we actually know somebody who was willing to pay
the price of their blood
in order to have his enemies become his friends.
So we're gonna be continuing our series in Colossians,
but before we get into the following verses 15 through 23,
we actually need to go back into some of the territory
Joey covered in verses nine and 10,
so that we can get a fuller understanding
of what Paul is trying to say to the church at Colossians.
So in verse nine, he says,
and so from the day we heard of you,
we have not ceased to pray for you,
asking that you may be filled with the knowledge
of his will and all spiritual wisdom and understanding,
so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord,
fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work
and increasing in the knowledge of God.
There's this key point that we see
in Paul's prayers for the church,
that it really matters that we know God,
and that's going to inform what we start to see in Colossians
because he's gonna give us a very descriptive
and theologically rich idea of who Jesus is.
But before we get into that, I'm gonna say a little story.
Recently, I got married,
and in this process of being engaged,
one of the things that me and my wife did
is marriage counseling or premarital counseling.
And in this process,
one of the key themes that we always got
beat into us, for lack of better terms,
is Sebastian, you need to become a lifelong learner
of Christina, which is my wife's name,
or they would say, Christina,
you need to become a lifelong learner of Sebastian.
The reason why that phrase was so prevalent
within this premarital counseling
was to say that we're never going to get to a point
in our lives where we know all that we need to know.
And I think Paul, in the same way,
in verses nine through 10, is saying,
church at Colossians, church of today,
you need to become lifelong learners of Jesus.
And so now that we understand why Paul's prayers
for the church were that we would be full
of the knowledge of God,
we can understand better why he says what he says
in verse 15.
He says, 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 of 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 all things to himself,
whether on earth or in heaven,
making peace by the blood of his cross.
And you, who were once alienated and hostile in mind
doing evil deeds, has now reconciled in his body
of flesh by his death.
In order to present you holy and blameless
and above reproach before him.
If indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast,
not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard,
which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven,
and of which I, Paul, became a minister.
And so we get this idea that Paul's prayer
for the church at Colossians is that they know God,
and then he gives this really rich description
of who Jesus is.
And so we're gonna go over a couple of things
that Paul thinks it's really important
that we know about Jesus.
And what we're gonna find is that for each deep
theological truth that Paul states,
there is an equally practical and needful tool
that we can gain from it.
So the first characteristic that we need to understand
about Jesus is that Jesus is God.
One of the key characteristics that the original audience
would know and look for as a quality about God
is that he is a preexisting creator of everything.
And so it's not up for question or debate
on if Paul is stating the deity of Jesus.
He's being very clear that by him and through him,
all things were created, meaning that if it weren't
for Jesus, none of this would be here.
And this is where that practical and needful tool
that we gain from this theological truth comes
is that it helps us to know that Jesus created all things,
because if I don't know that, my relationship with him
is not gonna be what it should be.
I'm not gonna truly understand and appreciate
the fact that I can breathe, the fact that I can walk,
the fact that I have family, because he upholds all of that
by the word of his power.
Hebrews 1, 3.
he says, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. And Paul even goes
as far as to say in Acts 17 when he's evangelizing to people in Athens that in
him we live and move and have our being. So it's really important that we
understand that God came down in human form and was Jesus because without
understanding that I'm not gonna give him the proper praise, the proper worship,
and the proper service he deserves. And from that truth that Jesus is God and
that Jesus made all things comes another truth that is just as important, which is
not only was all things created by Jesus, but I was created for Jesus. Verse 16
says, 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 and for him. And so I was at this young adults group a couple of
weeks ago and we were singing the song, you are worthy of it all, you are worthy
of it all, for from you are all things and to you are all things, you deserve
the glory. And I felt like the Lord had put a correction in my heart for this
young adults group because what he had said to me is this young adults group is
seeing that I'm worthy of it all but they think that I'm worthy because I
saved them. And what they need to know is that I was worthy before I saved them. He
said, I'm not worthy because I'm your Savior, I'm your Savior because I'm
worthy. So there's this generation of people who didn't know that Jesus was
gonna come that still knew that God was worthy and offered them, offered him
their devotion and their praise and their sacrifices because God has always
been worthy and we were made for him. So not only were all things created through
him, but they were also created for him. The practical truth that we need to
understand and gain from this is most of the young people in the church today
find their purpose and find their value in the things that they're doing for God.
They think that they were made for kids ministry or worship ministry or tech
ministry and even though those things are good, they're not what they were made
for. They were made for God. Some people find their identity in evangelism and
even though evangelism is good and needful and a command that God gives us,
it's not what we were made for. We were made to know and love God and he made us
because it brought him joy. And as an extension of understanding that my sole
purpose in this world is to know God and glorify him forever, from that I can then
go into the kids tech worship ministries and serve not from a place of finding my
purpose, but from a place of understanding that my purpose is to make
God more known because he saved me. Psalm 139 verse 13 says,
for you formed me from my inward parts. You knitted me together in my mother's
womb. I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are your works
and my soul knows it very well. And we get this idea that the psalmist really
understands that God made him for himself. It really matters that we
understand the reason we were made, being for God. It's the only way that we're
able to put our lives into proper perspective. If I'm able to see that my
purpose is in knowing and loving God, then it will be easier for me to approach all
of the things that God has called me to do without attaching the value of my life
to those things, and without fully appreciating how genuine the grace and
love of God is that he could desire me. And the last thing that we really need to
understand and recognize that Paul makes very clear to us is that Jesus came to
the earth so that we can be reconciled. So we have this worthy and holy God that
we ought to know, we ought to become lifelong learners of. Not only is he God,
not only were we made for him, but we were made for him and then we rebelled
and were separated from God. And so it really matters that Jesus came so that
we can have reconciliation to God. If we go back to that verse in Colossians,
starting in verse 21, it says,
And so God came to earth for a purpose, so that we can be reconciled to him.
Romans 5 gives us a fuller perspective of what this means, for if while we were
enemies of God, we were reconciled to him.
to God by the death of his son. Much more, now that we are reconciled, we shall be
saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus
Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. And so not only did we
rebel from God, but scripture goes as far as to say that we were enemies of God.
It's hard language for me to really comprehend that I was an enemy of God
because our tendency and our desire in life is to feel like there's no way that
we could have been that hostile to God. But if we really look back at our
previous natures, if we look back at what our lives looked like before we knew
Jesus, we'll see that there really is a hostility in the ways that we lived, the
ways that we talked, and the ways that we acted before our nature was changed,
before we understood that this good God came to earth in the form of a human and
died for us. The final thing that really puts the nail on the cross, for lack of a
better phrase, is that we get to see that Jesus's payment was costly. The most
standout statement to me in that verse is, for him all the fullness of God was
pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile all things to himself, whether
on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. So understanding
that Jesus paid such a high price in his blood for us is so important because if
we were to put that into today's standard, how we understand we pay for
things, like nobody in civilization today goes out to the blood bank and gets a
pint of blood to go pay for their groceries or their dinner, but we
actually know somebody who was willing to pay the price of their blood in order
to have his enemies become his friends. And I think that's why Paul's major
theme throughout this whole chapter of Colossians is that we ought to know God
is the least that we can do for him, is offer ourselves back to a God who paid
such a high price for us. So that's my encouragement to you today, is really
really meditate and dwell on this fact that there's so much to know about God.
Paul really just lays out the basics. If we decide as Christians and as disciples
and followers of Christ to be lifelong learners of Jesus, there's so much
richness, that's the abundance of life that Jesus talked about in John 10. If we
if we know him, if we come to a full knowledge of who Jesus is, that's gonna
be be the fullness of life that we've all been looking for.