Senior Retreat #1 - Colossians 1:15-23 - Revering the Christ

Intro

Mark 8:27–29 ESV

And Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi. And on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” And they told him, “John the Baptist; and others say, Elijah; and others, one of the prophets.” And he asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Christ.”

There is a terrible danger and downside to growing up in Christian school. Don’t get me wrong, I love Christian school. I’m a strong believer in it. But I want to warn you of an area that you could be blindsided to. In fact, I could almost guarantee that it has affected you in one way or another: familiarity breeds contempt.

There are words you hear day after day and moment after moment: faith, grace, truth, love, atonement, justified, forgiveness, saints, Spirit, and Christ.

These are words that all carry and heavy and weighty consequence for the state of your soul.

Despite how easy it is to feel apathetic or neutral to Jesus today, he left little room for feeling that way during his time. He spoke harsh and challenging truths. He embarrassed his followers by the people he was willing to fellowship with. He spoke with an authority that appeared unwarranted to many.

Jesus was as controversial as he could get in his day. So as he is walking with his disciples, men who followed him, he asks them a valid question: “Who do people say I am?”

Their answer includes much of the various confused conclusions people came to: John the Baptist, Elijah, just another prophet.

Jesus then changes that question. He directs toward the heart of his own disciples and asks them the same question. Jesus knows their hearts and thoughts (Matt 9:24), he knows what they truly think of him. But he asks it anyway. Not so that he can find out. But so that they can consider what they truly think of him. To make them draw a line where maybe they hadn’t really been forced to before.

Peter speaks for them and answers with this simple phrase: You are the Christ.

Christ, the greek word for Messiah. It means “anointed one.” The one who is set apart. “The chosen one.”

Is this one of those words that feels plain? Does it roll in and out of your ears with little effect on your mind and your heart?

The media paints a small Jesus. One who cares little what you think.

So much so that his name is used most often as a swear word.

But this is not a light word. It is a word that carries all space and time riding on it’s shoulders. It is a word that should invoke both the most reverent fear and the most ecstatic joy. By nature it implies that whoever bears that title is a person who possesses the upmost significance to the story of the universe that God has written.

Why are we talking about this?

Because in senior year of high-school, I’ve noticed a pattern amongst students. A pitfall that every senior seems to be fully engulfed by but blind to by the end of their school year. I am guilty of it more than most, but I noticed my siblings fell to it, my friends, and nearly every other person I’ve met that graduates high-school.

In your senior year, people tend to put more attention and effort into loving you. Your school displays your achievements at graduation, your parents often gift you with special rewards, your friends and family.

Wanna know what happens during that? The sinful flesh in you eats it up, but in the wrong way. You start to feel like you are on top of the world. That you are the main character. That you have plot armor.

Nothing is more dangerous, more damaging, than thinking you stand when at any moment you could fall. Sinful temptation will sprout and overwhelm.

Why does this happen? Because we think we are fascinating. Our nature is bent in a terrible twisted manner to delight and worship ourselves rather than the creator who takes the credit for making us as Romans 1:23 says.

Why does this happen?

Because we feel like Jesus is boring. We feel like we got him figured out. We feel like he is old news. We said our prayer when we were 10 and now we can move on to more fun things.

Such an attitude leads to us thinking that we can exist and enjoy his world as if it was our own. As if it was made for us.

The moment you forget his supremacy above you, you will live as if you are supreme. You will make choices unable to see the consequences because of the fog of your pride.

What is the remedy to avoiding this?

2 Corinthians 5:15 ESV

and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.

This verse by nature implies that intertwined into our nature is a desire to live for ourselves. But Christ came to change that so that you may live for him.

Move away from being concerning about who you say you are. What your likes and dislikes are. Your strengths and weaknesses. Your gifts and areas you lack gifting.

Replace that with a focus on who Jesus is. Only when your gaze is fixed firmly on him. You must replace your tendency to see yourself as the main character with a fix on him.

How to see Jesus as the main character of the universe:

1. Remember Jesus is the God of all creation (1:15a)

“He is the image of the invisible God.”

A paradoxical statement. A God who’s very essence and nature is invisible is suddenly made visible through an image.

“Invisible” = Unseen or unreachable. We as creatures can only easily comprehend images, the visible, those things of the same essence of being as we are.

“Image” = εἰκών (an object shaped to resemble the form or appearance of someth., likeness, portrait) (BDAG)

When God first made man, he used this same description. We are made “in His image.” The word image means a reflection or a representation of. A visual stand-in. He sent man into the world as representatives of Himself to the rest of creation.

Genesis 1:27–28 ESV

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

The issue is that we have fallen and are a broken reflection of the image of God. Instead of glorifying his name we drag it through the mud in our own self worship.

What is this saying? God became the perfect version of the thing we were supposed to be: his image.

Hebrews 1:1–2 ESV

Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.

God spoke through prophecy, through miracles, but none of those compared to him arriving on earth Himself.

Colossians: The MacArthur New Testament Commentary Jesus Christ in Relation to God

By using the term eikōn, Paul emphasizes that Jesus is both the representation and manifestation of God. He is the full, final, and complete revelation of God. He is God in human flesh

What a mystery! How impossible it is to think that the creator became his own creation? That should be something that fills your mind with wonder and awe. It is impossible to wrap your brain around and that’s a good thing because it’s proof that it’s something that can only be accomplished with God.

2. Remember Jesus is the means for all creation (1:15b-16)

How did the Bible start?

Genesis 1:1 ESV

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

Paul is saying that Genesis 1:1 isn’t just about God. It is about the person of God who is Jesus.

All creation consists of two parts: the heavens and the earth. The visible and the invisible.

God is of the invisible, we are of the visible.

Jesus is the bridge between the two. He is the maker of both the invisible and the visible and he placed himself in that creation.

A few statements we need to consider:

Heaven was made by Jesus and for Jesus.

Thrones, dominions, rulers, and authorities.

Not only is every country created as a part of the story of the world, every leader of every country is placed where they are. Through him and for him.

An example is king Sennacherib:

2 Kings 19:25–26 ESV

“Have you not heard that I determined it long ago? I planned from days of old what now I bring to pass, that you should turn fortified cities into heaps of ruins, while their inhabitants, shorn of strength, are dismayed and confounded, and have become like plants of the field and like tender grass, like grass on the housetops, blighted before it is grown.

Everything that is on earth has been placed there by God. It has not spontaneously generated. It is a piece in his great cosmic puzzle. Not one molecule or one atom is without meaning. Therefore if you are on this earth, it is not because you are an accident. You are not forgotten. You are created by a God who knows it is better for you to exist than to not.

1 Corinthians 8:6 ESV

yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.

He is the main character because he made this world for himself.

3. Remember Jesus is the center of all creation (1:17-18)

Verse 17 -“He is before all things, and in him all things hold together”

Jesus did not just make creation like a clock, set it to wind itself and hung it up on a wall, walking away to occupy himself with greater things. He made creation and placed himself within his own creation as the center gear that the entire clock hinges upon. Without Jesus there is no creation.

“Physicists tell us that among the atom’s whirling protons and electrons there is vast space, not unlike our solar system. Though some have theories as to why the atom holds together, none know for sure. Christ is not contained in matter, but he holds it together by his word! (Heb 1:3)” - Kent Hughes

Acts 17:26–28 ESV

And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for “ ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, “ ‘For we are indeed his offspring.’

Paul shows that God is not only the creator of creation but he says that we our very being is intimate with him.

We can not forget this universe is made by him, it is made for him. He wants to be in this universe. He gives it meaning.

“Jesus is the clue of the universe, it’s center and explanation. All things are to be seen in light of the cross, and all things reflect on the light of the cross. For him all things exist.” - Charles Spurgeon

The story of the cross is the story of all time and space. Everything before built up to it and everything after it responds to it.

Verse 18 - “He is the head of the body, the church”

Because he is first place in Creation and presently involved in creation, that means he is presently involved with you.

Why does he mention this?

Paul mentions the church here because that is you. That is how you fit into this. You are not the head, the main character, he is.

“He might be preeminent.”

Literally means “taking first place.” He is at the forefront, the cameras are on him. He is at the front of the track race.

Paul mentioned the church alongside him being preeminent so we could see who he is and who we are in relation to him.

But even if he is the head, you are still part of the body. You are still part of the story. How sweet that he invited you into that? We have done everything to reject him by placing ourselves at the center but he has included us in his glorification.

4. Remember Jesus is the savior of all creation (1:19-20)

Many of you have heard what I have said and some of you have accepted it willingly. But I would be shocked if there weren’t some in the crowd that were thinking extra critical. You may have noticed that everything I have said seems to have one glaring issue with it:

How has it been possible that the other truths could be real if there is evil? How can Jesus be the maker and sustainer of thrones and dominions that pervert and destroy? When I look at the world, I don’t see it spiraling to a glorious symphony of Christ. I see loss and death. I see suffering. It is difficult to believe that the universe this book speaks of is the one I live in.

That’s a valid question. Other men of the Bible asked God the same problem such as Job and Habakkuk.

Here we find our answer:

“To Reconcile all things to himself.”

Reconcile = ἀποκαταλλάσσω “To make things right with one another.”

To fix the broken. To restore the destroyed,

It is because that evil makes him glorified. It’s because one day he will destroy that evil and it will truly be magnificent.

The reason for all time and space is not our existence: it’s Christ’s glory. It’s for him.

“The creation was but the work of God's fingers (Psalm 8:3). Redemption is the work of His arm (Luke 1:51).” - Thomas Watson

God allowed the terrible problem of evil to exist so that he may provide the beautiful solution in Christ.

Have you guys ever heard of plot armor? It’s when a character is too important to the story to die before he is supposed to. The stormtroopers always miss, the heroes always climb out of the rubble of the explosion.

Because he is the main character, he must triumph! He must win! He will not fail! So here is the thing: that is so awesome for us because we win with him!

He saves everyone he wants to save. He wins every battle. The perseverance of your salvation into heaven doesn’t depend on you: in depends on the God who holds you.

“In creation God shows us his hand, but in redemption God gives us his heart.” - Adolphe Monod

This is how he invited you into his story. He died and rose. You must have faith in that and that alone to be included.

Conclusion

Mark 8:29 ESV

And he asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Christ.”

Of all the answers Peter could have picked, he chose this particular one. He said you are the Messiah. The anointed one. The one that all creation has longed and groaned for. The very reason for his own existence.

I want you to ask yourself: “Who do you say that he is?”

Your answer doesn’t change who Jesus actually is. He is who he is no matter what you think of him.

I’m sure you have some christianese answers you have been taught of who you are supposed to say who he is.

But your answer will certainly determine who you are. It determines how you fit into this great cosmic plan of the God who WILL glorify himself.

I once had a lunch with a non-believing friend. He made a suggestion at some point that I should buy sermons online and preach those instead of putting so much work into writing them. I responded that I don’t think my God would be too pleased with that. He commanded me to make myself a workman approved. That friend responded with: “I’m pretty sure God is too busy to care about something like that.” He changed the conversation before I had a chance to respond but my heart broke inside because I knew that the God he had in mind was very small compared to the true Christ.

I know that I have wandered. I have chosen pleasures apart from God. I have sinned against him and his children. But he has plucked me up out of this universe. He made me his own. He has reconciled all things to himself. I know him. He is beautiful.

Please do not look at these verses of the great God over the cosmos and believe he is too big to occupy himself with you.

But meditate on this: Whoever you say that he is, it is never enough. He is more. But that’s okay. The almighty God knelt down to your level, and loved you anyways.

When you hear the word Christ, let it carry the weight of the universe on it’s shoulders.