Nothing Missing | Pastor Chris Kouba

Hey, really good to see you.

Grab your Bibles, open them up with me to Colossians chapter one.

Colossians chapter one.

It was great to be able to hear from Tasha Calvert earlier.

Tasha has been a longtime friend of Hillary and I.

We've loved her and Robert and their family.

And it is so we're so honored to be able to have them here.

Uh, not only with us this morning, but gonna be here tonight for our ladies' event.

Want to make sure, ladies, you're registered uh there.

I think we have over 450 or so, I think, already signed up, ready to go uh to be here tonight.

We're gonna be making copies or available copies rather of Tasha's book that I want to encourage all of you to pick up a copy of.

She just released this earlier this year.

It is called Set Apart for More.

It's a book on holiness.

This is an incredibly practical resource and tool to help you live a holy life.

You may be saying, holiness, why in the world would I want to read about holiness?

Holiness sounds hard, holiness sounds difficult.

We want peace, we want joy, we want all those things from God.

But what we find, Tasha does an incredible job in this book of showing us that holiness is the path to get those things.

Whenever you begin to pursue the holy God and you begin to act holy yourself, you begin to experience all the benefits and the blessings of that.

I'm gonna just encourage you to do this.

Ladies, I also want to make sure that you are aware uh Tasha does an amazing job on a podcast called Digging In.

She's an incredible Bible teacher, uh, and she has a digging in podcast that she releases episodes uh every other week, or every week rather.

And I want to just make sure you know about that.

You can sign up for that.

Let that be one of the many podcasts that you uh have the opportunity to take advantage of.

Colossians chapter one is where we're gonna spend just a little bit of time uh today.

Most people, when they look at a diamond, think that they're actually looking at the whole thing, but the reality is they are not.

When you look at a diamond, you're only looking at one face of it.

And a cut stone actually has 57 faces.

Jewelers actually call them facets.

When you look at a diamond, you only see a handful at a time.

The rest are working underneath where you cannot see them at all.

It's actually part of the design.

You know, whenever you see a diamond, one of the things that you love about seeing a diamond is the fact that it kind of glistens and it glows.

It has this uh ability just to kind of sparkle and make it look like something that is incredibly beautiful.

And that's all because of the angles of what the diamond has been cut to be.

Because if you there's no actual light in a diamond, it gets light from outside of it, and then it goes through the diamond, it hits another stone, another cut stone on the back side of it, and then that light begins to reflect back to you.

If the diamond is not cut properly, then the light will go right through it and it won't sparkle or shine at all.

But instead, if you see a diamond that is beautiful, you see one that shines and has all the things that begin to attract our attention to a diamond, then it is perfectly cut in every way.

A Belgian named Tokowski worked out the math in 1919.

Every face was set at an angle so the light had nowhere to go but back to you, which is why nobody that knows anything about diamonds is gonna hand you a diamond and just hold it.

Instead, they're gonna move it, they're gonna turn it, they're gonna allow you to begin to see various aspects and parts of that diamond that you may not have naturally been drawn to.

And with each turn of the diamond, a new part of the beauty of that stone gets uncovered.

I remember the first time that I went into a jewelry store to go with Hillary to go shopping for wedding rings.

Uh, I mentioned that to you last week, and we walked in there, and and I'll be honest with you, I had absolutely no idea what I was looking at.

Okay, I just they all looked expensive to me.

That was my that was my evaluation, okay?

Uh but the jeweler began to describe to me the four C's.

Do you know the four C's?

Okay, it's cut, it's carrot, it's color, and it's clarity.

And when they began to describe that to me, suddenly all these things began to have a new appreciation because you began to get a feel for what it is that you were looking at.

You begin to get a realization of the beauty.

All of them seemed to sparkle and shine, but there was something magnificent when you began to realize exactly what it was, this specific diamond, what it was cut to, the color of it, the clarity.

All of those things began to give it more meaning.

I'm convinced that you could stand in front of a diamond and look at it your whole life, looking at one face, thinking that you've seen everything.

But the reality is this, you haven't.

You've just seen one part of it.

A diamond is something that can only be appreciated when you spend time looking at all of the various facets and all of the various faces that it has.

I'm convinced that a lot of us have done that same thing with Jesus.

We've not rejected him.

Almost nobody in the room came here today to reject Jesus.

That's not our problem.

Our problem is that most of us have settled on one part of him.

We've looked at one face of him a long time ago and have been calling that Jesus ever since.

So, for example, maybe Jesus rescued you from something.

And so, therefore, you see Jesus as the rescuer, and that's a great thing, but that's not the only thing.

Maybe some of you see Jesus as the guy with a lot of rules trying to make sure that you follow them.

Please hear me.

That is one part of Jesus, but that is not all who Jesus is.

Maybe some of you feel like Jesus is the reason you feel a little guilty on Sundays.

And I would tell you that maybe one face that you've decided to look at, but that is not all that he is.

And whenever we begin to look at just one part of Jesus and say that is who Jesus is, then what begins to happen is we quietly begin to start thinking that we need to add something else to Jesus because he's great in this area, but he's not all that I need.

So we begin to say that as long as I have Jesus and the right outcome.

As long as I have Jesus and my kid turns out okay.

As long as I have Jesus and the one more thing that finally makes me feel like I am doing this right.

Let me ask you the question today: what have you added to Jesus?

Whatever it is, I think you added it because nobody ever took the diamond and turned it for you to let you appreciate and to see his beauty and all that he is.

This is what Paul's about to do in our text in Colossians chapter 1, verses 15 through 23.

Colossians 1:15–23

Let me set the scene up for you.

Colossae was a town in what is now modern-day Turkey.

Rome was the one who ran it at the time, and Rome had one rule about religion.

You could worship whatever God that you wanted, as long as you did not claim that your God was the only one.

The city was full of temples, and the mood was take a little bit from this God and take a little bit from this God and take a little bit from this religion and a little bit from this religion, and you can put it all together, and it will cover whatever you need to help do you.

You do you and take whatever you want to get there.

That was the idea.

Then this guy named Epaphras goes and plants a gospel church in the city of Colossae, and people start getting saved.

And then false teachers came in and they began to do what all of the town did.

They didn't discredit Jesus, they didn't remove Jesus, they didn't argue against Jesus.

They just said, Hey, that's awesome.

We'll add Jesus to all the other things we've already decided are okay.

They did not throw him out, they just added him in.

Paul's now sitting in a Roman prison cell, and Epaphras, the planner of the church, comes to him and tells him what happens.

And so what Paul does is he writes a letter, the book of Colossians, to a church that he had never actually visited, and he doesn't do so by dismantling with an apologetic all of their arguments as to why the false teachers are wrong.

Instead, what Paul does is he just holds up the diamond and he turns it and shows you all the various faces of it.

And by doing so and showing you who Jesus is, he shows why he is greater than all the other options that are out there.

He does this in verses 15 through 23, one of the most beautiful descriptions of what we should be looking for in the person of Jesus.

Would you stand in the honor of the reading of God's word as I read this amazing passage of scripture?

Verse 15 says, He 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 or rulers or authorities.

All things were created through him and for him.

And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

And he is the head of the body, the church.

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

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 has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister.

You may be seated.

Four different times.

Paul says, He is.

Verse 15, he is.

Verse 17, he is.

Verse 18, he is.

Another time in verse 18, he is.

It's like he's trying to say, here's another thing that Jesus is.

He's holding up the diamond, and he's turning ever so slowly for you to be able to admire it.

And every time he turns the diamond, another face catches the light and it shines in a fresh and new way.

Let me show you four turns of the same diamond.

Write this down.

Number one, see the God revealed to you.

See the God revealed to you.

Verse 15, he is the image of the invisible God.

The word image means icon.

He's not a picture of God, he's not a reminder of God, he's not a good representative sent to speak for God on his behalf.

When you look at Jesus, you are seeing God in the flesh.

This mattered in a society where all religions thought that everybody was going to end up at the same destination.

You just took different routes to be able to get there.

Every religion is trying to solve the same problem.

How do we make an unseen God visible?

And so here's what these religions would do they would all make have temples trying to solve that problem.

They would carve something, they would build something, they would imagine something, they would get something that they could look at and worship, but nobody ever pulled it off because you cannot make an invisible God visible from the outside until now.

It says he, Jesus, is the image of the invisible God.

This establishes right away that Jesus is not just one of the many options, but Jesus is the only option.

He is the one who is greater.

Why?

Because he's the literal flesh and blood of God.

It says there at the end of verse 15, he is the firstborn of all creation.

You hear the word firstborn, it seems to indicate that he was the first one that was born.

I'm the oldest of all of my siblings, and so therefore I am the firstborn.

But that is not what it means here.

It's referring to rank.

Psalm chapter 89, verse 27.

Psalms 89:27

David is called God's firstborn, but we know last series that David was the youngest of eight kids.

So what does this mean?

It can't mean position or it can't mean birth order.

It's got to mean position and sequence.

Paul is saying Jesus is the highest in rank.

He clarifies this in the next verse, verse 16, when he says, Everything that was created was created by him.

If everything that was created came through him, then he's not standing in the created line.

He's actually on the other side of it.

John chapter 1, verses 1 through 3.

John 1:1–3

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

He was in the beginning with God.

All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.

Look at verse 16, he lists thrones and dominions and rulers and authorities.

This is speaking not only of the created world, but it's also speaking of the unseen spiritual world.

People back in those days would take created things, but they also would assume that there are spirits which are out there that they would pray to or they would do things to try to curry their favor, hoping that by being in their good graces it might be good to them.

And so what Paul is saying is, hey, I want you to know, Jesus is not like everybody else.

He created all the things everybody else is using to try to get to God.

He is above all of those things.

And then look at what it says at the end.

Not only are these things created through him, but these things are created for him.

All of creation was made through Christ.

All of creation was made for Christ.

There is nothing that doesn't have purpose and meaning that doesn't feed and lead us to him.

The question we got to wrestle with.

What have you been using to picture God?

When you think about God, what do you think about?

Some of you have built something years ago out of a good or bad experience with the Father, or maybe the image is of God is the one from a flannel graph in Sunday school.

Anybody the flannel graphs, right?

You know what I'm talking about?

You've been in church long enough to know that.

And so therefore you've got this image of God.

Maybe you had a bad season, and so therefore you filter everything that you see through this lens of God being one who was maybe either there in a bad season or God who felt absent in a bad season, and you've just keyed in on that.

What I'm encouraging you to do, according to verse 15, put those things down and turn the diamond and realize he is the God who you can see.

Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.

Verse 17 tells you what he's doing with all of that right now.

Look at what it shows, the second turn of the diamond.

Write this down.

See the hand holding you.

See the hand holding you.

Verse 17, Jesus is before all things.

And in him all things hold together.

John chapter 8 tells the story.

John 8 · chapter mention

It's kind of a kind of actually a funny story.

Where Jesus comes up on the scene and there's these uh unbelieving Jews who are really just frustrated with him.

They just cannot get their heads around the things that he's trying to say.

Because here they are talking and debating about the role of Abraham and where he fits into all of this.

And here's Jesus, this guy in his early 30s.

And he starts saying things like somehow he knows Abraham, like he's a contemporary of Abraham, like they're friends or they're buddies.

And the Jews just are losing their mind.

How do you, who do you think you are?

How do you think that somehow you know Abraham?

And here's how Jesus responds in John 8 58.

Jesus said to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.

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

That's a present tense word, not held, but currently holding right now in this room, while you are sitting here, Jesus is holding everything together.

When you are worried and you are analyzing and you are thinking through your situation and what you're gonna do, Jesus is holding all things together.

When you are asleep, unconscious to the world, for however long you do it, five hours, ten hours, whatever it is in between, you need to know this.

While you're sleeping, Jesus is holding it all together.

Then in verse 18, he says, He is the head of the body, the church.

Jesus is the head of the church, which is why to be a Christian, it means that you are someone, if you follow after Christ, you also care deeply about what he cares about, and he cares about the church.

I would admit the church is not perfect.

There are things that the church does wrong.

If you are here long enough, you will realize we are not a perfect church.

Why?

Because we got a lot of imperfect people that go to the church.

But what we've got to be careful of is this idea and this trend almost that says, I'm fine with Jesus, I just don't want anything to do with the church.

That's like you coming up to me and saying, Hey, I really like you, I just don't like your wife.

If you don't like my wife, you don't like me.

All right?

We ain't getting along.

So I want to make sure we have this understanding that to be all in on Jesus doesn't just mean the blessings of Jesus, but also the things that Jesus cares about.

And here's what I want you to know Jesus cares a lot about his church.

He says the gates of hell won't prevail against his church, which means this: we must be a people who invest in the church, who give to the church, who serve the church, who engage with the church.

Don't just be casual attenders and folks that just sit on the sidelines, but be all in.

Why?

To be all in on the church means that you get to be all in on Jesus.

And you get to experience his goodness and his mercy and his grace.

The end of verse 18 is the peak of the passage.

Everything before it is the reason, everything after it is the result.

It says that in everything he might be preeminent.

That means first place, not just high on the list, but off of the list, like a category by itself.

Many people try to make Jesus prominent, but they don't make Jesus pre-eminent.

Jesus does not have the option of just being a good teacher that we follow.

He is God, or everything else falls apart.

Philippians chapter 2, verses 9 through 11 reads, Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name.

Philippians 2:9–11

So that the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

Jesus Christ is preeminent, He is supreme.

Verse 19, it tells you why he can hold on anything to anything at all.

Not like a portion, not like he just happened to be more spiritual than everybody else, but the fullness of God.

Colossians 2 9, for in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.

This is what is holding your life together, not a force, not a principle, not a spirit, but the one in whom all the fullness of God lives, which is the person of Jesus.

Jesus, the preeminent one, is holding all things together.

Let me tell you what this means.

That means he's holding your life.

He's holding your family, he's holding your future, he's holding this church, he's holding your sickness, he's holding your blessings.

Let me just ask.

What have you been holding on to that you believe that you've got to carry?

Maybe ask it like this: who's been holding it while you slept last night, not able to do one thing about it?

An area of conviction that the Lord has brought about to me over the last really six months.

It keeps coming up, it doesn't go away, and it's been applied out in multiple different scenarios.

Is this conviction?

Do you really trust me?

It's hard because I would tell you, of course I do.

Of course I trust you.

Of course I believe you.

I've taught others about how to do this, I've preached on this, but the Lord is pressing on me.

Do you really trust me?

To the point I've had to start asking the follow up question why do you keep asking me?

And the conviction is this I say that I trust him, but I don't act like I do.

Because I worry about stuff.

I analyze stuff.

I would rather go to a strategy whiteboard session than to prayer.

I would rather spend time grinding and working than waiting and listening.

And I feel like it's so clear the Lord's invitation to me is like at some point you're gonna realize that with me is better than anything that you could ever do on your own.

And speed and urgency is not my agenda.

I instead want spirit-led move of God that can make up for any lost time by just grinding and working.

Folks, what I've got to ultimately realize is this if I believe he holds all things together, then I'm not gonna act like everybody else.

I'm not gonna respond like everybody else.

I'm gonna see my greatest need is to be with him, the one who holds all things together, the preeminent one, the one to whom all things are through and to who all things are for, trusting that actually he can work when I am not.

I can actually rest knowing that God is still doing things behind the scenes that I can't see.

And ultimately, when I do that, I can believe that he's holding me.

Third turn of the diamond reveals this.

Write this down.

See the peace made for you.

See the peace made for you.

Verse 20 says, God was pleased through him to reconcile to himself all things, making peace by the blood of his cross.

That isn't like a conditional statement, it is a done reality.

The result of Jesus' preeminence is peace.

Verse 21 moves away from being about the universe and it starts to get very personal.

He says that we were all alienated, hostile in mind, doing evil deeds.

This is not speaking about somebody who just kind of drifted away.

This is somebody at war.

Verse 22 says that he reconciled us in his body of flesh by his death, meaning that the peace that we get to experience was not negotiated.

It wasn't some compromise.

Nobody met in the middle.

It was purchase, and the price is named right there in the verse.

It was the sacrifice of the preeminent one.

The purpose was to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before Him.

The Holy One makes us holy.

You know, most of us live our lives like it's a payment plan.

If we have a good week, that means that God is pleased.

If we have a bad week, it means that God is upset.

Here's what it looks like for me.

If I preach and you guys act like you're actually engaged and awake, people make decisions, people respond, there's energy in the building.

I go home and think it was a good day.

But instead, if you guys just look at me like, how long is he gonna keep going?

When is this over?

Nobody responds, half of you leave early, which really makes me mad, alright?

And I go home and think somehow I failed the Lord.

The assumption is my performance determines his satisfaction.

The reality is this the peace that we've received is something that we receive regardless of our performance.

In fact, the peace that we receive is in spite of our performance.

Folks, this allows us to rest in what God has done more than what we feel.

Verse 21 makes it super clear that your situation was way worse than your worst day or your worst week.

Verse 22 makes it clear that God's best is way better than your good feeling, your good day, or your good week.

It's a peace that was made for you.

Turn the diamond one more time.

Verse 23 shows what a person who actually believes this does with it.

See the hope given to you.

Number four, see the hope given to you.

Verse 23.

If indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you've heard.

The if there doesn't mean that you could lose your salvation.

Paul's not putting your salvation on probation.

He's telling you how you can tell that it's real.

Real faith stays put.

The staying is not what saves you, it's the evidence that you've been saved.

And then I want you to see where Paul puts the hope.

He does not say your hope.

He says the hope of the gospel which you heard.

It's not in you, it's not something you generated on a good weekend.

It came from outside of you.

Somebody said it out loud, and it was true before it ever reached your ear.

So when Paul tells them to continue, he's not telling them to work harder.

He instead says, look at the words, stable, steadfast, not shifting.

These are not action words, these are resting words.

So he's telling a church that has spent years adding to Jesus that the only thing you can do is to stay on what you've already been given.

Don't upgrade, don't add to it, don't strengthen it, don't supplement it.

Instead, don't shift off of it.

Because there's nothing that you could add that would make it hold any better.

Anyone who has owned a house in Texas before knows about foundations.

You ever had a house?

We had one in our house in Dallas, and then all of a sudden the door just wouldn't quite latch anymore, like it just kind of got stuck and it wouldn't quite shut as clean as it needed to.

We also noticed that above our window seal that there was a little bitty crack in the little corner right above the window seal.

I also noticed that there was a little bitty spot above one of my doors, the same thing in the corner that was there.

And so what I did is I went, I'm not really handy, but I was handy enough to basically patch up those areas and paint them.

And then I was able to kind of tweak and move the door enough to be able to get that door to be able to close.

Only for a few months later, what happened?

The exact same thing happened.

Another door this time wouldn't quite shut.

That area that I had spackled and painted before began to crack yet again.

Why?

Because you can do all that you want on the top, but if you got problems on the foundation, it doesn't make any difference.

Those same issues are going to return.

Which is why the question is not what have you added and built on top of the foundation?

The question is, what is the foundation that you're building your life upon?

Some of you, your faith feels like it's cracking in the same place that it cracked for years, and patching that spot is not gonna hold.

What you need to do is go back down to the foundation, and it's not complicated.

Here is the foundation of the Christian life.

Jesus Christ died on a cross, he rose from the dead.

And if you put your faith and your trust in him, everything changes, folks.

You do not need a better slab, you need to stop trying to shore it up and lean upon the foundation that has been given to you.

Here's the thing about a cut diamond.

Nobody can make one more brilliant by adding something to it.

There's nothing that you can put on a diamond that makes more light come out of it.

Everything a cutter does is take away until there is nothing left between the light and your eye.

In the same way, what Paul has been doing for us is he has held Jesus up.

He has turned him, and every time he turns him, another face gets seen that catches the light that reveals his beauty.

See the God that's been revealed to you.

See the hand that is holding you, see the peace that is made for you, see the hope which was given to you, and behold.

Because nothing is missing with Jesus.

Would you bow your heads and would you close your eyes with me?

Have you been adding anything to Jesus?

Have you become bored with the gospel?

Would you just confess these things to the Lord?

Father, I confess that I have become convinced that as long as I do this, then things are going to be having a breakthrough.

Then things are going to be easier, then things are going to be best.

Father, your word is clear.

You are enough.

Help your people to believe that.

Help us to trust you.

Help us to follow you.

Help us to lay these burdens at your feet.

Not because we don't want to do anything, but because we want to not do anything that you don't want us to do.

Man, what an amazing time that we had today.

Hey, if you know of someone that needs to hear this message, we'd love for you to share that on socials.

We'd love for you to actually go and check out our socials so you can stay up to date on everything happening in the life of United City.

And if you need to take the next step, we'd love to help you do that as well.

Love you guys so much, and we'll see you next week.