July 22, 2007pm    It’s a Mystery!     Colossians 1:15-28

By Ronald E. George Jr. at the Fayetteville Baptist Church

Will our mystery guest come in and sign up please?  Who is the mystery guest?  Or What’s My Line?  Preach this sermon first and then read this scripture.   Let the people guess.

First mystery guest: 

 

1. He is the one who is the image of the invisible God.  

 

2. He is fully God and because He is God he can fully reveal God to us.  How can anyone or anything that is less than God reveal Him completely?  He is.  John 1:1

 

3. He is the creator of all things.  All things created were created by Him and for Him.

 

4. He is before all things and by Him all things hold together or consist. 

 

5. He is the head of the body, the church. 

 

6. He is the beginning the first one to rise from the dead.  Because of that he is the first of all and is to be recognized as the first. 

 

7. All of God’s fullness dwells in him. 

 

8. He made peace through his sacrifice.  God made peace through Him and brought all things to Him through His cross.  The people came to God through this one who gave his life for them.  He reconciled them and bridged the gap of sin of humankind.

He is the Lord, Jesus Christ.  He is the one we worship and serve.  We love you, Jesus because you first loved us.  

 

Second mystery guest: 

 

1. I am a servant who suffered for Christ’s sake. 

 

2. Commissioned by God to make the gospel fully known to all.

 

3. I am to tell the secret that God’s love is for the gentiles as well as the Jews.

 

4. I am to tell that Christ lives in you and this is your assurance that you belong to God and will share in his glory. 

 

5. I work very hard to tell the story

 

6. I depend on Christ’s power working in me. 

 

He is Paul the apostle or could this be you.  Are you one who knows the Lord and has suffered for Christ?  Have you been commissioned by God to make the gospel fully known to all?  Are you to tell the story that God’s love is for all not just a select few?  Does Christ live in you?  Are you working very hard to tell the story?  Are you doing your part and answering God’s call in your life?  Are you depending on Christ’s power that works within you to work for him?  Then you could be tonight’s second mystery guest.  Certainly God calls us all to tell the world who He is.  He is.   Have you?  Would you? 

 

Christ Is Supreme

^{Colossians 1:  15} Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. He existed before God made anything at all and is supreme over all creation.  ¹⁶ Christ is the one through whom God created everything in heaven and earth. He made the things we can see and the things we can’t see—kings, kingdoms, rulers, and authorities. Everything has been created through him and for him. ¹⁷ He existed before everything else began, and he holds all creation together.

¹⁸ Christ is the head of the church, which is his body. He is the first of all who will rise from the dead,  so he is first in everything. ¹⁹ For God in all his fullness was pleased to live in Christ, ²⁰ and by him God reconciled everything to himself. He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth by means of his blood on the cross. ²¹ This includes you who were once so far away from God. You were his enemies, separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions, ²² yet now he has brought you back as his friends. He has done this through his death on the cross in his own human body. As a result, he has brought you into the very presence of God, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault. ²³ But you must continue to believe this truth and stand in it firmly. Don’t drift away from the assurance you received when you heard the Good News. The Good News has been preached all over the world, and I, Paul, have been appointed by God to proclaim it.

²⁴ I am glad when I suffer for you in my body, for I am completing what remains of Christ’s sufferings for his body, the church. ²⁵ God has given me the responsibility of serving his church by proclaiming his message in all its fullness to you Gentiles. ²⁶ This message was kept secret for centuries and generations past, but now it has been revealed to his own holy people. ²⁷ For it has pleased God to tell his people that the riches and glory of Christ are for you Gentiles, too. For this is the secret: Christ lives in you, and this is your assurance that you will share in his glory.

²⁸ So everywhere we go, we tell everyone about Christ. We warn them and teach them with all the wisdom God has given us, for we want to present them to God, perfect  in their relationship to Christ. ²⁹ I work very hard at this, as I depend on Christ’s mighty power that works within me.^[1]