Jesus is Supreme (Colossians 1:15-18)

As Pete said, we are in Colossians chapter 1.

Colossians 1 · chapter mention

We're going to be covering a short amount of verses today.

We're going to be covering verses 15 through 18 because so much of what we're going to look at are so important to the doctrine and the theology of our faith.

And so, just a heads up, we're going to get a little technical today.

We're going to kind of get into some of the nitty-gritty, but it's so important for us to know these things about Jesus and about our faith and why we're the church and why it's important for us to be here this morning.

And a lot of those things.

So if you need some coffee, grab it.

If you start to nod off, just you know, smack yourself a little bit.

If your neighbor starts to nod off, just smack them a little bit.

And we'll just keep you.

No, hopefully it's not boring.

But we are gonna get a bit technical today.

But before we even read through these verses here this morning, oh the siblings, don't do that.

Not that I kids like heard some giggling back there.

Before we even read this, uh, I want us to keep in mind the purpose of the first half of Colossians and why Paul is writing this to this church in Colossi.

And really, this whole first half of this book is to teach them that Jesus is supreme.

So remember that.

Jesus is supreme.

So he's going to use a lot of words, Paul, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, to point to Jesus being first, to point to him being the origin, being the creator, being before all things, being the head of the church.

So really supremacy, preeminence, those are the words that we're gonna use a lot here today.

And if we are reading just verses 15 through 20, we're gonna see the phrase all things or everything just six times in those verses.

So keep an eye out for those things.

So the two things as we read through this, notice Jesus is first in priority and then over all things.

So with that, keep that in mind as we read this text.

So if you are able, please stand for the reading of God's Word.

We're in Colossians chapter 1, verses 15 through 18 here this morning.

Colossians 1:15–18

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.

For everything was created by him, in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things have been created through him and for him.

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

He's also the head of the body, the church.

He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything.

Let's pray.

We thank you that we live in a place where it's so readily available, where we can hold it in our hands, where we can look at it for ourselves and understand it in clear English.

Lord, I pray that we would never take that for granted.

So as we look at these verses today, I pray that you would reveal yourself to us.

Lord, your your word is alive, it's sharper than any uh two-edged sword.

So we pray, God, that you would do your work in our lives individually, but as a as a church here this morning as well.

Use your word to mold us and to shape us, to change us, to help us to understand your greatness, your supremacy in everything.

We pray these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

You may be seated.

You know, some churches do special messages every Sunday in December, or they do something that's advent related, which we've never really done in the past.

It's not usually a tradition of a Calvary.

Not against it, you know, maybe some year we're gonna do something along those lines.

But the way that it worked out this year, just following our typical schedule, the two Sundays, so today and next week, they're gonna be very pertinent to Jesus Christ.

They're gonna be very pertinent to why God became fully man.

So we're gonna be looking at who Jesus is and why he became flesh today as we go through these verses.

So the next two Sundays are not quite your typical Christmas messages, but in a in a way they really are Christmas messages.

So I want to start us off this morning by asking two different questions.

The first one is if Jesus wasn't God and was just a really good man that lived 2,000 years ago, would we still celebrate Christmas today?

And then the second thing as we go through these verses to think about if Jesus was God, but he just came, he walked among us, maybe around 70 years old, he ascended back to heaven, he never made a way for salvation, he never died on the cross.

Would we still celebrate Christmas?

You know, we can get into this mode of Christmas of, you know, oh, the baby, you know, the infant, isn't he cute, you know, that type of thing.

But I don't think we would be celebrating Christmas, at least in the same way that we do now, if it wasn't for the salvation that Jesus came to provide.

If he wasn't fully God, and if he didn't come to save us, or if God became flesh but he left us under the Old Testament law, I don't think we would be doing what we do in December the same way, at least that we do now.

So today is about Jesus being fully God.

Next week we're gonna see it's about Jesus being fully man and how he reconciled us to God through his physical body.

So that's kind of where we're headed in the next two weeks.

You know, and I know this is already a long intro, but hang with me here because there's so much importance to this passage for our faith, as I already mentioned.

And this really needs to be set up well before we jump in to kind of help us understand why Paul is writing this to this church in the first place.

So the first thing is in your Bibles, this whole section may be indented in some way.

Um it might look a little bit different or set apart from the verses before and after it.

And a lot of the times that means it's referencing a verse that's found somewhere else in your Bible.

It's a cross-reference of some sort.

And yes, everything Paul's about to say and write can be cross-referenced and found somewhere else in the Bible in a lot of different places.

We're gonna be looking at a lot of those different verses today, but a lot of scholars and commentators believe that verses 15 through 20 came from a psalm or a poem that the first century church would have either sung or recited together.

And Paul is using this verse to confirm the point that he's teaching them, and also launch into what he's about to say next.

Like, kind of in the in the sense of, you know, see what I'm saying to you right now is confirmed by this verse that we all know, whether it was poetry or a song.

Many think that that is what these this section of verses is.

We can't prove it for sure, but it may explain a little bit of what we're looking at here this morning.

But regardless, Paul added this right in this text by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit to prove the point that Jesus is fully God, that he is fully qualified to redeem and to forgive our sins all by himself.

He does not need our help, he doesn't need anyone else's help, he doesn't need anything else to help him.

He's fully qualified all by himself to be the savior of the world.

You know, as we mentioned in the first Sunday that we were introducing this book, Colossae was a melting pot of culture and religion.

It was on this major trade route where East met West and the Roman Empire at the time, uh at least in the first part of the first century or middle of the first century as we're looking at here.

And the gospel message that had been brought to this church of God becoming flesh, of Jesus being fully God and fully man, of Jesus fully redeeming us, it's being challenged in this church.

You know, some were trying to influence them that they needed Jesus and we've talked a lot about that.

It's never Jesus and anything that leads to salvation, it's just Jesus.

But the Judaizers were probably coming in and saying, Well, yeah, you need Jesus, but you need the Old Testament law as well.

You need Jesus and you need severe discipline called asceticism.

Basically, that they should not enjoy anything from this physical world.

That was part of it as well.

Some were teaching that Jesus was a lesser divinity and that there was higher power, a supreme being out there that it wasn't Jesus, but maybe Jesus was pointing to him, but that it was not Jesus as the supreme being.

And a lot of this influence was coming from the different veins of Gnosticism.

I know that's a big word.

This is part like don't doze off right here, okay?

Gnosticism is basically this belief that a lesser divinity created the world.

So yeah, maybe Jesus did create the world, but he was a lesser divinity.

He's not the supreme divinity.

Um another tenet of their faith was the supreme divinity could not only, or I'm sorry, the supreme divinity could only be known through like this secret knowledge, this gnosis.

And salvation could only come from that knowledge.

So not from Jesus, but from that knowledge of the supreme being.

Jesus, you know, they thought that he was simply here to help us connect to that supreme being, but he was not it.

Another one of their things is that the physical world was evil, and only things that are spiritual can be good.

And they really took this in two different directions.

The Gnostics, some of them would say, like I was saying with the asceticism, that uh you had to be so disciplined, like you couldn't enjoy anything in the physical.

And then the other side of that was well, we're physical and the evil is physical, but our spirit is different, so it'd be complete debauchery.

We're just gonna let the physical do whatever it wants, as long as the spiritual, you know, was doing what it should, and they saw it really as two different things.

And then the fourth thing, Jesus would be that Jesus only appeared to have a body, but was not fully man.

That's like another vein of Gnosticism.

So, and their thought behind that was how could even you know a lesser divinity be in a body since created matter was evil, you know, according to them.

This was one of their thoughts as well.

So today's passage is gonna begin to debunk all of that.

All of these teachings of the Judaizers, the the teachings of the Gnostics as well.

And this is just a broad brush, there's a lot of different veins of Gnosticism.

But we're gonna jump into our verses now.

Finally, the intro's over.

And we're gonna start off with a little bit of a running start because we ended last week with 13 and 14, which really gives us a running start into these verses.

So look at verse 13 with me.

He has rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son He loves.

In him we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

Again, you don't need Jesus and anything else.

Jesus died so we can say, so that we can believe, so that we can claim those four things that we just saw in those verses.

So that we can say, I've been rescued from Satan's kingdom on this earth.

I've been transferred into his kingdom, I've been redeemed.

Christ has set us free, he's paid for our sin, he's paid our debt.

I've been forgiven of my sins.

They've been cast away as far as the east is from the west.

But how can we know these things for sure?

That's the question.

How can we know these four things for sure?

That's where verse 15 comes in.

So look at verse 15.

He is the image of the invisible God.

Now, in the Old Testament, Israel was known for worshiping an invisible God.

While the other religions in that region, they had these physical idols, they had images that they would worship, they had high places, they were worshiping the Ba'als as we see all through the Old Testament.

And here was this small nation in Israel that worshipped a singular invisible God.

And they stood out because of this.

Now, they would hear from God, they would see miraculous evidence of God, but he was invisible.

And God told them not to make any images trying to depict him or any other spiritual being.

You know, no golden calves, which they didn't listen to very well.

But he told them not to make figures that were male or female, or animals, or creatures.

He told them, don't worship the moon and the stars and the heavenlies like their neighbors were doing.

And at one point, Moses asked God if he could see him.

And I love this.

God told him, You cannot see my face, for humans cannot see me and live.

So God allowed Moses to see his back as his glory passed by, because that's all Moses could handle without dying.

But then God became flesh.

Why we celebrate Christmas?

He became the image of the invisible God, meaning image, figure, likeness.

That's what the definition says.

As in, you know, you see this a lot with uh with different veins of Christianity and the saints and things like that, they'll have an image, a painting, or they'll have a statue, and they call it an icon.

This is where we get that word from uh in the Greek for icon.

And the book of Hebrews then goes and calls Jesus the exact expression of God's nature.

Jesus made the invisible visible in a way that man could see God and not die.

You know, Jesus veiled things that we couldn't handle really while he was on earth, yet revealed God as the express image of him.

It says in John 1.18 that no one has ever seen God, the one and only Son, who is himself God and is at the Father's side.

He has revealed him.

Jesus has revealed him.

Jesus said to his disciples in John 14, 9, the one who has seen me has seen the Father.

You know, I think what tripped up the Gnostics in this time, making them think Jesus was a lesser divinity, it was not the supreme being, was God being in the flesh.

So in their mind, he was really um, if he was really God, then he was either a spirit that looked human, or he wasn't really the supreme being and was only pointing humans to the supreme being.

So the next part of 15 starts to argue that he truly is the supreme God.

So look at that next part of 15.

The firstborn over all creation.

You know, that word firstborn here can trip some people up because they think that means Jesus was created.

Like he was God the Father's creation.

But what does it say?

He is the firstborn over all creation.

You know, the word firstborn is interesting.

It's true of Jesus in the sense that this was the first time that God fertilized the egg of a woman and was born into the flesh on this earth as fully God and fully man.

But that's not what this verse is talking about right here.

This is talking about Jesus' divinity.

This word firstborn here is in regard to priority and origin.

He's the first of importance, he's the highest of rank.

Remember, I said we're going to see a lot of this today.

The priority, the origin, you know, things like that, first in priority.

This is speaking of Jesus always existing, not being created by God, but always existing before anything was ever created, and also having priority over all creation.

So you can see Paul's knocking down those Gnostic arguments one at a time as he goes through here.

So Paul argues Jesus is the image, the icon of God, and is not created, but actually holds prior priority over everything that has ever been created.

Which is backed up by the context of verse 16.

So look at verse 16.

For, your translation might say, because, everything was created by him in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible.

Not only does he hold priority over all creation, he himself created everything.

Both the physical and the spiritual.

John, going back to John one more time, John 1, 1 through 3, one of my favorite verses in the Bible.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

He was with God in the beginning.

All things were created through him, and apart from him, not one thing was created that has been created.

Jesus is fully God, and he also made all of creation.

And if you've read Genesis, you know after creation, what did God say?

It is good.

He goes on, second part of verse 16.

Whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things have been created through him and for him.

Nothing stands above him.

You know, for people that hold angels as something to be worshipped or prayed to, Jesus created them.

And one day we will judge, rule, and govern with Christ over them.

Don't pray to angels.

They are not a being that we should be praying to or looking to or talking to.

And Paul's actually going to address that in chapter 2 of Colossians.

So there is no throne or dominion, ruler or authority above him, and that includes, hear me, that includes God the Father and the Holy Spirit.

So in verse 16 alone, we see that everything was created by him, everything was created through him, and everything was created for him as well.

Warren Weirsby has a quote on this passage that I really like, and I want to share it with you.

He says, For centuries the Greek philosophers had taught that everything needed a primary cause, an instrumental cause, and a final cause.

When it comes to creation, Jesus Christ is the primary cause.

He planned it.

The instrumental cause, he produced it, and the final cause, he did it for his own good pleasure.

The last part of verse 16 here, I think, is a real dagger to these Gnostics.

Not only was everything, uh, has everything been created by him, but for him.

Jesus created it, he said it was good, and it's for him.

So it can't be inherently evil, can it?

Like the Gnostics are saying, if it's physical, it's evil.

Because Jesus created it, he said it was good.

Yes, all of creation is under the bondage of sin and death.

Romans 8 talks about that.

But just because it's created doesn't mean that it's evil.

God wants us to be able to enjoy a good meal.

Amen?

We can still enjoy art, we can still enjoy music and a beautiful sunset that He created.

We can enjoy nice things, we can enjoy each other.

Idolize absolutely not.

But enjoy God's creation 100%.

But the Gnostics would say, no, it's created, it's evil.

The Holy Spirit through Paul says it was created through Christ and for Christ as well.

And he goes on, look at verse 17.

He is before all things.

So this word before that we see here, it's often translated as above as well.

Again, so this is regarding priority one more time.

Because a creator will always be before its creation and above its creation, won't it?

For example, say you bake a pie, or you create a website, or you make a piece of furniture, whatever it might be.

Did you come before that creation?

I sure hope so.

Are you greater than that creation?

Absolutely, 100%.

Jesus is before and above his creation as well in every way.

Now look at the next part of verse 17.

By him all things hold together.

Your translation might say all things consist.

So not only did Jesus create everything, he's still the reason that the world goes round.

He's still the reason that those things still hold together.

He's actively holding those things together.

So he didn't create it to just step back and see what happens.

Like, whoo, this will be interesting.

Let's see what happens.

Creation continues to exist and is still in his hands right now.

Everything remains created because of him.

I want to kind of go down a little rabbit trail here for a second because I think it's really interesting.

Did you know that it is still not understood what keeps the nucleus of an atom together?

They simply call it the force that holds that nucleus in the atom together.

They simply call it the strong force because they don't know how else to explain it.

And it's this force that pulls these positively charged protons together and then keeps them together.

Now, positively charged protons should fly apart, but they don't in the nucleus of an atom.

I brought some magnets.

You know, we're talking about positive and negative charges here.

Um I had a really big one and I couldn't find one to match.

But so this is when a positive and a negative meet each other.

They get drawn together.

But when you turn it around and there's two positives, I'll do it to this side first.

It doesn't want it doesn't want to touch.

There's this force that's pushing it away from each other like this.

That's what two positively charged protons will do.

And the strong force pulls these positively charged protons together when they shouldn't be staying together.

And this force holding the nucleus together, the strong force, get this, it's several trillion, several trillion times stronger than gravity.

Whew, that's a lot of force, isn't it?

And even that's an estimate, the trillions, because they can't measure the force accurately.

The strong force is literally holding every atom in the universe together.

Just for fun, later, ask Google or AI what would happen if the strong force simply let go?

It's fun to read about.

A little scary, but it's fun to read about.

The best answer that I got was that the universe would turn into a hot soup of fundamental particles in less than a millisecond.

If the strong force just simply let go in every atom.

Maybe that's what's described in 2 Peter 3.

When the old earth and the heavens pass away and that says that the elements burn and dissolve before God makes the new heavens and the new earth.

Read that passage if you want to.

2 Peter chapter 3.

2 Peter 3 · chapter mention

Could it be, though, that God in his omnipresent, omnipotent power, is just holding all of this together, and he is that strong force.

You know, right here in verse 17 it says, by him, by Jesus, all things hold together.

So is God the strong force and scientists simply don't know yet?

You know, regardless, we know God created the strong force, don't we?

But think of it in a different light.

Think about this for a second.

In Jesus, in Jesus, all things hold together.

When he was being flogged, he was hold uh holding the whip together that was ripping through the flesh of his back in his sight.

When he was on the cross, he was holding the wood together that he was hanging on.

The nails being driven in his flesh, he was holding those nails together.

The hammer.

He was holding that hammer together.

He was holding it all together even at that moment.

And Jesus went to the cross willingly for you and me while he was holding that all together.

You were worth it in his eyes for him to go through that and still hold it all together.

Think about that.

Paul goes on, verse 18.

He's also the head of the body, the church.

Again, this is another first, another origin word that we're looking at.

He existed always.

The firstborn of God, firstborn over all creation.

He's before all things.

And head here has another connotation, like I was saying, of origin and priority.

He's the origin of the church.

The first in the church.

The creator of the church.

They're preeminent over the church.

The reason that the church exists in the first place.

This is why there can't be Jesus and anything else.

All we need as individuals, all we need as a church is Jesus.

Simply Jesus.

And it's best if we keep Jesus first, isn't it?

He's there anyway.

But it's best for us to acknowledge it and recognize it and then live like it.

Live like he's first in our life.

Like I said, he's there anyway.

So we might as well admit it.

And he's always gonna be there.

He's always going to be first.

And that's where verse 18 is gonna end up at the end.

But Paul goes on in verse 18.

The next thing he says is he is the beginning.

Again, another origin word.

The beginning and the end, the alpha and the omega we see in scripture.

Next he says, the firstborn from the dead.

So, yes, Jesus raised people from the dead, but then they died again later.

I always think about poor Lazarus.

Like that poor guy.

They had to die, go through that twice.

One of the few people on earth that can sit next to somebody on their deathbed and say, I know exactly what you're going to do.

There's only a few people in history that could do that.

But Jesus was the most important to ever do it, the first of importance to do it, and Jesus was the first to resurrect from the dead permanently in his resurrected eternal body and to never die again.

Unlike Lazarus.

And no one else has ever done it since.

Or will until the return of Christ.

For followers of Christ, we get to look forward to that.

When Jesus comes back, we get an eternal resurrected body, not tainted by sin.

But Jesus was the first to do it.

First of importance to do it.

And he did it so that we get to do it as well when he returns.

Now look at the verse at the end of verse 18.

It says, So that he might come to have first place in everything.

Your translation may say he may have the preeminence or the supremacy in everything.

There's those words again.

You know, a bit of a spoiler alert here, isn't it?

Jesus will come to have first place in everything.

The thing is, though, he gives us the chance to give him first place in our life right now.

He gives us the chance to stop living for self and chasing after the wind and realize that the things of this world will never satisfy us in the way that we hoped that they would.

He gives us the chance to realize that true and lasting satisfaction and purpose are only found when we give Jesus first place in our life and we start living for him now, in the present.

He desires to give us that opportunity.

Not because he's a control freak, but because it's what's best for us.

He wants what's best for us, and that is what's best for us.

You know, he sees us chasing after things that only leave us with a void feeling and only bring loneliness to us and leave us more unsatisfied than what we were before we tried whatever it might be.

But Jesus is there and he's like, I'm here.

I'm what you've been looking for all along.

Just simply give me first place in your life now.

Do you remember how we started out this morning in verse 13?

I want you to look back at it with me real quick.

He has rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son He loves.

In him we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

This is what Jesus has made available to us right now.

This is why God was made flesh.

This is why we're celebrating the birth of Jesus in this season.

This is why he came and he walked among us and died on a cross and rose three days later.

To make salvation so available to the world that we can simply confess with our mouth, Jesus is Lord.

Believe in our heart that God raised him from the dead and we will be saved.

You simply do that in your seat right now, and you will be transferred into the kingdom of the Son, as it tells us right here.

Forgiven eternally of every wrongdoing that you've ever done in your life.

We just saw, as we're going through the book of Philippians, that at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

Some, we talked about, are gonna willfully bow down and worship Jesus.

Hopefully that's everybody in this room.

Some aren't gonna have a choice.

Even if they don't want to worship Jesus, they're still gonna see, they're gonna admit, yeah, Jesus Christ is Lord.

He is over everything.

You see, even if we don't have him first place in our life now, he's one day going to be first place in everything.

So why not do it now?

Ephesians 1, 20 through 22 talks about this in detail.

It says, He, speaking of God, exercised his power in Christ by raising him from the dead and seating him at his right hand in the heavens, far above every ruler in authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in this age, but also in the one to come.

And he subjected everything under his feet and appointed him as head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of the one who fills all things in every way.

So the question is today, are we giving him first place in everything?

Now, we give him first place in everything in our life.

And I'm talking to the Christians in this room.

What is taking first place in your life that is not Jesus?

I think, especially in December, that's a really good question.

With all the busyness, with all of the consumerism, with all of the other things that are pulling us in all different directions.

What is taking more of your time, attention, and resources in place of Christ right now?

You know, what are the things that are keeping Christ out of first place in your life?

That are taking priority over him in your life.

We need to ask God this question right now.

Like, what is it?

What are the idols?

What's taking that priority that is not Jesus?

And then ask him, Jesus, take first place in my life and show me how to live that out.

Would you please pray with me?

Lord, I'm getting convicted preaching this message of just the distractions in everyday life and in this season.

Jesus, we truly desire that you would take first place in our life, that we would give you that position willfully now because you are gonna have first place and priority over everything.

So show us how to do that now, Lord.

Not just as individuals, but as a church as well.

Lord, help us to make you first in everything.

Show us how to live that way and how to live that out moment by moment in our life.

God, you are so good.

Your love for us is so incredible as we saw in these short amount of verses here this morning.

That Jesus, being fully God, chose to step down from his position in heaven to walk into this world in such a humble way, to live such a humble life here on earth, and to die in such a humble way, to be raised three days later, because you love us so much.

You didn't want to leave us in that darkness of Satan's kingdom here on this earth, but you wanted to transfer us into the kingdom of your Son.

And we just say thank you, thank you, thank you.

Lord, we thank you so much for Jesus.

Help us to live our moment by moment life with Him taking first priority in every decision, every thought.

And when we fail, Lord, we thank you so much for forgiveness.

And that you're so willing to freely forgive us when we do mess up, because we're going to, living in this fleshly body.

But help us to learn more and more to be like Jesus on a daily basis, we pray.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.