The One at the Center of It All

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Well, everybody has priorities, and they’re all different. But whatever the most important priority is, it kind of stands at the center. The other priority is just sort of rotate around it.

It’s kind of like our solar system where you’ve got the sun at the center and everything else just sort of orients around the sun. And we see this play out in our lives all the time. We’ve seen it in particular with the whole response to COVID.

Just as one example, you know, what people, what is people’s number one priority shows up in the way they respond to COVID. That’s why you have people whose absolute number one priority above everything else is safety. They want to know that they’re going to be safe.

And so they want to wear the mask. They want you to wear the mask. They want 50.

I heard somewhere some government agencies now saying three masks is what you need. You know, people and we’re going to quit driving cars and all these things because people just want to be safe. on the other hand you’ve got people that their number one priority is freedom and it doesn’t matter how dangerous anything is you can’t tell me what to do we’re locked and loaded ready to go my my number one priority I’ve discovered is normalcy you know I’m willing to do almost anything if we can just move past this all right that’s just but that’s just me in everyday life you know I can get in an argument with my wife and say I’m willing to agree to whatever just so this fight can be over and we can go on with life.

That’s just me. I value normalcy. Not that we fight that much, right?

I can’t even remember the last one. But that’s just me. Whatever it takes to get back to normal life.

We all have our priorities and that shows up in everything else. Right now, one of my priorities when it comes to stuff around the house, much to probably Charla’s frustration because she has different priorities about the house. My priority is getting chickens.

And so I know she wants new floors laid. She wants the kitchen table finished. She wants all this stuff.

I want chickens. And so I spend my free time out there cutting trees and moving brush trying to get space for a chicken coop. And I’ll stand out there and I’ll dream about where do I need fencing?

And it’s all about these chickens. Every other priority seems to fall in place behind those chickens. What rooms get cleaned?

What gets done in the yard? it’s been all about the chickens. Every day we make choices, we make choices based on our priorities and based on what’s at the center, based on what priority is most important to us.

And like I said, we all have those. They’re all different. What we value most, what you value most, what determines all the other priorities, that thing is the center of your life.

And I won’t say chickens are the center of my life, but I’ll say they’re a center of a big part of my life at the moment. Some centers that we can have for our lives are going to be better than others. You know, there are some things that, for example, your family being at the center is better than, say, alcohol being at the center.

You know, some centers are better than others, but the Bible tells us what should be the center for the Christian. Now, there are things that are good, but shouldn’t necessarily be the center of our lives. The Bible tells us where the center should be.

And so we’re going to be tonight in Colossians chapter one, looking at where the center of the Christian life is, the one who stands at the center of it all. And we’re going to start in Colossians chapter one, verse 13. I know we read 13 and 14 last week.

Once you find it, you can go ahead and stand. You may be saying part of this sounds familiar. We just did this last week.

And it’s because 13 and 14 are kind of a transition between him talking about spiritual growth and him getting into talking more about Jesus. And so those two verses factor into both messages. Starting in verse 13 tonight, and we’re going to go through verse 18, Paul writes, He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins.

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created that are in and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers, all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things consist. And he is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things he may have the preeminence, and you may be seated.

Now to understand what he’s talking about here, what the Apostle Paul is talking about here, He is writing about Jesus being the center of everything. And he’s writing to the church at Colossae that is not that different from all the other churches that were in that part of the world at that time. They were all facing some similar challenges and a lot of them had to do with false teachers in their midst. They were surrounded by all kinds of false teachers.

Some of them were from Jewish backgrounds. Some of them were from pagan backgrounds. Some of them were just bonkers and came from, I don’t know, came from another planet as far as I’m concerned.

But they were facing all kinds of false teachers. And so when you realize that and realize some of the false teachers that they were dealing with, you can begin to see as he’s writing things, oh, that’s something they were dealing with and he’s answering that particular charge. See, one of the groups of false teachers they were dealing with were a group of people called the Gnostics that they focused on secret knowledge.

Part of their issue was matter is evil. The physical world is evil. There’s a spirit world that’s good.

And so their belief was Jesus couldn’t possibly have come in the flesh. John’s letters deal with this a lot too because the problem there is if Jesus didn’t really come in the flesh, then He couldn’t have died on the cross and we get into all sorts of problems there. But they believed that Jesus came as a spirit being and merely appeared to be in flesh, and you had to have secret knowledge of that.

And he came to bring a secret knowledge of the universe, and salvation was only available to those who were initiated into this secret knowledge. They were sort of the 2,000 years ago version of the New Age movement, these Gnostics. And they were putting these ideas of these spirits and these emanations, all these metaphysical ideas, everything but Jesus at the center of their lives.

They were focused on this spirit world and this secret knowledge that they could get. Then there were Judaizers who were focused on rituals and focused on religion. And they might acknowledge that you need Jesus.

You need the salvation that Jesus provides. But on top of that, you had to do other things. And there were people in Paul’s day who were preaching, yeah, you need Jesus, but you’ve also got to be circumcised.

And that really was the key. Because if you had Jesus and not that, that wasn’t enough. You had that and not Jesus, that might be enough.

Or you had to keep the Passover. You had to have Jesus and keep the Passover. If you had Jesus and didn’t keep the Passover, it wasn’t enough.

And so they were focused on these rules and rituals to the point where it became less and less about Jesus and more and more about the rules and about the rituals. And then they were dealing with pagans around them who focused on spirits and nature. They were worshiping the spirits and the rocks and trees and the animals and all these things.

And this idea that you could sort of manipulate the physical world around you by appealing to the spirits. By the right spells and the right incantations, you could bend the physical world to your will. Well, you convince yourself you can do that.

It’s easy to convince yourself, why do I need Jesus? I can do all of these things. These were all very different ideas.

We can’t say, oh, they’re all one group. They were very different ideas and they would have disagreed with each other on a lot of things. But the one thing they had in common was that all of them in their teaching diminished the importance of Jesus.

That was the one common thread that these false teachers had running through their teaching as they were trying to infect the church is Jesus went from being the center of everything to being out here on the fringes and he was kind of an option. You know the difference between something being central to what we’re doing and something being an option. Jesus became optional in these teachings.

And so in response, the Holy Spirit led Paul here to remind them that Jesus shouldn’t just be somewhere in our lives. Jesus should be, he deserves to be at the very center. And this is something that people still struggle with today.

This is something that we still struggle with today. Well, you know, I believe in Jesus and I go to church and I read the Bible. Surely that’s enough.

Those are all good things. But that sounds like we’re trying to put Jesus somewhere in our lives. We’re trying to fit him in somewhere.

We’re trying to find a nice little room for Jesus somewhere in our lives without letting Him be the center, without letting everything revolve around Him. He deserves to be at the center. And Paul outlines here some of the reasons why He deserves to be at the center.

In dealing with these philosophies that would say, Jesus really isn’t all that important. He said, let me tell you how important Jesus is. And He begins to outline, and I think He could have gone on much longer, But the Holy Spirit in his wisdom gave three areas where he points out the preeminence of Jesus.

And I don’t love that word preeminent just in conversation because it’s not one we use very often. And so tell people, tell somebody on the street, Jesus is supposed to be preeminent. I know it’s in here.

It’s in the scripture. I wish there was a more common English translation that fit the bill. We could talk about the importance of Jesus, but preeminent says more than that.

Preeminent said he is the most important. Preeminent describes his power. Preeminent describes his majesty.

That if Jesus walks into the room, he’s the one that every head turns to. Everyone can’t help but stare. Everyone can’t help but hang on his word.

And that’s a lot of meaning for one English word to encapsulate. I wish we had an English word that meant all those things that was a little more common that we didn’t have to explain to people. It’s this idea of Jesus being at the center of all things.

And he starts out by talking about Jesus being preeminent in the spiritual realm. Because again, there are people that were saying there’s a spirit world out there. Jesus is just part of it.

And there’s all these other spirits you can call on and they’re powerful enough. You can get them to do all sorts of things. And really, Jesus is just one among many.

And this is one thing that I’ve discovered over the years. I wrote a whole book about this. That it’s not so much that the other religions of the world object to Jesus, most of them, with the exception of Judaism, are willing to make room for Jesus in their thought process.

But he’s not at the center and can’t be. And so as these people were saying, oh, Jesus is just part, he’s just one of many things. He’s just somewhere in the mix there.

The Holy Spirit inspired Paul to explain that Jesus was preeminent in the spiritual realm. He talks here about some of the things we looked at last week, the deliverance from the power of darkness that we have in Jesus, that he can completely transform our eternity and convey us into the kingdom of the son of his love. Now, this is something that God the father does, but he does it through Jesus Christ. It’s in Jesus that our eternity is transformed.

And he says in whom we have the redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, he’s able to completely conquer sin. He’s able to completely transform our relationship with God because before we really don’t have one. And I’ve heard politicians, I can’t remember who it was, but there’s a politician back in the 70s who used to talk about the brotherhood of man and fatherhood of God.

We’re all God’s children. That is not true. We are all God’s creation, but the Bible says it’s to those who believed gave he the power to be called the sons of God.

Romans 5. 1 says being justified by His grace, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. The only way we have this relationship where we’re at peace with God and we are His children is through Jesus Christ. Apart from that, we’re God’s enemies. And I know that sounds so harsh to our ear.

Realize God’s not the one who declared war. We are. But Jesus can take us from being the enemies of God, being estranged from God, and give us this relationship of peace where He’s our Father.

It completely is transformed because of what Jesus Christ did. So He’s able to conquer sin and darkness. And verse 15 describes that He is God in human flesh.

It says He is the image of the invisible God. So many people then as now were worshiping some image. Now I know most people today don’t, at least in our country, don’t bow down to statues and pray to statues, but they’re worshiping something.

And for many people, they had this idea that you had to have something intangible that you could feel, that you could touch, that you could look directly at in order to be worshiping. It appears to me that when you go back to the book of Exodus, when they convinced Aaron to build the golden calf, at least some of them were not thinking we’re going to worship the cow god. That’s not where their thought process was.

They were trying to make a visual representation of the true God, some of them. They thought, we’ll still worship the God of Israel. We just need something to look at.

God didn’t like that because you couldn’t contain the God of the universe in one of these graven images. It would end up being a false depiction. There’s only one image of the invisible God and that’s Jesus Christ. There’s only one image that accurately reflects who He is.

There’s only one person or thing that we can look at that shows us what the God of this universe is really like and that’s Jesus Christ. And in a few places in the New Testament, it uses this description of Jesus being the image of God. Hebrews uses this. And the idea is that when we are looking at Jesus Christ, it’s like looking at God himself.

It’s like looking at the Father. We see exactly what he’s like. So this idea of him being the image of God, he’s not just an image.

He’s not just a representation. When we look at him, we’re seeing God. You don’t need all these other spirits.

You don’t need all these other advocates on your behalf. You’ve got the image, the very image of the invisible God who does what all the idols and all the statues and all the icons on earth never could. Shows you what God is like.

And so he’s preeminent in the spiritual realm. There’s nobody else who can do what he does. To all their philosophies, to all their spirits that they worship, to all these things, there was nobody, despite what they thought, that Jesus could just be at the periphery and they could put all their things at the center that let them do what they he said there’s not one of them that holds a candle to Jesus Christ. And then he’s preeminent in the physical realm.

It’s not just the spiritual realm. He’s preeminent in the physical world. Verses 15 through 17 tell us this, talking about him being the firstborn over all creation.

I want to clarify something right there to begin with. This idea of firstborn doesn’t necessarily, sometimes that word is used symbolically. It’s used twice in this passage that we’ve looked at tonight.

And here in verse 15, it says he is the firstborn over all creation. Verse 18 says he is the firstborn from the dead. Some people have misinterpreted verse 15 and him being the first born of all creation to think that he was the first created being.

That’s not true. We’re in Jehovah’s Witness territory at that point. We’ve veered off somewhere.

And I’m a little nervous about that because polls have shown that a substantial number of evangelical Christians agree with the statement that Jesus was the greatest of all created beings. And I’m hopeful that they just are not reading the question right. Jesus was not created.

Jesus is creator. When it talks about him creating here and elsewhere, it doesn’t say by him all other things are created as though he was the first thing the father created and then he had a hand in creating everything else. It says by him, all things were created.

Everything that was created, Jesus had a hand in creating. He was not created himself. This idea of him being firstborn over all creation has nothing to do with him being created.

It talks about his position of authority. We were talking headed out to the mountains, or headed toward the mountains, going fishing Friday. And my boys got into an argument.

Because one time we were driving down I-44, once we agreed to come here, but hadn’t moved here because and found a house yet. I pointed out because I wanted to make sure they were aware of those mountains and you know you’re getting close to Lot. And I said, those are my mountains out there.

Those are daddy’s mountains because I love those mountains and I always have. I said that one time and I think they believe me because Benjamin is in the habit of asking, he’ll find things and he’ll say, can I have this when you’re dead? Told him just this morning, you’re getting a little too excited.

So stop asking me that. Okay. Y’all can just fight it out once I’m dead.

I’m done answering that question. But Friday, they were arguing about who gets Mount Scott when I’m dead. And they’re arguing over particular mountains.

It’s my mountain when daddy dies. No, it’s my mountain. No, it’s mine.

And I finally hear Benjamin say, I am the oldest. I’m the firstborn. I get first pick. Of course, Madeline says, that’s fine.

Y’all fight over that. I’m taking Mount Everest. I was like, that’s my girl. But he was right from a biblical standpoint.

In Bible times, the firstborn was in charge. And I never miss an opportunity to remind my sister of that. The firstborn calls the shots.

Matter of fact, the firstborn gets half of all the inheritance. The others split the other half. That’s not how it works in my will, just so you know.

I don’t want to have to keep an eye out for Benjamin while I’m asleep. To be the firstborn conveys authority. It conveys prestige.

So for him to refer to Jesus as the firstborn overall creation has nothing to do with Jesus being created. It’s describing that this person that they thought was just an ordinary man, that they thought was just somebody that they could treat as part of their pantheon, as part of their life. This person that they thought was optional is actually in charge of it all.

That’s what firstborn over all creation means. He’s the creator of all things. Verse 16 says, for by him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers, all things were created through him and for him.

He did it all. He did it all for himself. He did it all for his glory.

A skeptic one time asked, if God made all this, if God made all this, as you say, and he’s just focused on life here on earth, why would He make all these other galaxies? Why would He make all these other planets when we couldn’t even see them until the last however many years? God’s just entertaining Himself.

God’s just showing off His creativity for His own self. It exists for Him. It exists to bring Him glory.

And it exists for when we look out at it and say, isn’t God amazing? Jesus is the Creator of all things. He was as involved in creation as the Father was.

And He’s the sustainer of all things. He’s the one that holds it all together. Verse 17 says, He is before all things and in Him all things consist. Now I know that on a scientific level from physics, there are electrical charges and things like that that hold the atoms together, that hold our molecules together.

I get that, but who do you think wrote those laws of physics? And if Jesus today said the word, if Jesus so much as willed it, our atoms go flying apart and there goes the universe. That’s what it means when it says by Him all things consist. He sustains everything.

He’s the one who put this all in motion and He’s the one that keeps it going. We rely on Him for our very existence. He’s preeminent in the physical realm.

And because He is preeminent in the spiritual realm, because He’s preeminent in the physical realm, He is also preeminent in the Christian life. Verse 18 says that He is the head of the body, the church. He’s of the church.

Amen? I’m not the head of the church. There’s no deacon body that is the head of the church.

Not supposed to be anyway. The congregation voting as a whole is not the head of the church. Those who give the most and control the purse strings are not the head of the church.

Jesus is the head of the church. And it’s dangerous. It is so dangerous whenever we get to a place where we think otherwise, that we think something else is the head of the church.

Jesus deserves to be at the center. And I’m not saying this to call anybody out because I think there’s any of the other going where we are in Colossians. But he deserves to be at the center.

He deserves to be at the center of everything we do. He deserves to be the focus. And I’ve seen how quickly things get off kilter when we try to make something besides Jesus the center and the head of the church.

I had some conversations this week about pastor cults of personality. I don’t ever want to go down that road. I told the choir today discussing stuff for the Easter program.

If Christy wants me to play Jesus, I’ll play Jesus, but I said, I don’t want it expected that I have to because I’m the pastor. I don’t have to be the center of attention in everything we do. Jesus is supposed to be the center of attention.

The example that comes to mind, the example that comes to mind about this is Jim Jones, who was responsible for the death of all those people in Guyana back in the 70s. You know, he started out in the 50s in Indiana. I’ll say his church was a little liberal. It’s not necessarily where I would have gone, but basically run-of-the-mill, ordinary, average church.

It was when he began to take Jesus out of things and began to put Jim Jones on top of things that things started to go awry. And the more he became the center of attention, the more he became the head of the church, the crazier things got. We can see the same process play out, not necessarily with the same ending, but we can see the same process play out in churches around this country where a preacher begins to believe his own press.

Starts to think he’s the center of attention. He’s the head of the church. And the more that happens, the more Jesus gets thrust aside.

I’ve also seen it happen where groups of people within the church start to think it’s all about us. It’s all about what we want. And that’ll split churches.

That’ll destroy churches. That’ll at least destroy the witness of churches. Listen to me.

Nobody but Jesus is the center of attention. Nobody but Jesus is the head of the church. He deserves to be at the center of all we do.

And if He’s not at the center of it, it’s not worth doing. He’s the head of the church. And He’s the basis for our hope.

He’s the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence. He rose from the dead. But look at this, because He rose from the dead, He was merely the first that will rise from the dead.

Him being the firstborn from the dead means He’s not going to be the last. You and I will be delivered from the clutches of death because He lives. Because He’s preeminent in all things. He’s given us a hope that transcends this life.

He’s given us a hope that eclipses death, that in all things He may have the preeminence. He deserves to be worshipped. He deserves to be worshipped.

He deserves to be praised. He deserves to be glorified. He deserves to be the center of attention because of who He is, because of how powerful He is, because of all that He is in the spiritual world and all that He is in the physical world and for all that He’s done for us as His people, for redeeming us and giving us a hope and a future.

He deserves to be at the center. Only Jesus belongs at the center. And when He’s at the center, everything else is going to end up in its proper place.

There should be no area of the Christian life where Jesus is not in charge. There should be no area of the Christian life where Jesus is not the center of attention. I know that sounds odd, but as I go through my daily life, Jesus should be the center of attention.

I’m not saying we can’t think of other things, but Jesus should always be what everything else is oriented around. I should not have spheres of influence in my life Maybe my money stuff is rotating around my greed. And something else is out here rotating around something else.

And then back here, I’ve got a few spiritual things. I’ve got Sunday things rotating around Jesus. It shouldn’t work that way.

Everything should orbit around Jesus. By promoting Him as the head of the body, Paul was making the case for Him being the head of the individuals in that body. If you and I are the body of Christ, and Jesus is the head of that body, then He’s the head of the individual members.

of that body. That word that he uses there for head is literally the head. He’s not speaking metaphorically here like, oh, he’s the head of that committee or he’s the head of that company.

He’s using the word for a literal head. And if the literal head of the body is no longer in charge of individual parts of the body, something’s wrong, isn’t it? That’s where you need to go see the doctor.

If the head says, stop doing that, put your hand in your pocket. If the head says, don’t punch people out on the way out of the building tonight and your hand doesn’t listen, right, time to go see a doctor because something’s wrong with the body. When our head tells our hands to do something or our feet and they don’t respond to the prompting of the head, we know something’s wrong and we go get it checked out.

And so for him to be the actual head of the body, what does that tell you about our response to him and what he says? He’s supposed to call the shots and we’re supposed to listen. We’re supposed to obey.

We’re supposed to orbit around him and what he wants, but we all have We all have areas of our lives where it’s harder than others to yield to his preeminence. Now, that doesn’t mean we can’t do it. I remember a few years ago, Benjamin was on an allergy medicine that kind of made him wild at school.

We didn’t realize it until a couple months in. We’re going, this is not him. And I had to tell him as we were trying to wean him off of this allergy medicine, now you’re taking this medicine, but we’re not going to treat it as an excuse for you to do wrong.

You need to understand it makes it harder for you to do right, but it’s not an excuse not to do right. We’re not going to say, well, it’s my medicine, so I can do what I want. That’s sort of how it works here.

We’ve all got areas that are harder for us to yield to him than others. You know this, there are areas in your life that are harder for you to say yes, Lord, than in others. Some areas it’s super easy.

Yes, Lord, whatever you want. Others, I don’t know. Lord, I’m going to have to pray about that and get back to you.

Try saying that. We say that to everybody else. I’ll pray about it and get back to you.

Try saying that to God. I have to think about it. I have to pray about it, sleep on it, call you back.

We all have those areas where it’s harder, but that’s not an excuse not to yield to His preeminence because those are exactly the places where we must yield to His preeminence. Because if He is in control of the spiritual world and He’s in control of the physical world and He’s the head of the church, He’s the basis for our hope. He’s all these things that God’s Word says He is.

There is no part of the Christian life where He should not be in charge and where he should not be the center of attention.