Sermon for MHBC (3 September 2022). You can watch on our website or on Facebook or YouTube.
I grew up in a home that talked a lot about God, and I certainly grew up “believing in God.” But it really took me quite a while to see Jesus. Of course, I had heard about it and talked about him. But it wasn’t until I was 17 when I grasped for the first time that Jesus is above all things and my obligation as a human is to trust him and treasure him above all things.
Tonight we are kicking off this Saturday series on who Christ is. I want to take you to a beautiful passage of Scripture in Colossians 1 and show you that because Christ is above all things, we should put our trust and hope in him. When we see Jesus clearly, it changes everything.
Paul writes this letter to the church in a Greek city called Colossae. It’s a young church that needs to hear this message. Because Christ is above all things, we should put our trust and hope in him. Like us, they have anxieties and fears about the world. They have questions about how things work. They are looking for meaning in their lives. So this letter was intended to remind them that Christ is always the solution to our fears and anxieties.
Let’s take a look at who Christ is. First, he is fully God. Look at v. 15: He is the image of the invisible God. Jesus reveals God perfectly. We can’t see God. God isn’t part of creation. And because God is so far removed from us, we could never discover God for ourselves.
You know it’s fascinating that humans have always had this concept of a god. It’s not something we arrived at just from thinking really hard. It’s baked into us. We instinctively sense the reality of God.
But how can we ever come to know a God that is so big? How can we ever know someone who is invisible? That’s what is so important about this verse. Jesus is the image of the invisible God. In other words, Jesus reveals God perfectly. We can know who God is through Jesus.
We can also know more about who we were created to be. In the first book of the Bible, God creates humans in the image of God. But our rebellion against God distorts that image. Since Jesus is the image of God, he shows us what it means to be fully human. Do you want to discover your reason for living? Look to Jesus.
So Jesus is fully God, and because he’s fully God, he’s called the firstborn of all creation. Look at the rest of v. 15. Now let’s be really clear. This language doesn’t mean Jesus was created. It’s actually the opposite. In the Bible, “firstborn” refers to someone’s importance. Jesus stands at the hand of all creation. Why? Because he is the creator of all things. Look at v. 16.*
Everything we see was created by Christ. It’s remarkable when we consider how large our universe is.
Bill Bryson gives an analogy. If we reduced to the earth to the size of a pea, Jupiter would be 1000 feet away, and Pluto would be a mile and a half away. Our nearest star would be 10,000 miles away. We don’t even know the extent of creation. Christ is the creator. And that’s an incredible statement about his power.
And he’s not only the creator of all things. He’s also the goal of all things. Look at the end of v. 16.*
C. S. Lewis once said that if we find in ourselves a desire that nothing else in all this world can satisfy, the only explanation is that we were made for more. Saint Augustine famously said, “Our heart is restless until it rests in God.”
Have you ever noticed that restlessness? Even the most satisfying things don’t last. Even the best experiences come up short. That’s because our desires were made for something more than creation. We were made for our creator. All things were made for him.
And this isn’t some disappointing call to dissatisfaction. It’s an invitation to ultimate satisfaction, to ultimate happiness, to ultimate joy. But we will only be satisfied by Christ. We were made for nothing less.
The reason is because there’s nothing better than him. Look at the next two verses (17–18).* All of creation is Christs and he holds it together.
We live in a dangerous world. I don’t like to think about it, but if Yellowstone ever blows, it will destroy a huge portion of the Western US. Or consider a less alarming example, our world is so perfectly created that if the sun were just a tad bit closer, it would be far too hot for survival, and if it were just a bit farther away, it would be far too cold for survival. We are spinning around on a globe in orbit. Everything we touch and see, including our bodies, are made up of these things called atoms, and somehow they are all hold together. It’s incredible that we are here at all. It’s incredible that we have a sustainable world. But Christ holds it all together, and apart from his power, everything we know would simply fall apart.
So we have Christ is fully God, and we see how amazing he is. He rules the universe without equal. Everything finds its source in him. All of the good things in this world, including love and joy and friendship are from him.
But we all know this world is far from perfect. There’s lots to be afraid of. There’s lots to be anxious about. But Christ is not a distant God. No, Christ lowers himself. He comes to our world and he dies. Why would he do that? To bring the world back to God. Remember we are restless. Our deepest longing is to know God, but we are kept from it because of rebellious hearts. And there are spiritual powers at work too, blinding us to Christ’s excellence and goodness.
But he’s so good that he acts to bring this world back to God. That’s what the word reconcile means—to put something together again. Look at vv. 19–20.* He restores all of creation through his death.
Jesus suffers a humiliating death—a great evil—the greatest evil imaginable because the image of the invisible God was nailed to a cross by the people he created. And in a spiritual mystery of this massive universe, that act, of God coming to the world to die, changes everything.
If that seems crazy, remember two things. First, we actually know very little about the universe as we saw. Second, no event in human history has impacted the world like Jesus’s death. To say that he was just a great teacher won’t cut it.
And the story doesn’t end there. Because of his goodness and power, he defeats death itself, showing that he rules all things, including death. And he is alive today, holding all things together, acting as the king of the universe.
So what do we do when we see Jesus clearly? We should trust him and we should treasure him. We were made for him. We will be restless until we trust and treasure him. He is the answer to our deepest longings and to our worst fears.