Why Worship Jesus?

March 30, 2003 Colossians 1:15-20

“Why worship Jesus?”

INTRODUCTION

Have you ever been in a situation where after you ended a conversation with someone, you thought of all the things that you should have said in that conversation but couldn’t think of them at the time? Several months ago, I responded to a ring of my doorbell. I went to the door and discovered that there were 2 female Jehovah’s Witnesses there. Rather than shooing them away, I engaged them in a conversation. I asked them, “Tell me what you believe about Jesus.” I was surprised to hear one of them say that they did accept that Jesus is the Son of God because I knew that JW’s do not accept that Jesus is God. I thought, “I’m up to this challenge. I’m going to win these ladies to Jesus.” I wasn’t going to let them off my porch until I had either proved to them that Jesus was God or at least had given them enough to think about that they would have to re-examine what they believed and possibly come back for more later. I asked one of them if we could examine some verse from the Bible together. She agreed, and so began the dueling Bibles. I opened my Bible to a verse, and she opened hers to the same verse. Each passage that we read, we both interpreted in such a way that it supported our own position. Every verse that I turned to hoping that it would be the smoking gun that would shoot down her position only seemed to show how weak my own position might be. This went on for a while, and I wasn’t getting anywhere. She left frustrated thinking that she had accomplished nothing. She did not know that I went back inside frazzled and questioning. I knew with all my heart that Jesus was God, but where was the undeniable biblical proof that would solidify it in my own heart and would enable me to communicate it to other people?

The Christians at Colossae were having an experience much like my own. Someone was telling them that Jesus was not God. Someone was telling them that what Jesus did for them on the cross was not enough to provide forgiveness for their sins. Paul wrote this letter to counter these two false teachings.

The verses that we come to today are the central verses of Paul’s whole argument. But more than that, they teach us the foundational truths of all of Christianity. Without them, Christianity would fall apart. It is the denial of these truths that have led to the formation of every cult and false religion throughout history. You will notice that your bulletin is filled to overflowing today. In it, I have included information about the two cults that impact you the most on a daily basis: Jehovah’s Witness and Mormons. When you read over these sheets, pay close attention to what they believe about Jesus and salvation. Both of these belief systems grow out of the same issues that the Colossians were struggling with.

You will notice also that your note sheet is bigger than normal. It takes up the whole page, and there are biblical passages on the back. The four passages of Scripture probably look kind of funny. That’s because they are copies from a special Bible that I have, called an interlinear Bible. That simply means that it takes the actual Greek and Hebrew words of the verses and puts right underneath them what their English translation is. That way, you can see for yourself what the Bible says in the original languages. It will prevent you from being fooled by a cult’s faulty translation. I have even included some of these verses as they are found in the New World Translation, which is what the Jehovah’s Witnesses use so that you will see the difference between their translation and the original languages.

It may seem that I have gone to a lot of trouble for one sermon. I have. There are two good reasons for doing so. A day is coming and probably already has that you are going to get a knock on your door. I figure that if they can rattle me, your pastor, they can probably rattle you. I don’t want to have to find out one day that one of you has joined one of these cults. You need to know more than just what you believe; you also need to know why you believe it. With the information that I give you today, you might even be able to do what I was unable to do and convince one of these that Jesus is more than God’s Son. He is God. The second reason that we are doing this today is that the more sure you are that Jesus is God, the more you will obey Him and the more you will give Him what only God deserves - WORSHIP.