Image of the Invisible

Since it is the third week of Advent, that means we have this weekend and next before the big day. The theme for today is Joy, and I can think of no greater joy for Christmas than getting to talk about my Savior. It’s pretty easy for us at Christmas to grasp the humanity of Jesus, because what is more fragile and vulnerable than a helpless little baby. But what gets lost, and I hope we can see massively on display in this passage over the next two weeks, is the incredible evidence of the deity and divinity of Jesus. That reality makes us a little less comfortable, but I love the fact that it is in a familiar Christmas passage. Isaiah 9:6:

"For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given;
and the government shall be upon his shoulder,
and his name shall be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace."

This passage makes it pretty clear that the child who is born will be called Mighty God and will even be equated with the Father.

These next two sermons are going to be all about Jesus. For the record, they all should be. But specifically in verses 15-20, you’ve got Paul calling direct attention to Jesus as the answer to his prayer and the initial response to the issues that Paul sees in the church namely the syncretism that we have mentioned along with the idea that Rome is the light and hope. This weekend we'll see Christ being held up as the creator and ruler of all things and the preeminent eternal image of the invisible God. Next week, we’ll come back and talk about Christ being the preeminent head of the church displaying the fullness of God through his reconciling and peacemaking death and resurrection.

Jesus is the Image of God

So here we go, Colossians 1, starting in verse 15, “He [Jesus] is the image of the invisible God,. . .” Okay, I’m going to stop here. This is great news. When it comes to God, if you want to know who God is, if you want to know what He’s like, if you want to know what His tone is, how He behaves, how He feels, how He responds, you don’t have to speculate; you can find out. You study, you look at and you watch Jesus Christ. Jesus is the image of the invisible God. We could look at all the attributes of God through the life of Jesus, but I’m going to point out just three.

Merciful

The first one is we know that God is merciful. We know that God is merciful because we watch Jesus, over and over again, extending mercy to those who are clearly guilty. I’ll give you three examples of that.

In John 8 we see the woman caught in adultery who is dragged into the temple while Jesus is teaching one morning and thrown at the feet of Jesus Christ. They say to Him, “The Law of Moses says that we should stone such a woman. What do You say?” The Bible says He bends down and begins to draw in the dirt. No one knows what He drew in the dirt. There are some people who say He drew their sins in the dirt. I have no idea what He drew in the dirt. But He draws in the dirt and He says, “Let the one of you who is without sin cast the first stone.” And then He goes back to drawing in the dirt. Then the Bible says that from the oldest to the youngest, they began to drop their rocks and they leave. And He picks up the woman’s face and says, “Where are they? Has no one condemned you?” And she says, “No, my Lord.” And He says, “Neither do I. Go and sin no more.” The thing that is so weighty to this text is the fact that she is guilty. She is caught in the act and the Law condemns her. It’s not as though there is any question of her guilt. She is caught in the act, the Law is clear and Jesus extends mercy in the face of blatant guilt. So what we learn about the Father by watching the Son is that the Father is merciful.

And then the one I like to use because everyone knows it even if you don’t have a church background is the story of Zacchaeus, the wee little man. You’ve got this great story of Zacchaeus, who honestly is about as much of a scum bag as you could be. He is raising taxes for Rome, who is occupying Jerusalem at this time and killing and oppressing hundreds of thousands. They’re being funded by guys like Zacchaeus who raise money for them via taxes. So Zacchaeus climbs up in the tree and Jesus walks up through the crowd to the tree and says, “Zacchaeus, you come down. For I’m going to your house today.” So Zacchaeus comes down, they go to his house and eat dinner at his house, they talk gospel, they talk reconciliation, they the things of God and Zacchaeus repents and not only gives back everything that he had taken but even beyond what he had taken. And Jesus says, “Surely salvation has come to this house.” So over and over and over again, in the face of blatant guilt, blatant shame, blatant disregard for the things of God, Jesus’ response is that of mercy. So what we know about God, what we know about the Father is that He’s quick to extend to those who ask for it, those who desire it, those who want it. We see that because those who receive Jesus receive it. So the first thing is mercy.

Compassionate

We also see that God is compassionate. And we see it in what is my favorite story from the life of Jesus outside of the Passion Week. In John 11, Mary and Martha send word to Jesus that Lazarus, whom Jesus loved, has gotten really ill and is close to death. Jesus’ response to the disciples was, “This is not the kind of illness that leads to death, but rather the kind of illness that was given for the glory of God,” which is an interesting, complex idea. And so Jesus stays two more days and teaches. Finally, He heads out on a two-day journey to check on Lazarus, and as He gets close, Martha meets Him before He gets to the village and goes, “Where have You been? Lazarus is dead.” He’s not just dead; he’s buried in the ground. And she’s sobbing and weeping. So Jesus talks with her, and then they go on into the village. Now Mary, hearing that Jesus is coming, gets up and leaves her house full of mourners, and they think she is heading to the tomb, so they follow her out. She goes to Jesus and not to the tomb, so Jesus is met by this mob who is crying and sobbing and screaming. And Mary comes up to Him and asks Him the same thing. “Where have You been? If You would have been here, he wouldn’t have died.” And then He goes, “Take me to the tomb.” So they go to the tomb, and this mass of humanity is all wailing and sobbing and crying all the way to the tomb.

Now why is Jesus going to the tomb? To raise him from the dead, right? Do you think at this point that Jesus has not decided He’s going to do that? No. He’s already said, “This sickness is not going to end in death. It was given so that I might be glorified.” So Jesus knows He’s going to raise him from the dead. And so He’s walking with all these people who are mourning and sad and overwhelmed and broken and hurting and don’t the light at the end of the tunnel. And then this really interesting thing happens. It’s the shortest verse in the Bible. What happens? Jesus starts to cry. The Bible says that He’s hurt, that He feels heavy and He begins to weep. So He knows what He’s about to do, but that doesn’t stop Him from entering into the grief of His people. So we know that God is compassionate by watching the compassion of Jesus as He sees His people hurt.

All-Powerful

The third aspect we can see through Jesus is that of God is all-powerful, He’s omnipotent. And we see this over and over and over again. Most people have already guessed this about God, but you’re really going to see it in different stages with Jesus.

Some of my favorites are in Luke 8:22-25 when Jesus stops the storm. The disciples and Jesus are on a boat on the lake when the Bible says a windstorm kicks up. The disciples are terrified; they’re crying because the boat is filling with water and it’s being thrown all over the lake. They just know they’re going to die. Jesus is taking a nap, which is great in so many ways. The Bible says that God neither slumbers nor sleeps, but since Jesus is fully man, he gets tired and needs to take a nap. So in this story we see Jesus' humanity butted right up against his divinity in a very cool way.

So the disciples argue over which one of them is going to go wake Him up. I don't know what they expect him to do, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't what actually happened based on their response. So one of them (probably Peter) goes and wakes up Jesus saying, “Surely we’re going to die here. Get up.” So Jesus gets up, yawns a little bit, looks around and then just rebukes the storm and it stops. The wind and the waves just stop. And then Jesus goes back and lays down while the disciples head to the other side of the boat and they have this talk, “Who is this guy that the wind and the rain and the waves obey Him?” So you’re watching God’s power over nature, over weather, over creation in Jesus Christ.

You can see it over disease in Luke 17 where ten lepers stumble onto Jesus. Leprosy would always be a horrible disease to have regardless of time period, but in this time period in particular, it was viewed socially where you could be thrown out of the city, where you would be viewed as unclean and dirty and not allowed into the temple and not allowed in any type of community activity. You really would have been excluded from any type of gathering of anyone who didn’t also have leprosy. It would have just been torture on the soul. Jesus runs into ten lepers, they kind of talk for a while and then leave. After they leave, Jesus heals all ten of them. Only one comes back and falls at the feet of Jesus to worship Him, and Jesus goes, “Were not all ten healed? And yet only the one comes back?”

It’s just a visible picture of our hypocrisy. If anything goes well for us, we did it, we accomplished it and we made it happen. But if anything goes wrong, God did it or did not do it (depending on how we want to spin it). And that shows your bent towards evil and our bent towards hypocrisy. If it’s good and right and if we’ve got money and things are well, we did it, we accomplished it, we cracked the code. If we get sick or something goes bad, it’s, “How dare God not do this. How dare God let this happen.” And this is what you see happening here when you get ten of them healed and only one returns. But for the record, Jesus is showing His (and God’s) power over disease.

I’ll give you one more. In Mark 5:38-42, a ruler of the synagogue (definitely not a friend of Jesus’ and would have been hostile toward the message of Jesus Christ) has a 12-year-old daughter who gets sick, and so he sends a runner to Jesus and says, “My daughter is really, really sick.” And so Jesus goes to his house, and as He gets there, the little girl had died. So everyone is mourning in the house. So He walks in and goes, “She’s not dead; she’s just sleeping.” And they mock Him. So Jesus clears the house, walks into her bedroom, sits on the edge of her bed and says, “Talitha cumi [little girl, arise].” And she gets up and starts walking around and somebody gets her a sandwich. He raises the little girl from the dead.

So you’ve got His power over nature, you’ve got His power over disease and you’ve got His power over death.You’ll see that power over death again and again. You saw it with Lazarus, and you see it in His own resurrection. You’ll see it over and over again in the New Testament moving into the Acts of the Apostles.

Now this is so important because we’ve talked about this the past couple of weeks. The Colossians were tempted to add other things to their beliefs about Jesus because of syncretism. Paul tells them and us that the antidote to this sickness is to behold the Glory of God. We are transformed from one degree of glory to the next by beholding God. How do you behold God? Jesus. If you want to know who God is, if you want to know what God’s like, if you want to know how He’ll respond to you, if you want to know what His tone is, if you want to know what stirs up anger in Him, where He extends mercy, you have to look at the person of Jesus Christ. If you want to know who God is, Jesus is the key.

Now there are hints in other places. There are hints in creation, there are hints in your conscience and other places. But to know the nature and character of God, you go to Jesus Christ. If you go anywhere else, you’re going to get off. We know about the nature and character of God through the person and work of Jesus Christ. So I want to plead with you to always be in the Gospels, to always be studying and looking at the life of Christ. And you need to look at it carefully, not just read it. Put yourself in the story. Like think about what’s actually happening when they drag the woman caught in adultery and throw her at the feet of Jesus. Is she crying? She thinks she’s about to die. She thinks that day ends with the lover escaping scot-free and her being pelted with rocks, publicly naked until she dies. It’s a horrible way to go. That’s her reality. And what does she get? She gets mercy.

So that makes Jesus through His life, His work, how He responds to things, how He does things, where He goes, what He says, an unbelievable key to us knowing and being transformed by the power of the gospel.

Jesus is Superior

When "Christians" don't know their God, they quickly turn into something other than Christians. Just this week, I had this conversation with someone who mentioned the birth of Jesus and was talking about him as a baby, and I told them that Jesus was around before his birth and they asked what I meant by that. They had always thought that Jesus came into existence in the manger in Bethlehem. That is why we talk about Advent or coming. Jesus left heaven and the satisfying presence of the Father to put on human flesh and take the form of a servant.

Paul is telling us in these verses that we need not look any further for the fullness of God. We don't need to seek out new idols to worship, we don't have to look at all the latest fads and trends. Jesus is Superior, Christ is Enough.

He is Over All

We see a confusing word choice in the next phrase.  “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.” Now, this does not mean that Jesus was the first thing created Jesus is not a part of the creative order. In fact, this term “first-born” is used 130 times in the Septuagint and it’s almost always used to describe status or power. So in Exodus 4:22, Israel is called, “My beloved firstborn son.” So the point is not that Jesus was the first thing created; the point is Jesus is prominent over all things created. He has authority.

So you could go outside today and scream, “Start snowing!” and it wouldn’t start snowing. No one in here has ever raised anybody from the dead after four days. We could go back through this list, and see that no one has been able to exhibit the type of authority and power over creation that Christ did. Because He is the firstborn over everything that is. So Jesus is not a part of the creative order. In fact, in some of your translations, the text probably reads firstborn over all creation. I think that is a better understand and it helps alleviate the confusion that Jesus is a created being.

He was Before All

Not only is he preeminent over all things but he is also before all things. We'll get to verse 16 in a moment, but look down to verse 17, "He is before all things."

This one really threw the religious leaders of the day for a loop. You've got to understand that there is no one like Jesus. No other major religious leader has ever claimed to be God. When people claim to be God we usually put them in the nuthouse. It drives me crazy when I hear people talk about Jesus like he is on par with Mohammed or Ghandi or the Bhudda. None of those guys claimed to be God. If Jesus claimed to be on par with God he cannot be just a good moral teacher. Because if the claim is false then he is a liar and has misled millions, or he is a lunatic that is probably not safe to be out in public. It was a natural reaction that the Religious leaders had to Jesus. They didn't have him killed because he healed people or had compassion on the poor and destitute. They had him killed because they thought he was just a mere man, just a bastard baby born in a stable to a poor unwed mother raised by a carpenter from the hick-town of Nazareth. How could this man claim to be God? Because he is.

You’ve got to do something with Jesus Christ. If you are a thinker at any level, you have got to do something with Jesus Christ. Anyone who ever calls Jesus a good teacher but not God has never read what Jesus said about Himself. Jesus’ teachings will not let you call Him a good teacher if you don’t believe He was God in the flesh. Let me give you a couple examples of this.

In John 8:54-59, Jesus is talking to some of the rulers of the synagogue and here’s what He says, “If I were to say that I do not know him, I would be a liar like you, but I do know him and I keep his word. Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.” So the Jews said to him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?” Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.”

He’s quoting Exodus 3:14 where Moses asks God when He was going to deliver Israel out of Egypt. “When they ask me who sent me what do I reply.” And God said, “Tell them I am sent you.” So Jesus just did two things. He said, “I’m God and I’ve always been. Abraham knew My day was coming and He loved that My day was coming.” So He’s God and He’s eternal. He’s pre-existent. He didn’t just show up one Christmas morn. He didn’t just show up in Bethlehem. He’d always been. This is what Jesus teaches about Himself, and it’s not the only place He does it.

In the high priestly prayer found in John 17:4-5, right before the crucifixion He says, “And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.” So Jesus, once again, is saying, “I had a glory, I had a reality, I had a size that was here before the world existed.” Jesus cannot be a good teacher, not when He’s teaching that He has always been, that He’s always existed. And it’s not just the opinion of Jesus that He’s God and that He’s eternal, but the opinion of the rest of Scripture.

And I won’t even go into the Old Testament where we see the pre-existent Christ show up in places like the fiery furnace or even in Isaiah vision of God. Remember, God is a spirit. He's invisible. But Jesus is the Image of the invisible. So when Isaiah sees the Lord High and lifted up with the train of his robe filling the temple, that is the glory of the pre-incarnate Christ. We saw it also in Isaiah's prophecy earlier.

Ponder on this, the very men who followed Jesus for three years, lived with Him for three years, thought He was God. Teresa lives with me; it makes marriage work really well. . .most of the time. Sometimes it makes it harder. She can tell you where my strengths are, what I’m good at. But she can also very easily tell you what I’m not good at and what my strengths are not, what I want to be strong at but I’m not, what I hope to be but I’m not. She can tell you those things. Ans she can definitely tell you that I’m not God. So you have to do something with the fact that the men who lived with Jesus for three years call Him God.

Today, if you want to pervert the truth and preach lies, you can make a lot of money and power. But when this is happening, preaching that Jesus is God would have just served as a means to get them killed in a variety of uncomfortable ways. You can be boiled alive. You can be eaten by lions. You can be pelted with rocks until you die. You can be thrown off the Temple. You can be beaten with clubs. That’s what you had back then. You didn’t have wealth and power. That’s not what was at stake in 60 A.D. But yet they’re doing it.

Not only that, but Jesus’ own family thought He was God. Now, try that one on. James, His brother, is martyred for Jesus. They take James up onto the temple and say, “Recant. Jesus is not God in the flesh.” And he won’t do it. So they throw him off the temple, he breaks both of his legs. He’s bleeding out and they ask him to recant. He still won’t. So, they took a club and bashed in his skull, because he wouldn’t recant.

We could look at countless other examples but we can easily look at John the Baptist that we called out earlier in some of our Scripture readings. We know that John goes before Jesus. He is Jesus cousin and older than Jesus. But In John 1:29-30 he says, "He is greater than me because he was before me."

As Paul is talking to these Colossians who are so eager to put their hope and trust in their government, he is saying, There is a better Lord. Jesus is superior to all others. And we are called to look at all of the fleeting pleasures of this world and to our mountains of stuff and count them as rubbish for the surpassing value of knowing Jesus, because when you get to know Jesus you are getting God himself, something greater than anything else that we can imagine.

He Created All

Before we finish, I have to look at Colossians 1:16, “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.” Now that’s a little jab at Caesar. Here’s why. Marcus Aurelius wrote in Meditations, “O Nature: from thee are all things, in thee are all things, to thee all things return.” Paul here is saying, “That’s close, Caesar, but there’s something above creation. Creation is not actually ultimate, but creation serves something higher, and that something is Jesus Christ.” Jesus is superior not only because he is the Firstborn over all things and because he is eternal and before all things but because he is the creator and sustainer of all things.

And then he defines all things in two ways. The first is on earth and visible.

If you can touch it, taste it, see it, smell it, if you can experience it in any way, Jesus created it. Often it was created in a good form, but now it’s been perverted by the Fall. You can take anything in the creative order and it can be used for good and be beautiful and be a reflection of the person of Christ. It can also be twisted, perverted and destroyed. So this is what this is saying. If it exists, Jesus was there. He created all things visible. But then he moves into this one that I’ve always been intrigued by.

Not only did He create everything on earth and everything visible, but He also created everything in heaven and invisible. This will blow your mind if you let it. One of the things we're talking about is angelic powers. And people make two errors when it comes to spiritual forces. They either make way too much of them or they don’t consider them enough. Those are the two big errors. Like if you’ve been around hyper-spiritual people, if anything went well, it’s because the angel took care of them or if anything went bad for them, it’s because Satan is really against them and gave them a flat tire. But the truth in Scripture is that they are real. There really are angels and there really are demons. There really are spiritual authorities and spiritual powers. All were created by Christ and for Christ and they all obey Christ.

And here’s my final point about his creation. According to verse 17, he also holds It all together. He sustains all things. This means that God designed the world to work a certain way. These are invisible realities that He wove into the world. For instance, you can’t breathe underwater. God designed you to need oxygen to breathe. There is a certain way to plant and harvest food. God designed the world to function in a certain way. These are invisible realities that are just the laws of the universe, and the Bible says He created those also.

How does Jesus Christ, the Creator of all things, hold all things together? Because He’s everywhere; He is the Creator. He is the active agent in creation that holds it all together. You’re here, I’m here and all of this is working right now because Jesus is telling it to. Hebrews 1 would say that He’s holding it all together by the word of His power. He created the stars in the sky and called them by name. He set the boundaries of the sea. The earth is staying in orbit, the sun is burning at the right temperature, every molecule in your body is holding together, the water in my cup is holding together, all these things are happening because Jesus is in control and is sustaining all things.

Impact

For you, right now, this should be an amazing comfort. It means that no matter what’s going on in your life right now, it hasn’t surprised Him. Jesus is not in a panic about you, regardless of what’s going on. So whether you’re healthy or you’re sick, whether your relationships are going well or they’re broken, it hasn’t surprised God. God is not an ambulance driver. He doesn’t show up after the accident and try to fix it. That’s not our all-sufficient Savior. He’s more the surgeon. If there’s wound that needs to be inflicted, He’s the one that takes the scalpel and He makes it, because He has good intentions for the wound.

For us here at this little house church this also means that Jesus has his plan under control. We'll see this more fully next week, but see the end of verse 16. All things were made through him and for him. There’s one kingdom and it is like nothing that we have ever seen before and nothing we could ever create here on this planet. My goal is not to create a giant building and my own little mini-kingdom here. You’ve got to hear this. Jesus is the head of the unstoppable, unmovable, always pressing forward, Church of Jesus Christ. The covenant community, Church with a big C, all believers, everywhere, over all time, He is the head of that, He is the brain behind that. Everything we do here, Christ is the head of that.

I say this because I get so frustrated when I see the Church fighting amongst itself, arguing about personal preference and secondary issues while thousands die every day without hearing the gospel of Jesus Christ. I think we could learn something from the character of God that we saw early in this passage. We need to be a heck of a lot more merciful and compassionate towards our fellow believers.

I don’t think it’s wrong for us to point out where people are outside of orthodoxy, where they’re outside of Scriptures, where they’re preaching a false gospel. I don’t think it’s wrong to be critical of some of that stuff. But in the end, if the gospel is being preached but musically or creatively or organizationally we’re just different. But in the end, there’s one Kingdom and it’s not this place. Jesus Christ is head of the body, the Church. We’re building His Kingdom, not ours.

The other point that I want you to take away from this is the secularization and self-centeredness of much of what we would call Bible Belt Christianity. You have some sort of knowledge that God loves you, but there’s no real pursuit of Him, no real understanding of the Scriptures. So if this is true, If Jesus really is the Perfect Image of the Invisible God and he is far superior to all other Gods and pleasures that this world has to offer then we should be much more serious about our faith, much more serious about holiness and much more serious about pressing into Him than we are. I haven't figured it all out yet, but we need to catch a glimpse of our true God and I'm honestly a little bit scared of what might happen. But I think if we saw him as he really is it would change everything about the way we live here and now.

But I think this is the most amazing product of believing this: When we make Jesus our ultimate pursuit, we are invited in. I’ve said this before, and I’ll continue to say it. God is not in love with some future version of you. You’re not in time-out right now. That’s now how this works. He says, “Come to Me now, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” The All-Powerful God of the Universe is welcoming you into his rest, right now, just as you are.