SPEAKER_00: Good afternoon, everyone.
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to you.
SPEAKER_00: My name is Mark.
SPEAKER_00: I'm one of the leaders here at City Church.
SPEAKER_00: Very welcome to you.
SPEAKER_00: If you are uh new or visiting with us, happy new year.
SPEAKER_00: Uh new year, new sermon series.
SPEAKER_00: We're in the book of Colossians, which please do keep that open in front of you if you can.
SPEAKER_00: Um, we will be in for the next couple of months uh on the run-up to our uh church retreat, our weekend away, which will be at the start of March.
SPEAKER_00: More information about that uh at the at the end.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but why don't I pray for us and ask for the Lord's help?
SPEAKER_00: Father, I pray uh that you would give us uh eyes now to see uh the majesty and the beauty of who Jesus is, and in doing so to be changed by him.
SPEAKER_00: Pray that your spirit would be among uh at work amongst us to that end uh for the glory of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: We're some 2,000 years detached from uh from the events that the New Testament describes, some 2,000 years detached from uh from the person of Jesus walking uh on this uh earth in a little piece of real estate at the eastern end of the Mediterranean.
SPEAKER_00: Some 2,000 years detached from who Jesus is, and over that time, you know, a lot of speculation, a lot of uh perhaps confusion uh has grown up about the person of Jesus and about uh what he came to do, what his work was, what his mission was.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps uh you come here this morning with or this afternoon with uh ideas uh about who Jesus is that you have been taught or that you have imbibed from uh from your cultural narrative of where you're from.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps you just think that uh that Jesus was a uh was a good moral teacher.
SPEAKER_00: Uh perhaps Jesus' authority is not something that you readily desire to accept.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps you simply see Jesus as irrelevant or struggle to see what his relevance might be uh to how you work, how you love, how you live, how you relate to people.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps also you would say that you are a follower of Jesus, but in your life you betray that you don't see Jesus as sufficient.
SPEAKER_00: Implicitly or explicitly you might say something like, Well, I love Jesus, but I need this.
SPEAKER_00: I love Jesus, but I want that.
SPEAKER_00: I love Jesus, but I need I need that relationship to work.
SPEAKER_00: I love Jesus, but I need to not be alone.
SPEAKER_00: I love Jesus, but I don't want him to ask that of me.
SPEAKER_00: I love Jesus, but I quite like my comfort too.
SPEAKER_00: Is Jesus actually sufficient for you?
SPEAKER_00: It's good actually at the start of a new year to kind of clear the decks and get a clear vision of who Jesus is.
SPEAKER_00: To go right back to the first writings, eyewitness accounts of who Jesus is.
SPEAKER_00: Paul was somebody who met Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Who met him after he rose from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: And he writes describing who this person of Jesus is.
SPEAKER_00: That's so important for us, especially off the back of Christmas, right?
SPEAKER_00: Because Christmas, we have a very uh we have a very kind of kitsch, uh, tweety uh view of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Christmas Jesus, Christmas Jesus, little baby, maybe looks a little bit weird, like in the Renaissance painting, gold dinner plate behind his head.
SPEAKER_00: Uh you kind of have that that view of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Uh he's kind of inoffensive.
SPEAKER_00: The little the the Jesus, uh, you know, little Jesus, meek and mild, coming in tinsel time Bethlehem, there's the shepherds, and there's the wise men, isn't it all lovely?
SPEAKER_00: Uh let's go into you know Viganuary, right?
SPEAKER_00: Uh don't vegany, why would you do that?
SPEAKER_00: Um don't hate yourself that much.
SPEAKER_00: Um sorry.
SPEAKER_00: Um but that view of who Jesus is can make us lose sight of the Jesus who grew up to become a man.
SPEAKER_00: The Jesus who uh Paul says is the very image of the invisible God.
SPEAKER_00: And actually, what happens when we go through this passage is this passage helps us to understand the incarnation in a new light and actually blows the doors off Bethlehem.
SPEAKER_00: Because we see that the one who became a baby, who stepped into human history and became frail and vulnerable in that sort of way, is actually the Lord of all, the one through whom all things were created.
SPEAKER_00: It really is quite remarkable.
SPEAKER_00: We also need to kind of clear the decks at the start of the year, I think, because so often the concerns of life, the demands on our time, the circumstances that we face, they narrow our field of vision, don't they?
SPEAKER_00: And so it's good just for a moment to have our horizon expanded so that we can feel our affection stirred again at the top of the year for who Jesus truly is and what he has come to do.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna move through this passage, kind of taking it clause by clause, considering these descriptors, uh, most of them, eight of which uh I have summarized the person of Jesus, who he is, and then finally to think a little bit about what he came to do, what his work was.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna move through the passage beginning at verse 15.
SPEAKER_00: The first thing that Paul says is he says that Jesus is the image of the invisible God.
SPEAKER_00: That is, he has made the invisible God visible.
SPEAKER_00: Now, there's a sense in which the Bible contends that every human being has done that.
SPEAKER_00: We spent some time in the last semester uh in the book of Genesis, in Genesis 1, end of that chapter, we're made in the image of God.
SPEAKER_00: Each human being in some way puts on display and represents who God is to the world, to one another, and to the rest of creation.
SPEAKER_00: We are all image bearers, and yet uh because of our rejection of God, because of our walking away from him, we have kind of marred that image.
SPEAKER_00: You can think of it a little bit like us uh us taking a myrrh and uh and cracking in it.
SPEAKER_00: That it still reflects, but it does so in a distorted way, and that's us.
SPEAKER_00: We're image bearers, but that image is being distorted.
SPEAKER_00: And one of the things that Paul is contending for is that Jesus is the perfect image bearer, he is the perfect representation of who God is to the world.
SPEAKER_00: But not just so in the in that human sense.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus also means that in a in the divine sense.
SPEAKER_00: So he could say to Thomas in John, uh in John's gospel, John chapter 10, Thomas comes to him and says, Show us the Father, and that will be enough for us, right?
SPEAKER_00: This is you know just a little request.
SPEAKER_00: Show us uh the God of the universe, and we'll be satisfied.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus turns to Thomas and says, If you've seen me, you've seen the Father.
SPEAKER_00: He is God come close to us, veiled in flesh, the Godhead see, healed the incarnate deity, right?
SPEAKER_00: He is the transcendent Lord of the universe, drawn near.
SPEAKER_00: He is the absolute one made imminent.
SPEAKER_00: This is something that each of our hearts, if we think about it, long for.
SPEAKER_00: Each of us long for something that calls us out of ourselves, calls us to something greater, calls us outwards and upwards to experience something transcendent.
SPEAKER_00: Why is sex such an idol?
SPEAKER_00: Why is sex such a compelling thing?
SPEAKER_00: Because it's the most transcendent experience that you will have as a human being.
SPEAKER_00: We want that transcendent feeling of being called outside of ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: And one of the things that Paul is continuing for is that that transcendent other, that divine being has come close to us in the person of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And so he is worthy of our love, he is worthy of our trust, he is worthy of our worship.
SPEAKER_00: We read on, uh He says He is the He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna skip over that and put it into uh into the third point.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 16, for by him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities.
SPEAKER_00: That's the second point.
SPEAKER_00: Then by him all things were created.
SPEAKER_00: How many things?
SPEAKER_00: All of them.
SPEAKER_00: That's that's that's a lot.
SPEAKER_00: That's everything.
SPEAKER_00: We see that everything expressed in those phrases.
SPEAKER_00: Heaven and earth, visible and invisible.
SPEAKER_00: They're like linguistic brackets uh in linguistic terms.
SPEAKER_00: It's called a merism alpha and omega, beginning and end.
SPEAKER_00: It means everything in between.
SPEAKER_00: What is there outside of heaven and earth?
SPEAKER_00: Nothing.
SPEAKER_00: It's emphasizing that Jesus is the creator, that he is the active agent in creation.
SPEAKER_00: Again, going back to our previous series in the book of Genesis, Genesis 1, what do we what do we what do we have?
SPEAKER_00: We have a God who speaks.
SPEAKER_00: And God said, Let there be light, and God said, Let the waters be separated from the waters, and God said, and then there is the repeated refrain, and it was so, and it was so, and it was so.
SPEAKER_00: The implication being in Genesis 1 is that God's word, the thing that he speaks, is effectual.
SPEAKER_00: It actually causes things to happen.
SPEAKER_00: It brings light out of darkness, it brings order out of chaos.
SPEAKER_00: You fast forward to the Gospel of John.
SPEAKER_00: How does it begin?
SPEAKER_00: In the beginning was the Word.
SPEAKER_00: And the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
SPEAKER_00: He was in the beginning with God, for all things were created through him.
SPEAKER_00: Without him was not anything made that has been made.
SPEAKER_00: You cast your mind's eye down to verse 14.
SPEAKER_00: The word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory.
SPEAKER_00: The glory is of the only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the word that effective agent a creation made flesh.
SPEAKER_00: How remarkable.
SPEAKER_00: That phrase, the word, the logos in Greek, was even at that time an idea in Greek thought, in philosophy.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps if you're a philosoph a philosophy student, you've maybe even looked at Aristotle.
SPEAKER_00: The logos, the word, was this was this impersonal force, this impersonal force that uh that brought order out of chaos.
SPEAKER_00: And John takes that term and says that Jesus is the fulfillment of that.
SPEAKER_00: He is that logos that brings order out of chaos, but it's not impersonal.
SPEAKER_00: It has a face, it has a nymph.
SPEAKER_00: It walked on our earth, it walked our road and knew what it means.
SPEAKER_00: To be hungry, to be thirsty, to grieve, to to be tired, to be vexed and angry.
SPEAKER_00: Paul not only wants to emphasize the scope of creation, heaven and earth, visible and invisible, but also wants to press home that Jesus is the creator of and therefore Lord over other philosophies and spiritualities.
SPEAKER_00: That's what he means when Paul says that uh that Jesus is the one who created thrones, dominions, rulers, and authorities.
SPEAKER_00: Those are uh those are ancient Jewish ways of describing other spiritual powers, other spiritual beings.
SPEAKER_00: They step back and say, uh, you're you wondering what it is that Christians believe.
SPEAKER_00: You wouldn't call yourself a Christian, you're trying to figure it out.
SPEAKER_00: Well, one of the things that Christians believe or are is that we're supernaturalists.
SPEAKER_00: We are supernaturalists by necessity.
SPEAKER_00: We believe in a in a human being that came back from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: We don't believe that that's a metaphor.
SPEAKER_00: We believe that that really happened in history and that there's good evidence for it.
SPEAKER_00: Have a conversation about that.
SPEAKER_00: To be a Christian is to be a supernaturalist.
SPEAKER_00: We believe that miracles are true.
SPEAKER_00: We believe that that's rational.
SPEAKER_00: Because if there's a lawmaker who stands behind the laws of the universe and who has both the power and prerogative to tinker with those laws, then that's what a miracle is.
SPEAKER_00: A miracle is a tinkering with the laws of nature by the one who made them.
SPEAKER_00: Do you see?
SPEAKER_00: We are supernaturalists.
SPEAKER_00: There are forces and beings outside of our field of vision.
SPEAKER_00: And one of the things that Paul is encouraging and comforting us with is that Jesus is Lord over them.
SPEAKER_00: There is a warning and an admonition there not to worship them.
SPEAKER_00: But that thing that scares you.
SPEAKER_00: It is under the control of the Creator.
SPEAKER_00: It is under the command of the one who says, Do not be afraid.
SPEAKER_00: Third of our eight.
SPEAKER_00: Again, we continue on.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 17, and he is before all things, and in him all things altogether.
SPEAKER_00: No, sorry, that's not the wrong one.
SPEAKER_00: That's not the one.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, end of verse 16.
SPEAKER_00: It's been a long day already.
SPEAKER_00: Um, after the little hyphen there, all things were created through him and for him.
SPEAKER_00: That he is not only the agent of creation, Jesus is the goal of creation.
SPEAKER_00: And this is what I think Paul means when he describes Jesus in verse 15 as the firstborn of creation.
SPEAKER_00: Our uh Jehovah's Witness friends or our uh or our Muslim friends say, aha, look, he's a created being, the firstborn of creation.
SPEAKER_00: He's not divine.
SPEAKER_00: Well, no, verse 18, verse 19 rather will directly contradict that.
SPEAKER_00: What rather I think Paul means when he says that he is the firstborn is that he is the heir, he is the one who will inherit all of creation.
SPEAKER_00: Because that's what the firstborn did in the ancient world.
SPEAKER_00: All things were made for him.
SPEAKER_00: God the Father so loves the Son that the world was made, so that all might behold and revel in that love.
SPEAKER_00: God so loves the Son that the world might share in that joy.
SPEAKER_00: God so loves the Son that He has given those who trust in Jesus as a love gift to his Son.
SPEAKER_00: All things were made for him.
SPEAKER_00: He is the goal, the end point, the apex of this world.
SPEAKER_00: And then the verse that I accidentally read that he is before all things.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, this means in in terms of time, he is the eternal one, that that eternal divine logos, that that word who exists in eternity.
SPEAKER_00: And that is necessarily true.
SPEAKER_00: Again, that is a rational, reasonable uh way of describing God.
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of what it means to be God, is what Aristotle called the the unmoved mover, the uncaused cause.
SPEAKER_00: If you don't believe in that, then you just kind of get an infinite regression, right?
SPEAKER_00: Well, uh, who made the God, who made the God?
SPEAKER_00: Well, who made the God, who made the God, who made the God, who made the God?
SPEAKER_00: You know, you just keep on coming back.
SPEAKER_00: There has to be a point where there has to be a bottom to that, a kind of philosophical rational bottom.
SPEAKER_00: And the rational bottom, Aristotle said, is that God is the uncaused cause, the cause of all things who is not himself caused.
SPEAKER_00: And Paul is saying that the man, Jesus Christ, is that.
SPEAKER_00: He was before all things.
SPEAKER_00: He is the unmoved mover, the uncaused cause.
SPEAKER_00: It means that he was before all things, both, yes, in terms of time, but also in terms of the fact that he is the highest pursuit.
SPEAKER_00: He is the loftiest idea in all of philosophy.
SPEAKER_00: He is the most worthy, most worthy object of all art and music and poetry.
SPEAKER_00: He is our greatest pleasure.
SPEAKER_00: He is the most worthy pursuit of our life.
SPEAKER_00: He is before all things.
SPEAKER_00: And in him, second half of verse 17, in him all things hold together.
SPEAKER_00: The man Christ Jesus perpetually sustains the universe.
SPEAKER_00: The man Christ Jesus keeps your atoms from flying apart.
SPEAKER_00: He grants you every breath.
SPEAKER_00: If that's not kind of mind-boggling enough.
SPEAKER_00: That's also true at the cross.
SPEAKER_00: That's also true on Good Friday.
SPEAKER_00: That on Good Friday, as Roman soldiers were paying him mock homage, scourging his back.
SPEAKER_00: Ramming thorn and nail into flesh.
SPEAKER_00: He was allowing them to live.
SPEAKER_00: He was keeping them in being.
SPEAKER_00: He was granting them breath.
SPEAKER_00: Causing synapses to fire.
SPEAKER_00: He kept them in being.
SPEAKER_00: Those who have no desire to consider to consider Christ.
SPEAKER_00: I have no desire to follow him or to be here.
SPEAKER_00: He's graciously keeping them alive.
SPEAKER_00: How remarkable.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 18 continues.
SPEAKER_00: This is the if you want to know where we're at.
SPEAKER_00: One, two, three, four, five.
SPEAKER_00: This is six of eight.
SPEAKER_00: He is the head of the church.
SPEAKER_00: Do you see that?
SPEAKER_00: Verse 18.
SPEAKER_00: He is the head of the body that is the church.
SPEAKER_00: It would be wrong-headed of us to think of uh to think of the church as uh uh, well, certainly not as a physical edifice, bricks and mortar.
SPEAKER_00: Uh that's not that's not the church, it's a church building, that's a building in which the church meets, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Uh because the church is not a is not an organization or an institution, it is an organism.
SPEAKER_00: It is a collection of uh of people that comprise the church, specifically those who uh are trusting in, putting their faith in, following, and who love the Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You hear people uh say things like, I love Jesus, but I don't really have any time for the church.
SPEAKER_00: I love Jesus, but I don't really love the church.
SPEAKER_00: And on one level, depending on what they mean by that, you can kind of understand it, right?
SPEAKER_00: You mean the church and the church in our land uh has not had the uh, let's say, the best reputation.
SPEAKER_00: Certainly, not the church is as as institution.
SPEAKER_00: It's not covered itself in glory, to say the least.
SPEAKER_00: And so you can understand why people might come out with something like that.
SPEAKER_00: But if we understand the church as the collection of faithful people, that is, people who have put their faith in Jesus, then actually it doesn't make sense.
SPEAKER_00: It's to say I love Jesus, but I don't really love his body.
SPEAKER_00: Or to put it another way, it's to say, I love Jesus, but I don't really love what he loved.
SPEAKER_00: Because he loved the church and gave himself up for her.
SPEAKER_00: The church is his bride.
SPEAKER_00: Such that Jesus is intimately connected with his church, he is not detached from it, it is part of him.
SPEAKER_00: And so Paul, who wrote this letter before he became a Christian, was on his on his way persecuting Christians, locking them up, putting them to death, having them stoned like Stephen.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus, when he apprehends him, could look to him and say, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?
SPEAKER_00: Not why are you persecuting my followers, not why are you persecuting my church?
SPEAKER_00: It's why, Paul, are you persecuting me?
SPEAKER_00: So close is how Jesus identifies with us in our persecution.
SPEAKER_00: What great news that is for our persecuted brothers and sisters across the world, in Nigeria, in Orissa, in India, in China, in Korea, Cambodia.
SPEAKER_00: The Christ is not far, not far from those brothers and sisters, not far from those who languish in forgotten cells.
SPEAKER_00: He is the head of the body of the church.
SPEAKER_00: And so, by implication, we love the church because we love Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: We love being committed to one another because we love Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: We love serving one another because we love Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: We love speaking the truth to one another because we love Jesus, we love encouraging one another, building one another up, making that extra effort to be here, to be at communicate, because we love Jesus and we love being part of his body, that expression of his body that means here.
SPEAKER_00: To love Jesus is to love the church.
SPEAKER_00: That same verse continues on in the second sentence.
SPEAKER_00: He is the beginning.
SPEAKER_00: The firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent or supreme.
SPEAKER_00: He is the beginning of what?
SPEAKER_00: Well, we saw that he was the active agent in creation, but he is the beginning of something else.
SPEAKER_00: He is the beginning of a new creation, of a new existence, of a new heaven and a new earth.
SPEAKER_00: And how do we know?
SPEAKER_00: Because of his resurrection from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: Christianity really does rise or fall on Jesus' resurrection from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: If it didn't happen, then all of the hope is gone from Christianity.
SPEAKER_00: But because Jesus has been raised from the dead, and he is the firstborn, what does the firstborn do?
SPEAKER_00: The firstborn assures us of more to come.
SPEAKER_00: He gives you assurance that just as Jesus died, you will die, and just as he rose again, you will rise in him on that last day.
SPEAKER_00: And it's not a metaphor.
SPEAKER_00: It is a physical, existential, eternal reality.
SPEAKER_00: But that's not just something to look forward to, that's actually something to place your hope in now.
SPEAKER_00: A hope of renewal.
SPEAKER_00: A hope of restoration.
SPEAKER_00: A hope of reunion.
SPEAKER_00: Hope for a day when the Lord will make all things new, and mourning and pain and crying will be counted amongst the former things.
SPEAKER_00: The resurrection lifts our gaze to that and gives us hope.
SPEAKER_00: And that's such good news.
SPEAKER_00: Do you know why?
SPEAKER_00: Because outside of faith in Jesus, the things that we hope in tend to be circumstances.
SPEAKER_00: We tend to put our hope in a circumstance.
SPEAKER_00: Relationship, career, bank balance.
SPEAKER_00: The problem with that is that all of those things are changeable.
SPEAKER_00: Certainly in an ultimate sense.
SPEAKER_00: The one who you love will die.
SPEAKER_00: Have a great day.
SPEAKER_00: Do you know what I mean?
SPEAKER_00: If you want a royal are going to get married next month, and one of the things that you will say, until death do us part, one of you will die.
SPEAKER_00: Not in, you know, not in the short term, but that circumstance will change.
SPEAKER_00: If your hope is in the other person, then your hope dies too.
SPEAKER_00: And when hope is dead, you're really in a tough spot then.
SPEAKER_00: But if your hope is not based in a circumstance that is changeable, but on a person who is eternal, then hope can never fade.
SPEAKER_00: Spoke in this last service on the last service at 10 o'clock.
SPEAKER_00: With someone who has gone through the ringer a little bit over the last couple of weeks.
SPEAKER_00: And yet they were saying about how they can still rejoice.
SPEAKER_00: How they can still have hope.
SPEAKER_00: Not because of the circumstances that they find themselves in, because they're painful.
SPEAKER_00: But because the gospel gives them a hope that is imperishable.
SPEAKER_00: Kept in heaven for us.
SPEAKER_00: And if Paul in verse 19, it's almost as though he wanted to disabuse us of any other notions that we might have about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: This is the final one before we look at his work, and there's only one point there.
SPEAKER_00: For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.
SPEAKER_00: How divine is Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: Fully.
SPEAKER_00: The fullness of God was pleased to dwell in him.
SPEAKER_00: There is no rivalry between Father, Son, and Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: The Father was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in the Son.
SPEAKER_00: He is not a lesser God, a demigod, a philosopher or sage.
SPEAKER_00: He is not merely a moral teacher, he is fully God.
SPEAKER_00: And the glory and the beauty of that phrase in the book of Colossians only really comes into the four in the second chapter.
SPEAKER_00: And I'll give you a little insight into it.
SPEAKER_00: Because one of the things that the Colossians were wondering, and maybe you're wondering, is is this it?
SPEAKER_00: Is this Jesus it?
SPEAKER_00: Is there any more?
SPEAKER_00: Is there more that I have to do?
SPEAKER_00: Can I have Jesus in a little bit of that?
SPEAKER_00: Is Jesus sufficient for my flourishing?
SPEAKER_00: Is he sufficient for my life and happiness?
SPEAKER_00: That's all the sorts of things that the Colossians were wondering.
SPEAKER_00: And Paul says here in verse 19 that all of God was in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: All that is in God, you have seen in the person of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And then in the second chapter, he'd say, and you are united to him by faith.
SPEAKER_00: You are in him.
SPEAKER_00: And so all of that fullness of God, you have access to it by faith in him.
SPEAKER_00: You, Christian, if you are trusting in Jesus, you lack nothing.
SPEAKER_00: God has withheld no good thing from you.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't mean that in a material sense, because perhaps some of you are struggling materially.
SPEAKER_00: Or in a relational sense, because perhaps some of you are longing for a relationship.
SPEAKER_00: But if you see that you are in Christ and Christ is in God, can you not see that you lack no good thing?
SPEAKER_00: The greatest benefit of being a follower of Jesus is not that you get stuff like eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: It's that you get God.
SPEAKER_00: And finally, Paul switches in the final verses, and this is much quicker, to talk about his work.
SPEAKER_00: And how amazing, given what we've just looked at.
SPEAKER_00: This one who is fully divine, the image of God, the head of the church, the one who created all things, the one who is the goal of all things.
SPEAKER_00: What did that sort of person do?
SPEAKER_00: He reconciled all of humanity to himself.
SPEAKER_00: How?
SPEAKER_00: He did it by the blood of his cross.
SPEAKER_00: This Jesus who was fully divine made himself nothing, so that we could be at peace with God.
SPEAKER_00: And oh how we needed it.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 21, 22.
SPEAKER_00: What is our diagnosis, biblically speaking, outside of faith in Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: We're alienated, cut off, wandering.
SPEAKER_00: Don't you feel it?
SPEAKER_00: Or remember it?
SPEAKER_00: That before you were a Christian, that restlessness, that looking for something that just was fleeting.
SPEAKER_00: Alienated.
SPEAKER_00: Doing evil and hostile.
SPEAKER_00: You see, it is not as though humanity lies cut off and neutral towards God.
SPEAKER_00: It's actually that we really don't want anything to do with Him.
SPEAKER_00: It's actually act of hostility.
SPEAKER_00: It's not just meh, I could take or leave Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: It's that no, I don't want him anything anywhere near my life.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you very much.
SPEAKER_00: I'm happy enough.
SPEAKER_00: It's shaking our fist at the heavens.
SPEAKER_00: And what did Jesus do for us while we were in that state?
SPEAKER_00: He has reconciled us, verse 22, in his body of flesh, by his death, in order to present us, you, holy and blameless and above reproach before him.
SPEAKER_00: We are no longer alienated if we trust in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: We're no longer alienated, we are reconciled.
SPEAKER_00: What a glorious thing reconciliation is.
SPEAKER_00: And so Paul says, Stay there.
SPEAKER_00: Don't move from that.
SPEAKER_00: That's what you build your life on.
SPEAKER_00: That's where you center your hope.
SPEAKER_00: That's where you place your trust.
SPEAKER_00: Don't move on from that.
SPEAKER_00: There isn't, there isn't Jesus, you know, do bit of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus will get me started on my spiritual walk, but then I'll move on to other things.
SPEAKER_00: I've matured beyond Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said, Paul's saying, plant yourself there and put your roots deeper into Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Don't move from there.
SPEAKER_00: That is who Jesus is and what he has done from you.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus satisfies all of the deepest longings of our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: We crave beauty and transcendence.
SPEAKER_00: And in Jesus we see the face of God.
SPEAKER_00: We crave intimacy.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus has drawn close to us.
SPEAKER_00: He is God made flesh.
SPEAKER_00: We crave acceptance.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus has reconciled us to God.
SPEAKER_00: So that we are no longer alienated but adopted into his family.
SPEAKER_00: He is the locus.
SPEAKER_00: He is the focal point of real, satisfying, life-giving, joy-sustaining faith.
SPEAKER_00: Let us at the gateway to the year expand our horizons and to encourage one another with the full scope of who Jesus is.