Colossians 01 Round Two: Highlight All Of It

Someone told you Jesus was “a great teacher” and nothing more. Colossians 1 doesn’t just disagree, it lays down one of the strongest, clearest claims about Jesus in the entire New Testament.

I’m Pastor Brandon, and we’re starting a new book with the kind of Bible breakdown that helps you actually see what’s happening in the text. We talk about the background of Colossians, how Epaphras connects the church in Colossae to Paul, and why this small house church ends up receiving a massive message from a prison cell. When voices start spreading confusion about who Jesus is, Paul responds with a focused theme you can’t miss: Jesus is Lord of all.

Then we read Colossians chapter 1 and slow down on the lines worth highlighting. We look at Paul’s prayer for spiritual wisdom, endurance, and a life that bears good fruit, and we sit with the stunning claims of Christ’s supremacy: Jesus is the visible image of the invisible God, He existed before all things, everything was created through Him and for Him, and He holds all creation together. We also connect that to the heart of the gospel, reconciliation through Christ’s blood on the cross, and the call to keep believing without drifting.

We end with a decision point that gets personal fast: if Jesus says what He says, who is He to you, and what will you do about it? Subscribe for the rest of Colossians, share this with a friend who has big questions about Jesus, and leave a five-star review so more people can find the show.

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The More We Dig. The More We Find.

Scripture quotations taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation (NLT).
Copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation.
Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Transcript

Welcome And How To Connect

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Welcome to the Bible Breakdown Podcast. Every day, we take one chapter of the Bible, dig deeper, and discover that the more we dig, the more we find. You can find out more at the BibleBreakdown.com. Now let's grow in God's Word together. Well hello, everybody. Welcome back to the Bible Breakdown Podcast with your host, Pastor Brandon. Today, Colossians chapter one. And if I were to give today a title, it would be Highlight All of It. Okay. Highlight All of It. We're going to talk about this. And as always, when we start a new book, we're going to take a moment, kind of give you a bit of a background, give you the theme, give you the keyverse, all the wonderful things. But before we do all of that, make sure that you are getting connected with us. Make sure you're leaving us a five-star review on the podcast because you're always going to be my favorites. Make sure you're leaving us, you know, liking, sharing, subscribing, commenting on the YouTube channel, and as always, gather with us at the Bible Breakdown Discussion on Facebook. And I'm going to tell you something especially for the book of Colossians because it is so wonderful. I would say it is probably top five, my favorite book, one of my top five favorite books in the entire New Testament. I love the book of Colossians. And so if you have your Bibles, want to open up with me to Colossians chapter one, let me give you a little bit of background first. The Bible is a collection of different writings that was inspired by the Holy Spirit by different people that span over centuries, if you include the Old Testament, but the New Testament spans over a short period of time that was amazing on what God did. And one of the things that we see is we have Gospels in the beginning, and then through the second half of the whole thing, we have letters that were written to different churches for different reasons by different people. Most of them, I believe it was 13 of them, was written by the Apostle Paul. And they're written for different reasons. One of them is Colossians. And what happened was a guy named Epaphroditus, Epap, he travels from Colossae once upon a time, and he goes to the next biggest town over called Ephesus. And while he is in Ephesus, he experiences the goodness of God, but a wonderful church there, the church that was ran by a guy named Timothy, who is like the protege of Paul. And Epap goes on back over to Colossae, and a lot of historians think that Epap actually goes and he starts a church in Colossae. Many people also think this church in Colossae was probably the smallest house church of all the churches that Paul knew about. Well, eventually, as time goes on, a different thing happens, there's different things going on in Ephesus that they need to talk to Paul about. And then there's some things going on in Colossae. And so what, and we'll tell you about those in a minute, but what Epap does is he goes to visit Paul, who is in prison in Rome in around 6061 A.D. And he's waiting to talk to the emperor. And while he's there, he talks to Paul about what's going on. And Paul writes letters while he's in prison to the church of Ephesus, the church in Colossae, and to a guy named Philemon, and he gives them to Epap. And Epap, Epaphroditus, takes them back to these places and these people so that they can hear the word of the Lord from Paul. It turns out the Holy Spirit inspired these to be the word of God for all of us. Now we break that down a little further. Now, the guy that he was first writing to, that was that he was writing to become Philemon, what happened was is Philemon had a runaway servant or slave that had actually traveled with Epaphroditus to visit Paul. And he realized once he got there that Jesus was the way, he gives his life to Christ. And they realized that if you were a runaway slave, and slaves were very different then than what we think about now in our modern culture. We think about slavery and slavery is bad back then, and it could be bad back then, but common slavery back then would be basically you owed someone money, and so you worked for them until you paid off the debt. Much like many of us do, we go work for a corporation. We work for a place and they pay us. So it was a little bit more like that than it would be what many of us think of, which is like southern slavery in the 1800s in the United States. Horrible, horrible thing. It wasn't quite like that then. But if you ran away, you could be killed. And so Paul writes a letter to a guy named Philemon saying, hey, so-and-so is coming back to you, but I need you to know he's a Christian brother now. So he's basically saying, you should probably set him free. At the very least, you should forgive him because he's a Christian brother now. Oh, and by the way, you kind of owe me your life too, because I led you to Christ as well. So that's going on in Philemon. We're going to get to that book eventually. He writes this amazing letter to the book of uh to the church at Ephesus and Ephesians. We've read that one already. But what's going on in Colossae, which is the reason why God inspired the apostle Paul to write this, is there were people that were going around and they were attacking the deity of Christ. There were these false teachers who were girl around and they were saying that Jesus was not the Son of God. He was a good man, he was a teacher, but not actually God. And so Paul writes this wonderful letter. And as you can tell, it's very close. If you ever read Ephesians and you read Colossians back to back, they're very close to one another. But one thing that stands out in Colossians is the overall theme. And the overall theme is Jesus is Lord of all. We're going to see that when we get into chapter one, that the overall goal is that Jesus is Lord of all. And I love this because a lot of critics of Christianity will say that when Jesus was first, you know, on this earth and he did all these things, he never claimed to be God, which is completely wrong if you read the Gospels. But they say he never claimed to be God, he never claimed to be any of those things. It was Paul who started the idea of him being God, and it wasn't until the second or third century at these different councils that they had where they declared Christ to be God. One of the most famous uh atheist, agnostic, leaning toward atheists called Bart Ehrman actually says this. He says that Jesus never claimed to be God, it was the church that made him God. Well, that's very unfortunate and very much a lie, because we can read in Colossians where the highest Christology, the highest view of Christ was the first view of Christ. That first of all, Jesus did call himself God. That's what the whole gospel of John is all about, right? All the way back from the first chapter and the first verse. But then, because this was already happening, where these false teachers were saying, you know, Jesus isn't really God, he was just a really good teacher. Paul writes to the Church of Colossee and he says, Oh, no, no, no, no. Jesus is God. He's a second person of the Trinity. He's just as much God as the Father and the Spirit, and he existed from all of time. And so we're going to read this and you're going to see all throughout this where Paul is constantly reminding us that Jesus is Lord of all. And that's why I say chapter one is just highlight all of it. I wish you could see my Bible in Colossians chapter one, and it is just one yellow piece of paper, just about. I mean, I have so much of this highlighted because there's so much good stuff here. So I want you to imagine with me as you get your Bibles ready. Imagine that you're a young church, you're a small church in this small town called Colossae, and there are these teachers that are coming through and they're going, Man, I'm so glad you love Jesus. He's not God, just a real good teacher. And you don't think that's true, but you're not really sure. Well, now you get a letter from the Apostle Paul that says, Let me tell you exactly who Jesus is. Let's read this together. Let's enjoy it, and let's see what God's Word will have to say to us and what we can take away today. You ready? Colossians chapter 1, verse 1 says this. This letter is from Paul, chosen by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, and from our brother Timothy. We are writing to God's holy people in the city of Colossae, who are faithful brothers and sisters in Christ. May God our Father give you grace and peace. We always pray for you and we give thanks to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and your love for all of God's people, which come from your confident hope of what God has reserved for you in heaven. You have had this expectation ever since you first heard the truth of the good news. This same good news that came to you is going out all over the world, and it is bearing fruit everywhere by changing lives, just as it changed your lives from the day you first heard and understood the truth about God's wonderful grace. You learned about the good news from Epaphras, that's the guy I was talking about, our beloved coworker. He is Christ's faithful servant, and he is helping us on your behalf. He has told us about the love for others that the Holy Spirit has given you. So we have not stopped praying for you since we first heard about you, and we ask God to give you complete knowledge of his will and to give you spiritual wisdom and understanding. Then you will the way you will live will always honor and please the Lord, and your lives will produce every kind of good fruit, all the while you will grow as you learn to know God better and better. We also pray that you will be strengthened with all his glorious power, so that you will have all the endurance and patience you need, and may you be filled with joy, always thanking the Father. He has enabled you to share in the inheritance that belongs to his people who live in the light. For he has rescued us from the kingdom of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his dear son, who purchased our freedom and forgave our sins. So, first of all, that's Paul's really nice way of saying, Sup, y'all. I heard y'all are doing great. That's awesome. That's what he just said. Now, watch how he goes straight into this. So imagine, remember, he's talking to all these people who have heard all these bad things. Jesus is awesome, but he's not really God. So here's Paul saying, Let me tell you exactly who Jesus is. You ready? Verse 15. Christ, that's Jesus, is the visible image of the invisible God. He existed before everything was created and is supreme over all creation. Now pause. Make sure you remember, because some people say, like I think it's Jehovah's Witness Mormons, they say that Jesus is a created being. And so Paul is reminding us here at the very beginning, he is the visible image of the invisible God. He existed before anything else was created, and he is supreme over all creation. So he's not a created being, he exists above all of that. For through him, God created everything in the heavenly realms and on earth. He made the things that we can see and the things that we can't see, such as thrones, kingdoms, rulers, and authorities in the unseen world. Everything was created through him and for him. In other words, he's saying everything we can experience with our five senses, God created. But then all around us is a spiritual world. There's angels, there's demons, and there's hierarchies in both. God created everything. Verse 17, he existed before anything else, and he holds all creation together. Christ is also the head of the church, which is his body. He is the beginning, supreme over all who rise from the dead. He is the first in everything. For God in all his fullness was pleased to live in Christ, and through him God reconciled everything to himself. He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth by means of Christ's blood on the cross. So, in other words, God at the beginning of time stood outside of time and he created time and everything that we see. And then when the time was right, he then created a body and he went and he indwelled that body. He was the hypostatic union, fully God and fully man. And through that visible representation of God, he then walked on this earth for 33 years, died on the cross, rose again, and through him and through his sacrifice, we now have forgiveness. Verse 21. This includes all you who were once far away from God. In other words, that salvation includes all of us who were once far from God. You were his enemies, separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions. Yet now he has reconciled you, us, to himself through the death of Christ in his physical body. As a result, he has brought you into his own presence, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault. But you must continue to believe this truth and stand firmly in it. Don't drift away from the assurance that you have received when you heard the good news. The good news has been preached all over the world, and I, Paul, have been appointed as God's servant to proclaim it. I am glad when I suffer for you in my body, for I am participating in the sufferings of Christ that continue for his body, and it's the church. God has given me the responsibility of serving his church by proclaiming his entire message to you. This message was kept secret for centuries and generations past, but now it has been revealed to God's people. For God wanted them to know that the riches and glory of Christ are for you, Gentiles, too. And this is the secret. This gives you assurance of sharing his glory. So we tell others about Christ, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all the wisdom that God has given us. We want to present them to God perfect in their relationship to Christ. That's why I work and struggle so hard, depending on Christ's mighty power that works within me. Wow. We have there the answer to why Paul does all he does is he's so in love with God. And he wants to present all of God's people perfect in God's presence. Isn't that amazing? Isn't that amazing what God gives us the honor to do? And he says, I work and I struggle so hard, but I depend on God's mighty power that works within me. And so as we read through the book of Colossians, what we're going to constantly and consistently see is that Jesus is Lord of all. That he's not just a man, he's not just an idea, but first of all, there was a historical man named Jesus. All serious scholars, even atheistic scholars, agree there was a literal human being named Jesus Christ. There's a literal human being named Jesus Christ who was crucified by the Romans. And then all reputable historians, even atheistic historians, believe and say that then they were followers that claimed to see Jesus in the flesh, and they claim he resurrected after he had been dead for three days, and they claim all these things. So all of these things are true. What matters is you put your hope in that for salvation. And what Paul is going to tell us is you have every reason to believe it. It reminds me of uh one of my favorite authors, C.S. Lewis, who said that Jesus is one of three things, and you've got to decide what he is. He is either a liar, he's either a lunatic, or he's Lord. He has not left up to us another option. Because if you think about what he said, he said this. He said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. He said, I am God. All throughout John, he says, I am. Ego em me, which is Greek for I am. All throughout the Gospels, he proclaims exactly who he is and what he is doing. And so he is one of three things. Anyone who claims to be God and is not is either a liar, they're crazy, a lunatic, or they are who they say they are. Jesus said, I am God and watch what I can do. And he did all these different miracles to validate and give proof to who he says he is. And so over the course of Colossians, there's four chapters, we get the opportunity to decide who is Jesus. Who is Jesus to you? Is he a liar? Is he crazy? Or is he Lord? And is he Lord? What are you going to do about it? Let's pray together. God, thank you so much. You are with us and you are for us in every way. I pray today, Lord, as we get ready to dig into Colossians, Lord, that you will come alive in our hearts. Help us to realize, God, that you are with us and you are for us. And because of that, we can trust you when you lead us all along the way. We celebrate you today. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen and amen. Well, here's our verse, here's our theme verse for this particular book. The Bible says in Colossians 3, verse 1 and 2, Since you have been raised to new life in Christ, set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits in the place of honor at God's right hand. Think about the things of heaven, not the things of earth. My prayer for you is that the more you fall in love with Jesus, the more you focus on Him, the more He changes you from the inside out. I love you. I'll see you tomorrow for Colossians chapter two.