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The Priority of Christ for the New Year

The Priority of Christ for the New Year

Jan 01, 2017

Passage: Colossians 1:15-20

Preacher: Conrad Mbewe

Category: Sunday Evening

Keywords: christ, history, new year, priority, purpose

Detail:

Pastor Conrad Mbewe, visiting from Zambia, continues in his New Year’s exhortations looking at Colossians 1:15 – 20 in a message entitled “The Priority of Christ for the New Year.”

Often we think in terms of years—we finish 2016 we start 2017—which leads us to think in terms of the year ahead. This limits our viewpoint and diminishes our thinking. For God one year is like a thousand years; human time is a continuing relay beginning with Adam and continuing until the Second Coming, all per God’s plan. Moving from 2016 to 2017 is simply a dot on the timeline and of little significance. This being so, we ought better to concern ourselves with how we might glorify God in our times.

Paul wrote this epistle from prison. Thus, he not free to go to Colosse to minister nor had he been to this church. Yet, because he was an apostle, he was concerned about this church and the heresy that was starting to develop. His worry was for the saints. He wanted to be sure they were being rooted and built-up so to be able to continue in Christ. After all, as Paul makes plain in this passage, Christ is the highest of all; He is God, creator, upholder, not just some philosopher nor even a great moral leader. His relationship with church is as head, the firstborn, and elder brother. Paul, in vv. 19 and 20, brings everything into an eternal perspective. In Christ all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. All that God is Jesus is. All the attributes of God are found in Jesus. While the saints belonged to Christ and so should be active in their own building-up, they should also have confidence.

Confidence from the truth the saints belong to Christ should rebuke any anxiety about the coming year. It should also inform us we are part of something big because we have immediate access to God. He has “[reconciled] to himself all things.” Since sin came into the world there has been chaos in the universe. Yet God already had the plan. Philippians 2:9 – 10 shows where the plan was headed: “Therefore God has highly exalted him [Jesus] and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth.” Therefore, Jesus’ work on the cross being satisfactorily completed we have peace by His blood. The cost of this reconciliation is the shedding, the very spattering of His blood. Jesus sacrificial work is done. Look beyond yourself. The world, yes, is in rebellion, but a God with an agenda is moving on. He is in control. He is on the throne bringing those who belong to Him to himself that they might come in and be His own. Stay the course with confidence in Him who died and rose never to die again. The last trump soon will be heard…calling the saints home.