Sermon Tone Analysis

WHO IS THE CHILD OF CHRISTMAS?

COLOSSIANS 1:15-20

 

 

Christmas is one of those wonderful times of the year and a time to focus on the simple but profound message of Jesus Christ.

It is the message about the birth of Jesus.

To me, Christmas has become one of those days that is acknowledge on the calendar, but there is little celebration of what it is all about in today’s world.

For example, people around the world acknowledge Christmas, but very few celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ.

Take the stores, which put up the holiday decorations shortly after Halloween, yet there is nothing mentioned about the birth of Christ.

Look at the festivities that surround Christmas with parades and bands and Santa Claus, but nothing is mentioned about the birth of Jesus Christ.

In fact, I believe the government would missed the holiday season of Christmas because of the taxes gained from the sale of merchandise in the stores, but if you put up a nativity scene in front of a government building the ACLU will cry foul.

There is much made of Christmas, but little done in celebrating the real reason of Christmas.

And to do away with Christmas would be devastating to the commercial world anyway.

In fact, there is no one calling for a dismissal of the celebration, just the reason for the celebration.

People in the world would rather have Christmas without Christ.

And I believe that is what many people are doing anyway.

Now, this may sound like I am the Scrooge or the Grinch, but I am not.

In fact, I enjoy the many things that are done around this time of year.

But I think in many cases, the world and in some ways the church has lost focus on the real reason for Christmas.

If we are going to celebrate Christmas, then we need to celebrate the birth of Jesus.

Otherwise, he sorted becomes the excuse for us having this holiday.

He becomes insignificant, yet he ought to be the most significant part of the celebration.

So this morning and this evening, I want to study who is the child of Christmas?

The Apostle Paul gives us great insight to who is the child of Christmas.

I want you to take your Bibles and turn to the book of Colossians the first chapter and the fifteenth verse.

I want to read from Colossians 1:15-20.

Due to time, I want to focus on verses 15-17 this morning and 18-20 this evening.

I hope you will make plans to be here tonight to get the rest of this important study.

Every one of those statements that is made from verse 15 through verse 19 is absolutely exclusive.

They are true of Him and nobody else.

And the sum of them all is at the end of verse 18 where it says that He is to have the first-place in everything.

No one else is the image of the invisible God; no one else can be the first-born of all creation.

No one else can be the creator of things in heaven and earth, visible and invisible.

No one else sits over the thrones and dominions and rulers and authorities.

No one else is before all things and holds all things together.

No one else is the head of the body, the church, the beginning, and the first born.

No one else has all the fullness dwelling in Him to the pleasure of the Father.

Those are all absolutely exclusive statements.

And what they tell us is that Jesus Christ is utterly unique.

There is no one like Him.

He is beyond everyone else.

He is infinitely beyond everyone else.

And if we're going to slight somebody at His birthday, better it be a man than the God-Man.

Yet at Christmas, God gets slighted even though most people will tell you why there is Christmas.

Folks, Christmas is about God reaching down to touch our lives in a personal way by condescending into the world to redeem people from their sins.

Isn’t that the truth that an angel said, “This is Jesus who will save his people from their sins?

He is called Emmanuel, which means God is with us.

The Bible teaches that God came into a sin-polluted world without being blemished by the sins of the world, took our guilt, and bore our sins so that we could be saved.

He keeps our salvation secure by ascending back to heaven to intercede on our behalf and prepare a place for us there.

What a glorious Lord and Savior!

So let us look into this wonderful passage of Scripture that describes this child that we celebrate at Christmas.

I hope that you will have new appreciation for the Lord Jesus Christ after our study this morning and evening.

I hope Christmas will have more meaning for you after this study.

Paul, in this passage, reveals some very important truths about Christ.

In verses 15-17, Christ is seen as supreme over creation and in verses 18-20, Christ is seen as supreme over the church.

But for time sake, let us concentrate our time on verses 15-17.

The first truth that Paul states about Christ is that “he is the image of the invisible God.”

This word “image” is a Greek term for a stamp or die.

Many of us have seen a head of state like Caesar imprinted on a coin.

Well that image on the coin represents the likeness of that person.

So Jesus is not a likeness of God, but the exact replica, representation or manifestation.

In other words, his essential character is the same as God.

He is eternal, omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscience, just, holy, and gracious.

Jesus said, “Anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:9).

Anyone who saw Christ, the visible manifestation of the invisible God, has thereby “seen” God indirectly.

For “no one has ever seen God, but God the only Son . . .

has made Him known” (John 1:18).

Paul wrote of the “invisible” God (1 Tim.

1:17), but Christ is the perfect visible representation and manifestation of that God.

It is hard for us to grasp the supernatural, yet God in his word explains himself to us.

Without the word acknowledging to us who God is we would be in the dark.

But Christ came as an exact reproduction of God to show us the invisible God.

So this birthday of a child we celebrate at Christmas is God in the flesh.

Another truth that Paul states in verse 15 is that Jesus is the firstborn of all creation.

For us to appreciate what Paul was saying here, I need to give you a little background about this text.

In those days, there were a group of false teachers known as the Gnostics, which means “knowing.”

They thought they had superior knowledge.

For them, Christianity was just a mundane religion so they elevated their way of thinking above it.

They believed that creation exists of evil matter.

In other words, all that is physical such as things you can see, feel or touch was evil.

And everything that is spirit is good.

Therefore, God who is good could never take on a human body because that would mix good with evil.

In fact, God who is good would never have created anything.

Who created?

Well they said God created a series of emanations or angel beings out of Himself and along almost infinite line of creations from Himself.

And God is far far far away and as He spun off these emanations, they kept coming down a descending ladder and at some point they went past the point of good and they entered into evil.

And one of those evil ones created matter.

Some foolish evil subgod and now the rest of human history is people trying to fight against the stupidity of this subgod who created matter and messed up a perfectly good spiritual world.

So Paul writing that Jesus is the firstborn of all creation was countering this attack on Jesus.

Yet, what we see today is that many cults will use this phrase to deny who Christ really is.

They would say that he was the first of all creation.

He was a created being like the rest of us.

Therefore, many false teachings will assert that Jesus was only a mere man, a good example, or a great prophet, but will deny him as God.

Jesus is fully God because Scripture tells us this.

So Paul stating that Christ was the firstborn of all creation was not making a direct reference to time because Christ was before creation.

No, Paul was claiming that Jesus is the supreme one, superior one, the one who has rights of privilege, prestige, and honor.

He is absolutely first which implies sovereignty.

Psalm 89:27 says, “And I will make him firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth.”

So Jesus is before creation and over creation as we will see in verses 16 and 17.

In verses 16 and 17, Paul shows us the supremacy of Christ over creation.

Let us look at what Paul says about Christ and creation.

To prove that Christ was the creator of creation rather than one of the creations, Paul begins verse 16 with the English word “for” in many Bibles.