Preeminent in the Gospel

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Well, when you’re a parent, it’s amazing how much of your planning revolves around your kids. And I remember before Benjamin was born, I heard somebody talking about how, no, the kids, they come into your world and they fit into your world and not the other way around. And I thought, well, that sounds right.

You show them who’s boss. And then I, you know, you already know that’s not how it works. I discovered real quickly it doesn’t work that way.

You’d be amazed. Well, maybe not, because many of you in the room are parents. You may be raising 30 or 40-year-olds, but you’re parents.

But it’s amazing how much of the planning revolves around the kids. Charla and I typically make, well, we make most decisions based on what’s best for the kids. We’re going to go out to eat.

All right, well, where can we go with the kids? We’ve made decisions about where to go on vacation based on the kids. I’ve made career decisions based on what’s best for the kids.

Now I can already hear some of the objections. Preacher, aren’t you supposed to see what God wants you to do and make your decisions based on that? Yeah, you are.

But if you recognize that not just for me, but for all of us, our family is our first ministry, then that’s got to be one of the primary concerns in figuring out what God wants us to do. God wants us to do, in most cases, what’s best for our families. Well, you can’t let the kids run everything.

No, my kids don’t run everything at the house, and when they try, they get in trouble. But there’s a difference between doing what’s best for them and making them centering the plans on their good versus letting them run everything. Now, what I’m talking about here this morning is, you know, we make plans centered on what’s good for our children, what’s good for the family.

You know, when you get married, it’s no longer about you. It’s about the two of you. And when you have children, it’s no longer about the two of you.

It’s about all of you. It’s about the whole family. And so, like I said, we, the kids, the kids are at the center of the plans.

The kids are at the center of the decisions, usually. I say usually, I can’t think of a time when they’re not unless it’s we got away once a year for a date night, and we don’t have to consider where to go for them, except charlots usually when we’ve got to get back in time to feed them or do something. The kids are at the center of the plans.

Now, what does this have to do with what we’ve been studying about Jesus Christ from Colossians chapter 1? Well, God also has a son, and God’s plans revolve around the son. Not the S-U-N, but the S-O-N.

God the Father has had plans from eternity past of the things that he was going to do. And you know that those plans revolve and have always revolved around his son. Just like I as a parent, the kids are not the parsley on the plate.

They’re not the garnish on the side of the main course. They are the primary consideration. Well, for the Father, the Son has always been the primary consideration, and Jesus has always been at the center of God’s plans.

We talked a little bit on Wednesday night about the new covenant, as we’ve been looking at the covenants, the major covenants, the major promises that God made throughout Scripture. And we talked about the objection that some people give who reject Jesus as the Messiah. They say, oh, Christianity has nothing to do with the Old Testament.

Clearly, this was just made up by the apostles. There’s no way. We look to Jeremiah 31 verses 31 through 34, where it talks about God giving a prophecy to Jeremiah in the Old Testament, one of the Old Testament Jewish prophets, some five, six hundred years before Jesus Christ. And God told Jeremiah, there’s coming a day when I will give a new covenant that will be totally different from the one I gave Moses, and it will deal with the heart.

Where God said, I’ll change the hearts of my people. fast forward 500 years to Jesus teaching at the Sermon on the Mount. And he says, this is what you think about the law, but you’ve totally missed the application to the heart.

Now that right there, among many other things, points to the fact that God’s plan has always revolved around the coming of Jesus Christ. See, God didn’t start 500 years earlier with Jeremiah thinking, first of all, God didn’t start at Bethlehem and say, okay, Jesus was born, okay, what do I do with him now? It didn’t start at the cross where God said, oh, well, he went and got himself killed. How do I make the best of this situation?

No, no, it didn’t start at the cross. It didn’t start at Bethlehem. God’s plans revolving around Jesus didn’t even start with Jeremiah.

We can go back to the earliest days of human history. We can see even in the Garden of Eden. You see it all throughout the Old Testament.

But we can see even in the Garden of Eden, where man sinned against God for the first time. And there were a couple things in that story that point to the coming of Jesus Christ. First of all, God said that he would put enmity, he would make them enemies, between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman. Now, Jesus Christ was born the seed of the woman.

He didn’t have a human father. He was born the seed of the woman and said that the seed of the woman would crush the serpent’s head and the serpent would bruise his heel. Well, there we see at the cross, Satan thought he had won, thought he had gotten Jesus by the heel.

But really, it was at the cross that the serpent’s head was crushed because sin was defeated. Satan’s plans to drag us into the lake of fire with him were defeated once and for all because Jesus paid for our sins and foe on the cross. Not only that, but in the story there in the Garden of Eden, there was a picture of Jesus Christ because when Adam and Eve, their eyes were opened after they’d sinned and they realized that they were naked, God made clothing for them.

What did he make that clothing out of? Animal skins. Where did he get the animal skins?

There you go. Killed an animal. I figured somebody was going to say an animal. I was going to say, can the animal live without the skin? No.

An animal had to die. That was the first time in recorded history that the innocent died to cover the sins of the guilty. That was a picture of what would happen about 4,000 years later when Jesus Christ died on the cross so that his blood that he shed could cover the sins of the guilty.

Look through the Old Testament, and it’ll give you goosebumps sometimes if you look at some of these stories and see how God always had these plans in mind regarding Jesus Christ. But folks, it didn’t even start at the Garden of Eden. The Bible talks about how Jesus was slain from the foundation of the world. God’s plan all along.

He created us knowing that we were going to sin and that he was going to have to rescue us. God’s plans have always centered around Jesus Christ. And so this morning in Colossians chapter 1, we see the preeminence of Jesus Christ, the overarching importance of Jesus Christ, the all-surpassing worth of Jesus Christ in the gospel. We’re going to pick up where we left off last week in Colossians chapter 1, starting at verse 9, and we’re going to look at verses 9 through 14 this morning.

Now Paul says in verse 9, For this reason also, since the day we heard this, we haven’t stopped praying for you. We are asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will, in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, so that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all his power, according to his glorious might, so that you may have great endurance and patience, joyfully giving thanks to the Father who has enabled you to share in the saints’ inheritance in the light. He has rescued us.

Don’t miss this part. He has rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son he loves. In him we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

Now some manuscripts say, in him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins. Some manuscripts have that, some don’t. Now, if you take that out, you still have the question, how do we have redemption?

Through his blood. There’s no other way. But I think it’s important to have that in there.

We have our redemption through his blood. So we see in this that Jesus Christ is at the center of God’s plans for us. He’s at the center of the Father’s plans for us.

Now, we started last week on this chapter, chapter 1, where really the whole thing deals with Paul talking to this church at Colossae who was getting confused. There were all sorts of heretics. I know that’s a word we don’t use much anymore, but it’s such a good word.

It describes it so well. They were heretics. They came preaching some other Jesus.

They came preaching some other idea of Jesus, an idea of a Jesus who could not save, and it had the potential to confuse the church. And so Paul writes the book of Colossians, the letter to the church at Colossae, for a number of reasons, but one of those is to make sure they understand with him who Jesus is. And in the passage we looked at last week, the first eight verses, it really talks about the importance that there’s nothing more important.

There’s nobody more important to the church or to the Christian than Jesus Christ. Then we come to these verses and we see the plan of God working throughout our lives, changing us, making us different. And we get to the end of that passage in verses 13 and 14, and we see that all of that revolves around Jesus. And this plan of God that works in our lives to make us different, to save us, and to transform us, Jesus is at the very center of that.

There’s no plan of God for our lives if there’s not Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is at the center of the Father’s plans for us. Sometimes we wonder, sometimes people will wonder, well, what does God want for me? What’s God’s will for my life?

Folks, if you’re not considering Jesus Christ at the center of those plans, you’re not going to find God’s will for your life. If it’s just, oh, I want to live for myself, I don’t need Jesus, I don’t need salvation, I don’t need to be transformed, I just want to live my best life now, and I want to see what God has planned for me, what God wills for me, you will never find out God’s will for your life apart from Jesus Christ. Now we see in this passage that because of Jesus, we can have fellowship with God and know his will. It’s Jesus who enables us to have that fellowship with God and know his will.

He says in verse 9, For this reason also, since the day we heard this, we haven’t stopped praying for you. We are asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding. Now, I know that verse itself doesn’t mention Jesus, but all of this ties back into verses 13 and 14.

The basis for all of this is what Jesus Christ did for us on the cross, shedding his blood and giving his life to bring us back into a relationship with the Father. It’s only because of that that we can have a knowledge of God and his will. It’s only because of that that we can have a relationship with God.

And so because of Jesus, we can have a relationship with God and we can know his will. And he says, Paul’s praying here that the church at Colossae, because of what Jesus has done, that they would be filled with the knowledge of his will. That word there, fulfilled, in Greek is pleris, which is, I believe it’s where we get the word, it’s related in some way, shape, or form.

I don’t know if it’s actually where we get the word, but it’s related to the word plethora. Plethora is another good English word that we don’t use very often. You have a plethora of things.

I have a plethora of children. A slew, yes. If we were writing this in Oki, we might say that you may have a slew of the knowledge.

of his will. That word is talking about an abundance and overflowing. I believe there was a blood disease that they called by this term because you had too much blood and it began to seep out places.

Paul doesn’t want us just to have some vague idea of what God wants for us. Paul doesn’t want us just to have some vague idea of how to serve God. He wants us to be filled to overflowing with the knowledge of God and his will.

He wants us to know God so well that our knowledge of him spills out all over the place. How can we ever come back close to the Father? Only through the Son.

Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes unto the Father but by me. When we get close to the Father, you’ve got to come through the Son.

He’s at the center of God’s plans here. And through him, we can have a relationship with the Father, and we know his will. Doesn’t mean you’ll never have those moments of wondering, well, what does God want me to do next?

Yeah, in a specific situation, you may ask that question. I ask that question all the time, and sometimes it takes a long time for God to answer that, but it doesn’t mean that I don’t know God. It doesn’t mean that I don’t know God’s will about a lot of things.

If you remember back to last week, I told you on Sunday night, those of you who were here, there are some things God doesn’t even expect you to pray about because he’s already told you in his word. That’s by will. One of those things is for us to be more like Jesus.

Sanctification. Lord, do you want me to be more like Jesus today? You don’t have to pray that.

He’s already told you in 1 Thessalonians chapter 4. That’s by will for you. So because of Jesus, we can have fellowship with God and know his will.

He’s at the center of God’s plan for us to know him. Because of Jesus’ righteousness, we can be worthy and pleasing to God. Do you ever feel like you’re not good enough for God?

Do you ever feel like you don’t measure up? You know why that is? Because you don’t.

If you don’t have that feeling that, oh, I don’t measure up, if you think, oh, I’m good enough for God, there’s your problem, okay? But for those who’ve trusted in Christ as their Savior, see, we’ve all sinned, and it separates us from God. We can’t measure up.

But for those who’ve trusted Christ as their Savior, that feeling, God doesn’t accept me, God doesn’t love me. I can’t please him. It’s not true.

It’s not true. There may be moments of disobedience where we wander from God, and we need to deal with those as quickly as possible. We need to come back and seek restoration in our fellowship with him.

We need to confess where we’ve gone wrong. We need to come back like the prodigal son and seek the Father’s forgiveness. But at the same time, this feeling of just walking around, well, I can just never be good enough for God.

No, no, no. We can’t be good enough for God, but Jesus has made us good enough for God. Because of Jesus’ righteousness, we can be worthy and pleasing to God. He says in verse 10, one of the things he prays, so that you may walk worthy of the Lord.

That’s a pretty tall order, isn’t it? Walk in a way that’s good enough for the perfect, holy, sinless God. He says so that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him.

Pleasing in just a few things? No. Just a little bit pleasing?

No. fully pleasing to the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and growing in the knowledge of God. That’s Paul’s prayer for them.

That’s his prayer for those of us who followed in their footsteps, that we’d get to a point where we could walk worthy in the Lord. Are you ever going to be sinless? No.

Never going to happen. And yet, because of the right, the only way we can be, the only way we can be worthy of him is because of the righteousness of Christ. See, when Jesus went to the cross, he took our sins, he took our sins on himself, and he bore responsibility for them. But he also, in that transaction, he takes his righteousness and puts it on us.

He took our sin and put it on himself and was punished for it so that he could take his righteousness and put it on us. And the Bible says, God made him who knew no sin to become sin for us so that we might be made righteous. I’m paraphrasing a little bit.

That word for worthy means to be made deserving. I don’t deserve God’s love. No, you don’t, but Jesus made it where you do.

We don’t deserve God’s love because of who we are, but we’re worthy and deserving of God’s love because of who we are in Christ. Because of Jesus’ authority, we’re empowered to serve. When he tells us to do something, how often is your answer? I know the answer for me.

But how often is your answer, God, I can’t do that. Jesus, I can’t do that. How am I going to look at Jesus who told me to do something and tell him I can’t do what he told me to do?

Is there anything that’s not under his power and under his authority? Is there anything that our God is not sovereign over? I can’t think of anything.

And Jesus, the Father, talks about how Jesus has been given all authority. Now, that doesn’t mean he’s less than God. It just means indifference to his father.

His father says, here’s the authority. Now in verse 11, it says, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might, so that you may have great endurance and patience. He wants us to be strengthened with all power according to his glorious might.

Now it’s easy to miss what he’s saying here, if we just look at the English. Because as confusing as the Greek is that this was written in, Greek is really good for describing things, because they have so many different words for everything. Now, when he says strengthened with all power, we might think these words power and might mean exactly the same thing.

And he says strengthened with all power, that word is dunamis or dynamis, depending on how different people have pronounced it, is the root word that we get dynamic from, or dynamite. It’s talking about an ability to do something. It’s talking about actual power to go out and do something.

And we would use that word power in different ways, ability versus authority. Dunamis, this word power, means the ability. Now, might comes from the word kratos.

And again, I don’t know for sure that I’m actually pronouncing these perfectly, but bear with me. That’s the word where we get the suffix krat in our English language. So somebody’s a Democrat with a small d, it means they believe in the rule of the people.

Somebody’s an autocrat, They believe in the rule of one person. All right? That word kratos means rule, authority to do something.

So let’s use those words. Let’s use ability and authority here just to get a clearer sense of what he’s saying. Being strengthened with all ability according to his glorious authority so that you may have great endurance and patience joyfully.

Now, what Paul is saying to the church at Colossae is that you can go out and do all the things that he’s called you to do. Why? Because he has the authority to say so.

It goes along with that verse that Paul wrote to the church at Philippi. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Now, we throw that around in such a flippant way.

I can win this baseball game because I can do all things. Maybe. I can build the biggest business and I can make the most money because I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

Maybe. Whether it’s baseball, whether it’s business, whether it’s any other thing that we apply that to, we apply that typically to competitive situations. What happens when you’re claiming that verse and your competitor’s claiming that verse?

You can’t both win. That’s not what Paul’s talking about. If you read it in context, He’s talking about his ability to endure all things.

He’s talking, Paul was in prison. And not because he’d done anything wrong. He was in prison for sharing the gospel.

And he says, I can do this. I can’t get through the next five minutes of what I’m going through. No, no, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

So how can we serve God faithfully? How can we do the sometimes impossible things that he calls us to do? Is it because we’re so powerful?

Is it because we’re so in charge? no it’s because he gives us the ability because he has the authority and if he says go do it you better believe he’s going to give us the ability to do what he’s called us to do and so because of Jesus we’re empowered to serve God because of his authority there’s nothing that’s not under his authority talking to somebody this week about Satan about Satan’s influence on things and we were discussing how in the book of Job we see that even Satan is under his authority Now does that mean every evil thing that happens, everything that Satan does, God made him do? No.

God gives Satan a little rope to hang himself. God lets Satan run him up just a little bit. But we see in the book of Job, at whatever point God says, stop, Satan can’t go any further than that line.

Even Satan is under the sovereignty of God. And we see in here, because of Jesus, we are acceptable. I think this is incredible.

We can talk about the power to serve. We can talk about all these other things. I think this is one of the most important things in the passage.

Because of Jesus, we are acceptable to God, and we share in the inheritance of the saints. Now, he says in the end of verse 11 going into verse 12, joyfully giving thanks to the Father who has enabled you to share in the saints’ inheritance in the light. That word enabled means to be made adequate.

It means to be made adequate. It’s not just he’s giving you the power here to have a share of the saints’ inheritance. He said he’s making you adequate.

He’s making us worthy to be called the saints of God. It’s Jesus Christ who makes us worthy to be called children of God. You know, I said the son is at the heart of the father’s plans.

Part of those plans also involve God’s other children. We’re God’s other children, those who come to him by faith in Jesus Christ. See, we get this idea in modern society, oh, we’re all children of God. No, we’re not.

We’re all creations of God. I’m not trying to be harsh in saying that. It’s just what the Bible teaches.

We’re not all children of God. We’re all creations of God. But he says to those who believe in Jesus Christ, he’s given us the power to be called the sons and daughters of God.

We are adopted into the family of God. Jesus is the son of God by nature. We can become sons and daughters of God.

It doesn’t mean we become gods. It means we are adopted into God’s family as his children by faith in Jesus Christ. And God’s redemptive plans have involved bringing us into his family, making us joiners. His plans revolve around his children with his only begotten son at the center of it.

And he makes us, Jesus Christ makes us adequate, makes us worthy to be part of that family. And he says he’s enabled us to share the saints’ inheritance in light. That means there’s a portion of inheritance set aside just for us.

Folks, if you’ve come to God, if you’ve come to the Father through Jesus Christ, you’ve come believing in what he did on the cross, if you believe that he died and rose again and he paid for your sins in full, and you come to God believing in that, you are not a stepchild in the family of God. Now, he adopts you into his family. Jesus makes you adequate, and there is a portion of the inheritance set aside specifically for you.

And that inheritance, and we like to think of inheritance as, oh, I got some money. I don’t know who these people are who inherit money, but when I’ve had family members pass on, I’ve really never inherited more than a few broken air compressors and some things like that when we had to go clean out tool sheds. I don’t know who these people are that inherit money.

Inherit dead. But we tend to think of an inheritance as money, something we get to take and enjoy, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with that.

Nothing wrong with you working and being responsible all your life and saying, I want to leave something for my kids and grandkids to take care of them. Nothing wrong with that. But when the Bible talks about an inheritance, This word kleros is talking about a responsibility, not just something to sit and enjoy.

Talking about a responsibility, a portion of the inheritance with the saints that we are then called out and given the privilege of serving our Father. Don’t think of the inheritance of the saints just as something we experience in heaven, although that’s part of it. That’s a big part of it.

But the inheritance of the saints is also the service that we perform here on earth. The privilege that we have of serving our Father while we’re here on earth. Folks, this is most important of all.

Because of Jesus, because of Jesus, our sin debt is paid in full. It’s paid in full so that we are transferred, we are pardoned, and we are set free. And what does this mean?

Look at verses 13 and 14. He has rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son he loves. I think some translations say he translates us.

Either one of those are good words that describe what he’s talking about. He has rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son he loves. In him we have redemption by his blood, the forgiveness of sins.

That word domain is the jurisdiction of something. When we start out, we’re in this domain of darkness. We are under the jurisdiction of Satan.

I know that makes people uncomfortable, but the New Testament even refers to Satan as the God of this world. Small g. Don’t get confused and think Satan is another God.

That there’s God and Satan and they’re evenly matched and they fight back and forth. No, it’s talking about the way he is served in this world, almost like he were a God. That he rules over the hearts of men, unfortunately.

If you don’t think that’s true, turn on the news. Oh my goodness. It’s an ugly world we live in, isn’t it?

It has some beautiful moments to it. I love being out in nature and in God’s creation, but our human world is an ugly place, isn’t it? I watched a documentary last night on human trafficking in Cambodia.

Some of these stories that these girls told were just heart-wrenching. And as a father of daughters, it made me want to hop on a plane with a gun, which you can’t do. And I do know that.

And go over there and start knocking some heads together and rescuing some people. And I know there are people that do this. But listening to some of their stories, I thought, what are we doing to each other?

What is wrong with humanity that we would do these things? And they interviewed some of the traffickers and some of the gangs that come and assault these girls. And, well, it’s okay because that’s what we wanted.

I’m getting mad again just thinking about it. Folks, it is an ugly world we live in. You think Satan isn’t roaming and running rampant in our world?

You think this world is not the domain of darkness? or living in a fairy tale, if you think otherwise. And we’re all born into that domain of darkness.

Sure, we’re not human traffickers. I don’t know of anybody in here who’s a human trafficker. We’re not murderers, adulterers.

You name the sin. Okay, we’re not all those things. We’re all right now.

We’re all born with this sin nature. I’ve never gone out and murdered anybody. I’ve never gone out and had an affair.

But folks, I know what lurks in my heart. I know the anger that takes up residence there. I know the pride that takes up residence there.

I know how selfish I can be. We’re born sinners. We’re born into that domain of darkness.

We’re born under Satan’s jurisdiction. But because of Jesus, folks, because of Jesus, the Father transfers us. I like what I’ve talked about in the past, the versions that say translate, and the meaning of that word that he picks us up and takes us over here and puts us back down.

We’re not talking a gradual movement where God, over the course of several years, takes us from one kingdom to another. We’re talking, we’re taking the kids to those arcades, those crane machines, trying to get Charlie a little rubber duck. There’s no arm, and that’s what that word transfer is like.

There’s no arm in the machine that just sort of gently sweeps them gradually over to the hole so they can come down. Now that crane goes over to where they are, the arm drops down, picks them straight up, pulls them back, and drops them. When we trust in Jesus Christ, God reaches down, plucks us up out of the domain of darkness, brings us into the kingdom of his son that he loves and sets us down there under his authority.

He moves us and he changes us like that. Oh, I love that. Does it mean we become perfect and sinless?

No, it doesn’t, unfortunately. I wish it did. but it does mean that we’re in his kingdom and he begins to change us where we become more and more like Jesus Christ we never become exactly like Jesus Christ we never become sinless we never become perfect but all throughout our lives we grow to be more and more like him why?

because in him we have redemption through his blood the forgiveness of sins this word have isn’t just oh I have it there are things that I have that I have no idea where they are anybody else that way? but there are also things that I have that I always know where they are because they’re important. And this word that he uses for have, this word echo, means to hold on to or to wear, to cling to it.

We have redemption. It’s not just something we have over here somewhere and we can dig it out of a box if we need it. It’s something we have in the sense that we hold close to us every day, this redemption that we have, this forgiveness.

This word for forgiveness in Greek means both pardon and liberty. We talked about this a little bit on Wednesday night. Imagine you’ve committed a crime that you’re going to sit in prison for the rest of your life while that crime is held against you.

Now, this word to you would mean two thi