-Transcript-
00:26 Amen, thank you for joining me. Welcome back to the podcast. You may have noticed a new introduction.
00:33 Hey, what can we say? We’re getting ready. We’re gearing up for season two, almost there to season two. We are doing for season one, if you can believe it, it’s I think 365 total episodes.
00:44 We’ll wrap up on the 1st of January. Amen. Which is my birthday, by the way, New Year’s day.
00:52 And then we’ll be getting started on the 2nd with a 2nd season, Jan 2nd, 2nd season. I love how the Lord works it out. And the 2nd season of KJV Cafe will be a 15 minute Bible study through the Bible, starting at Genesis 1, 1, going all the way through Revelation.
01:08 So that’s exciting. I’m really looking forward to that and Lord willing, we’re just going to take our time and get in the book as we have. So thank you for listening again.
01:19 Here we are in the 2nd part of a 4 part series on God’s role as creator. Creator God, all things by him, is the title of the message here. And our text verse is Colossians 1:16-20.
01:37 For by him were all things created that are in heaven, that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers, all things are created by him and for him. And he is before all things. And by him, all things consist.
01:51 And he is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things he might have the preeminence. For it pleased the father that in him should all fullness dwell.
02:02 And having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself, by him, I say, whether they be things in heaven.
02:17 That’s our text verse here. And the idea is that we are serving a God that created all things, that God is preeminent, that he has power over all things.
02:27 In Colossians 1:16, it says visible and invisible, that God created them all, that Jesus Christ specifically created them all.
02:38 So think about that. The invisible things that we can’t see, who created them? Christ did. And so that really raises a lot of questions because we know that there’s a lot happening that we can’t see in the spiritual realm.
02:56 Amen. Look, ask anybody in the ministry when they try to do something for the Lord, all the battles they face, all the hurdles they face that are a lot of times hard to describe. I’ll give you a silly example.
03:09 I was called to leave my position as a youth preacher and deacon of a church and start, plant a church in a town I’d never even been to, a little ways from my house.
03:23 And we started in a chapel in a field. It was literally called the chapel in the field.
03:29 And we met there, maybe half a dozen of us. And I’ll never forget, I mean, I had music ready. We didn’t even have hymn books.
03:35 So I had to print out music. I had the sermon outline, which was literally like word for word. It was practically a booklet that I had written, you know, because I was afraid I’d forget something.
03:46 And the printer, my printer has been, you know, this laser printer, steadfast. I’ve worked in technology for many years. I knew what printer to get.
03:56 I thought, you know, I had a pretty good handle on how to print stuff, I thought. And I’ll never forget, like the first year of that church, that printer was just absolutely, I literally had to get a new one. I mean, it was doing things I’d never seen before.
04:08 You know what that’s called? That’s called a spiritual battle. That is called something that we can’t understand or explain, but that it never, I mean, I would literally go to my wife and be like, I printed stuff all week for work. It was fine.
04:21 Come Sunday to print the stuff for church and it refuses, you know. And you can go with so many different examples of that.
04:29 You know, I remember being in the bus ministry and you’d go to pick up a young man that more than likely was really considering walking the aisle and getting saved.
04:39 And the bus would get stuck in a pile of mud or the parents would get upset about something or, you know, the dog would bite one of the bus workers. I mean, literally you can’t make this stuff up, but those visible and those invisible things that are happening, they’re all created by Jesus Christ, which begs the question, that’s kind of the crux of this message here this week.
05:00 Why? Like, why would God make things like stress or heartache? Why would God make cloudy days, right? Like, why do we go through these things?
05:08 And I believe the answer is number one, everything is made for his pleasure, his good pleasure.
05:16 And then number two, as we go through challenges, it proves us. Amen. It proves us.
05:23 I know a lot of people I went to high school with, a lot of people wanted to be doctors and they were going to be doctors. They’re going to be pre-med, right?
05:30 And they go to school, they’re there for about half a semester and they have to take organic chemistry or whatever else it is. And all of a sudden, they’re not going to be pre-med anymore.
05:39 They were proven or weeded out, if you will, from that occupation, right? Well, in a way, as we say we love God, God wants us to prove it. And since God looks upon the heart, he’s not playing around.
05:54 And so you can’t just say, oh God, I love you, but I want everything to be easy peasy.
06:03 I want to live a life of prosperity. God’s going to say, well, if you love me, then suffer like I had to suffer. Remember, Jesus Christ had to suffer greatly.
06:10 Can you imagine being God in the flesh and being laughed at and ridiculed and mocked, dealing with people that had great unbelief, even when the crowds followed him?
06:18 I mean, get into like John 6, right? The crowds are following Jesus. Everybody wants to be around Jesus until he starts mentioning some tough things and they all peel off. They were just there for the goodies.
06:29 They were there for the handout, for the food, for maybe to see the miracles. But once it got hard, they wanted nothing to do with it.
06:36 And so God in his righteousness and his holiness allows the Christian to walk in this broken world for a season.
06:44 And that’s another thing too. We can’t see eternity, but in the scope of eternity, this is a short season. So God in his mercy and his love says, okay, for this short season, you’re going to walk through some challenging times, but guess what? I’ll be right there beside you.
06:59 I’ll be a ever present help in times of trouble. I’ll be your refuge. I’ll be your strength.
07:06 When you’re weak, I’ll be made strong. And you see, all of this grows our faith. All of this builds our faith and our dependency upon God.
07:12 And guess what? We become more like Christ each day through this. And so we see that Colossians 1:16-20 teaches us that God created all things, including the tough things. For by him were all things created.
07:29 It doesn’t say like all good things, all happy things, all things are created by him in heaven and earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers, all things are created by him and for him. And he is before all things. And by him, all things consist.
07:45 How about that right there? By him, all things consist. You know, I’ve heard it said that the Lord is literally holding everything into in control. And if he chose to, he would just let it go.
07:56 And I really believe that one of the prayers of my heart is God, keep me Lord, keep me because I’m not arrogant enough to think I can do anything on my own.
08:06 So God, I need you to keep me because by you, all things consist. So you’re the one people say, oh, uh, God didn’t take his life today.
08:14 He has another day. He didn’t take his life. He didn’t take his life.
08:19 He gave that person life. He or she gave God gave that person life. Jim or Jane, they didn’t assign themselves air in their lungs for the day.
08:31 God gave it to them. He’s the head of the church. He’s the head of the body.
08:32 He’s the beginning. He’s the firstborn from the dead. He has preeminence over all things.
08:34 And guess what? The scripture says in verse 19, it pleased the father that in him should all fullness dwell. Now, why do you think it pleased the father? And that’s our little focus point here for the time we have left.
08:41 Why did it please the father? Could it be that it pleased the father? Because number one, Jesus Christ is part of the holy Trinity.
08:53 He’s God in the flesh. He’s the risen God. Now the ascended Lord.
08:59 Amen. How about number two? He rightfully earned this because he created everything. So number one, he earned it because he created it all.
09:08 I mean, I don’t know about you, but if someone creates something, I associate that person with ownership, right? So if you create a book, right? I would say you’re the author of that book. Well, Jesus Christ is the author of our world. Okay.
09:14 So just like you would own that book that you created Jesus Christ, he’s the author of the world. He created it. And not only is he the author of the world, he’s the author of our faith and he’s the finisher.
09:28 You guess what? We couldn’t make up the law. We couldn’t obtain greatness within the law. I can’t follow the law.
09:34 You can’t follow the law. I can’t drive from here to the post office without something going wrong. Amen.
09:40 Maybe I, maybe it’s a thought. Maybe it’s something I say. Maybe it’s the way I look.
09:48 I don’t know, but I’m not perfect. You’re not perfect. Jesus Christ is the only one that ever was perfect to walk this earth physically.
09:53 And he, in his perfection went to the cross at Calvary and willingly, obediently submitted himself to the most brutal death man has ever faced. The Bible tells us he was unrecognizable.
10:14 His visage, his face was marred beyond compare and beyond the physical brutality, the emotional, spiritual.
10:23 Can you imagine he had to drink the cup of sin? He had to take sin upon himself for every person for all time. Hitler’s sin, Saddam Hussein’s sin, Osama Bin Laden’s sin. Think of these wicked people’s sin.
10:37 Now think of everyone’s sin, everyone’s sin for all humanity. He took it on his shoulders. Oh, what broad shoulders he had and what broad shoulders he still has.
10:46 He did it willingly for the joy that was set before him. The Bible tells us he willingly endured the most brutal physical death and the most brutal emotional, spiritual death of all time, of all humanity.
11:01 I’ll go as far as to say of all eternity, as far as I can tell, he did it just so that you could be saved, so that you could be reconciled to God, that you could be saved, that you could have peace with God through trusting Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord.
11:19 It’s already been done. And so you can see why it would please God that all the fullness would rest on Christ. It should please him, verse 19 of Colossians 1, for it pleased the Father that in him should all fullness dwell.
11:28 It should please the Father that all fullness dwells because the Son has creator, authorship of the whole world. He created it all and he went and bought humanity with the price of his blood. And that is tremendous.
11:49 Amen. That is incredible, you know, to think about what Christ has done for us. There’s a whole book and I read parts of it just absolutely blew me away.
12:01 The idea of beholding Jesus and this idea of simply just beholding, just meditating and thinking about what Christ has done for us and how holy Christ is and how wonderful he is and how loving he is, how sacrificial he is. Amen. Jesus Christ deserves all fullness.
12:22 He deserves the right of creatorship, authorship, and full control. Now, for a season, I know the devil is loosed and the little g god of this world, the prince of the power of the air is doing his thing for a season. The church is raptured out very soon.
12:42 It could be today, it could be tomorrow, very soon. Then there’s seven-year tribulation period, and then there’s a millennial kingdom where we’ll literally see Christ rule and reign.
12:50 And I believe that Jesus Christ allows difficult situations, being the creator of them, so that we can get out of our sinful flesh, out of our temptation to just do what we want to do, to be the captain of our own ship, to fulfill our own desires, to get out of that and to see that he is life, he is the light, he is the truth.
13:19 And I want to flip it on his head for a minute here while we got left. If he created all things, doesn’t he know how to overcome them all?
13:26 And the Bible says that he overcame the world, that we should rejoice because he overcame the world. I mean, if he created all things, certainly he could overcome all things.
13:31 Amen. And so he’s the great overcomer. And so as we face obstacles, why not go to the engineer of the obstacle?
13:38 Look, if I’m driving and all of a sudden there’s a huge wall and I can’t figure out how to get around it, I would love to talk to the person that built that wall and they could tell me what I need to do to get around that wall, because maybe they’d be the only one that knows.
13:48 And Jesus Christ wants to hear from us. He wants to spend time with us. And here we are, we’re going to read a self-help book, or we’re going to go to this counselor, or we’re going to switch jobs or transfer schools.
13:54 What we need to do is be about our Father’s business and seek the kingdom first. Trust that the Lord created all things that are all things are made by him and for him. Without him, nothing is made.
14:15 Understand that preeminence that is Christ, turn to him and relish that time with him. Make that time with him and relish and enjoy that time with Jesus Christ, because he is so wonderful and so merciful. I can testify day and night how good Christ has been to me.
14:31 Amen. And not the least, saving my soul from hell. Amen.
14:36 So let’s keep Christ on our minds and realize he is the creator. Tune in next time.
14:40 Take care. God bless and amen.