Please turn in your Bibles this morning to the letter of Paul to the Colossians. The letter of Paul to the Colossians, again chapter 1. We take up not only our series on Colossians, but in particular a sermon I began last time. So you will find in the outline in your bulletin, what we covered last time was point 1A and B. I put it there as a refresher for you. But as you remember, false teachers had arisen and gained some influence in the city of Colossae and the church there. And they were speaking with authority and claimed the right to be heard because of their very spiritual credentials. In the name of Christ, they were teaching something other than the gospel of Christ. Now, whether they denied the gospel and were offering something else entirely, or whether they gave lip service to the gospel, they just took it for granted and were adding something more. We don't know. But in either case, they were teaching that Christ is not enough. Something more is needed. Now, it's not difficult to understand how the Colossians were being tempted. We share with them the relentless struggle against sin. The never-ending enticements of the world. The enchanting temptations on the one hand and the stinging accusations on the other of Satan. And all of these press all the more surely and difficultly in the circumstances of life. We know what it is to want short answers that bring immediate results. Relief from our misery now. Victory in the battle, now. We've heard the gospel. Perhaps we believe it and we are saved. As I trust many, if not most, of you are. But we do grow weary in living the life to which we are called and for which the gospel equips us. It's a long road. It's a narrow road. And we have a time to wait before our faith will become sight. And so we can understand how appealing it is to have other answers, to have a different way. Therefore, we too are vulnerable to being lured away from Christ. So this message is just as important for us as it was for the church in Colossae. Well, as we said last time, Paul responds to these false teachers by trumping their credentials with apostolic credentials. And with authority delegated to him by Jesus Christ, he tells them, he reminds them and he reminds us of what God has accomplished already for the people of God in Jesus Christ. In verses 13 and 14, which we will read in a moment, he says that God has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have already, we could say, already redemption, the forgiveness of sins. This is what we have. And this is a magnificent claim that Paul goes one step further to back up and he does so in our text today when he gives pause to give Christ supreme credentials. Credentials that testify to his unique authority, his unique ability, and his unique right to accomplish this great redemption. A redemption that we will see that encompasses not only the sinners but also the whole of creation. In verses 15 through 20, Paul presents two credentials in a hymn-like manner, the structure of which I've tried to lay it out for you in the back of your bulletin insert as I did last time. And in it he speaks poetically. He's using pictures to declare the truth that Jesus Christ has two natures, one divine and the other human. And so we read this morning from Colossians chapter 1, beginning at verse 9 through verse 20, our text and attention being given to verses 15 to 20. Hear now the Word of God. Since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of His will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please Him in every way, bearing fruit in every good work, Growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might, so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully giving thanks to the Father who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light. For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness, and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. He, now speaking of the Son He loves, He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created, things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities. All things were created by Him and for Him. 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 and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything He might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all His fullness dwell in Him, 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. Here ends the reading of God's words this morning, and may He bless it to us, His people. Well, last time I unpacked Christ's first credential, which is in verses 15 to 17. Christ is God eternal. In his divine nature, the Son of God is distinct from his creation. He is the Lord of creation. He stands apart from and exalted over all things because all things were made by him, in him, through him, and unto him. He is the Alpha, the first, who stands at the beginning as the agent of creation. He is the Omega, the last, who stands at the end as the goal toward which creation is moving. The goal which is realized by God in the flesh. And so now we turn our attention to the second of Christ's supreme credentials in verses 18 through 20. Christ is God incarnate. And first we consider its declaration and second its clarification. In verse 18, Paul declares that Christ is God incarnate and he doesn't use those words, he paints us a picture. He tells us this truth by emphasizing the work of the Son of God in the flesh. And he introduces this point in the refrain when he shifts from all things, referring to the creation, to the church. Now he turns our attention to the church, the new creation, and that sets the stage for all that follows. And he begins in verse 18, he says, He is before all things, I'm sorry, that's verse 17, He is before all things, and he concludes in verse 18, And he is the head of the body, the church. And speaking of the church, Paul is referring to the people of God assembled, gathered together. Now Paul here has in mind the totality of the church. The church universal. the invisible church that finds expression in each visible and local church that confesses Jesus Christ and proclaims his gospel, whether that church is in Colossae or in Escondido or any place in this world at any time in our history. Paul's got the big picture in mind here. He's speaking of the church as God knows it, the one holy Catholic and apostolic church that we confess in the nice scene in the Apostles' Creed. We'll confess it this evening. We also confess this in our Heidelberg Catechism, question and answer 54, saying that the Son of God, through His Spirit and Word, out of the entire human race, from the beginning of the world to its end, gathers, protects, and preserves for Himself a community. A community. Chosen for eternal life and united in true faith. There's one church, and that's the church to which Paul is speaking. Now, Paul often pictures the church as a body. Sometimes he applies this to a local congregation, sometimes to the church in its totality. And it's a powerful metaphor that portrays the vital union between the body, which is the church, and the head, which is Christ. He applies it in great detail in 1 Corinthians chapter 12. He's speaking to the church there and he's focusing on that body of believers that has become divided to remind them that they are one. That there is unity there even though they have a diversity of gifts. And he begins in verse 12, they're saying the body is a unit. It's made up of many parts and though all of its parts are many, they form one body. That's our experience. We look at each other and we know this. He goes on to say, so it is with Christ. This is the picture we're to have in our mind when we envision the relationship of Christ and his church. And in our text this morning, Paul applies this metaphor in order to focus our attention on the head in particular. On Christ. The head of the body. The head of the church. And as the head, he is the source of the body's life. Just as it is so in our lives. If the head dies, if we become brain dead, our body will die. Now we live in a technological age where we can sustain that body for a long time but the body is as good as dead and will be dead as soon as life support is removed. If the head dies, the body dies. In the same way, Christ is the source of the church's life. Without his life, a man is still dead in his sin. Without his life, any so-called church is no church at all. It's just a gathering of people in a building and a place. In Colossians 2, verse 13, Paul reminds all who trust in Christ for your salvation that Christ's life is now your life. When you were dead in your sins, God made you alive with Christ. Then in verse 19, he warns us against false teachers who have lost connection with the head, he says. Just from that statement alone, what do we know? they've lost connection with the head. They're spiritually dead. They have nothing to offer you. They've lost connection with the head from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow. Jesus taught His disciples, apart from me, you can do nothing. Christ is the head of the church. He's the source of life for the church. And the head is also the governor of the body. When we consider our own lives, we know that what we think we can say, what we think we can do. The head has the authority and the power to tell the body what to do. And in the same way, Christ is the governor of his church. He's the Lord of the church. He's the Lord of this new creation. In Ephesians chapter 5, We read that Christ is the head of the church, His body. And then we read that the church submits to Christ. The church is subject to and governed by Christ. Then Paul goes on in the text to declare that our head, Jesus Christ, is also the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead. And by identifying Jesus Christ as the firstborn from among the dead, Paul makes it clear that he's speaking of Christ in the flesh. He's speaking of God in the flesh. He's saying that Jesus Christ is the first man to be raised from the dead once and for all. Now we know from the record of Scripture that others were raised to life before him. But we need only remember Lazarus to remember that after their resurrections, they were still subject to death. They were raised, to be sure. But they died again. Only the God-man, Jesus Christ, has been raised from the dead, never to die again. He is the first to be raised from the death to eternal life in the fullness of humanity. Saints who have gone before have been raised to life in spirit. Their bodies are still in the grave, but Jesus Christ has been raised body and soul. He's been raised and he has ascended into the very presence of God in the fullness of his humanity, body and soul. Children, this is important to know and to learn and for us adults to remember that we don't worship a Christ who is a spirit disembodied and floating about. We worship the God-man. Were he to appear today, we would recognize him as a man. He has been raised in the flesh. The promise of God in Romans chapter 8, verse 29, is that those God foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of His Son, that He might be the firstborn of many brothers. And by this we know that all who trust in Christ for eternal life will likewise be resurrected in the body. Body and soul together to live with God forever. This is our Christian hope. It is unique in the world. We don't hope for a bodiless heaven. We hope for the resurrection of our bodies and we hope grounded on a certainty that Christ has gone before. He is the firstborn of many brothers. And because Jesus Christ is the firstborn from among the dead, He is also called the beginning. The founder of the new creation, the family of God. He is the founder of a family that will be conformed to Christ's human likeness and made fit to live forever in the presence of God. That's what God's about in your life as a Christian. It's to conform you to that image of the resurrected Christ. According to the Apostle John, John 1, verse 12, to all who receive Christ, to those who believe in His name, He gives the right to be called children of God. And it's with this confidence that He writes in His first letter, 1 John 3, that we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like Him, for we will see Him as He is. Christ is the firstborn from among the dead, the beginning of a new and redeemed humanity. And as such, He is our Head. As He is, in His resurrected and glorified humanity, we will be as members of His body. Therefore, we confess in Heidelberg question and answer 49 that in Him, we have our own flesh in heaven, a guarantee that Christ, our Head, will take us, his members, to himself in heaven. Christ is God incarnate. He is our head to which we're joined. He is our life. He is our future. To this declaration that Christ is God incarnate, Paul adds some clarification in the verses that follow it. The last part of verse 18, he gives us the purpose for which the Son of God came in the flesh. He gives us the bigger picture. He says that he came so that in everything he, that is Christ, might have the supremacy. And when we first read that, we might say, why does he even tell us that? He's God. Is he not supreme over all things? Indeed he is, as we discussed last time. In his divinity, he is, he has been, he always will be eternally supreme over everything. Because he made everything. And everything's for him. But Paul's point here is that it's God's purpose that the Son of God have supremacy as the God-man in his flesh, bearing human nature. Adam, our first head, failed to accomplish what he was created to do. Therefore, God had to accomplish it for us by sending his Son in the flesh. therefore Paul calls Jesus Christ the last Adam and as the head of a new humanity he merited, he earned the inheritance of eternal life in the flesh not only for himself but for all who would follow through faith in him and therefore because he has completed that work which we will discuss in a moment in his resurrected and glorified humanity he has gained supremacy he has been raised above everything Christ has already accomplished this purpose Christ has already become supreme over all things and he's done it in the place of and for the benefit of all those whom God has given him all those who will believe that he is Savior and Lord this purpose is already accomplished but it's not yet fully realized nor will it be until he comes again in his flesh and gathers up his people, body and soul, to reign with him over all things. And then in verse 19, Paul goes on to tell us why. Why this is so. Why this happened. Why did God do this? What motivated God to send the Son of God in the flesh? And here we bump up against mystery because all he has to say is that for God was pleased. Don't you like that answer? When you ask that why question to anything in life and you bump up against because God was pleased. God was pleased to do for you and for me what we could never do for ourselves. Never earn for ourselves. Never buy for ourselves. And it was his choice for his own reasons before anything was made. God was pleased. And it's the thread of God's purpose and pleasure that binds together all of his work. And it's expressed very beautifully in chapter 1 of Ephesians. And I just want to read the thread that strings through that whole chapter. God chose us in Christ before the creation of the world. and he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ in accordance with his pleasure and will. According to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will. The secret things belong to God. Revealed things belong to us and to our children forever and we have been told that God did this for us because it pleased him. And it was his good pleasure that determined the manner in which He would accomplish this purpose. And according to verse 20, God was pleased to have all of His fullness dwell in Him, in the Son, in Christ. According to chapter 2, verse 9, in Him all the fullness of the deity lives in bodily form. I can't comprehend that, people of God. I can't wrap my mind around it. But I can submit to it, praise God, that God, in Christ, has made the fullness of His presence known among us. In the person of Jesus Christ, the Creator, entered creation, conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary. The Divine Son of God has taken to Himself human flesh, a body that He will never shed. He'll never shed. As the God-man, He came to give His life as a ransom for many. In the flesh, He lived the perfect life, the sinless life. In the flesh, he suffered and died his sacrificial death. In the flesh, he was powerfully raised to life again on the third day. And in the flesh, he gloriously ascended to the right hand of God the Father. And all this he did for the sake of those whom the Father has given him all who will believe and trust that he did so for you. And when Paul goes on in verse 20 to say that God was pleased through him to reconcile unto himself all things, all creation, whether things on earth or things in heaven, Paul is presupposing something that we need to remember and that's the fact that all of creation has been estranged from God. Jesus Christ came because there was a need. Because the fellowship of God's image bearer, mankind, had been broken and with that breaking of fellowship all of creation had fallen out of sorts and out of order and under the frustration of the curse. At the creation God saw that He had made and it was very good. And in the Garden of Eden He lived with man. He was in the company of men. And if Adam, the head of mankind had obeyed the commandment of God he would have inherited eternal life with God not only for himself but for all of his offspring and in him mankind would have been exalted to rule in the name of God over everything including the angels. The big picture here is that God created man for a purpose and that's to reign over his creation. Things on earth things in heaven. Visible and invisible. And here the false teachers and Colossae had turned things on their head. They thought that man was designed to worship angels. Angels were created to serve men. In Hebrews chapter 2 verse 5, the author notes that it is not angels that God has subjected it is not to angels that God has subjected the world to come. God didn't create angels to rule the world to come. And then the author ponders with David from Psalm 8 how it is that God put everything under the feet of man. What is man that you're mindful of him that you'd make him supreme over all things? And as he ponders that he wonders how it is at present we do not see everything subject to him. How it is now that it's not been fulfilled the way God created it to be. And we know the answer. Don't we? Adam disobeyed. Adam fell. And as our head, he inherited death for himself and death for us and forfeited that reign. And not only that, but according to Romans chapter 8, ever since his fall, the creation has been waiting eagerly for the sons of God to be revealed, for the redemption of God's children. Why? Because the creation was subjected to frustration. Not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it. That's God. And it was subjected in hope, in the expectation that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. Paul talks about the creation groaning, waiting for this day when the purpose of man will be realized and fulfilled. and everything will be set back in its proper order with God supreme over all, reigning through man, reigning through the God-man first and foremost and the saints reigning with him over all things. And therefore, the author of Hebrews continues, even though we do not see everything subject to him, to man, we do see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. We see Jesus reigning supreme over all, accomplished and gaining that because of his work in the flesh for his people. Christ, the God-man, the last Adam, has gained the supremacy for which man was created and he has done so through his redemptive work in the flesh and he has done so by reconciling sinners to God. And He has done so, as Paul says in verse 20, by making peace through His blood shed on the cross. In chapter 1 of 1 Peter, we're reminded that it's not with perishable things such as silver and gold that we are redeemed, but with the precious blood of Christ, the God-man. And it is through our redemption, through the redemption of the people of God, through the freedom of the children of God, that the entire creation will at last be liberated from its bondage and decay and reconciled to God. This is where we're heading. This is where we're going. This is where Christ is. Paul has presented us with Christ's supreme credentials to make it unmistakably clear that Christ is enough. Because Christ is who He is and has done what He has done. There's no need for something else or something more for getting right with God or for living a life that shows that we're right with God. No matter how difficult the circumstances. Christ is enough. Because, as Paul says, at the heart of our text, in the middle of our refrain, in Him all things hold together. And how could it be otherwise? He is God eternal. He's transcendent. He's exalted over all. And Christ is God incarnate, imminent, close at hand and in vital union with His people. He alone is supreme over and sufficient for all the circumstances of this life, of your life, for eternal life. To God be the glory. What great things He has done. Let us pray. Our Father in heaven, we are humbled this morning and grateful this morning to be reminded of the work of Jesus Christ on behalf of your people and for the benefit of all creation. It is hard for us, Lord, to understand, to comprehend. In fact, I do believe it's impossible to comprehend. that the God, man, Jesus Christ, is fully divine, fully human, and will ever be both in one person. But we thank you that you have, out of your good pleasure and for your purposes, accomplished this feat in the Incarnation, that Christ might accomplish our salvation and provide for us through our sanctification even under glorification when we will be like Him body and soul in the perfection of the humanity you've made us to be in Him. Thank you Father for this good news. Help us to live our lives today and the confidence it should give us as we keep our eyes fixed on Jesus Christ. It's in His name we pray. Amen.