A SUPREME JESUS IN A ONE-TOPPING WORLD
COLOSSIANS 1:15-23
INTRODUCTION... CS Lewis, MERE CHRISTIANITY, Barbour and Company inc., pp.44,45
Then comes the real shock. Among these Jews there suddenly turns up a man who goes about talking as if He was God. He claims to forgive sins. He says He has always existed. He says He is coming to judge the world at the end of time.
I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: "I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God," This is the one things we must not say.
A man who was merely a man and. said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic... or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool; you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
READ COLOSSIANS 1:15-23
In this passage we see that Jesus was so much more than those who followed Him could ever have imagined. Jesus was not just some good teacher or a good moral man. Jesus is supreme. Jesus is supreme for two reasons. Paul tells us these reasons: 1) Because of Who He is and 2) Because of what He has done.
You might be wondering about the title of my sermon: “A Supreme Jesus in a One-Topping World.” When I think of the word ’supreme’, which is the key word in this passage in verse 18, I think of two things. Gasoline and pizza. My wife, when we order pizza, loves to get the Supreme Pizzas with all of the toppings on it. Most of the time I like a one topping pizza; except if the pizza joint is offering a meat supreme; one with all the meats on it. Of course when it comes to taste, I am sure that nothing compares to the Supreme Pizza; it has all of the toppings and flavors that you could possibly want. There is no comparison. It is the same with Christ. Nothing compares with Him,; everything else is just one-topping.
I. CHRIST IS EXALTED AS SUPREME (VERSES 15-19) (WHO HE IS)
One of the first ways that Jesus is shown as supreme is that He is exalted as the image of the invisible God. Verse 15 says, “Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.” Paul begins his teaching about Jesus Christ by communicating to us that the fullness of God dwelt in Him. Many times we may wonder what God looked like. We wonder what God would do if He came to earth as a human being. We do not have to wonder about these things because Jesus is the answer. Jesus was ’God with Us.’ The disciples listened to Jesus and asked Him to show them the Father. What was Jesus’ response? He told them that if they had seen Him they had seen the Father as well. Jesus was God in the flesh revealed to us.
Hebrews 1:1-5 agrees with Paul and his teaching about Jesus when it says, “In the past God
spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven. So he became as much superior to the angels as the name he has inherited is superior to theirs. For to which of the angels did God ever say, ’You are my Son; today I have become your Father.’”
Another way that Jesus is shown supreme is that He is shown to be the Creator, being equal with God the Father. The Hebrews verse that we just read eluded to that fact as well. Verse 16 says, “For by Him were all things created.” Paul exalts Christ by proclaiming that he created everything. John 1:1-3 states the same supreme fact about Jesus, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.”
Paul does not stop with his exaltation of Christ as supreme. He continues and says that Jesus, "He is the head of the body" (verse 18). The body is of course the church. Other passages refer to the church as the Body of Christ and the members as different parts of that body. Yet, there is only one head... and that is Jesus Christ.
ILLUSTRATION... Church History: Council of Chalcedon (www.bible.org/illus.asp?topic_id=231)
The Council of Chalcedon (451 A.D.) failing to penetrate the mystery of the divine and human natures of Christ, offered four precautions that would protect the Christian from error when contemplating this mystery.
> Attribute true and proper divinity to Christ.
> Attribute true and proper humanity to Christ
> Do not so mingle the human and divine that you end up with a being neither human nor
divine.
> Do not dissect Christ so that there are two persons in one being
What picture do we get from the Apostle Paul so far about Jesus Christ? What should we know about Jesus? What should our correct view of Jesus be? I think we can boil-down all that Paul has said so far and state it simply: Jesus is God. I hope that this statement is not too simple because I do not want to lose any of the meaning. Jesus is supreme over all because through Him all things we created and he holds everything together. Everything that God is... Jesus is.
II. RECONCILED IN CHRIST (VERSES 20-23) (WHAT HE HAS DONE)
We have seen who Jesus is. For this reason we know that Jesus is exalted and is supreme. Yet, there are more reasons that the Apostle gives for us to consider.
Paul says in verse 19-20, “ For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.” Paul now speaks of the incarnation of Christ. Paul now exalts Jesus and sees Him as supreme because of His life here on earth and the result of that life: reconciliation with God.
The reconciliation of humanity to God was completed and made possible by one thing. Verse 20 tells us what that one thing was. What was it? All of this was done through the blood of Jesus that He shed on the cross. The Bible continually states that sin must be paid for and that the price to remove sin and the shame is blood (Hebrews 9:22). It took Jesus on the cross and the shedding of the blood of Jesus to reconcile or bring us back to God. What does Paul tell us in Romans 5? Romans 5 tells us that when we were still sinners and id not pay any attention to God, Jesus died for us so that we could come back to God and have salvation.
Because of the sacrifice of Jesus, how do we look? What us our spiritual state? Verse 22 tells us several important things about ourselves because of Jesus:
1) We are holy in the sight of God [expand upon]
2) We have no blemishes [expand upon]
3) We are free from accusations [expand upon]
Because of all that, there is a magnificent change in our relationship to God. In the past, we were all God’s enemies. I hope you realize that there is no middle ground here... you are either on the side of God or you are not. We were enemies in our minds, because of the evil works we did. In the present, the price of our sins has been paid at the Cross. We are now reconciled to God and can have a personal relationship with Him. So when God looks at us, he sees Christ – the sinless one. As such, we are free from accusation; Satan has nothing to say about us. In the future, we have the command to remain faithful to this Supreme Christ.
ILLUSTRATION... Reconciliation
The Civil War was carnage. Then Jefferson Davis of the Confederacy died. And Ulysses Grant of the Union died. Their widows, Varina Davis and Julia Grant, settled near each other. They became closest of friends.
CONCLUSION
