The Preeminent One

Good morning and welcome to Dishman Baptist Church. If you’re new here we’re so blessed that you would join us this morning. I want to reiterate the importance of filling out those connection cards so that we can connect with you during the week.

Here at Dishman we view the Bible as one cohesive message from beginning to end. All 66 books work together to tell one story. It has stages - the creation and then the fall. God’s promise of redemption and then a long period during the rest of what we call the Old Testament that demonstrated our failures and God’s patience. In the time period that gave us the New Testament we have the story of who Jesus was and the proofs that He was the Seed that was promised all those years back in the Garden. After He provided for redemption on the cross and ascended to Heaven, the rest of the book of Acts tells the story of how the church started. The Epistles explain more of the implications for us as a result of salvation and how we are now to live and Revelation promises the second coming when all will be remade and we will live eternally with God. So there’s the Bible in a nutshell. But there are some passages that shine out of Scripture or stand out the way Mt. Rainer does over Seattle or Mr. Fuji does over much of the eastern seaboard of Japan. And this morning we come to one of those passages - it’s such a high passage that really all I should do is read it and sit down because no amount of eloquence or word smithing can capture the true beauty of the passage’s description of Christ. But there are some parts that bear a little closer inspection because so many have taken what it says and twisted it to suit their own perverse ideas of who Christ is.

So please take your Bibles in whatever form you have them and turn or navigate with me to Colossians 1 and we’ll be looking at verses 15-20 this morning.

Colossians 1:15–20 CSB

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For everything was created by him, in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities— all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and by him all things hold together. He is also the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile everything to himself, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

Christ Reveals God

Colossians 1:15a; Isaiah 53:2; John 1:18; John 14:9; John 1:14; Hebrews 1:3

I don’t think Paul would mind if I added a bit of a preface to what he wrote here. You can almost see an implied “You have heard it said, but I say to you” in the white space between verses 14 and 15. Paul had been informed of the Colossians faithfulness and their love but he had also been informed that there were those in the community of Colossae that had aberrant ideas of who Christ was. They said that He wasn’t really God but one of several emanations of God - a created being that was higher than man but lesser than God. And as such He could not have been all that Paul and Epaphras had claimed Him to be.

Their days are not unlike our own where people have their own idea of who Jesus was (or is). If you ask Oprah He is one way to Heaven but not the only way. “There are many paths to what you call ‘god’ that her path might be something else and when she gets there she might call it the light but her love and her kindness and her generosity but if it brings her to the same point that it brings you it doesn’t matter whether you call it god along the way or not.”

Russell Brand, and many others, think that Christ is just a way to handle their problems. “My personal feeling is the teachings of Christ are more relevant now than they’ve ever been.” The teachings that apply to a way of living and staying clean off of drugs.

In a 2011 article in the Guardian the atheist thinker Richard Dawkins said “Jesus was a great moral teacher, somebody as intelligent as Jesus would have been an atheist if he had known what we know today.”

It’s not just celebrities - even the comic book world is getting into the mix. DC Comics is set to release a new comic series entitled “The Second Coming”. The synopsis on their website reads like this “Witness the return of Jesus Christ, as He is sent on a most holy mission by God to learn what it takes to be the true messiah of mankind by becoming roommates with the world’s favorite savior: the all-powerful super hero Sun-Man, the Last Son of Krispex! But when Christ returns to Earth, he’s shocked to discover what has become of his gospel—and now, he aims to set the record straight.”

You have heard it said. Yes there are many things that have been said and thought about Jesus. I recount all of these things not to poke fun or to attack those who said them - but so that we can understand what others are saying and why this passage is important for us today. You have heard it said, but I say to you. Paul in this passage is going to deliver one of the most cohesive and closely reasoned presentations of the supremacy or preeminence of Christ anywhere in the Bible.

He starts off saying “He is the image of the invisible God.” We might be tempted as we read these words to think that Paul’s statement is actually an understatement or a misstatement. What do you mean he’s the image of the invisible God. We live in a very visual culture with estimates that nearly 75% of our learning occurs visually. All around us we are assaulted by images of food, furniture, cats, political images, body images, sports images. A week from today we’ll be discussing the super bowl commercials and how well the advertisers did in getting their images into our memory - but we have no pictures of what Christ actually looked like. And neither did the Colossians. Their church would have been founded during Paul’s third missionary journey nearly 20 years after the crucifixion took place. In fact one of the passages that foretells Christ in the Old Testament tells us that He really wasn’t much to look at.

Isaiah 53:2 CSB

He grew up before him like a young plant and like a root out of dry ground. He didn’t have an impressive form or majesty that we should look at him, no appearance that we should desire him.

So how could the Colossians have seen Him as the image of God and how can we read this passage today when we don’t really have an image of Him to refer to?

Another way of understanding image is that of being a representation of - the Greek word here is eikon and it’s where we get our modern English word icon from. It is the same word Christ used to refer to the image of Caesar on a denarius in Matthew 22. But even here it would seem that Paul may have actually been playing right into the hands of those who were misrepresenting Christ because an emanation can be a representation of something without being that actual thing. Many of you have noticed that my oldest son, Hayden, looks a little bit like me. Actually, he’s a spitting image of me - but he’s not me. We do have some of the same characteristics and mannerisms but we don’t have all the exact same characteristics and mannerisms. But that is not what Paul is saying here either.

He is saying that Christ is the exact representation of God - much like John wrote in John 1:18

John 1:18 CSB

No one has ever seen God. The one and only Son, who is himself God and is at the Father’s side—he has revealed him.

And Christ said of Himself in John 14:9

John 14:9 CSB

Jesus said to him, “Have I been among you all this time and you do not know me, Philip? The one who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?

That in the person of Jesus Christ the attributes of the Father are most clearly revealed because He is one and the same as the Father. Now to be clear it is true that we also were created in the image of God - but there is a difference between being something and being made in the image. God is holy, we are not. God has attributes (omnipotence - all power, omniscience - all knowing) that although it might seem like parents have these at times, especially omniscience, we don’t. No created human does. But notice here that Paul doesn’t say that Christ was in the image of God but that He IS the image of God.

Paul here is emphasizing that Christ is not simply a representation of God but the very manifestation of the invisible God. As John wrote in John 1:14

John 1:14 CSB

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We observed his glory, the glory as the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

And the writer of Hebrews would later claim

Hebrews 1:3 CSB

The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact expression of his nature, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.

In the person of Christ - that we find presented in the pages of His Word - we find the clearest explanation and representation of who God is. And He is mighty and holy and loving and compassionate. It is also in the person of Christ that we most clearly understand who we are. As Alistair Begg has said “You will never know who you are, or why you’re here, or what you’re doing in the world until you gaze into the face of God, as revealed in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, and acknowledge Him to be who He is.” Christ is the full, final and complete revelation of God. And that is beautiful enough but Paul doesn’t simply stop there.

Christ Created the Universe

Colossians 1:15b-17;

Paul’s next phrase has been used by cults throughout history to try and make the case that Christ was a created being. From Arius in the 4th century to the Jehovah’s Witnesses in our day the claim is made that Christ was a created being and so He could not have been God. This is because they have a misunderstanding of what firstborn means. The Greek word is prototokos and it has three different senses or definitions. The first is in accordance with what the cults believe. In Luke 2:7 it says that Mary brought forth here first born son - first born chronologically. In Jewish and Greek society the first born son was the son who had the right to the inheritance.

In Exodus 4:22 Israel is called the Lord’s firstborn son

Exodus 4:22 CSB

And you will say to Pharaoh: This is what the Lord says: Israel is my firstborn son.

This refers not to Israel being the first nation born - since Abraham lived among nations while dwelling in Canaan - but as having a special status as God’s chosen people.

In the Messianic Psalm, Psalm 89 it is written

Psalm 89:27 CSB

I will also make him my firstborn, greatest of the kings of the earth.

The second phrase explains what is meant by the first. Even in reference to David - he was Jesse’s last born son not his first. It is an expression of rank - that the firstborn was the highest or greatest.

Christ has the highest and greatest station over all the earth and creation.

It’s hard to believe that anyone could read the rest of Paul’s text here and draw the conclusion that Christ was a created being. This is a demonstration of the dangers of taking a single verse out of context with the verses around it. Paul’s next statements remove any doubt that Christ could have been a created being.

First he says that everything was created by him. He is the architect of creation - He designed every intricate detail to exact perfection. And the word everything means exactly that - everything. The inclusion of the word everything removes the option that He was simply created first and then He created all other things. Nor is there the option of saying that He only created what’s here on earth because Paul says that everything was created by Him, in Heaven and on earth.

I have never felt so small as when I was deployed on a ship and crossing the ocean. At night you could walk out on the bridge wings and look up and get lost in the vast expanse of darkness that encompasses space except for the little points of light that were stars. Just considering the immensity of our own galaxy - that there are hundreds of billions of stars. One is Betelgeuse which has a diameter of 100 million miles. Another is Alpha Centauri, the closest star to our own sun. It would take light leaving our sun more than 4 years to reach that star - traveling at 186,000 miles per second that’s 24 trillion miles. Our brains can’t even fathom how far that is.

On a smaller and more (or less) understandable scale think about the human eye. Our iris, the colored part of the eye, opens or closes allowing more or less light in depending on need. The cornea bends the light so that when it hits the retina the image is actually turned 180 degrees. The retina, which itself contains over 10 million photoreceptive cells, transforms the visual image into electrical impulses that are carried to the brain where they are then transformed back into the original image.

If that’s not enough think of the miracle of our very existence. If the earth were to change its rotation or shift on its axis we wouldn’t be able to survive. The climate of the earth would either be too hot or too cold. If the moon were closer to the earth then tides would flood over the earth. It really gives meaning to the words of the Proverb in Proverbs 8

Proverbs 8:27–29 CSB

I was there when he established the heavens, when he laid out the horizon on the surface of the ocean, when he placed the skies above, when the fountains of the ocean gushed out, when he set a limit for the sea so that the waters would not violate his command, when he laid out the foundations of the earth.

To answer the critics that said that Christ, if He participated in creation, could only have created the visual world Paul writes that He created both the visible and the invisible. The false teachers in Colossae were saying that Christ - if He were God or even the highest of God’s created beings and therefore inherently good - could not have matter because matter is evil and a good creature cannot create an evil entity like matter. But Paul says that He created the visible and the invisible - the physical as well as the spiritual realm - whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities. This also has dual connotations. It is Christ who determines when countries will be born and when empires will die. He decides who will be President or Speaker of the House and what policies will be enacted when. Now without getting too deeply into the weeds of His perfect will versus His permissive will what Paul is driving at in this passage is the Christ is sovereign over all governments and the previous phrase of visible and invisible tells us that it is not only earthly governments that Paul has in mind.

There is a spiritual world taking place all around us. Now I don’t know how accurate Frank Peretti’s books This Present Darkness and Piercing the Darkness were regarding this topic but there are passages in the Bible that tell us that there is both angelic and demonic activity that takes place on the earth beyond our senses. In Daniel 10 we get a glimpse of this

Daniel 10:12–13 CSB

“Don’t be afraid, Daniel,” he said to me, “for from the first day that you purposed to understand and to humble yourself before your God, your prayers were heard. I have come because of your prayers. But the prince of the kingdom of Persia opposed me for twenty-one days. Then Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me after I had been left there with the kings of Persia.

I don’t say this so that you go looking for angels or demons under every bush - but to say that there is a spiritual realm and that Christ is sovereign over it because just like our realm He is the architect of it. But He’s not just the architect, He’s also the agent of Creation.

Paul continues on to say that all things have been created through Him and for Him. It is primarily in this vein that the world attacks the nature of Jesus and God. If they can prove that there wasn’t a creation and that we have come to exist in this well ordered, cohesive universe by sheer chance then there clearly wasn’t a creator and therefore no God. I just read (well skimmed really - there are limits to my tolerance for some things) an article that posits that a first mover is not needed. In the article the writer asks the question “why is there something rather than nothing?” and then goes on to say that we all share a weird idea that something or someone had to put everything into motion for there to be anything at all. That if this is the case then we must assume the default state of reality to be one of absolute rest. Now without being sarcastic or overly critical of this man let me point out one critical flaw in his theory - he assumes that there was something to be at rest which could then be put into motion. He seems to assume that everything already existed and that it merely had to be placed in motion for the world to start - much like an old vehicle just needs a kickstart and then the motor purrs.

This is the problem that the world continuously runs into when attacking on this front - they have no satisfactory answer for how something, everything came to be. Besides the evidence that the Bible gives right from the beginning in Genesis, in John 1:3 the Apostle wrote

John 1:3 CSB

All things were created through him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created.

And the writer to the Hebrews echoed him

Hebrews 1:2 CSB

In these last days, he has spoken to us by his Son. God has appointed him heir of all things and made the universe through him.

Again in order for things to be created through Him, He could not have been a created being Himself. We humans pride ourselves on all the wonderful gadgets and tools that we have made. We’ve made cell phones so small they could fit in the palm of your hand (even now on your wrist) and then made them big enough to take down a small building again. We’ve built rockets to take us to the moon and built medical equipment delicate enough to operate on a baby in the womb. Yet we’ve never created anything out of nothing. Never have we made anything just appear where there was nothing - not even air - before. Only Christ could and did do this. Not only were things created through Him but ultimately they were created for Him.

We have a tendency to think that creation is an act that is all about us. We are the highest and best of God’s creations. The Universe seems uniquely suited to support our life on this planet at this moment. Even the facts that I’ve quoted regarding the tilt of the earth or the distance from the sun seems to suggest that it is very important to God that we remain alive - and don’t mistake me, it is. But is that the primary goal of creation? is it just about providing us a great place to thrive and grow? It is true that there are special moments for each of us - like running at 7:00 am and cresting a hill just as the first rays of sun turn Mt. Spokane into a vibrant display of colors. Or seeing the dazzling light show during a meteor shower. Or looking into the face of a newborn child. But is this the true raison d’existence of creation? Is this it’s true reason for existence?

Listen to the Psalmist again

Psalm 19:1 CSB

The heavens declare the glory of God, and the expanse proclaims the work of his hands.

Psalm 97:6 CSB

The heavens proclaim his righteousness; all the peoples see his glory.

He is the creator of all things, all things were created through Him and all things were created to glorify and point to and belong to Christ. All things were created for Him to demonstrate and reveal His glory and His benevolence and grace toward us as His creation. One of the most gracious things that He does is the continued sustainment of the earth.

Paul’s next statement is that He is before all things and by Him all things hold together. C.S. Lewis once described God’s relation to time this way:

If you picture Time as a straight line along which we have to travel, then you must picture also the whole page on which the line is drawn. We come to the parts of the line one by one: we have to leave A behind before we get to B, and cannot reach C until we leave B behind. God, from above or outside or all around, contains the whole line, and sees it all.

God defies even the concept of time because He preexisted the creation of time. He was before all things - there was never a time when He wasn’t. It is this admission that resulted in the Jews wanting to stone Him in John 8.

John 8:54–59 CSB

“If I glorify myself,” Jesus answered, “my glory is nothing. My Father—about whom you say, ‘He is our God’—he is the one who glorifies me. You do not know him, but I know him. If I were to say I don’t know him, I would be a liar like you. But I do know him, and I keep his word. Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day; he saw it and was glad.” The Jews replied, “You aren’t fifty years old yet, and you’ve seen Abraham?” Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, before Abraham was, I am.” So they picked up stones to throw at him. But Jesus was hidden and went out of the temple.

In the Old Testament the prophet Micah prophesying where the Messiah would be born said

Micah 5:2 CSB

Bethlehem Ephrathah, you are small among the clans of Judah; one will come from you to be ruler over Israel for me. His origin is from antiquity, from ancient times.

Not only does he preexist all things, He holds all things together. I love what Job 34:15 says

Job 34:14–15 CSB

If he put his mind to it and withdrew the spirit and breath he gave, every living thing would perish together and mankind would return to the dust.

I think about this in the context of the crucifixion. As Christ is lying there being nailed to the cross, He is sustaining the heartbeat of the soldier driving in the nails. Think about that - what would you do? Think about what would’ve happened if He had simply taken a moment not to think about that man, or the next one, or the next. There would just be a pile of dust lying next to the cross that He lay on. And yet He continued to sustain the very hands that were putting Him to death. And He continues to sustain each of us - even in our bleakest circumstances He continues to provide for us. A great example of this is found in Psalm 22 - listen to the despair and how it turns to praise. If you are here this morning and you’re suffering, listen and know that the Lord will answer you and be comforted that even now He is sustaining you.

Psalm 22 CSB

For the choir director: according to “The Deer of the Dawn.” A psalm of David. My God, my God, why have you abandoned me? Why are you so far from my deliverance and from my words of groaning? My God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, by night, yet I have no rest. But you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel. Our fathers trusted in you; they trusted, and you rescued them. They cried to you and were set free; they trusted in you and were not disgraced. But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by mankind and despised by people. Everyone who sees me mocks me; they sneer and shake their heads: “He relies on the Lord; let him save him; let the Lord rescue him, since he takes pleasure in him.” It was you who brought me out of the womb, making me secure at my mother’s breast. I was given over to you at birth; you have been my God from my mother’s womb. Don’t be far from me, because distress is near and there’s no one to help. Many bulls surround me; strong ones of Bashan encircle me. They open their mouths against me— lions, mauling and roaring. I am poured out like water, and all my bones are disjointed; my heart is like wax, melting within me. My strength is dried up like baked clay; my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. You put me into the dust of death. For dogs have surrounded me; a gang of evildoers has closed in on me; they pierced my hands and my feet. I can count all my bones; people look and stare at me. They divided my garments among themselves, and they cast lots for my clothing. But you, Lord, don’t be far away. My strength, come quickly to help me. Rescue my life from the sword, my only life from the power of these dogs. Save me from the lion’s mouth, from the horns of wild oxen. You answered me! I will proclaim your name to my brothers and sisters; I will praise you in the assembly. You who fear the Lord, praise him! All you descendants of Jacob, honor him! All you descendants of Israel, revere him! For he has not despised or abhorred the torment of the oppressed. He did not hide his face from him but listened when he cried to him for help. I will give praise in the great assembly because of you; I will fulfill my vows before those who fear you. The humble will eat and be satisfied; those who seek the Lord will praise him. May your hearts live forever! All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord. All the families of the nations will bow down before you, for kingship belongs to the Lord; he rules the nations. All who prosper on earth will eat and bow down; all those who go down to the dust will kneel before him— even the one who cannot preserve his life. Their descendants will serve him; the next generation will be told about the Lord. They will come and declare his righteousness; to a people yet to be born they will declare what he has done.

Christ is the preeminent One over all of Creation because He is creation’s architect, He is the agent or source through which creation was made, and He is sustaining His creation even now. But Paul draws now from the broad category of creation and narrows in on the particular category of His church.

Christ is the Head of the Church

Colossians 1:18-19;

Paul says that He is the head of the body, the church. This reference to the church being a body is familiar to our ears because we’ve heard it all of our lives but it would have been a very foreign concept to the Colossians and the rest of the early church. Throughout the Old Testament the metaphors for the nation of Israel we that of a family or a vineyard, a kingdom. But in the New Testament the church is called a body, a living organism that has Christ for its Head. You may think it is trite or cliche that I say that I am the Lead Pastor here and that we all serve under our Senior or Head Pastor Christ. It is unfortunate that in many aspects of the church today that is not true. Pragmatics or greed have taken the place of Christ as the head of the Church. No church can out grow its view of Christ - in fact I’ll go so far as to suggest that if Christ isn’t the head of your church He may not be in your church. He is the life of every member, He provides the unity of the body, He provides the energy for ministry and He provides the humility which drives us to serve one another.

He was the firstborn from the dead - not in the sense that He was the first raised from the dead - but that He is the first raised from the dead to everlasting life. And He is to have first place in everything. Everything will submit themselves to Him. Notice that in this passage things are always referred to as those on earth and in Heaven - especially in verse 20 where Paul says that God reconciled everything to Himself through Him whether things on earth or things in Heaven - this points to the existence of a place where things cannot be reconciled from. But in Philippians 2:11 - the other great mountaintop passage about Christ - Paul says this

Philippians 2:10–11 CSB

so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow— in heaven and on earth and under the earth— and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

All tongues - some with joy, some through gritted teeth - will confess that Jesus is Lord because He has come to have first place in everything because God was pleased to have His fulness dwell in Him.

This statement is another shot at those who were attempting to subvert the Colossians understanding of Christ. The later Gnostics would say that parts of God’s divine attributes and powers were divided out among several emanations or emissaries but Paul writes that in Christ the entire fulness of the person of God dwelt - there were no others, no comparisons. He is it - He is the perfect image of who God is because in Him all of God’s full personality and attributes dwell.

Christ Reconciles Us To God

Colossians 1:20;

But here’s the thing - we can’t really understand this preeminent, transcendent Christ until we understand and grasp the Christ that Paul describes in His last phrase - by making peace through His blood, shed on the cross. We can’t see the beautiful Christ until we have seen Him in the beauty of the broken body, the crown of thorns crushing His brow, His beard ripped from His face as He hung on the cross to make atonement for our sins. Oh how differently this Passover Lamb was treated from the lambs that had been sacrificed to point towards Him. They had to take those lambs and bring them into their homes, to care for them and keep them pristine and perfect for the moment of sacrifice. Not so with Christ - they beat and spit on Him, scourged Him and mocked Him until He gave up His life crucified like a common criminal and the worst part was what couldn’t be seen as the wrath of God for the sins of all those who would put their faith in Christ fell on Him and He drank it all. Can you see Him? He hung there for you. And it is that act that we are going to commemorate now - as we partake of the cup that represents His blood shed for us and the bread that represents His body broken for us. And through these elements we will see the exalted Christ - not because of any power that they hold but through repentance brought about by faith in Christ and the forgiveness received then we are free to see Him in all of His beauty and glorious splendor. Take a moment, explore your heart and see the one broken on the cross and then come and take of these elements. Use them as Charles Spurgeon talked of them “Never mind that bread and wine, unless you can use them as folks often use their spectacles. What do they use them for? To look at? No, to look through them. So, use the bread and wine as a pair of spectacles. Look through them, and do not be satisfied until you can say, “Yes, yes, I can see the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.”

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