Who You Are In Christ, Transferred into the Kingdom of the Son of God

Alrighty, well last week Kirk taught on the first half of a verse and this week I get to teach on the second half of that verse and the following four or five verses after that as well. Colossians 1.13, For he rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son. Okay, so last week Kirk discussed the domain of darkness. We're going to recap that because it's part of the passage. This week we're going to take a look at the second half of this verse and the following verses that actually outline the depth of this kingship of the Beloved Son. Delivered from the domain of darkness. Delivered or rescued.

Domain being authority and there's an implication of tyrannical rulership. This domain of darkness. You're not dealing with something that's benevolent or nice. rulership of darkness. You know, darkness isn't one of those words you use to describe happy things. Oh boy! In fact, the two-year-old this last night was concerned about the dark. It was like, my goodness, every other night you go to bed it's fine, but mommy and sissy are missing and so the darkness is an issue.

But darkness here is substantial and important that we understand the the extreme contrast between the darkness and this kingdom of the Son of God. When darkness rules over a human, what fruit is born? I'm asking that to the class. What kind of things get born when darkness is ruling in the life of a human? Mold spores. Mold spores. It's the nasty stuff. It grows and it's It's gross and it has a lot of health implications.

The wages of sin are death. But when we, for example, go to Galatians and look at the description that Paul writes there before the fruit of the Spirit, it's not really good. But we're not going to go to Galatians. I'm actually going to take a look at Romans chapter 1 because I think this is probably my favorite passage on the wickedness of man. So if you'll turn to Romans 1 and read along with me, that would be fantastic. I'll be reading out of the New American Standard, but if you don't have that, and it's confusing to have different words, you can read along on the screen.

For even though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks. Oh, I'm sorry, I'm in Romans 1, 21 through 32. or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man, and of birds, and four-footed animals, and crawling creatures.

Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions. For their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural. And in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman, and burned in their desire toward one another. men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.

And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind to do those things which are not proper. Being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice, they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful, and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, They not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.

What's happening now? Yeah, it's amazing that in 2000 years humanity hasn't gotten much better. It's true. It's gotten much worse, but not much better. We haven't evolved very well. No, we have not evolved very well. The downward spiral, it's down, that's the problem.

But when we talk about the domain of darkness that Kurt taught on last week, this is the domain of darkness outlined in the scripture in one of several places where that takes place. We've been delivered or rescued from that domain. So this morning we're going to take a look at what we've been rescued to and to whom we have been rescued. That's the domain of darkness.

We've been transferred. The first word in the second half of the verse there that's important to look at is that we've been transferred. It's to uproot from one location and place in another location. To remove from one place to another. It's not a minor relocation. It's not as if I just stepped to the left. Okay? That's not a transfer.

This is substantial. 1 Corinthians 13, 2, when Paul is writing about not having love, he says, if I have faith that moves mountains, it's the same Greek word there. You're relocating this mountain. How important or impressive would it be if Paul said, if I have faith to move mountains, and by move mountains he meant a dust speck over to the left. No. This is a relocation from one point to another.

That's why the kingdom of darkness or the domain of darkness and the kingdom of the Son of God are substantially different in their characteristics. The power of darkness being one side. There's a one-way transfer here. This transfer doesn't go two directions. It's not like you can go back and forth like a hopscotch maneuver of some sort.

Once you're in the kingdom of his beloved son, the kingdom of of Christ, you're there. You're stuck. You're trapped. Oh no. And I, trapped is the wrong word that sounds. That's a negative word to describe it. But the relationship that is there is eternal. You'll notice that the language that Paul uses there when he says transferred is a one-way kind of a vocabulary. It's not like temporarily relocated.

So is being positioned in the heavenlies an example of this? Being positioned in the heavenlies is the example of this. That's what's happening. Positionally, our position has changed from the power of darkness to the position of being in the heavenlies with Christ. So that is the perfect and descriptive example.

So even though our flesh stays here, there has been a change that we may not notice. except through the living of Christ through us because we're still here on earth. Yes, one of the biggest problems that I found in modern, at least in my own exposure, I'm going to say that in the context of my own life, I have found that there is a poor job done in the situation of evangelism where people often have become believers and then we notch, you know, we open up our Bible cover, put a little notch in there, look, they're saved, I got another person who's a believer, and then we move on instead of coming alongside afterwards and bringing them and actively be involved in a body that can nurture them and train them up so that they can understand that they've been transferred. You know, a lot of people become believers and they get left off with, my sins are forgiven. Well, that's not a lot to grow on. and they're still dealing with the burden of, oh man, I'm still sinning. I was a young child when I became a believer, but when I've talked to people who became believers at an older age, they say often, It was disappointing the first time I sinned after I became a believer because I thought, oh, I've got this licked now, I've got Jesus.

And then they discovered that they didn't because their condition and position were two different things and no one had explained that to them yet. So I think in the course of believers evangelizing and actually I had dinner with Kurt and Becky last night and Kurt was having an opportunity to do that at work and that's one of the things that I know in our discussion that Kurt's desire is that we're going to have this opportunity to evangelize. The person will hopefully respond to the Lord and then they'll be able to be plugged into a good healthy body and grow.

You need that. This transfer is something that a lot of people never learn about. It's your mind that just changes. I think you just think differently. You just become... That's what I mean. You're just reborn. You gear into other areas that are so important. All this other stuff is peripheral nonsense. Well, it is.

The problem that often happens is that people become believers and they have faith in Christ, but if you think about it as kind of like a speck of knowledge When you have faith, you have a simple faith in a simple truth, which has complex ramifications obviously, but as you grow in the Lord, what you're growing in is the things that you are walking in faith in. I'm walking in faith that I've been transferred in the kingdom. But until you know that, until someone teaches you that, or you are blessed enough to read the passage and understand it the first time, It's often there's a lot of confusion because they don't have faith in a wide array of theological facts, of biblical facts. So yes, it's a change of mind, but the problem is that the things that they know are often not as robust until as they grow in the Lord. The Lord reveals things that are already true of them. That's the number one thing about God.

I was just thinking about, you might make an analogy with a young child who's the son or daughter of the president. As a young child, they have very little concept of what their position in terms of their parents are. But as they grow, they learn Well, my dad, he's the president. That's big news. When they were a little child, they didn't bloggy kind of thing.

In a way, that's somewhat what believers have when they know the Lord initially, but they don't know, well, I have everything. He's given me everything. I'm blessed with everything. I've been acting like I have nothing. One of the biggest things I ever remember learning in one of the small tidbits that get spoken in the podium by somebody besides my dad, or whoever's teaching in the main service.

Mike was leading the service one morning and he just read a quote from A Hungry Heart and it was a simple statement of, spiritual growth happens when you believe what is already true of you. The problem is that the young believer often doesn't know what is true of them. And so when you start to be exposed to the things that are true of you, suddenly the growth is this exciting big jump, because suddenly you go from trying to memorize Bible verses, because that's what everybody says to do, you've got to memorize it, or you've got to read you know, from Genesis to Revelation so that you can know the whole Bible and that's a big undertaking. I'm not saying you shouldn't do that, I'm saying that that's pretty overwhelming for a young believer. But these things, as we study here, we're going to take a look at this one aspect of the spiritual growth and the king with whom we're identified.

Sorry, did somebody just start to say something? the kingdom. Now the word kingdom there would possibly be better translated as kingship or rulership. It's not to be confused with the actual kingdom, but rather the right or authority to rule over a kingdom. So this is the kingship of Christ, but it's not It's not like this is my tract of land and it's not necessarily a place.

We're talking about we've been transferred instead of the rulership of darkness into the rulership of Jesus Christ. We're under the authority of Christ and his benevolent rulership in contrast to the power of darkness. Now the power of darkness is not a benevolent power, is it? It's not... When you think about the opportunities to sin, that's not benevolent.

The opportunity to sin and be selfish, when we read through Romans 1, they're inventing new kinds of sins. That's the kind of authority that was ruling over you before, that was driving you to invent new sins, but now you've been moved to this new authority under Christ.

Now I have behind me Some words here. Now, if you're familiar with the BBC or some of the gossipy television programs and tabloids, they have royal watchers. Their whole job is to just keep tabs on everything that the royalty over in England is doing. They get paid, I don't know how many pounds a year, but they get paid simply to just observe these people and know every little tidbit about their life possible.

Now, there are no royal watchers of that sense in Christianity. But there are angels watching in awe at our King, or at Christ. And there are, in our lives, the opportunities that we have to watch what the Lord is doing. But we don't have royal watchers. We also don't have democracy. We're not transferred into the democracy of the Son of God. God doesn't take a vote. Hey, who wants for me to not forgive Hitler's sins? I don't want them. Okay, go to hell. That's not how it happens. That's not the way it works. It's not Marxism or capitalism or any of those things. There's no Senate and there are no candidates.

This is the kingship of Christ. That means for us as Western American citizens who love democracy, and I praise the Lord I live in the United States of America, but for us We have to make sure that we don't bring baggage of world history of empires and things, you know, being the colonies as we are. We don't bring that into understanding the kingship of Christ.

He's a benevolent, loving king. We need to have that in context. What kind of king is Jesus? He is our King. Jesus is this we've been transferred into His authority. So we're going to take a look at some subsequent verses and look at this King who is over us.

The next verse, Colossians 1.14 says, In whom we have redemption through His blood, even the forgiveness of sins.

This is not a King that just has dominion over us simply. This is the kind of king who would redeem his subjects from the bondage of slavery with his own blood. This is not a king who just sits on a throne and has got this highfalutin authority and just sits around. This is the kind of king that redeems us. And we've talked about being redeemed already in this class.

This is the kind of king who would forgive the sins of his subjects Okay? This is not just a periodical pardoning. You know, like at the end of a presidential reign here in the United States, it's common for them to do a few pardons here and there. I don't know why that's become tradition, but they say the prisons are overcrowded or something.

But this is the kind of king who forgives the sins of the subjects. We already talked about being forgiven a little bit, but it's not just merely a forgiven, it's forgiven and then we've been justified and those sins are replaced with the righteousness of Christ. What kind of King is Jesus?

Colossians 115, the next verse says, He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. Now let's stop and think about the philosophical nature of that statement. He's the image of the invisible God. Only God could be invisible and yet still have an accurate reflection of that invisible nature in a physical form. In a sense, an image that is visible that we can understand and recognize. If you try to take that into a philosophy class, if you try to take that into some kind of mathematical or photographic sort of a sense, you're going to come up short. You cannot do it. This is only the characteristics of the God of the universe. Only the God of the universe can have an image of something which is invisible.

And that's pretty awesome. That's our king. The kind of king that predates all of his dominion. He's the firstborn of all creation. Most kings come into some land or they'll come and sweep in and take a land. Okay, this is mine now. My army is bigger than your army. I mean, if you read the Old Testament, you'll find that David was a good warrior. He represented Saul and the Israelites, and he was a fantastic warrior, leading them into battle to go take land. There was a warring season.

No. Christ was before this dominion. Christ was before this kingdom. He's the firstborn of all creation. Now one thing to ask, what does it mean to be firstborn? Because we have an issue here. We have a theological issue. This is the Trinity. Okay? This is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is a... It says, He is the image of the invisible God. So is the firstborn of all creation, does that modify God? Or He? Well, this is a position that Christ has been given and that's the thing you need to be aware of. Stan?

Isn't it also Philippians 2.5 that he came in the likeness of man? So he actually was the first born as man. and the only one out of the Trinity, right?

Well, this is using a different context. We'll take a look at that in a minute because another subsequent verse is going to address that. But this is a position that he was given. This is not like God the Father There was another miraculous virgin birth before the earthly birth, and it was Christ the Son, who always existed. That's not the theology that's being presented here. He was given the authority, positionally, as the firstborn.

So we want to make sure that that's clear. There's not some kind of weird sequence of events going on here. Randy, does that firstborn take on a cultural context of the rights and things that would be given to a firstborn of, say, a Greek citizen or a Roman citizen or something like that? Absolutely. That's a good illustration.

Obviously, when Paul's writing to the church in Colossae, they're going to have that context. You're the firstborn. Of course you get favor. Of course, part of the problem in the Old Testament is that the firstborn, if you read through Abraham as we go through Genesis in the main service, You're going to see that there's some firstborn issues that come up in Genesis. But in this context, yes, that's a good point.

The next verse here, For by him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities. All things have been created through him and for him. So Jesus is the kind of king who creates his dominion. Like we said, it's not him sweeping in with authority and taking that which was already someone else's. This is the kind of king who creates his own dominion. And that's a powerful, powerful concept.

You don't get that anywhere else. The closest thing we have is that Craig was actually talking about over in the Middle East. There are The countries are taking and doing landfill into the Mediterranean because there's nowhere else to grow. So they just grow by adding dirt out into the water. You expand your country very expensively. I mean, that's a costly procedure to do. I'm not an engineer, but I can imagine that the engineering work that has to go in to make sure that it's safe to go build anything on this dirt that you've just put in the ocean you gotta make sure that everything is just right. That's how they're expanding in some of the countries because that's the only way they can expand without war, which of course would cause some significant problems in the Middle East.

But this is a king who can create from scratch, if you will, from speaking. Genesis 1 states that God created the universe simply by speaking. No other king has had that kind of authority or power. That's the kind of king Jesus is. Jesus is the kind of king who authorizes the distribution of authority. You see, he says, both in the heavens and on earth, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things have been created through him and for him.

Now again, this brings us to another philosophical problem, if you think about it. That means that people who've done some pretty naughty things in a position of authority have done so under the permission of Christ. Now the real problem is that they're doing so under the dominion of the earth, which has been temporarily transferred to the power of Satan, which was of course where we started in verse 13. But even still, Christ allowed those things to happen.

Now, is this the work of a benevolent king? We have to ask. And the answer is yes, but let's address why. Let's ask why. Anybody have some thoughts on why that's still part of a benevolent, loving God? He gave us free will, so therefore what we create is our own fault. That's the answer. He gave us a will. He gave us the ability.

Genesis 1.26, we were created in God's image. That included a will. Unfortunately, when Adam fell, that will was corrupted. When we read Romans 1, he says God gave them over to their depraved minds.

Stan. Doesn't this fall into the characteristic that he also gave redemption to the whole world, but the whole world didn't receive it? Absolutely. That's, again, that darn will. It comes right in and it interferes. Well, it goes also to what his purpose is for us. His purpose is not to create a rose garden here. That's not what his purpose was. His purpose is to conform us to his image, and sometimes conforming us and millions, has been through horrible circumstances. Absolutely. He uses all those things.

Being a believer, how often have you heard people say, well, I don't believe that there's a God or that the God of the Bible is real because he wouldn't allow suffering or pain or all of those things. It's funny that we don't, as humans, want to own Our wickedness. We don't want to own it. I don't want to be responsible for my junk. It's not my fault that I'm out there in adultery and all this other stuff. It's somebody else's fault. I'm going to blame God.

There we go, because he's not here for me to talk to. He can't answer for himself, right? Well, actually, he's revealed his word. He can't answer for himself. But since they're choosing to disrespect that, it's easy for them to pull a proverbial sleight of hand. Look over here while I'm doing this thing over there. We'll blame God. He's over here, right? And they ignore the authority of Christ.

Now this is, the last point I've got here is something that I also, I was just thinking, man, this is so cool. Jesus is the kind of king that God the Father desired he create a kingdom for himself. All things have been created through him and for him. Through him, God said, make these things. And it was for him. God said, I love you so much that I am desiring for you to make a kingdom for yourself. That's the kind of king he is, that his father loves him in that sort of way.

And that's really cool. Any thoughts on that before I jump to the next slide? It's easy for me to click the next button and just keep going and I forget to ask. Next verse there, he is before all things and in him all things hold together. So Jesus is the kind of king that has might to hold the entirety of the universe together. Okay, here's a picture from some of the really awesome satellites that we have out there with these awesome telescopes, awesome photographic abilities. Here is a picture of an entire galaxy out there and it's being held together just as much as we are by the power of God, by the power of Jesus Christ. That's the kingship we've been transferred to.

I mean, when I look at that, it looks on, it's just, that's awesome. That's where the term stellar came from. Stan? I'm almost afraid to bring this up because it's not relatable. where it comes from, what causes it, why it's there, there's a theory to it. So for me, the analogy is until they find out what gravity is, to me it's Jesus Christ.

And that's the point of this, is the authority of God is what holds us all together. What you deal with when you have, let's say you're talking about an unbeliever, they're blessed. In the Old Testament it says the rain falls on the righteous and the wicked. Your body is held together whether you're righteous or wicked because of Christ. The earth that you're walking on and the buildings that we're in, the fact that the beams are holding us up because there's a basement below us here, all by the power and authority of Christ. Every one of us has a job if we're employed or if we're not employed, we still have our existence and our being by virtue of the Savior of the universe holding us here. putting these things together.

And that's pretty awesome. This is, you know, you get into philosophy and various other things that come with this and science. But the truth of the matter is that, as Stan was saying, there is no answer. We don't know. We can come up with things scientifically that this is the best we've discovered so far. And it's pretty phenomenal.

I mean, my dad was an engineer and he made his living so that I could, you know, live in my house with my parents and eat way too much food. My mom, for some reason, still likes to buy us ice cream even after we eat gallons and gallons of it. All those things that we get because the consistency of Christ exists to hold the universe together in a consistent way. Physics as we know them are a sign of God's existence. as he holds these things together. People question God. Oh, I look around and see trees. We talk about seeing trees and knowing God exists. We do.

But when we look at the way physics operates, Bob's job is to discover, well he and his team and other researchers, their job is to discover the way God put things together. His job is to discover the intricacies of the working of Christ in his creation. Unfortunately a lot of scientists who don't believe in Jesus Christ are trying to just say it just happened that way, which is awfully unfortunate. One of the things that has come of that from those scientists, the more they get into it and get into the nano research and all that, the more that are coming to Christ.

Because there's no other answer. Or at least believing there's got to be a God. There's no other answer. Even though they've denied it their whole lives. It's pretty awesome. It's interesting to me because an inanimate thing like the earth absolutely follows every detail of the law. always, the physical law, it's always going to lie with regardless of the situation.

If the temperature goes up, certain things happen. If the temperature goes down, certain things happen. If you have an airplane and it has a certain aerodynamic lift, and it takes off on the runway, and the temperature is such and such, and the humidity is such and such, it's always going to happen the same way. It follows its laws absolutely. Just like Jesus did when he was on the earth and following his father. It's the human race that's impossible to follow along.

That's why you have to have God who can do things like make the day last six hours longer. You have to have a God who's already in charge of every single intricate detail. That's God pausing the rest of the solar system for six hours while letting everything on the earth operate for that six hours longer. You know, in the battle in the Old Testament where that happens, it's just like, wow!

Again, it can only happen because these things, everything has its very glue, if you will, in Christ. You know, scientists are really never happy because, you know, they think there are humanoids on other planets and all this money to think there's a little spot that creates a being and there are out there. It's insane! We're getting into philosophy, but it's actually an area that I love, so I'll follow that rabbit trail.

One of the things that's interesting, and when we talk about faith, as a believer we have faith in God of the universe. The God who can declare these things and speak them into existence and hold them all together. Now, what does the atheist or agnostic put their faith in? What are they having faith in? Global warming. But basically they're putting, like we read in Romans 1, they put their trust in the creature instead of the creator. And so what does this mean?

How much do we know collectively as humans on the earth? We have Wikipedia, we know a whole lot, right? I'm sorry, that's a website for those of you who are not internet savvy. But with Wikipedia, we have a collection of all kinds of human knowledge all on one website and anyone is welcome to contribute. So if you know something and you've got some good proof text for it, you can add to this collective human knowledge.

And they have gigabytes and gigabytes of data. It's wonderful. But how do we... anyone here willing to venture to say with any absolute certainty that there has never ever been nor will there ever be a unicorn in the universe? I'm not going to limit to the earth. Let's just say the universe. Anyone venture to say that on a scientific level? Come on. No one? No one?

But we can learn more. We might learn more. What I'm saying basically is that if you put your faith in mankind, the tiny speck of knowledge that we have collectively as an entire globe of human beings has no confidence. We still may find out that next thing, that next breakthrough may come, and then we'll discover that everything that we thought we knew is now out the window, rewrite the textbooks, because we've discovered the new thing. In my lifetime, they've changed their opinion on how the earth is made up, whether it's solid in the middle or has molten lava here and there, and they've changed those things in my own life based on research, I hope. And those things have changed because in science you're always discovering the next thing. Now that doesn't make science totally unreliable and faulty, otherwise Bob wouldn't have a job.

But it does mean that as humans, if we don't have our faith in the authority of God who made everything and so can speak authoritatively on it, It's like a hockey puck on an ice rink. It's moving all over the place. And it's going to keep changing and keep moving because the next thing gets discovered and slaps it across the ice rink. Stan?

And Romans 1 has a lot to do with idolatry. That's basically what Paul's talking about. And that's why he brings it up because it's silliness. And it's just exactly what he said. To have faith or belief in an idol something less than God, it's silly, because it's going to change over time.

It's not static. It'll be the new thing that everybody's all excited about, you know. Well, it's just like in the 70s, you know, we had global Putin. Right. That was the big thing. And we'd all better get ready, because the Ice Age is coming. Oh, man. It's a good thing we discovered everything's melting and we're all going to dry it. That's another thing.

Actually, Wayne Anderson told me once, and I don't know where he heard it, but he told me that it's arrogant for us as humans to think that we figured out how the world's going to end. The scriptures say how the world's going to end, and we didn't do it. Right. I think it was God, if I'm not mistaken, who does the ending of the world. When we talked about this the other day, Ronnie and I, just the fact that the Earth's going to endure the tribulation period, which is just going to be, I mean, big time. Talk about global warming. It's going to be, it's like a calendar. Here we are. But it's still going to last a thousand years after that. That's right. Yeah.

What am I worried about? Yeah, absolutely. This is the nature of the king we have. I think arrogance is the right word. Yeah. It really is. We really have taken on such an authoritarian position about which we know so little. Well, it's arrogance that we're doing any of this. I know. Yeah. Arrogance that we're causing these changes. And that we can change it. That's the other thing to say. And that we can stop it.

Yeah, that's what the arrogance is. Unbelievable. And for those of you listening on the recording, I know there's somebody who's probably going, But in the end, our reliance and our faith is on the Savior of the universe who is bringing these things together to his glory.

Romans 8.28 says that in the life of the believer, God works all things for the good of those who love him. And we're just blessed enough that those who are lost also get to participate in some of that blessing. God has preserved the earth despite the crazy stuff we've done to it. because he designed it to radiate his glory. If you think about that, the other flip side of God's nature to declare his presence, if God uses nature to declare his presence, We can't destroy it because it's declaring his glory so that we will not have an excuse. Or those who don't believe will not have an excuse. Despite the fact they tried real hard. So we've really exhausted this. I want to add one thing, but it has nothing to do with global warming. It's about the character and who our king is. If he is the person that's created this, when you look at You know, people look at the miracles and things that Jesus did in the Old Testament and say, nonsense, that's mythology. In my opinion, I look at those things and I go, He created it.

He can do whatever He wants to do with it. If God wants to walk on water, He can. If God wants to raise someone who's dead, He can. Because He created it. He has the power and the authority to do so. So I don't see mythology, I see God's awesome power and who our King is. Well, and that actually leads me to another thing that I have I'd forgotten, I'd heard someone say, but I'll share it now.

If everything is held together by God, does that make it all natural or does that make everything supernatural? The miraculous is normative. It's miraculous that the God of the universe is holding this all together. The fact that we take a breath and breathe, the fact that I'm turning the air into carbon dioxide and various other chemical compounds, the fact that all of us are sitting and doing these things is supernatural to a certain sense.

Now that doesn't mean we should walk around freaked out and in a weird state of mind because it's supernatural, but it means that we walk in even greater confidence in our faith in our Savior. That is, the miraculous is normative instead of it being natural as the worldly person might describe it. Well just birth, birth alone to create something. Absolutely. It's mind boggling when you think about it. The little nails, the little eyelashes, every little thing. How it all works together, this perfect form.

Yeah, well when Abigail and Evelyn were, or when Evelyn was inside of Jessica, when she was pregnant with, when Jessica was pregnant with Evelyn, GE has put together this phenomenal ultrasound device that makes a 3D image. And I don't know if you guys have had that with your little one. Becky has pictures in her purse if you want to see them. And actually it's worth looking at. It gives you a 3D mapping of this little baby inside of the pregnant mother. It's phenomenal. It's amazing. And that's totally supernatural.

Scientists have not been able to create life in a test tube, so to speak. I keep reading in the news, oh, scientists have found some chemical compound on another planet or in another solar system or in another place and there might be life because we found a chemical compound. I'm like, no, the chemical compound does not create life. It takes a god.

You're missing that one special ingredient. Anyways, I think we've really covered this. I think everybody understands without a doubt that they're held together by the Lord Jesus Christ. A miraculous thing of the whole thing. He spoke it into existence. Absolutely. And then held it together. He didn't have to make it or something. He spoke it into existence. Yeah. And he doesn't have to concentrate real hard. We don't multitask as human beings. He speaks in existence and it happens and he's not like, oh no. My brain is busy thinking of holding it together. I can't do anything else.

He's got it. Next verse there. He is also head of the body, the church, and he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he himself will come to have first place in everything. That's the kind of king that Jesus is. He's head of the body.

Now for us, we're going in the main service for a month. We're doing a special series on the body. and what Christ has set in store for the body. And I'm not going to really comment on that a lot because the elders are going to be teaching on that. If you want to hear what I think about it in more depth, Tuesday night we've got a Bible study at the Anderson's house where we're actually also going over the believer in the body, but that's another story.

But Christ is the head of this body, the body that we're in. We were transferred into the kingdom or the kingship of Christ and that put us in this body. Now when you think about being part of a body, What things exist in the body that allows us to not just flop on the ground uncontrollably?

We have bones. We have a neurological network. It's phenomenal. I'm not going to get into biology because that's not my specialty anyways. But the Holy Spirit acts in the body of Christ as a neurological network to let somebody know who might be an eyeball, so to speak. and pass the message on that the eyes are seeing this, so that somebody else who might be a handy pair of hands, sorry that was a bad pun, I wasn't even trying, can come along and help when there's a need, when something's going on. But Christ is the head, he's the one that's orchestrating all of that, and we're part of that. That's pretty awesome. That's the kind of King that Christ is.

He's the beginning, the firstborn from the dead. Stan was talking about this when we were talking about that, you were asking about it. Christ is the firstborn of the dead and we've talked about it in this class a little bit before. The firstborn from the dead was required because dying separated us from the law, but he didn't stay dead. He was the firstborn and because we're identified with him, we're also born along with him and we're born again. the Bible to the Greek, it's Bios and Zoe.

Other than the Trinity, this is creating Zoe. I mean, Jesus was Bios when he was man on the face of the earth, and when he died, and God called him forth He's back to an eternal state, which we all can be. So God's actually creating something here. He's creating Zoe for everybody who is a believer. Jesus starts it, you know, through God, because God did it. Yes, it's a phenomenal thing. And we talked about being born again in a previous lesson. But it's really quite amazing that here's Jesus.

He's the firstborn from the dead. Nobody talks about doing anything after being dead, like born again. That's crazy talk. Except for that you and I, we are also not first born from the dead, but we are born from the dead. Being identified with Christ in his death, burial, resurrection, and ascension. So after being first born from the dead, so that he himself will come to have first place in everything. Christ had preeminence in the creation of everything.

We tried to screw it up. Adam fell. And he came back and he fixed it anyway so that he still after things having a fallen state has preeminence and authority and is firstborn from the dead so that he can continue to reign as the perfect king. That's pretty awesome. That's the kind of king that Jesus is. What kind of king is Jesus? This is the last slide. the kind of king that would call us sons.

Would somebody please turn to Romans 8.15 and read that aloud? For you have not received the spirit of slavery, meaning to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption, as sons by which we cry out, We're not merely subjects. We are grafted into the line of the king. You'll notice at Holly Hills often the words to songs you probably knew from somewhere else got changed just a little bit. What happened? That used to say king. And they change it often to something else in the lyrics, because the concept of king is not false, it's just not where we stopped being in relationship to God.

He has that authority, Christ has that authority, but Romans 8.15 there, just like Stan just read, we're sons. You're grafted into the line. We talked about the royal family a little bit. The rest of everybody else is considered to be a subject or a minion or some other term to describe being under that authority. We are not described that way as merely being just a subject of Christ.

It doesn't stop there. the relationship we have with him is far more intimate. It's not like, oh, he rode by and I actually got to see the crown, kind of a king. It's no, you're identified with him. Colossians 3, you're hidden with him. That's not the kind of king that we experience on an earthly level.

That's all I've got for the slides this morning. Any thoughts? Any questions? Disagreements? Hopefully not disagreements, but anything else? anyone else wants to ask or add? Some of these terms like you come up with, you know, the bride of Christ, the bride at work, the bride of Christ, the bride of the king, we're not a queen. Well, the problem that we come into is we are dealing with the God of the universe and trying to describe it in human language.

You always come up short. You know, that's one of my favorite parts of the book of John. At the end of the book of John, he says, if everything that Christ had done were written down in books, it would fill the world. that's the kind of king we have that when he was on his earthly ministry for the first time he's gonna come back and do even more cool things and again we'll have technology probably at that point in time it'll just fill up all the hard drives. But we won't have hard drives, we'll have something else that's cooler. We have God. He can store it and record it much better than zeros and ones.

But God describing us as the bride of Christ describes the passionate relationship that would explain why he would give himself up for his bride. It's a beautiful picture of that. I mean, I know in my own relationship with Jessica that it has taken me a while to fully understand and I will continue to learn and more deeply understand what it means to give up myself for my wife. When I was first married to her, what I expected in the relationship was, as a newlywed, very different from what I understand now. Because I'm more deeply understanding who Christ is, and more deeply understanding what Christ did for me. When I see what Christ did for me and I start to learn, I've been transferred, I've been identified, all these things are true, suddenly the concept of sacrifice for my wife becomes deep, it becomes very meaningful, and it becomes very powerful in our relationship.

I have got to clean up the house before Jessica gets home today. It's not trash, totally, but it's there. But she served me before she left and made sure the house was clean. She said, oh, I want to leave you with a clean house. Why would she do that? Because she loves me.

And in honoring of my wife in a tiny, tiny way, this is so tiny in comparison to the work of Christ, I want to make sure the house is clean and she gets something. As a tiny representation of what it is. But that's, as the bride of Christ, he was giving us an example so that as we live out as men and women on the earth, that's real. We don't just say it, we don't see it. If somebody said that was a good idea, we have seen it in this kingdom.

Any other thoughts or questions? We've got a little bit more time. Steve? Kind of the cap one, what we've talked about is that our position is very contingent upon the kind of king Jesus is. Absolutely. If he wasn't that kind of a king, our position could be a totally different thing. Yeah.

And that's where, when you look at the error of legalism and what that causes us to to think about our relationship to this kind of king that Christ is, it's pretty shocking when you discover the kind of king he is and the kind of position that he's created for you.

And it is contingent on there, and that's partially why today I was, as I was studying and preparing for this, I was like, man, the rest of the passage here, and he keeps going, we could keep going, but I figured I didn't have enough time to. finish all of Colossians. Let's look at the New Testament. I was going to say, Satan developed his kingdom through deceit as we read about in Genesis and how he deceived Adam and Eve and so everything that he got was through a lie and through deceit and contrary to God's character completely. And then you see Jesus developing his kingdom. He says he's the truth, the way, the life. And he makes this offer, like we talked about earlier. And so, which is the better choice? To stay where you are in the kingdom of the seed, or to be transferred into the kingdom? Absolutely. You know, that's being offered.

I don't know why that's so difficult to grasp. I once heard a guy ask a question. I thought that was, it kind of proved the point of the problem of humanity. Do you know you're being lied to? Often the case is no. Not always, obviously, because that's why there's tabloids. Actually, in the passages you read, they know the truth. They don't want to. but people surround themselves with people who are agreeing with that deception and we'll all be in it together and so then God's unjust because we've looked at our count, we've got a head count and we've figured out that we outnumber you God.

So you've got to do our thing because it's the democracy thing again. It's a problem. The second bell has been rung. Let's close in prayer. Heavenly Father we just thank you so much for sending your son to die for us and so that we may be transferred into his kingship. We thank you for being the kind of king that you are, Lord Jesus. We thank you for the power that you show in our daily lives and our moment-by-moment lives. We thank you for all that you've done and Lord we just pray that as you are our head and we are the body, as we are the bride, that you would allow us to observe and meditate on your activity in our lives, that we may grow together as a powerful body, strong in you. We thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.