Sermon Tone Analysis

I want to start off by showing you a few pictures here.

1st picture… Can you guess what this is?

In case you can’t see so well, this is a cluster of brown clumps found in the dirt.

So… what kind of brown clumps do you tend to find in the dirt?

In case you still don’t know… I’ll give you a hint.

This cluster of dirty brown clumps was found shortly after this guy came walking through.

So… dirty brown clumps after a dog has visited the area.

Anyone know?

This cluster of brown clumps are truffles.

Dogs are used to sniff out truffles.

Some of you were thinking something else weren’t you… you uncultured bunch.

No seriously… I’m pretty uncultured also because I have never eaten one of these.

And the reason I’ve never eaten one is because… a year ago… 2021… before inflation… truffles ranged anywhere between $300 to $1600 per pound.

No idea how much they would cost now.

But I know this… the Kennon family has never eaten anything that costs that much.

Y’all just don’t pay me that well.

But, it turns out, truffles apparently really make French cooking come alive… so they’re a highly sought after item.

I’m sure Pastor Matthew could tell you all about them.

But the reason I wanted to highlight the truffle… the form of the thing is different than the function of the thing.

The form of the thing is ugly and dirty and filthy looking… but the function is to make certain French dishes taste quite delightful.

I’ve got one more illustration for you… and you’ll be able to spot this one right away.

This one is much more the language of our culture.

Anyone here ever visited a real hog farm?

There is a pretty significant hog farm in Fredericktown where I grew up… I went there once… and holy cow… I’m pretty sure that hogs are about the most disgusting animals on the planet.

That stench was in my nose for hours.

Hogs are dirty… smelly… and honestly… they’re quite mean.

Cows are pretty docile… not hogs… they can be down right mean.

But… as we saw with truffles… the form of the thing doesn’t always match the function of thing.

What do we get from hogs?

One of God’s greatest gifts to mankind.

Can I get an amen to that?

Oh man… especially applewood smoked bacon.

MMmm… Doesn’t get much better than that.

The form of these things are dirty and ugly and nasty… but their form doesn’t do justice to the function… their function is wonderful.

Last week I put up this picture.

This was sciences best estimate to what Jesus may have looked like.

He was most likely a 5 foot 1, dark complected, dark haired guy that didn’t look much like us.

And then I read to you Isaiah chapter 53, verse 2 which tells us that Jesus wasn’t an attractive guy… Perhaps even a bit towards the ugly side.

It says…

But when Isaiah speaks of the unattractiveness of Jesus, it’s not just talking about physical appearance.

In fact, that’s not really even the focus of the passage.

The focus of the passage is that Jesus wasn’t attractive in the overall sense.

In other words, you wouldn’t have looked at Jesus… and simply by what you saw, said… This is a guy I need to follow.

There was nothing about Jesus that the culture around him would’ve said… We need to do whatever that guys says.

Nobody would’ve looked at him and said… He’s a born leader.

Understanding that Israel… Jews were looking… they were watching… they were waiting for their Messiah to come… and they fully expected that their Messiah would be a mighty military leader.

But… here’s Jesus… and he’s none of those things.

And so… He was despised and rejected.

His followers were few.

Sure… there was often a large crowd that followed because they were curious… but few were the people that actually followed him.

My goal for this morning’s sermon is to recapture who Jesus is by understanding his function… to see him in his beauty and splendor.

I am convinced… that if we would truly see who Jesus is… we would be absolutely awe struck.

And I want to be honest with you… I really don’t think we do a good job of this.

And by we… I mean the church as a whole… but I also mean us… this local church.

I think we lose focus of who Jesus is.

Because again… I think if we truly saw him for who he is… we’d be awe struck and everything else in this life would pale in comparison to knowing him.

If you have your Bible, and I hope that you do… Turn to Colossians chapter 1 with me.

In Colossians chapter 1 we find a poem… a hymn that was written about the beauty and majesty and Jesus Christ.

It’s commonly referred to as the Christ Hymn.

Understand that it is Greek poetry… and so the rhythm and the score are kind of lost in translation though… and so, as we read through it… it’s not going to seem like poetry or music at all.

But the amount of sheer truth packed into these 6 verses is incredible.

And let me just say… There is no way I can do this passage justice in 30 minutes… so I highly encourage you to take a month, or two… or three… and just study out these 6 verses… but this morning, we’re just going to quickly unpack some of the truths that are found in the Christ Hymn.

That’s the first half of the hymn… it highlights Jesus’ role in creation.

We’ll talk about it more in detail in a moment… I just wanted to highlight that the first half deals with Jesus in eternity past and who he was in creation.

Let’s read on… The second half… Verse 18…

This is a beautiful… beautiful hymn to Jesus.

Like I said… there’s no way we could do justice to this passage in the little time that we have… So, what we want to do this morning is walk through it, and see the functions of Jesus according to this hymn.

*DON’T READ*

Function number 1… Verse 15… He is the image of the invisible God.

God cannot be seen.

God walked by Moses on top of the mountain, and Moses couldn’t even look… it almost killed Moses.

God cannot be seen… but if you want to know God, you know him through Jesus Christ.

In the 17thcentury, there was a Catholic philosopher named René Descartes… and Descartes really is the father of modern philosophy.

Descartes coined this phrase… I’m sure you’ve heard it before… I think, therefore I am.

That’s his most famous saying.

But he also said something else that is quite relevant… Descartes said… Not only do I exist, but if I look deeply enough inside, I notice that God is there… I notice that God exists as well.

In other words… Descartes said that without looking at anything else… without looking at creation or anything else, I know two things… I know that I exist… and I know that God exists.

And that’s true.

God’s imprint is on every single one of us.

So, what Descartes said is really helpful.

But what Descartes did after that is… he began to expand that view and later said… I can therefore use my mind to understand who God is.

And as a result, Descartes said… I don’t need any external source to understand God… all I need is to look inside myself.

Again… I think his first two statements are in some ways very important and very correct.

But where he goes from there… he tries to identify who God is outside of anything other than his mind.

In the 20thcentury, responding to Descartes, German theologian Karl Barth said… Any conception we have of God will ultimately lead to idolatry.

We cannot correctly grasp who God is except through Jesus Christ.

This is exactly what Paul is saying here in the hymn.

If we want to know God… we can only know him through Jesus.

The function of Jesus then is to point us to who God is and all that he means.

Every single person that has ever existed is wired to want to know God.

We all have a spiritual sense about us.

Some may try and deny that sense through atheism… Some may just pass over that sense through being an agnostic… saying there may be a God but we can’t know him… but we all have, wired into our DNA, a desire to know God.

On our honeymoon, Becky and I went to the Smokey Mountains.

I had been there before as a kid, but you don’t really appreciate things as a child the way you do as an adult.

We rented a log cabin up in the mountains… completely secluded from civilization… and I remember standing on the deck of that cabin… looking out at the majesty of God’s creation… and simply being in awe of it.

And so what happens is we fall into these traps… I’ll go hunting and I see God in the woods… I’ll go hiking and I’ll see God through creation… I’ll go to the ocean and see God there… and those things are correct… you can get a blip of an understanding of God from those things… but none of those things really point us to a correct understanding of God.

That can only happen… We can understand God ONLY through Jesus Christ.

He is the image of the invisible God.

*DON’T READ

2nd… Still in verse 15… They hymn says that Jesus is the firstborn over all creation.