. He offered himself said the book
of Hebrews without spot to God. He stood as it were with his
back toward us in his face toward God. And as our high priest he
offered one sacrifice which is forever and without excuse me. without any way for it to be
taken back or nullified or in any way proven ineffective. He
offered himself and our sins were removed. God accepted his
sacrifice. It's a done deal. That's why
there is no priest class in the church. Don't need one. We're all priests to offer sacrifices
of praise, but there is no priest anymore. Nowhere. to offer a
sacrifice of atonement. Why? Because an effectual one's
already been offered by the Christ, the Christ priest, the Lord Jesus. And he's the king. He has been
anointed to that office. Wherefore God hath highly exalted
him, and given him a name above every name, that at the name
of Jesus every knee should bow and every tongue confess that
Jesus is what? Lord. And the Lord Jesus, right
now, as the Christ King, rules over everything, over the entire
created universe, in order to bring about the full salvation
of all of God's elect. That's actually what Romans 8.28
means, when it says, All things work together for good to them
who love God, who are called according to His purpose. A lot
of people think, you know, they'll say, well, something bad happened,
so now something good is going to happen to make up for that.
Or that, I wonder what good will come out of that. Maybe nothing
you'll ever see in this life. I mean, let's face it, you know,
like, loved ones die. Well, I wonder what good God's
going to bring out of that for me. Like somewhere down the road,
you know, you'll have a windfall prophet on Simon. You know what
it means? That God is ordering everything
to ensure that you will be with him and behold his glory. That's the good he's working
towards. You may go bankrupt sometime
in this life. That doesn't mean that somewhere down the road
he's going to make you rich. You may die bankrupt. I guess
everybody does. Because when you die you ain't
got nothing anymore. Do you see what I mean? He is
the king and he is directing his people You know, the word
Antichrist actually means substitute for Christ. That's what the word,
strictly speaking, means. And all these people, all these
religious leaders who try to be prophets to God's people and
try to be priests to God's people or try to be kings over God's
people, you know what they are? They're substituting themselves
in the place of the true prophet, priest, and king. They are Antichrist. Don't go looking for one guy
that's going to pop up over in the Mideast somewhere and try
to take over the world and call him Antichrist. Antichrist is
on television. Antichrist has mega churches.
That's where he is working. But you've got these, you've
got preachers that try to rule their church as though they're
allowed to lord it over God's heritage. There's only one that
has the right to lord it over God's heritage. That's the Lord. You know, churches, they'll do
it with a single person or they'll have a board or something, and
they just they're tyrants over God's people. That's Antichrist. You have the fellow over in Rome
with his robes and his hat and all that gilded stuff around
him. And he walks around with a stick
in his hand, meaning a shepherd's staff, as though he rules the
church. There is no Lord over God's people
other than the Lord. Jesus the Christ. And the apostles
went around preaching that. And when they preached, he was
the only prophet. The Greeks said, well, what he's saying
is stupid. When he preached, he was the only priest. The Jews
got upset. And when he said he's the only
king, the Romans got upset. Have you ever noticed that everything
that's true about Christ gets somebody upset? But they attack
him in his most vital offices. But Christians look to no one
for truth other than Jesus Christ. Christians are those who come
to God through no one but the Lord Jesus Christ. He is their
priest. And Christians are those who
bow to no one but the Lord Jesus Christ. He is their king. And
then the second point. Jesus is the Christ. Christ is
all. As I said, Christ unites all
those titles, all those offices into one man, prophet, priest,
and king. And Paul says that Christ is all. That is the essence of the Christian
message. Now let's take just a moment
because the moment's all we got to note the context into which
Paul wrote these words that is the historical context. The Book
of Colossians was written in response to one of the early
heresies in the church. It's interesting how God brought
specific heresies into the church so the apostles could deal with
them and it's somehow another fits every age. And this heresy
was called Gnosticism and essentially Gnostics do what lots of religious
people like to do within the visible or so-called Christian
church. And that is they like to divide the people of God into
upper and lower levels. And you have those that are just
the riffraff Christians, then you have the spiritual Christians.
I remember they used to call it spiritual and carnal Christians.
Do you remember that division? You know, but these Gnostics,
and they got their name from the Greek word meaning to know,
and they called themselves the knowers. And they felt that they
had achieved such a high level of spirituality, they had a special
connection with God. And they were the best of the
best. And in the church, there was them and there's us. And Paul says, no, there's neither
you nor them. There's him and that's it. Christ is all. And one of the
things that these Gnostics believe, they believe that between us
And God was this kind of a ladder of more or less spiritual beings. All this came, by the way, through
Greek philosophy. And you know how the Greeks had
all their gods and demigods and semi-gods? They dragged that
into Christianity and they said, in order to get to God, you've
got to go through this whole ladder of mediators. And there, you know, each one
a little bit higher. And they would acknowledge that Jesus was at
the top of the ladder. And they called this ladder the
fullness. And Paul said it pleased God
that all the fullness should be in Christ. And in Him dwells
all the fullness of the Godhead in a bodily form. By the way,
they also wanted to deny that Jesus Christ had a body. He said
he's just a spiritual being. And Paul said, and this is what
he meant by this in the book of Colossians, everything it
takes to get from where you are to where God is, is in Christ. You need Christ, but He's all
you need. The most moral, upright, Righteous,
respectable man in the world is in desperate need of Jesus
Christ. And the most wicked, depraved,
corrupt, violent, and worthless individual in the world, Christ
is all he needs. Most of so-called Christianity
doesn't believe that. In fact, in the book of Galatians,
one of the issues that Paul was dealing with was that the Jews
thought before you could be saved, you had to make at least a little
stab at being a Jew. You know, that was a step up.
There is no step up to Christ. There's one mediator between
God and men. The man Christ Jesus. But there
is no mediator between men and Christ. That's why you don't need to
walk down front and shake the preacher's hand. Because he's
not going to take your hand and then put his hand on Christ and
bring you two together. What did Job say? Oh, that there
were a daysman who could put his hand on both of us. On God
and on Job. And there's one man that can
do that. The Lord Jesus Christ. And you don't need anybody else's
hands in between. In fact, if you put anybody else's
hands in between, the Lord will just step out of the way. Because
He's going to be the whole way or He's not going to be involved
at all. Christ is all. Christ is all in the church.
It is not for nothing that God's church is called the Church of
Christ, because it is. Christ is all in the church in
contrast to us being anything. What is a person in the church?
Nothing. That's what he's talking about.
Now we're back in Colossians 3.11. Where there is neither
Greek nor Jew, what's the where he's talking about? Well, it
says in verse 10, We've put on the new man which is renewed
in knowledge after the image of him that created him. He's
talking about the new creation. In the new creation, Christ is
all. What is the new creation? Well,
in each individual, it's that revived or regenerated spirit
within him. But collectively, it's the church.
It says God will make new heavens and new earth. He's already started. When God regenerates a man, He
doesn't just renew the old man. He doesn't just Give kind of
a CPR to the old man. He makes something brand new
that's not even part of that creation he made in Genesis chapter
one. And that's the beginning of the
resurrection, the beginning of the new heavens and new earth.
And in that place, Christ is all. It doesn't matter whether
you're a Greek or Jew. Greek, that word Greek, they
just commonly meant all Gentiles. Classified him as a Greek and
said, well, there's neither Greek nor Jew. It doesn't matter where
you came from, no matter what your ancestry is. Can you imagine
what a blow that was to the Jews and the Greeks? Because they
both look down on each other. The Jews say we're filthy Gentiles.
The Gentiles are those stupid Jews. And Paul said neither one
matters. There's neither circumcision
nor uncircumcision. Imagine that from the man whose
former boast was circumcised on the eighth day of the stock
of Israel. Barbarian or Scythian, the Gentiles, or the Romans anyway,
they were the civilized nation and empire of that day and constantly
their military had to be sent out to deal with the barbarians.
The barbarian whores, which by the way is most of us. We were
from the barbarian whores, the Germanic tribes and from over
in Britain and all that, you know, we come from them. But
we were the barbarians back then. And you can imagine what that
sounded like to those cultured Romans. Paul says, it's nothing. Your Roman culture, your Roman
Republican government and all that that you've developed. And
that means nothing in the sight of God. The barbarians are on
the same level with you. But, you know, there were barbarians
and then even among the barbarians, there were worse. The Scythians
were known to be of the most barbaric. Uncultured, uncivilized, violent,
disgusting people. And Paul said it's of no significance,
whatever. And bond or free. You know, old
feelings die hard. And some that God saved were
slaves and some that God saved were slave owners. And in the
church of the Lord Jesus, you might have sitting in the pew
a man who is a slave and the man who owned him. And Paul said, it doesn't matter. And you say, well, a Christian
already know that. They didn't know it in the South 150 years
ago. And brethren, we don't know it
completely. Don't we still hold ourselves
as higher and more worthy than others for either social status? Oh, that's a constant warfare,
isn't it? To remember Christ is all. And that master had to
sit there next to his slave and realize, in this place, In this
government, I'm nobody and neither is my slave. There's only one
somebody and that's Christ. Christ is all in the church's
message. That's all we're preaching. Now
you can build a big church if you'll come up with several messages
and rotate them. Messages about the family, about
economics, about the social issues of the day and politics and morality.
And when they're weary of one subject, you just move to the
next one and that tickles their ears for a little while longer.
You just keep rotating that and people start collecting. But
the church has one message of two points. Jesus is the Christ
and Christ is all. And there's only one kind of
person that can stand. That sounds funny, can stand to sit there,
can tolerate sitting there and listening to that. Week after
week after week. And that's the sheep of God.
I don't know how old this church is, but I know Brother Scott
pastor here a long time and you've been here several years. How
come you all haven't had to put on addition after addition? How
come this place isn't packed with? Why? Well, because you
can't attract goats with what's being preached here. Because
they don't like Christ as all. Everybody wants to be a little
something. And Christ is all kind of eliminate that, doesn't
it? I got to hurry. Christ is all in the leadership
of the church. Did you know that? I know we
have. I hate to call them offices because
that's really not what they are. The pastorate is not an office,
it's a job. I find there's lots of people
willing to fill an office, but there's not so many people willing
to work and that's That's what it is. A pastoring is something
you do. It's not just a position you
take. But the authority of the church is not the pastor or elder
or bishop or whatever you call him. It's Christ. In fact, the
Lord Jesus Christ is called all of those things. He is our elder
brother for sure, but he's also called the bishop and the shepherd. And by the way, the words pastor
and shepherd are the same word. He is the shepherd and the bishop
of our soul. The fellows like me that stand behind the pulpit?
Well, God help us if we ever try to think that we're really
the shepherd of God's people or the overseer of their souls.
He is. We're a voice. We're a clay pot. And by the grace of God, we have
a treasure inside. But we ourselves are nothing.
Christ is everything. Christ is all to the Father,
for he's committed all things to the hands of the Son. And
Christ is all in the heart of the believer. He is all the believers
love. I am my beloved and my beloved
is mine. When Peter denied the Lord three
times, it's interesting, I love the way the Lord dealt with it.
He didn't rebuke Peter. He didn't make him promise he'd
never do that again. He said to Peter three times,
do you love me? And finally, Peter says, Lord,
you know all things and you know I love you. And I know this isn't
recorded in Scripture, but I think the meaning or the purpose of
the Lord's way of dealing with it that way was to say to Peter,
yes, I knew it, but you didn't. Have you ever felt like you behaved
so horribly? Oh, it can't be that I love the
Lord Jesus Christ. You know something? You'd never
feel that way if you didn't love Him. Your feelings are offended
love. That's what it is. Oh, I have
been hurtful to the one I love. Oh, He's all our love. And all
loves are subject to that one, aren't they? He is all our righteousness. We don't claim anything but Christ
before God, do we? We don't even claim before Him
the fact that we claim nothing but Christ. He is all our hope. He is all our desire. We have longings in our heart,
don't we? But do you realize that that which we desire, what
the true believers, His true desire is the very thing for
which Christ prayed. Father, I would that those that
You have given Me would be with Me where I am that they may behold
My glory. And You tell me something You
want more than that. If you're a child of God, you
say, Amen, Lord, amen, so be it. There's one thing I ask of
the Lord that I may dwell in the house of the Lord forever
and gaze upon his beauty. That's way back in the Old Testament. And what is the house of the
Lord? Where is it that God dwells in Christ and where is his beauty
revealed in Christ and Jesus Christ is all. as the focal point
of our faith. We were talking last night the
devil's belief and tremble. The devils believe there's one
God and they tremble at that knowledge. But Peter says through
Christ do you believe in God. See they have to believe God
without a mediator. That's scary business. But we believe God through a
mediator, and therein is salvation. And when we say we believe God,
the truth of the fact is we believe Christ. We trust Him. You say, well, isn't that kind
of leaving the Father out? No, it's not, because He's the
one that told us to believe Christ. This is my beloved Son in whom
I am well pleased. Hear ye Him. All that hath heard
and learned of the Father comes to me, says the Lord Jesus. Well,
but isn't that giving short shrift to the Holy Spirit? No. Because
what does the Holy Spirit do? Direct you to Christ. All of
our faith, all of our attention, all of our worship is focused
on Him. And in so doing, we not only
worship Him, we honor God in all the blessed persons of His
Trinity. We honor Him for all He is and
all He does. by worshiping the Lord Jesus
Christ. Jesus is the Christ and Christ is all and ain't nothing
else.