Good morning, I invite you to turn with me to God's Word, to the New Testament, and Paul's letter to the Colossians, Chapter 1. Last time I preached it was Colossians Chapter 2, so logically you do the next one and you go back to Chapter 1. But there is a reason I'm doing it that way. So we'll read a short passage, Colossians 1, verses 15 to 20. We've just been singing about our great Savior. This passage is about the supremacy, the preeminence of Jesus. So let's read Colossians 1, 15 to 20. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, 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. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church, He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might have the preeminence. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. And through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. So as we look at this passage, we have verses here that indicate the supremacy of Jesus. The supremacy of Jesus. And there are so many people in our world today who are trying to exert their supremacy. You've got people at the moment vying to be the next prime minister. Here in Scotland, you've got people desperate for power to impose their godly, no, that's the wrong word, their ungodly ideology upon us. The last thing they want is a godly ideology. If you'd said to me 10 years ago, I would be helping to create a Christian school, an independent school, I would have said, what a nonsense, you don't need that. But now we do. Very much so. People putting forward their supremacy. Sports people, film stars, music stars, American presidents meeting with Saudi Arabian leaders, you find it everywhere. Turn on the news, people are putting forward their supremacy. That all pales to nothing compared to the supremacy of Jesus Christ. Now you might think, well, what about those people who don't acknowledge that Jesus has this high place. Sadly, there are even people within churches who want to reduce Jesus to some kind of pal that we call on from time to time. In this passage, we'll find out what Jesus' rightful place is. So let's begin with verse 15. I'll just briefly say a little bit about each verse. It would take too long to do each verse in great detail. Verse 15, he is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. So Jesus is described as the image of the invisible God. Now the word image here is not particularly about what Jesus looks like. What the word image here is about is about the characteristics or the attributes of God which Jesus reflects exactly. And as we go through this passage, we'll find out why Jesus reflects the attributes of God exactly. Now if you don't know what the attributes of God are, I'm not going to go through them all, but God has love, God has righteousness, God has faithfulness, God has holiness, that type of thing. And Jesus is in God's image in the sense that he reflects these attributes and he reflects them because he has them all himself. Why does he have these attributes? Because Jesus is God. On Wednesday night at the prayer meeting we were talking about a man in Pakistan who's been put in prison for saying that Jesus is God. He's now been sentenced to death because he said Jesus is God. He told the truth. Now what about the people that don't believe these things about Jesus? Does that make these things any less true? Not at all. The truth about Jesus is the truth whether people accept it or not. And the people who don't accept it are the ones who will not benefit from what Jesus has to offer to us. Now we're told also in this verse he's the image of the invisible God. Why the mention of the invisible God? because people often use this as the excuse not to believe in God. Oh, I would believe in God if I can see him. Now the problem with that is you're saying if I don't see it, I'm not having it. So we're relying on one of our human senses in our limited human body to decide about something that is way beyond anything we as humans can achieve. So these people that say, oh, I would believe in God if I saw him. Well, let's look at some of the evidence back in the time that Jesus was on Earth. So many people saw Jesus. Some believed in him, but many, many did not. Some of the same people a week before he died, probably less than a week before he died, were cheering him into Jerusalem, Hosanna to the Son of God. And then some of the same people by the Friday were shouting, crucify him! They didn't really believe in him. Did that make him less of a person, less divine? Of course not. People Not believing the truth doesn't stop the truth being the truth. Be assured of that. And the truth comes from God through Jesus to us. Jesus is also described as the firstborn over creation. The firstborn over creation. He leads the way. Jesus existed before creation. And he came to save us after we spoiled his creation. And we spoiled our own lives with our sin. Jesus is also the firstborn over creation because he is Lord over the whole creation. And that includes him being our Lord. Jesus has a rightful place to be our Lord. Now in our sin, we can push him away, but his rightful place is Lord of our lives. So what does it mean for Jesus to be Lord? What does that mean? It means that we trust in Him. We believe in Him. We come before Him and we see our sins, our sins that have offended Him, and we repent of our sins. We put our faith in Him, our trust in Him. We study His Word. and we serve him in our lives. He becomes our Lord. Not in some loose, oh well, we'll pull Jesus in occasionally into our lives, but Jesus influences our lives every day. Let's go into verse 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. So Paul here is speaking of creation having taken place by him, through him, and for him. And this echoes what Paul also wrote in the book of Romans. You'll find this in chapter 11, verse 36, where he says, for from him and through him and to him are all things. So in this passage here, Paul is clearly aligning his words about God with his words about Jesus. He's putting them side by side, his words about God and his words about Jesus. Now why is he doing this? Because Jesus is God. Because Jesus is creator. We're told here, all things were created by him, through him, and for him. Thrones, dominions, rulers, authorities, Nothing can exist without Jesus. And Jesus even allows the sinful to have their time, but they will be brought to judgment unless they repent of their sins and put their faith in him. Nothing exists without Jesus. Nobody And no thing continues without Jesus. We owe our very existence to Him. Whether we acknowledge that or not. Creation. Let's think of creation. Creation is a result of the power and the skill of the Creator. And that creation can only exist and it can only continue and be preserved by a continuation of that divine energy which first created it. People are getting awfully worried about climate change. People are getting awfully worried about nuclear weapons. I'm not saying that's wrong. But you need to look at these things in the context of the sovereignty of God and the purposes of God. And ultimately, what happens to this earth will be in God's purpose. And the culmination of this earth will be the return of Jesus to this earth. That's the context in which we should consider all worries we might have about the future. We continue to owe our very existence to Jesus. How are we responding to that truth? How are we responding to Jesus in our lives? How important is he to us? We'll come back to that. Verse 17. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. So a continuation here. Saying he is before all things, this means, for example, that his works, his truth, his power, and much more are from everlasting to everlasting. They're not time-limited in any way at all. And in him, all things hold together. You might think, well, we're being held together by the government or science or something else. No. They are under the authority of Jesus under the authority of God. Nothing on this earth or beyond this earth can continue without Him. Without Jesus, the earth would disintegrate. Our lives would come to an abrupt end. And all that we love about this life would be extinguished. You see, we like to think that we have power over everything, that we control our own lives and our own destinies. We like to think we're in control, but we're not. Verse 18, and he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. Jesus is and must be followed as the head of the church. What is the purpose then in having a pastor? The purpose of having a pastor is that God ordains to equip and use leaders to bring his truth to others. He did this back in the Old Testament with the prophets. They brought God's message to the people. The priests represented the people to God. Since the time Jesus was on earth, there are Pastors, they may be called other titles in other churches, who are, you might use the word ordained or licensed or commissioned, it doesn't matter what the word is, because the bottom line is, for a pastor to be a pastor of God, that man needs to be ordained. Inspired, chosen, and developed by God. And how do you know whether that's the case? You will know through his preaching and his pastoral ministry. And his desire to bring the truth of God's word into people's lives. Jesus is and must be followed as the head of the church. He is our forerunner in life after death and we must repent of our sins and put our faith in Him. Verse 19, for in Him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. Now you sometimes get the word pleased or pleasure in the Bible. It's awfully easy to think that God is stern, unhappy with us, wrathful. And to some extent, there's truth in that as well. But God takes pleasure in lots of things. He takes pleasure in what Jesus did. He takes pleasure when we turn from our sins to serve him. He takes pleasure when we support each other as Christians. And that means we're allowed to take pleasure in our faith as well. God doesn't want us to be miserable. but he doesn't want us to be flippant and light about our faith either. He wants us to be serious about our faith and happy about being serious in our faith. So this verse 19 is telling us that Jesus is fully God. Now there's no half measures here. Jesus isn't a bit of God or part of God. He is fully God. Now, I'm not going to get into a sermon of the Trinity here today, but Father, Son, Holy Spirit, one God. Now, how do we explain that? The fullness of God is the essential nature of God making up all his attributes. This deity, this godness, if you like, dwells in the human Jesus and characterizes him eternally as the head of the church. And the deity of Christ means he has the full, now I'm going to use a word here that I quite like, but I'll need to give you a kind of health warning with it as well. Jesus has the full essence of God. Now, what does it mean to speak about the essence of something? Well, let me give you an example of the use of the word essence that's not the same as what we mean here by God. Let's take the pulpit here. It's made of wood. So the essence of this is wood. These panels, which some people in the church here painted. And one lady who's missing today was definitely involved in that. This banister, wood. This door, wood. The essence of all of these items is wood. But they are different items. That's not what we mean when we say that Jesus is the full essence of God. There's no separation. There's no different items in the Trinity. Now, some of you might not like this illustration, but to understand the trinity, it's God reveals himself in different ways to us, and it's easier for us to understand if we think of God as the creator, God as the son and savior, God as the Holy Spirit who influences us. But it's still one God in essence, and the essence here is not like the bits of wood It's the same very being. It's that same essence that we mean when we say Jesus has the full essence of God. Now, as you probably know, I don't know much Greek, but there's a Greek word, homoousio, or homoousion, that means of one substance. And it's a useful word. It was used, for example, by the people that made up the Nicene Creed all those years ago. It's a useful word, but again, it's not understood correctly sometimes, because people think, oh, of the same substance, a bit like the wood, you know, different bits. Homoousio, as it's used, doesn't mean different bits with the same substance. It means one being with the same essence. Father, Son, Holy Spirit, one being, one essence, no divisions, no separations, one in substance, one in truth, and one in purpose. One in godly purpose. So it's important to think of Jesus not as, oh, he's less than God. That's not what the Bible teaches. That's not what this passage teaches. But it's not enough to have this almost theoretical understanding of who Jesus is. and the fact he should be our Lord. So we come to the last of our verses today, verse 20. Having said that Jesus has all the fullness of God, Paul then goes on to say, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. Now, to reconcile all things. Now, if you've used the word reconcile before, quite often it's in the case of two people or two groups of people have had a disagreement and have fallen out with each other. And to reconcile is a kind of coming back together to sort out the problems. And often the word reconcile is used between two people on a fairly equal footing or two groups of people on a fairly equal footing. A bit different here because it's not two groups of people, it's a person, a being, the supreme being, God, and his creatures, us. Why do we need to be reconciled with God? Because we have gone our own way. We have chosen our own way. We have sinned. We have disappointed God. We have offended God. Among the things that offend God is when preachers stand up and say, oh don't worry about sin, you know, let's just love Jesus and have a good time. I'm paraphrasing a bit here. You might think that's a recent thing. with a few students or recent graduates of the University of Aberdeen. Let me go back a long, long, long time ago, back in the midst of history, when I was a student at Aberdeen University. I went to a service in King's College Chapel. I thought, I better go along to a service there. And the person that was preaching, I'm not going to tell you his name. I do remember it, though. It's etched in my mind. He stood up in the middle of his sermon and he said this, don't worry about sin. Sin's not something for you to worry about. Let's just concentrate on the love of Jesus and loving each other. And don't worry about sin. Just put it out of your mind. It was the closest I ever came to actually walking out of a service. And looking back, I should have done that. What an abhorrent, evil, God-denying statement that was for a highly exalted person in the church to come out with. Long before many of you were born, that untruth was being put forward in a Christian church in this city. How much worse has it become since then in churches that used to be so faithful to the Bible and no longer are? It is essential that we approach Jesus. We've just been talking about his supremacy, his God attributes. It's vital that we approach Jesus properly. We don't approach Jesus as our pal. We approach him as God's saviour, God's very being that has offered himself for us. Now, we don't deserve anything that Jesus has done because we have caused the break in the relationship between us and God. We have sinned, we have denied God in our lives, we have sought things that displease God, that offend God, and then even worse, we've pretended that these sins are not really so bad after all. And there's lots of excuses we can give for sin. Well, it's only a little thing. God won't mind that. It'll only offend him a little bit. Or, well, everybody else is doing that, so, you know, I'm just the same as everybody else, so it's not a big deal. There's lots of excuses given about sin, but there are no excuses before God. The only hope we have before God is putting our faith, our trust in Jesus. And that's why Paul here is speaking about people and things being reconciled. Now, why things? Well, when sin came into the world, not only did human beings become contaminated by sin, God's creation became contaminated by sin. So why are there tragedies from things like earthquakes and volcanoes and hurricanes and tsunamis? Because God's creation has been soiled by sin. The creation is every bit as much fallen as the human beings are. But as Paul says here, Jesus came to reconcile all things and all people to himself. How? By making peace by the blood of his cross. Now we've just been told all about Jesus being supreme, Jesus being fully God. And this Jesus went to the cross, endured humiliation, endured suffering. Now the physical suffering Jesus endured was horrendous. but the spiritual suffering he endured was far worse. Why? Because he who was without sin took all our sin upon himself on the cross. And he did this to bring us reconciliation, to bring us sinners back with God. Jesus has done the work already for us. And we respond by coming to Jesus and saying, yes, I'm a sinner. Yes, I've sinned against you. I am sorry for my sins. I want you to help me to turn from my sins, to turn to Jesus for forgiveness, for salvation, for eternal life. to be fully accepted by God. And if you've never done that before, now is the time to turn from your sins and to turn to Jesus and to put your faith in Him. And if you do that, He will accept you and your life in this earth and beyond will be transformed. Who by? By this Jesus. who is fully God, and despite the fact that our sin offends him, he still loves us. Let us respond to Jesus and receive salvation, forgiveness, peace, and eternal fellowship with God. Amen. Let us pray. Almighty God, We thank you for all that Jesus has already done for us. We thank you for his creation. We thank you for his self-giving for us on the cross. We thank you for his teaching. We thank you for his resurrection, showing that he had conquered sin and death for all who repent of their sins and believe in him. And we thank you that Jesus still intercedes for us now. In Jesus' name we thank you and pray. Amen. Now we sing how deep the Father's love for us.