Who Is This Jesus, Anyway?

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Colossians 1:15-29

Who Is This Jesus, Anyway?

Desired outcome: To be in awe and worship who Jesus is.

My friends and I last summer, at the Apostle Islands were sleeping in a sailboat at harbor by an outer island. After a night of amazing star-gazing, we decided to wake up early in the morning, ride the dinghy onto the island, hike to the other side, and watch the sunrise. The water was like glass and the waves were lapping onto shore as the giant orange ball of a sun began to rise over the water horizon. Simultaneously, the waves began to grow stronger, crash into the rocky shore and splash up into the water, creating a rainbow studded mist all around us. Time stood still as we stayed there in awe.

April 26, 2003 I was with Staci in the hospital. We had been there for most of the day and she was exhausted after giving birth to our first daughter. When they took our first daughter and put her into my arms for the first time, I was giddy and scared not knowing what the world of fatherhood was, but knowing that it was good. There’s something about holding a baby in your arms that makes everything in the world OK.

It started this spring when the last frost disappeared. The moment that has been anticipated all winter. The beginning of a new crop season. For some of us, it is a simple garden or some flowers. For others it is hundreds of acres. The land is made ready. The seeds are planted. The hard work is put in. And then the trust in God begins until harvest. But when that harvest comes, what joy! With the perfect combination of hard work and waiting for God to do His thing, we can rejoice and celebrate in a good harvest.

We can all recall at one time or another moments of awe or worship. These are the moments I want you to keep in mind this morning as we take a look at the second half of Colossians 1.

Remember sitting in Sunday School? The tiny little chairs. The kind old lady (everyone is old when you’re a kid!) teaching the class. Maybe you were lucky enough to have flannelgraphs. Do you remember the questions? Who died for your sins? Who was God’s Son? Who loves you? What was the answer to every question? JESUS!! It seems like every sermon comes down to Jesus. What is this infatuation with Jesus? What’s so special about this man from 2,000 years ago? What about Ghandi or Martin Luther King, Jr. or Mother Theresa or the pope or Billy Graham? Why does Jesus get so much attention? Our reading from Colossians this morning lays out for us the uniqueness of Christ’s position from anyone else.

Let’s just take a look at one paragraph alone (vv.15-20). Here is everything we could say about Jesus from just this one paragraph.
• Image of invisible God
• Firstborn of all creation
• All things created by Him
• All things created through Him
• All things created for Him
• Before all things
• All things hold together in Him
• Head of the Body
• The beginning
• Firstborn from the dead
• First place in everything
• All the fullness dwells in Him
• Reconciled all things to Himself
• Made peace through the blood of His cross

Every one of those points could be a separate sermon in itself, but let’s look a little closer at a few of them to make sure we don’t miss the significance of what Paul is saying here.
1. Image of invisible God
o God is invisible. Therefore, anything we can know about the image of God is through how He chose to reveal Himself in Jesus.
2. Firstborn of all creation
o This doesn’t mean Jesus was created, but rather that He has been given the rights of the firstborn, that is, the right to rule God’s Kingdom.
3. All things created by Him
o We often think of God as Creator, but here we learn that all things were created by Jesus. Jesus played an active role in the creation process.
4. All things created through Him
o Somehow Jesus was the conduit of creation. Nothing was created that didn’t go through Him; which is also why all of creation has to go back through Him to get to the Father.
5. All things created for Him
o If someone asks you why you were created or what’s the purpose of life, now you know that you can tell them that you (along with the rest of creation) was created for Jesus.
6. All things hold together in Him
o What’s the universal tool for fixing anything that comes apart? Duct tape! Did you know that the earth has just the right amount of gravitational pull to keep us in the perfect position for life? If we were a little closer or a little farther from the sun, life as we know it could not be sustained on this planet. The gas make up of our atmosphere is just perfect. If we had any other combination of gases, life as we know it could not happen on this planet. Jesus holds all of that together. Jesus is the duct tape of the universe!
7. Head of the Body
o The Church is the Body of Christ and Jesus is its head. Have you ever seen a body without a head? Doesn’t work out so well, does it? Have you ever seen a church try to function without Jesus? The result is the same as a headless body.
8. First place in everything
o Jesus is the ultimate definition of a winner. He takes first place in everything. You may say, “It doesn’t always look that way to me.” Well, the reality we see is not always the same as the spiritual reality that we can’t see. The reality we see is temporary. The spiritual reality lasts forever. Jesus will come to have first place in everything- whether we choose to fight Him to the end or concede the victory to Him- either way, the victory will be His. And if you know you can’t beat somebody, the next best thing is to be on their team!
9. All the fullness dwells in Him
o If you want a rich, full life, it’s got to come through Jesus because He contains all the fullness. Everything else comes up empty.

For those of you who ask the question, “What’s in it for me?” the apostle Paul gave us the second paragraph. It breaks down like this:

Paragraph 2 (vv.21-23) - What Jesus did for us
• Our past = alienation and hostility towards God.
• Christ’s work in us = Reconciled us through His death.
• Our present identity because of Christ = holy, blameless, and beyond reproach.
Continue in the faith. Don’t move away from hope. Something big happened at the cross; bigger than we can even know or ever see. That’s the spiritual realm I was talking about before.

Christ has done His reconciling work. It’s done and there is nothing else He has to do. So all of this should lead us to times of awe and worship like I described at the beginning of this talk. But sometimes we can get in our own way with a relationship with Jesus. Jesus has forgiven us, but sometimes we don’t accept His forgiveness or we are angry at Him and this keeps us from worship.

What’s holding you back from worshiping Jesus? Has something happened in your life that you’re angry about? Do you feel as if God has taken someone from you? Maybe today is the day you could take Psalm 13 as your own. (Read it. Emphasize vv.5-6)

What have you got to lose? Nothing but bitterness and separation from God. What do you have to gain? A relationship with Christ who is in you, the hope of glory and our reason to worship!

Desired outcome: To be in awe and worship who Jesus is.