Message of the Week

The Little White Community Church

Scripture: Col. 1:15-23  Sept. 14, 2025                   

Message: “The Supremacy of Christ!”

by Pastor George Gnade

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Introduction: 1. It is very easy in our world order to think that size determines value. Therefore, a large city is more important than a small town or a large church is more important than a small one.

2. But Paul’s letter to the Colossians turns that idea on its head. This was one of the smaller towns and one of the smaller churches. But it was just as important to God as the others.

a. Paul had not even started this church. Epaphras did. Yet Paul wrote to them and told them he was regularly praying for them.

b. He knew of their struggles and prayed they would learn God’s will and have the grace, patience, and endurance to do God’s will.

3. He was thrilled Epaphras had taught them about the Lord Jesus Christ and how God the Father “had rescued them from the dominion of darkness and brought them into the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, even the forgiveness of our sins” (Col. 1:13).

4. That brings us to the passage we are studying today, a passage centered in Jesus Christ and who He is.

A. The very first thing Paul told them was that Jesus “is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation” (Col. 1:15).

1. In Heb. 1:3, Jesus is called “the radiance of (God’s) glory, the exact representation of His being.” 

a. We are 93 million miles from the sun. All we can see of the sun are the radiant light beams that come forth from it. In the same way, Jesus is God’s way of revealing Himself to us. He is “the radiance of His glory.”

b. How can you take a picture of an invisible being? Yet Jesus is the exact image, the exact representation of God’s being. As Jesus told His disciples: “He who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14: 9). 

2. He is also called the “firstborn over all creation.” 

a. Jesus is God coming forth from God, the only begotten Son of God. As it says in John 1:1, “In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God.”

b. Everyone and everything else was created by the Son, “visible and invisible.”  Not only that, but “all things were created by Him and for Him.” Jesus is the glory of God, and every awesome thing that God has made was meant to glorify the Son, even as it also glorifies the Father.

c. In the Jewish culture, the firstborn son had pre- eminence over the whole family. So the Lord Jesus Christ has always had pre-eminence over everything that He created.

3. Having told us that all things were created by the Son and to bring glory and honor to the Son, Paul takes this one step further. 

a. In Col. 1:17, he writes: “He is before all things and in Him all things are held together.”

b. Scientists have helped us understand various laws of the universe. The law of gravity is the one most of us are familiar with. Jesus made and maintains these laws. 

c. He literally holds everything together. When the Bible warns us that in the last days there will be earth-quakes and all kinds of natural disasters, it is because these disasters are reminding us that this world is going to come to an end. And all the problems of this world are warning us that that time is getting closer and closer.

4. People may think they can stop all of this. They can’t. But Jesus knows what He is allowing, and Jesus knows how and when it will come to an end. Only God knows when He will return.

a. Remember the story of the great storm when Jesus was sleeping in the boat and His disciples had to wake Him up. They said: “Don’t you know we are perishing?” 

b. Jesus spoke to the storm and the waters immed-iately quieted down. And then the disciples were terrified of Jesus because “even the winds and the waves obeyed Him” (Mark 4: 35-41).

5. So remember, even when we think the world is out of control, Jesus is very much in control. Everything is held together by Him.

B. Not only is Jesus the One who created everything and the One through whom the whole world is held together, in Col. 1:18, it says: “He is the head of His body, the church.”

1. Here is an illustration we can all understand. If you cut off my head, my body can’t function. If I am brain dead, I am basically dead. My head controls my body.

a. Jesus is the head of the church. He has sent His Spirit to work in our hearts and to draw all kinds of men and women to Him.

b. If the beginning of the world is called God’s first creation, the beginning and growth of the church is Jesus’ new creation. The old will pass away, but the new has come to stay (II Cor. 5: 17)..

c. If Jesus maintains the old, how much more does He maintain and control the new.

2. In Col. 1:18, it continues: “He is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that is everything He may have the pre-eminence.”

a. When Jesus died on the cross and rose again, He was the first to die once and for all and rise to never die again (Rom. 6:8-11; Heb. 9: 27-28).

b. Of even greater importance, Jesus paid the penalty for our sins on that cross so that we can receive new life in Him (Col. 1: 19-22).

3. When Adam and Eve sinned, God said they would surely die (Gen. 2:15). 

a. But this happened in two steps. Immediately, they died spiritually. But Adam lived almost a 1,000 yrs. before he died physically. 

b. The Bible says we are born dead in our sins, even though we may live a relatively long life on this earth. But because Jesus rose victoriously, all those who truly love the Lord immediately receive a new spiritual life from Him. When we die physically, our spirits go to be with Him. 

c. When we die physically, Paul wrote: “Away from the body is to be at home with the Lord” (II Cor. 5: 6-9). When Jesus comes again, our physical bodies will be raised and transformed to become like His resurrected body. That is also when our resurrected bodies will be reunited with our spirits. So we will forever be with the Lord.

4. All of this is only possible because Jesus is the head of His church, which is like unto His body in this world. Amazingly, He works in and through us to both grow the church and to maintain the church.

In Conclusion:

1. The good news of the gospel is that while this world is coming to an end and will soon pass away, God’s new world with a new heavens and earth will never pass away. We will live with Christ forever. 

2. God’s plan has always been that in everything the Lord Jesus Christ should “have the pre-eminence” (Col. 1:18). He does and always will. Amen!