Ron Dunn Podcast - The Pre-eminence of Christ

Episode Date: August 14, 2024

Everything God has ever done is so that Christ may have first place in your life. Jesus Christ stands at the center of this life and world. From the series The Fullness of Christ.

It's a joy to be in your church this morning. I wish it didn't have to be under the circumstances that it is, but I've always looked forward to being here. And as always, the music in this church is such a blessing. What a feast it has been this morning. And I appreciate the opportunity of being with you this morning and to share with you the Word of God. So I want you to open your Bibles to the book of Colossians, chapter 1.

Colossians, chapter 1. And I'm going to open your Bibles to the book of Colossians chapter 1. Colossians chapter 1, and I'm going to read beginning with verse 15, and I'll read through verse 20. Colossians chapter 1, verses 15 through 20. As we come to this Christmas season, of course, our attention, most of it, is on the Lord Jesus as he's the reason for the season that we celebrate. I do not know of another passage in the New Testament that gives such a full, complete, and concise description of the Lord Jesus Christ as we find here. He is elevated here to the highest position. If you ever want to find a passage of Scripture that elevates Jesus

Christ to the very top, to the very limit, you'll find it here in this passage. And so Paul is describing Jesus Christ, and he says in verse 15, he is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created, things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities, all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body of the church. He is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy.

For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, for the things on earth are things in heaven, by making peace through his blood shed on the cross. Now I want to call your attention to the last phrase in verse 18. It's a purpose clause, and the apostle says, "...so that in everything he might have the supremacy," the preeminence. Some translations read that he might come to have first place. Others, that he might be above all things.

But that is what Paul is aiming for in this passage. Everything that he says dovetails right onto that statement, that in all things Christ might have the preeminence. I have been haunted by a newspaper article I read some time ago. It's one of those things that you read and then you sort of wish you hadn't read it, because it says something to you that's very uncomfortable and you can't easily dismiss it. What I read in the newspapers was an account of a young girl, a young secretary, who on her lunch hour one day climbed out on the ledge of the building in which she was working

and declared that she was going to jump, that life had no meaning and she was going to jump. Well, of course, immediately all her fellow employees gathered around the windows and trying to plead with her to come back in, and she wouldn't let anybody speak to her. And when they began to speak to her, she said, I'm going to jump, nobody leave me alone. And of course they called the police, the fire department, the counselors came, the psychologists came, but she wouldn't let anybody speak to her. Finally, after a while, she did say that she would let a minister speak to her. So they brought a minister up and he sat on the window ledge close to where this girl was standing and he began to speak to her.

He talked to her for two hours and at the end of those two hours she jumped. I'm glad I wasn't that minister. I'll bet he still has nightmares about that. I'm glad I wasn't that minister. I'll bet he still has nightmares about that. If you ever wanted to be in a position where you felt like another failure, that would be the position. I've often wondered what he said to that girl. What disturbs me is, what would I have said? What would you say?

What if somebody you knew called you up on the phone and said, I'm going to give you two hours and if within two hours you can't give me a reason for living, I'm going to kill myself. What would you say? Albert Camus, the French existentialist, said a startling statement, and yet I think there's a great deal of truth to it. He said the only really serious philosophical issue

is that of suicide. In other words, he was saying, first of all, before anything else makes any difference, you've got to decide, is life worth living? If life isn't worth living, then everything else doesn't make sense. What does it matter if you find the cure for cancer if life isn't worth living to begin with? What does it matter if 2 x 2 equals 4 if life doesn't matter to begin with?

The first thing you and I have to understand and ask ourselves is, is life worth meaning? Does it have any meaning? What would you have said to that girl? And yet the fact is that every day without knowing it, I am certain that you and I come into contact with people who are just as desperate as that girl and are just as in a dangerous position. what are you saying to them?

I guess it's a question that I'm confronted with most often as I travel about this country, people asking why this and why that. All of these questions become more poignant at Christmastime, you see, because the hearts are made more tender. And so those things that hurt, hurt more at Christmas time around this season. And I think around this season, we are sometimes more and more have pressed upon us the issue, is life really worth meaning? What is the purpose of it all? Well, I want to say to you this morning that I cannot give you the immediate, I cannot give you the immediate purpose for whatever is going on in your life this morning.

I wish that I could. I can't even give you the meaning for everything that's going on in my life. I wish I could. A lot of the stuff that's going on in my life right now is an absolute mystery to me. I don't have the immediate reason for what's going on in my life. But I can give you the ultimate reason. I know where we're going to end up. We're going to make a few stops along the way that I'm not familiar with.

But I know where we're going to end up. I know what our destination is. And it's that which Paul underlines in that verse 18, so that in all things, so that in everything, Christ may come to have preeminence. In other words, as Paul describes the character of Jesus, the work of Jesus, as he builds all of these word categories around Jesus, demonstrating to us who Jesus is and what Jesus has done, he says all of this has as its purpose, all of this has as its goal, that in all things Christ might have first place. That's it.

That's the meaning of life. That's the real meaning of life. That's the real purpose of life. Everything that God has ever done, everything that God is doing right now in your life and in this world, everything God will ever do, he's doing it for this one ultimate purpose, so that in all things Christ might come to have first place. The apostle is simply saying this,

that if you take Christ out of life, life doesn't make sense. Christ is that hidden factor. He's the common denominator. He is what makes sense of everything. And if you alienate yourself from Christ, then you're alienated from everything else. Because life only takes on meaning, Paul is saying in this passage of Scripture,

life only takes on meaning when you understand that Jesus Christ stands at the center of life and of history and of this world. That in all things he might come to have the preeminence. And that's something that is going to happen. He says that in all things he might come to be preeminent. Well, there's a sense in which he is, of course, because he is Lord. But there's another sense in which he is going to have somewhere down the road,

there is going to come a time when everything, and this is the way Paul puts it in Philippians chapter 2, he says that, "...and every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, of the glory of God the Father." Saying the same thing in Philippians 2 that he's saying in Colossians 1, just using different terminology. And you know that great passage in the second chapter of Philippians where Paul describes the humiliation, the incarnation, the crucifixion of Jesus. And then he says that God has highly exalted him

and given him a name which is above every name. And at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. I have news for you folks. Regardless of what it looks like in the world today, there is coming a time when every knee will bow, every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. I like what Vance Havner used to say.

Vance Havner used to say, I never ask a man, will you confess Christ is Lord? He said, never ask him that. Will you confess Christ is Lord? Always ask him, when will you do it? Because the question is not, will you do it? Everybody's got it to do.

You say, well, I'll never will. Yes, you will. Every knee is going to bow. Every kind is going to confess. In three worlds, all things that are in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, in hell, there is coming that day when every person, regardless of what he may say today, is going to bow the knee and confess with the mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord, after all, of all things. Everybody has it to do.

You can do it now in the day of grace, or you can do it there in the day of judgment things. Everybody has it to do. You can do it now in the day of grace, or you can do it there in the day of judgment. But everybody has it to do. I remember when our kids were little. Have you ever noticed how all of a sudden, well, you just mentioned the word bedtime, and kids become terrified. They never want to go to bed.

Have you ever noticed that? George Bernard Shaw said that youth is wasted on the young. Well, that may be true. I know this much naps are wasted on the young. You know when you're little kids and you can have them, you don't want them? When you're old and warm, you can't have them. This whole thing must be a result of the fall. I got so weary of fighting my kids every night.

I mentioned bedtime. They say, Daddy, Daddy, I'm not tired. I don't care. I'm tired. That's why you're going to bed. And it was just a war. I got tired of it. And so one night I set those three kids down there on the couch, like three knots on a log.

And I said, I want to tell you something, kids. You are going to bed. Now, you can kick and scream and holler and cry, but you are going to bed. Now, you can kick and scream and holler and cry, but you are going to bed. Nothing you do, nothing you say is going to make any difference. You are going to bed. Now, you can go easy or you can go hard, but you are going. And you know, my kids, being intelligent of course, picked up on that. Well, if you're going any way, you may as well go easy. I don't mean to sound irreverent, but I tell you what I believe God is saying to many of us through things that are going on in our lives.

Listen, you can go easy or you can go hard, but you are going to bow the knee. You are going to acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord. Let me talk just a minute about this. Number one, I want you to notice what I'll call the reach or the scope of his preeminence. Paul says that in all things he might have the preeminence. Not in some things, not even in most things, but that in all things he might have the preeminence. Religious things and non-religious things,

secular and sacred, that in all things he might have the preeminence. In other words, Paul is saying there's not anything that lies beyond his jurisdiction. There is no border that you can cross over and suddenly you're outside beyond the jurisdiction of his lordship. He is to be preeminent in all things, everything, big and little, everything. Let me illustrate it like this. You don't have any windows right here, but we pretend that there are windows around this auditorium on the outside, so you can see outside there. You can see through those windows. Now, let's say there are three windows over here on this side, and three windows back here, and three windows over here on this side. All right,

you come over to one of the windows on this side. You look through that window, and what do you see? Well, you see the inside of this auditorium. All right, you move to the second window, and you look through there. What do you see? Well, you see the same thing, the inside of the auditorium. Well, you move to the next window, and look into that window, and what do you see? Well, you see the same thing the inside of the auditorium. Well, you move to the next window and look into that window, and what do you see? Well, you see the same thing. You see this auditorium. Now, a little different angle, but you still see the auditorium.

All right, move back to these windows and look through these windows. What do you see? Well, you still see the same thing, the auditorium, but you're seeing it from a different viewpoint. Actually, you're seeing some things in the auditorium you didn't see before but what you're seeing is the same thing it is the auditorium just looking from a different angle you come over here to these windows and look through these windows what do you see oh you see the same thing but you're seeing it from a different viewpoint from a different angle now let's suppose that i look into your life through

the window of your home life and i life through the window of your home life. And I look through the window of your home life, and what do I see? I see the auditorium. I see Jesus Christ Lord. I see Jesus Christ preeminent. All right, let's look at it through another angle. I mean, let's take another viewpoint. Let's look at it through the window of your church life.

Oh, no problem there. Look through the window of that church life. Man, you see the same thing. Jesus Christ is preeminent. Well, no problem there. Look through the window of that church life. Man, you see the same thing. Jesus Christ is preeminent. Well, move back here. Let's look through the window of your school life. Look through there. Boy, hmm, I wonder where that auditorium went. You know, from this angle, you just can't see the auditorium. Move over here to your window of work. Look at your life through the window of your business. What do you see? Man, you know, it's hard to see the auditorium through that.

Now, what Paul is saying is that you and I ought to be able to look through every window of our life, and no matter what angle you look through our life at, it always stays the same, Jesus Christ Lord. Lord. In business, in home, in recreation, no matter which angle you look at, no matter which viewpoint you see, you see the same thing, Jesus Christ preeminent Lord. And he mentions some things specifically. He says, first of all, Jesus is preeminent

when it comes to this matter of revelation. Look in verse 15. Paul describes him as the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. He as the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. He is the image of the invisible God. Now when the Bible calls God invisible, it's saying two things about Him. Number one, it's saying more than He just cannot be seen. It is saying He cannot be seen.

But more than that, it is saying that He is unapproachable, he is unknowable. The reason that the Bible describes God as invisible is because he cannot be known by the senses. He cannot be known by seeing or by touching or by listening. In other words, there is no way that man can approach God. There's no way that you and I can know God. But the second thing he's saying is this, that Christ is the image of that invisible God. He is the exact expression.

He is the exact image and expression and essence of the invisible God. In other words, Jesus came and made the invisible God visible. He came and made the unknowable God noble. You can know God now, but not apart from Jesus Christ. He's cornered the market on Revelation. Nobody else can take you to the Father but Jesus Christ. One of the most important statements our Lord ever made was in Matthew 11, verse 27, when He said, No man knows the Father except the Son,

and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him. The only way you can ever know God is through the Son. You say, but preacher, I believe in God. I believe in God. Now, I don't believe in Jesus, but I believe in God.

I believe in the God of the Bible. I believe that God created all these things. But I don't believe in Jesus. But I believe in God. all these things. But I don't believe in Jesus. But I believe in God. And I worship God. But I don't know Jesus. Then I want to say to you that you are an idolater.

Because you're worshiping a God you don't know. And that's idolatry. You see, you can't worship God, the true God, apart from Jesus Christ. There's no other way. He is preeminent when it comes to this matter of revelation and knowing God. But Paul tells us something else. He's also preeminent in creation. I love these verses.

He says, He is the firstborn over all creation, for by Him all things were created, things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, where the thrones or powers or rulers or authorities, all things were created by him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. Now, you could spend a week right there, but I want to call your attention to something special. What Paul is telling us here, of course, is that Jesus Christ is the power behind

everything that was created. All things have been made by him. Paul says visible and invisible. You look out there, everything you see was created by Jesus. Everything you don't see was created by Jesus. He is Lord, Master over all creation. But then he mentions these things, visible and invisible. And when he comes to the word invisible, he gives us four examples of invisibles. Notice those expressions, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities. Thrones, powers, rulers, authorities. In different translations, they'll be translated differently, of course, but basically the same.

Now I want you to come over to chapter 2 and verse 9. Paul says, For in Christ all the fullness of the deity lives in bodily form, and you have been given fullness in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority. Now come down to verse 15, in the second chapter, Paul talking about what Jesus did on the cross. He says, And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross. Now I want you to focus on those words, powers, authorities, thrones, dominions. They occur over and again in the letters of Paul, Ephesians, and other letters. Now what those words refer to are the unseen powers of life, the hidden forces of life.

They can be good powers or they can be evil powers. It all depends on the context in which they're found. For example, Ephesians chapter 6, when he talks about our spiritual battle, we wrestle not, we wrestle with the powers of darkness. There again, he uses those same words. So there he's talking about evil forces, evil powers. Now, one of the problems that people were having at Colossae were this. There were some teachers who were coming in and were saying,

listen, it's nice to know God, and it's nice to know Jesus, but you know, you've got a lot of bad things going on out there in the atmosphere. I mean, there are a lot of bad influences. There are a lot of bad powers. You can call them spirits or demons or whatever you want to call it. There's a lot of enemies out there, and you need to placate those, and somehow you need to get the mastery over those also. And so it's like a person today who's afraid to walk out of the door before he consults his horoscope. It's that type of thing. People were beginning to live in fear of things they could not see, you see, and things they did not know. You might call it fate or luck or whatever. and so Paul again and again in this book of

Colossians hammers down at this whatever forces are out there whatever evil spirits are out there I know this much whatever is out there Christ has conquered them all and there's no need to be afraid of no need to be afraid of won't taste something folks there's only one thing in life that you need to be submitted to and that is Jesus Christ. You do not have to be under the control of anything else. Well, we don't believe maybe in the horoscope. Maybe we don't believe in the planets having to be arranged just right. But there are some forces that determine my life. Maybe I was abused as a child.

Maybe I'm an adult child of an alcoholic. Maybe the economic situation has forced me to do things that I don't want to do. I want to say something to you people. There is no, there is nothing that you as a believer have to be a slave to except Jesus Christ. You can say, but it's my heredity.

No, you don't have to be a slave to that. But you don't know how I was treated as a child. But you don't have to be a slave to that. You don't have to go through the rest of your life thinking my fate is determined, my destiny is determined, I will never amount to anything because of this and this and this.

Listen, Christ is Lord, preeminent over all things, visible and invisible. And that's why they call it the gospel, the good news. There's one other word. He is not only preeminent in revelation and creation, but naturally, of course, he is preeminent in redemption. I want you to look at verses 19 and 20.

Paul says, For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood shed on the cross. Now, two things that I want you to notice. Our Lord is the only one who can save us for imminent and redemption.

Salvation only comes through Jesus Christ. It can't come through anything else or anybody else. And there are two reasons for that. Number one, because Jesus is God, because of who Jesus is, because of his deity. Now, Paul says, if you'll notice the structure of those verses, he says that in all things he might have the preeminence. And then he comes down to verse 19,

and then he says, for, or you could read, because it has pleased the Father that in Jesus all fullness shall dwell, and through him to reconcile all things to himself. In other words, Paul is saying the right that Jesus has to be preeminent is this. Number one, because of who he is. Number two, because of what he's done. Because of his deity and because of his death.

Why is he preeminent? Because it has pleased the Father that in him shall dwell all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. What a tremendous statement that is. He says the same thing in chapter 2, verses 9 and 10, that we read a moment ago. All the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Jesus. That's hard to imagine. The word is hard to translate.

It means the sum of all sums, the mother of all sums. It means the fullness of all fullnesses. It means if you go out here and you gather up all the mercy there is in the world, I mean every speck of mercy you'll find anywhere in the world, put it over here and it's in a giant pile. You gather up all the love there is in the world,

stack it over here and it goes into a mountain. Take all the grace, all the wisdom, all the knowledge, everything that is good and godly in life, put it up in stacks and piles and mountains, and then take all of that and sum it up in Jesus Christ. That's what he's saying. Everything that is good and godly is in Jesus Christ. Everything.

Remember that day when some of the disciples, the secondary disciples, began to fall away? Jesus said to his immediate disciples, Will you also go away? Their answer has always intrigued me. They said, Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou, asked the words of life. I don't know why it is.

Maybe I'm just suspicious of the disciples, but I get the sneaking suspicion that if they had an alternative, they might consider it. Lord, to whom shall we go? I mean, we're locked in. I mean, you've got us cornered. Only you have the words of life. You see?

They say, well, this person rejected Jesus for something else. No, you reject Jesus for nothing else because anything outside of Jesus Christ is neither good nor godly. It's all in Him, folks. One day I was in Little Rock. I was preaching.

After I preached, a woman came up to me and gave me a book. She said, I want you to have this book. I said, what is it? She said, it's the Book of Mormon. I gave it back. I said, thank God, I don't want it. She gave it back. She said, there's some good stuff in there.

You ought to read it. I said, I've read it. I gave it back to her. She gave it back to me. She said, that's the trouble with you, Baptist. You're narrow-minded it I gave it back to her she gave it back to me she said that's a trouble with you Baptist you're narrow-minded I gave it back to her and I said listen and that this this was before I became mellow I gave the book back to her and I said she said there's some good stuff in it I said there's good bread in the garbage can too but I

don't need a garbage can. Why do I need to go over here to find anything if all the fullness is in Him? And I'm made complete because of His deity, because of who He is, and then because of His death, what He's done. He has reconciled us through His death and His own body on the tree. It's very simple. He made us and he bought us. And he is preeminent. F.B. Meyer, a great Baptist preacher of the last century, used to say, in every Christian's life, Jesus Christ is present. In many lives, he's prominent. But in few lives is he preeminent. And that's the goal. Where is God leading me?

Oh, I know where he's leading me. He's working in my life, so I'll come to the place where no matter which window he looks through, he'll still see the same thing. Jesus Christ, Lord and preeminent. Would you bow with me as we pray? After we pray, we're going to stand together and the choir is going to lead us

in a hymn of an invitation a couple of verses this morning if you do not know jesus christ as savior we invite you to come to him when we stand to sing in a moment there'll be ministers down here at the front all you have to do is to move out from where you'll be standing make your way here to the front you won't be by yourself there'll be someone here to meet you it may be that the lord is speaking to you about joining this church and and you've been visiting, and you feel like this is where God would have you to place your life, and that's what you ought to do. And so the invitation is open for us to do whatever it is that God speaks to us about. I trust that you'll let him have his way

this morning. Heavenly Father, we thank you that Jesus Christ has come into the world, and that he did live a real life as a real person, and that He died a real death. And there was a real resurrection, a real ascension. And I thank you that there's a real presence today of Jesus Christ in our hearts, just as real as ever in our hearts. I pray that He would move among us this morning by His Holy Spirit and draw us to Himself. This is our prayer in Jesus' name. Amen.