Colossians: Gazing Upon the Glory of Christ | Associate Pastor: Matt Armstrong

Amen.

C.S.

Lewis, you're probably familiar with him, British writer of the 20th century, he said something pretty profound about praise and how it functions.

He said this, I think we delight to praise what we enjoy, because praise is not merely, praise not merely expresses, but completes the enjoyment.

It is its appointed consummation.

It's not out of compliment that lovers give, uh keep on telling one another how beautiful they are.

The delight is incomplete until it is expressed.

He goes on.

The Scotch Catechism says that man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.

But we shall then know that these are the same thing.

Fully to enjoy is to glorify.

In commanding us to glorify him, God is inviting us to enjoy him.

I think this is just a beautiful concept to meditate on, so take that with you.

But it's also what Paul, the Apostle Paul, is doing in our passage this morning.

Last week we began our fall sermon series in the book of Colossians, and Russ kicked us off by going through the introduction to Paul's letter, and he told us that the occasion or the purpose of Paul's letter is that Paul and other apostles had gone through Colossae and other parts of the Greco-Roman world and had preached the gospel.

People had come to faith.

Churches had been formed, but now, later on, years later, new teachers had come behind them and they were preaching a similar but different gospel.

And the problem was so much that Paul felt the need to write to the church in Colossae and to begin to correct some of these errors.

And we don't know exactly what this heretical teaching was, but we kind of piece it together by looking at what Paul emphasizes in his letter.

He's not just writing out of inspiration or the kindness of his heart, but he's writing out of care and concern for the Colossians.

And how we can, what we basically have put together is this that these teachers, these new teachers, were telling the Colossians that it was all well and good, that they had come to faith in Jesus.

That's good, that's where things belong.

But if you really want to be spiritual, you need to move on to other deeper spiritual truths.

And before we jump into this section, it's good for us to relate that we can do the same things, right?

The passion, uh, the zeal, the the way our hearts were once gripped by the gospel can often become very ordinary and boring, can't it?

We started with Jesus, or maybe we've had ups and downs in our Christian life, and we find ourselves at times kind of wondering what is this all about?

Perhaps you're going through a difficult time in life and you wonder if the gospel is really relevant to what is going on in your life.

What's fascinating about Paul's response, in some of his letters, he attacks kind of the problem head-on, especially in the letters to the Corinthians.

If you watch this, he'll say, You guys are doing this, it's bad, stop.

In Colossians, he doesn't do that.

He, after his introduction, the first 14 verses, he launches into just kind of a description of who Jesus is, because that's the crux of the issue for the Colossians and these new teachers.

Jesus was no longer preeminent for the Colossians.

Paul's desired result for these Colossians, what they would, that they would simply gaze upon the glory of Christ again.

It's kind of like if you visited the Grand Canyon when you were a kid or 30 years ago, and you have this vague memory of kind of how great it was, but you go back and you stand before the expanse that is the Grand Canyon, and you are reawakened to the awe that it is before you.

Paul, in this passage, he invites us to stand in awe before the Lord once more.

So let's look at the first part of our passage, verses 15 to 17.

He says, He, Jesus, is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, for by him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions, rulers or authorities, all things were created through him and for him.

He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

Our first point this morning is the supremacy of Christ over all creation.

This is what Paul is getting at.

Paul begins the section by talking about Jesus in his relationship to God and to creation.

He tells us first that Jesus is the image of the invisible God.

Well, what does that mean?

It means that Jesus makes God visible.

He's talking about his incarnation, of course.

If you want to know what God looks like, look at Jesus.

Martin Luther famously said, if you want to know what God is like, look to the cross and the suffering God.

The God who loved his creation so much, he was willing to suffer and die for her.

He doesn't reveal himself in power and conquest, but in weakness and sacrifice and love.

This has been called Luther's theology of the cross.

But in reality, we can look at all of Jesus' life, from his humble birth through his childhood into his adult life, his public ministry, to gain an understanding, a three-dimensional view of who our God is.

God in his compassion and mercy, his patience, his internal strength, even his anger.

And we see that throughout his ministry, right?

Especially his miracles.

These are the things that dumbfounded the disciples and confused the religious leaders of his day.

Jesus calms the storm with a word.

He heals the lame with a quiet command.

He even reveals his authority over death by raising more than one person from the dead.

In all of this, the people were confused and they began to noodle on this puzzle.

After Jesus calms the storm that threatened his disciples' lives, they exclaim, Who is this?

That even the winds and the waves obey him.

A quick word on this phrase, the firstborn of creation.

This little phrase has led many astray over the years.

We have the initial kind of heretics of this were the Arians in the early church.

Today we call them Jehovah's Witnesses, and in some ways Mormonism follows this wrong path.

That says that Jesus himself is part of the creation, that he is not eternal God.

But that's not what Paul is talking about here.

In his first century context, he's talking about the legal rights of inheritance.

Jesus as the eternal Son of God is the Father's firstborn, and therefore all of creation that belongs to God is Jesus' inheritance.

So what Paul is saying here is as the eternal Son, all of creation belongs to Jesus as much as it belongs to the Father.

Let's go, let's continue.

Paul.

Paul says, For by him, Jesus, all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions, rulers or authorities, all things were created through him and for him.

You see, not only is Jesus supreme over creation, kind of like as a role or a job, but he is the creator himself.

This divine mystery of the Trinity, which we were just singing, holy, holy, holy.

Genesis 1 tells us that God spoke creation into being.

In John chapter 1, the apostle tells us that Jesus is the word.

John 1 · chapter mention

Jesus is the one through whom God the Father created all things.

And Paul is very specific here.

There is nothing that has been created, that was not created through Jesus.

Whether it's in heaven and on earth, those are the only two realms.

Okay, so that's everywhere.

Visible or invisible, those are the only two types of things.

So everything.

All that is created, thrones, dominions, rulers, and authorities.

These are words that we'll see in different places in the New Testament, and they they represent power, seats of power, whether humanly and physical or spiritual and invisible.

So Jesus is Lord over Satan.

I love that scene with Jesus and Peter.

Peter cuts the ear off of the Roman guard soldier, and Jesus says to Peter, if I wanted, I could call ten legions of angels to come.

These soldiers mean nothing.

Caesar in Rome means nothing compared to my power and authority.

Nothing happens to Jesus that he doesn't allow to happen.

Whether it is the most powerful human being on the planet or whether it's Satan himself, Jesus is above all powers.

Finally, Paul says, he is before all things, and in him all things hold together, right?

He's before all things because he's the eternal Son of God.

But listen to what Paul says here.

In Jesus, all things hold together.

This is no deistic God who has a creative fancy and puts all things together like a wound clock and just kind of sends it floating off into space, never to have anything to do with it again.

Every moment of every second of every day, Jesus is willing us into existence.

This is part of what Scripture means when it says that whether we're Christians or non-Christians, we all owe God our complete allegiance and thanks.

It's not just the air that we breathe belongs to Jesus.

The lungs that we breathe the air with only exist because Jesus allows them to exist.

From the beginning of this sentence to the end of this sentence and into the future.

Jesus is creator and sustainer of all things.

And Paul's implicit question to the Colossians and to us is this to whom will you go that is greater than Jesus in all of creation?

Let's continue.

I have no idea how long I'm going.

So, Sam, you'll be all right.

Okay.

And he is the head of the body, the church, he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent, for in him all the fullness of God is pleased to dwell through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace with the blood of his cross.

Point two, the supremacy of Christ over the new creation, right?

Notice Paul's brilliant parallelism throughout this passage as he praises Jesus.

He jumps from Jesus in his incarnation and his pre-incarnation as the creative word to his death and resurrection.

He is the firstborn from the dead.

Not only is he the firstborn over all creation, he is the firstborn of the new creation.

Willingly taking on flesh, dying on the cross, he defeats death and rises from the dead, beginning a process of new creation, re-creation, which Revelation tells us is a world where sin and death are no more.

So Paul says, this is who Jesus is, not only the beginning of creation, but the beginning of new creation.

Because of this, Paul says, Jesus is preeminent.

Take every category you can imagine power, wisdom, might, love, compassion, wrath, there is none higher than our God, who's embodied in Jesus Christ.

Jesus is Lord of all, whether in heaven or on earth.

And then Paul steps into one of the most explicit statements of Jesus' divinity.

For in him the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.

This word fullness was one of the catchphrases of these false teachers.

If you wanted fullness, you needed to move on from Jesus.

And Paul says here, there is no fullness.

There's nothing more.

Jesus is where the fullness of God dwells.

Just as God amazed his people in the Old Testament after the Exodus by dwelling with them in the tabernacle in the wilderness.

Now God has come to dwell with his people in flesh, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, in an even more personal way.

And through him, through Jesus, he came to reconcile to himself all things, whether in earth or in heaven, making peace by his blood on the cross.

So notice what Paul's doing.

He began by talking about creation, maybe on your side, creation.

He talks about the beginning of history, and then he talks about the end of history.

Jesus is the beginning of the new creation that we look forward to.

But now he turns to the cross, the center, the fulcrum of history on which everything turns.

Jesus, the beginning of all things, the end of all things, the Alpha and the Omega, but he is also the center of all things.

And his death on the cross.

There's so much we could explore here.

If you can't tell, this passage is incredibly dense.

But Paul's point, Paul's emphasis in this section, in this part, talking about Jesus' death on the cross, is that he alone is the one who reconciles.

Broken in ourselves, broken between us, broken between us and God and the creation.

What Paul is saying here is that Jesus alone is able to heal, to save, to reconcile.

There is no reconciliation apart from Jesus.

As the Apostle Peter says in Acts chapter 4, there is salvation and no one else.

Acts 4 · chapter mention

For there is no other name under heaven given among men that we must be saved.

Again, Paul's implicit question here to the Colossians and to us is this to whom else will you turn for salvation?

All right, final part of our passage, 21 to 23.

And you who were once alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he is now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him.

If indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which he has proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a minister.

Point three, the supremacy of Christ over salvation.

What Paul is reminding the Colossians of here is that Jesus' death and resurrection, his divinity as the eternal Son of God, is not simply theological doctrines written by theologians in some high ivory tower.

This truth is their life.

This truth is our life.

That God became flesh and he dwelt among us and he willingly went to the cross to die for our sins, taking our sins on himself, graciously giving us his righteousness, so that in him we might become sons and daughters of God, fully at peace.

At peace with God.

There is no more wrath, there is no more judgment, there's no disappointment.

That's a whole sermon right there.

God is not disappointed in you.

He loves you because you are in his son.

That is the gift of righteousness.

And what's behind it all?

Jesus came to do all of this so that he might present us.

I don't really know what that means.

I think of like a third grade, you know, pageant or something, some ballet performance, you know, and you see your kid come up on the stage and do their, you know, and you're just like beaming, like, oh, that's my kid.

Not a good ballerina, but you know, beautiful.

And that's what Jesus is doing.

He is making us holy, removing our blemishes so that we might stand before him one day, and he will beam at us as we beam at him.

It's all in love, my beloved.

And Paul gently encourages the Colossians as he encourages us to come back to the simplicity and the beauty of Jesus.

There's so much today that gets in the way.

There's so much deconstructing going on within the church, and a lot of that is necessary, and it's it's the result of just a lot of the failings and trauma we've experienced as the church and in the church.

And so it can be refreshing to come back to this simple truth of the Christian faith.

What Russ likes to say a lot, that Jesus plus nothing equals everything, right?

Which we can even simplify more than that.

It's just Jesus.

Jesus loves you.

Jesus died for you.

Jesus is the greatest thing above all creation.

He is the head of the new creation.

He is supreme over salvation.

There is no other name to run to, no need, nothing else you need to do to earn your worth or value.

Just run to Jesus.

The Olympics just ended in Paris.

And uh it's been really fun.

I got to see a lot of events, but there's tons that I didn't get to see, and so these these new fangled things called reels, you know, on Instagram or Netflix or whatever.

Um man, I'm so old.

Uh there's this great one.

Apparently, this American gymnast got a perfect 10 on some flippity flippity.

And uh it's amazing, you know, they show the thing and you're just like, oh my gosh, this is amazing, you know, flipping through the air, landing on the ground, like no hop, no bounce, or whatever.

But what's amazing is like, you know, the camera is watching the gymnast, but like on the other side of the gymnast are the judges.

And they zoom in, and one of the judges, as this gymnast hits the ground and sticks the landing, her mouth drops.

She's a gape.

And I think that's that's what Paul is doing in our passage.

He's just looking at Jesus, and he's just standing agape, and he says, Beloved, let us look to the Lord.

Let everything else fall away.

Remember who he is because he will tell you who you are.

That you are at peace with God and you are at peace with yourself.

And we can be at peace with our neighbors if we will embrace what C.S.

Lewis was talking about.

Let's gaze at the beauty of Christ and let's finish that gazing and that enjoyment with praise.

Let's pray.

Our Father and our God.

Who is like you, O Lord?

Let us sit and gaze upon the Lord.

For there's nowhere we would rather be when we are in the Spirit than in your house.

Before your presence, you are peace forevermore.

Lord, just give us another taste of who you are, O Father.

Be glorified in us and let us enjoy you forever.

We ask in Jesus' name.

Amen.