WHO IS JESUS?

The Supremacy of Jesus

WHO IS JESUS?

Date: 11/29/20

Time: 10:00; 11:30AM

Text: Col.1:15-20

Me: What is the estimate number of people who ever lived on planet earth?

ChatGPT:

Estimating the total number of people who have ever lived on Earth is a challenging task, and different calculations may yield varying results. However, as of my last knowledge update in January 2022, demographers and historians have provided estimates.

One commonly cited estimate comes from the Population Reference Bureau, which, as of the early 2020s, suggested that around 108 billion people had ever lived on Earth! It's important to note that these estimates involve a considerable degree of uncertainty and are based on various assumptions about early human populations.

John Blanchard comment’s:

Of those 108 billion people who have walked Planet Earth, only a handful have made any real, lasting impression, have actually changed the world.

And in that handful of people, there is One who stands head and shoulders above all of the others—and His name is Jesus!

More attention has been given to Him;

more devotion has been given to Him;

more criticism has been given to Him;

more adoration has been given to Him;

more opposition has been given to this one person than all of the others.

Every recorded word that He said has been more sifted, analyzed, scrutinized, debated—every word—than all of the historians and the philosophers and the scientists put together.

Yet He was here two thousand years ago. And after two thousand years, there is never one minute on this earth that millions are not studying what He said.

Think about it—think about it!

Here’s a person who lived in a miniscule, tiny little land two millenniums ago; and yet His birth divides the centuries: AD, BC—Before Christ and Anno Domini, the year of our Lord.

He never wrote a book that we know of—and yet library after library could be filled with the volumes, the multiplied millions of volumes, that have been written about the Lord Jesus.

He never painted a picture, so far as we know—and yet the world’s greatest art, the world’s greatest dramas, the world’s greatest music, the world’s greatest literature has Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, as its source.

Jesus never raised an army, so far as we know—yet multiplied millions have died for Him.

He never traveled very far from His birthplace—and yet His testimony has gone around and around and around the world.

He only had a handful of little followers that followed Him there in His ministry—and yet today over thirty percent of the world’s population names His name—the largest such grouping on earth today: Jesus of Nazareth.

A ministry of only three short years—public ministry; and yet here we are two thousand years later saying, “Jesus, your name is wonderful,” because His name is.

He had no formal education. He didn’t attend the university or seminary—and yet thousands of universities, and seminaries, colleges, and schools are built in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

The great historian Kenneth Scott Latourette said this—listen to this quote: “Jesus has had more effect on the history of mankind than any other of His race who ever existed.”

To explain Jesus Christ is impossible; to ignore Jesus Christ is disastrous; to reject Him is fatal.

Understand who Jesus Christ is: to know Him is to love Him; to love Him is to trust Him; to trust Him is to be radically, dramatically, and eternally changed, to be transformed.

But the question still is, who is he?

• The answers to that question are as many and as varied as there are people in this room.

• Paul writes a letter to the Christian church in the ancient city of Colossae, because in that church and in that city, like today, there are varied opinions as to who Jesus is.

• Paul writes this letter to set the record straight. This is who Jesus Christ is.

Let’s read: Col.1:15-20

Colossians 1:15–20 NIV

15 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. 19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

He (Jesus Christ) is the ’Image of the invisible God’

• God the Father does not have a material body.

• However, in Jesus the invisible has become visible.

• Who God is, what God is like, and what God does is seen in perfection in Christ.

• So if I want to know what would it be like for God to live among humans, I don’t have to speculate or guess, because he did in Christ, the invisible has become visible.

(Jesus Christ) is the‘Firstborn of all creation’

• “Firstborn” does not mean that Jesus was created?

• Firstborn in the culture that the Bible was written into is the person in the family who has the authority of the father.

• So this doesn’t speak of Jesus being created; this speaks of Jesus’ rank, authority, and honor.

• So the firstborn of all creation means that Jesus stands over all of creation and governs it according to his will.

• Everything in the cosmos, temporal or eternal, seen or unseen, was created through Jesus, by Jesus, and for Jesus.

• There is no power, earthly or spiritual, that is equal to or greater than Christ.

• That everything, whether it be an earthly throne or a spiritual throne, exists by Christ, through Christ, and for Christ. It will ultimately serve his redemptive plans.

‘He is before all things’

• The entire planet and the universe is held together by the sustaining power of Christ.

• God, because of his great kindness, even people that hate him the sun still shines and there will still be rain. Christ sustains it all.

‘Head of the body, the church’

• Church not being a building. Church being people who have true faith in Jesus at any time in history and throughout the world.

• We exist to fulfill the redemptive purposes of him.

‘The beginning’

• children asked “When did God begin?”

• The Scriptures affirm that Jesus is the beginning. He didn’t have a start. He is the start. He is the beginning.

‘Firstborn among the dead’

• There’s that word again. We already established it doesn’t mean he was created.

• It’s referring to his rank and honor.

• The work of the gospel is that I will get a new body completed in Christ, free from death and sin, in a restored world.

• Jesus’ resurrection guarantees your resurrection. So he is the greatest of all who rise from the dead, because his resurrection secures our resurrection.

‘He might be preeminent’

• So God has so willed that everything is summed up in Christ.

• God so wanted to demonstrate that and solidify that, that his Son Christ Jesus conquered the greatest enemy to you and I, death.

• If he is conquering even death, then there is nothing in the cosmos that is not subject to Jesus.

‘Fullness of God’ dwells

• So Jesus was not an emanation from God like we used to watch in Star Wars or Star Trek.

• Jesus is not a piece of the pie.

• Illustration: Tim Keller explains how Jesus is not a piece of the pie

• He was not just a piece of the pie, nor was he just a good guy with extraordinary abilities.

• The Bible affirms that the totality of who God is dwelt in Christ.

• That for God to become a man as celebrated on Christmas Day brought God joy and pleasure.

‘Reconcile to himself all things’

• Before sin, as recorded in the Scriptures, God and his creation were in perfect harmony.

• Not only human beings, all of creation.

• Sin, disobedience to God, came into the picture thus creating brokenness.

• It’s why all of us, no matter how mature in the faith we get, there will always be part of us that wants to sin.

• The promise of the gospel and the work of Jesus is that he will restore things to how they were before sin.

• Christ has come and set in motion the redemptive plan of God, but we are still in the previews.

• Illustration: Revelation 5:13 – emphasis on the creatures praising the Lamb

• There is a worshiping of all creation that happens to Jesus in the new heaven and the new earth.

• The Scriptures make it very clear that this restoration and reconciliation and the participation in the new kingdom is reserved for those who have come to faith in Christ.

• How does this great restoration happen? By the blood Jesus shed on the Cross.

• Jesus stepped in for us; whereon the line of guilty people it’s time to step forward and take the punishment, and Christ comes from behind the scenes and says, “It’s my punishment to take on behalf of these guilty ones.”

• That is the power and love and mercy and kindness displayed to us in the gospel of Christ.

• So this is the Christ we celebrate at Christmas.

Conclusion

• For those who believe the gospel, we would encourage you to continue in the faith.

• The New Testament—2 Peter, Jude, Revelation—encourages us to continue in the faith, that we must each day recommit to Christ’s gospel, each day recommit ourselves to the lordship of Jesus, and not be one who doesn’t make it.

• For those who do not believe the gospel, we would say respectfully and humbly and graciously, that there is no middle ground.

• You either believe on Christ or you reject him. As Scripture calls, as Jesus calls, us to turn from sin and believe in the gospel.