Well, I say amen to that sermon we've
already had this morning.
On Disneyland.
And if you'd only kept on another two
or three minutes, I needn't have preached at
all.
Well, now, I'm feeling all right.
But that's what you say.
We ought to have a vote on that,
I should imagine.
Anyway, don't worry about me, I'm all right.
I feel like ten men this morning, nine
dead and one dying.
But I'll be all right by tonight.
Now, let us read together from the Word,
the Holy Scriptures, from Colossians, chapter 1.
One preacher was arriving at a certain town,
trying to find his way around to where
he was staying.
And there was a boy he inquired of.
The boy said, I'll take you, it's across
this field.
And as they were going across the field,
the preacher thought he'd put a word in
for the Lord.
He said, do you go to Sunday school,
my son?
He said, yes, sir.
And he said, can you remember what you
learn at Sunday school?
He said, yes, sir.
He said, well, what did you have last
week?
He said, we had the story of Jacob,
sir.
Well, that's very good.
And he said, what did you have the
week before that?
Well, the other minute, he said, oh, we
had the story of Abraham.
Well, he said, that's very good.
He said, do you ever have the story
of Jesus?
He said, oh, no, sir, that's at the
other end of the book.
Let's hope he got to the other end
of the book sometime rather soon.
But I think we get the most benefit
when we get straight at the glorious person
and work of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Preaching Christ is the greatest means of building
the saints of God and converting sinners of
the Gentiles.
Now, Colossians chapter 1.
Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the
will of God, and Timotheus, our brother, to
the saints and faithful brethren in Christ, which
are Colossae.
So they were both in Christ and in
Colossae.
It must have been, meant a lot to
them that they were in Christ.
And let's hope it meant a lot to
Christ that they were in Colossae.
Grace be unto you and peace from God
our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
We give thanks to God and the Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for
you.
Since we heard of your faith in Christ
Jesus and the love which you have to
all the saints, for the hope which is
laid up for you in heaven, whereof ye
heard before in the word of the truth
of the gospel, which is come unto you
as it is in all the world, and
bringeth forth fruit as it doth also in
you, since the day ye heard of it
and knew the grace of God in truth.
As ye also learned of Epaphras, our dear
fellow servant, who is for you a faithful
minister of Christ, who also declared unto us
your love in the Spirit, for this cause
we also, since the day we heard of
it, we heard it, do not cease to
pray for you, and to desire that ye
might be filled with the knowledge of his
will, in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, that
ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto
all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work,
and increasing in the knowledge of God.
Strengthened with all might according to his glorious
power, unto all patience and longsuffering with joyfulness,
giving thanks unto the Father, who hath made
us meet to be partakers of the inheritance
of the saints in light, who hath delivered
us from the power of darkness, and hath
translated us into the kingdom of his dear
Son, in whom we have redemption through his
blood, even the forgiveness of sins, who is
the image of the invisible God, the firstborn
of every creature.
For in him were all things created, that
are in heaven, that are in earth, visible
and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions
or principalities or powers, all things were created
by him and for him, and he is
before all things, and by him all things
consist.
And he is the head of the church,
he is the head of the body of
the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn
from the dead, that in all things he
might have the preeminence.
For it pleased the Father that in him
should all fullness dwell, and having made peace
through the blood of his cross, by him
to reconcile all things unto himself.
By him I say whether they be things
in earth or things in heaven.
And you that were sometime alienated and enemies
in your mind by wicked works, yet now
hath he reconciled.
Alienation is judicial, it is a dismissal from
God.
In the body of his flesh through death
he hath reconciled you, to present you holy
and unblameable and unapprovable in his sight.
If ye continue in the faith grounded and
settled, be not moved away from the hope
of the gospel, which ye have heard and
which was preached to every creature which is
under heaven, whereof I, Paul, am made a
minister."
Verse 28, Christ, the hope of glory, whom
we preach, warning every man and teaching every
man in all wisdom that we may present
every man perfect in Christ Jesus.
May the Lord impress this beautiful portion of
his word upon our hearts and minds this
morning.
Now the Apostle Paul, while he was there
in prison in Rome, received a very special
guest in his, I would imagine, one room
apartment.
And this man had travelled by foot nine
hundred and fifty miles except a short part
of that, a few miles when he probably
came over the straits by boat to the
southern part of Italy.
And he'd come all the way from Colossae
in Phrygia, the district of Phrygia in Asia
Minor, Turkey as it is today.
There was just there a triangle of three
New Testament churches, Laodicea, Hierapolis and Colossae.
And the Apostle Paul had never been just
exactly into that area, although he had been
around that area and fairly near to Ephesus
for some time.
And while he was at Ephesus preaching, he
had met one or two people from Colossae
and had led them to Christ, among them
a very fine nobleman of Colossae that we
hope to be talking about tomorrow, either morning
or evening.
I haven't decided which yet when we speak
on the letter to Philemon.
May probably both, but we'll wait and see
how the Lord leads about that.
But this man from Colossae was called Epaphras.
Not to be confused with Epaphroditus, who was
the young man who came from Philippi with
that love offering we were talking about last
night, you remember.
Now Epaphras had a burden on his heart
for the church from which he came.
And there was error beginning to creep into
the church at Colossae.
He was most concerned about it because he
had evidently founded the church at Colossae.
He had been used by God in evangelism
and in pastoral care afterwards as an elder
in the church to build up the church.
But now it seems there was one man,
and I agree with Harold St. John here,
my late beloved friend of beautiful memory, Harold
St. John.
I agree with him here that there was
probably one man who was now in the
church at Colossae who was spreading error in
the ways that we shall mention as we
go along.
And to prove the point you can see
from chapter 2 and in verse 4 he
says, This I say, lest any man beguile
you.
And in verse 8, beware lest any man
spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit.
Verse 16, let no man therefore judge you.
And verse 18, let no man beguile you.
So it does seem that there was one
man.
But the error was there and it was
inclined to spread and spread rapidly because of
the traditions that most of these Christians had
been brought up in and Epaphras was very
concerned about it and he came all the
way to Colossae to tell Paul about it
and about him and to ask Paul to
pray.
Well, now Paul not only prayed for these
Christians, he did that immediately.
He didn't know them in the flesh, although
I think he knew one of the leaders,
Philemon, he led him to Christ.
But he was very concerned for them and
you'll see that his prayer is in verse
9.
For this course, since the day we heard
it, this is from Epaphras who's just come,
we do not cease to pray for you,
and this is the burden of my prayer
for you, he says, that you might be
filled with the knowledge of his will in
all wisdom and spiritual understanding.
Now he said, not only am I praying
for you Colossians, but Epaphras, you know Epaphras
well, look at chapter 4 and verse 12,
he says, I'm sending you greetings from various
people here and people that you know and
Epaphras is one of you, verse 12.
He's one of your city, that is, as
you know he's a servant of Christ and
he salutes you.
He's always labouring fervently for you in prayer.
Now Epaphras, they knew, had laboured fervently for
them in evangelism and had founded the church
and now he's not with them for a
time absent, he's still labouring fervently in prayer,
he says he's praying for you.
And the burden of his prayer is very
similar to the burden of my prayer.
My prayer is that you might be filled
with the knowledge of his will in all
wisdom and spiritual understanding.
Because wisdom is the right outworking of knowledge.
We want you to know his will and
work it out rightly and Epaphras' prayer is
that you might stand perfect and complete in
all the will of God.
So both of us are praying that you
might know God's will and be complete in
God's will and in its outworking in your
Christian lives and in your assembly.
Now the point is this, the Christians at
Colossae or some of them were not giving
to the Lord Jesus his rightful place.
Christ with son, especially with this one man
who was propagating this doctrinal error, Christ was
not first, he was not the head, he
was not the preeminent one.
Now the apostle knew, Epaphras knew that there
is no spiritual maturity, there is no completion
in maturity unless the believer is in the
will of God.
And nobody can be in the centre of
the will of God unless he's giving to
the Lord Jesus his rightful place as number
one and preeminent.
Well now you see this was the burden
on the apostle's heart when he not only
prayed for the Christians but when he decided
to write to them after a while.
And this is the letter he wrote as
I'm quite sure he placed himself under the
actual and deliberate control of the Holy Spirit
so that his words as he wrote them
or dictated them would be the words of
God not only to the Christians at Colossae
but to you and to me today.
It was most important that they should learn
to give to the Lord Jesus the preeminence,
the first place and it's very important that
you and I should do that too.
Therefore the key verse to the whole of
this epistle is the first part or rather
the last part of verse 18 of chapter
1, that in all things he might have
the preeminence.
And we shall see as we try to
give you a little analysis now as it
comes to my mind we'll see that this
is the centre of the whole idea.
In chapter 1 you have the believer and
his sovereign Lord.
In chapter 2 you have the believer and
his judicial standing.
In chapter 3 you have the believer and
his spiritual state.
And in chapter 4 you have the believer
and his balanced service as seen in these
chosen personalities that Paul sends greetings from and
to as well as the exhortations at the
beginning of that chapter.
The believer and his balanced service in chapter
4.
So if you want to analyse it a
bit better than that you get the introduction
and then the Christ and then the church
and then the conclusion.
The introduction is chapter 1 verses 1 to
14.
His salutation, his thanksgiving and his prayer.
And then secondly the Christ.
This is chapter 1 and verse 15 to
29.
One of the 3 or 4 or 5
great and mighty Christological passages in the New
Testament.
This is outstanding.
The Christ chapter 1 verses 15 to 29.
And then the church thirdly chapter 2 to
chapter 4 and verse 6.
And then the conclusion chapter 4 verses 7
to 18 as I said salutations from chosen
personalities.
There are two key words in the letter
preeminence and fullness.
And that's a very interesting word in the
Greek pleroma.
It means completeness that to which nothing can
be added because it is full and complete
in itself.
And you'll see that this comes in so
many times especially in relation to Christ but
also in relation to Christians.
For in him dwelleth all the fullness the
pleroma of the Godhead bodily.
And you are the pleroma, the fullness in
him.
Say unto, what's that man at the end
of chapter 4?
Say unto Archippus the ministry that thou hast
received in the Lord, fulfil it.
And there is the same word again as
is used so many times in this beautiful
letter.
But when we talk about the preeminence of
course we're only talking about one.
And that is the preeminence of the Lord
Jesus because Paul was very anxious that they
should give to Christ his rightful place.
But he approaches the subject most delicately and
graciously and diplomatically.
You see it heard from Epaphras that this
man was propagating a traditional philosophy.
And was suggesting in all probability that there
were many more intermediaries between sinful men and
Christ's holy God.
Indeed that there were many angels, angelic beings
through which we should come to God as
well as through Christ.
And of course this was erroneous doctrine.
And we shall see in this letter not
only is Christ the preeminent one in creation
and in conservance and in the church and
in the resurrection and in the believer.
But we see, that is in chapter 1.
But in chapter 2 we see that Christ
is the preeminent one as the true wisdom
of God in the first few verses of
chapter 2.
And then Christ is seen as preeminent over
traditional philosophy.
And Christ is seen as preeminent over Jewish
legality as well.
And then later on in chapter 2 Christ
is seen as preeminent over modern mysticism of
the day.
And then Christ is preeminent over asceticism too.
And Christ is seen at the beginning of
chapter 3 as preeminent as the very life
of the believer.
And the whole epistle and letter is about
the Lord Jesus, the glory of his person
as the preeminent one and the marvel of
his work and his preeminence.
Well now, I thought we ought to this
morning with the time that is left to
us start on the subject from the beginning
of the chapter 1 and in all probability
we shall leave the main theme, the preeminence
of the Lord Jesus until this evening and
try to make a sermon out of it.
When I say that I mean not just
a study, it will be that I trust,
but an inspirational sermon as well.
Excuse me using the word sermon but it's
the right word.
And if you can stand anywhere in a
pulpit or on a soapbox in the open
air and give an address on any kind
of a subject in the world, any secular
subject.
But if you stand up in the name
of God and open his word and preach
his word and give a homily from which
comes the word homiletics then that is to
be correct in English, English, English.
I'm not talking about American English now.
The correct word is sermon.
Well now forgive me, that's one of my
little asides.
I have these little asides from time to
time as they come into my mind.
No point in it at all really, but
just by way of explanation.
But you will notice here that the apostle
is very carefully and diplomatically approaching the subject
that he has in his mind.
Now this remember was once the arrogant idealist
and persecutor of the church, Saul of Tarsus.
Now he in my opinion has grown in
grace at a terrific rate and absolutely marvellously.
And he has become the most gracious, careful,
diplomatic servant of Christ.
Now you see, Epaphras came and told him
about the trouble and he didn't immediately, before
he started to pray about it, get out
his pen and say this, Dear Brethren at
Colossae, Epaphras has told me about the trouble
in your church.
I'm very concerned about it and now I'm
writing to put you right.
Now listen to me.
Nothing like that at all.
He says, Brethren, I have heard from our
dear brother Epaphras of your faith in Christ
Jesus, verse 4, and the love that you
have to all the saints, verse 4, and
about the hope which is laid up for
you in heaven.
He speaks of the three cardinal virtues which
were there.
And so he very graciously approaches the subject,
in thanking God for them and for their
faith and love and hope.
And for the fact that they have not
only heard the gospel, but they have received
the gospel.
And that in them, verse 6, it was
bringing forth fruit.
Now the true gospel and the full gospel,
and notice here the full gospel includes the
preaching of the hope at the end of
verse 5 and the beginning of verse 6.
And the true and full gospel, which includes
the preaching of the glorious hope we have
in heaven, is always fruitful unto God.
Remember that.
God's words shall not return unto him void,
but shall prosper in the thing whereto he
sent it.
Now notice that the hope that they had
was laid up for them in heaven.
Now in this connection, I think I want
to take a minute or two for a
little further aside.
It's really to do with the subject.
We are trying to, in an inspirational way,
expound a few of these verses as we
get to the main points and themes of
the epistle.
But you see, the hope is in heaven.
And I want you American Christians to understand,
if you will, from the word of God,
that you are not going to live at
Park of the Palms for a thousand years
during the millennium.
I know you would like to.
And America itself is a lovely place.
And it's most glorious.
And I'm just waiting for some dear brother
to take me in his car, my wife
as well of course, right across America so
that we can see it one of these
days.
Because we haven't seen much of it yet.
But they tell me it's a terrific country.
And all these American, lots of these American
Christians I've met, they want to live in
America during the millennium and stay here.
But you're not going to.
Your hope is in heaven.
And heaven's a nice place.
It's far better than America.
I know you can't believe that, but it's
absolutely true.
It has not yet entered into the heart
of man what great things God has prepared
for those that love him.
Now even we can show it from this
passage that this is so.
In verse 5, the hope which is laid
up for you in heaven.
We have a heavenly calling.
We are a heavenly people.
Look at verse 12.
God has already made us to meet, to
be partakers of the inheritance of the saints
in light.
And that of course is speaking of heaven,
the saints in the glory.
And in 1 Peter 1, the inheritance is
reserved for us in heaven.
And in John 14, the Lord Jesus said,
in my Father's home are many resting places.
And I go there to prepare a place
there for you, and I'll come again and
take you there to be with me, that
where I am there ye may be also.
And in Revelation 21, you know the New
Jerusalem, the New Jerusalem has no sun and
no night.
Well now in the Jerusalem in the Middle
East, when I was there they had both
sun and night.
Sun during the day and night during the
night time.
And that will continue during the millennium.
And, but there's another Jerusalem you know.
A New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven
but not to the earth, over the earth,
we shall reign over the earth in Christ.
Just as I was talking the other day,
you remember, about our complete union with Christ.
Just as we are in Christ's death, and
in Christ's life, and in Christ's exaltation, and
in Christ's glorification, God sees us in Him
completely, so also we are in Christ's reign,
or we shall be.
Yet to be revealed and made manifest and
perfected.
And of course, as He shall reign over
the earth, we shall reign in Him.
We shall have power and authority in Christ,
in His reign over the earth.
And of course we're going to have glorified
bodies.
This mortal shall put on immortality.
This body of humiliation, don't call it a
vile body, that's an unfortunate word.
This body of humiliation shall change to give
place to a body of glory like our
glorified Lord.
And what do you think we're going to
have glorified bodies for?
To live in glory with of course.
Heaven is our home and we're going to
be with Him in heaven.
Where Jesus is, it is heaven there.
So there'll be no sun in the New
Jerusalem.
The Lamb will be the light.
There'll be no night there.
And of course in 1 Corinthians 15 it
says we shall bear the image of the
heavenly.
Because we are going to heaven.
And flesh and blood cannot inherit incorruptible, the
incorruptible state.
So we're going to have glorified bodies.
And although you may not believe it, that'll
be a blessing to you.
And the greatest blessing that can possibly come
to a Christian is when he or she
is ushered into the Lord's presence to live
in heaven with Him forever.
Well I thought I ought to mention that
in passing.
I've taken far too long and we've robbed
ourselves of some of the main theme of
the epistle.
Never mind, perhaps it's a little word for
somebody.
So the hope that you have is in
heaven.
Well now you know there are thousands of
books, reams and reams of pages written and
printed and published on the Colossian era.
And to my mind it's totally extreme and
unscriptural.
You've probably noticed by now I just don't
follow the usual trend.
You look in anybody's theological library you'll find
reams and reams, books and volumes on the
Colossian era.
And we have some suggestion as to what
era this was.
But I want to show this, this morning
briefly, that this era had not gripped the
church wholly and totally and completely.
It was not so serious as all these
volumes make out.
And there were suggestions of a more definite
era that came about in the 2nd and
3rd centuries that certainly hadn't developed by this
time in the 1st century AD 60, 62.
That always gives me a bit of a
heart attack not being used to it this
time in the morning.
By about the last morning I should just
be used to it.
Now you see he is not only thanking
them for their faith and love and hope
or thanking God for it in them.
Notice in verse 2 he calls them saints
and faithful brethren in Christ.
So most of them generally must have been
quite faithful to the Lord.
It seems to me that only one man
was propagating this era and he hadn't got
very far with it.
But he perhaps saw the danger and asked
the Apostle Paul's advice and prayer for this
problem.
Well now the Apostle says I want you
to know God's will and work it out
wisely with spiritual understanding.
This is verse 9.
So that you may walk worthily of the
Lord unto all pleasing.
How could Jehovah be pleased and glorified through
the walk of any Christian who has not
given to Christ his rightful preeminent place.
Now when we come to verse 13 the
Apostle says God the Father has already delivered
us from the power of darkness and has
already translated us into the kingdom of his
dear son.
Maybe we were thinking that we had got
to wait till the coming of the Lord
to be ushered into his kingdom.
But if you are in Christ who is
the king then you are in the kingdom.
And of course it is quite true to
say the kingdom is in you.
It is not only among you it is
in you if the king is in you.
And if you are a Christian then the
king of the kingdom is in you.
The king and the kingdom is in you.
And so here the Apostle Paul begins his
Christological passage by speaking of the kingship of
the Lord Jesus and then his sonship and
then his image of God and then his
fullness.
This of course is the first section of
this important passage.
This first section is about his glorious person.
The second section is about his wonderful passion.
And the third section is about his essential
preeminence, his glorious person.
You notice that there are three parties here
that the Apostle has in his mind.
Verse thirteen, his dear son.
Verse twenty-one, and you.
And verse twenty-three, I Paul.
Now in relation to the first, his dear
son.
When the Apostle after his greetings and thanksgivings
and salutations and prayers.
When he suddenly mentions the phrase, he's translated
us into the kingdom of his dear son.
His dear son fills his mind and his
heart and now he can think about nothing
else and no one else but Christ.
And at great lengths he goes on to
speak of the glory of his person, the
wonder of his passion and his essential preeminence.
And so he says first of all, something
about his kingship.
We have been translated into the kingdom of
his dear son.
Now it goes without saying that we all
know our Lord Jesus is a king.
Well you say he's not reigning on earth
now.
Well no, in one sense he's not.
We must never get away from the fact
that Christ is king.
He was king, he is king, he will
be king.
He was born king of the Jews.
He was the rejected king, we will not
have this man to reign over us.
Over his head was his accusation written on
the cross, this is Jesus the king of
the Jews.
And then when he died and rose again
and ascended on high, the gates of heaven
swung open wide and God the Father gave
him honour and glory and made him king
of glory.
This is seen very manifestly in Psalm 24
where it says the earth is the Lord's.
Suddenly someone has become king over all the
earth in this prophetic scripture in Psalm 24.
And then the cry goes out, who is
this one who is mighty in battle and
become king over all the earth?
He is the king of glory, he is
the king of glory.
So the king of glory will eventually become
king over all the earth.
But in another sense, Christ is reigning on
earth now.
Now it isn't right and correct as I've
heard some of our leading brethren in England
say.
I must oppose this teaching from the world.
It isn't right to say that the Lord
Jesus is now king of kings and lord
of lords over the earth.
He's not.
He's not reigning on earth.
It is his right to reign now on
earth but not his time.
One of these days it will be his
time.
And the prophetic scriptures about his reign over
the earth will be right and true and
correct and fulfilled.
Psalm 72 has one example.
He shall reign from the river to the
ends of the earth.
His enemies shall lick the dust.
Kings and presidents shall bow before him and
the glory of the Lord shall fill the
earth.
And at the end of that psalm David
says Amen, Amen, the double Amen, meaning of
course at the end of one of the
books of the Psalms which is very significant
here.
He says the prayers of David the son
of Jesse are ended.
Nothing left to pray for.
He's satisfied in his vision.
He's seen Christ reigning over all the earth
and getting all the glory from all its
creation.
Satisfied.
Nothing left to pray for.
Amen, Amen.
The prayers of David the son of Jesse
are ended.
Now that is to come.
But now it isn't so.
You know it isn't.
America wouldn't be in such a mess as
it is today if the Lord Jesus was
reigning on earth.
And Britain wouldn't be such a pagan and
immoral country as it is if the Lord
Jesus was reigning on earth.
But he is reigning in one sense.
In the hearts of his own.
And that's how the kingdom of God is
within you.
Because the king is within you.
King of my life I crown thee now.
Thine shall the glory be.
Lest I forget thy thorn-crowned brow.
Lead me to Calvary.
Well so much for his kingship.
It's a big subject.
But his sonship as well is mentioned here.
And that's even a bigger subject.
I think we're going to pass over this
very quickly.
Only for the sake of time.
He has translated us into the kingdom of
his dear son.
Thank God that this platform stands for the
eternity of our Lord Jesus Christ.
I thank God this pulpit stands for the
Lord Jesus being the son, the eternal word
of God.
And when it ceases to do so, I
hope the park of the palms will sink
into oblivion.
Because if Jesus be not the son of
God, the eternal word, then our preaching is
vain and there's no hope for mankind.
For a saviour who is not quite God
is a bridge broken at the Father in.
At his baptism the word was from heaven,
this is my beloved son in whom I
am well pleased.
On the mount of transfiguration this was the
word from the Father, this is my beloved
son, hear him.
And that prophetical word in Psalm 45.
My heart is bubbling over, I'm speaking of
the King.
Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever.
Is fulfilled in Christ according to Hebrews chapter
1.
This passage is cited there.
And unto the Son he saith, unto the
Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is
forever and ever.
So you see, he is not just one
of the intermediaries.
He is not just another angel between us
and God.
There is one God and one mediator between
man and God.
The man Christ Jesus, for he is the
God-man, the eternal word, his dear Son.
And then of course in verse 15 we're
still on the subject of his glorious person.
In verse 15, his image of God.
He is the image of the invisible God,
the firstborn of every creature.
Now 15a, the image of the invisible God.
Now in Britain they have recently gone metric
as far as the coinage is concerned.
And there are not now 240 pennies in
a pound or pence in a pound, but
there are just 100 pence in a pound.
The pound has kept its value, except that,
glad to say, we give ourselves a pat
on the back.
It's about time we did as well, that
the pound is going up a little bit
in value these days.
And, but there's still 100 pence in the
pound, you see.
Well now, on the side of these coins,
you see, there's an image of the invisible
Queen.
Well she's mostly invisible.
I mean if you went over to Britain
and stayed outside the railings of Buckingham Palace
hoping to see the Queen, I doubted you'd
see her.
Possible chance.
But to most people she is the invisible
Queen.
But there's the image of the invisible Queen.
And how do we know about God and
the attributes of the divine?
We see them in the divine Son.
All fullness, as Dr. Wayne, his translation puts
it, with a capital F, all fullness was
pleased to dwell in Him.
He is the fullness of the Godhead bodily.
God was in Christ.
He is the exact visible likeness and representation
of the invisible God.
And He hath declared the Father.
Not only so, in verse 19 it speaks
of Him as possessing the fullness.
Oh, I just mentioned that in another connection.
It pleased the Father that in Him should
all fullness dwell.
He's not only the image of God, the
visible representation of the invisible, but He's the
fullness of the Godhead bodily.
The Lord Jesus said before Abraham was, I
am.
Now this verse 19 is confirmed again in
chapter 2 and verse 9.
In Him dwelleth all the fullness of the
Godhead bodily.
Now you couldn't say that about an angel.
And this brother in this Colossian church couldn't
say that about any of the angels.
Not even about the archangel.
But all the attributes of deity, everyone was
found in Christ.
And by the way, everyone was found in
Christ when He was here upon earth as
well.
And that's a very important doctrine which I
cannot go into now, but this is where
a lot of erroneous doctrine and modernist theology
has come in at this point.
Therefore it's necessary to emphasise it.
Now very quickly as I close this morning,
I want to not only mention His glorious
person, but His wonderful passion.
The work that He did upon the cross
of Calvary, Paul is taken up with this
very much.
And he is the pre-eminent one because
of his person and because of his work.
He is number one because of who he
is.
And he is number one because of what
he has done.
And when the apostle speaks of his wonderful
work and what he has done to make
him the pre-eminent one, then of course
he concentrates not on his life, not on
his teachings, but as you might expect, on
his passion, on his cross work.
You'll notice in verse 14, in whom we
have redemption, through his blood.
And then in verse 20, having made peace
through the blood of his cross.
And then in verse 22, in the body
of his flesh, through death to present you
holy.
And so, it all depends upon the blood
of Christ.
The work of Christ does our redemption, reconciliation
and justification.
You see, verse 14 is speaking of redemption
through his blood.
And verse 20 is speaking of reconciliation through
the blood of his cross.
And verse 22 is speaking about justification through
his death.
And again, through the death of the cross.
So, whatever blessing a believer has in Christ,
redemption, that is, he is brought back to
God from the slave market of sin, or
reconciliation, he is brought back to God into
the blessings of relationship.
That's the definition of reconciliation.
Or justification, he's vindicated in the sight of
God and accounted as though he'd never sinned
at all.
Any blessing that the believer has in the
sight of God, in his standing before God,
it is through the blood of Christ, through
the death of Christ.
Now, to be absolutely theologically correct, I must
remind you that the words in verse 14,
through his blood, are not in the original
text.
But of course, we gather from the passages
I've already referred to, that the meaning is
correct.
So, it's not so erroneous to put it
in there, because according to the context, the
meaning is right.
In whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of
sins.
And from the context, it is through the
work of the cross.
So, we glory this morning in his glorious
person.
He is the only one, because he's the
image of God.
He's the Son of God.
He's God's King.
And all the fullness of God is in
him.
And we glory in his wonderful work of
the cross.
The blood of his cross is that which
makes us knight of God, brings us every
blessing, redemption, reconciliation and justification.
And we want to confess before God this
morning, that all we are and all we
ever hope to be and possess, we owe
to the Lord Jesus and all that he
has done for us.
Unworthy though we be, so we glory in
his person and in his work.
And I trust that tonight, we shall respond
and glory in his preeminence.
Let us pray.
Heavenly Father, we worship thee now.
Thou our heads and our hearts and glorify
thine name for the gift of thy Son.
All that he is in himself and all
that thou hast made him to be to
us, who believe.
We pray that thou reveal him and more
of his glory and his work and the
wonder of it to our souls as we
go on day by day until we see
his face.
And then the veil is taken away and
we shall see him as he is.
And indeed, we shall be like him and
share his glory and share his reign.
Amen.