This is the Truth Network. Welcome to Ignite the Light Ministries radio and podcast. It is our mission to help listeners develop a deeper relationship with Jesus by sharing what the Bible says and what it means. We aim to encourage and equip you to serve others, share the gospel, and reflect Christ in every aspect of your life. I'm Pastor Wyatt Cudd.
Thank you for tuning in.
Alright, so Today we're continuing our series through Colossians. Uh today we're going to be in Colossians 1. 15 to 23. You can go ahead and turn there with me if you will. Before we jump into it, we're going to do a little recap of last week.
Now it was my plan. for us to get through the whole book of Colossians. in seven weeks. The Lord has since humbled me. Uh I think in order to do it justice, it might take a little longer so I'm going to take my time.
as we go through the book to make sure As we go through each verse, I'm not skimming over anything. Uh that I'm doing the best I possibly can. to uh expound God's Word for you.
So last week we went over Paul's introduction to the Colossian church. This letter is from Paul to Colossi, and at this time he was in a Roman prison roughly 1,000 miles away from their church.
Now Epaphorus, their faithful servant and leader of this church, made that journey 1,000 miles there and back, 2,000 round trips, so that he could bring this letter back to the people he loved, his church. We learned last week the main thing that Paul wants us to learn is how we can have a Kingdom perspective in our lives. Seeing the world, seeing the events in our lives from God's point. A view. We learn that God's grace enables us to grow peace.
And the fruits of peace are faith. Hope. And love.
So building on that today, We're looking at this section that is all about the supremacy of Christ.
So I want to add. This. Christ is God's ultimate expression. of grace.
Alright, so we're going to jump right into it. Verse 15. We're going to do a clean read-through, and I'm just going to let Paul, God's word, speak for itself, and then we're going to go through it and talk about it.
Alright, so we're at verse 15, Colossians chapter 1. The sun is the image of the invisible God. Firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created. Things in heaven, Things on earth.
visible and invisible, whether thrones, powers, rulers, or authorities. All things have been created through him. And for him. He is the beginning of all things, and in him all things are held together. and he is the head of the body.
The church. He is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have his fullness dwell in him. And through him to the to reconcile to himself all things. Whether things on earth or in heaven.
by making peace through his bloodshed. On the cross. Once you were alienated from God and you were enemies in your minds. Because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you holy in his sight.
without blemish, and free from accusation, If You continue in your faith. established firm and do not move from the hope held out in the Gospel. This is the gospel that you heard and has been proclaimed to every creature under earth, of which I, Paul, have become. A servant. This entire section.
No, the the entire book of Colossians. No, no, no. The entire Bible. Is supremely focused on the Lord Jesus Christ. Every part of Scripture Testifies and bears witness to this.
And this section is a poem or a hymn that dramatically removes any possible doubt of how we ought to understand. Jesus. The church of Colossi at this time, remember from last week, was caught in the middle of this heresy. It wasn't from outside the church. Yes, the outside culture was influencing the church, but this heresy was taking root.
from within the church. It was what we know now, we call it Gnosticism. Gnosticism goes something like this. God and the spiritual things are good. Matter and the created things are evil.
Jesus is just one of the many manifestations of God. He is not divine, he is not God, but he's like an angel. He's a manifestation of God. And. There is this secret, hidden knowledge beyond Scripture that we have to work out if we want to attain enlightenment.
And the most problematic aspect of this Gnosticism. was the rejection of Christ's divinity. In Gnosticism, Christ was. prominent But not pre-eminent, not above and surpassing all things. And Paul addresses this issue.
first before anything else. Christ is preeminent. Christ surpasses all things. He is supreme. Yet Paul doesn't start by saying Ma'am.
I hope God's grace and peace find you before I do. Because some of y'all out here are spouting nonsense and I'm about to set you straight. No, see, he doesn't say that. He doesn't. Even address this heresy first.
Instead, he declares what is true before confronting error. As a result, You almost don't need the context of this section to make sense of it and it make a difference in how you understand Jesus. This declaration of Christ's Deity stands alone eternally. Paul clarifies who Christ is for this past Colossian church. For our present church and for any future church that reads his epistle.
It is for all. And who is this Christ? Christ is God's ultimate expression of grace. He has an ultimate reign He gives ultimate reunion And he calls us to have ultimate resolve. If you take one thing away from this sermon, let it be that.
Christ is God's ultimate expression of grace. He has ultimate reign. He gives us ultimate reunion with the Father, and he calls us for ultimate resolve, ultimate dedication.
So let's jump right into this. Christ has ultimate reign. Verse 15 to 20, verse 15 says, The Son is the image of the invisible God, firstborn over all creation. The image of the invisible God. In relation to God, Christ makes visible What is it?
invisible. If you want to know who God is, His character, if you want to know what He looks like, you need look no further than the life and person of Jesus. If God had a driver's license in the state of Virginia, Jesus would be his headshot. John 1.18. No one has ever seen God but the only one But the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in close relationship with the Father.
has made him known. Can you guys hear me all right? They came back.
Okay, all right. Hebrews 1:3, the Son. is the radiance. of God's glory. an exact representation of his being.
sustaining all things by his powerful word. John 14, this is verse 8 to 9. It's the upper room right before the crucifixion. Philip said, Lord, show us the Father, and it will be enough for us. Man, you guys are so prompt.
This is awesome. Verse 9, as he puts it up, you'll see it's a little truncated. Anyone who has seen me. has seen the father. Yes.
Jesus is the very Image of God. Put more simply, Jesus is. God.
Now I want to reflect a little bit on on Genesis. Uh Genesis 1.27. God created mankind in his own image. In the image of God, he created them, male and female, he created them.
Okay, so Jesus is the image of God. We are created in God's image. What's the difference? Isn't it exactly the same? No.
There's a huge difference here. that hinges on one single preposition. We are in the image of God. Jesus. Is The image of God.
We are a reflection of God, kind of the way the moon reflects the light of the sun. Jesus is The sun. S-U-N. We don't share God's perfect We don't share God's image perfectly. We don't have his incommunicable attributes, that is, like, we're not all knowing.
We're not all-powerful. We're not everywhere at once. We're not before time and after all time. Oh, but Jesus is. Jesus does share these things.
With God.
Now, our ability to reflect God as the moon reflects the sun is tarnished. Buy sin. But Romans 8.28 It says, for those God foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son. See, Christ is how we are redeemed image bearers. He is how we return to being an untarnished reflection, an untarnished echo.
of who God is.
So, verse 15, back to Colossians here. The Son is the image of the invisible God. The firstborn over all creation. Firstborn. In Greek, it is prototakas.
It has to do with position and rank regarding inheritance. and less to do with uh chronology. Here Paul is referring to Christ's Rank. Christ is the worthy heir to the throne of all creation. Christ has ultimate reign.
It does not say firstborn of creation. No, see the firstborn of creation, that would have been Cain. Uh The firstborn over all creation. That's Jesus.
Sorry, Jehovah's Witnesses. The notion that Jesus is a lesser created being is actually the very heresy Paul is refuting here. Verse 16. For in him all things were created, things in heaven, And on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers, rulers, or authorities, all things have been created through him and for him.
So whether it's spiritual, whether it's physical, whether it's grass, whether it's gravity. Big or small, if you see it through a telescope or through a microscope, it belongs to Jesus. And Jesus is the ruler of everything, worthy of all the praise, all the worship we can give. Praise God. Yeah.
Study creation, church. Bask in its wonder, and you will see the mystery and the majesty. of its creator Jesus.
Now verse 16 makes it Clear. Jesus is the creator of the spirit realm. Everything and everyone. Edit. are under his control.
including safety. Job chapter 1 in order to afflict Job and tempt him? To curse God, Satan has to go before the throne of the Lord to ask permission. He can't do anything without asking. See Jesus.
Has Satan on a leash. He can only go as far as he's permitted. And he doesn't want you to know that, but it's true. Jesus has saved you. On a leash.
Verse 17, it says, He is before all things. And in him all All things hold together. As the creator. Jesus is pre-existent, and he holds the universe together. The intricacies we see of the universe are incredibly fascinating.
So, Colossians was written in about 60 AD. Paul did not know about atoms or the protons and the electrons. He did not know that the human body was made up of cells. We didn't quite have the Hubble telescope back then to see how vast and large. Yeah.
Wise. But what he said is true. And what we know now about the universe makes it even more evident how impossible this all is, how impossible life is to begin with. The world around us is a miracle. The fact it's held together at all is beyond us.
For example, The fine-tuning of the universe. Y'all know that story about Goldilocks? It's this young girl that she's wandering through the woods and finds this shack and She's just like, she just goes in, goes into this shack, and she sees three bowls of porridge laid out. And I don't know, does it occur to her that this is somebody else's house? Goldilocks, this is not your house.
This doesn't belong to you. I mean, she sees a bowl of porridge with steam coming off, it's too hot.
Somebody just made it! Like it's so evident this is somebody else's house. But she just goes in anyways. Finds her favorite bowl and she eats the whole thing. She goes into the next room.
You know, there's three chairs and she finds her favorite one. I was reading the story, it says she sits in it and just breaks the chair. Of course, everything's baby bear stuff. Like, he just really gets the brunt into the stick in this story. I couldn't even tell you the moral of it.
Like, lock your doors, I guess. I don't know. You know? But you see, humans and animals. All of life is like Goldilocks.
In order for us to live at all, We require just the right amount of oxygen in the air. We require just the right amount of uh just the right temperature. The planet has to be just the right distance from the sun. You get the idea. In order for life to exist at all, our universe has to meet Very particular conditions.
And many of these conditions to line up as perfectly as they do. is just impossible by mere chance. The margin is is a razor edge.
So for example, we're going to get a little sciencey here. The second law of thermodynamics. Everything is moving from a state of order to disorder. Watch your kitchen as you cook and you'll see what I mean. Energy moves from usable to unusable.
You put a ball on top of a hill, it rolls down. It does not roll up. You take a pot of boiling water off the stove, it cools down. It doesn't keep heating up. You put ice in a thing of water, that ice, the temperature dissipates and it equalizes and the ice melts.
Everything is moving from a state of order to equalized. disorder. That's the second law of thermodynamics. It governs the universe. It's a mystery for scientists.
why there's a state of order to begin with at all. Why is there a state of order?
Well The leading theory that does not include God is the Big Bang. A cosmic explosion, church, created all this order that you see. around us. Have you seen an explosion create anything in your time here at Earth? See, when I was on the way here, we passed by a Home Depot.
And I was thinking, man. I would love to see that Home Depot blow up and become a multi-million dollar mansion. Because without God, that's the best theory we got. There's this guy named Roger Penrose. He was a mathematical physicist.
Uh And he won a Nobel Peace Prize, essentially for proving black holes. Uh Now he calculated if our universe just Happened to be low entropy, a high state of order. If this just happened by mere chance, the odds would be. Uh one and ten. raised to the tenth power, raised to the 123rd power.
Now, that number is so astronomically large that if you were to try to write out all the zeros in 10-point font, It would stretch well across our solar system and beyond. The number is so astronomically large, I can't even wrap our heads around it. It's Impossible. For it just to happen. Life is an impossible miracle as we know it.
Now what's more impossible? A godless miracle. Creation demands a creator. And Paul reveals to us, verse 17, it's Jesus. He is before all things, and he holds all things together.
Moving on to verse 18, and he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything. he might have supremacy. Christ has ultimate reign. Over the created universe, and final say of what happens in the church.
in our church. Christ is the head of the church, and we know anything without a head is. Dead. Uh and anything with two heads Belongs in a horror movie. Church has one head, and it's Jesus.
He gets ultimate say, and he coordinates and energizes us, the body, to use our spiritual gifts. to his purpose. Verse 18 says, He is the beginning. Christ is the beginning. of the universe?
The beginning of the church corporately. and individually. Jesus is the very start of our Christian journey. We encounter him. We place our faith in him.
He removes our sin. And he gives us his righteousness. setting us on the path for eternity. He is the reason We care about the rest of the Bible at all. When we share our faith with somebody, the first place we ought to be taking them is the gospel.
Christ's death and resurrection. You want to get the lost person. to the cross as quickly as possible. They're not going to know to ask the right questions. because they're lost.
So we have to direct the conversation. To the cross.
Now, depending on the culture, who the person is, your avenue getting there might look different, but it's all about Christ. That's the end goal: Christ. Don't take them to Ecclesiastes. Don't take them to Leviticus or the minor prophets. See, all of that's good and necessary and adds depth and significance to the gospel.
But without the cross, without Christ, the Bible does not matter. We're still in our sin without Him.
So get them to the cross as quick as possible. 1 Corinthians 5, 17, and if Christ has not been raised... Your faith is futile. You are still in your sin. The Bible does not matter unless we have Christian.
Christ. He's the beginning of the church corporately and individually. He's the beginning of the universe. And he's also at the beginning in ways that we can hardly fathom. Ephesians 1.4.
God chose us in Him Jesus. before the creation of the world. to be holy and blameless in his sight. See, we were elected. before creation to be members of the body of Christ.
You were personally selected by God to be part of His church. Before creation. What an honor. I want us to take a minute to really ponder that. Think about your life for a second.
What are some of your darkest moments?
Now don't shout them out. Just Yeah. What are some of your darkest moments?
What are some of the things that you've done that Ah, I want a redo on that. I don't know about you, but I have a list and it's longer than I'd care to admit. Happy.
Now let it be known to us Mm-hmm. God saw your list. God saw our rap sheet. Before anything on that list, even happened. He saw every awful thing, every dark corner of your life that would be, and decided the person you would become in Christ was worth it.
Was worth the sacrifice on the cross that would have to be paid. You are worth it. Jesus chose you. God calls. You.
Verse 18. Firstborn from among the dead. What does that mean?
Well, we covered that firstborn has to do with rank, not necessarily chronology. Jesus reigns over death. He certainly wasn't the first to come back from the dead. Jesus raised the ruler's daughter in Matthew 9. He raised the widow's son in Luke 7, and then Lazarus in John 11.
So he wasn't firstborn as like he was the first to be raised from the dead. But Jesus is the source. of those resurrection. Hey there. I hope this sermon has enriched your day.
If you like this message, I want to personally invite you to join us for Sunday worship. We have two locations in Virginia, Trinity Methodist Church in Concord and Mount Comfort Methodist Church in Appomattox. Come join us Sunday morning at 9.45 and we will help you get connected. As always, I'm Pastor Wyatt Cudd. Thank you for tuning in.
