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15 He is the image of the invisible God,
the firstborn over all creation.
16 For everything was created by him,
in heaven and on earth,
the visible and the invisible,
whether thrones or dominions
or rulers or authorities—
all things have been created through him and for him.
17 He is before all things,
and by him all things hold together.
18 He is also the head of the body, the church;
he is the beginning,
the firstborn from the dead,
so that he might come to have
first place in everything.
19 For God was pleased to have
all his fullness dwell in him,
20 and through him to reconcile
everything to himself,
whether things on earth or things in heaven,
by making peace
through his blood, shed on the cross.
l This morning we are going to be talking about the word, PEACE.
l And we are going to be talking about the word PEACE in the context of Colossians Chapter ONE: Verses 15-20
o Thank You Again to Brad for reading those verses for us just a few minutes ago.
o If you have your Bibles with you and you want to follow along that is where we will be...
o If you want to use a pew Bible, you will find Colossians Chapter one on page (956)
o I will give you a moment to get there....
l (PRAY)
l I could imagine as someone sitting in Church, getting ready to listen to a preacher begin a sermon about Advent, you might be thinking:
o “What does this letter to the Colossians have to do with Christmas?”
o “What does a letter from Paul to a group of believers, who were likely meeting in a house Church have to do with Advent?
o “Shouldn’t we be reading something from Isaiah or Micah or Luke”?
o You might be asking: “Why do we really have to read the same story, year after year?”
l In one of the most iconic moments in modern American culture, as well as animation history: Charlie Brown once asked his friend Linus “Doesn’t anyone know what Christmas is all about?”
o Surely Christmas isn’t about presents even though we’ve commercialized it to no ends....
o Christmas isn’t about the Winter solstice even though opponents of Christianity will tell you about Christmas’s Pagan origins...
o Christmas isn’t just about Santa, and Elf on a Shelf, and Blinking lights attached to the roof lines of homes....
l “Doesn’t anymore know what Christmas is all about?”
o Well Linus knows.
o Linus didn’t hesitate.
o When asked what Christmas was all about Linus began to recite, from memory, Luke Chapter 2..
§ And our friend Linus ends it like this: “You shall find the Babe wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in the manger; and suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest and on Earth peace and goodwill towards men!”
l So, Linus tells us what Christmas about quite simply!
o According to Linus Christmas is about:
§ Praising God
§ And Peace on earth
o Pretty simple!
l Sometimes out of the mouth of a Child we get the best explanation for things that sometimes we make too complicated!
o So, let’s take our friend Linus’s advice:
o What is Christmas all about?
§ Praising God...and
§ Peace on Earth.
l First let’s talk about praising God.
l When we go to churches, or when we read the scriptures, we find that one of the most common ways that we find people praising God is through a prayer, a hymn, or a song!
o Ancient Israel was a very musical place!
§ We read in the Old Testament about how people sang and danced and blew trumpets all the time!
· They were praising God with music!
§ We read in 2 Samuel 14-15: 14 David was dancing[a] with all his might before the Lord wearing a linen ephod. 15 He and the whole house of Israel were bringing up the ark of the Lord with shouts and the sound of the ram’s horn.
· David was always singing and dancing and playing his harp...
o David liked to dance and praise so much it even started a marital dispute in his home! (but that’s a sermon for another day)
§ So it’s ok to emulate David in our praise to God!
§ There is an entire book in the Old Testament full of songs! You might have heard of it... it’s called the psalms!
§ This is all praise!
o Fast forward to today: The Church today is a very musical place!
§ (and if it is not, it SHOULD be!)
o Just look at this morning!
· We sang together some classic Hymns.
· We heard the sound of the organ filling the sanctuary praise!
· We heard the sound of God’s people singing filling the sanctuary with praise!
· God’s people should be a singing and praising people!
· Psalm 100 starts like this:
o Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth!
o Serve the LORD with gladness!
o Come into his presence with singing!
l So, we praise God with Music, we praise God with singing, and we praise God with Psalms.
l This should make us think of Christmas time!
l Christmas time is so musical!
l So that brings us now to Colossians Chapter One verse 15-20.
o This section in Paul’s letter to the Colossians is widely considered to be either a poem, hymn, or song!
o Which is why this passage is perfect for Christmas....
o Now I will say there is some debate about whether or not this passage is a hymn but...
o I will briefly tell you why I think this idea is worth considering...
o Arthur Patzia writes about the Christ Hymn (Colossians 1:15-20): The passage contains many words and phrases not found elsewhere in Paul’s writings, and it was not uncommon for Paul to incorporate previously existing traditional material into his letters. Normally this included hymns, confessions, creeds, and liturgical materials used by the early church. When this occurs, Paul could be regarded more as an editor than as the original author.
o So, what now is this Hymn about? It seems to have two central themes.
o Images and PEACE...
o And the Christmas season is a season that if full of images...
§ Think about the nativity scene for example...
· Shepherds with their staffs....
· Kings with their gifts...
· A baby in a manger...
l Here in Colossians chapter One, we see Two very important images.
l The first in verse 15, Paul writes: He (JESUS) is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.
o What Paul is trying to tell us here is that JESUS Christ, is literally and not figuratively, GOD.
o This Christ Hymn is a sort of creed the establishes the fact that Christ was fully man and fully God.
o While Christmas celebrates the incarnation of Christ into his human ministry, it in no way celebrates the idea that Christmas was moment of Christs creation.
§ Think John 1 here:
§ In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. All things were created through him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. That light shines in the darkness, and yet the darkness did not overcome it.
o When we read that Christ is the firstborn over all of creation, we should not take this to mean that Jesus was the first thing created.
o Jesus is not a created being.
o Jesus was and is God from the beginning.
§ Jesus being less than God is a heresy called Arianism!
§ This false belief about the Trinity existed from early on
§ (tell the story of ST NICK)
§ Arianism still exists today in Unitarianism, Jehovah’s witness, and primarily in the modern secular mind when people say I believe in God but JESUS was just a good moral teacher... This is false and dangerous mindset.
o What Paul is trying to tell us here is that Christ is the image of God in a very specific way, JESUS IS NOT:
§ copy of God...
§ a blueprint of God...
§ the avatar of God...
o Paul tells us here that JESUS is the visual Icon of God through which God reveals himself to his creation.
§ This is a concept that is almost impossible to understand fully but let’s leave it like this:
§ Jesus is the way in which God reveals himself to humanity.
§ JESUS is the IMAGE of GOD...
§ JESUS is the way we see God...
§ JESUS IS GOD.
l The next image we are going to talk about from the Christ Hymn comes in verse 20, the last verse of our passage this morning.
l Colossians 1 verse 20 says: and through him to reconcile everything to himself, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.
l The Second image for us to work with this morning is the CROSS.
o The cross is a powerful image...
o It probably doesn’t matter what religion you belong to or country you are from if you see the image of the cross you immediately know it’s association!
o So, what does the cross represent?
o Colossians tells us that it is on the Cross that Jesus, the Image of God, made peace with man through the shedding of his blood.
o So in a sense, you could say, that the cross is the IMAGE of peace....
o We have other images of peace in our culture too!
o For example:
§ You may see someone hold their two fingers up like this! We know this means PEACE...
§ You may see a Volkswagen minibus driving down the street and plastered on the side might be this circle with like a kind of “V” in it! (you know the classic PEACE sign)
§ The Olive branch is also a symbol of peace! This once goes all the way back to antiquity...
· As a matter of fact, if you have any money on you can observe that the Bald Eagle is usually depicted with an olive branch.
o We are very familiar with these symbols of peace...
o There are more symbols of peace to mention, but all of them have something in common... They all represent peace in only one direction.
§ These earthly symbols of peace represent peace among men...
§ These symbols of peace that we use in the day to day represent peace to the left of us or to the right of us!
§ But the cross represents peace in two directions...
l When we think of what a cross looks like: we see two beams that intersect.
o One of the beams points horizontally
o One of the beams points vertically
l The cross represents peace in two directions!
l The horizontal beam should make us think about peace among men....
o The kind of peace that extends to the left of us and to the right of us...
o (this is the kind of peace we are most familiar with...)
l But the second kind of peace that the cross represents is a vertical peace...
o This is the kind of peace that so many in our world DO NOT HAVE
o Vertical peace is something that is unachievable without Jesus Christ...
o Vertical peace is PEACE WITH GOD.
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