"One King"

There was once a man who was hiking along a narrow trail that wove its way along a beautiful mountainside. The man was so overwhelmed by the sheer beauty of all that his eyes saw that he wasn’t paying much attention to where he was going. When the trail turned, the man did not, and he slipped over the edge of a cliff. As he fell, the man grabbed a branch that was growing from the side of the cliff. Once he was hanging there for a few moments, he realized that he couldn’t get himself out of the situation that he was in and that he wasn’t gonna be able to hang on for long, so he started to call for help.

The man shouted is desperation, “Help! Help! Is anybody up there?” Then a voice responded, “Yes, I’m here!” The man said back, “Who is up there?” The voice said, “The Lord.” The man said, “Lord, help me!” The voice said, “Do you trust me?” The man said, “Lord, I trust you completely,” to which the voice replied, “Good. Then let go of the branch.” “What???” asked the man, now alarmed. The voice said once more, “I said, ‘Let go of the branch.’” Then there was a long silence along that mountainside that was finally broken by the sound of the man’s voice… “Is anybody else up there?”

Tension

My friends, he is risen!

I stand before you in the complete and certain confidence that the tomb where Jesus was laid on the night of his crucifixion is empty! My friends, the tomb of Jesus is empty! Death could not contain Jesus! I’ve got all my eggs in the basket of the God Man who once died and is alive forevermore.

And I know that confidence in the resurrection of Jesus may be true for some of you and yet, for others, there may be shreds of doubt. I would tell you that you wouldn’t be alone in your doubt. Doubt and skepticism have been a fashionable line of thinking ever since a French philosopher was sitting in his basement and wrote, “I doubt—therefore I think; I think, therefore I am.” Summing him up, he said, “I doubt…therefore I am.” In other words, if you follow that line of reasoning, doubt is at the core of our human existence.

Do you doubt? Sure, we all have the ability to doubt. I mean, I have doubts all the time. For example, I doubt that my phone showing me advertisements for things I talked about is just a coincidence. That ever happen to y’all? Any way, do you doubt the resurrection of Jesus Christ? Do you doubt the claims of the gospel?

Truth

Now I said that doubt became fashionable because of the guy who said “I think, therefore I am,” but that’s not the first occurrence of doubt. Doubt is all over the Bible. There were hundreds of people who saw Jesus Christ resurrected. They saw him, they touched him, they ate with him, the whole thing and the Bible says that Matthew 28:17 “...when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted.”

I think it’s fair to say that some doubts had crept in to the Colossian church when this letter was written to them. The portion of the Bible that I read for you comes from a letter from a first century church planter and missionary named Paul. He is writing to Christians who were very new in their faith in Jesus, who had accepted the preaching that Jesus Christ is King of all and yet, with time, they had started to wonder. There were some people who had started coming to their church who were telling them that what they had been told, and what they had come to believe, wasn’t exactly true and that it would be better for them to denounce this Jesus character. These people were part of a faith that was still waiting for God to send a Savior to redeem a people and as far as they were concerned, Jesus wasn’t him. And as Paul writes to these people who were young in their faith, he is warning them about being held captive by their philosophy and empty deceit.

And we might assume that he means the idea that we are held captive in our thoughts, like if we’re just laser focused on a speaker, but that’s not what Paul means when he writes this. When this warning is written, what he is communicating is that there are lies out there that will kidnap you from the family of God. All of those lies come about from mere men who have told a good story, but it is not God’s truth. For these Colossians, as long as they entertained these false teachers, as long as they kept playing with fire, they risked getting burned.

We face similar threats of being kidnapped today. These threats all come from sources who seem like really nice people, who in many instances are your literal neighbor, but their belief of who Jesus is is not rooted in the Word of God. These kidnappers come in the form of Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons and as science teachers and even wolves dressed as Christian preachers who will convince you that God’s will for you is health and wealth. Their approaches are unique, but at the end of the day, they kidnap you with the thought that the world revolves around you. They make you believe that you can be good enough for God or that you are god or that their is no God or that the god that they’re talking about is just waiting for you to pray so meet your demands with a hop, skip, and a jump.

You’re smart people. Think about it for a moment. What does it matter if a man from Nazareth is crucified and raised from the dead if the gospel is really about you being a god or if the gospel is really about “God” standing by to serve you like a spiritual vending machine? Why waste all the ink and paper about this cross and resurrection? This is where getting kidnapped is easier than you think.

I mean, sure, the Bible includes stuff like 1 Corinthians 15:3-5 “...Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve...” but so what about that Jesus Christ guy, right? So what? Let’s talk about me! Let’s talk about my rewards now! Let’s talk about my glory forevermore!

So what about that Jesus guy? Here’s what: Colossians 2:9 “For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.”

Let me say this simply and sweetly, eliminating any doubt about the Person of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ was born in the city of Bethlehem to a mother who had never been with a man. He is a human being like me and you. He faced all the temptations you and I face. And yet he is different than you and I, and he’s different than any of us in this way: While Jesus is absolutely human, he is also God. Jesus is God in human form. This is important for you and me to come to terms with and this is where Christianity differs from all the lies masquerading as religions and philosophies on the known earth. In creating humanity, God didn’t create us to be gods unto ourselves, he created us to reveal his glory. Read the book! The Bible says that Romans 3:23 “...all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” That has as much to do with our universal need of a Savior as it does our universal failure to complete the mission given to us! So Jesus, God himself, enters into history to show his creation that the glory of God can be revealed. He does so to deal with sin. Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us. Jesus is not a distant God, far removed from you and me. Because God came to earth in human form, you can know that Jesus is concerned with you and the challenges that you face.‌

In fact, Jesus is very much able to sympathize with our weaknesses. He lived with them all and yet, in every respect, he never gave in to temptation, he never sinned. (Hebrews 4:15) This is the truth that all other philosophies want to kidnap you from. All the other threats of our day would keep you from fully trusting this God, whose name is Jesus.

‌Now, if in your mind you are trying to do the math of someone being God and human at the same time and you’re coming up with “that sounds crazy”, let me afford you a little bit of comfort. You wouldn’t be the first person to think that. A former atheist who turned to Christ was named C.S. Lewis. He spoke with lots of people who struggled with this and wrote about where he came down on Jesus: “A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said wouldn’t be a great moral teacher.” In other words, you couldn’t hear the teachings of Jesus and just conclude that he is a guy who was going to teach you how to live a better life. Rather, “He’d either be a lunatic—on the level with a man who says he’s a poached egg—or else he’d be the devil of hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse.”

‌Where do you come down on Jesus? Do you doubt that he’s the Maker of Heaven and earth? Do you doubt that he has always been and will always be? Do you doubt that God added to himself a physical human body? Do you doubt that body of his really died? Do you doubt that dead body of his physically rose to life? All the kidnappers need to do is get you to doubt any of these things and then they’ve got you.

There are people who are ready to fill your head with doubts. They’re knocking on your door ready to share with you material printed by the Watch Tower that tells you Jesus has returned in fulfillment of the Scriptures…he’s just done so invisibly back in 1914. Others of them are ready to give you a copy of a so-called Third Testament of Jesus that is written on the premise that after Jesus bodily ascended into Heaven, he returned to a people in South America with a new word. They are in classrooms across the globe educating minds to the accidental nature of our existence and the certain finality of death. They’re filling your television screen with an 800 number where you can sow a seed of faith and receive your blessing, all so you can live your best life now. They are not brothers and sisters, my friends. They are kidnappers.

So what should we do when they come? How do we protect ourselves from being taken captive? We offer to one another what Paul does here. We remind one another of the Person and work of Jesus Christ.

My friend, if you are in Christ, Colossians 2:11 “you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands.” You may be familiar with the fact that circumcision is a procedure done on males that involves a measure of skillful medical attention, yet for those who are in Christ, those both male and female, we each have received a circumcision made without hands. Someone might be thinking right now… “I’m in Christ, I trust in Jesus, but I don’t remember any circumcision. Who did the procedure? Was the physician even qualified?” Yes, the physician is more than qualified. He is world-renowned, an alumni of the U of H (University of Heaven), and known as the Great Physician. He is Jesus himself. See, if you are in Christ today, you have faith because the Spirit of Jesus called your name and you came to Jesus, and when you did, the Holy Spirit did a surgery in you that only God himself can do.

I bet you never knew you were in need of a surgery, did you? Or maybe for that matter, that you were ever sick. Do you know what sort of surgery it was? Maybe someone’s thinking, “I know how invasive circumcision is, so this must’ve been some minor, outpatient, type of surgery.” If you’re thinking that, you’d be wrong.

Let me try to jog your memory… Do you remember the day of your salvation? Do you remember that day that was filled with amazing grace, where from one moment to the next, the desires of your heart changed? Where the burdens of your heart rolled away? Oh there may have been so many things you were living for, but you knew none of them satisfied you. None of them brought lasting peace. And all of a sudden, something changed. Your heart was flooded with a warmth you’ve never felt before and at the same time, you had a resolve that your life was no longer your own. In some strange way, you were no longer living for yourself, but were living for others. Living for Jesus. That all came to be because God in his Spirit performed a heart transplant in you. You once had a heart of stone and he replaced it with a heart that beats for Jesus.

A HEART TRANSPLANT? Yeah, that’s what Jesus did when he called and you came to him. Every man and woman, every boy and girl needs a new heart. That’s what Jesus gave you and I who are in Christ. Come to think of it, he hasn’t just circumcised us of heart, he has resurrected us. You probably didn’t know you needed some resurrecting, did you?

I know you’re thinking, “Resurrecting can only happen to someone who’s dead and I’m clearly alive. I’ve never been dead.” Oh, but you have been! Remember that Romans 3:23 “...all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”? Because of the sinfulness of humanity, we are dead in our sin. We were sin-sick, dead on arrival, and urgently needing resurrecting if we were to actually live. This is what we need reminding of when the kidnappers come to bring doubt.

I suspect there’s one more doubt that might be floating around right now. Healing our sin-sickness, performing a heart transplant, being made alive in him, resurrecting us… “Pastor, this all sounds too good to be true. I don’t buy a lick of what the kidnappers are saying, but I’ve got to admit, I could never repay Jesus for that. I mean, I struggle just with the guilt and shame from the things that I’ve done. How could I ever repay Jesus?”

When someone does something for us, we feel that we need to repay. The religious kidnappers would take advantage of that desire. They deceive people into the lie that they can repay God through their actions. They have no understanding of what it might mean for God in the Person of Jesus Christ to go through the cross. The cross of Jesus is confusing to so many. The cross is where people who were guilty of terrible crimes were sentenced to die upon. Yet, Jesus who knew no sin, knew that his life would end nailed to one. Why would Jesus do this? Why would God enact such a plan? The answer is easy to say and yet has an infinite depth to its magnitude. Why? The answer is simply, love. The Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit who are the Persons of the Godhead, love what he has created, and yet we as humans loved ourselves more and chose to rebel against our Creator. And our rebellion, our sin, requires punishment. That punishment is the wrath of very God.

That puts each of us in a state of crisis because we cannot withstand God’s wrath. In other words, each one of us has done a crime (lots of them) but we cannot survive the sentence. And God, knowing this, entered into history by adding to himself humanity, because he loves his creation, he loves us. He did so to do what only he could do, to take on the sin of all time, subjecting himself to his own wrath. To what end? So that you and I who trusted in Jesus Christ, when we stand before God in judgement and the verdict in our criminal court case is read aloud, the verdict comes in: “Innocent!”

Imagine that courtroom! The prosecutor has just laid out all the bits of evidence to prove your guilt beyond a shadow of doubt, so he’s like, “Your Honor, the state’s proved their case. This person is guilty. Might I remind you of Exhibit A14 when he didn’t honor his mother and stole cookies out of a cookie jar when he was six? Do you remember the photos I shared with Exhibit D46 when at sixteen he was drinking? Your honor, what about Exhibits F17 through G118 that documented his 'faithfulness’ to his wife in his twenties?” “Stop. None of that matters now,” says the Judge. “WHAT DO YOU MEAN NONE OF THAT MATTERS, YOUR HONOR?!” “Read on in the book that is his life and you’ll find that I intervened and he turned his life over to me. He came to see that the cross to which I went wasn’t foolishness, but it is the power of God for salvation. Today, he receives mercy. He doesn’t get what he deserves because I took his guilt upon myself. Rather, I take great joy in declaring this man righteous.”

“Why would he do that? I don’t deserve that!” You’re right, you don’t. None of us do. That’s the amazingness of God’s grace! That in the cross of Jesus Christ, he who knew no sin became sin. In calling us to Jesus, the Spirit of Jesus has breathed life into us. We are no longer dead in our sin, but God looks upon us as he looks upon himself, in Jesus Christ. He has transferred us from the realm of darkness into the kingdom of Jesus’s glorious light.

That’s the significance of Christian baptism, by the way. As we are lowered into the waters of baptism, we are identifying with and committing our lives to the Christ who died for our sin. As we are raised, we are testifying to the fact that the same Holy Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead, has given life to us. In his glorious resurrection that he has called us into, dear brothers and sisters, it is no longer we who live, but Christ who lives within us. He is at the right hand of the Father in Heaven and at the same time, he is seated upon the thrones of our hearts. He is our precious, majestic, most wonderful King. And in every way, we unite with Jesus in his death and resurrection, proclaiming that the world is behind us and the cross is before us.

It is in the cross of Jesus Christ that we see that God has taken all the initiative so that sinners can be reconciled to himself through faith. Jesus has done all the work and calls you to follow him in the same confidence of faith that I and others have, fully trusting in Jesus Christ and no one else, not even ourselves.

Application

To follow him where? To follow him into the glorious kingdom, into the new world that started to come that first Easter Sunday morn’. It was on that morning when the stone rolled away and what had never been, was. Never before had man crossed into the great unknown that is death and returned, but that morning. Oh that morning.

That morning where the devil’s victory parades were interrupted and alarm flooded over the streets of hell. That morning where even the greatest of kings and queens and presidents find that their rule is ultimately impotent and inferior. That morning where sinners who have been forgiven through his work upon the cross, remind one another that this is no myth nor is this is a fairytale. There is a King, his name is Jesus, and HE. IS. ALIVE. HE IS RISEN!

Inspiration

There is a man who Christ called to himself at the age of sixteen. He called this young man to salvation and he called him to then preach this gospel of Christ crucified and Christ resurrected. It is estimated that 2.2 billion heard him preach in his lifetime. The man of whom I speak was named Billy Graham…maybe you’ve heard of him before?

Billy died five years ago and many do not know that in his final years, he suffered from vision loss. He died nearly blind. It’s said that when his sight started to fade, doubt did not crept in. What abided with him was a certainty of faith in what was accomplished in the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He said, this… “I may not see anything again in this life, but I know the next thing I will see is the face of my Savior.”

Action

Christian brother, Christian sister: Colossians 2:8 “See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit...” Don’t let doubt creep in. Our King Jesus, once dead, is alive! Death could not contain him!

And friends who have joined us this morning…maybe you came here with all sorts of doubts and between what the choir has offered and what has been preached, there’s one thing you know… those doubts are drowned out in the light of the truth that Christ is risen. We’re going to sing a song together after I pray and I need to make you aware that faith and obedience are married to one another. If God is giving you faith that Jesus is the Son of God, that he died in your place for your sin, that he is alive, then the finish line of your faith is not a prayer from the comfort and safety of your pew but in eternity with him. What you do cannot save you, only what Christ has done on that cross can. And in his calling you to Jesus, the Spirit is bidding you to be obedient to the Word of God, to reveal the glory of God to the nations.

If you’ve been called, there’s a total response, a total surrender to follow the way of Jesus. So, you can come to Romans 10:9-10 “...confess with your mouth that Jesus is...” King and that you, “...believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead...” For as the Bible says, “...with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.”

Related Media

Related Sermons