Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

We love greatness, don’t we? It’s magnetic, drawing us into things that we otherwise have no interest in.

When Tiger Woods was dominating the world of golf in a way that I’ve never seen any athlete dominate any sport, people that didn’t know anything about golf suddenly found themselves tuning in to the Master’s to see whether or not Tiger could do it again.

People that can’t even pronounce Tour De France were suddenly tuning in when Lance Armstrong was winning 7 consecutive titles.

During the 2016 Olympics, even if you couldn’t tell a pummel horse from a sea horse or a saw horse, you were watching as Simone Biles or Michael Phelps were redefining greatness for their sports.

You see, we’re drawn to greatness because God has built us that way.

God has so designed you and I that we would be left in awe of seeing something that is supremely greater than anything we could do ourselves.

And, by designing us to love greatness, God has engineered us to love, exalt, and glorify the Supreme Greatness in all of the universe, the Lord Jesus Christ.

This morning, as you kick off this series on Colossians that’s exactly what I want to talk about.

I want us to look at the supremacy of Christ so that we might be provoked to worship by what we see.

God’s Word

Read

A Hymn for the Ages

The occasion for Paul’s writing to the church at Colossae is that false teaching has broken out within the church.

The church has been started by a Colossian named Epaphras, and Epaphras had apparently appealed to Paul for help in addressing the heresy that had broken out.

There is a great deal of debate about the nature of the false teaching in Colossae, but from what we can surmise from the book itself, these false teachers were adding to the gospel a number of ascetic requirements.

In other words, they were saying that Christ alone was insufficient to both save and keep those He saved.

So, Paul writes to them for the purpose of correcting the cheapening of Christ and his glory.

Most scholars believe that our text this morning is a first century hymn that was being sang among the people of God.

But, brothers and sisters, this is not a hymn for the first century.

This is a hymn for the ages!

This is the hymn of our gospel joy!

What I think we’ll see is that there are two stanzas in this hymn with parallel verses in each stanza.

So, I want to make those two stanzas the two main points of my sermon and show you how these words sing of the supremacy of Christ!

Jesus is the Supreme Creator

“He is the image of the invisible God” At the heart of the Colossian heresy was the belief that Jesus was sufficient to cleanse you of your sin, but that He was insufficient for you to remain reconciled to God.

For that, you must keep up certain festivals and ascetic requirements.

And to dismantle that, Paul reminds them of something they likely already believed: This is God that we’re talking about!

Jesus is the ‘image of the invisible God.’

That is, Jesus is God’s very essence, his character, nature and attributes, perfectly manifested in every way.

He is, as says, the ‘exact imprint of God.’

In , when Phillip tells him that if they can just see the Father it will be enough for them, Jesus responds by saying, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.”

In all of his ways, in his imminence and transcendence, in his communicable and incommunicable attributes Jesus isn’t like God, isn’t God close to God; He is God!

There is nothing that you can say about God that you cannot say about Jesus!

TRANSITION: Paul testifies to the power and sufficiency of Jesus’ deity in at least three descriptions.

He is the Eternal Source.

“For by him all things were created....all things were created through him and for him.”

Verse 16 says that all of the Creation is ‘by him, through him, and for him.’

Let’s think about those phrases.

If it is ‘by him’, then that means that all of creation is his idea.

The sun has a diameter of 864,000 miles.

You could hold the equivalent to 1.3 million earths inside of the sun, and it was his idea.

The moon is in the perfect proximity to earth to keep us all from being flooded from out of control tides, and it was his idea.

The very oxygen that you breathe is produced by plants which breath in the carbon dioxide that you breathe out, and it was his idea.

There are a creatures surrounding the throne of God that are indescribable with human words, and they were his idea.

Every year, a copious number of new plant and animal species are discovered around the world, illustrating that He is never out of ideas.

“through him” And, creation is not just by him, it is ‘through him.’

That is, it is by Jesus’ power and with Jesus’ material that everything is made.

In other words, Jesus is the source.

You see, source is the great question of the universe.

What is eternal?

What is the source of all that was?

A formula of nothing X nothing = everything is senseless.

It defies the first law of thermodynamics, which states that energy can be neither created nor destroyed.

If you were to believe in the Big Bang theory which suggests that everything came to be as a result of a cataclysmic explosion, what set into motion that explosion?

What was the source of the energy that led to such a thing?

If we all originated through billions of mutations that began in a puddle and ended up as humans that can build skyscrapers and 747’s, how did the puddle get there to begin with?

What is the source?

There must be a source.

Brothers and sisters, Jesus is the Big Bang!

Jesus is the source!

There was a time in which we weren’t, and there was a time in which earth wasn’t, and there was even a time in which there was no time, but there has never been a time in which Jesus wasn’t!

He is the eternal God, the Beginning and the End, and ‘through him’ all things that are have come to be.

A formula of nothing X nothing = everything is senseless.

If you were to believe in the Big Bang theory which suggests that everything came to be as a result of a cataclysmic explosion, what set into motion that explosion?

What was the source of the energy that led to such a thing?

If we all originated through billions of mutations that began in a puddle and ended up as humans that can build skyscrapers and 747’s, how did the puddle get there to begin with?

What is the source?

There must be a source.

“for him” And, brothers and sisters, it is not just by him and through him; it is ‘for him!’

That is, there is an end to which all of creation, visible and invisible is aimed.

And, that aim is Christ!

As John Piper says, “Nothing in the universe exists for its own sake!

Everything from the bottom of the oceans to the top of the mountains, from the smallest particle to the biggest star, from the most boring school subject to the most fascinating science, from the ugliest cockroach to the most beautiful human, from the greatest saint to the most wicked genocidal dictator -- everything exists to make the greatness of Christ more fully known -- including you, and the person you have the hardest time liking."

APPLICATION: Jesus is the eternal source of every humming bird and galaxy, Mt.

Everest and Niagara Falls.

He has created universes seen and unseen.

And, this tremendous reminder of his great power to create reminds us of an even more glorious truth.

Not only is He mighty to create, but He is mighty to save.

And, whoever He saves, He mighty enough to keep and to sanctify, and to ultimately glorify.

He is the Ruling King.

“the firstborn of all creation” You’ll notice in verse 15 that Paul calls Jesus ‘the firstborn of all creation.’

Now, this text has been abused by heretics, both ancient and modern alike.

They want to make it out as though this shows that Jesus is, in fact, a creature and not created.

They point to ‘firstborn’ as evidence that Jesus is not eternal, believing that it speaks to chronology.

But, this is totally miss the context of what Paul is saying.

First of all, he is saying explicitly that Jesus is the eternal Creator of all things.

Secondly, ‘firstborn’ is not being used here as a term referring to chronology, but rank and position.

The Torah was often referred to as the ‘firstborn’ as was Israel.

Not because the Torah is the oldest book or Israel the oldest rank, but because of the position which they hold.

speaks of king sitting upon Davids throne as being the ‘firstborn’ and being the greatest king in all of the world.

That’s what we’re talking about here.

Jesus is the ruling the King!

I want you to especially note the terms heaven and earth.

Paul is speaking here to the incomprehensible scope of Jesus' reign.

On the earth are those things that are seen and known by us.

It contains things that are concrete to us, physical, easily touched.

And, yet ever here, as limited as you are, you will only behold even the smallest fraction of what is to be known and seen.

Think of flowers that are to be found on the outer band of the Andes mountains in Patagonia or the glacial water the contains the whales in the arctic.

In the rain forests, we are still discovering frogs and insects that have never been labeled by science before.