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Introduction:
Have you ever wondered what the wind looks like?
It is a relatively common question.
We know wind is there.
We feel it.
We can study it.
But we can never actually see it.
How much more amazing would it be to see God! We know He is there.
Creation screams His majesty.
We see His handiwork everywhere we look - even how our bodies work shows the amazing handiwork of His creation.
Yet we could not see Him.
No one had ever seen God (John 1:18).
That is, no one had ever seen God until Christ came to earth.
The Great I Am and Creator of the universe came down from heaven and revealed the invisible to mortal man.
Today we are going to discuss the first half of a two-part sermon on how we can envision the invisible.
Join me as we read God’s Word:
Let us pray.
Prayer
Today we are going to discuss three ways we can envision the invisible God.
The first is…
I.
We Can Envision the Invisible Through...
The Firstborn (15)
The three verses we are going to cover today could actually be broken down into three entire sermons.
There is so much wonderful theology and Christology packed into these verses.
The first theologically loaded word we come to is the word image.
Christ is the image of the invisible God.
What exactly is an image?
An image is something that we can see.
Since the fall of man, people were unable to see God.
He revealed Himself to Israel as a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night (Ex 13:22).
He showed part of His glory to Moses as he passed by (Ex 33:18-23).
He showed Himself to Moses in a burning bush (Ex 3:2).
But none of these were said to be the actual image of God.
They were ways that God revealed Himself to man at that time.
The Greek word for image here is eikōn (eek-on) which means image or likeness.
Man was made in the image of God but is not the perfect image of God.
We are marred by sin.
Jesus is instead the exact likeness of God.
He is the full and complete revelation of God.
How important is it to believe that Jesus is fully God?
Let’s read what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:4:
Paul says that the god of this world - meaning Satan - has blinded the minds of unbelievers from seeing Christ as the image of God.
This was no better seen than in the case of a fourth century presbyter named Arius.
This man wanted to prevent the heresy that Christianity was polytheistic.
You see, some people were spreading lies about Christianity - not unlike they do today as well.
They said that Christians worshiped three gods instead of one God.
Muslims and others still spread this misunderstanding.
Arius wanted to prevent this misinterpretation and instead created his own heresy!
Let’s take a brief moment to realize the tendency of over-correction here.
I think that we can all be prone to over-correct in our lives.
What do I mean?
I mean that when we see a problem, we may go to an extreme to try to correct it.
And this correction can oftentimes be a bigger problem than what we had before!
We need to allow the Word of God to interpret everything and we need to be sober-minded and thorough in our study.
Watch out when you hear an extreme teaching that doesn’t seem congruent with Scripture.
Think hard when someone says something that you have never heard before and doesn’t have Scripture to back it up.
Oftentimes these statements are out of bounds and dangerous teachings.
Getting back to Arius, we see that he:
Essentially Arius falsely taught two things:
1) Jesus is not self-existent and was created as a "perfect creature"
2) Jesus has no communion or even direct knowledge of the Father
These false teachings still are held by the cult of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
They still believe that Christ is not God made flesh.
And because of this, they are not true believers as they are condemned by Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 4:4 that we read a short while ago.
It should be noted that Arius’s teachings were condemned at the Council of Nicea in 325 AD and were ruled to be heresy.
My friends, a proper understanding of the Person of Christ is paramount to a saving faith.
We must know who our Savior is!
He is the image of the invisible God.
And next we see He is the firstborn of all creation.
Arius also took this term, firstborn, incorrectly as well.
The Bible clearly teaches that Jesus has been since before the beginning.
It also teaches clearly that Jesus is God.
See John 1:1 for complete clarity there!
But what does this term firstborn mean here?
It can obviously be misunderstood as we have seen in the past.
The Greek word for firstborn is prōtotokos (pro-tow-ta-kose) which can mean firstborn or more accurately here, preeminent.
Firstborn = preeminent - which means above all; to take precedence; position of primacy; existing before
This Greek word for firstborn is actually listed 9 times in the New Testament and it is only actually used one of the 9 times as a reference to progeny - literally meaning born first (Luke 2:7).
The other 8 times are all used as the word preeminent.
Revelation 1:5 (ESV)
5 and from Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth.
To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood
Obviously we know Jesus wasn’t the firstborn from the dead.
Jesus, Himself, raised multiple people from the dead!
But He is the preeminent from the dead.
His resurrection does take precedence above all others!
And we will see this next week which describes this concept further as we see the two closely related words of firstborn and preeminent in the same verse:
As we can see, Paul makes it clear what he means when he says that Christ is the image of the invisible God and the firstborn of all creation.
Jesus Christ is fully God.
He the complete revelation of God.
Knowing Jesus is knowing God, Himself.
Envisioning Jesus is seeing the invisible God.
We have seen how we can envision the invisible through the firstborn - the preeminent Savior Jesus Christ.
Next we see that we can...
Scripture References: John 1:18; Exodus 13:22, 33:18-23, 3:2; 2 Corinthians 4:4; John 1:1, Luke 2:7, Revelation 1:5, Colossians 1:18
II.
We Can Envision the Invisible Through… The Founder (16)
Now that we have heard about the Deity of Christ, we are given another level of understanding of Christ’s power.
We see Christ as Creator God.
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