Video Transcript: The King of Creation

When Jesus was walking on this earth, one question got asked again and again. Who is this? People who met him were left scratching their heads, and some were saying, it can't be. But it's got to be. And they were asking this question again and again, what's going on? Who is this? When Jesus spoke, the Bible says the crowds were amazed at his teaching, because he spoke as one who had authority and not as their teachers of law. He wasn't quoting this or that person. He would simply say, You've heard it said, and I say to you, and when people heard him speak with that kind of authority, they were staggered. Even some enemies who were said to arrest him said, no one ever spoke the way this man did before. There was something about the very way he spoke that made people wonder who is this? And then some of the things that he said. He would speak to demonic powers and spirits that were tormenting people, and the demons would scream out in terror around them, and then they would go, and the crowds were amazed at that. They'd say, well, he even gives orders to evil spirits, and they obey Him. Somebody is brought to him and he looks at him and the man needs healing. But the first thing he says to him is, Son, your sins are forgiven. Who can forgive sins, but God alone? Who does he think he is? Some praised him because they realize what he was saying was true. Others thought he was blaspheming. But they all understood that when he said your sins were forgiven. He was going around talking like he was God. 

We read this week, the Lord is my light and my salvation. He shows up saying, I am the light of the world. Well, if the Lord is my light and my salvation, people start punching in the data and they say, well, the Lord is supposed to be light. And this guy says, He's the light. He sounds like he's saying, He's the Lord. Just as when he said, I'm the Good Shepherd. They said, Well, I think we remember Psalm 23 The Lord is my shepherd, a little more data. It sounds like he's saying, He's the Lord and His disciples, running him doing different things. Walking on water is kind of an unusual activity. And then when he tells the storm to be quiet, and then all of a sudden this huge storm just stills to nothing, they say, Who is this even the wind and the waves obey him. 

About halfway through the Gospel of Mark, Jesus asked the question, Who do people say I am? And they tried out a variety of answers, one of the prophets, and maybe John the Baptist, maybe this guy, maybe that guy? And Jesus said, Well, who do you say that I am? Peter answered, You are the Christ, the Son of a living God. He didn't fully understand all that that meant yet but he was getting there. And the Bible says what you didn't actually figure that out even. God had revealed it to you. Jesus did things that required an explanation. Some of his family thought he was insane for a time with what he was doing and saying. Some of his enemies thought he was demon possessed, but nobody claimed that he was just talking like another nice guy, or like another prophet, or even that he was doing things that an ordinary person could do. His enemies said that it was by the power of the prince of demons, that he was casting out demons because they had to admit he was casting them out. And he was doing just astounding things, and commanding various things to obey him in creation, and they had to come up with an explanation. 

Who is this? Well, even his enemies when they didn't believe in him couldn't completely ignore just the sense of his presence. When people came to arrest him, they said, we're looking for Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus’ answer was, I am and they all fell backward onto the ground. While they picked themselves up, dust themselves off and refer and then proceeded to haul him off. Then they accused me to Pilate of claiming he was the Son of God, as well as the King of the Jews. The Bible says when Pilate heard that he said, He's the Son of God, Pilate was scared that what am I dealing with here? Well, He went ahead and did the wrong thing anyway, as God had planned. But the fact is, even his enemies had a sense who in the world, are we dealing with. 

His friends? That Well, it might be, it could be. It is, you know, the end of John Thomas says, My Lord, and my God. Finally, it starts sinking in. Now, it took a long time for people who met Jesus, even those who ended up believing in Him to absorb what was really going on. That the eternal Yahweh, the creator of Heaven on Earth, had actually taken on a human nature and walked and lived among them. And finally, it dawns on them and as the Holy Spirit reveals to them, we get the fuller and clearer explanations. 

You get those kinds of explanations here in Colossians one. He is the image of the invisible God, the one through whom all things were made. You get same thing in John one. In the beginning was the Word the Word was with God, the Word was God, the Word became flesh. We've seen His glory. You get same thing in Hebrews one, that through him all things were made. He's the exact image of God and the radiance of His glory, and all things were created and are upheld by his powerful word. So if you want a real crystal clear picture of who is this you can read the gospels as to the unfolding and the discovery process. Or you can just read those three ones. Colossians one, John one, Hebrews one. The first few verses of Colossians, of Hebrews one and John one and you get crystallized in very clear form who this Jesus is. 

Colossians says He is the image of the invisible God. That's the highest claim that you can make that he's God that you can see. As one person put it He’s God in a bod. That's what it means to say the word became flesh, God in a Bod, whom you can see. Jesus said, I'm the way the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. And he says, you've seen God and Philip says, Lord, show us the father and that will be enough for us. And Jesus, don't you know me, Philip, even after I've been with you for such a long time? He who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, Show us the Father? Don't you believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me. He says, at least believe on the evidence of miracles themselves, even if you don't believe what I'm saying. 

So Jesus himself said when you see God you have seen me. And we have these statements from Hebrews one. He is the radiance of God's glory. He's the light shining from the face of God. He's the exact representation of what God is like. If you want to know what God is like, if you want to know God, you look at Jesus. The Word became flesh. We've seen His glory. On the one hand the Bible says you can't see the glory of God. On the other hand, the Bible says, we've seen His glory. You can't see God but the only God who is at the father's side, he has made him known. Psalm 27, starts with the Lord is my light. And Jesus said, I'm the light of the world. And as we read on in that psalm that we read this week, it says one thing, I ask of the Lord. This is what I seek. That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord, and to seek Him in His temple. My heart says of you seek His face. Your face, Lord, I will seek. 

Jesus is the image of the invisible God, and the glory of God is to be seen in the face of Jesus Christ. And so when we pray, Lord, I seek your face, the face we want to see is the face that God has revealed in Jesus Christ. And the way that we are transformed is by beholding God's glory in the face of Jesus Christ. He's the firstborn of all creation. Now, as I said last week’s sermon about what Satan's main aim is, Satan wants to keep us from seeing the glory of God in the face of Christ. That's what the scripture says. But when we see who he is, then we understand all those wonderful things God is showing us. One of Satan's tricks was to use this very phrase, the firstborn of all creation for some heretics to say that he was the Archangel Michael, who then became, who through him all things were made and then eventually became human. And there have been others. Arius was a heretic who taught all that. And they’ll use that idea that he was first born of all creation to say he was part of creation. 

But the very next phrase was unexplained. Why he’s called the firstborn of all creation.  For by him all things were created, that's why they're calling him this. Not because he's just a creature, and the first one. They didn't have the birth order book back then, and you don't necessarily do your Bible interpretation on the basis of firstborn just meaning birth order. Now, in one sense, of course, he was before all created things. But the key text for understanding what this firstborn is all about is not the timing of his birth. But Psalm 89, verse 27, I will make him the firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth. Now, this was a promise given to David. David was not the first kid born. In fact, he was the last yet born and God said I'm making him the firstborn because I'm making him the greatest of kings. Now, when it says that Jesus is the first born of all creation, it is saying he is the king of creation, not just the first created thing that came along. And in being the firstborn of creation, it means that all of creation is meant to reflect Him, to glorify him. It was always through Him and for Him. And we see this phrase, the firstborn in Romans eight, verse 20. That's not right. That's Romans eight, verse 29, and 30. Anyway, for those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. So Jesus is the firstborn in the sense that he's king of us all. And he's also the firstborn in the sense that God wants him to be the pattern of what we all become. 

Now, the Bible puts those phrases right together. He's the image of the invisible God and the firstborn of all creation, because God wants us to be in His image. Go back to the beginning. God created man in His own image. In the image of God, He created them, male and female he created them. There's a sense in which God made humanity to be image bearers of him. Not in the sense that we're the exact representation of God and the radiance of his being as Jesus is. But He created us to image him. And the fact is that Adam and Eve were created in God's image and then they fell in the image of God is righteousness and holiness, where defaced. Also the image of God in the sense that they were designed to be kings and to rule over creation was undermined and Adam ran into an awful lot of thorns and thistles and Eve ran into an awful lot of pain in her primary calling. And all of this happened to us who are to bear God's image and to govern creation on his behalf. 

But there's another Adam, just as we have borne the image of the man of just Adam, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven, Jesus Christ. So Jesus is the image of the invisible God and His purpose is that we're going to bear his image and and bear it beautifully. Now how does that get started? It gets started right now in relation to him. It doesn't get perfected yet. But Second Corinthians three verse 18, says we all beholding the glory of the Lord are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. A very short way of saying this is, you become what you focus on. You become what you worship. You become what you put first, and what you think about and reflect on and mull upon. If you think about Jesus, two minutes a day, or an hour a week, this is not quite the transformational beholding that is going to reshape you in His image. If you are thinking about almost everything, but for most of the time, then the image and radiance of Christ are not going to be transforming you to the degree that they will if you're beholding the glory of the Lord and becoming more and more like him. This is in a context where Paul is talking about Moses spending time with God on Mount Sinai, 40 days and 40 nights. And when he comes down the glory, the light is shining from him. Spend some time with Christ, focus on him, and throughout your day focus on him and behold His glory and you become what you worship. 

The downside of that is if you worship other stuff, you become like that. The Psalm says, well, they were to be stupid idols that have hands and can't do anything, have eyes and can't see and so on. They worship all this mechanical dead stuff, and those who worship them become like them. It's deadly. Whether that's focusing on making money as your idol, whether that's glorifying evolution as the Great Creator of all things and impersonal process that somehow generated it all, you lose personality. Every time you dwell on that and hold out to the ultimate reality it sucks life and personhood out of you. On the contrast, when we behold Christ, and we also have a new self, Colossians three verse 10, which we'll get to in a while. The new self which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its Creator. That comes in the context of saying don't lie because you've put off the old self and its practices and you know, you have a new self which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its Creator. This whole idea of the image of God, first and fully and most completely and supremely in Christ, but then, from Christ, to be reflected from you. This is one of the glories of God with us that he didn’t hog the glory to himself in one sense, of course, none of us will ever be equal to Christ but in another as He is the image of God, we are to bear the image of Christ. And the Bible is quite clear about that. And it's so important to know that that's what we were originally created to be when God made the world and made the first man and woman and that is what we will be again, when we belong to Jesus Christ. 

Well by him all things were created. If there was any doubt that firstborn of creation meant he was something less than God, it's getting removed by this statement by him all things were created. He is the Creator. All things were made through Him. Without Him was not anything made that was made. Hebrews one verse two phrases it by calling him God's son whom he appointed the heir of all things, so it was all made for him. He's gonna inherit it all. The purpose of it was it will all belong to him in the end, but he's also the one who created the whole world in the beginning. Now these are the high and lofty phrases that reveal Jesus as the creator and the Scriptures tell us that and the Holy Spirit told men of God to write that down. But it was first revealed in Jesus himself just in the things he was doing. 

In the book of Exodus, chapter four, Moses is griping that he can't talk well enough. What does God say? Who made man's mouth? Who makes him mute? Or enables him to talk? Who makes him blind or gives him sight? Is it not I the Lord. The Lord can create someone and he may even want a particular person to have a disability that he'll use for His glory, or he may give them sight or make them blind. But in the person of Jesus, he comes up to people who cannot speak at all, and he just speaks a word and their mouth is open and suddenly they can talk. They're stone deaf, can’t hear a thing. Jesus speaks a word and all of a sudden their ears are working fine. They cannot see and Jesus puts a little mud on their eyes and says, go wash that stuff off and see how it goes. And all of a sudden, they can see perfectly fine. Now, what is going on? Isn’t this the guy that was talking to Moses, who said, Well, who gives a man sight or makes him blind? Who can cause a man to speak or makes him mute? Is it not I the Lord? Jesus is simply advertising when he's giving sight to the blind. He's acting in compassion, but he's giving signs of who he is as the king of creation. 

Jesus turns water to wine. God's been doing that for 1000s of years. Usually he takes more than 10 seconds to do it. But you know, when the vines and the grapes grow and the sun shines on them and the rain falls on them and the soil nourishes them and  gradually the water becomes grapes and becomes wine. That's the work of the Creator. And when Jesus says I'd like to speed it up a little bit on this particular occasion, because we're low on wine, he is acting as the creator of the world. Who is the one who creates bread, or who can take a little bit and make a whole bunch of it. Well, every year my dad goes out to the field and my brothers and they drive around the field with a cedar behind them and a little bit of grain goes into the ground and about now the combines are roaring around Montana, and a whole bunch of food is coming out of the ground and you start out with five loaves and how you got enough to feed 1000s? Who does that sort of thing? Well, maybe somebody who can take five loaves and say I would like you to feed 1000s. He can do that in 10 seconds if he wants. Most of the time he does it over a longer period and takes a little more time. But it is the same creator who does that. 

Psalm 100:4 speaks of God who gives wine to gladden the heart of man who creates bread. And when we see Jesus multiplying loaves, when we see Jesus making wine, he's just doing what he's always been done. He just wants you to know who does it. And so we have these tremendous miracles of Jesus Christ. Of course, this is the same one who formed a man out of the dust of the earth and then have that lifeless body before him and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. Well, he sees a widow’s son being carried along in his coffin, and the one who breathed the breath of life decided I think I'll do that again. And out of the coffin, the boy came. A little girl, 12 years old, lies dead. And the Jesus comes up to Jairus’ daughter and speaks to her and breathes into her nostrils the breath of life and she lives again. Lazarus is dead. He says, Lazarus come out, and Lazarus comes out. This is the king of creation. He's done it all before. He does it all the time. But he did it in His incarnation and in His miracles to give signs of who he is, and to let us know that he's the one through whom all things were made. When the disciples reflected on that, and as the Holy Spirit inspired them, then they got it right. And they said, Well, yeah, all things were made through Him. Without him nothing was made that has been made. Now we understand how all those miracles were happening. He's the one who made everything. He's the king of creation. Creation obeys his word, and it just does what he says. 

Now the Colossians needed to be reminded that. He didn't just command bodies and eyes and ears and hands and all of that, or even storms and seas, but that he had authority over the angel powers. And so Paul reminds them that He created everything in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, he made them all. And that's why when Jesus was born, it says in Hebrews one, let all God's angels worship Him when the Son comes into the world. And that's what they were doing. When the angels sang Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to those whom God's favor rests. And so they were praising the one whom they  had always been praising. Only now they saw him in a manger, instead of on the throne of the universe where they don't even look at it, but they never stop praising him. And so the good angels, they knew who he was, and they praised him when he came into the world and they were ready to follow his every command. When Jesus was arrested He was still the king of angels. 

Dallas Willard put it this way. He says that God, the Creator of all things, and who was before all things came into the world and became weak but he always had the control panel of the universe at his disposal, should he ever choose to use it. And occasionally in his miracles he did, and certainly when he was being arrested, His very presence flattened them, but he also said to his disciples, in fact commanded them and they just put away the swords. Don't you think I could call a legion of angels? But that's not why I came. But he could have and they were ready, and you can bet they would have made very, very short work of Jesus’ enemies, if he had given just one little word, one snap of his fingers and all the good angels of heaven could have swept in and taken care of things. 

While the good angels are always obedient to him. What about the demons, the fallen angels, the rebel angels. The Bible says, well, he made them too. He didn't make them bad, but they owe their being to him. They owe their intelligence to him. they owe their power to him, and he can undo them at a moment's notice. That's why when Jesus showed up, you read again and again and again, that the demon possessed people would have the demon crying out what do you want with a Son of the Most High God? Are you going to send us to hell already? And they were just deathly frightened of him. Even at His weakest, at the cross, when the Bible says, Well, this was the hour of darkness and of the power of darkness, when the prince of this world came and did his works. Even then, Jesus defeated the powers. We'll talk about that in Colossians chapter two. It just doesn't say He disarmed them. It also says he embarrassed them. He put them to shame and why is that possible? 

Well, it's possible because he made them all and they may have gotten a little uppity. And then they've gotten some ideas, but they may have thought they could rise to the level of the power and wisdom of the Creator. And one great error that people make is with the idea of spiritual things called dualism, where they hold Satan to be one kind of great and ultimate power and God to be the other kind of great and ultimate power. And they're kind of just equal powers, always duking it out and going back and forth, back and forth. The Bible teaches that Satan is not an equal and opposite power of Jesus Christ, but that the Satan was an angel created by Jesus Christ for reasons we don't fully understand. Jesus doesn't just put him out of existence. I remember one of my radio listeners asking a very good question of which I had no answer. Why doesn't God just squish satan like a grape? Now, I don't know the answer to that question. But I do know one answer that is wrong. One answer that would be wrong is he can't. He can squish satan like a grape anytime he wishes, but for reasons of his own, he chooses not to. 

But he's the one who made all those things in heaven and on earth. visible and invisible, whether thrones dominions, rulers or authorities. The people in the church of Colossae who were tempted to worship angels, or tempted to think they had to keep certain spirits happy in order for their life to move forward, had to be told all of those spirits were created by Jesus Christ, and you're not gaining anything by worshipping them instead of him. Of course, all the invisible powers these days, we don't just think of angels and demons. We also think of things like gravity and the bond that holds atoms and molecules together, and electromagnetic forces and all the other invisible powers that science has discovered and taken note of. And those are wonderful things to discover and to some degree, have just a little smidgen of control over. But those too, those invisible things were created by Jesus Christ and for him. 

Now, as I've already said, we shouldn't think therefore of Satan as somebody that God just kind of lost control of and now he's somebody God can't quite handle. In Isaiah, the prophet talks on behalf of God and God, in Isaiah 10 he was talking about a Syria, which is the biggest empire and strongest force in the world at that time. They had been beaten up on some people, including Israel and Judah, and they're pretty proud. And so God says, Shall the ax, Assyria is his ax, he's using them to discipline and punish nations, he says, Shall the ax boast over him who hews with it or the saw magnify itself against him who wields it? If you're chopping with an ax or you're sawing back and forth with a saw, does the ax or the saw start bragging about all the energy it's got? No, because you're the one who's handling it. As if a rod should wield it, you know the rod is starting to run you or a staff is lifting him who is not wood. He says all those things are just stuff I'm using. And you big shot empires. You're just a tool in my hand. And don't you think for a moment that you are beyond me. 

The king of Assyria by the way, shortly after this said, Well, no God has saved any of these other nations. Certainly the God of Judah can't save them either. He woke up the next morning about 175,000 dead soldiers and headed back to his homeland. Things didn't go so well for him. So that's what happens to the enemies of God who think that they've somehow gone beyond all the bounds of control. In other places God says no weapon that is fashion against you shall succeed. It's a wonderful phrase that's quoted a fair amount by people who want to be encouraged by God's protection. But understand the logic of that statement. Why can no weapon that is fashioned against God's people succeed? Well, God says, Behold, I have created the smith who blows the fire of coal and produces a weapon for its purpose. So where the weapon come from? Well, I made the blacksmith by the way, I also made the fire and everything else that went into it. So the weapon is something that is a result of my creation. I also created the ravager to destroy. So I made all those guys. I made all those weapons, and they can't do any damage to the people who are the apple of my eye. That's the logic of it. I made everything including everything that went into the enemies and the weapons and so I have the power to protect. 

Who shall separate us from a love of Christ? Here's the logic of it again. Earlier he said, He predestined us to be conformed to the likeness of his Son and he works all things together for good of those who love Him in Romans eight. And now he says, now who shall separate hi, from the love of Christ? Shall famine or trouble or hardship or persecution or nakedness or danger or a sword. He gives a whole long list of the stuff that could damage you. And then he says no in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I'm convinced that neither death nor life nor angels, nor demons, neither the present or the future, nor any powers, either height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that's in Christ Jesus our Lord. The logic of that is not just that God loves you. The logic, that's true, but the logic of it is I made the heavens I made the heights, I made the earth I made the depths, I made the angels I made the demons, I made all that stuff. Don't think I'm going to get unexpected surprises and be forced to Plan B or Plan C. If I love you, I love you and nothing is going to get in the way or stop that. That's the logic. The unstoppability of God's love is rooted in the logic of Jesus being the creator of all things. All things were created through Him and for him. 

I just want to pause a little bit and reflect on three things that philosophers and great thinkers throughout history have talked about a lot. The true, the good, and the beautiful. Where does that come from? Well, the Bible says the word through whom all things were made, the word produced the patterns in created things. That's why science is possible. That's why technology is possible. That's why it's possible to manage things in this world, because there are patterns in created things. And the word who created those things and those patterns gave us minds to detect those patterns and praise God for them. That's where they come from. If you want to know how science is possible, this is why? There have been other explanations, they all fail. The notion that randomness could produce patterns, that non intelligence can produce intellect, and that there could be any correspondence between intellect and pattern is impossible to explain on any other grounds. There have been many attempts, they simply failed. 

Darwin, as I've told you before, as well, would anybody trout trust the workings of a monkey's mind if such a being could be said to have a mind? He knew that his own theory destroyed the ability to trust the human mind in the first place. Because if the mind is a randomly evolved blob of meat, you can't trust anything that comes out of it. I have never seen that statement refuted or even begun to be refuted. But the fact of the matter is, we can know truth. There are patterns in creation. There are ways that the mind works and logic and other things and those come from the word who created them all. 

The same is true of goodness. Jesus Christ is the source of what is right and wrong, because he designed all things to flourish on the basis of love. God is love and all things are meant to flourish in love and all of God's moral laws and God's conscience to know the way of love are given to us. He created love as the fuel on which the world is supposed to run. And it gave us the conscience to know what law requires. Now fallen conscience doesn't know that perfectly, but that's what it's designed for. It's still an instrument to know right and wrong. And once again, you cannot explain morality simply by saying, well, we just kind of emerge with a notion of what's right. I agree with those who say that we all have a sense of what's right and wrong, and that it's not just one culture can do this and the other can do that. We all have a strong and emerging sense of a testable sense of what's right and wrong. But where does it come from? And what's the standard for it? The one who is goodness and who created us with consciences to understand goodness. The only thing that Darwinism can offer us is what the postmodernist philosophers ever since Nietzsche have been telling us. What Richard Rorty the foremost American of Lim said. He said, it’s just silly to believe that man has an inborn mechanism to understand truth, or an inborn mechanism to detect right and wrong. That simply is incompatible with what we know about the world. Okay, take it from horse's mouth. He does not believe there's any such thing as truth, or any such thing as right and wrong. And I therefore think that he has proven he's not worth listening to you. I'm not trying to be insulting. Why would you listen to somebody who says, I don't know what I'm talking about? And neither to do? Then my answer is, speak for yourself. 

And beauty. You know, it's not just a matter of logic and right and wrong, but the beauty of the universe. God created things to reflect things about himself. He created rocks to do it in one way, plants to do it in another way, one person to do it in this way. and another to do it in that way. He created those things to reflects facets of his splendor, and he gave each of us equipment again, to taste that and savor it and appreciate it. He gave us imagination. He gave us desire for beauty that recognizes the beauty in created things but never fully satisfied with that and always longs for that supreme beauty. All these things were created through Him. They were created for him and he gave us truth that we might know him the truth. He gave us goodness so that we would be drawn to his supreme goodness. He gave beauty so that we'd be drawn to his beauty. And these are fundamentally the most important things that you can know about creation that Jesus Christ is the author of it, and that he is the starting point of all of it. 

And now we need to ask some questions. You know, if your question is, how do you debate creation? How do you debate the age of the earth, for instance, which is a second order issue, but still an important one? How do you debate those things? It's one kind of question. This morning I'm not going to ask you to debate those things become really good at it. You should and that's fine. I'm going to ask you now given the fact that Jesus is the creator, is any good of anything? You know, is he smart? Is he strong? We can act sometimes, like he's not. Like he doesn't know what he’s talking about like, he really can't do much. We don't always look to Jesus as the source of wisdom for how to handle things in our world, whether in nature or in society. You think the logic of the universe might know how nature works. You think the logic, the logos of the universe might know how society would work best and if so, we might want to start building on some rock instead of some sand. Is love incarnate able to know what's good for you. Because very often we say, Yeah, we know Jesus said that things like turning the other cheek and loving your enemies and forgiving those who persecute you and so on. That just doesn't work in the real world. Well, your real world is going to stumble along just like it has been, if you say that's how it goes. Love knows what's good for you. And if you believe that, then follow him and don't think you can take shortcuts that will go against it. 

Now if he's the radiance of God's glory, you think he could satisfy your desire for beauty? Many of us in our world today are flipped with boredom. And so we chase one show after another after another after another. One game after another after another after another because we're bored. Our sense of excitement and splendor goes unsatisfied, and we keep looking for it in the wrong places. If Jesus is the radiance of God's glory, we need to start learning to delight in real beauty and learning to focus on him. And then see him in the beautiful things that he has made that he has done. He's before all things. He's the starting point he's before everything else. So he's the starting point, the standard for everything else. The Word was with God and word was God. He  was in the beginning before anything else got going. He was in the beginning. First John one verse one. That which was from the beginning, which we've heard, which we've seen with our eyes, which we've looked at and our hands have touched, this we proclaim concerning the word of life. 

Again, sometimes, you know, I teach a course on apologetics. I'm going to be starting one in a week in half here. I've already got one going, you know, a little different level for Christian leaders Institute that teach apologetics. Apologetics can make some mistakes in trying to make Jesus plausible, on the basis of other things which are alleged to be more certain. That's very dangerous process. Because if Jesus is before all things, it's a little hard to prove him in his greatness on the basis of lesser things. One of the guys I studied for my dissertation, Leslie Newbiggin, said it is impossible to have a plausibility structure, a way of thinking that can fit Jesus Christ in, if he's not the starting point. You'd have to start with him with him incarnate, crucified and risen, where you can't cram him into any other system of thought. If you do it's not the real Christ anymore. Now, that doesn't mean that all apologetics is a waste of time. It does mean that you do need to be very careful to say okay, I am the judge of whether God is real or not. And here is the evidence that I and my supreme majesty and logic have decided counts in my world. And on the basis of that evidence, if I can show that God exists, well, lucky God, I will agree that he does. Well, that's all very nice, but he made you and you couldn't even think without him. All that suppose evidence that you're reasoning from are just the little scatterings from his fingertips. So be very careful about becoming the great evaluator of whether God is real or whether God is right. He's the starting point you're not. 

And He is before all things and in Him all things hold together. Hebrews one verse three says the same thing. He upholds the universe by the Word of His power. We're going to read Jonah early this week. And there's lots that you can look at in Jonah. I'm just gonna highlight that he's holding all things by the Word of His power. What's going on in Jonah? Well, Jonah wants to run away from God's mission for him. So poor God can't do much about it. And that's that. End of story. But not quite. He hops on a ship, and God says, well I’ll take care of that ship. And the Bible says the Lord hurled a great wind on the sea. And so finally they chuck Jonah overboard to get the sea to calm down and it works. Now Jonah’s got a little problem. And the Bible says the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And then the Lord spoke to the fish and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land three days later. So God is telling the wind what to do. He's telling the fish what to do, right down the vomit. And then there's Jonah in a bunch of people puke right on the shore. Well, he's still not very happy about his job, but he goes and does it and he is wildly successful and the Ninehvites repent. And Jonah is so mad about it, he could die. Because he did not want these suckers getting saved. 

And so God wants to teach him something about grace. But he's got a lot of tools at his disposal. So to teach him about grace, he again just enlists his creative powers. The Lord appointed a plant. It’s gonna be nice to Jonah. And Jonah is going to sit out there and wait to see if the city gets blasted. And so God says, Well, I bet you'd enjoy some shade while he's watching whether the city gets blasted so he gets this nice plant that just springs up and gives him great shade. Well, God appointed the plant. But the next day God appointed a worm, and God appointed a scorching east wind and the worm ate the root of the plant and the scorching east wind blasted the plant. The plant shriveled up and blasted Jonah and Jonah was feeling mighty, sweaty and mighty mad that God would treat him so shabbily and treat Nineveh so well. And God said, Well, you know, I made that plant overnight, got rid of it overnight. There's a city of 120,000 people who don't know right from wrong. There’s a few cattle too. I like cattle. End of story. 

Now, you know, there's a lot to learn from that story. The only point I'm making here is he's the one who holds all things together. The scorching winds, the stormy winds, the worms, the plants or this or that. In your own life, you might not like the scorching wind. You might not like the worm. You like the plant. You like the deliverance, even if you end up in a puke sometimes. You're glad. And Jonah sings praise to God when he gets rescued and furious at God when he rescued somebody else. But in all of it is our creator who's managing and directing our lives and he can appoint all things. He works, for the Bible says, he works all things for the good of those who love Him. And the reason he can do that is because he was before all things and in him all holds together, and he keeps it all going. 

I want to close just with Psalm 29, which was another part of our reading this week. I told it's not that hard to preach through Colossians and preach on the weekly readings because the Bible is one book. It all points to Jesus Christ. It's all pointing to the glory of God. All things are created through Him. Psalm 29 is a song written during a thunderstorm. It talks about the voice of the Lord and the God of glory thunders. And some of those places and place names you didn't really recognize in that song. It just starts with the storm happening over the Mediterranean Sea. It sweeps over different parts of Israel and then heads off into the desert. And, in all of this, the Psalmist hears the voice of God. And the God is the one who thunders in the storms and God is the one whose majesty is displayed. 

Remember reading Jonathan Edwards. Edwards said he was so scared of thunderstorms when he was a kid. And when he really got to know God and the glory of God and God as his personal Savior says, I love to sit outside and listen to the thunders roar and the lightnings play.  You know that was how he saw thunderstorms once he knew God. And Psalm 29 was written that same spirit. Ascribe to the LORD, O heavenly beings, Ascribe to the LORD glory and strength, Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name. Worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness. And it talks about the voice of the Lord as over the waters. The God of glory thunders. The voice of the Lord is full of Majesty. The Word. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God and God spoke and all came to be and it is that same voice of the Lord that sounds in all of creation. The voice of the Lord is full of Majesty, and in his temple all cry glory. May the Lord give strength to His people. May the Lord bless His people with peace.

Lord, we thank you for such a revelation of Christ our Creator, that your father created all things through Him that He is the logic of the universe, that he is the glue that holds it all together, that he is the goodness and the beauty of all that is. We praise You Lord Jesus Christ for this revelation. We pray, Lord, that as we come to know you in personal ways, and in the ways that you touch us individually at the level of our own lives, that our hearts and minds will also be lifted to these supreme truths about you. That we will glory in you and be amazed at you and realize that the one who stoops down to help us and to come near to us is the very One who has made all things and who upholds all things by the word of your power. Lord, when we are tempted to think that things are out of control, that the powers arrayed against us are too much for us and even too much for you, bring us again to this truth that you've made all things. That you rule all things and you work all things for the good of those who love you. We pray in Jesus name, Amen.