Alright, let's take our Bibles
and turn to Colossians chapter 1. The salvation of God's elect is a salvation purposed, designed,
and accomplished and brought to pass by the God of glory. Everything about this salvation,
its design, from its design all the way to its ultimate perfection
and completion, is all of the God of glory, the salvation of
God. In Ephesians chapter 1 and verse
9, it says this, and most of you are familiar with this chapter,
but if you're not, you can go back and read through it where
he talks about God having chosen us in Christ blessed us with
all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ, according as
He has chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world,
having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus
Christ to Himself according to the good pleasure of His will."
And on and on and on it goes. And then he gets down to verse
9 and he says this, having made known unto us the mystery of
His will." What mystery is he talking about there? Well, he's
talking about His eternal design and purpose and salvation. He's
talking about our election in Christ. He's talking about the
predestination of God. He's talking about all those
things that he just mentioned that he said was according to
the good pleasure of His will. And now, to His saints, to His
elect, to those He chose in Christ, He gives a revelation of these
things. He brings us to know these things,
and to hope in these things, and to see that our salvation
is in Him. And He said, having made known
unto us the mystery of His will according to the good pleasure
which He purposed in Himself, that in the dispensation of the
fullness of times he might gather together in one all things in
Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth, even
in him, in whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being
predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all
things after the counsel of his own will, that we should be to
the praise of the glory to the praise of His glory who first
trusted in Christ. That is, talking about Himself. The Godhead. Putting all things,
trusting all things into the hand of His Son. And this is
what Paul is writing about here in Colossians chapter 1. The
Christ of God. The Christ of God. Him in whom
all fullness dwells. Him in whom the fullness of God's
purpose, the fullness of God. the Godhead, all things in Him. He is the firstborn, He tells
us in Colossians 1, of all creation, of all creatures. And by Him
were all things created that are in heaven and that are in
earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions
or principalities or powers. All things were created by Him
and for Him. To accomplish God's everlasting
purpose of grace, He appointed His Son, who is the image of
the invisible God, and He is the mediator of God, one in whom
and by whom and through whom the redemptive will of God shall
be carried out. In Hebrews chapter 10, verse
7, speaking of the coming of Christ to fulfill all that the
law foretold concerning Him. He said, Lo, I come. I come. Now listen to this. In
the volume of the book, it is written of Me to do Thy will,
O God. This is why He came. This is
what this is all about. Salvation is not God feeling
sorry for folks in time. something brought about by circumstance,
something brought about by what men call chance and all these
things. This is not the God of the Bible. The God of the Bible
said, I declare the end from the beginning and from ancient
times the things that are not yet done, saying, my counsel
shall stand and I do all my pleasure. And I just read to you out of
the book of Ephesians where it said, we obtained an inheritance
being predestinated being predestinated by Him who worketh all things
after the counsel of His own will. And nothing comes to pass
in time that is not in conjunction and in harmony with His will. In John 6, verse 38, He said,
For I came down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the
will of Him that sent Me. And this is the Father's will
which hath sent me, that of all which He hath given me I should
lose nothing, but raise it up again at the last day. And this
is the will of Him that sent me, that every one which seeth
the Son and believeth on Him may have everlasting life." All
of these things are according to the will of God, not the will
of man, the will of God. In Romans 8, verse 20, it said,
"...for the creation." The creature was made subject to vanity, not
willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in
hope." So whether we're talking about creation or providence
or salvation, whether we're talking about the purpose of God, the
means of God, or the accomplishing of salvation, Christ is preeminent. He is the mediator of God, the
eternal mediator of God. Christ was not an afterthought.
Christ is the reason for all things. That's what He's telling
us here in Colossians chapter 1. He is the preeminent One. And He's preeminent in all these
things. And there's only one Mediator
between God and men, and that's the Man, Christ Jesus. Well,
why is that? Look here at Colossians chapter
1, verse 19. For it pleased the Father that
in Him should all fullness dwell. That's why. Now, men get upset
with that. That don't please men. But God
don't do things to please men. God does things to please Himself.
It's according to the good pleasure of His will. According to His
good pleasure, not ours. All fullness in Him. This is God Himself come into
the flesh, the brightness of the Father's glory, and express
the image of His person. And here's what I want you to
see. No greater power, no greater person, no wiser person, no more
loving person, no kinder, more gentle person could have been
chosen as God's Mediator. He chose the one and only one
who could do this task. He chose the perfect one for
this task, the Lord Jesus Christ. Had to be in Him. Couldn't be
in any other. Had to be in Him. He's perfect
for the task He's been chosen for. And if God has trusted all
things into His care, then He can be trusted. You see where
Paul's coming from with this? He's not just bringing this thing
up as an argument. He's not just bringing this thing
up to provoke a reaction. He's bringing these things up
for our faith and for our confidence and assurance and rest in Christ.
And he's telling us that this Christ is it. He is the eternal One. He's the
fit One. And no greater One than Him could
have been chosen for this. This One born of a virgin in
Bethlehem, Judea is Him in whom all fullness dwells. This One
who lived under the Law is the Lawgiver. And this one who would
lay down his life for the sheep is the lamb slain before the
foundation of the world. And this is who the great representative
and federal head of God's elect is. He's the mediator. The surety
of God's everlasting covenant of grace. David's last words
before he died was this. He said, although it be not so
with my house, yet hath he made with me an everlasting covenant.
Ordered in all things and sure. What made it so sure? The surety. The surety of Christ. And He
said, this is all my salvation and all my desire. And the salvation
purposed in Him is not an afterthought, not something God had to do in
time because of some unforeseen circumstance. This is at the
very heart of all things. This is what brought about creation. Creation is no more than the
stage upon which God is going to reveal and manifest the glory
of His name. That's what creation is all about.
And you can go home and kind of brush your Feathers were some
idea of a paramecium crawling out on the beach and evolving
into a man if you want to. But I'm telling you this, this
is what it's all about right here. The Lord Jesus Christ. This is why creation is. This
is from whom creation is. Without Him was not anything
created that was created. And the salvation purposed in
Him is what's behind all these things. It's at the very heart
of all things. First there was Christ and then
creation. First there was Christ and then
providence. He's the head of the body of
the church who is the beginning. That in all things, not a few
things, but that in all things, not what men are willing to give
Him the preeminence in, but in all things He might have the
preeminence. Now I've stressed all these things
And this point in particular to better help you understand
in the next several verses what the lesson is all about this
morning. Look here in verse 20, Colossians 1 verse 20. And having
made peace through the blood of His cross by Him to reconcile
all things to Himself, by Him, I say, Whether they be things
in earth or things in heaven, whatever these things are, they
are all by Him. Everything that was reconciled,
things in heaven, what was reconciled in heaven? God Himself. God Himself. The justice of God.
The righteousness of God. The holiness of God. The whole
character of God reconciled in the person of Jesus Christ and
things on earth. What is he talking about there?
He is talking about His elect. His elect justified through the
death of Christ, justified by the resurrection of Christ, and
justified by faith in time. Things in heaven, things in earth.
The reconciliation in Christ spans heaven and earth. And it
is effectual in both places. It is effectual to reconcile
here, because it was effectual to reconcile there. And nothing that is manifest
here that is not manifest there. Did Christ rise from the dead
declaring the full justification of His death? Then know this,
that justification manifested here was manifested there. You notice every time it talks
about His resurrection, It talks about God raising Him from the
dead. Why does He keep telling us that?
Because Christ was God Himself. He said, I've got the power to
lay my life down and I have the power to take it up again. This
was God in human flesh. So why does He talk about the
Father? Why does He talk about the God
of glory raising Him from the dead? to show us that that justification
was first manifest there. That's why. That's why. Same
reason when Paul, they told Paul, you remember they arrested Paul
on false charges and put him in prison. And they didn't know
that he was a Roman citizen. And when they told him he was
a Roman citizen, then they wanted to get rid of him real quick.
Because they didn't want the Roman government coming back
on them. They were captives to the Romans. And so they come
down and they were going to let him go out the back door. And
Paul said, oh no. He said, I came in by the front
door and that's the way I'm going to leave. You're not going to
let me sneak out the back door. And the same thing concerning
the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul said this thing wasn't done
in a corner. It was done right out in full
view of the whole world. And when God raised him from
the dead, He raised him. And men saw him. Hundreds and
thousands of men saw him. Colossians 1.21. And you... Now Paul is going to bring this
thing down on personal level. And you that were sometime alienated
and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath He reconciled
in the body of His flesh through death to present you holy and
unblameable and unreprovable in His sight. In another place,
it said, in the presence of His glory. Unblameable. The redemptive work of Jesus
Christ, our representative and substitute, has fully and completely
reconciled us to God. In the body of His flesh through
death, He fully satisfied divine justice. As a man, He could bear
our sins in His own body on the tree. As a man, he could fully
represent man in his sorrow and suffering. As a man, he could
endure the wrath of God and die as God's law and justice decreed. The soul that sinned shall surely
die, and die they did in the person of their substitute. I
want you to just think about this for a second. It's not so
much that Christ died for our sins. He did do that. They do that. And that's true. You hear that saying, Christ
died for our sins. That's a scriptural saying. Christ
died for our sins according to the scriptures. That's what Paul
said over in 1 Corinthians 15. But it's not so much that Christ
died for our sins as it is that we who are the sinners died in
Him. That's what you need to get a
hold of. I died in Him. You are dead. Isn't that what
Paul says over here in Colossians 3? And your life is hid with
Christ in God. You're dead. When we die, we
died in Him. Now, if I died in Him, then the
law has no more to do with me if I died in Christ. Is that
right? I'm convicted of murder or whatever.
I'm a criminal. I come before the courts. The
courts judge me. They pass judgment on me. They
take me out and hang me, and I die. Well, they don't follow
me out to the cemetery and go out there and continue on nagging
on me and harping on me and judging me and threatening me. No, they're
done. They're done. I died. The law
satisfied, I died. When the believer died in Christ,
he died to the law. The law's done everything to
him it can do. It's done with him. He's not
under the law anymore. And his life, he died with Christ,
but he was raised with Him. Raised to walk in newness of
life. We died in Him. 2 Corinthians 5, verse 14, Paul
said, For the love of Christ constraineth us, because we thus
judge or rightly understand that if one died for all, then we
are all dead. When Christ died, we died. And
when He rose, we rose. And when Christ sat down at the
right hand of God, all who were chosen in Him sat down with Him. Isn't that what it says over
there in Ephesians 2 and verse 6? He raised us up together with
Him, made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Faith understands that we died
in Him. Being dead, the law has no more
authority over us. There is no more contention.
It has done all it can do. And being raised from the dead,
we are fully justified and have a perfect righteousness in Christ.
And seated on the throne of God, we see the full inheritance of
glory secured in our Redeemer. And these things bring peace
and rest and joy to the heart of believers when they understand
what this salvation is about. I was miserable when I grew up
in religion because all my salvation depended on me. And you're miserable. Now you might be happy when they're
in there singing and you're clapping your hands and waving your hands
and everybody gets in the mood and you're dancing around. But
when you go home and you're serious about that hope and you start
thinking about it, you've got no assurance, you've got no rest,
you've got no hope, you don't have anything because it's all
riding on you. And so you go back down, they
pump you up again and all air goes out of your tires before
you get home. All on you. But that's not the salvation
of the Bible. Salvation in Christ is all dependent
on Him. All dependent on Him. And that's
where the rest is. The rest is not confidence in
your confidence, it's confidence in Christ. Confidence in Christ. when I study Him and see where
He is, see myself in Him. I see myself being judged of
God. I see myself being justified
of God. I see myself having a righteousness
acceptable to God. And I see my inheritance secured
in Him who is seated at the right hand of fellowship and glory. And these things bring peace
and joy and rest to the hearts of believers. It's through an
understanding of this redemptive work of Christ that we become
convinced that this work is a particular work and done for certain individuals
and not for the whole world at large. Now, I'm going to tell
you something. If you believe that Christ put
away sin and justified His people, that's what the Scripture said
He did. Took away our sin. They're gone. fully satisfied
the justice of God, provided for us a perfect righteousness,
present us, I just read it to you, unblameable, unreprovable
in the presence of His glory. Then how can you apply that toward
three-quarters of the people in this world who are already
in hell? There's no way you can take this
salvation declared in this book and make it universal. No way
under the sun. And to me, the most damnable
doctrine of Antichrist religion is the doctrine of universal
atonement. I jump up and down on it. I spit
on it. I tell you every chance I get
how damnable that doctrine is. It turns the everlasting love
of God into an ineffectual desire. It's as though God were walking
around saying, boy, I love him, but I can't do anything
for him. You can't find that love in this
book. You can't find it. But I'll tell
you what you do find. You find Paul saying there's
nothing. Nothing now, nothing yet to come, not things present
or things to come. nor height, nor depth, nor any
other creature shall be able to separate us from the love
of God which is in Christ Jesus the Lord." That's the love of
God. That's the love of God. It turns the wisdom of God into
utter foolishness. Where's the wisdom of God in
sacrificing His Son for a people who were already in hell? Where's the wisdom of God in
planning the redemption of some that He knew would never be saved?
That's not wisdom. And universal redemption totally
denies the justice of God. Redemption is primarily an act
of divine justice, and if Christ died for all men, how can you
square that with His justice? You can't do it. That's saying
that His justice was satisfied, and then He cast the same people
that He justified into hell. That's an utter impossibility. If Christ died for our sins according
to the Scriptures, and yet I'm forced to die for them too, then
where's the justice of God? And universal redemption reduces
the omnipotence of God into impotence, weaker than the will of man,
That's what they're saying. They're saying all these things
that God did. I've labored to show you here
this morning. If you don't get anything else,
get dead. I've labored to show you that Christ is all in all
with God. He is God's eternal mediator. God trusted all things into His
hand. And all of creation, everything
that God purposed, everything that He brought about in time,
it arises out of this man and God's purpose of grace in him.
Now you think about that. All of these things arise out
of him. And then all of a sudden, we're
saying that all of these things that God purposed from eternity,
all these glorious things that we see, creation and providence
and salvation and the cross and all of these, we're saying all
of these things are subject to the will of man. Huh? That damnable heresy. Damnable
heresy. And people who say that don't
know God. Listen to this. God said through
His prophet, He said, My arm is not shortened that I cannot
save. Isn't that what He said? My arm
is not shortened that I cannot save. Yet the universalists preach
that there are thousands who cannot be saved because they
won't let it. You see what I'm saying? They
flip-flop this thing. They take man's glory and they
put it above God. and they overshadow and just
try to blot out the glory of God altogether. I tell you this, even a depraved
mind can't imagine offering the life of your beloved son knowing
that it would make no difference at all. You can't even imagine
that, can you? But yet, that's what they're
saying about him. The doctrine of universal atonement implies
that the immutability of God is, after all, changeable. They
preach that God loves everybody while they're alive on this earth,
but then at the judgment, He's going to cast some of them into
hell. God changes His mind somewhere between here and there. Universal redemption robs God
of the glory of salvation, glorifying man, man's will, and man's work,
and man's love. It also denies the satisfaction
of Christ. If any man for whom Christ died
perished, it would make God a liar, number one, because He said,
I have given to them eternal life, and they shall never perish. That's what God said. Neither
shall any man pluck them out of My hand. Isn't that what He
said? That's exactly what He said.
If you perish, don't that make God a liar? Sure it does. It makes God a
liar. Christ would not have fulfilled
the Old Testament types, and His death could not have in any
wise satisfied the law or the justice of God. And then add
to that, that it denies the Word of God completely. Just utterly
denied. You can't read this chapter here
in Colossians and imagine a salvation dependent on man. You can't do
it. The only thing in here that you
can find man is just an object that God uses for His glory. You know what He said over there
in Romans 9? He said, "...of the same lump." Got that lump
of clay laying there. God tears off a piece of that
lump and makes one vessel unto honor and He tears another piece
off the same lump. Tears it off. makes Him a vessel
of honor. That's the potter. And that's
the God of glory. And that's what He's telling
us here in Colossians chapter 1. This man Christ Jesus is not
who the Jews claimed Him to be, and He's not who religion claims
Him to be today. They thought He was going to
be another David. They thought He was going to
come and He would have all their own characteristics. He'd be
weak and he'd be all of these things, but yet God would raise
him up in power and restore old Israel back to their world glory
and all those things. They had a wrong view of Christ
and that's what Paul's telling them here. This is the Christ
of God. He's eternal. This Christ didn't
come along in time. He was in the beginning was the
Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. And the
Word was made flesh. This Eternal One was made flesh
and dwelt among us. The eternal quickening of God's
elect to Christ and in Christ by whom their redemption was
accomplished in His victorious reign and glory, securing their
salvation, was done. He said that in the ages to come
He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness
toward us through Christ Jesus. for by grace are you saved. The preaching of the Gospel,
the Word of God, the work of the Holy Spirit in the new birth,
leading men and women to repentance and giving to them the gift of
faith is God's declaration both to them and to this world that
these are the sons of God. These little ones are the sons
of God. And being the work of God, it
cannot be undone. or destroy it. All His sheep will persevere
in the faith, because it is God who worketh in them. And by way
of His working, there are new creatures in Christ, and they
will not leave Him. And the reason I said these things
is because of what it says next over there in Colossians chapter
1, if you continue in the faith. Well, that big if Somebody said
you take all those ifs that's bringing doubt to your heart
and you thread them onto a silver chain and hang them around the
neck of the Savior if you continue in that faith. That faith that
you continue in is the gift of God. And it's maintained by Him. It's empowered by Him. And He
indwells in us to preserve it. And that believer, if he is a
believer, he'll persevere in that faith. He can't do otherwise. because of the presence of God
in him. God to help give you an understanding
of these things.