Archive for the ‘Colossians 1’ Tag

The Most Important Priority For Everyone Everywhere! Part 2 (Our Christian/Biblical Worldview)

Part 2A:

Part 2B:

Full Message:


Bible Verses: Colossians ( Various Scriptures)


Introduction:

In a world:

Where people, including those in the Church, are still fighting over the various shades of color of skin,

Where people are seeking to live life in their own made up identities and pushing politicians to identify mainly with their cause,

Where people are exalting their own independence and individualism at the complete cost of their neighbors suffering,

Where the ultimate innocents and vulnerable among us are being aborted at an alarmingly high rate, and,

Where one of the scariest places in all the world to be is a nursing home, and,

Where, in our cities, the murder rate is not only high, but where research shows that most murders are meant to kill…

What hope do we Christians have to share with the world?

Theological Theme:

According to our Christian Hope shared through our Christian Calendar (following the events of God in History), we have entered the season of Advent where we celebrate the fact, specifically, that the Father’s Son came among us as Jesus 2000 years ago, as promised in scripture, and has come and is here again after his resurrection (in the Spirit), and is anticipated to come to earth again, bodily, at his Final Appearing! What does the word Advent mean? It is a word that means “The Coming and the Arrival of something great and important!” For us Christians it means the Coming of Some-One Who is The Greatest and The Most Important Someone, and that Some-One is the Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God the Father, Filled with the Love, Communion and Power of the Holy Spirit!

Christ Connection:

Because of Who Jesus is not only as God, but also as Man, His ministry and comings not only have something to do with His Body the Church, but with all of creation. He is Creator, Reconciler, and Redeemer of All Things spiritual and physical within creation. In His Person and Work He holds all things together, uniting all things as they should be united and giving His entire creation His peace, all evil and destruction having been overcome in His Life, Death and Resurrection to a Life of New Creation!

Biblically this is spelled out in summary form in Colossians 1:

1He is the image of the invisible God,
the firstborn over all creation.
16 For everything was created by him,
in heaven and on earth,
the visible and the invisible,
whether thrones or dominions
or rulers or authorities—

all things have been created through him and for him.
17 He is before all things,
and by him all things hold together.
18 He is also the head of the body, the church;
he is the beginning,
the firstborn from the dead,
so that he might come to have
first place in everything.

19 For God was pleased to have
all his fullness dwell in him,
20 and through him to reconcile
everything to himself,
whether things on earth or things in heaven,
by making peace
through his blood, shed on the cross.

Missional Application:

Like the Apostle Paul, the Church is now eager to share this Good News with the world that it might have its hope and faith in the love of God-Father-Son-Holy-Spirit, also! We encourage the world, and share with all who will listen, that it should repent of its sin and sinful perspective about God, creation and itself, and receive the gift of a new relationship with the Father, in the Spirit and through Jesus Christ, Lord of all Creation:

Colossians 1:

21 Once you were alienated and hostile in your minds as expressed in 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— 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. 24 Now I rejoice in my sufferings for you, and I am completing in my flesh what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for his body, that is, the church. 25 I have become its servant, according to God’s commission that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, 26 the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints. 27 God wanted to make known among the Gentiles the glorious wealth of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. 28 We proclaim him, warning and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone mature in Christ. 29 I labor for this, striving with his strength that works powerfully in me.”

Photo Compliments: Dr. Gary Deddo

The Preeminence Of Jesus Christ!

Part A:

Part B:

Full Message:


Bible Verses: Colossians 1:15-24 2: 3


Introduction:

What is the outlook you have in your life? Do you see Jesus?

How and what we see is so important for the life we live today, the relationships we have, and to the words we speak today. Our outlook/view is so important to our walk, ministry and testimony.

“We should be focused on The Father, Son and Holy Spirit and The God who is revealed in Jesus”

“We should be (given the context of the lives that we live today, given all things that we’re going through, through the tears, celebration, through the relationships, through the work and through the worry) focused on Jesus, who is supreme, who is central, and who is sufficient in and for all things, and for all times.”

Paul wrote the letter to the church at Colossae when he learned through Epaphras that heretical teachings were running through the church. Paul’s letter pointed the church to the person and work of Jesus Christ. The cross of Christ is not merely a theory for theologians to ponder; it’s a real-life, realtime reality that heals, restores, and reconciles. Through the cross, Christ reconciled us to the Father, reconciles all things in Himself, and reconciles us to one another.

Paul focuses on the reconciling work of Jesus and focuses our attention on reconciling in 3 different areas in our lives:

1. Christ is preeminent in His reconciling all things. (Col. 1:15-20).

2. Christ is preeminent in His reconciling us to God. (Col. 1:21-23).

3. Christ is preeminent in His reconciling us to one another. (Col. 1:24–2:3).

Theological Theme:

Through His work on the cross, Christ is restoring the world and reconciling us to God [Father-Son-Holy Spirit] and to one another.

Christ Connection:

Jesus is the preeminent one. Growth and maturity are firmly established on that precept.

“For everywhere He is first; above first; in the Church first; for He is the Head; in the Resurrection first.” –John Chrysostom

In prison, Paul encouraged God’s people by proclaiming the magnificence of Christ—His identity as God’s Son and His work on the cross to reconcile us to God. Christian growth and maturity does not take place through moving beyond the gospel to other Bible teaching but through continually refocusing our attention on Christ—who is the focus of the Scriptures and the head of the church

Missional Application:

God, through His Holy Spirit, calls us, as those who have been reconciled to God, to be heralds of reconciliation to the world.

Conclusion:

Just as Christ is preeminent in His reconciling creation, He is preeminent in His reconciling us to God, which He accomplished through taking on flesh and then laying His life down on our behalf. Because of the blood He shed on the cross, we are no longer alienated, hostile, and evil. That is the old person who has been put to death with Christ on the cross. In that person’s place, we have received new life, new identity, in Christ. And it is this new person who has been declared holy, faultless, and blameless whom Christ presents to the Father. This is the fundamental change of Christ’s reconciliation. He has undone sin’s curse. He has restored that which was broken. He has made right that which was wrong. He, not us, has accomplished this work of reconciliation. And this is why He receives all the glory of our salvation.

By the cross, Christians enter into a personal relationship with the Man of Nazareth who, being fully God and fully man, suffered with us, suffered for us, and suffers through us as we “weep with those who weep” (Rom. 12:15). The beams of the cross point us upward (Christ), downward (grounded in the faith), and outward (loving others). Be careful to keep those three beams together, for if we become deficient in one, the others will fall apart. May we proclaim a whole redemption through a whole Christ to a world that is not yet whole.

Photo Compliments:

http://www.crosswalk.com

The Most Important Priority For Everyone Everywhere! Part 1 (Our Christian/Biblical Worldview)

Part 1A:

Part 1B:

Full Message:


Bible Verses: Colossians ( Various Scriptures)


Introduction:

Over the past few Gospel messages we’ve been sharing in the mind of Jesus Christ by reading through the book of Colossians and seeking to grasp all that the Father inspired to be written for the Christians living there under His leading! We have been beholding the complexity of the Father, Son and Spirit’s oversight and purpose for everything, everywhere! Understanding His loving care and concern for our faith, hope and love in Him!  Trusting Him for His loving care and concern for His Church, His Kingdom, and the World at large. Receiving His loving care and concern for all created things as Reconciler and Redeemer of each and all of us who have been negatively impacted by evil and are in a state of recovery from the Fall in Christ our Lord!

We’ve been seeking to understand and have God’s view of what it means to live in and amongst all this complexity, even as the Colossian church members were, too! We are hearing the call of the Lord to continue to let the Truth of our Being (Jesus Christ!) be the Way of our Being, participating with him in his earthly historical life!

Theological Theme:

In Astounding and Inclusive Love the Father has sent and given humanity His Son and Word (Jesus), and gives us His Holy Spirit, that all of humanity might share in His Fellowship as Father, Son and Spirit! How do we receive, trust and live out this relationship in the complex situation going on around us? How do we honor and love God and neighbor while we are still in a becoming state of being more like Jesus? In Colossae, and like us, they were believers who are seeking to relate with Jesus and seeking to understand the Jewish/Christian connections of faith in Jesus Christ! At the same time they are also working, living, and breathing in a particular secular culture that had businesses, educational institutions, gossip, industry, various religions, and therefore various idols and powerful influences that threatened to attack and undermine their faith and trust in Christ!

“Human beings are fallen and therefore subject to temptation and being deceived by evil influences. Fallen, we are also inveterate self-justifiers seeking to maintain our own autonomous righteousness (ethics) apart from the gift of God received by repentance and faith upon hearing the proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ by the ministry of the Holy Spirit.” – Dr. Gary Deddo.

Abba, Father, help and save us through this tension through our Lord Jesus Christ, by Your Spirit!

Christ Connection:

The Good News of the Gospel is that Christ has already overcome this tension, and our fallenness, through his obedience to His Father by the Spirit, from inside our broken human nature. He has turned our human nature around and back to the Father! From his place of Ascension as a glorified human being he now sends, and we receive freely, the Holy Spirit he sends from the Father, giving us a share in his overcoming power through his very own faith and trust poured out in us!

“For the Lord touched all parts of creation, and freed and undeceived them all from every deceit.”
― St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation

Missional Application:

Jesus is the only hope for all, not just Christians! As Jesus encounters and empowers us believers in our relationship with him, we call upon pre-believers to place their faith and trust in Jesus by the Spirit – calling on them to repent, be baptized, deny themselves and pick up their cross, following Jesus!

“The problem of pursing a life of moral faithfulness is not simply a matter of discerning what God’s will is—as if simply knowing it, figuring it out, takes care of it. The barriers are much greater. No earnest pursuit of moral faithfulness to Jesus Christ will come to fruition unless the Holy Spirit in conjunction with the Word of God, breaks down our resistance to the Word and the Spirit and kills our self-justifying pride that resists repentance and faith in Jesus Christ and his Word.” – Dr. Gary Deddo

Photo Compliments:

http://www.thegospelcoalition.org

Becoming An Ethically Responsible Christian Disciple! Part 2 (Our Christian/ Biblical Worldview)

Part 2A:

Part 2B:

Full Message:


Bible Verses: Colossians (various scriptures)


Introduction:

Because Jesus Himself is our Ethic (our humanity living properly among his neighbors and glorifying the Father), ethics is the free gift of God given to us in Jesus Christ. Christian ethics are not a way to earn God’s love or a way to earn salvation through human works and achievements. It is the gift of participating with Jesus in his human life by Grace! Jesus is God’s Grace to us! Ethics is what it means to participate with Jesus in living his life in this world by the Spirit!

Theological Theme:

You begin life as a child but only so you can grow up into an adult. Similarly, through your union and participation with Jesus, by the Spirit, you are in the state of growing up and becoming a little Christ who glorifies the Father.

Christ Connection:

Jesus is the One Who stands in our human place and lives life in this world with our human nature and on our behalf in a renewing way that brings and gives us revitalized human life, destroying sin completely. He Himself, then, is our Ethic. He is the way we are called to live! Jesus is our proper human response to God and our neighbor! He is the only true Learner of God, and the only human fully obedient to the Father, AND he was and is this so that we might participate with him, glorifying the Father!

Missional Application:

As members of Christ and as people in this world, Christians have a dual citizenship. We have a complex responsibility – the response-ability of Christ, by the Spirit, to be equipped for the works of Christ’s service in the spheres of the Church, the Kingdom, and the State. The goal and mandate is to prioritize our relationship with God, and then, at his direction and under his authority over all, to love everyone, pointing them, through his mission, to him that they too may be in union and participation with him.

Photo Compliments: www. justbetweenus.org

Becoming An Ethically Responsible Christian Disciple! Part 1 (Our Christian/ Biblical Worldview)

Part 1A:

Part 1B

Full Message:


Bible Verses: Colossians 2, Colossians 3: 17, 23


Introduction:

This messages proclaims Jesus and clarifies the Christian Worldview as given to us by Jesus through his Apostles in scripture. It seeks to help us have a “pair of glasses” that we might, in the Father’s grace, know how we ought to see, be and act in participation with Christ by His Divine Commands shared with us in the Holy Spirit.

Theological Theme:

As members of of the Body of Christ and people in this world, the Church has a dual citizenship! We are participants of the Kingdom of Heaven and citizens of the human family on earth.

Christ Connection:

In the Person and Work of Jesus, our human nature lives out its human life in a full and proper response to the Father by the Spirit. In Jesus we are also graciously given how it is we are to love our neighbors as ourselves as we minister to the Father in the Spirit.

Every Christian has a complex responsibility – the response-ability of Christ by the Spirit – through which we are equipped by Jesus through His Church for the works of his service to His Father, on behalf of the world!

We live, move and have our being in relation to the FSS in these three spheres:

  • As participants in the sphere of the Church, with Faith in Jesus! (the Church is NOT the Kingdom)
  • As participants in the sphere of the Kingdom, in Hope for its fullness! (the Kingdom is NOT the Church)
  • As participants in the world, with the Love Jesus shares! We all live in and participate in the sphere of Human Authority – Government, State, Jobs (seeking to love our neighbor with Christ and at his direction and inspiration)

Missional Application:

Our life in the World is primarily one of Love – not as defined by Santa Clause, but defined by Jesus Christ – self-giving, other-centered, and self-sacrificing toward God, first, and, at his direction, toward others! We are to teach others and disciple them the way Jesus teaches and disciples us. The way Jesus loved the world in the scriptures is the same way He still loves the world in and through His people who trust him, to the glory of His Father in the Holy Spirit!

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