Let us join together as I will be reading from the Holman Christian Standard Bible today. If you have a Bible I would ask you to read along even if it is another translation. It would be great if you brought your own Bible with you each week so you can take notes and mark in it if you so desire. However, if you don’t have a Bible with you, you can use one of the pew Bibles. Join me in prayer as we prepare to hear the Word of God given to us by our Heavenly Father! Let us pray…
19 For God was pleased to have all His fullness dwell in Him, 20 and through Him to reconcile everything to Himself by making peace through the blood of His cross — whether things on earth or things in heaven.
As we begin this week’s message we are walking through the supremacy and excellence of our Lord and Savior. We have been doing that since we started in verse 15 and will finish this point up today in our text. In verse 19 we are told that in Jesus the fullness or completeness of God was please to dwell! Now the word “dwell” means to abide permanently! Although Jesus was totally and completely human the fullness of God resided in Him. This is the mystery of Divine Nature and Human Nature found in Jesus Christ! Now to be honest I wish I could explain this to you, but it is not something that is easily explainable. However, look at the attributes of Jesus’ divine nature found in Scripture:
- He knows everything
- He is everywhere
- He has all power
- Depends on nothing outside Himself for life
- Rules over everything
- Never began to exist or will never cease to exist
- He is the Creator
Looking at Jesus’ Human nature which happened at the Incarnation when God became man we see these attributes:
- He was born a baby from a human mother
- He became weary and tired
- He thirst
- He hungered
- He cried and was filled with sorrow
- He lived on earth
So although this may not explain all we need to know about God dwelling in His fullness in Christ Jesus we have all these attributes I explained found in the Scriptures.
Verse 20 then speaks to through God’s fullness dwelling permanently in Christ Jesus that through Jesus God reconciled to Himself all things on earth and in heaven, making peace by the blood of His Cross. Notice it is God who reconciles us to Him, not Him reconcile to us! We are the sinner in need of grace! As the wonderful hymn says, “I once was lost, but now am found — was blind but now I see!” Through the grace of our Lord and Savior we are made right in the eyes of God.
Let us look closer at this in the next 3 verses:
21 Once you were alienated and hostile in your minds because of your evil actions. 22 But now He has reconciled you by His physical body through His death, to present you holy, faultless, and blameless before Him —
I love how the verses point out to the church of Colossae and to us here this morning that we were once alienated and hostile in our mind and in our actions toward God because of our evil nature or sinful nature before we came to know Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. Before we come to know Christ we belong to Satan — not that may seem like a harsh statement but it is true. We are told at Ephesians 6:12: For our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the world powers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavens. As we see in this text the battle is not against us and Satan, but between God and Satan for our soul! God desires that we come to know Him! We find this at 1 Timothy 2:3 — 4 where we read, 3 This is good, and it pleases God our Savior, 4 who wants everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. God desires for all to be saved, but it is up to us. He is reconciling our sinfulness to Himself by Jesus’ death on the cross! And He does this as we read in verse 22 in order to present us holy and blameless and above reproach before God! We cannot do this on our own, but by the blood of Jesus Christ on the Cross of Calvary we are deemed (redeemed) holy, blameless and above reproach before God! Hallelujah — Amen!
We have God, but does He have us? Totally, all of us? Have we given Him our time, finances, everything we own? Have we really given it to Him? Do we pray, earnestly pray, about every decision, in our life? Are we thankful for God’s goodness in what He has already blessed us with or are we still looking for the next thing that will thrill us & bring us supposed pleasure? Would God be pleased at why we do away from church & what we see on TV or our phones?
Now let us look at verse 23 together:
23 if indeed you remain grounded and steadfast in the faith and are not shifted away from the hope of the gospel that you heard. This gospel has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and I, Paul, have become a servant of it.
Paul talks directly to the problem going on in the church of Colossae in this verse! They have shifted away from the hope of the gospel that they have heard Paul has proclaimed and others have proclaimed in all creation under heaven. The church of Colossae was being attacked to follow a different Gospel, much like is happening today. Today we see a watered-down Gospel — a Gospel that doesn’t want to mention sin or hell and the consequences of being a sinner — we hear God is a loving God and will not bring judgment on people or send people to hell (this is not Scriptural, but it is what people want to hear — and Paul spoke to this in 2nd Timothy 4:3 — 4: 3 For the time will come when they will not tolerate sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, will multiply teachers for themselves because they have an itch to hear something new. 4 They will turn away from hearing the truth and will turn aside to myths). We must stay sober-minded, enduring the suffering we will have when we remain true to the Word of God.
Brothers and sisters we are living in a time where the Gospel is looked at with scorn — where Jesus Christ is trying to be silenced — and where being a follower of Christ means we will be persecuted. I read this week that in Afghanistan if a person is found to have a Bible on their phone they will be executed on the spot. If they are a follower of Christ they will be executed on the spot! However, with that said we must not cave into the demonic world in which we are coming under attack, but we must remember who is in charge and who has our back — Jesus Christ! Let us make it our pledge to follow Him not matter what it might cost us — our job, friends, our finances, or maybe even our life! Our hope is not in this world but in the world to come!
Let us pray…
Scripture used is HCSB - The Holy Bible: Holman Christian standard version. (2009). (Ge 9:8–10). Nashville: Holman Bible Publishers.
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