I used to be an avid archer.  During my high school years I participated in an archery program and was involved in a number of competitive matches with a recurve bow.  As I competed in these matches, my goal was to get first place.  Most of the time my goal wasn’t close to achievable, but there was one time.  I was at the peak of my archery skills and I knew that I was having a good day.  As the match neared to a close I was on track for my best score yet.  I finished with my highest score—270 out of 300.  But as the awards were handed out I came to the realization that I wasn’t going to get first place.  In fact, I came in second.  I lost to another archer who was a natural with the bow and eventually participated on the USA Olympic archery team.  I learned that day that first place was not for me; I wasn’t good enough for first, first was reserved for the elite archers who could out do me. 

Only those who deserved first place received first it.  The Christian life is similar.  Just as those who are the best at an athletic event deserve first place, Jesus deserves first place in our own lives.  Followers of Jesus ought to give Him first place in their lives.  God desires that we give His Son, Jesus Christ priority in lives.  In a world that is consumed with lust, money, fame, and pleasure, God desires that we fill our lives with Christ.  Our text this morning is Colossians 1:15-20.  Colossians 1 displays to us the greatness of Christ.

This passage has been called the “Colossian hymn” because in the original language of the New Testament it appears that these verses were written in hymnic format.  In fact, if you have a newer translation of Scripture, it sets this section off from the other paragraphs, signifying the poetic nature of the text. This comes even more into play if you know Greek, as there are two specific stanzas to this hymn set apart by two “he is” phrases, one in verse 15 and the other in verse 18.  This hymn sings praises to Jesus Christ, presenting Him as true Deity and exalting Him for His matchless worth.  In hymnic format we see a portrayal of the glory of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.  But it’s not only that. As we read through this hymn we get insight into the worship of the early church. We get a vision into how the early church expressed worship to God.

A correct understanding of Christ’s matchless worth should compel us to give Him first place in our lives.  We ought to give Christ first place in our lives.  Let’s read this passage . . .

Big Idea: God wants us to embrace the fullness of Jesus Christ

Genesis 25 records for us the story of Jacob and Esau.  I’m sure most of you are familiar with the plot.  Esau was the firstborn and thus in line for the birthright from His father Isaac.  His younger brother Jacob plotted to steal the birthright and their Father’s blessing, and tricked Isaac into bestowing it on Himself rather than his brother Esau.  After this, Jacob fled for his life and from his brother, spending several years away from his brother Esau, whom he had wronged greatly.  As he left, Esau swore to kill Jacob upon their father’s death.  After a period of at least 14 years, Jacob decided to return to his family once more.  Boys and girls, you can draw Jacob coming back to meet Esau.  As he neared, he received word that Esau was coming to meet him with 400 soldiers—imagine what was going through his head!  As Jacob finally reached the place where Esau waited, an unexpected event took place.  Rather than beginning a deadly battle, Esau raced to Jacob and embraced him, welcoming him home.  The two had parted as heartless enemies.  Now they embraced as loving brothers.  What we have here is an example of reconciliation.  Two people who were once enemies are now friends.

Today we’re going to focus on reconciliation.  I just have one goal for you today—I want you to be so impressed with Jesus and the work that He’s done for you, that you learn to love Him even more than you do already.  Often times when men preach we focus on a desired action.  We must . . . we should . . . we can . . .  Today I’m not going to focus on an action, as much as I am on a feeling, or a way of thinking.  I want you to love Jesus.  I want you to be completely inspired by and satisfied with the work of our savior Jesus Christ that you walk away thinking of Him differently than you did when you walked in this morning.  I want you to understand the work of Christ in reconciliation and praise Him for it.  So let’s read our passage today—it’s just 3 simple verses, Colossians 1:21-23 . . .

Big Idea: through Jesus, God has made you his friend!    

The story is told of a little boy who built a sailboat. He built the sail and had it all fixed up, tarred and painted. He took it to the lake and pushed it in hoping it would sail. Sure enough a wisp of breeze filled the little sail and it billowed and went rippling along the waves. Suddenly before the little boy knew it, the boat was out of his reach, even though he waded in fast and tried to grab it. As he watched it float away, he hoped maybe the breeze would shift and it would sail back to him. Instead he watched it go farther and farther until it was gone. When he went home crying, his mother asked, "What's wrong, didn't it work?" He said, "It worked too well."

Sometime later, the little boy was downtown and walked past a second hand store. There in the window he saw the boat. It was unmistakably his, so he went in and said to the owner, "That's my boat." He walked to the window, picked it up and started to leave with it. The owner of the shop said, "Wait a minute, sonny. That's my boat. I bought it from someone." The boy said, "No, it's my boat. I made it. See." And he showed him the little scratches and the marks where he hammered and filed. The man said, "I'm sorry, boy. If you want it, you have to buy it."

The poor little guy didn't have any money, but he worked hard and saved his pennies. Finally, one day he had enough money. He went in and bought the little boat. As he left the store holding the boat close to him, he was heard saying, "You're my boat. You're twice my boat. First you're my boat because I made you, and second you're my boat because I bought you!"

Such a simple and relatable illustration, yet is represents a profound theological truth. Just like the little boy made his boat and bought his boat, so Jesus Christ made us, and bought us with his blood. This simple yet complex reality is wrapped up in what the Bible calls redemption. Redemption is what made it possible for dirty sinners to become part of the family of God. Paul makes this idea of redemption his focus in our text today, Colossians 1:18b-20. In this text, Paul considers the role that Jesus plays in providing and offering salvation to sinful humans, and he makes the case that Jesus is the only one who could truly provide salvation for mankind. That’s the main thrust of our text this morning—that salvation and all it entails is only possible through the work of Jesus, and the result therefore is that we need to live our lives in service to Jesus. That’s the main point we see as we come to our text this morning, and I hope that’s what you will take home with you today:

Big Idea: Jesus settled our redemption, and deserves our allegiance

Have you ever seen something so beautiful, so stunning, so breathtaking, that you just had to stop and take a look? Maybe the leaves turning in the Minnesota Fall. Perhaps you’ve traveled to the mountains out west and the closer you get, the more stunning the view becomes. Or you are up in a plane and fly over something fantastic and you just have to look down and enjoy. We’ve all had experiences similar to that.

My wife and I love going to South Dakota.  We enjoy traveling to Custer State Park to drive the wildlife loop to see all the animals.  We see mule deer, white tail deer, pronghorn, prairie dogs, elk big, horn sheep, and even mountain goats.  But there’s one animal that makes us stop above all the others—the buffalo.  Many times we’ve come around a corner in a road only to find the herd of buffalo grazing right alongside the road.  And so what do we do?  We stop and park. We pull off to the side of the road and park a while so that we can gaze at these unique creatures. This summer we took our first trip to Rocky Mountain National park, and we drove to the top of the mountain onto Trail Ridge Road which winds around the peaks at 12k feet. And it was so beautiful, you just wanted to stop and gaze off getting lost in the beauty of it all.    

In our passage today Paul, the writer of Colossians, encounters Jesus.  He pulls off to the side of the road in a sense and puts it in park so that we can gaze at the glories of Jesus Christ.  This passage has been called the “Colossian hymn” because in the original language of the New Testament it appears that verses 18-20 was written as a form of verse—this is a poem or a hymn with two stanzas. We’ll come back and deal with that in our final sermon of the series. But these verses sings praises to Jesus Christ, presenting Him as true Deity and exalting Him for His matchless worth. 

This is a glorious passage.  This passage deals with our values—what we treasure in life, and sets Christ up as far beyond anything people in the world may value.  People value many different things in the world today.  There are many things people treasure.  Boys and girls, you can draw something that you treasure, or someone might treasure.  Some people treasure money.  Some treasure their possessions.  Others their families, or jobs, or hobby.  These things are good, but these are not the most important.  Here in this passage, Paul shows us what is most important—who is most important.   

God desires that we have His Son, Jesus Christ at the center of our lives.  In a world that is consumed with lust, money, fame, and pleasure, God desires that our treasure be Jesus Christ.  He wants us to be consumed with the incredible worth of His Son Jesus.  This passage displays to us the greatness of Jesus Christ.  A correct understanding of the matchless worth of Jesus should cause us to treasure Him and praise him above all else.  Jesus should be our greatest treasure.  That’s our big idea this morning.    

Big Idea: Jesus is our greatest treasure

The story is told about a pilot who always looked down intently on a certain valley in the Appalachians when the plane passed overhead. One day his co-pilot asked, “What’s so interesting about that spot?” The pilot replied, “See that stream? Well, when I was a kid I used to sit down there on a log and fish. Every time an airplane flew over, I would look up and wish I were flying... Now I look down and wish I were fishing.”

This seems to be a common theme in our world today—people searching for meaning, contentment, and satisfaction. The average person in our world today might not admit that they’re searching for meaning, but in reality they are. I think that’s why we have a lot of the issues we have in our world today. The gender revolution with homosexuality and transgender—it’s people searching for meaning. They are trying new or different lifestyles to bring them meaning. Some people search for meaning in their relationships—that’s why we have so many problems with marriages and divorce in our world today—people look for meaning in one thing and when it loses meaning they look for another. Some people look for meaning in their job, and they put an exceptional amount of time into their job and excelling at their work—because they’re trying to find meaning and satisfaction in those things. For children it could be school work or pleasing your parents—we try to find all kinds of satisfaction in all sorts of things in this life.

What about for believers in Jesus? What ought we to find satisfaction in? What should bring us joy and fullness? Even as believers we are not immune to the draw and pull o the world that allures us into finding our meaning in other things. I like what C. S. Lewis wrote:

He who has God and many other things has no more than he who has God alone. [C.S. Lewis]

Isn’t that such a true statement? What really ought to drive us as believers? It should be God! It should be finding our satisfaction and fulfillment in Him and Him alone! That should be our drive and our mission!

And as we come to our text today in II Timothy 4. I think Paul shares with us his own example of where he placed his focus and how he found satisfaction. In his last letter, as he sees the end of his life drawing near, he passes on to Timothy his protege some vital pieces of information for how he ended well in his spiritual life. And as we unpack this text today, we can learn too from Paul’s example. And so we’re going to look at our text this morning, it’s II Timothy 4:6-8 and from this text I want you to remember one key truth—it’s our big idea for this morning.

Big Idea: Emptiness is the path to fullness

Surgeons have incredible skill.  I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about it before, but it takes great skill to be a surgeon.  You have to have a steady hand and be able to keep your cool under pressure.  But sometimes surgery is necessary—maybe you’ve had one before.  Sometimes the best option is to open up and look inside and get to work. 

I brought with me something to illustrate this—the game “operation”.  You may have played this game.  It’s a game that reminds us of the importance of getting to work on our inside.  The game is set up so that there’s foreign objects inside the body that shouldn’t be there, and you play the part of the surgeon, trying to skillfully get each piece out.  But if you make a mistake and touch the edges of the incision with your tweezers, the game puts off a loud buzzing sound.  It’s quite a riveting experience!  But the game reminds us that sometimes we need to do surgery—we just need to open up and find out what is there.

This is very similar to our spiritual lives.  Sometimes we need to open up what’s on the inside and do an operation on our spiritual lives—sometimes we need to get to work on our heart.  Just like a doctor might perform heart surgery if there were a severe heart issues, sometimes we need to look inside at our spiritual hearts and get to work.  Take care of business; deal with what is on our inside. Often times, if our hearts are not right, this becomes most evident when we are exposed to the heart of God. When we see God working and come to understand his heart and the things he cares about, oftentimes that reveals where our hearts might not be in line with the heart of God. That’s what we find this morning as we look at the life of Jonah.

Big Idea: Exposure to God’s heart often exposes our own

One of the most fascinating human organs is the brain.  The brain weighs around 3 lbs, it’s just under 6 inches long, and it makes up 2% of a human’s body weight.  The brain is really a tiny part of our anatomy when defined by size and weight, yet we tend to think our brains are larger than they really are.  Ever meet someone who thought this—a know it all?  Some people seem to think their brains are larger than they really are.  They think they know everything.  They are more than happy to expound on various tidbits of facts and knowledge that they’ve acquired.  But they think they’re smarter than they actually are.  They think they know more than they actually do.  They might even think that they know better than you do.  We refer to these people as having a big head.  We say they’re egotistical or conceited, because it’s as if they think their brain is larger than life. 

Though this is true in our physical lives, sometimes this phenomenon can happen spiritual as well.  Just like a know it all thinks they know more than you, sometimes we can be spiritual know it all’s who think we know more than God.  We acknowledge that God has a perfect will and a perfect plan, but we want to run it.  And just like a know it all has a big head, we can get big heads spiritually as well.  We can be guilting of thinking that our brains are larger than they really are, and we think we know better than God.  But you cannot know better than God.  You can never know better than God when it comes to running our lives.  That’s our big idea today:

Big Idea: You cannot know better than God

If you’ve been a parent for any length of time, or maybe you’re not a parent but you’ve spent time around kids, you probably have learned a couple of things.  Obviously, you learn how to change your share of diapers.  You’ve learned how to burp a baby. If you have girls with long hair you’ve learned how to do hair, which isn’t a great feat for most women, but for someone like me who has little experience with hair, that can be a big deal. You’ve learned how to be quick at catching that arm as they go to throw the toy, or how to grab them as they try to run off into the road.  But one thing I’ve learned that usually goes all across the board is that when a baby cries, you respond.  When a baby cries it’s a sign that they need something.  It could be a bottle, or a diaper change, or just some cuddles, but when they are screaming we try to figure out why.  And we have certain ways of figuring out what a baby needs and making sure we don’t miss a crying babe.

I brought with me a little something to illustrate this.  I have a baby monitor.  Baby monitors are great.  Today there are video monitors so that you can actually see the baby.  I remember ours as children—we used to pretend they were walkie talkies and it was so cool that you could talk to the person on the other end, only they couldn’t talk back because they were one way. And these have developed over the years.  Someone told me that growing up their monitor used to interfere with the neighbor’s and they would pick up conversations from the neighbors house.  But we use baby monitors because we understand the importance of hearing a baby when he or she cries and making sure there isn’t a problem.  Wherever we are and whatever we’re doing, we want to make sure we can hear the cries of the baby.  

What about our spiritual lives?  Sometimes we cry out to God.  And we might tend to wonder—is he listening?  Does he hear?  Will God hear the cries of his children?  This week we’ve been reminded again that our world is broken. Violence and hatred spill across our screens, and many of us are left asking—does God even hear when we cry out? Does He care about what’s happening? Now here’s the good news—God doesn’t just hear the cries of the ‘super-spiritual’ or the people who’ve got life all figured out. He hears anyone who calls out to Him. That’s what we’re going to see today. As we come to our passage today we learn the answer to the question of if God hears us—the answer is yes.  God does hear the cries of those who call out to him—he hears the cries of anyone who turns to him in trust.  Just like we have baby monitors to help us hear the cries of a baby, so God hears the cries of those who turn to him!  That’s our big idea today—if this is the only thing you remember this morning, remember this.  

Big Idea: God hears the cries of anyone who turns to Him! 

If I were to come to your house—let’s say you invited my family over for dinner.  And we pulled into your driveway and walked up your sidewalk and came to your front door, what would I do?  The first thing I would do would be to knock on your door.  You would here this “knock, knock, knock”.  Or maybe I’d ring the doorbell, or use the door knocker.  I used to think door knockers were for rich people until I lived in an apartment and every door had them.  But I knock.  And that knock is a sign to you—help me out: what does that knock say to you?  It says someone is here, and it says come open the door right?  Not always.  For you it may elicit several different responses.  Maybe it’s excitement: “oh, they’re here, let’s get the door.”  It could be confusion: “now who could that be at this hour?”  Perhaps it’s: “shhhh!  Go hide!  It’s the neighbor kids selling candy, let’s pretend we’re not home.”  Or it could be “turn up the tv and pretend we don’t hear it, it’s that salesman again.”  All kind of different responses, but we know when we hear that sound, we have to make a choice.  It’s a universal symbol in most of the first world—that sound means someone is at the door, and I have to choose; am I going to open it and see who it is, or am I going to run and hide. 

Believers in Jesus have a very similar spiritual decision they have to make, because we have that same knocking sound in our spiritual lives.  Sometimes God comes knocking at the door to our spiritual lives.  And we have a choice—a decision to make.  Are we going to open up and let him in, or are we going to run and hide.  And as we come to Jonah, we find that he had this same decision to make.  Let’s review where we’ve been so far.  God tells Jonah “Go cry against Nineveh, that wicked city.”  Jonah says “No way!”  And boarded a ship to flee from God.  And then we hear it—knock, knock, knock.  God comes knocking at Jonah’s door by way of a storm—God hurls a storm on the waters to get ahold of Jonah, but Jonah wasn’t through running from God.  He told the sailors to throw him overboard, and they do.  But again we hear that all too familiar sound—knock, knock, knock, as God knocks on Jonah’s door again by way of a fish.  And we pick up our story as Jonah is swallowed whole and we find him sitting inside of the fish and we hear the knocking again as God waits for Jonah to open up the door.  And God begins to work on Jonah’s heart, and eventually he does open up.  God is knocking at the door to our spiritual lives as well—will you let him in?  From this section in our story of Jonah this morning we learn one key truth for our lives: 

Big Idea: God's grace knocks at the door to our hearts, and God expects us to answer

One of the clearest signs that someone owns a dog is this little device—a retractable leash. If you’ve ever used one, you know how it works: the dog has freedom to wander a bit, but it never leaves the control of its owner. The line may stretch, but there’s always a limit. And when the dog strays too far—or when danger comes—the owner pushes a button and reels it back in.

What a fitting picture of God’s grace.  We are all inescapably tied to God with a very similar bungee chord called grace.  Grace connects us to God.  It allows us to have a perceived level of freedom, but if we get too far, God’s grace brings us back.  We see the inescapable anchor of God’s grace displayed openly for us through the story of Jonah.  He ran from God—fast and far—but he never escaped God’s gracious pursuit.

God works this way in our lives as well.  When we run from God, he pulls us back.  When we think we’ve escaped, we haven’t left at all.  And in Jonah 1, we find good news for all of us who have a tendency to run:

Big idea: God graciously pursues his children