The Supremacy of Christ

Colossians 1: 15 – 20 (NIV): 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, 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, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

When Paul says Jesus was the “firstborn over all creation”, he doesn't mean Jesus was the first of God's children, he means Jesus was here before everything else. He means that Jesus was and is God. Jesus is the image of the invisible God. He is God in the flesh. What does God look like? Jesus.

Did Jesus agree with Paul on this issue? Jesus said in John 8:58 “before Abraham was born, I AM.” If you have any doubt about his meaning, look at the people's reaction when he said this. They knew exactly what he meant: he was claiming to be I AM. Seventy-eight times in the Gospels, Jesus called himself “The Son of Man.” When we read Daniel 7: 13, 14, we see that the Son of Man was divine. Further, when Jesus called himself “God's Son” in John 10:36, his hearers understood that he was saying he was equal to God.

Not only did Jesus say he was God in the flesh, he proved it by what he did. He accepted worship in Matthew 14:33 and Luke 7:36 – 50. Only God can accept worship and Jesus would know that. He forgave sins in Luke 7:48 and Mark 2:5. Only God can forgive sins. And he lived a sinless life (Hebrews 4:15). Only God can do that and the Bible says so (Romans 3:10).

Did anyone else call Jesus God in the scripture? Yes, Thomas called him God in John 20:28, John called him God in John 1:1, Paul called him God in today's passage and in Colossians 2:9, and Stephen prayed to him in Acts 7:59. Stephen, a Jew, knew he could pray only to God.

This is the mysterious doctrine of the Trinity: one and only one God, in three persons. We must get this right even though we cannot fully understand it. We must understand that our sins could only be forgiven if God himself paid for them with his own blood. If we believe that Jesus was a just good man or teacher or prophet, but not God Himself, we not only have wrong belief about him, but we are calling him a liar. Instead, let us call him Lord and God.

Fatherhood - A Lesson from Abraham

Genesis 22: 4 – 13 (NIV): On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. He said to his servants, "Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you." Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, "Father?" "Yes, my son?" Abraham replied. "The fire and wood are here," Isaac said, "but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?" Abraham answered, "God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son." And the two of them went on together. When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, "Abraham! Abraham!" "Here I am," he replied. "Do not lay a hand on the boy," he said. "Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son." Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son.

First we must understand that God will never, ever again ask a father to sacrifice one of his children for any reason, and notice that God did not allow Abraham to slay his son. But Abraham was in a unique situation to demonstrate true devotion and God's love for us. This story is full of symbolism. God did allow his one and only son to die. God did sacrifice his promised child. And God did raise his child from the dead, the very thing Abraham reasoned God would do (see Hebrews 11:19).

God was testing Abraham to make sure that he, God, had first place in his life – even above the promised child for whom he had waited for years.

The best gift a father can give his children is to show that he loves God first and foremost. The best gift I can give my own children is to show them that I love God more than I love them. That's what God was demanding in this story. And God demands obedience from us, too, even if it doesn't make sense at the time. God's ways are higher than ours, and we must trust him at all times to please him.

This story also introduced the concept of the substitute sacrifice. God provided a ram so that Abraham could sacrifice it instead of his son. A lamb was slain for another's salvation. But there is more: This happened on a hill outside Jerusalem, a three-day's journey, innocent blood was shed, an obedient son is central to the story, the son carried his own wood, and the son's birth was promised years before-hand. God has provided a substitute sacrifice for all of us, but make no mistake, he requires total devotion, obedience and faith.

We Can Know God Exists

Romans 1: 18 – 25 (NIV): The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator--who is forever praised. Amen.

No one who has a brain has any excuse not to believe in God. All we have to do is look at creation to realize there must be a God. We can see the incredible diversity of life and the fine tuning of the cosmos; we can taste the fruits of the land; we can hear the sound of birds singing or the ocean beating against the shore; we can feel the breeze on our skin. Our senses tell us there is a God. Even Helen Keller, who was born blind and deaf, knew there was a God. She said she just didn't know his name until someone spelled it out on her hand.

Believing that all of creation is an accident, like secular evolutionists do, is like walking through the forest and seeing “help” spelled out with logs in a clearing and saying to yourself, “Oh look, the wind must have placed these logs like this. Isn't that amazing?!” Only it's really more like walking through the woods and finding the complete works of Shakespeare spelled out with logs.

Every creature is designed with a complex DNA code that tells the cells what to become, what to look like, and how to function. To say that the DNA code came about by chance is like saying that lines of computer code simply write themselves. That is absolutely impossible. Not one line of computer code has ever written itself. I'm not smart enough to write computer programs, and the intelligence it took to write the codes of creation boggles the mind. But it really boggles my mind to think that people choose to believe the DNA code is some sort of accident.

Paul didn't even know about the DNA code when he wrote this, but he knew that God had “invisible qualities” – behind-the-scenes power. He knew the origin of life itself was a mystery – and it still is, except for those who believe. We will worship something, either something created or the creator himself. Paul urges us to escape God's wrath by believing in the true God and worshiping him alone.

Why We Can't Look at God

Acts 17: 24 – 31 (NIV): The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. 'For in him we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.' Therefore since we are God's offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone – an image made by man's design and skill. In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead.

This is Paul's speech to the philosophers in Athens. A tough bunch to convert. But his bottom line was that God proved that he is the true God when he raised Jesus from the dead. That is the bottom line of our faith. The next verses basically say some believed it and some didn't. Yep, just like today. We have more than enough evidence that Jesus rose again and we can build our faith on that evidence.

The secondary argument he presents is the fact that we are here. We had to get here somehow! God created us and placed it in our hearts to seek him. If we do, we will find him because he is not far off. Some people refuse to seek God. Why? Perhaps because God commands everyone to repent and many people don't want God to tell them what to do.

We might ask, “So why can't we look at God so we can believe in him?” I think this is a fair question, but there are good answers. In John 3:8, Jesus says there is a mystery to God. He is Spirit and, like the wind, we can see his effects, but we can't see him. In John 1:10-11, John tells us that God did come to earth as a man so we could see and touch him, but most people still rejected him! Exodus 33:20 says it would kill us to look at God in his full glory. That is a reminder of how awesome, holy and powerful he is. He's like the sun – way to bright to look at. Imagine how awesome he must be if he spoke the sun – and the whole universe into existence.

If God removed the mystery, he would also have to remove our free will. I'll let you ponder that, because I want to end with a thought based on 1 Peter 5: 5-6. God has veiled himself so that the proud will not find him, but has revealed himself so that the humble will.

The Fragrance of Sacrifice

Leviticus 1: 3 – 9 (NIV): If the offering is a burnt offering from the herd, he is to offer a male without defect. He must present it at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting so that it will be acceptable to the Lord. He is to lay his hand on the head of the burnt offering, and it will be accepted on his behalf to make atonement for him. He is to slaughter the young bull before the Lord, and then Aaron's sons the priests shall bring the blood and sprinkle it against the altar on all sides at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting. He is to skin the burnt offering and cut it into pieces. The sons of Aaron the priest are to put fire on the altar and arrange wood on the fire. Then Aaron's sons the priests shall arrange the pieces, including the head and the fat, on the burning wood that is on the altar. He is to wash the inner parts and the legs with water, and the priest is to burn all of it on the altar. It is a burnt offering, an offering made by fire, an aroma pleasing to the Lord.

Leviticus was written by Moses about fourteen-hundred years before Christ. It was a hand-book for the priest on how to conduct worship, sacrifices and celebrations. It uses the word holy 152 times, more than any other book of the Bible. God was very specific about how he wanted sacrifices to be done.

What we see in this passage is that true sacrifice is always costly. David said, “I will not sacrifice to the Lord my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing.” God said the worshiper must sacrifice a “male without defect”. This is important for two reasons: one, it meant that they were to give their best to God. Ranchers need their best males to insure the best stock. God said give it to him. This insured that the sacrifice was costly. Secondly, it is symbolic of Jesus, who was without blemish (sin) and was thus worthy to be a sacrifice.

Why would God demand innocent blood? Why does Hebrews 9:22 say “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness”? Because bloodshed is the ultimate sacrifice. God is holy and we are not, so only an ultimate price is sufficient. Freedom is so precious because it is paid for by that ultimate sacrifice. More than a million Americans have died for our freedom. But as unbelievable as that is, it is even more amazing that the creator of the universe shed his blood for my salvation.

Blood shows how serious sin is. It is not a joke to God, or something he is going to let slide. My sin and your sin cost his son's life and he doesn't think that is funny anymore than you would. (The mystery of the Trinity is that Jesus was God's son, but also God incarnate – in the flesh.)

The sacrificial system in Leviticus is no longer in effect. Jesus became the offering for us once and for all (Hebrews 10:10). But it is important to study it so that we realize that sacrifice must be costly. It was costly to God and true sacrifice is costly to us as well.