1.
Your child looks at the nativity scene nestled serenely beneath your tree and says,
Whats that camel doing in Santas workshop? 2.
Little Johnny is writing a letter to Baby Jesus at the North Pole, asking for a pony like
the one Mary Christmas rode in the pageant at church last year. You gently correct
Johnnys error: it was a donkey. 3.
You sing Amazing Grace to the tune of Frosty, the Snowman. 4.
Your pre-schooler adds a green Play-Doh creature to your manger scene insisting,
Mommy, you forgot the Grinch. 5. In
the plywood caravan of magi on your roof, the lead camel sports a red 200-watt nose. 6.
Your kindergartner comes home with a story that wise guys from back East (probably from
Brooklyn) gave the first Hanukah presents to three kids named Golda, Frankenstein, and
Murray. 7.
Youve been searching your Bible for the story of Amahl and the Night Visitors. 8.
Youre surprised when it isnt eggnog in those tiny cups at communion. 9.
Your spouse repaints the front yard nativity scene and gives Joseph a red suit and white
beard. 10.
You remember the Bible says Jesus was living in a house when the wise men
arrived; this explains how they were able to come down the chimney. Confusing? Sometimes, maybe.
Amazing? Always, absolutely. In the midst of holiday madness, of shopping frenzies and school programs, Advent comes to help us refocus, re-evaluate and retool so that we can discern what Christmas is all about. This morning we will take a look at a passage which should put into perspective what Christmas is all about. Even if we dont confuse Gabriel with Frosty or "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" with "Grandma Got Run Over by Reindeer," we can easily fall prey to a sentimentalized Christmas which robs the majesty of Christ by presenting Him only as a cuddly infant with dimpled cheeks. Christmas cuteness disarms the power of Incarnation, rendering it impotent and controllable. To allow us to rid our minds of Christmas confusion lets look again at what Gods Word tells us about the Incarnation. But rather than turning to the familiar scene in Luke this year, lets look at Colossians 1:15-18 to see that Christ is supreme over all creation.
Christ clears our
confusion by showing us the Godhead Paul understood the critical importance for the
church in Colosse and for us as well, that we need to understand who Christ is. There is a
danger that when we confuse the person of Christ, we confuse his work on the cross and so
lose our bearings on what we are to believe and how we should live. The church receiving this letter was enamored with a
spirituality that promised much but offered little, a piety without substance or truth.
False teachers had infiltrated the church promoting a Jesus who was certainly important,
but was not supreme, a Jesus who offered help, but was not sufficient to save. Jesus
was just one of many beings who could help unravel the mysteries of life. To these lies,
Paul clears up their confusion: Christ is the only picture we have of the Godhead. How does Christ clear our confusion? He
is the image of the invisible God What does it mean that Jesus is "the image of
the invisible God?" Ive told the old joke about the little boy who was drawing
pictures on the floor one day as his mother was working. She asked him, "What are you
drawing?" He said, "I'm drawing a picture of God." "But no one knows
what God looks like," she said. "They will when I get through!" the boy
replied. Certainly we can not encapsulate God by our own
design. The second commandment forbids it. But that is not to say that God can not, has
not done so. In Christ we see God most clearly. The word image here is eikon.
In Greek the term is used of an artists rendering, of a likeness on a coin. In the
eastern church, the term is used of the paintings of the saints, representations to point
the worshippers attention to a fuller understanding. In our generation "icon"
has taken on special importance, as computer junkies clicking an icon open the program we
desire. We may know the fullness of God through His icon, Jesus. Wesley's wonderful phrase from "Hark, The
Herald Angels Sing" restates the truth we see in verse 15: "Veiled in flesh the
Godhead see; Hail the Incarnate Deity." God is no clearer to us than in Christ.
Scripture tells us that God
is certainly seen through creation. The heavens declare the glory of God. We must never be
so cut off from our world as to forget the splendor of God, the power and majesty of God
as when we encounter His universe, whether the expansiveness of the starry night or the
minute detail in the human body. Yet, as wonderful as all that is, how much greater has
God revealed Himself than when God the Son came to earth, taking on flesh. This is what John in his
prologue tells us when he writes that no one has seen God, but God the only Son has made
Him known. In John 14:9 Jesuss disciple, Philip, asks to be shown the Father, to
which Jesus replies, Don't you know me,
Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen
the Father. How can you say, 'Show us the Father'? The author of Hebrews says the same thing in his letter when he writes: "The Son is the radiance of Gods glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word." Jesus Christ shines forth
God. Just as the radiance of the sun reaches the earth, lights, warms, gives life, so the
glorious radiance of Christ is the life of God. The brightness of the sun is the same
nature as the sun. The brightness of the sun is as old as the sun; never was the sun
without its brightness. The brightness can't be separated from the sun. Next, He is the
exact representation of God's being. He is not only the brightness but He is the essence.
The word used here is a term of the engravers work, so that what is seen is a copy
of the original. God is invisible to us not
only in that He is Spirit; He is also invisible to our sinful and finite minds. Not only
can we not discover God through a telescope, we can not discern Him properly through our
philosophical musings. But God shines a spotlight upon Himself by means of a baby in a
manger. If you want to know the character of the God we worship, if you desire to have a
better understanding of the one who made you and how much He cares for you, look there!
To seek Him anywhere else is to form an image of God that is nothing more than an
idol. But in the cradle and the
Cross, the swaddled infant and the suffering Savior, Gods majesty is paradoxically
revealed. His omnipotence is seen in weakness, His dominion is seen in the helplessness of
the manger. This should not further confuse us, but overwhelm us, that our God is so great
that the abject poverty of the cattle stall can not obscure the riches of His grace.
If confusion reigns in your
mind whether the God of the universe loves you, whether the one who created you can care
for you, you need look no further than Bethlehem to see Gods compassion for you. Yet
it does not end with the incarnation that first Christmas morning. Gods mercy is
lived out for us in flesh and blood on the Cross. There, the depth of His love is seen in
a bleeding Savior and, three days later, in the risen Lord. Christ clears our
confusion by showing us His supremacy Christ is
supreme as the Firstborn What firstborn is not Because born
connotes beginning, this passage has been used to teach that Christ was not the eternal
Second Person of the Trinity because He had a beginning as the firstborn of God. In the
4th century this term was the center of the controversy between Arius and Athanasius over
whether there was a time when the Son was not. The Church settled the issue in the
Councils of Nicea and Chalcedon by making it clear that God the Son is eternal and has
always been the Son. Yet the heresy stemming from a misunderstanding of this term
continues. There are those who come knocking on your door, spreading confusion through
their literature, saying that Jesus is a great deity, but is not Jehovah. Well dressed
young men on bikes may promote moral ideals, but they are confused as to what this term
means. What firstborn does mean Firstborn is the Greek prototokos
(from protos, first, and tikto, to beget). While it does
refer to one who is the eldest in the family, the term carries with it the ancient view of
special standing awarded to the firstborn. The term means first in priority, supreme. To
understand this term we must not forget that the context is King! The NIV helps clear the fog.
He is over creation. Verse 16 further specifies the matter by saying that all
things were created by Him. He could not be a created being if He created all
things. Notice how throughout this passage Paul is clear on this point. To be firstborn over
creation is to say that Jesus Christ is sovereign over all that exists. He is the
architect, the builder as well as the owner. The understanding of this
term is expressed in our call to worship in Psalm
89:24-29. To be the firstborn is to be the one who rightfully rules on the
throne in Heaven. The Fathers approval rests on Him. The author of Hebrews in 1:6
also uses this term to describe the supremacy of the Son, that all else in the universe
must give Him worship. Christ is
supreme over all creation Why is it important that Christ is the firstborn over creation? Because of the
confusion which reigned in the world at that time. False teachers propagated the idea that
a good god could not contaminate himself with matter. He had to have someone else do the
dirty work. A lesser being would be responsible for this, in fact, an evil being was to
blame. Matter is by its limited nature was deemed evil and only spirit was good as was
anything invisible and intangible. God could never take on a body, that mix good with evil
and a god who is good would never do that. To this Paul gives a resounding NO! To make it clear that matter is not
evil we have the incarnation. We may rightly complain about the materialism of the
holidays but let us never run from one sin into the arms of another. The worship of matter
is wrong. We can not save ourselves through what we own. But it is equally wrong to adopt
pseudo-spirituality which repudiates all things physical. God loves matter, CS Lewis once
said, he created it! That it is wrong to see sin as synonymous with substance is made clear by a baby
in a manger. It is argued by Paul that Jesus Christ, the image of God has supremacy over
creation as the firstborn of creation. The firstborn of Mary is validates that what God
created in six days was and is now good! Here the aorist passive form of the verb is used. Aorist, emphasizing historical
fact, passive pointing to Christ as the mediator of creation. Look at the end of verse 16,
same verb, but a different tense. There Paul uses the perfect, reminding us of the
continuing nature of this creation. Christ made it and it is still owned by Him. What is more, it is created by Him and for Him. The entire universe bears His
fingerprints which show His care as well as His ownership. All that there is points to Him
and is for His own glory. For centuries people have sought meaning and purpose to life
while always surrounded by a universe constantly shouting of Gods ownership. To drive the point home
even more, Paul summarizes in verse 17 by saying that He is before all things and holds
all things together. The word hold
together (sunhistemi) means to stand beside. It is used of giving
approval to something (I stand by my work!) as well as making sure a thing endures, holds
tight, as someone who has created an object will keep a careful eye on his creation to
guarantee that nothing harms it. Christ is the glue to the
universe, the foundational principle by which all that is, is. If it were possible for
Christ to step back from that which He made, it would cease to be. Every breath you take,
every atom, molecule, compound, substance exists by His very word. Hebrews 1:3 says He's
upholding all things by the Word of His power. He's the principle of cohesion. If the
earth's rotation slowed down, we would alternately freeze and burn. The sun has a surface
temperature of 12,000° F. If we get any closer wed be crispy critters, any further
would make last week look like a blast furnace. Our globe is tilted at an exact angel of
23 degrees which enables us to have four seasons. If it weren't tilted like that, vapors
from the ocean would move north and south and pile up massive continents of ice on both
ends and we would have some major problems in the rotation, to say nothing of seasons. If
the moon didn't remain at the exact precise distance it is from the earth, the ocean tide
would inundate all the land twice a day. Who sustains the delicate balance? It is Jesus Christ, He is before all things
and in Him cohere, all things hold together. And all of that was in the manger. Creator,
sustainer, before all things. This child is the beginning of creation, the end of
creation, the upholder of creation and the goal of creation. It is for this reason that
the great Dutch theologian, Abraham Kuyper, said, "When Jesus looks at his universe from his exalted throne at the right hand
of the Father, and he sees the great galaxies whirling in space, the planets and the
people upon this planet, and all the minute details of life here including the details of
our individual lives, there is nothing that he sees anywhere of which he cannot say,
'Mine!'" In light of all this,
when we contemplate the incarnation during this advent season we will end the confusion in
our frenetic lives. For in that child in the manger is one and the same as the creator of
the wood and straw, He is the Lord of Mary and the object of worship by angels. For this
reason we must never forget that: Christ
has cosmic authority It's common in contemporary Christianity to engage in strange speculation about
unseen powers. Neo-paganism has crept into the Church through occult practices whereby
people attribute god-like authority to spirit beings. People live in fear of demonic
forces at work, seeing territorial demons holding power over geographic regions, requiring
Christians to engage in shamanism and divination to gain control. Others claim
generational spirits cause the replication of ancestral sins and so engage in a warfare
unknown in Scripture. There is indeed personal evil, spiritual forces at work in our world. But what we
must never forget is that they are under the thumb of Christ. It is He who made them and
they are answerable to Him. We need not live in fear, for the Infant of Bethlehem rules
over all. Christ has civil authority Moving from the cosmic scene to the institutional venue ... Christ is still on
His throne. The events of the past month have unsettled us used to tranquility in our
land. Pundits from either party are perplexed as to what the future holds. But as
concerned as we may become, as much as we should pray for a peaceful transition, we must
never forget: Christs authority is not determined by the vote of His creation, but
by the decree of the Creator. Christ rules now in both heaven and on earth and nothing can
unseat him. No act of congress can enact a law forbidding His authority, no court can
overturn His right to rule. Christ has personal authority We can and should always find these truths to be personally comforting. It is not
just that Christ is supreme over universal forces but cares little about us. The
Incarnation is constant proof to the contrary. If the demonic should not frighten you, if
the Democrats and Republicans do not cause fear... then your mothers comments during
the Christmas holidays should hold no authority to either make you or break you. The
turmoil of your past has no claim to you. The hurts others have inflicted on you which the
holidays seem to dredge up each year claim no authority. Christ has come and purchased for
Himself a people. The muddled thinking of
sin may confuse us for a time. But when the frantic pace of this time of year gets too
much, when the lies of the world take hold, fly back to the good news that the Son of God
who created you, is the son born to Mary, the very same God who came to suffer and die for
your sins. |