March 30, 2003 Colossians 1:15-20
“Why worship Jesus?”
INTRODUCTION
Have you ever been in a situation where after you ended a conversation with someone, you thought of all the things that you should have said in that conversation but couldn’t think of them at the time? Several months ago, I responded to a ring of my doorbell. I went to the door and discovered that there were 2 female Jehovah’s Witnesses there. Rather than shooing them away, I engaged them in a conversation. I asked them, “Tell me what you believe about Jesus.” I was surprised to hear one of them say that they did accept that Jesus is the Son of God because I knew that JW’s do not accept that Jesus is God. I thought, “I’m up to this challenge. I’m going to win these ladies to Jesus.” I wasn’t going to let them off my porch until I had either proved to them that Jesus was God or at least had given them enough to think about that they would have to re-examine what they believed and possibly come back for more later. I asked one of them if we could examine some verse from the Bible together. She agreed, and so began the dueling Bibles. I opened my Bible to a verse, and she opened hers to the same verse. Each passage that we read, we both interpreted in such a way that it supported our own position. Every verse that I turned to hoping that it would be the smoking gun that would shoot down her position only seemed to show how weak my own position might be. This went on for a while, and I wasn’t getting anywhere. She left frustrated thinking that she had accomplished nothing. She did not know that I went back inside frazzled and questioning. I knew with all my heart that Jesus was God, but where was the undeniable biblical proof that would solidify it in my own heart and would enable me to communicate it to other people?
The Christians at Colossae were having an experience much like my own. Someone was telling them that Jesus was not God. Someone was telling them that what Jesus did for them on the cross was not enough to provide forgiveness for their sins. Paul wrote this letter to counter these two false teachings.
The verses that we come to today are the central verses of Paul’s whole argument. But more than that, they teach us the foundational truths of all of Christianity. Without them, Christianity would fall apart. It is the denial of these truths that have led to the formation of every cult and false religion throughout history. You will notice that your bulletin is filled to overflowing today. In it, I have included information about the two cults that impact you the most on a daily basis: Jehovah’s Witness and Mormons. When you read over these sheets, pay close attention to what they believe about Jesus and salvation. Both of these belief systems grow out of the same issues that the Colossians were struggling with.
You will notice also that your note sheet is bigger than normal. It takes up the whole page, and there are biblical passages on the back. The four passages of Scripture probably look kind of funny. That’s because they are copies from a special Bible that I have, called an interlinear Bible. That simply means that it takes the actual Greek and Hebrew words of the verses and puts right underneath them what their English translation is. That way, you can see for yourself what the Bible says in the original languages. It will prevent you from being fooled by a cult’s faulty translation. I have even included some of these verses as they are found in the New World Translation, which is what the Jehovah’s Witnesses use so that you will see the difference between their translation and the original languages.
It may seem that I have gone to a lot of trouble for one sermon. I have. There are two good reasons for doing so. A day is coming and probably already has that you are going to get a knock on your door. I figure that if they can rattle me, your pastor, they can probably rattle you. I don’t want to have to find out one day that one of you has joined one of these cults. You need to know more than just what you believe; you also need to know why you believe it. With the information that I give you today, you might even be able to do what I was unable to do and convince one of these that Jesus is more than God’s Son. He is God. The second reason that we are doing this today is that the more sure you are that Jesus is God, the more you will obey Him and the more you will give Him what only God deserves - WORSHIP.
In order to accomplish these goals, we’re going to look at the top ten reasons to worship Jesus as recorded here in Colossians 1:15-20. Each of these reasons will also further solidify our belief that Jesus is God. Now I know what you’re thinking. Somebody forgot to pray the prayer that I gave you last week – you know the one about the preacher being clear and concise with an emphasis on concise. Don’t worry. We’re not going to spend an equal amount of time on each point, and if necessary, we’ll continue this message into next week. Let’s get started. The sooner we get going, the sooner Jesus will receive the worship that He is due.
1. Worship Jesus because He is the REVEALER of the Father. “image of the invisible God”
Every Sunday morning after the service for the last several weeks, Mike Bullough has been using his digital camera to take pictures of each of the families in the church. The reason he is doing this is so that we can put together our own church directory. This will help everyone in the church to get to know one another. You’ll be able to find the picture of the face that you see at church and read the name that is at the bottom of that picture so that you can learn to put the name with the face. Pictures help us to see what the person is like, but pictures also have limitations. Think about it – pictures only show people’s front side, and when you are at church, you mostly see everyone’s backside because you spend most of your time sitting behind them. My picture doesn’t show my bald spot – thankfully – so if you were sitting behind me, and all you had to go on was my picture, you would not recognize me.
When it comes to God, people have a hard time recognizing Him too. He’s invisible after all. It’s hard to get to know or worship an invisible God. So people began making stuff that reminded them of some aspect of their understanding of God’s character. If they thought of God as powerful, they would make an image of a bull. If they thought of God as fast, they cast Him in the image of a leopard. If they thought of God as massive and unknowable, they would look up at the sun or one of the planets and worship them. If they thought of God as the great intellect, they would fashion an image of a man. The problem was that none of these images was just right. All of them had their limitations. That’s why the second of the Ten Commandments forbade the practice of making images as a representation of God (Exodus 20:4). They could not show the full glory of God. The problem with images or pictures is that they never do justice to the original. They always fall short. Mike’s had to re-take some pictures either because he or the family didn’t think that the picture did justice to what they actually looked like. I doubt any of us has ever had a picture that we felt was a true representation of who we are.
God had a desire for us to enter into a relationship with Him, to get to know Him just as He is. So when the time was right, He gave us a perfect visible image that we could look at to reveal all of God’s character. The Bible talks about that image in John 1:14 - The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. Then again in Heb. 1:3 - The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being…Jesus was that perfect image. He possessed all the characteristics of God to their fullest extent because He was God. He made the invisible God visible. He revealed God to us so that we might have the opportunity to get to know Him and so that we might choose to enter into a relationship with Him. Thomas, one of Jesus’ disciples, asked Jesus to show them God the Father. In response, Jesus said, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” (John 14:9)
Reason #1 to worship Jesus is because He has perfectly and completely revealed God to us so that we might enter into a relationship with Him. Reason #2.
2. Worship Jesus because He is the RULER of all creation. “firstborn over all creation”
This is the first part of the passage that has created false teaching when not understood properly. Some people have taken this phrase to mean that Jesus was God’s first creation – that God created Jesus before He created anything else. That would make Jesus a created being that had a beginning rather than the self-existent eternal God. This interpretation of the phrase is easier to come to if the translation you are using says “firstborn of every creature” or “all creation”. To be honest, the word “over” in the NIV translation is not present in the originals. But there is a good reason that the NIV translators chose the word “over” to interpret what the passage is saying.
Think about what you know of Hebrew (Jewish) society of which Paul, the writer of Colossians was a part. What did it mean to be the “firstborn”? It usually did refer to the physical fact that the firstborn child was the child who was the first to be born in the family. But it had a whole lot less to do with timing than it had to do with position and importance within the family structure. This was especially true if the physical first born was a girl. She would have never been referred to with the title “firstborn” because of the role that the firstborn was to serve in. Upon the death of his father, the firstborn was to become the leader or ruler of the family. He would make all the decisions for the family. He would become the head of the family. And he would also inherit a double-share of the father’s wealth. It was a place of preeminence. It was also a place that could be lost due to sin or bad decisions.
Take the story of Jacob and Esau for example. Esau was actually the physical firstborn in the family. But he made some bad decisions in his life and sold his birthright – his right to rule the family – for a pot of stew. When their father, Isaac, died, Jacob the second born took over the rule of the family because he held the title “firstborn” (Gen. 27:29,37).
By referring to Jesus with the title “firstborn”, Paul is saying that Jesus is the ruler of all creation. That is why the NIV translators chose to use the word “over”. Jesus has the authority or the right to rule all that exists.
As much as Saddam Hussein thinks that he rules his country, he does not. He and his country are a part of the creation. That means that Jesus is the ruler there, and there is not a thing that Saddam or anyone else can do to change that fact. As tempting as it is for President George W. Bush to think that he rules the United States, he would be wrong if he ever came to that conclusion. The difference between Saddam and President Bush is that the President recognizes that this country is a part of God’s creation and that therefore he is under the authority of Jesus. Let’s get a little more personal. Are you a part of God’s creation? YES! Then who has the right to make the decisions that affect you and your family? You …or Jesus?
Worship Jesus because He is the ruler over all creation including you and me. Reason #3 tells us how He got that authority.
3. Worship Jesus because He is the CREATOR of all that exists. “by Him all things were created” (vs. 16)
Whenever I make something, I have the right to rule over that thing so long as I own the materials that it was made out of and so long as I was making it for me and am not planning on selling it or giving it away. Jesus got the authority to rule over creation because He is the one who created it all. He made it out of nothing, and the end of vs. 16 clearly states that He made it all for Himself. Paul is very specific in the categories of things that Jesus created in order to show that there is nothing that came into existence apart from Jesus’ creative work. He speaks of things on earth – the land, water, plants, animals, human beings. Things that are visible – light, the planets, the galaxies. Things that are invisible – gravity, radio waves, electricity, radiation. In that “invisible” category, he includes some of the things that are a part of the heavenly realm – principalities, powers, rulers and authorities (Rom. 8:38; Eph. 3:10; 6:12; Col. 2:15). Paul included these four categories of spiritual beings as part of Jesus’ creation because there were some that were teaching that Jesus himself was part of the creation and that He fit somewhere in one of these four categories. The theory went something like this. [use the board to draw out a diagram of this as you explain it] God is somewhere up here [circle in top left hand corner of board] and God is good. God’s creation, composed of matter which they considered to be evil is somewhere down here [draw circle in lower right hand corner of board]. They reasoned that a good God couldn’t have created an evil creation, so they had to come up with a way to get from here [top left hand corner] to here [bottom left hand corner]. Their solution was a system of intermediaries. They thought that God created a slightly less powerful and less good entity than himself, who in turn created a slightly less powerful and less good entity than himself and so on and so on until somewhere down the line, one of them created Jesus, who in turn created the world. [draw descending circles along a diagonal line running from God to the creation. Draw a scale labeled as the “good” scale running along the left hand side of the board and a scale labeled “power” along the bottom of the board.] Instead of worshipping Jesus who is down here on the board, the people had begun worshipping those who were higher up on the chain – the angels and other spiritual beings. Do you see any of that happening today?
One author puts it this way: “Paul is saying, ‘You dispute much about the successive grades of angels. You distinguish each grade by its special title. You can tell how each order was generated from the preceeding. You assign to each its proper degree of worship. Meanwhile you have ignored and have degraded Christ. I tell you it is not so. He is first and foremost, Lord of heaven and earth, far above all thrones or dominations, all princedoms or powers; far above every dignity and every potentate---whether earthly or heavenly, whether angel or demon or man--- that evokes your reverence or excites your fear’.” – Bishop Lightfoot
The Bible makes it very clear in 1 Tim. 2:15 that there is only one Mediator between God and man and that it is Christ Jesus. Jesus is not an angel and is not lower than any other spiritual being. Jesus made it very clear in the Garden of Gethsemanae that had He wanted to, He could have called 10,000 angels to come to His rescue. In commenting on this whole scheme of things, Alexander MacLaren said this: "There is no need for a crowd of shadowy beings to link heaven and earth. Jesus Christ lays His hands upon both…He is first in all things to be listened to, loved, and worshipped by men.”
When I was in high school geometry, I used to love to do geometric proofs. Some of you have blocked those out of your memory because it was such a bag experience, so let me remind you of them for just a minute. A geometric proof allowed you to use two or more things that you knew to be true to come to a conclusion about a geometric shape. Though you left geometry behind a long time ago, you still use some of those same techniques to draw conclusions about your everyday life. For example, I pick up a pencil. I know that pencils with a point on them can write on paper. I also know that the pencil in my hand does not have a point on it. Conclusion – I cannot use this pencil to write on paper. I used two facts to lead me to a conclusion.
I want to do the same thing in relation to Jesus. Paul tells us here that Jesus created all that is. This assertion is repeated in John 1:2 and Hebrews 1:3, both of which are on the back of your note sheet. So that is fact #1. Somebody quote for me Gen. 1:1, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Acts 17:24 - "The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth… Fact #2 is that God created all that is. When I put these two facts together, I realize that there are only two possible conclusions that I can come to. Either the Bible contradicts itself and should therefore be thrown out, or Jesus is God and is deserving of my worship.
The fact that Jesus is the Creator tells me who I belong to. And the fact that He created me for Himself tells me my purpose in life. My purpose is to glorify God with all that I am, with all that I say and with all that I do. Worship Jesus because He is the Creator.
Reason #4, 5, and 6, we’ll just mention quickly without comment for lack of time.
4. Worship Jesus because He is the BEST of all things. “He is before all things”
5. Worship Jesus because He is the SUSTAINER of all things. “in Him all things hold together”
6. Worship Jesus because He is the LEADER of the Church. “He is the head of the body”
Reason #7.
7. Worship Jesus because He is the CONQUEROR over death. “firstborn from among the dead”
A man is driving along a highway and sees a rabbit jump out across the middle of the road. He swerves to avoid hitting it, but unfortunately the rabbit jumps right in front of the car. The driver, a sensitive man as well as an animal lover, pulls over and gets out to see what has become of the rabbit. Much to his dismay, the rabbit is dead. The driver feels so awful that he begins to cry. A woman driving down the highway sees a man crying on the side of a road and pulls over. She steps out of the car and asks the man what’s wrong. "I feel terrible," he explains, "I accidentally hit this rabbit and killed it." The woman says, "Don’t worry." She runs to her car and pulls out a spray can. She walks over to the limp dead rabbit, bends down, and sprays the contents onto the rabbit. The rabbit jumps up, waves its paw at the two of them and hops off down the road. Ten feet away the rabbit stops, turns around and waves again. He hops down the road another 10 feet, turns and waves, hops another ten feet, turns and waves, and repeats this again and again and again, until he hops out of sight. The man is astonished. He runs over to the woman and asks, "What is in that can?" The woman turns the can around so that the man can read the label. It says.... "Hair Spray - Restores life to dead hair, adds permanent wave."
What does it take for something to rise from the dead? It takes a lot more than a can of hair spray. It takes the power of God. Jesus rose from the dead, and He is described here as “the firstborn from among the dead”. So we’ve got to deal with that term “firstborn” again. Scripture tells us of many people who were raised from the dead both in the Old Testament and in the New. Elisha, the prophet of God, raised a boy back to life by God’s power (2 Kings 4). When invaders were coming into the land of Israel, some cemetery workers decided to do a rush job on the funeral they were conducting and through a man’s body into Elisha’s grave. When that dead body hit Elisha’s dead body, the other guy came back to life and got up out of the grave (2 Kings 13). During Jesus’ time on earth, he raised people back to life – a widow’s son, a young girl and Lazarus. So how is Jesus the firstborn from among the dead? All of these people who were raised from the dead before Jesus had one thing in common – they all died again. They gave death some repeat business. They got their card stamped twice. Jesus’ resurrection was different. Jesus rose to never die again because in His resurrection, He defeated death. (1 Cor 15:55-57 NIV) "Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?" The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” In every resurrection before Jesus, those who were resurrected only won the battle with death. The eventual winner of the war was always death. But Jesus gained the final victory so He is the firstborn from among the dead.
Earlier in this same chapter of 1 Corinthians, Paul refers to Jesus as the “firstfruits”. The Jewish people had many feasts and many different types of offerings that they would bring to the temple. One of these feasts was the feast of weeks, and it would occur about the time that the first portion of the crops in the field had ripened. The Jews would take a portion of these first fruits of the crop and offer it as a sacrifice to the Lord. It became a symbol, even a guarantee of what the rest of the crop was going to look like and that the rest of the crop was going to come in successfully. Jesus is the firstfruits of those who have died and will be resurrected to a glorified body to live with God forever. Since Jesus rose from the dead just as He promised that He would, everything else that He said can be trusted as true and I can be confident that I too will rise from the dead one day! So when I go to a funeral, someone else’s or my own, I don’t go there hopeless and fearful. I go there with joy knowing that that person will one day be resurrected never to die again because Jesus has defeated death! (1 Thes. 4:13ff)
Worship Jesus because He has conquered death!
8. Worship Jesus because He is the CONTAINER of all that is God. “all his fullness dwell in Him”
9. Worship Jesus because He is the RESTORER of my relationship with God. “making peace through His blood”
10. Worship Jesus because He is GOD!
We began today with the stated goal that by the time that we got done, you would be firmly convinced that Jesus is God and that based on that belief, you would worship Him. In my fallibility, I might not have yet convinced you of the divinity of Jesus. And further, I might not have made it clear why it is even a big deal whether or not Jesus is God. Let me see if I can fulfill both of these goals through this last point. There are at least two major implications if Jesus is not God. If Jesus is not God, then I have no obligation to worship Him. In fact, I am committing idolatry if I do worship Him. The first of the Ten Commandments is “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” (Exodus 20:4) Just in case they didn’t get it the first time, God said it again in Exodus 34:14 – “Do not worship any other god…” In response to Satan’s attempt to get Jesus to fall down and worship him, Jesus said, “Worship the Lord your God, and serve Him only.” (Matt. 4:10) In Rev. 22:8,9 and Rev. 19:10, John the Apostle attempted to worship the angel who was communicating these marvelous end times truths to him. The angel made him stop and told him in clear terms, “Worship God!” The constant teaching of Scripture is that worship belongs only to God!
And yet, in Rev. 14:7, an angel cries out, “Worship Him who made the heavens, the earth, the sea and the springs of water.” Who did all that? JESUS! Maybe the angel got it wrong. Angels have been known to make mistakes about who you are supposed to worship. Lucifer was an angel, and he thought he was supposed to worship himself. Is there anyone else who tells us to worship Jesus? (Heb 1:6 NIV) …when God brings his firstborn into the world, he [God] says, "Let all God’s angels worship him." God Himself commanded that Jesus be worshipped.
Do you remember that thing that we did a little while ago where you take two facts that you know to be true and you draw a conclusion based on those facts?
Fact #1 – God commands that He alone is to be worshipped.
Fact #2 – God commands that Jesus is to be worshipped.
Conclusion: Jesus is God and is deserving of my worship!
Incidentally, the verse I just read, Hebrews 1:6 says that the angels were to worship Jesus when He was first born into the world. If He was deserving of worship when He was first born, then He was God when He was first born. He didn’t become a god as the Mormons teach. If Jesus was not God, I would be sinning if I worshipped Him. Because Jesus is God, then I am sinning if I’m not worshipping Him.
There is another implication if Jesus is not God. The verses that we have looked at and will look at again next week are preceded by verses 13-14 and they are followed by verses 19-23. Both of these sets of verses speak of what Jesus did to save men from their sins. If Jesus was not God, then His death on the cross was not sufficient to provide salvation for me or for you. Even if He was a perfect, sinless human being, His death could have only bought salvation for Himself. But since He is God, the blood that He shed is sufficient to pay for your sins and mine.
INVITATION
How should you respond to a message like this:
Worship Jesus! Worship Him with your mouth, your hands, your mind - with everything that you are and have. He’s worthy of it. He is God.
Come to Jesus for salvation! He created you. He sustains you. He conquered death. He can conquer whatever is seeking to destroy you.
Work to bring others to Jesus! There are a lot of people out there who are really confused. You know the truth. Share it with them. I’ve given you some tools to work with this week. If you want to review them, this sermon is already posted on our web sight on the internet. The more people you tell the truth, the more people will recognize that He is God, and the more people there will be who will worship Jesus.
Note: The title for this message is from a sermon preached by Matthew Rogers as recorded on sermoncentral.com
