Trusting In The Head Of The Church (Colossians 1:15-20)

Introduction

We continue our Sermon Series this Morning on the Third Article of the Creed: The Holy Spirit and His Work in and among the Church, the Body of Christ, the People of God.

Now some of you have asked “Why this series?” Is it simply a defense of confessing creeds—well, no. The reason Neil and I are preaching this series is because our God hates vain repetition.

Throughout the Scriptures God makes clear that he calls all men to worship him. He commands this. We are called to it. There are few things God prioritizes or loves more than right worship to Him and in his name. And at the same time there are few things God hates more than false worship. Worship that ignores his words, ignores his commands, or is simply a babbling with no connection to the heart. God hates vain repetition.

Jesus himself said

Matthew 6:7 (ESV)

“And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words.

God hates vain repetitions. So we must take this seriously. God doesn’t simply want our words. He wants our hearts. So when we gather together and we confess our faith with words from a Creed, we must make every effort to be sure that our minds and hearts are in it.

That is the reason for this series. That we might be, as it were, re-enchanted with a new grasp and understanding of the beauty and grandeur of all that we are declaring together. That our hearts might be in it.

So with that, let us proceed to our text this morning, which is found in the book of Colossians, the first chapter, starting at verse 15.

Colossians 1:15–20 (ESV)

He [Jesus] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

This is the Word of the Lord

Thanks be to God.

Let’s Pray

Holy Spirit, come and illuminate the words of our God. Keep all your Words ever brightly shining before our eyes. Show us the wealth of glory that lies beneath the old, familiar stories. Teach us the meaning hidden in the songs of Zion. Raise us to the heights of aspiration reached by the wings of the prophet. Lift us to the summit of faith that is trod by the feet of the apostle. Open our eyes that we may behold wondrous things out of your law, and Amen.

(Based on a prayer by George Matheson)

Three Points:

I. A Church with a Head II. A Church without Boundaries III. A Church with a Mission

I. A Church With a Head

Colossians 1:15–20 (ESV)

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

So what Paul pushes here in this text is the absolute supremacy of Jesus Christ over everything. He has this supremacy by right of creation. That is was through him that all things were created, and that all things were created not only through him (because He is the Word of God and God the Father created the universe by speaking), but also that all things are created for him. Which means whatever exists in this world exists as something under the lordship and ownership of Christ.

Fields, mountains, oceans, every stitch of clothing you own, every gadget and piece of technology you have, every virus and bit of bacteria, every weapon and every shield, your car, your dinning room table, your living room sofa. Kids, your toys, your stuffed animals. Your legos. Your video games. All the plates and cups in your kitchen. Entire houses. Entire families. Entire cities. Entire governments. Entire economies. Entire nations. All things were created for him. To be used well and wisely in service in his kingdom, to be oriented toward his praise, glory, and gospel, and to be received with thankfulness and glad hearts by us.

It’s all for him. He’s Lord of it all. He’s owner of it all. We are but stewards, not owners. And Paul tells us and he is the head of the body the church.

Jesus Founded a Church, and is himself its head. Pastors are not the head of the Church. Elders are not the head of the Church. Popes are not the head of the Church. Even the apostles were never known as the head of the church. There is only one head of the Church, and he is Jesus Christ.

We talked about this on a Wednesday Night last month—that Christ is the head of the Church, and that Christ has sustained his authority over the church for centuries, and he exercised that authority through the work of elders at the local level. And that wherever you find believers in the New Testament, you find they are connected to a local assembly of believers.

In fact the word that is translated “Church” in the New Testament” is a Greek word that means assembly. The etymology means called out ones, but as you probably know, when it comes to words, usage always trumps the etymology. So, sometimes, the mere parts of a word do reveal their meaning. Like the word fishbowl. A fishbowl is indeed a bowl where you keep the fish. It is a fish-bowl. But, the word butterfly has a meaning and it does not mean a fly with butter on it, right?

So sometimes meaning can be discerned by etymology, but not always. So it is with the Greek word “Church.” Yes, if you unpack each part of the word, the parts do mean “Called Out” ones.

But the function or usage of the word in first century had to do with a gathering or assembling of people. It would have been used to refer to everything from the synagogue meetings to the Roman Senate. This has led theologian Michael Horton to combine both the etymology and usage of the word together and Horton says,

“More than being the ‘called out’ ones, it would be more appropriate to understand the Church as the called together ones, or, even better, the Called To-Gather ones, the ones who are called in by the Gospel to gather and assemble to worship and serve the Lord Jesus.” —Michael Horton (paraphrased from a podcast I heard some years ago)

She is called in by her head and husband Jesus Christ whose words determine all of what and who she is.

So the Church of Jesus Christ is a Church with a Head. And it is, furthermore,

II. A Church Without Boundaries

Many of you are familiar with the biblical text where Jesus establishes or institutes the church. My generation and the two or three generations before mind have had a real allergy to institutions. But Jesus is not afraid of them. He instituted the church.

Matthew 16:15–18 (ESV)

He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

And what must be understood about this text is that it is not—as the Roman Church would have you believe—the establishment of Peter as the first Pope. The importance of this passage is that the foundation of the church is not on one man, but on one man’s confession of the reality of who Jesus Christ is. Peter was the first to give the good confession of Christ as the Son of God, and he was the one to preach the first Gospel sermon after the Resurrection and Ascension. The rock on which the church is built is this confession of who Jesus is and forever will be.

Furthermore, Peter himself in 1 Peter 5, identifies himself not as the head of the church but as a fellow elder among many elders.

1 Peter 5:1–2 (ESV)

So I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed: shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you; not for shameful gain, but eagerly;

And in the Apostles’ Creed, we confess that we worship as part of the holy catholic church. There is great discomfort with the word catholic in our day. Mostly because we don’t want to be confused with the Roman Catholic Church, which is often just called the Catholic Church for short.

But it is a real sadness not only that we have been robbed of the word catholic, but that we have willingly given it up. Because catholic does not mean to be ruled by a Pope. As many of you no doubt know, the word catholic—with a lowercase “c”—means universal.

And it is a bizarre irony that the Roman Catholic Church has claimed ownership of the word because the word catholic means universal—it refers to the church everywhere in all places and in all ages. But the word Roman is a reference to a particular place (Rome) and a particular empire.

So “Roman Catholic” is a contradiction. It would be like saying “global garden.” A garden has a particular location. It has boundaries.

But this church that Jesus founded is everywhere.

And that is why I think we need to reclaim the world catholic, because, here’s the comment that people can clip out of context if they want—We are the real catholics, and we’re more catholic than the Catholics.

For that reason, this morning and the next few Sundays we are going to stretch our muscles a little bit and use the old word catholic when we confess the Creed. Most of you know that we have—for a long while—substituted the world catholic with the word Christian. And that’s not bad. We are, after all, part of the holy Christian Church.

But when we use the word catholic we are confessing more than Christian identity. We are saying that we are worshipping alongside all the saints throughout the ages. That we lift up our glad psalms and hymns alongside Augustine and Cyprian and Anselm. We pray our prayers shoulder to shoulder with Luther and Calvin and Tyndale. The Reformation was not a rejection of the catholic church it was the recovery of it.

This is why you will frequently hear me refer to so-called Roman Catholicism as Romanism or the Roman Church. It does not have the market cornered on the catholic church.

And to any Romanist who would say “Well, but where was your church before Luther?”

I would answer “Well. Where was your face before you washed it this morning?”

We don’t believe that the Holy Spirit went to sleep between the book of Acts and the Reformation. The early Church, the Constantinian Church, the Medieval Church, those are our brothers and our sisters, warts and all. Where they were faithful, we praise God, and hold up their example. Where they got it wrong, we are instructed and mark the ditches.

But we do indeed worship as part of the holy catholic church, alongside Baptists and Lutherans and non-denomination denominations, and Nigerians and Chinese, and Koreans, and rich and poor, and learned and uneducated—we are bound in fellowship with the living and the dead in this one holy catholic church. United not by visible institutions or even primarily by creeds or confessions. But by the blood and the cross of our One Lord Jesus Christ.

And one of the marvelous realities about the Gospel and Church that Jesus founded upon the confession of the Gospel is that it is not bound to one nation, and indeed, it cannot be bound to one nation. It spreads everywhere all over the earth.

My favorite text for this is perhaps the most under-preached parable of Jesus, it’s a one verse parable

Matthew 13:33 (ESV)

He told them another parable. “The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, till it was all leavened.”

The Kingdom that God is growing is like leaven. Which, it only takes a little leaven, even if it’s hidden, it gets into every part of the dough.

Don’t miss this. In the Old Testament, a big concept and a big problem was the problem of ceremonial uncleanliness. There were lots and lots of things that could render you ceremonially unclean. Now being unclean was not sinful. But entering into God’s presence in an unclean state was sinful.

And in this paradigm, it was rather easy to be made unclean. It was easy to get contaminated.

But what happens after the Resurrection is now, The Gospel is the contaminant. We are the heralds of the Gospel and this Kingdom Leaven. This is part of why we eat leavened bread in the Lord’s Supper, because of this glorious image given to us by our Lord in this parable. In the Old Testament, leaven an image of invading sin. But now, the Gospel is the invading contaminant, purifying a sinful world.

This Gospel is the leaven that gets into all the corners of the world. It spreads to every nation. It invades every territory.

“Christianity agrees…that this world is at war, but it does not think that this is a war between independent [and equal] powers. It thinks it is a civil war, a rebellion, and that we are living in a part of the universe occupied by the rebel. Enemy-occupied territory—that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the Rightful King has landed—you might say landed in disguise—and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage. When you go to church, you are really listening in to the secret wireless from our friends. That is why the enemy is so anxious to prevent us from going. He does it by playing on our conceit and laziness and intellectual snobbery.” C.S. Lewis Mere Christianity, Book 2, Chapter 2 From The Complete Signature Classics, pg.46

Christianity is—at its core—an invasion into enemy occupied territory. And we carry the leaven. That is why we are part of the holy catholic, the holy universal church. This is not just an American thing or a Western thing. This leaven is a global thing. It gives us a deep and fraternal connection with brothers and sisters under the blood of Christ that transcends language and culture. It does not render those things worthless or powerless, that is, being a Christian doesn’t mean I am no longer a father or a husband or an American or a citizen. But it disciplines all these vocations and loyalties and puts them in their good and God-honoring place.

Our identity is not in an earthly institution, but in an everlasting and universal message—the Gospel.

So this universal catholic church has a head and it is a church without boundaries. And finally, it is

III. A Church With a Mission

The mission that Jesus has given us is to carry out his work.

Which, from a human perspective is the dumbest idea ever.

Here’s what I mean. In the Gospels, we see all the glory of the Son of God on display. He’s doing miracles. He’s preaching. He’s dying on a cross. And then he gets up from the grave and he says “In all your going, take this gospel with you, and disciple the nations.”

And as Paul says to the Corinthian church...

1 Corinthians 12:27 (ESV)

Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.

Think about this with me for a moment. Today is the 12th Day of Christmas. The official close of the Christmas Season. What we celebrate at Christmas is the miracle of the Incarnation. God become man.

That God man walked on our dirt. And he’s turning tax collectors into disciples. Turning fishermen into apostles. And then he puts this gospel on their sinful lips, turns over the mission to them and says “Now go and finish it.” Jesus, during his earthly ministry had a body and was accomplishing the mission. And after his ascension, he still has a body on this earth accomplishing his mission.

The Church is not just people who believe in Jesus. The Church is the hands and feet and body of Jesus—it is how this mission gets accomplished.

Jesus had a body here on earth, during his earthly ministry. And do you know what he did with that body? Stuff. Heavenly-minded, glorious, miraculous, life-changing, world altering, principality destroying, nation-shattering, revolutionary stuff. And today, he still has a body on earth charged with carrying out this mission, and brothers and sisters, it is us.

Bodies do stuff. That’s what they do. Jesus came to earth in a body and did stuff. And he left his body, the Church, here on earth, and he’s called us to go do stuff.

This is what we mean when we say The Church is God’s Plan A, there is no plan B.

We are the body of Christ, and Bodies do stuff.

In fact, the whole Bible is the story of God using his people to do his stuff.

So here’s why that matters. If the Church is the Body of Christ, then the Church is how Jesus gets his stuff done. The Church is how Jesus gets his mission accomplished.

Which means we don’t simply send out thoughts and prayers. We are called to be the ones who take the actions to see our prayers answered. We don’t just ask God to conquer the world with his Gospel, we are the invading force. There is no plan B. We are God’s Plan A. Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.

We don’t just ask God to comfort the broken or to lift up the spirits of the depressed, or to take care of the poor or to check the power of the wicked.

We bring the words of comfort. We lift up the depressed with encouragement and hope. We take care of the poor and the sick. We confront the wicked powers and call them to repentance.

Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.

So don’t just pray about it. With all prayer and hope, and gladness of heart and loud singing of Psalms, get to work doing it. Mend that relationship. Forgive that offense. Dissolve that record of wrongdoing. Speak clearly about that evil. Confess that besetting sin. Love that difficult neighbor or family member. Have that person over for lunch. Say the hard thing, seasoned with grace, at the appropriate time. Pray for the Kingdom to come, and then, set your hands to the work wherever God gives it to you. For the prayer “Let your Kingdom Come” is not an invitation to be an observer. It is a charge to be a glad-hearted worker.

Now you are the body of Christ, and individually members of it. You are the members of this holy, catholic, universal church, you will bring this leaven, and once it’s in the dough, it cannot be stopped.

In the name of Jesus, Amen.