I thank you guys for allowing me to come and worship with you again this evening. It is good for my soul to do so. If you have your Bibles, turn with me to Colossians chapter 1. Colossians chapter 1. And this week, as you know, we're on the Lord's Day 6 in the Heidelberg Catechism. And my focus this evening is going to be on the sufficiency of Christ, the sufficiency of Christ. So I'm going to read here the first 23 verses of Colossians chapter 1. This is the word of the Lord. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God and Timothy our brother, to the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae, grace to you and peace from God our Father. We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints. Because of the hope laid up for you in heaven, of this you've heard before in the Word of the Truth, the Gospel, which has come to you as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and growing, as it also does among you since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth, just as you learned it from Ephras, our brother, fellow servant. He is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf and has made known to us your love in the Spirit. And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will and all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to Him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. May you be strengthened with all power according to His glorious might for all endurance and patience with joy, giving thanks to the Father who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He's delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. He's the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, for by Him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through Him and for Him. And He's before all things, and in Him all things hold together. And He's the head of the body, the church. He's the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything He might be preeminent. For in Him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through Him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of His cross. And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, He's now reconciled in His body of flesh by His death in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before Him. if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the Gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister." Would you pray with me? Heavenly Father, we thank You for Your Word. And Lord, we thank You that You've allowed us to gather here tonight on this Lord's Day to worship You in spirit and in truth. And Lord, I pray that Your Holy Spirit would humble us. And Lord, that You would use Your Word to help us see and savor Christ more. You would use Your Word to conform us more into His image so that we may glorify You. So Lord, thank you for this time together. And I pray all this in Jesus name. Amen. I want to give you a little bit of background on the church at Colossae, and I think that this will help us to understand this text in regards to helping us see the sufficiency of our Savior, Jesus Christ. And the church of Colossae, like many churches even today, they had an inadequate view of the person of Jesus Christ. And I hope we can resist the temptation this evening to just gloss over that. They had a perspective on Christ. They didn't lack a perspective on Christ. They had a perspective on Christ. but their perspective on Christ was governed by error. It wasn't governed by truth. And this error led them to this inadequacy regarding the person of Jesus and consequently the work of Jesus Christ. And we know that this inadequate view of Jesus led the church at Colossae to doubts regarding the sufficiency of Christ. And we know that the doubts about the sufficiency of Jesus led to this discontentment with Christ, his person, his work. And we know that the Church of Colossae's discontentment about the sufficiency of Christ led to bizarre, idolatrous worship practices that took place in the context of the local church and it took their church's emphasis off of Jesus Christ for lesser things. And Colossians, it supports what we know about this church. The book itself supports what we know about this church. The Apostle Paul, he commends the church in Colossians in chapter two, verse three, he says, that in Christ is hidden all the treasure of wisdom and knowledge. And then he goes on and he exhorts this, that no one may delude the church with plausible arguments. Okay, so the church here is facing this pressure. There are these wolves in sheep's clothing that were beginning to gain influence inside this local assembly and Paul's concerned and we can hear the concern as we read this letter together. He goes on and he continues in verses 8 through 10 of chapter 2, he says, see to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. Not according to Christ. For in Him, in Christ, he's saying, the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily. And you've been filled in Him, who's the head of all rule and authority. And if you were to skip down to verses 16 through 20, Paul later says, he says, therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. And as a side note, it's not referring to the Lord's Day here. Paul's addressing Judaistic ceremonial practices, not the everlasting moral law. But Paul goes on to say that these, these Judaistic ceremonial law practices, these are a shadow of things to come. They were pointing us. to Christ, but the substance belongs to Christ. And then shifting and addressing Gentile philosophers that were also gaining influence in this local church. Paul says, let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by a sensuous mind and not holding fast to the head. Speaking of Jesus, from whom the whole body nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments grows with the growth that is from God. If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations? So it should be evident to us that there's a crisis in this local church. They're being influenced, they're being taken somewhere and they don't even realize it. And the reason why they don't realize it is because they're not grounded in the Word of God. So the Church of Colossae is searching What we can pull from the passage that I just read you, the church in Colossae, they're searching for wisdom and for knowledge outside of Christ, apart from Christ. They're being taken captive by philosophies and superstitions and human traditions. And they're having, or being pressured, and influenced by people who are claiming to have ecstatic, emotionally charged, superstitious worship gatherings that include so-called visions and the worship of angels. And the result of this is a people not holding fast to Christ. who's their only sufficient mediator between God and man. That's the result of this. And we have Paul speaking to this church that he's never visited before, and he's speaking to them in love, he's affirming them where he can, and he's asking them, is not Christ sufficient? Is not Christ sufficient? And that's a valid question for us to ask ourselves this evening, isn't it? Is not Christ sufficient? If you answer yes, is Christ sufficient? If you answer yes to that important question, and I have to ask a follow-up question, is Christ's sufficiency informing your private worship and your public worship? Is his sufficiency informing your private worship and your public worship? That's a valid question, I believe, because we see that an inadequate view of Jesus and his sufficiency had a direct impact on the private and the public worship of the church at Colossae. So grace, may our minds be renewed by God's word. on the sufficiency of Christ. And by God's grace and the Holy Spirit living in us, may we repent of those areas that we're being taken captive by philosophies and passions that drive us away from our sufficient Savior. And so let's talk about Christ's sufficiency and how it is that He is a sufficient Savior. I'm going to kind of do that for the rest of this evening with you. And if you're taking notes, I'd encourage you to jot this down. Christ is sufficient. because he is truly man and truly righteous. Christ is sufficient because he is truly man and truly righteous. Colossians 1, our primary text, verses 21-22 says, And you, speaking of the church at Colossae, and certainly because God's Word is living and active of us as well, You, who were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, He, speaking of Jesus, has now reconciled in His body of flesh by His death in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before Him. Paul says that Jesus has this body of flesh. And the word flesh in Scripture doesn't always mean sinful or carnal, and it certainly doesn't mean sinful or carnal in this context. But the Greek here, sarcosamadi, it means the physical, sinless body of Jesus. I like the way the NASB puts it. It says His fleshly body, Christ's fleshly body. In the Heidelberg Catechism for this Lord's Day, it answers why a sinless, fleshly body is significant. It says that God's justice demands that human nature, which is sinned, must pay for its sin. But a sinner could never pay for others. And certainly we see that that's the Apostle Paul's logic here in Colossians. but also in Philippians, right? It makes me think of Philippians, and you guys are aware of Philippians 2, right? Verses 5-8, it says, "...have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus." We have Paul kind of propping Christ up as an example here, but, "...who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped. But he made himself nothing, and taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form." He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. So why is Christ being man significant? And even put it... man, a righteous man. Why is Christ being a righteous man significant? As Reformed Baptists, we believe the scripture teaches what's called, we look back to the garden, right, in Genesis, and we see this period of time called the, we have the covenant of works here that we see happen in the garden, and then we see the covenant of grace promised in the Old Testament, and then we see the covenant of grace concluded in the New Testament. But this covenant of works here, And Adam, pre-fallen Adam, had the capacity to obey God and earn eternal life. He had that capacity. Adam had an eschatology that he was working toward. And then we see that sin enters the picture, and Adam, he sinned in his flesh, and as a result, We're marred by original sin and we commit actual sins of the flesh on a daily basis. Now Adam's sin in this covenant of works, it didn't make the covenant of works null and void. The covenant of works was God's standard. It was God's standard and God didn't modify His standard based on Adam's disobedience. The covenant of works remained a requirement to be upheld, but it had to be upheld by another, and it had to be upheld by a greater Adam. And so Christ came in the flesh as the greater Adam, and he upheld the covenant of works so that you and I, his children, can enjoy the covenant of grace. So we have the first Adam, in his flesh, rebels against God, all of mankind is tainted by original sin, commits actual sins, and could never uphold the covenant of works, God's standard. But Jesus Christ, in the flesh, fully righteous, the greater Adam, the second Adam, as Romans 5 teaches us about. upheld the covenant of works so that we can enjoy the covenant of grace. So Christ is truly man. He's the second Adam and he physically died to pay for the sins of God's church, to God the Father whose character demands and requires justice so that there can be reconciliation. And we shouldn't think about Jesus being fully man, righteous man. and ended at his death, right? It would be incomplete. But he physically, he bodily rose from the dead, right? 1 Corinthians 15, the Apostle Paul as well, he teaches us this in verses 12 to 24 about the importance of the resurrection. He says, if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there's no resurrection of the dead? But if there's no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We're even found to be misrepresenting God. because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise, if it's true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you're still in your sins. And those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of most people, we are of all people most to be pitied. And get this, but in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead. The firstfruits of those who've fallen asleep. For as by a man, the first Adam, came death. By a man, Christ, the second Adam, in the flesh. By a man, has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. So by man, the first Adam came death. And by an eternally bodily resurrected man, the second Adam, Christ came the resurrection of the dead. So there's this salvific benefit to Christ being truly man. But there are also some other benefits to Christ being truly a righteous man that only magnify the sufficiency of our Savior. Pastor Ryan, last week, he took you to Hebrews chapter 2, but look at or listen at the Hebraic author's comments in Hebrews chapter 4, just a couple of chapters over there, verses 14 through 16. You're probably familiar with this passage. The Hebraic author, he says, Since then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens. Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. And because Christ is truly man, he can sympathize with our weaknesses and he can sympathize with our temptations while maintaining absolute perfection. So think of your struggles this evening. Those struggles that you're tempted to believe are only unique to you. Think of your sufferings. Those sufferings that you're prone to think are only unique to you. Now think of Christ and His humanity. who the text says can sympathize with our weaknesses, can sympathize with our temptations. And he never sinned. And as a result of that, Hebrews says, we can confidently draw near to the throne of grace. And we can receive mercy there. And we can find help in our time of need there. Because of Christ's humanity, the throne of grace is open to us. It's open. So believer, Christ is sufficient because He's truly man and He's righteous. Christ is sufficient because He's truly God. In Colossians 1, going back to our primary passage, verses 15 through 17, It says, He, speaking of Christ, is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities. And all things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. Jesus is truly God. He didn't become God and He didn't subtract or suspend His deity in the incarnation. Jesus is truly God and eternally so. He was active in creation along with the Father and the Spirit and Paul says that all things are held together by Him. And certainly we know that Jesus has a whole authority in heaven and on earth. So Jesus is truly God. Why is this important? The Heidelberg Catechism has a great succinct answer to that as well. It says, by the power of His, speaking of Christ's, by the power of His divinity, He might bear the weight of God's anger in His humanity and earn for us and restore to us righteousness. In other words, only God can measure up to God's standards. Only God can measure up to God's standards and all glories do His name because He allows His church, He allows us fallen, sinful, broken people to benefit from His obedience, from His character, His immutable character. 1 Corinthians 5.21, for our sake He, speaking of the Father, made Him, the Son, to be sin, who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. In Christ, believer, in Christ, you have the righteousness of God and Jesus made this possible because He's God. Paul also says in Colossians 1 that Christ is the image of the invisible God. He's the image of the invisible God. Jesus, he reveals to us the God who's otherwise invisible. And there are no other acceptable images of God. None. And Paul's putting that to rest for this church that's really struggling with sufficiency of Christ and trying to make up for that struggle by adding all these additional things. So how does Christ being the image of the invisible God, how does that relate to his sufficiency? John Calvin, he answers this question for us in a commentary that he wrote on Colossians. He says this, we must be careful not to look for him anywhere else for apart from Christ, whatever offers itself to us in the name of God will turn out to be an idol. So what's being offered to you this evening in the name of God? Certainly it's subtler than that in our minds, right? We may not label those passions within us as idols coming to us in the form of a savior. A lot of times in our confessions, we're not as sharp with putting sins and struggles and temptations in those types of, we don't form those types of words around them a lot. But they are. The passions at war within us present themselves in the form of a Savior. So what is it that you find yourself occupied with this evening? What is it that takes up residence in your mind? What is it that dominates large amounts of your time? What is it that you're reading? What is it that you're setting before your eyes? How are you spending your money? How are you treating others? The answers to these questions are important, and maybe even take this evening, this Lord's Day, even now, to jot some of the answers down of that question, because the answers to those questions demonstrate whether or not you believe that Christ is sufficient. Because idols are insufficient. When we move away from Scripture in our thinking, in our worship, in our behavior, and we claim that we're worshiping God, we're only deceiving ourselves. And we can be really good at that, right? Scripture, right? Someone who's grounded in Scripture, and have their thinking navigated by the Word of God, which means that their worship, will be navigated by the Word of God. Those of us who attend the Lord's Day worship but through the week we're disengaged from the Lord and we find ourselves not worshiping and magnifying Christ on Sunday, but worshiping and magnifying a substitute image of Christ made up in our own minds or made up in a mind not informed by God's word. So there's this, can be this disconnect throughout the rest of the week. And on top of that, our culture, Just like the culture that's influencing the Church of Colossae here paints a picture of a Jesus who never existed, right? Even folks who claim to be a part of the church can often prop up a fictional Jesus. His love redefined, his death and his resurrection in allegory, right? His person set against the God of the Old Testament. And then even those who mean well, that go outside of Scripture to tell a story about Jesus, oftentimes in movie form, fail to capture His deity. And draws out that idolatry proneness that already resides in our hearts. This is insufficient. This is insufficient. But Christ, who is truly God, as documented in the Scriptures is sufficient. He's the only acceptable image of the invisible God. And He's worthy of our worship. So Christ is sufficient because He's truly man. He's sufficient because He's truly righteous. He's sufficient because He's truly God and eternally so. Praise God because He took people like us, who were once alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, and He's reconciled in His body of flesh by His death in order to present us holy and blameless and above reproach before Him. Allow me to read to you question 19 in the Heidelberg Catechism, and then what I want to do is just give you kind of a few practical steps that, I can't say, thus saith the Lord with them, but some practical steps that I think could help magnify your perspective on the sufficiency of Christ. But I love the conclusion of Lord's Day 6, question 19 in the Heidelberg Catechism. He says, how do you come to know this? And for our purposes, let's rephrase this question a little bit. How can we be confident? How can Grace Baptist Chapel be confident in the sufficiency of Christ? Here's the answer. The Holy Gospel tells us, God Himself began to reveal the Gospel already in paradise, and later He proclaimed it by the holy patriarchs and prophets, and portrayed it by the sacrifices and other ceremonies of the law. Finally, He fulfilled it through His own dear Son. All of Scripture Old Testament, New Testament is pointing us and faithfully reminding us that Christ is absolutely sufficient. Therefore, abide in Him. A few steps. or a few things that I think could help you to, if you implemented these, help to maximize your perspective on the sufficiency of Christ. And I hope that you could see, this is one of the reasons why I love the scriptures. We see churches like the Church of Colossae and we can make easy parallels to the church of today, right? We're not more mature than the Church of Colossae. But we do have a lot of resources that can help us to avoid error in our thinking in regards to the sufficiency of Christ. A few steps here that I recommend. Have regular rhythms of devotion time that are informed and navigated by the scripture. So both your prayer life and your Bible intake. Have this regular rhythm that the Lord will faithfully use to help you anticipate the Lord's day on Sunday. Second, take advantage of your church's library. It's been carefully curated. So it may not be the biggest library on the peninsula, but I guarantee you it's the most careful library on the peninsula. And there are books there to help magnify your perspective on who God is for you in Christ Jesus. And so it would be a shame to waste that. Next is grow in being aware of the plagues of your own heart and mortify your flesh. I think I talked about this the last time that I was here, and I think we can look to both Romans 7 going into Romans 8 to kind of support this, but as we grow in maturity as believers, we really should grow in our awareness of God's holiness. God's holiness doesn't increase because he's immutable, but our perspective or our awareness of his holiness should continue to increase as we grow in spiritual maturity, and also the awareness of the plagues of our own heart, our own sinfulness. And we see the Apostle Paul talk about that in Romans 7, right? I do the things that I don't want to do, I don't do the things that I want to do, what a wretched man that I am. And then he moves right into reminding himself that there's now no condemnation for those that are in Christ Jesus. And our perspective on both of those things increasing should help us more and more to see how sufficient Jesus Christ really is. And so grow in that. Grow in your ability to discern truth from error. And a good question to ask yourself when you're listening to a sermon, when you're reading a book, or you're listening to a lecture, you're at a conference, or you're in conversation with people, a good question to ask yourself to help you grow in your ability to discern truth from error is, is this making much of Christ, or is it making much of man? It's a good question to ask yourself. And then finally, Christ-centered friendships. I may not have a lot in common with any of you in this room, I don't know if I do or not, but what we do have in common is the most intimate thing that we can have in common, and that's Christ Jesus. And so, we should be taking advantage of that, right? Far beyond just Lord's Day worship on Sunday, but one-on-one, Christ-centered, gospel-focused friendships that poke and prod at our hearts and help us to love Christ more, to hate sin more. that hold us accountable. Those types of friendships are gifts from God. And I'm certain that you could find those friendships in this local church. And so my prayer for you guys, as you continue to kind of journey through this Heidelberg Catechism, is that your perspective on Christ would increase. And that we, as God's church, can neglect all of those things that are after our attention to distract us from worshiping Christ in spirit and in truth and seeing Him as our all-sufficient Savior. Would you pray with me? Heavenly Father, I thank You for... God, I thank You for Your Word, God. I thank You that, Lord, we can look at churches in history, and we can see that their struggles were not unique to them, but there are struggles that we're still plagued with today. God's sufferings, temptations, sins, error in our thinking, Lord. And so, God, I pray that you would help us grow, Lord. Help us to have a bigger picture, who you are for us in Christ. so that our worship can be pleasing to you God. So thank you for this time that we've had together. We love you and praise you in Jesus name. Amen.