Colossians chapter 1, verse number
19. We have the Mediator, and that
is a very good study, is the Mediator. Christ, that He's the
one Mediator between God and man, And this sets him forth
in that of his work as mediator. And it says that he has the preeminence,
in verse number 18, that in all things that he might have the
preeminence. He's primary. He is set forth
as the preeminence in all things. Then it goes on and says, it
pleased the Father that in him should all fullness dwell. So
my thoughts today and our thoughts as I'd like to give those to
you this morning is upon the fullness of the mediator. We see Paul as he writes in this
chapter and he gives a salutation to the church at Colossae. we find that he takes notice
of these saints. And first of all, he speaks and
he talks about he's an apostle of Jesus Christ, setting forth
who an apostle he is, that he is of authority. This is something
we ought to keep in mind as we think about the Lord Jesus Christ
and the Apostle Paul, that here is Paul, and he is an apostle
of Jesus, and that shows his authority as he writes. He goes
on, he says, it's by the will of God, and he writes to Timotheus,
our brother, saints and faithful in Christ. So, he talks about
the faith here, He says to the faithful. He calls them faithful. And He also says we give thanks. He puts up petitions for them. Since we've heard, look at verse
4, of your faith and love. And it just continues on. He
gives thanks for the blessing of grace that they've received. And you find this as the Apostle
writes in other letters. That is, when he thinks about
the grace of God and he thinks about the saints, he gives thanks
for this grace. And he goes on and says that
they have been made meat for heaven. That they are feeded
for heaven. And that's what grace does. He
also talks about, in verse number 13, they have been delivered
from the power of darkness. And translated, are rescued into
the kingdom of God's dear Son. They've been rescued from the
power of darkness and translated. They've been placed from one
area to another area, from one kingdom to another kingdom. And
that's what's happened to those that are believers. They are
translated from one kingdom to another kingdom. They're in Christ's
kingdom. And he goes on, he talks about
in verse 14, he says, we have redemption through the blood,
even the forgiveness of sin. So he gives thanks for all these
things that has happened and what God has done for these saints. And then he begins to set forth
the glories of the Lord Jesus Christ and how excellent that
Christ is. And he says he's the image of
the invisible God. Now the Lord, when He walked
upon the face of the earth, He says, when you've seen Me, you've
seen the Father, didn't He? He says, when you've seen Me. So He is the image of the invisible
God. And you look at the book of Hebrews
in chapter number 1, and it would tell us this very same thing.
And He is the expressed image of the Father. And it goes on,
it says, He's the firstborn of every creature. then by Him were
all things created." So He is setting forth the eternalness
of the Lord Jesus Christ. It says, by Him all things were
created. See, He's the Creator and He
existed before anything was created and before any creature You know,
a lot of people think of Christ, that when He was born at Bethlehem,
this is His beginning, but no. We find Christ, He's of eternity. He's the Father's Son. He's the
Son of Eternity. And it says, by Him all things
were created. Notice that it says, in heaven
and that are in the earth, visible and invisible, whether they be
thrones or dominions or principalities or powers, all things were created
by Him. Now I want you to get the next
part of it. It says, for Him. Created by Him and for Him. And it goes on and says, He's
before all things. He's before. And then it says
that by Him all things consist. Now, that shows us the existence
of Christ. It shows us His glory. Then it
sets Him forth as a mediator, verse number 18. It says He's
the head of the body. the church who is the beginning,
the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He might have
the preemblance." So, we find that the Lord Jesus Christ, we
see His dominion, we see that He is head, He's the firstborn,
He rose by His power from the dead, He is sitting at the right
hand of the Father, and we find also that all judgment is committed
unto Him. that in all things he might have
the preeminence. Then it says, it pleased the
Father that in him should all fullness dwell. So in the Lord
Jesus Christ this morning there is a personal fullness in him. There is a fullness of deity.
We find as we look at the Lord Jesus Christ and We find, as
we look at God and we look at Christ, we see eternity. He's the Godhead. We find Christ
is before Adam. He was before Abraham. It's amazing
that Scripture says, and the Lord Jesus Christ quoted this
in the New Testament, didn't He? He says, before Abraham was
I Am. And they said, well, look at
you. They couldn't understand that.
But we see that Christ is of eternity. The Bible says He's
Alpha and Omega, the beginning and first and the last, the beginning
and the ending. Which was, which is, and which
is to come. The Bible says He's from everlasting
to everlasting. We see Him. We look this morning
at His fullness. We see that He's Creator. He's
powerful. He has all power. When we speak
of the God, when we speak of the Godhead, we speak of power.
And He is powerful, isn't He? We see Him and His power. He created. Now, what is creation? Look at the power of creation.
I was sitting out here last night and it was dark and I was looking
at the stars. And this thought come to me,
you know they speak of light years and this light reaching
us. In other words, there's so many
years this light is coming to reach us. You think about the
vastness of creation, and creation means, and the word means in
the Hebrew, the word means, barah, which means that God spoke it
into being. He created it out of nothing.
He just spoke it into being. Now, I don't know the vastness.
Nobody knows the vastness of the universe. Nobody knows how
big it is. Nobody's ever seen the end of
it. But we know this, God spoke it into being. And He created
it out of nothing. Now, you and I, we can make some
arrangements and we can arrange some things, but we have to have
something to work with to do it. Don't we? I mean, we can't make nothing
out of nothing. Only God does that. And that's
Christ. There's His works of creation
shows that He's God. Now this is a, you have those
that deny that he's God, and for instance the Jehovah Witnesses,
they deny that he's God, Christ is, they say he's just a person,
and this is something you ask them here. Well, the Bible says
he created. Now only God creates, doesn't
that mean he's God? He's a creator. There's his works. There's His powerful works. There's
providence. Everything's under the providence
of God. It's under His providence. It's
under His control. It's under Christ's control,
isn't it? You think about all of these
things. There's His power. There's His
power of redemption. There's His power of resurrection. And the Bible sets Him forth
as Almighty. He's the Almighty Christ. Then
also, He's all-knowing. Here's a fullness of the Deity.
He knows they come unto Him in the Scriptures and they would
try to ask Him questions and really trying to trick the Lord
Jesus Christ, but He knew what they thought before they even
asked the questions, didn't He? He knew their aim. He knew what
they was up to. Nobody needed to tell him. He
knew what was in man. He knew the thoughts of man.
He's a discerner of thoughts and intents of the heart. And
all things is made manifest unto him. And it's all open. Then again, we see that he's
all present, that he's in heaven, he's in earth. He's in heaven,
isn't he? At the right hand of the Father.
He says, where two or three are gathered in His name, He's with
them too, doesn't it say that? So He's ever-present, Christ
is. He meets with His people. When
He meets with them, He's present with His people. And when we
speak of the immutability of God, and here's the fullness
of Christ, we know that God's the same, Christ is the same,
isn't He? And one time I was looking up
that verse where it says Christ, the same yesterday, today, and
tomorrow, or forever. And really what it means is Jesus
Christ the same. If you speak of Him in the days
of yesteryear, it's the same. If you speak of Him today, it's
the same. If you speak of Him tomorrow, He's the same. He's
always the same. So He's over all. He's God, blessed,
the scripture says forever. He is the true God and eternal
life, the Scripture says, and there is a fullness about Christ. As the verse speaks out here,
in Him shall all fullness dwell. It means this morning that there
is nothing lacking in Christ. There is nothing lacking there.
He has a pre-eminence. He has the headship over all
things. And he's of the same nature and
essence of the Father and the Spirit. There's a fullness this
morning in the ability of Christ to discharge that of His very
work this morning as He has come into this world as mediator.
He's a fit one to do this. Now, we look at his fitness as
work of mediator, and he is the God-man, and that makes him fit
because he's the one, the go-between between God and man. You know,
we have an approach to God, and it's through the Lord Jesus Christ,
it's through the mediator. He's divine and human, and He's
qualified. And Job puts it like this. He
uses this, that, you know, here's God and here's man, and Christ
is one that bridges the gap. He's one that takes hold of God
and He takes hold of man, and that's who He is. That's His
ability. And as man, He offers sacrifice
to God. that he is the Lamb of God. He offers a sacrifice. He's capable
of making satisfaction in this sacrifice. And again, here's
man, and it's man that sinned. So here is the perfect man, and
he's one that makes satisfaction. There's his human nature, and
he's fit to be that of the priest. The Old Testament continuously
sets forth the priest and we come to the New Testament and
it says Christ is our high priest. Man fitted him for that. His
nature fitted him for that. He's advocate. Again, he's fitted
for that. He's intercession. The Bible
says he took not upon himself that of the nature of angels.
Now angels are creative beings. But he didn't take upon himself
the nature of angels. We know also by the Scriptures
that angels is that which fell and there's no redemption for
them, are there? Some of them fell. They fell
from their first estate. There's no redemption. But Christ
took upon himself, the Bible says, the seed of Abraham, doesn't
it? Man. And we see that he was holy. We see that he's without spot. He's a lamb without blemish.
He's called Jesus Christ, the righteous. And he's holy. They set him forth. And notice
how he's described, that Christ, he says he's holy, harmless,
undefiled, separate from sinners. Could that describe anybody but
him? It's Him, isn't it? Him only.
Then being God, there's a sufficient virtue in that of His actions
and His suffering. We find that His blood cleanses
from all sin. His righteousness justifies. His sacrifice atones. There's
no failing in the Lord Jesus Christ. He is capable of bringing
salvation and He has brought salvation and it is a complete
salvation. He is a complete Savior. There
is a fullness. Then we notice this fullness
that what is put in His hands. He is head over all things. The
Bible says, I am of all things. It is all at His disposal. Now,
that's our Lord. That's Christ Jesus. The Bible
says, the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof. And
all is for His mediator kingdom and His glory. Even the wicked. The wicked are subservient to
that of His very ends. when you look at the Scriptures. It's all for Him. It says He's
before all things. It's all for Him. There's a fullness
of grace. The Bible says He's full of grace
and truth. We need grace. You think about
grace this morning? We need it. We need His mercy.
We need His grace. And we receive it from Him, don't
we? It's from Christ Jesus. The Bible says He receives gifts
for men and gave them to men and for the work and the service.
It's Christ and He gives gifts. The gifts that we have come from
Him. There's a fullness this morning of the blessings of grace. There's a covenant of grace that
the Scripture speaks of and there's a spiritual blessings and it's
full of them this morning. The Bible says, He hath blessed
us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ
Jesus. And this covenant of grace was
made with the Lord Jesus Christ. It's in His hands and He's assured
thee of it. In Christ, this morning, there's
a fullness. There's a fullness of justifying
Grace. There is a fullness of pardoning
grace. There is adopting grace. There
is sanctifying grace this morning in the Lord Jesus Christ. We
find this work as mediator. And it says He's brought in an
everlasting righteousness. Can we stop this morning and
just think about Christ and what He's brought in, an everlasting
righteousness? If you had any righteousness,
it wouldn't last long, would it? If we had any. But He brought in an everlasting
righteousness. And it's a righteousness that
answers all the demands of law and justice. That's His righteousness. And it answers for that of His
people. And it lasts forever. This everlasting
righteousness answers for us. He's made it such that it answers
for His people. It's His righteousness and it
lasts forever. Such is the righteousness that
He brought out. He brought in. He's the author
of it. And we look to Him and we say
this morning that He's our righteousness. He's our righteousness. God our
righteousness. That's fundamental this morning.
As we look at the very Gospel, we plead Him and it's bestowed freely, imputed
to us. A lot of people do not like the
doctrine of imputation. They say, well, Adam's sin was
imputed to man. I don't like that. But on the
other hand, look at it, Christ's righteousness is imputed to us.
His righteousness and beauty to us. It's bestowed upon us.
And it's bestowed upon us without works. It comes freely, without
works. And it's upon every believer. Every believer has the righteousness
of Christ. It's called the righteousness
of God. And it justifies from all things. And there's a fullness
this morning of Christ. There is a fullness of His pardoning
grace. We find that there is forgiveness
of sin and there is forgiveness of all sin. All the Lord's people
have their sins forgiven. Isn't that amazing this morning
what God has done in Christ that all of our sins are forgiven?
He says, there are sins I will remember no more. It also says that He had cast
them behind His back, not to be seen. It also says that He's
removed them as far as the east is from the west. So there's a fullness this morning
in this pardoning grace, that there's a remission of sins.
And it's according to His riches of grace. It's free. It's free. You can't buy this morning and
pay for your sins. Christ paid. That's the only
payment God receives. It's full. It's not that He forgives
us part of our sins and part of what is left. If you just
had one left, it would be damning. Wouldn't it? If you just had
one sin left, it would be damning. But there's a full forgiveness.
It's a complete forgiveness that He has. See, there's a fullness
in Christ this morning of this pardoning grace that He has,
that we're forgiven the past, present, and that which is to
come. There's a fullness of adopting grace this morning. And look
at this honor that's given unto us, that we're called the children
of God, that we're sons of God and daughters of God. Oh, we
think of the love and the honor that He's bestowed upon us and
what He's done that we'd be called sons in the Scriptures. Oh, think about this this morning,
that we have a heavenly Father. A heavenly Father. One that has all power. Our Father
has all power. Our Father has all wisdom. He's
love. Scripture says He's love. Thine
is His care for us. I tell you, it's something today
to be able to say, My Father, and to say, Our Father, which
is in heaven. Oh, His sonship, and this morning
we have a rite because we're sons. As a home, we have a right
to the home because we're sons. We have privileges because we're
sons this morning. What a privilege it is to say,
My Father. What a privilege it is to say
this morning that He's our Father. It means that we've been set
at liberty, that we're free. At liberty. You know, we know
that the Scripture teaches that all are bound, bound by sin.
except those that have been set free in Christ and they are at
liberty. They are sons of God. To them
that receive Him and believe upon Him, they are sons and it's
all from Christ. This morning also, there is a
fullness of His sanctifying grace. All holiness is derived from
Christ Jesus. The Bible says, without holiness,
no man shall see the Lord. So there's sanctified grace,
and it comes with faith and love. Faith and love to the Lord. He's
the author and finisher of faith, the Scripture says. And He's
the author and finisher of every grace. And here it is. Here's His sanctified grace that
He supplies us. This morning we have that which
is sufficient for us this day, don't we? He's supplying us. We have that that He supports
us. We are supported day by day. He carries us through. He sets
us apart. Oh, there's a fullness this morning
of His wisdom, of His knowledge, of His strength, ability. There's
a fullness of all of these things in Christ Jesus and all spiritual
light comes from Him. Now, you can say what you want
to, but in Christ is hid all the
treasures, the scripture says, of wisdom and knowledge. It doesn't
come with this world. Man can have all the wisdom,
he can have all degrees, and education is fine. I'm not denouncing
education. But I'm saying this, you can
have all the degrees in this world, but the wisdom and knowledge,
the light of Christ, and the light that He gives, this spiritual
light, and you'd have all this other, never have that. You'd have it all, but it's darkness
outside of Christ, who is the light of the world, and in Him,
is hid, the Bible says, all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. A knowledge of Him. That's what's
great this morning, isn't it? A knowledge of Christ. And it's
communicated to us. It's given unto us. It doesn't come any other way.
The Bible says, Christ says in the book of John, He says in
that chapter, the vine and the branches, he says, without me
you can do nothing. And that is spiritually. You
can do nothing. But Paul writes and he says,
I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me. Without
Him we do nothing, but with Him we can do all things. So this
grace is sufficient this morning. There is a fullness of His promises. We read last week of the exceeding
great and precious promises. When he speaks of the promises
of God, they're defined as exceeding great and precious. See, we plead
the promises, don't we? We look at the promises and what
they are, and they're suited to us. I realized this morning
that life has all kinds of circumstances. There's all kinds of cases, there's
all various cases, there's all kinds of situations that you're
going to find in life. Brother Vaughn and Mother Ruth,
they're the oldest here, and there's all kinds of circumstances
and all kinds of cases, aren't there? And yet there's these
promises, and they're suited for these. They're suited for
us when we're young, Just seek the Lord while you're young.
They're suited for us there. They're suited for us as we go
through life. These promises are. And the covenant
of grace is full of promises to us. And here's what makes
them so great. The Bible says they're yea and
amen in Christ. Now what does that mean this
morning? They're yea and amen. It means when you read one of
them, you say yes. That's yea. You say yes. These promises. You can also
say amen to them, can't you? Amen to the promises. They're
yea and amen in Christ. That means that they're yes.
See, all of this is put in Christ's hands, and that's a safe place
for Him, and they're securing Him, these promises. There's
a fullness of glory this morning, and that is eternal life and
eternal happiness, and all of that's put in Christ's hands,
and there He's put this glory. The Bible says there's an inheritance
reserved, and it's safe and secure, The Bible even says that we are
heirs of God and short heirs of the Lord Jesus Christ. There's
a life of grace and there's a life of glory. The Bible says that
we shall appear with Him in glory, be like Him, we shall see Him
as He is. It even says these bodies will
be fashioned like unto His glorious body. Now that's a promise. He's all-powerful. Wisdom, even
these bodies, be fashioned like unto His. Come forth. Mortality. Come forth. Incorruptible, the Scripture
says. Come forth. So, there's a fullness. Let me
set forth something else about this fullness this morning. We
preach it today. In 2007, we preached the fullness
of Christ. But you know, ever since man
was born on the earth of old, this is not new. This is not
something new or something just began. This fullness is what
the Old Testament saints lived upon. They lived upon this. Back in those days, when you
read the scriptures and those years, Abraham lived upon this
fullness. These Old Testament saints lived
upon this fullness. They looked upon Christ. They
depended upon Him. They believed in Him. And they
were supplied out of this very fullness. You know, a lot of times we want
to think about this, days gone by, but they lived, the Enoch
lived out of this fullness. They were saved by grace, just
as we are saved by grace. The Old Testament saints are
saved the same way that we are. I've heard people teach it, that
it's saved a different way, and it's saved by law and grace and
so forth and so on. Everybody that's ever been saved
has been saved by grace. Everybody that's ever been saved
has been saved one way, and that's Christ. You just mark that down. So we find that they are supplied. This is grace that was given
to us before the worlds. Before the worlds. The elect
was given to Christ before the world. Here's His grace. We're blessed with all spiritual
blessings. Christ was set up as a mediator
of the covenant before the world. And He's from everlasting to
everlasting. And He was entrusted. Now listen
to me. He was entrusted with all these
blessings and all these promises Christ was. This fullness, we
look at it, and it says it pleased the Father to put it in Christ,
and it is free. And we've received His fullness.
The Bible tells us, grace for grace. It's free to us, His fullness. Now, just think about Christ
and who He is, and the fullness that we have, and it's free to
us. You can't buy it. You can't murder
it. There's nothing in us or out
of us. As we talked about one time a
few weeks ago when we preached upon without price. This is priceless. You can't
put a price on it. It's priceless. Man doesn't have
enough money in all the world to buy such as this. There's
nothing that he could do for such as this. It's the Lord that gives it.
And here's this fullness. This fullness is inexhaustible. It's abundant. It's super abundant.
It flows. It overflows. Now there's a spring
right down here and I went by it yesterday and for several
years it's been running. It's water been going down from
it. And I told Steve yesterday, I
said, well, there's no water coming today. It's dried up. And I know over the years, we've
been living here since 1953, and over the years there's been
several times that springs dried up. But this here, this fullness
is inexhaustible. It flows and it continues flowing. It's been flowing all of these
years and it never stops. His fullness never stops, and
it's to God's people, and it's to all of God's people in all
ages. Now, I don't know how long the
world's going to be. You don't either. Nobody does. But I know this has been down
through the ages and it will continue as long as the world
is, this fullness to God's people. in all times, in all places,
since the very foundation of the world. His fullness continues
to be in Him as a continual supply. There's daily supplies. Don't
we need His fullness daily? Supply out of His fullness daily? We do. So He gives us a daily
supply. He gives it to us. So believers
go each day, they receive out of His fullness and this grace. And we find that there is a sufficiency
of this fullness and it will be for the last believer on earth
as the first one. That's the very first one. There'll
be a fullness for the last believer. One day there'll be the last
believer upon the earth. But there's just this fullness
for the first one and the last one. And all between, there's
this fullness. Now, let's think about the safety
of this fullness and security of it. Everything in Christ is
safe and secure. Everything in Him. His fullness
is safe. Grace is safe. The believer is
safe. Glory is safe. It's put in the
hands of One that has the preeminence over everything, is the head
over everything. It's put in the hands that it
says here that all things consist by. It's put in His hands. Now, let's think about it. For
His sake this morning, it's put in His hands. For our sake, it's
put in His hands. For our sake. Yours and mine,
it's put in Christ's hands. It's put in His person. He's trusted with it. Now, what
would happen if it had been put in Adam's hand? It would have been lost, wouldn't
it? What if it's put in angels' hands? They were unfit creatures
for this. So it's put in Christ's hands,
this fullness. It sets forth His glory and we
see that it's by Him, through Him, and from Him. And it all
comes from the fullness of Christ. And what should we do this morning?
Give Him glory and give Him praise. This fullness, fullness to us
of the Lord Jesus Christ. Oh, this morning, we can just
see what all we have in Christ. Just taking this passage today
and looking at it, that of all the fullness, and we received
out of His fullness. May the Lord bless us with these
thoughts, and may that we live upon His fullness in our very
lives. May we pray, Father, take the
message, use it in our hearts and our lives. Oh, may we think
about the fullness of Christ, sufficient, overflowing to us. How we needed Christ and we see
that Thou has supplied Him. We thank You Christ for this
supply and this fullness of Your grace and Your mercy
toward us. We think about Your promises. We know that Your promises, they're
just as true as true can be. We know that everything that
You promised to us will be fulfilled. We thank You for that. We pray this morning, as You
permitted us and You've led us together together, that You would
bless every heart that's here We pray, Father, for those that's
not here. We pray, Father, for those that
are sick. Bless them, we pray in Christ's
name. Amen.