Who Is Jesus?
Colossians 1:13-17 · Miles Driedger · Aug 23, 2026
Colossians, No. 04
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/823261852571185

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Thanks, Jim, for reading our scripture there and getting our minds oriented to the text. It's a privilege to be with you again this morning. And really excited about the text in front of us today. And our title this morning, or whatever you want to call it, is Who is Jesus? the most important question that any person can ever answer.

And that goes for the unbeliever as well as you and I as believers. And we're going to seek to understand that a little bit more this morning. But before we begin, let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the opportunity to spend time together like this this morning as the body of Christ, to just focus our attention on you through your word. And we pray that you would teach us this morning, that you would give us greater understanding of the things that you revealed for your namesake. I'm praying in Jesus' name, amen.

So this letter to the Colossians, the believers at Colossae, is a very important letter, as is all of scripture. But there are some really important things that Paul is laying down for the Colossian believers, and we need to understand those things. There were some false ideas that were creeping into the church in Colossae and Paul give some indication of that a little later on in his letter. We'll touch on some of those things a little bit later on briefly.

But the question really, if we want to understand what this letter is about, is a question that we all face and have to handle and wrestle with as believers. And it's this, how are we supposed to conduct ourselves in this world as Christians? What governs the Christian life? How does it work?

And the kinds of ideas that were coming into the Colossian church are really the same ideas that come around again and again, over and over, down through history, and the same kind of things that we deal with today. And they had the appearance of wisdom. We wouldn't buy into them if they didn't have the appearance of wisdom, right? In other words, these things, they make sense. That'll work, you know? That's the way we respond to these kinds of ideas.

But what Paul says is that They have no value against fleshly indulgence. Right at the end of chapter 2, talking about these false ideas, he says they have no value against fleshly indulgence. So though they might make sense to us, they might seem to have some wisdom to them about how the Christian life should work. God's verdict is that they have zero value, no value at all to us. And so Paul's whole purpose in this letter is to tell the Colossians that the Christian life is not a set of rules or methods that men have come up with.

Instead, the Christian life is all about the Lord Jesus living his life through us. In Colossians 3 verse 4, Paul calls Christ our life. He says, Christ who is our life. And that's of course where we got the theme, Jesus is enough. The life that Jesus can live through us and is ready and willing to live through us is always sufficient to our every need. And if we depend on Him, it doesn't matter the situation. If we're depending on the Lord Jesus, He will never fail us. He will never let us down. He will never disappoint us. It's really only when we take our eyes off of Him and begin to take things into our own hands that we fall on our faces.

And so just to recap where we've come through chapter one so far, in the first eight verses, Paul reminds the Colossians of the foundation for the Christian life. You can't begin the Christian life without first being in Christ. And so he reminds them of the way in which the gospel came to them through Epaphras and their response to the gospel of grace. And that response must be by faith alone. Faith alone in the good news that Jesus Christ died for their sins on the cross and rose from the dead. And by that simple act of faith, the Colossians were placed in Christ Jesus. And I hope for you, this morning, that is your reality. I hope that you have definitely put your faith in Jesus Christ as your Savior, and that you have entered into this relationship with Christ, because that is the only foundation for the Christian life.

And then in verses 9 through 14, Paul tells the Colossians about the prayer that he began to pray for them. The instant that he found out about their salvation, the instant that he found out that they had received the gospel, he got on his knees and he began to pray for these Colossians. And we talked about the fact that he prayed continuously, which doesn't mean literally 24-7, but Every time the Lord brought them to mind, he remembered to pray for them. And what we want to understand about Paul's prayer here is that he was praying for what he calls a worthy walk, a life or a Christian life that is pleasing to the Lord. But Paul doesn't pray for that directly. And that's what we kind of looked at last week. His request is not just for this walk, but his request is actually for the knowledge that will lead to that worthy walk. So here is how he says it.

For this reason also, since the day we heard of it, we have not ceased to pray for you, the day we heard that you received the gospel, we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask, this is his request, that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding. And then in verse 10, he responds to that, so that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord. I'm praying for you to be filled with his knowledge of his will and all spiritual wisdom and understanding so that the worthy walk, the Christian life will flow naturally out of that, as you depend on it, as you trust it to be true. So behind the walk of a believer, there's to be the knowledge of God's will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding.

That has to come first. But the question really is, well, understanding of what? I mean, you look at verse 9 and... To me anyways, it seems a little cryptic. Wisdom, understanding, knowledge of his will. Well, what's God's will? How often have you had that kind of debate with someone? Well, how do we know God's will? And so what does this mean? What is he actually praying for?

And last week I used an illustration of two streams of truth. and how we need to connect these two seemingly contradictory different streams of truth. And I was thinking about that a little more and I want to review that this morning. I'm going to spend a little bit of time on this. And I hope that's okay because I think this is important. So what I want to do is give really another version of the same illustration just to help clarify this.

So when we become a Christian, when we accept the gospel by grace through faith, we understand that we're entering into really a new way of understanding reality. What we've really done is we've shifted from believing all of Satan's lies about reality, and we've transferred over to trusting God's word, which is the source of truth. And the initial step into that, is faith in the gospel, the simple fact that Jesus Christ died on the cross for my sins and rose from the dead. But there's a lot more in the Bible, isn't there? And so as we, by faith, enter into this sphere, we enter into the realm, as Jesus said, right, sanctify them in the truth, your word is truth. And so now we're entering into this realm wherein we are to be sanctified by the truth of the word of God. And suddenly we're confronted with all these bits and pieces of truth. And we have to learn and understand how they fit together, how they actually are connected.

There can't be any contradictions in God. We can't accept that because to accept that would be to say that God is a liar. God does not contradict himself. There are no contradictions in his word. And as Christians, we are operating on the premise that God is trustworthy. Are we not? That God is a trustworthy speaker.

And so through faith in the gospel, we enter into this sphere where we believe that God's word is true. And then we start to learn additional pieces of truth. And at first, they just come to us as bits and pieces, right? And so we see things like 1 Peter 1.15. And I've really summarized these so that we can fit them all on. If you want to think about this and study this more, I'll just write down those references.

1 Peter 1.15 says, Be holy yourselves also in all your behavior. And so we find out that God actually has an expectation for you as a believer.

And then we come across something like Colossians 1.10, which this was last week's text, right? Walk in a manner worthy of the Lord to please him in all respects. And so we find out that we actually have a personal responsibility. This walk doesn't just happen, there's a personal response, a responsibility involved in this.

And we also talked about John 15 last week, where Jesus says, my father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit. And so this tells us something about the way that God is glorified. The thing that pleases God is that there is fruit in our lives.

And a lot of Christians, I think all of us have probably been here, we see some of these truths and we try to connect these and we try to understand, okay, this is speaking to me about what God's will is. Because that's what we're trying to figure out. We're trying to understand God's will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding. And we connect these ideas and what that can often lead to is a very works-based Christian life. I see this group of truths and I think, okay, this is something I can work on. This is something I can do. And so we're trying to connect the truth with our reality.

But then we come across other verses like Romans 7.18, which says that, Paul says, for I know that nothing good dwells in me. Well, now that throws a bit of a challenge into the situation, right? And then there's also 7.14, which says that I am a flesh sold into bondage to sin. That's a believer speaking, okay?

And then we've got Romans 8.8, which says those who are in the flesh cannot please God. Uh-oh.

And so now we have these other truths over here, and we want to connect those all together, and we begin to think, well, maybe I have to deny the sin nature. Maybe that was all true, but this isn't really speaking about a believer, this must be speaking about an unbeliever.

Because I know that, well, I've got to keep up this Christian life, but this can't be true of me, or I can't, right? So sometimes that leads to the denial of the sin nature. Often it leads to a legalistic mentality. Well, yeah, I've still got a sin nature, but I'm going to have to fight hard against it. which is really stretching things to take nothing good dwells in me, but if I try hard enough, maybe I can squeeze out some good.

But either way, we see we're already trying to separate all these truths in our minds. We're not sure where to hang on to. We've got a lot of contradictions and sometimes What this leads to, as we bring these two sides of things together, is despair. Because we see what God expects on the one hand, and we see what we are on the other, in the flesh, and it can really lead to despair. But, you know, there's more that comes into the equation.

One of the things that comes in is Hebrews 11.6, which says, without faith it is impossible to please God. Well, now faith enters into the picture. Right? And what we can try to do, we see the word, over here, we see that we cannot please God. Over here, we say that we need to walk in a way worthy, pleasing to the Lord. But then we realize that without faith, it's impossible to please God.

So now we've got more truth to try to connect. And how do you fit that together? On the one hand, how do you say, on the one hand, in my flesh I cannot please God, on the other hand, God wants me to live a life pleasing to him, and somehow it involves faith. So what that really leads to is a lot of question marks, a lot of really big questions. Well, faith in what? How does this work? And so the plot thickens. But then we can add more.

Think of Romans 5.19, we can introduce the concept of grace, right?

Romans 5.19 says, where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.

Or Romans 6.14, which tells us that you are not under law, but under grace. And we try to understand what it means to be under grace, to live under grace. And we kind of have a partial understanding, a partial concept of grace that God has seen fit to bless us apart from any evaluation of what we have done. Because of the work that Christ did on the cross, he can bless us, he can justify us as sinners while we are yet unrighteous. But with this, we try to introduce this understanding of grace into this whole picture, and what can happen is that it really leads to a license to sin.

Well, since I'm in bondage to sin and nothing good dwells in me, but I see that God is gracious, well then maybe sin doesn't really matter. You know, maybe we just have to understand that God's grace covers it, sin doesn't matter. So I guess I do whatever I want, and God doesn't really care. So this is a very confusing picture of the Christian life, but this is where most Christians are operating.

This is where most of us have spent a lot of time, trying to understand how this all fits together. But what we need to understand is that ultimately, even scriptural truth wrongly related in our minds leads to a lot of error and confusion. So what do we do? How do we handle this? We're trying to understand God's will for us. That right? I mean, that's what we're trying to get to. And we're sure, we're confident that his word has the answer.

Otherwise, we wouldn't go through all these gymnastics. We're confident that the word has the answer, but sometimes it can get awfully confusing and awfully frustrating. We just can't figure it out. You know, and this is why there are so many competing ideas out there in Christendom about how this all works. And we could add an awful lot more to this circle, couldn't we?

As we bring in other truths, you know, and try to relate things that we can get really confused. But as we said last week, what we're really missing is one critical piece of truth. So let's just erase all the connections and look at it from this perspective. The truth that's missing in all of that is the fact of your identification with Christ so that you are a participant in His crucifixion death and His resurrection life.

And we could put scriptures behind that, right? That's what we're symbolizing with the cross and the arrow, right? Crucified, raised with Christ. Romans 6.3, Colossians 2.20, His death is counted as your death. Romans 6, 4 and Colossians 3, 1, his resurrection is counted as your resurrection. And the Lord begins to show us that truth in the word, and then we begin to understand how that connects with all these other truths. And in reality, instead of trying to connect all of these pieces together without the understanding of our co-crucifixion and resurrection, we realize that all these things are really related to that single fact.

And we can look at Romans 7.14, 7.18, 8.8, these things over here, and we can understand, yes, in my flesh dwells no good thing, but I've been crucified. I'm dead to the power of the flesh. I'm no longer under its power to control me. And so that answers those questions, doesn't it?

And then we've got over on the right-hand side, 1 Peter 1.15, Colossians 1.10, John 15.8, and so many other scriptures, right? These are just samples. We see that God expects and even commands a holy life. Right?

But now, in relation to this truth, this central truth. of our identification with Christ. The pleasing walk isn't something for me to produce. Now I see that it's Jesus who lives this kind of life through me. That's how it's going to work. That's how it's going to happen.

And now, verses like Hebrews 11, 6, which tell us that faith is the only way to please God, we realize that it's all about faith resting in the fact of my death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And I'm now depending on Him to live His life through me.

And then the question of grace. How does grace fit into all this? And what we realize in this is that grace is much more. Much more grace. We expand our understanding of grace. It's more than just the fact that my sins were paid for. Right? Grace also tells me that God has separated me from the power of sin and given me a new life in Christ. That's grace. That's a gift. A grace gift. So grace isn't a license to sin. Grace means freedom from sin. So this is an example.

This is the kind of knowledge and understanding that Paul was praying for. Our identification with Christ answers the question of God's will for us. His will is to produce the life of His Son through us. That's what pleases Him. That's what he wants to do. And that only happens when we're trusting him, right? We're trusting the fact that we've died to self and that Jesus is now our life.

So hopefully spending time to go through that helps review and clarify a little bit of what we were talking about last week. That's the understanding that Paul is praying for and that's the understanding that leads to the kind of walk that he describes in verses 10 through 14.

So now this morning, we're coming to an absolutely astounding section of scripture about the Lord Jesus Christ. And some people seem to think that Paul is jumping to a new subject here. And that Paul, in verse 13, mentions the beloved son. He's like, oh boy, I've got to say something about the beloved son. Like it's almost a rabbit trail. But I don't think that's what Paul's doing. Okay, Paul is, he's been talking about the Christian life. He's been talking about the life that we have in Christ Jesus.

And now, what does he want to do but tell us about the Lord Jesus? Tell us who he is. And as I mentioned at the beginning, understanding who the Lord Jesus Christ is, is the most important thing that we can ever do. It's critical not only for the unsaved, but it's also critical for you as a believer. Why would that be? Why would it be that we need to understand who Jesus is? If the Christian life is Jesus living through you, and if your responsibility is to depend on him to do the living, then what is the only thing getting between you and that life, which is a life of perfect and total victory?

Well, it's the failure to believe Him. It's a failure to trust Him for it. The failure to believe that Jesus is able. We just don't believe that He can really do what is needed. And we all do that, right? We all fail to believe that Jesus is actually capable.

And so Paul, wants to make us more aware of just who Jesus is for the purpose of allowing us to trust him in every situation that we face. So the degree of victory that we have in our Christian life is limited by only one thing, and that's the degree to which we trust Jesus. Because it's not limited by his ability, right? We need to learn to trust Jesus. And you can only trust someone to the degree that you know they are able.

We've got to know Jesus so that we can trust him to live this kind of life through us. So these verses are built and structured to answer the most important question that we can ask, who is Jesus? And as we said, we know that that question is important for the unbeliever, but it's equally important for the Christian. If we're going to trust Jesus to live through us, we need to know him. If we're going to have a fruitful Christian life, then we need to know him.

2 Peter 1, verses 2 through 4 has a similar theme. I thought we'd just look at that. Peter writes, grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ our Lord. And by the way, that there is called the Granville Sharp Rule, which. It doesn't really matter except to say that God and Jesus there are the same person. It's referring to the same person. The knowledge of God is not something distinct from the knowledge of Jesus.

We'll get to that a little bit later on, but the knowledge of God, even Jesus our Lord, seeing that his divine power has granted to us everything, everything pertaining to life and godliness through the true knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and excellence for by these he granted to us his precious and magnificent promises so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust. That's the kind of victory that is available to you. That is the kind of victory that God wants you to have.

And we have to realize that it's all related to knowing Jesus. It's all based and hinged on knowing Him. If we jump down to verse 8, I don't have this, oh I do have it, here we go. Verse 8 in that same passage. Peter's kind of describing this Christian life.

He says, for if these qualities are yours and increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. A true knowledge of Jesus is neither useless nor unfruitful. Or to say it the other way, a true knowledge of Jesus is useful and fruitful. So looking at our verses now in Colossians, you're gonna notice that the name Jesus isn't even mentioned, right? I think it's obvious who he's talking about, but instead of naming him, what does Paul do? He uses the pronouns he and him. And what that does is it causes us to look back for who are we talking about here? Who is this referring to?

And if we look back to verse 13, we see that all of the pronouns about Jesus are referring back to this term, the Beloved Son. And Paul wants everything that he's saying about Jesus to be framed under that name, the Beloved Son. Jesus is the Beloved Son. And it's critical to Paul's whole argument to see that Jesus is the one that God the Father is pleased with. Every time that we see the Father speak, out loud during Jesus' earthly ministry, right? There's a voice. Not everyone could always hear it, but we know at Jesus' baptism and on the Mount of Transfiguration, what did God the Father say? He said, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. It's in the Son that God the Father is pleased.

And so everything that we look at today about Jesus is all under the heading of the beloved Son of the Father. But then it's so important that we also understand what he just said in verse 14 about our relationship to the Beloved Son, because verse 14 continues, in whom? Well, in the Beloved Son. In the Beloved Son, we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. So Paul is pointing out that we are in the Beloved Son. We are identified with Jesus Christ. We are one with Jesus, the Beloved Son. So with all of that in mind, contextually, let's read today's verses again, just 15 through 17.

This is what we're going to be looking at today. says, He, the beloved Son, is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on the earth, visible and 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 in Him all things hold together.

And I've broken that down into five different propositional truth claims about Jesus. So first of all, we're gonna look at the fact that he is the image of the invisible God. I'm just gonna put all these on the screen and then we'll go through them one at a time. The second thing is that he is the firstborn of all creation. Number three, by him, all things were created. And then he expands on that, right? The fourth thing is that he is before all things. And the fifth thing is that in him, all things hold together.

As we explore these things, we're gonna find out just who Jesus is. And in coming to a greater understanding and hopefully refreshing or learning anew just who Jesus Christ is, we understand his ability, his power, his strength to live his life through us. So let's start with number one. He is the image of the invisible God. Does that sound like an oxymoron? Anyone catch that? How do you have an image of something that's invisible?

The kids in Canada, maybe you have it down here too, you guys get snow, but you don't have polar bears, do you? So we have polar bears. And in Alaska you do, right? But have you ever, has a kid ever asked you to draw a picture of a polar bear in a snowstorm? That's it. That's it. That's a joke for a blank sheet of paper because There's nothing to draw. Anyway, it's nothing to see.

A polar bear in a snowstorm, except maybe a little black nose, right? But it sounds like an oxymoron to talk about the image of the invisible God. So what is Paul getting at by that? What's he trying to say? How can there be an image of something invisible? Well, what is an image?

The Greek word is icon. And, you know, it's used, Jesus talks about when he says, you know, show me a coin, right? And whose image is on the coin? Same word, icon, right? The image of Caesar imprinted on the coin. Okay, so you have to kind of understand that, right? I mean, who's on the back of the coins here in America? George Washington? Lincoln? Okay. Have you ever met him? Have you ever seen him face to face? No. Right?

And even if you were alive in his time, you probably, maybe you would have, but you probably wouldn't have. But why do we imprint their image on our coins? In Canada, of course, it's the royal family, right? We have the queen, the reigning monarch is on the coins. Because you're probably never going to see them face-to-face. Of course, in this day and age, we have photography and all these things, but coins date back way before that. And so to put their image on the coin represented who they were. It represented them, represented their authority to mint a coin in the first place. That's why we put the image of a ruler on our coins. It represents authority.

But it's something tangible. It's something that we can see with our eyes, something we can handle, and we understand that there's a connection between this and the person behind it. Well, God the Father cannot be seen, right? We can't see him, we can't behold him, but we can behold Jesus. And what Paul is doing, he's not making Jesus less than God by calling him the image of God. And that's where the illustration of a coin kind of falls short. It's similar, but it's quite different. The coin is not the person. It simply represents them.

But Paul is expressing that the man, Jesus Christ, is the invisible God who came in human flesh so that we could see him. And Jesus says that to see him is to see the Father, right? John 14 verse 9. Jesus said to him, have I been so long with you and yet you have not come to know me, Philip? Catch that word, no, okay? Because then he says, he who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, show us the Father? So what's the idea behind seeing Jesus and seeing the Father, right? Jesus isn't talking about just seeing him with your physical eyes, right? This is about knowing God, okay?

To come to be acquainted with him, to know his character, to know what he's like. So don't think that you and I can't see the Father because we weren't alive when Jesus was physically present on the earth. That's not what Jesus meant. He said, if you've been with me so long, you've not come to know. We can see Jesus today as well as anyone ever has through his written word.

We get to know what kind of person He is. As we get to understand Him, we get to know Jesus, we're coming to know the Father. That's the whole point. That's the whole point of incarnating Himself as a man, is so we could come to know Him through the Son. So seeing Jesus is seeing the Father. Knowing Jesus is knowing the Father.

John 1.18, no one has seen God at any time. But, right, the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him, or He has made Him known. He has revealed Him. He has shown God to us.

And then we have Hebrews 1.3 which says, and He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature.

Exact. Okay? That's what it means to be the image of the invisible God through Jesus Christ. we come to know God truly and deeply and intimately and personally. And then we come to the second point. Jesus is the firstborn of all creation. Now that phrase has been distorted by some people. They say that firstborn of creation means that Jesus is the first created being. Right? And it might sound like that. So how do we answer that?

Well, first of all, the word for firstborn is the word prototokos. It can be used in the literal sense and It often is of just a firstborn son, a literal firstborn. You know, we have the words, Mary gave birth to her firstborn son and laid him in a manger. That's the same word, prototokos. He's the firstborn of Mary.

But we have to also understand that firstborn means a lot more than just physical birth and physical origin. Right? You want to remember what the role of the firstborn entailed to the biblical mind. We don't really think this way so much anymore. But being the firstborn, historically, was a position of authority. Not only authority, it was a position of responsibility. Right?

Turn to Psalm 89.27. I don't have this on the screen, so just turn there. Psalm 89. Verse 27. If you have a hard time finding the book of Psalms, the easiest way is to open your Bible into the center. And usually you're gonna be in the Psalms, unless you have a lot of end notes at the back of your Bible. But Psalm 89, verse 27.

Now here, this is speaking about David. specifically the covenant that God made with David, but I think there's also an application to the Lord Jesus Christ. But our point here is just to look at how the word firstborn is used. This is God speaking about David. And he says, I also shall make him my firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth. This is Hebrew parallelism, where we say one thing and then we repeat it through different words, but it's parallel. So to be God's firstborn is to be the highest of the kings of the earth. That's the idea behind being God's firstborn.

And that's what Jesus is over the whole creation. This is a reference to Jesus' authority and position, not his origin. Because Jesus doesn't have an origin, does he? Jesus is God of gods, and he is eternal. We'll get to that in a little bit here. So don't be thrown off by that word firstborn. Paul's not making a reference to some origin point for Jesus. We know that as a man, he became a man. But that wasn't the beginning of Jesus. He is eternal. He came as a man. But as God's firstborn, as a prototokos, he holds all authority.

The second reason that this is not somehow referring to Jesus as being a created being is because if Paul wanted to say that, if that was his intent in that phrase, then he shouldn't have added verse 16. Because verse 16 tells us why he is the firstborn. We have the word for, or the Greek word is hati, and it just means because. So Jesus is the firstborn of all creation, look at verse 16, because by him all things were created. So he's the firstborn of creation because he made it.

And that is what we sometimes call the creator-owner principle. Anyone ever heard of that principle? I probably learned that from JD. That whoever makes something owns it. That's a very basic principle, and we get that from God, okay? He made all this, so he owns it. You can give it to someone else, you can sell it to someone else, but you can only sell it because you own it, right? So it's a creator-owner principle.

And Paul wants to erase any possibility of seeing Jesus as something less than God. Jesus has authority over all creation because he made it. Jesus is the creator God, and he is Lord of all creation. So that's point two. Point three out of these verses is that by him all things were created.

So does anyone have a guess at what is meant by all things? Anyone want to venture a guess? It means all things, right? That's literally what it means. You could do a Greek study on that and you'd come up with the fact that all things means all things.

John 1, 1 through 3. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him. And apart from Him, nothing came into being that has come into being. And notice in 1.16, that is, all things both in the heavens and on the earth. What do you think Paul has in mind? Do you catch those two words, heavens and earth?

The first verse of our Bible, Genesis 1.1, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. What are the heavens and the earth?

I heard someone say it earlier when I asked all things. In modern terminology, this is the universe. This is everything. Everything that we see, and of course we'll talk about it in a moment, also the things that we don't see. This is terminology for the entire created universe.

And then Paul moves on to combat modern materialism. I'm not sure what kind of things floated around in the philosophy in those days, but today it's very popular to say, well, everything is just material. And the Holy Spirit, through Paul, is saying that no, everything is not just material. Materialism is a denial of God. Right? Because God is not material. So it's a satanic deception to get people to buy into the fact that everything is just material, which says that God doesn't exist without actually saying it. Because God is not material. So this flies in the face of modern materialism.

Paul clarifies that Jesus is a creator of not only what is visible, but also what is invisible. And of course, he's talking about the physical and spiritual realm. Both are real, right? And Jesus Christ is the creator of both. And there's so much more we could say about that, but let's continue on. Paul doesn't let up there, right?

He explains, he expands on the visible, and he He kind of describes it or separates it into these four subcategories, right? It says, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities. And you might wonder, what is that all about? What are all these things? But if we compare this to other passages, we see that this is very clearly a reference to angelic beings.

Ephesians 3.10 says, so that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to, who? To the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. These are creatures. These are beings because they have consciousness. They know. Things are being made known to them. So the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places are spiritual creatures.

Colossians 2 15 which we will get to and this is more contextual. Same terms use these are all the same Greek words by the way. So just in case you're wondering Paul is going to write when he had disarmed the rulers and authorities he made a public display of them having triumphed over them through him. Now here we're specifically speaking of those spiritual enemies of God those angelic beings who have rebelled against him. And what we'll find out in Colossians 2 15 is that Jesus has triumphed over them. So these are angelic beings, angelic majesties, and apparently, based on these scriptures, angels hold rank. Angels are divided or ranked in distinct orders.

And you know, we don't know much more than that about it. The Lord just kind of leaves it at that. But that's okay. That doesn't really matter. Angels are not our central focus, are they? We need to understand that they exist. We need to understand what the scripture says about them. But this is one of the things it says. Angels hold rank. And there are these thrones, dominions, rulers, authorities. These all refer to angelic beings. Why does Paul bring that up? Why do you think that would be? Why does he need to say over everything visible and invisible and then detail all of these things? Well, the Colossians And we kind of understand this a little bit from history, though it's not explicitly clear in the letter to the Colossians.

But there was a way of thinking floating around at that time that you've probably heard of called Gnosticism. And the idea in Gnosticism, or one of the ideas, is that there were degrees of separation between God or their concept of God and the creation. And that there were what they called emanations, basically ranks, a descending order of being, which is a very pagan idea, by the way.

We could talk about that sometime. And their idea is that Jesus was somewhere way down the ladder from God the Father. because God could never come and mingle with man on the earth. But maybe if there was an emanation of God, someone way down the ladder from God, a lesser being, maybe he could. Maybe he could come and live on the earth and do all these things. And so it was this terrible distortion of who Jesus Christ was.

And what we also see in the letter to the Colossians is in chapter 2, verse 18. You can just flip there quickly. to see it. What we see is that there was this worship of angels that was coming in. Because, right, if Jesus is somewhere in this big chain of beings, well, he's just one of many, and if he's worthy of worship, then so are all these other spiritual beings, right? And so you get this whole weird kind of pantheistic almost idea. And you see there in verse 18 let no one keep defrauding you of your prize by delight delighting in self-abasement and the worship of the angels Right, so strange stuff, but but but you know similar things still exist today, right? The worship of angels you'll see it Go to a Christian bookstore. We like little figurines of angels and stuff like that, right? We tend to we tend to Focus on them.

But what Paul is saying here, this is the point, what Paul is saying is that Jesus is not one of them. Jesus doesn't fit somewhere in this ranking of thrones, dominions, rulers, authorities. No, Jesus Christ is God himself. And Jesus Christ is the creator. And there are ranks of angels, biblically speaking, but they are not emanations of God. They are not little gods or anything like that, right? They are all created beings, and Jesus is not one of them, and he falls nowhere in their ranking. He is God. He's the creator of all spiritual beings.

Two more things that we want to note in verse 16, because this is the point. point three where Paul expands and he adds a lot. After telling us what is included in all things, Paul makes this striking statement. He says, all things have been created through him and for him. And this is more than just a recap of what he said, though it could kind of sound like that.

But first of all, The verb here, have been created. All things have been created. This is a perfect passive indicative. And what that means is two very important things. The perfect tense tells us about a completed action in past time that has abiding results. So what this is saying is that Jesus created at a point of time in the past such that it stands complete. The work is finished. That's what the perfect tense is telling us. And the passive tells us that the creation wasn't involved in its own creation. God acted, God spoke, and the created universe sprang into being. It wasn't involved in it.

Do you understand what this is coming against, what this is strongly teaching against? What is the pervasive theory of origins in our world today? Evolution. And so many Christians have tried to hold on to evolution and tried to make it fit with the Bible, and it's impossible. We can't. Evolution is a lie, and it is calling God a liar.

God said, I spoke, and it was done, and he meant it. The creation act was finished at the end of day six, and it stands complete. And creation, the created order was not somehow involved in propagating and developing into what we have today. No. Jesus Christ created and it was finished. Evolution is a lie.

And then the second thing in that phrase is that Paul says, that all things have been created through Him and for Him. And that fits perfectly with what we're saying about the Creator-Owner, Creator-Owner principle. The world was made through Jesus Christ. In other words, He did it. He did this. But it was also created for Jesus Christ. He owns it. It belongs to Him. It is His. And he has authority over it.

There's no spiritual being, or any being for that matter, nothing that has power equal or greater to Jesus Christ, including Satan. Don't ever make that mistake of thinking that Satan is God's equal and opposite. That's the way the world thinks of it. Right? And that's not true. Satan falls into that ranking category. He's one, up high, albeit, but he is a creature. He is not God's equal opposite. He is opposite, right? But he's not his equal. It's not that we have the forces of good and the forces of evil, and we don't know who's going to come out on top. No. Satan is a created being, and there's no spiritual being with power equal to or greater than Jesus Christ. So there's a lot in here. But let's move on to the fourth point. Jesus is before all things. Now, this is really an incredible statement.

Now, some people have wanted to take this and say, well, this is kind of repeating the idea that Jesus is over all creation, because that word before can sort of mean, you know, at the head of, or in authority over, you know, you come at the head, you're before all things.

But that's not what the words are saying, okay? Paul is writing this around 60 AD, and he doesn't say that Jesus was before all things. Okay, this is a present tense verb. This is the way it's translated. Right now, Jesus is before all things. This is a statement of Jesus' eternality. Jesus didn't just pre-exist all things. In his deity, Jesus is outside of time. In John 8, 58, Jesus said, truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I am.

And we recognize the I am, right? Ego e me. It's a reference to deity. It's the name that God gave himself with Moses, right? And Jesus says, I am. But what we want to focus on here is that he's saying before Abraham was born, present tense, I am. Jesus is the eternal God. He's not bound by time like you or I. This is an amazing claim to deity. This is all it could mean. that Jesus is the eternal God.

And then number five, in him all things hold together. And this is such a big point. As if it wasn't already enough that Jesus is the creator of all things, Paul adds this, right? The word behind holds together is this idea of joining all the parts into a working whole. Kind of a neat, I mean that's what it said, hold together, but joining all the parts into a working whole. And all you have to do is sit and just think for a few minutes about what that means when we understand the fact that Jesus is the creator of everything that is seen and unseen.

And we could explore the universe, the galaxies, as far as we possibly can. And it's so vast, so incredibly vast. But we can also turn our attention and we can look down, right? And we can see the cell. We can look farther and see molecules. And all of that is included.

All of that is included in what Jesus brought together in that creation week into a working whole. Jesus is the one who organized all of this and not only did he organize it He is right now holding it together and Jesus is upholding and sustaining the entire creation by his power this is again, this is a Perfect tense, I believe, which means that at a point in time, Jesus put all this together and he didn't just let go, right Jim? He is sustaining it. He brought it together such that he is currently holding it together.

And I just want to make a logical application of that truth, right? If Jesus is the creator and sustainer of the entire creation, if he has authority over every molecule in the universe, what does he have the right and authority to do? Just think about that. He has the authority to bring all of this to an end, but that's not where we stop, right?

Because not only does he have the right and authority to do that, but he also has the power to bring in a brand new one, which is exactly what the Bible tells us is coming. And it's understanding that that gives us a clue as to what the Christian life really is. Because the New Testament, if we understand what's being revealed, the New Testament is telling us that the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the resurrected Jesus Christ is the first man of that coming new heavens and new earth. So we can talk about the fact that He will dissolve this creation and will bring in a brand new creation, but we've got to stop and realize that it's already begun. The first resurrected man already exists.

That's a huge truth to hang on to. But we can go farther than that. Because, as we talked about at the beginning, if you put your faith in Jesus Christ, then you've already been united to Him. You've already been joined to him. You are dead to the old creation man, and you are alive to God in Christ Jesus. You are joined to that resurrected man. Our bodies are not caught up to that yet, right? The resurrection of our physical bodies is coming, but spiritually speaking and judicially speaking from God's perspective, we are already one with that one new man. That's our position. Thanks, Bob. That's our position. We are joined to that one new man, which means we belong to that new creation. We already belong to that whole new created order that's coming.

And if we go back to verse 13, that's what Paul's getting at. And I didn't touch on that in real depth in verse 13, but now as we see it connected, hopefully this has a little bit more meaning. When Paul, in verse 13, is talking about the fact that we have been transferred from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of the beloved son and his dispensation.

It's like, God, but that kingdom's still coming. Yes, it is still coming, but it's already begun in Jesus Christ. He is already a piece of that new creation, and we have been transferred out of that whole system, that amazing system in a sense, but a fallen system at the same time, right, the old creation, and we have become part of a whole new coming creation.

Okay? And that's so important for us to understand in terms of the Christian life. We don't belong to this world anymore. We live in it, right? But we don't belong to it. We belong to the creation that is coming. But the Lord has seen fit to leave us here for now. Why? Did he forget to have a purpose in this? No, right? God has a purpose in you and I as new creation beings in Christ Jesus for being here right now. And that's what we need to figure out. If we don't figure that out, then we're just wasting our time. But we know God's will, don't we? That's what we talked about at the beginning. What did we say?

God's will is to produce the life of his son through you and I in this dark world. That's his purpose, is that the life of Jesus would be lived out and manifest in this world that is passing away. That through you and I there'd be this living manifestation of the beloved son. That's the whole context, the beloved son. That that would be displayed, that he would be displayed. And so let's tie this all together. because we talked about at the beginning the importance of knowing Jesus.

And the more fully and deeply we come to know Jesus Christ, the more we are able to depend on him, to trust him, to live through us a life that we can't possibly live. But we have to become convinced of his ability. We have to understand who he is, the power that he has.

And if these verses are true, Then is there any question about Jesus' ability? Is there any question about what he is able to do? There shouldn't be, right? If Jesus has all power and authority, then there's no situation that he can't handle. There's no enemy that can overwhelm him. The question is not really, is Jesus able? The question is, do you believe it? Do you believe it? And are you resting your faith in Him? Do you understand that He lives in you in order to be your life for every moment, every day? And are we allowing Him to live that kind of life through us?

I'm just gonna close with Revelation 4.11, which is printed in your bulletin this morning. You may have heard these words read or you've read them and just seen God, the Father. But in light of what we studied this morning, I want you to picture the Lord Jesus Christ.

Revelation 4.11, worthy are you, our Lord and our God, to receive glory and honor and power. For you created all things and because of your will, they existed and were created. How does that book end? With the new creation. Not only did he create this whole existence, but he's going to replace it, to recreate in an amazing new way.

And we are already part of that, spiritually speaking. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, I thank you for your word. Boy, there's a lot in there. We thank you for the opportunity this morning to just get to glimpse the Lord Jesus Christ a little bit more fully. And I pray that we would know him. I pray that we would know him as our life. That we would understand who he is and that we are joined to him, the God-man, the creator of all that is and the creator of the coming. universe, the coming heavens and earth.

Lord, impress these things upon us. Teach us the significance of it and the practicality of it in our day-to-day walk. Teach us that we can trust you. There's nothing that you cannot do and there's nothing that we can face that can overcome you. We can only fail so long as we are depending on ourselves, others, anything but you. But in you, we can only have victory. I pray that we learn to trust that more and more. In Jesus' name, amen.