Sermon
The Centrality Of The All-Sufficient Christ
January 23, 2005
Pastor Donald Sheley

Every time that Patty so beautifully plays her violin it reminds me of a poem I heard many years ago.

It was battered and scared,
And the auctioneer thought it scarcely worth the while,
To waste much time on the old violin but he held it up with a smile,
What am I bid for this old violin?
Who will start the bidding for me?

A dollar?
A dollar, and who will make it two,
Two dollars and who will make it three?
Three dollars once, three dollars twice,
Going for three.

But no,
In the back of the room a gray haired man,
Came forward and took up the bow,
Then wiping the dust from the old violin and tightening up all the strings,
He played a melody pure and sweet, as sweet as the angel sings,
The music ceased and the auctioneer,
With a voice that was quiet and low said what am I bid,
For this old violin and he held it up with the bow.

A thousand dollars, and who will make it two?
Two thousand, and who will make it three?
Three thousand once, three thousand twice,
Going and gone said he.
The people cheered, but some of them said we don't quite understand,
What changed its worth?
Then came the reply,
The touch of the Master's hand.

And many a man with his life out of tune,
And battered and scared with sin is auctioned cheap,
To a thoughtless crowd much like the old violin.
A mess of pottage, a glass of wine,
A game and he shuffles along,
He is going once, he's going twice, and he's almost gone,
But the Master comes, and the thoughtless crowd
Never can quite understand,
The worth of the soul and the change that is wrought
By the touch of the Master's hand.

Jesus, thank you for touching our lives. Some of us were so deep in darkness, so lost, and yet in Your infinite grace and Your eternal mercy You reached out to us in love. That which was worthless now is the child of a King, and that which was empty is now filled with Your eternal joy. Thank you wonderful Jesus for being our Savior, our Master, and our God. Now as we open our hearts and our minds to Your eternal Word, may Your precious Holy Spirit be our teacher, I pray in Christ's name. Amen.

I'd like for you to take your Bible and turn with me to Colossians chapter 1 today and our Scripture reading will be Colossians 1 verses 12 through 20.

Our theme has been for the last number of weeks, 'Let's Talk About Jesus,' and it's a subject that is very dear to my heart. On Sunday evening after our evening service we has pastors sit down for a time of evaluating what has taken place during the day, the sermons that have been preached, and then we work with our younger ministers and our prayer is that in the years to come they will develop into great men of the pulpit. But last Sunday evening it was brought to our attention that if you are going to stand in a pulpit, stand there with an intense purpose, with a passion, with something that is very, very close to you otherwise it just simply becomes a lecture.

And today I want you to know that the subject that we have selected for the next number of weeks is a passion with me because the cults are winning converts one a minute, 1500 a day, and the researchers tell us that most of those converts are coming right out of churches that call themselves Christian. But because Christians don't understand what they believe in depth it's the cults that come to us and ultimately oft times get a convert. With God's help my prayer is that does not ever happened here.

The center focus for the cults has always been, from the early moments of the church, the person of Jesus Christ. They try to distort and to tear down what the Bible says about Jesus, and you'll go to any cult and you'll find that the heart of that cult is a terrible Christology, which is not biblical at all. And at the heart of our faith is the Christ, the Son of the living God, the Savior of the world, and today we want to come back to the subject of Christ.

Colossians 1:12-20, Paul writes: "...giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light. He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence. For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell, and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross."

Take your notes. I trust that you have them. I'm going to follow quite close to the notes today because the content is intense and I want you to be right there with me word for word, will you do that please?

Whenever we claim anything distinctively Christian we have to do it in the context of our experience of Jesus. Now I start our lesson today with that sentence because it is my deep conviction that all of our worship has to be centered in the person of Christ. All of our lives should be lived for the glory of Christ. Christ should be the very center of our being. He should be the very central focus of our church and our worship, and thus, whenever we claim anything distinctively Christian we have to do it in the context of our experience of Jesus.

The Christian gospel is the proclamation of an event, an event of Jesus Christ. In the Christian view of reality, Christ is final. He is the revelation of God and the revelation of true humanity. And the paradoxical tension--the humanity of Jesus and His divinity--is the very essence of the gospel proclamation. That's why we have spent time going through all of these verses that explain to us the deity of Christ as well as His humanity.

Our subject is Jesus Christ, Son of Man without sin, Son of God with power, whom God "hath appointed heir of all things, by whom He made the worlds, the brightness of God's glory, the express image of God's person, upholding all things by the word of His power".

Christ, "who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour; that He by the grace of God, should taste death for every man."

Christ, "in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin."

Christ, "never glorifying Himself, learning obedience by the things which He suffered, He became the author of eternal salvation."

Christ, "whom having not seen, ye love, in whom, though now ye see Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory, receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls."

Christ, who "hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit."

Christ, "Who is gone into heaven, and is on the right hand of God; angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto Him."

His name is Jesus Christ. Wonderful in the blessings He dispenses, wonderful in the influence He exerts, wonderful in the homage He receives, and wonderful in the place that He occupies.

Pascal, the French philosopher, writes, "Jesus Christ is the center of all and the goal to which all leads."

Von Muller, the Swiss historian, writes; "Christ is the key to the history of the world."

And Lord Balfour says, "Christ is Time's Masterpiece and Heaven's glory."

Strauss says that "Christ stands alone unapproached in the world's history."

And Carlyle said that "The life and death of the divine man of Judea are the most important facts of history."

And Gladstone says, "All that I think, all that I hope, all that I believe, all that I live for is based on the divinity of Christ."

And the Apostle Paul tells us in our Colossian passage He "has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son He loves." Now this verse continues the thought from the previous verse in which I believe Paul still has in mind the analogy of Israel inheriting the Promised Land. The Book of Exodus tells the story of how God rescued (or delivered) His people from Egypt (typifying Satan's dominion of darkness) and He took them to the Promised Land (typifying the kingdom of His Son).

Jesus referred to the dominion of darkness in His arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, and in Scripture darkness is a metaphor for evil. It is the dominion of those who are without God. Paul tells us in this beautiful passage that as true believers we have been transferred from darkness to light, from slavery to freedom, from guilt to forgiveness, and from the power of Satan to the power of God.

And the word that Paul uses for TO TRANSFER or to BRING OVER is an interesting Greek word with a very special use. In the ancient world, when one empire won a victory over another, it was the custom to take the population of the defeated country and transfer it lock, stock and barrel to the conqueror's land. Thus the people of the northern kingdom were taken away to Assyria, and the people of the southern kingdom were taken away to Babylon.

And what Paul is saying is that God has transferred us as Christians to His own kingdom. That not only has He transferred us or there's a transference that has taken place, but it was also a rescue. He rescued us from sin's darkness, Satan's kingdom and Satan's darkness. And in this whole passage there is a very close correspondence with Paul's word as he is giving his testimony to King Agrippa, and he is telling of the work that God has given him to do.

Here's the way he explains it to the king, "To open their eyes, that they may turn from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in God."

Peter writes: "You are a chosen people--that you may declare the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His wonderful light."

And John writes: "This is the message we have heard from Him and declare to you: God is light; in Him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with Him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, His Son, purifies us from all sin."

So Paul is telling us in this beautiful passage that we've been rescued from a rebel kingdom to serve the true King, that King--the Son God loves-- and he describes that Son in verses 15 through 20. He tells us that believers are qualified "to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light" because through Jesus Christ, God's beloved Son, we have received redemption and the forgiveness of sins. It's a beautiful passage. Paul tells us that God in His gracious act of mercy sends His Son, and in what Jesus did at Calvary He transfers of us (when we put our faith in Him) from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of the Son that the He loves, and now he's going to describe that Christ who has done that for us.

It's a most profound summary of who Jesus Christ is. First of all you notice that he says: "He is the image of the invisible God..." Now to understand the depth of the meaning of what Paul is saying, we must take a few moments to research the historical setting of the Book of Colossians and the conditions which prompted Paul's letter.

Pause - when we read the writings of Paul there are reasons behind them. Paul writes to the Galatians because after he has preached the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ, he leaves town and in come the Judaizers and they are going to take the position, oh you can't be a Christian unless you become a Jew first. You've got to go through all the rights of Judaism, and so we marry Judaism and Christianity and that's the way it's got to be. And Paul said, no, that's a bunch of nonsense. And in the book of Galatians he says, Christ and Christ alone has procured for us our eternal salvation, and it's not through the rituals of Judaism that we are going to get to heaven.

Now he comes to the church at Colossi. The interesting thing to me, it's just been a few years since Jesus is ascended back into heaven and the church is just getting started, and the first thing they've got to deal with is all of these false teachings. And Paul has got to deal with that in the church at Colossi.

I'm at the top of page 4. When Paul wrote Colossians, he was not writing in a vacuum. He was writing to meet a particular need. There was a tendency of thought in the early Church called Gnosticism. Its devotees were called Gnostics, which more or less means the intellectual ones. Now these Gnostics were dissatisfied with what they considered the rude simplicity of Christianity and they wished to turn it into a philosophy and to align it with other philosophies which held the field at that time.

So Paul is going to talk to these Gnostics. For they believed that matter is evil, and they argued that God would not have come to earth as a true human being in bodily form. Now they began with the basic assumption that matter was altogether evil and spirit altogether good. They further held that matter was eternal and that it was out of this evil matter that the world was created.

Now Paul states that Christ is the image, the exact likeness, of God and is Himself God, and yet He died on the cross as a human being. In that matter was essentially evil, God would not have taken on a human body. Now if all of you are following...the next sentence I should have put in the paragraph below because this is not what Paul would have said, in that matter was essentially evil God would not have taken a human body. That's the position of the Gnostics. So if you'd just like to cross that sentence out in your notes, I would have put it in the paragraph...and it should be in the paragraph that we're going to read right now.

As the Gnostics saw it, the true God could not touch matter and, therefore, could not Himself be the agent of creation. So the Gnostics believed that God put forth a series of emanations, each a little further away from God until at last there was one so distant from God, that it could handle matter and create the world.

What's an emanation, pastor? Well if you have a pond and you drop a pebble in the pond you'll notice the emanations going out from where the pebble dropped, and the farther they get from the dropping point the more diminished the emanation.

And here's what the Gnostics said: God started these emanations and one got far enough from Him that He turned around and created the world out of evil matter.

The Gnostics also taught that Christ was not the unique Son of God but rather one of many intermediaries between God and people. And so Paul explained that Christ existed before anything else and is the firstborn of those resurrected. But as the Gnostics saw it, if matter was altogether evil, it followed that the body was also evil. And concerning the body of Jesus, they held that it was not real, but only a spiritual phantom in bodily form, and thus they denied the real manhood of Jesus Christ.

Now in their own writings they, for instance, set it down that when Jesus walked, He left no footprints on the ground; I mean He's a Phantom, He's not for real. Can you imagine sitting in a church service listening to this nonsense? And this is what Paul is dealing with. He is saying, listen, he goes on to say - that's why Paul uses such startling phraseology in Colossians - he speaks of Jesus reconciling man to God in His body in the flash, and he says that the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Him bodily. In opposition to those Gnostics, Paul insisted on the flesh and the blood of the manhood of Jesus Christ.

And the Gnostics refused to see Christ as the source of salvation, insisting that people could find God only through special and secret knowledge. That's why they were called the intellectual ones. In contrast Paul openly proclaimed the way of salvation to be through Christ alone.

I'm at the top of page 5. Verse 15 - Paul says two great things about Jesus, both of which are an answer to the teachings of the Gnostics. First, he states that Christ is THE IMAGE OF THE INVISIBLE GOD. That Christ is the exact visible representation of God, and in the Greek the word is EIKON. God as spirit is invisible and always will be.

Paul writes to Timothy these words: "...keep this commandment without spot, blameless until our Lord Jesus Christ's appearing, which He will manifest in His own time, He who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, dwelling in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see, to whom be honor and everlasting power. Amen."

God's Son, Jesus Christ, is His visible expression. He not only reflects God, but, as God, He reveals God to us. Christ's glory expresses God's divine glory.

Paul writes: "But even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, whose minds the god of the age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image (the EIKON) of God, should shine on them. For we do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your bondservants for Jesus' sake. For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."

He's not a copy, He's the very embodiment of God's nature. Look at what the writer to Hebrews says: "He is the sole expression of the glory of God [the Light-being, the out-raying or radiance of the divine], and He is the perfect imprint and very image of [God's] nature, upholding and maintaining and guiding and propelling the universe by His mighty word of power. When He had by offering Himself accomplished our cleansing of sins and riddance of guilt, He sat down at the right hand of the divine Majesty on high."

At the top of the page, I mentioned that the Greek word that Paul uses for image is EIKON. It was a word used for a PORTRAIT or a PHOTOGRAPH, but this word had another use also. When a legal document was drawn up, such as a receipt or an IOU, it always included a description of the chief characteristics and the distinguishing marks of the contracting parties, so that there could be no mistake.

Pause - we have our EIKON. When we seek to sign a contract they are going to check our credit references and how we have handled our business. We carry our EIKON with us, our characteristics, the way we handle ourselves in business.

EIKON was a kind of a brief summary of the characteristics of the parties that were involved in the transaction. So what Paul is saying: "You know how if you enter into a legal agreement, there is included an EIKON, a description by which you may be recognized, and he is saying Jesus is the portrait of God. In Him you see the personal characteristics and the distinguishing marks of God. If you want to see what God is like, look at Jesus."

Read through the Gospels over and over and over and over again, and the more acquainted that you become with Jesus the better you know God, for Jesus Christ is God in human flesh.

Now Paul continues his presentation of Jesus with these words: "He is the firstborn over all creation." Now ladies and gentlemen underline that because that's where the cults come. When they want to say that Jesus was created, they come to this verse and say He was the firstborn of creation, and this is the verse they will refer to. Follow with me with the explanation.

What Paul is really thinking about is the FIRSTBORN with priority and authority as the FIRSTBORN prince in a king's household. You see, FIRSTBORN is very commonly a title of honor. Israel, for instance, as a nation is the firstborn son of God (Exodus 4:22), and the meaning is that the nation of Israel is the most favored child of God. FIRSTBORN was also a title of the Messiah.

In Psalm 89:27, as the Jews themselves interpreted it, the promise regarding the Messiah is "I will make Him my FIRSTBORN, higher than the kings of the earth." So clearly, FIRSTBORN is not used in a time sense at all, but in the sense of special honor. So when Paul says of the Son that He is the FIRSTBORN of all creation, He means the highest honor which creation holds belongs to Him.

Christ came from heaven, not from the dust of the earth, and He is the Lord of all. Christ is completely holy, and He has authority to judge the world. Therefore, Christ is supreme over all creation, and Paul goes on to say, even including the spirit world. Paul explained that in no uncertain terms that the Colossian believers had to focus on the deity of Christ, that Jesus is God, or their Christian faith would fall prey to false teaching.

And lest anyone misunderstand that FIRSTBORN meant that Jesus was merely the first thing God created, Paul went on to explain that all things were created in, through, and for Him. "For in Him all things in heaven and on earth were created," Paul writes, "things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers--all things have been created through Him and for Him." And John writes, "All things were made through Him, and without Him, nothing was made that was made."

So you know by verse 16 that it has reference to Christ's position, and has nothing to do as being the first one created, for He is now, Paul said, He's the Creator not the created one. He's the Creator.

Just as all the fullness of Deity is in Him, so in Him are all the creative powers that make Him the supreme Lord. And as we have already stated, the false teachers believed that the physical world was evil, thus, God Himself could not have created it. If Christ were God, they reasoned, He could be in charge only of the spiritual world. But Paul explained that all the thrones, the dominions, the principalities in heaven and on earth, both visible and invisible, are under the authority of Christ.

You see the Gnostics said well if He's spiritual then He's in charge of the spiritual world, but not down here. Paul said, just a second, let me clarify it. Any realms of authority may exist in the spiritual realm, He's over that, and anything you see in the physical, He's the supreme Lord of that also.

Paul's words refuted the false teaching that Christ was one of many intermediaries and that the angels were to be worshiped. All angelic and celestial powers in heaven and on earth are subject to Christ. Paul wanted to make that very, very clear and He's the Lord of all.

And Paul continues, In Himself He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. Christ is before all things, both in time and in rank. And He is not only Creator of the world, but He is also its Sustainer. Paul uses a strange phrase, "In Him all things hold together." That it is a phenomenal phrase. What Paul says there is an absolutely amazing phrase.

Every Saturday evening one of our elders who is a projects engineer on the missile program down at Lockheed comes and shares the service with me; a brilliant man. And we sat for prayer after our service last evening and this engineer said, you know pastor, when you started talking about in Him all things hold together - of course his mind started shifting into the forces that hold the atoms together. And if we were reading this in the original, in Him all things cohere. They are held together.

And this engineer explained to me, he said, you know pastor, when they first were wrestling with the atom bomb, one of the great concerns they had in experience with the first one, he said, the engineers were wondering if by in the splitting of that...and in that explosion, the breaking away of that cohesion, would it start a series where all of the atoms split apart in the universe and the universe would disintegrate.

Now here's an engineer talking to me - I don't know much about physics - but what he is saying is in the world of atoms, they are held together by a cohesive force. And what the engineer said was the deep concern that in the breaking of that cohesion would it start a chain reaction and all the atoms break apart. It's that mysterious force that holds atoms together which forms matter.

And then he went on to say, he said, you know pastor, the Scripture says that everything in our universe He controls; he said, you know when you start trying to explain some of the physical laws of the universe, one of the most difficult is to the law of gravity. You throw something up and it comes down. And he said when you start wrestling with the great theories of the universe, he said, if you are very honest you can only come to one conclusion - there has to be a God.

Back to our notes: he uses the strange phrase, in Him all things hold together. Now this means that not only is the Son the agent of creation from beginning to end, but between the beginning and the end, during time as we know it, it is He who holds the world together. That is to say, all the laws by which this world is order and not chaos are an expression of the mind of Jesus Christ. The law of gravity and the rest, the laws by which the universe hangs together, are not only scientific laws but they are divine laws as well.

Now do you see what Paul is saying! Paul is saying He who came to this earth to die on that cross rescued us not only from the kingdom of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of God's Son, but He's the Creator and He's the Sustainer, and He holds everything together and the universe without Jesus would be meaningless!

What a mammoth concept. Then he said, it pleased the Father that in Jesus Christ all the divine attributes, all the divine perfections are dwelleth in Him permanently. He was God in eternity, and He was God in time. And in Him, in bodily form, Paul says, it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness of deity should do well. And then he wraps up this glorious passage by saying, and in coming He fulfilled the great transaction of reconciling us back to God.

You know I think one of the most beautiful words in the English language is reconciliation. I've often watched as couples come in for counseling and they are really angry at each other and she sits over here and he sits over here, and I sit here, and I pray, Jesus, may it be that You reconcile this couple. And I'm praying and finally you see a tear drop here and a tear drop here, and the words get softer and the comments get last critical and less judgmental, and I see a process taking place that always overwhelms me.

It always overwhelms me, as I see two lives that have been at odds now forgiveness takes place and when I listen I know it's time for me to leave the room, and I walk out. And after a few minutes they'll walk out holding hands and I stand there and cry and say, Jesus, thank you for reconciling this couple.

And here's the picture that Paul paints because of what Christ, who created the worlds, who holds this whole universe together and loved us so much He came to this world to die on a cross, to shed His blood so we would have cleansing for all of our sins, and He made peace through the blood of His cross.

You know we sing many of the great old hymns of the church: What can wash away my sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. What can make us whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus! And a hymn I haven't heard for a long time, and we've got to sing it again, There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins where sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains.

When Paul finishes that beautiful, beautiful section of Scripture I think if we were sitting beside him, he would be on his knees in worship.

Jesus, we try, but our minds are so limited we don't comprehend it all. But we read these Scriptures, they thrill our hearts and all we can do is bow and worship You, O wonderful Christ. We love you Jesus and we worship You. Thank you for being our God and our Savior, and our Lord, and everybody said...amen. God bless you.