Colossians 1:17-18 The Supremacy of Christ Part 2
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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.
Prayer of Illumination
Dismiss Kids
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Good Morning and welcome to Confessors of Christ Church.
We are in part 2 of our three-part series on the hymn of Christ,
Where verses 15-20 in Colossians 1 establishes Jesus’ power, authority, and preeminence over all things.
Last week, we saw Jesus as the Creator of all things, visible and invisible.
But you might wonder, ‘What does that mean for us today?’
Paul now shifts from the past in verses 15 and 16, to the present in verses 17 and 18,
Showing Jesus is not just the Creator of the past but the Sustainer of the present.
He didn’t create and abandon us—He created and walks with us.
This morning we are going to look beyond Christ’s eternality.
Beyond His power and authority in Creation.
And look to his power and authority, today.
His supremacy is beyond a one time event, but a continual bringing forth of who He is.
We will look at three specific areas in this transition from the past to the present.
First we will see that Jesus is active in the present.
Even in this moment, He holds all things together.
Second, we will see how He is not only active in His creation, He is active with His people.
We know this because Jesus is the head of the Church.
Finally, Jesus is active in the problem.
He is conquering sin and death through His resurrection.
Jesus is the firstborn of the dead.
All of these declare not only his supremacy at Creation, but his continual preeminence, today.
Preeminent means that Jesus is the first in all thing, number one in everything.
My hope is that the greater our knowledge and understanding are of these verses, the greater impact they will be in our lives.
Our confidence in this life will be boosted, our peace in the midst of turmoil will be enhanced.
Our joy will be elevated, as we embrace Christ and His Kingdom.
The supremacy of Christ, if we truly recognize its impact in our life, will change our worldview, our priorities, and even our response to trials.
This morning I want us to marvel in Christ’s power and be captivated by all His wonders.
I want us to see our life in light of His greatness.
Without further delay, let’s dive into our first verse this morning.
Join me in Colossians, Chapter 1, verse 17.
Point 1: Jesus is active in the present.
And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
This verse shifts us from Jesus as Creator to Jesus as Sustainer.
The first part, ‘He is before all things,’ reminds us Jesus existed before creation, eternal and supreme.
But the second part, ‘in Him all things hold together,’ shows He’s active right now, keeping everything in place.
What does this mean? (Pause)
It’s mind-blowing: the earth spins, the solar system stays on course, galaxies expand—all because Jesus holds them together.”
Nothing will happen apart from His command and His control.
Have you ever been fearful that a meteor will come in and wipe out all of mankind?
It will not happen because Jesus controls the path in which each one takes.
If you look closely at the surface of the moon apparently Jesus enjoys sending them there instead.
One of the fears that I have had since a child is that one day gravity will turn off and I’ll begin floating up into the sky.
Has anyone else ever worried about this?
I’ve thought about this so much that I have developed game plans depending on where I am if this were to ever happen.
Yet, Hebrews tells us that we should not worry about these things.
Speaking of Jesus, verse three of chapter 1 tells us.
and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.
Jesus is fully and completely in control of His creation.
All that He has made, including you and I, is in His control.
This is why we pray in times of difficulty and calamity.
Because we are speaking to the one who tells every lighting bolt where it will land.
How many have ever heard someone say something blasphemous and been like.
“I’m not standing by you!”
There is some biblical truth there.
There is an acknowledgement that Jesus is fully in control over the elements, fully in control over ever molecule.
What I am about to say should bring us great awe and wonder along with great comfort.
Jesus is just as much in control of the sunset across the horizon as he is your heart. (Pause)
Perhaps that is why we enjoy seeing them so much.
It is why we pray to God to soften the hearts of His people.
He is holding all things together.
If you remember from last week, The Colossians were struggling with this idea of multiple deities and combining gods to protect themselves.
Yet, Paul is showing them that they only need one.
There is one that is greater, more powerful, more perfect than any other.
There is only one that is truly holding all things together, and it is not Zeus or Artemis, but rather it is Jesus.
Now, we can know this truth physically, meaning we can receive the knowledge of this reality as factual.
But, what we should now ask ourselves it this: What does this truth do for us experientially?
This truth should bring you comfort, this truth should calm our anxiety, this truth should fill you with hope.
How many of you worry over government details?
What trust do you have in Jesus when thinking of these difficulties?
The Christian hip hop group, Beautiful Eulogy asked these difficult questions of Jesus, in their song Sovereign.
They write: When world leaders are deceivers, eager to puff their chests? Is life a game of chess? Do you have these kings in check?
The answer that they give at the end is this.
Then I finally understood when I saw that man, nailed to wood.
What do you need to find comfort in? What is causing you to lose sleep and deprive you of peace?
What is stealing your hope and causing you anxiety?
List those things out, write those things down, lay them before you.
Then ask yourself.
If Jesus can hold the planets in their orbit and can position the earth perfectly between the sun and the moon.
If Jesus can sustain the balance of nature and can keep humanity from destroying itself, can Jesus handle your situation?
The answer is 100%.
If we will take hold of this truth, we can anchor our confidence not in fleeting worldly stability,
not in happen chance cosmic events, but in Christ Himself, who holds all things together in His divine wisdom and power.
Now, perhaps you believe that Jesus can overcome your situation and circumstance, but then you have another question that pops into your mind.
Sure Jesus could, but would He?
Not only does Jesus hold the universe together, but He also holds His people close.
What we are about to discover is that He’s not a distant ruler but a loving leader who cares about every detail of our lives.
Let’s explore the answer to this question as we continue to see Jesus’s power in the present.
Point 1 is that Jesus is active in the present, He’s holding all things together.
Now let us see Point 2: Jesus is active in His people.
Let’s look at just the first part of verse 18.
And he is the head of the body, the church.
Not only is Jesus the creator of everyone and everything, the supreme ruler of the cosmos, the king over all nations, he is also the head of the church.
Here is where we complete the transition from what happened in the beginning to what is happening now.
Where Christ was the preeminent one of Creation, He continues to be the preeminent one in the present.
To be the head means that you are what gives life to the body.
And Paul here defines what he means by the body.
Paul is speaking to the Colossians as the body.
He is speaking to both the global reality and the local expression.
Jesus is the head of the Global church, and is also the head of the local church.
You and I are united to every believer across the world and in every generation.
Jesus is the head of this global and generational group of believers.
You and I are also a part of the local church.
A gathering of believers in this generation, in this location, at this moment.
And Jesus is the head of this body of believers, not me, not anyone, only Jesus.
Let’s dig further into this idea of the head and the body.
The head governs the body, activates the body, moves the body.
Paul is intentional when he wants you to imagine your own body.
It is your head that activates the mouth, it is the head that moves the arms and the legs,
It is the head that gives emotion and wisdom and truth to the rest of your body.
Likewise, that is what Jesus is doing as the head of the church.
Let me ask you this:
What do you think happens to the church when it loses its head?
When the church tries to function without the leadership, authority, and power of Jesus?
When the church decides to make their focus about their wants and desires,
Instead of the mission and focus of Jesus?
Science says a heart can beat briefly without a brain, but it won’t last.
A church without Jesus as its head might function for a while, but it will lose its life.
We need Him leading us, guiding us, and sustaining us.
There are many churches out there that claim to be the body, but are doing so without Jesus as the head.
There are great dangers when we make ourselves the focus, when we make ourselves the hero, when we make ourselves the reason.
We are not here for ourselves this morning,
We are not hear for our wants and desires.
We are here to worship our King and to be equipped to serve in His kingdom.
Will we have great benefits in doing so? Absolutely, but is our reason for ourselves? No, it is for Jesus.
You may get tired of me constantly talking about Jesus this, and Jesus that, but that is because Jesus is our head.
We are Confessors of Christ’s Church, We are His church and we live to Confess that truth.
He is our head.
Now, let me tie this back to my previous question in point 1.
While Jesus has the power to overcome anything and everything, the question we asked ourselves is this: Will He?
Well, Jesus cares not only in Creating us, but also cares about sustaining us.
Jesus as the Head, means that He wants to guide us, direct us, govern us, provide for us, care for us.
This doesn’t mean that we will be without pain or difficulties.
An athlete training is a good example here.
If you have ever trained in a sport, gone to the gym, went on a run, or anything physical in activity, you will understand this next point.
Sometimes that part of the body, that you used and trained, hurts.
Sometimes there will be pain as we grow in unity together and work towards the mission of God.
Yet, this pain is necessary to make us stronger, to get us leaner, to ready ourselves for the goal at hand.
This is why I am so encouraged by Romans 8:28
And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.
The good and the bad, the easy and the difficult, the pain and the joy.
All work together for good for those who love God and are called according to His purpose.
So, to tie back to Jesus is the Head of the body, the church,
While the body doesn’t always know the point of what it is experiencing, it does trust the head.
As we are going through what we experience in our day to day life, we can have the confidence that Jesus is with us and for us.
We can rest with assurance knowing that there is purpose in the problem.
There is meaning in the mayhem.
There is strength in the struggle.
Jesus not only has the power to handle your situation, He has the heartfelt desire to guide and sustain you,
Intimately connected as the head of the body, willingly working all things for your good.
So to answer the question, Can Jesus? Yes, Will Jesus, Yes.
With that said, it does require us to trust that Jesus has a plan with every situation, even if it doesn’t make sense to us in the moment.
His power and his love displayed will help us trust Him in the process.
As the head of the church, Jesus guides us through life’s struggles, but He doesn’t stop there.
He’s also active in the biggest problem we face—sin and death—through His resurrection.
And now Point 3: Jesus is active in the Problem.
If we needed one thing, one situation, one event, that we could point to as proof that this same creative power is still for us today,
What is that we would point to?
We should look no further than the resurrection.
Because it is this same power that turns nothing into something that also brings the dead to life.
Let’s look at the final part of Colossians 1 verse 18.
He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.
The main question here is what does the firstborn from the dead, mean?
But, before we get to this question, we have the phrase, He is the beginning.
He is the beginning is another way of stating, the first in an order.
He is the supreme position.
He is the originator and leader.
In context this is referring to who Jesus is as the head of the church, which we just discussed, and now in reference to the resurrection.
Jesus is the supreme position, originator, and leader of the resurrection.
This type of understanding is also used elsewhere in Scripture, particularly in Revelation.
“And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write: ‘The words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of God’s creation.
This is Jesus, Speaking of Himself, recorded by John.
While the focus in Colossians is on the church and Resurrection,
The focus here in revelation it is on Creation.
Now, this should be easy for us to interpret because we just discovered last week that Jesus is the Creator of God’s creation.
If you have ever heard the phrase, Let Scripture, interpret Scripture, this is a great example.
Where we let the clearer Scripture help us interpret potentially misunderstood Scripture.
Jesus is the first and originator of Creation, and not a creation of God.
Now, there is a heresy that tried to creep into the church called Arianism.
Arianism is a belief that Jesus is not fully divine like God the Father but is a created being with a lesser divine status.
This belief was refuted and condemned during the Council of Niceae in 325 AD.
However, the Jehovah’s Witnesses are trying to revive this old heresy and believe that Jesus is a created being.
They liken Jesus to Michael the archangel.
Yet, the author John already stated in the Gospel all things were made through him and without him nothing was made that was made.
Colossians 1:16 declares that Jesus made all things, even angels.
So, He is the beginning is stating He is the First cause of creation, the first cause of the church, and now we will see the first cause in the resurrection.
Let’s now jump back into our verse.
He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.
My hope is that we are now getting family with this understanding of the term, firstborn.
Remember last week we noted that the firstborn is not speaking of a physical first person due to the order of ones birth.
But rather it is a way of stating the Sovereign position that Jesus holds over the event that comes after.
He held the Sovereign Position over all of Creation as its creator.
Here he holds the Sovereign position over new creation, which in this case is the resurrection.
He is the founder, the creator, the beneficiary, of creation.
And He is all of those things in the resurrection as well.
To be the supreme one from the dead means that Jesus had to die, and then come out from the dead, to be raised from the grave.
Which is what we call the resurrection.
The resurrection was necessary because the purpose of Jesus coming to earth was the save His people.
To save His people he had to defeat both sin and death.
He defeated sin by being the perfect sacrifice and atoning for the sins of His people.
He defeated death by His resurrection and thus making a path for all of us to be resurrected as well.
Jesus’s resurrection is the pinnacle event that declares his preeminence, today.
Creation declares His Supremacy at the foundation of the world and His resurrection declares His Supremacy until His return.
Upon His return Jesus will declare His Supremacy through the conquering and judgement of everyone and everything. (Pause)
Let me ask this question: Did you know that everyone will be resurrected? Regardless of their faith?
The resurrection of everyone is affirmed in Scripture (John 5:28-29, Acts 24:15)
In which there will be a resurrection to eternal glory of everlasting joy, for those who are children of God.
And a resurrection to eternal damnation for those who are enemies of God.
One question that sometimes comes up is that Jesus was not the first to be raised from the dead.
How can He be the beginning and the firstborn from the dead when others have already been raised.
Jesus is called the ‘firstborn from the dead,’ not because He was the first to rise—others like Lazarus were raised—
But because His resurrection is the most important.
It’s the first of a new kind of life, eternal and glorified, showing He’s the ultimate victor over death.
Those that were raised from the dead, died again.
Jesus died, and on the third day resurrected, defeating death, and will not die again.
While He is the first to do this part, the point of Firstborn is recognizing His supremacy and sovereignty in the act.
His power in the act. His rightful place in the act.
If you want to see Christ’s supremacy today, we look to the resurrection, we look to His defeat of death.
Jesus, as the firstborn from the dead, actively conquers the ultimate problems of sin and death through His resurrection.
By rising from the grave, He defeated sin’s power and death’s grip, proving He’s supreme and promising us new life,
Thus, this should give us the confidence that we can trust Him to handle every problem we face today.
Our verse ends with: that in everything he might be preeminent.
Remember, To be preeminent means Jesus is number one in everything.
Theologian Douglas Moo tells us, “Christ is just as preeminent in the realm of redemption as he is the the realm of creation.”
Jesus as firstborn from the grave has more applications than could possibly be numbered.
But, let me try to share at least a couple of the main ones.
Jesus as the “firstborn from the dead” assures us of our their own future resurrection and eternal life.
In the midst of tragic loss or fear of death we can be greatly encouraged by the promise of new life.
Since Christ’s power conquers death, we know that He has the power to overcome both our physical and spiritual death.
Another application to this understanding is the boldness that it should produce in this life.
Because God is in control of the number of our days, we can go and live boldly for Him.
Paul will later say in Philippians, To Live is Christ, to die is gain!
So we go about this life trusting in God’s providence in our lives, and knowing that we will not die until the Lord wills it.
And when the Lord does will it, then we have the promise of a new life and an eternal one before us.
This should produce great confidence and boldness as we pursue Christ’s Kingdom.
What we discover in these two verses and last week’s two verses is the true glory of Christ Jesus.
We see the incredible power.
The amazing wisdom.
The mind blowing ability.
The true greatness of our Lord.
When we understand this ,it will bring forth great worship and praise.
It will bring forth adoration and awe.
And it will bring forth a desire to serve and submit to our God, King, and Savior.
As I asked last week, I will again ask this week.
Who is Jesus to you?
Who do you think of when you think of Jesus?
In one of my favorite quotes from C.S. Lewis, he tackles this very question.
He says: I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say.
A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell.
You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
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Jesus is more than a man, more than a great teacher, more than a person worthy of emulating.
Jesus is the image of the invisible God.
He is the creator of everyone and everything.
Things that we see and things that we cannot see.
Jesus is eternal, He always has been and always will be.
While this we saw last week, that power and supremacy of Christ in creation,
We see today that this still continues in this moment.
He is with us even now. He is for us even in this season, He is sustaining us even in this day.
Jesus makes sure that we are taken care of because He has established Himself as the head of the church.
Jesus is the leader, governor, and sustainer of this congregation.
He guides, directs, and motivates us to accomplish His purpose to bring about His kingdom.
So, we will be a congregation, a gathering of believers who looks to Christ and Confesses Christ in everything we do.
And on top of all of this, He is the firstborn from the dead.
Which means He is not just providing for us in the moment but is going to care for us for all of eternity.
Death will not defeat us and death will not conquer.
Rather Jesus is over and above all things, He is the supreme preeminent one.
Our call this morning is to see Jesus as He truly is.
To place Christ as the center of our lives.
To recognize His supremacy over every situation, every circumstance and every challenge we face.
To fully embrace every aspect of every glory in Christ and to live for Him.
If you need to make changes?
If you need to think differently,
If you need to reorient your understanding,
Then today, let’s commit to seeing Jesus as He truly is—our Creator, Sustainer, and risen King.
If you are ready to make this change, then come find one of the elders after service, let us pray for you,
And let’s live for His glory together.
This is part 2 of the Supremacy of Christ.
And if all of this was not enough, we still have two more verses to look at next week.
I hope you will join us then, Amen? Let us pray.
