
The Treasure & The Pearl, Part 2
Last week we spent time considering two parables Jesus taught about the kingdom of heaven. “‘The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it’” (Matthew 13:44–46).
These parables taught us that citizens of heaven’s kingdom understand the value of the king and His kingdom. They recognize that being able to know and follow of Jesus is a treasure worth far more than anything else they could every lay eyes or hands on.
And they gladly spend their lives on Jesus and His kingdom and do not count it a sacrifice because knowing Christ now and into eternity does not compare with any suffering they might endure in His service.
And as I worked on that message last week, particularly as it came to a close, I felt a particular burden that we wouldn’t just focus on the call to sacrifice everything for Jesus. Because even if we say that Jesus is a treasure worth giving up everything for, if all we talk about is the giving up of things for Jesus, we could still end up with a lop-sided view of these parables and, as a result, of the whole kingdom of heaven.
A major point in these parables is that nobody had to convince the man or the merchant to sell everything to gain their treasures. They recognized the absolute value of what they had found and in their joy went to sell all that they had. There was no foot-dragging.
And so I knew we couldn’t just wrap up last week by saying “go give up everything for Jesus!” We had to say, “Look at this treasure! Behold this pearl!” I wanted us to have the experience of cracking open the buried box and feeling astonished at what we had inside. I wanted us to taste the wonder of the merchant when his eyes first fell on the pearl and he couldn’t think about anything else.
I wanted us to have this experience because, according to Jesus, this is how the kingdom works. This is what it means to be a Christian. We recognize and value the treasure of Jesus and His kingdom.
And there’s an additional burden there because I have a concern that I have felt my entire adult life, a concern that pushed me towards pastoral ministry twenty years ago.
It’s a concern that many people in North America who call themselves Christians are not animated or captivated or even all that interested in the real Jesus as their all-supreme treasure. They are willing to include a little bit of Jesus into their lives if that means Jesus helping them get what they want out of life. But how many people who call themselves Christians and even go to church every Sunday are really interested in the living Lord Jesus Christ for His own sake?
It’s a question that haunts me. And it’s a question made worse as I look out on the many churches in our land. I’m convinced that many Christians do not have the living Lord Jesus at the centre of their lives because many churches do not have the living Lord Jesus at the centre of their life together.
Many churches have given in to human-centred ministry, doing what they do, and whatever they can do, to help people be comfortable and pleased. Their statements of faith might say true things about Jesus, they might sing about Jesus, they might talk about Jesus, but the actual living Lord Jesus seems to have very little to do with what actually happens in that church, what fills up their calendar, how decisions are made, and how they go about doing what they do.
And if it could be proved that Jesus never rose from the dead, and his body were still lying in a grave in the Middle East, it would basically make no difference for that church or the people who attend its services. They could get along fine without the living Lord Jesus because they already have been.
I so do not want that to be true for Emmanuel Baptist Church. I so long for us to not be a church that is just content to say some true things, run some good programs, makes people feel welcome here on Sunday morning, and that’s it. A church that has the appearance of godliness while practically denying its power. A church that could survive with a dead Jesus.
I long for us to be a church that is centred on, devoted to, and captivated with the living Lord Jesus Christ because we are a church made up of people whose minds and hearts and lives are centred on, devoted to, and captivated with Jesus. A church of people who gather to fix their eyes on Jesus, to feast on Jesus, to hear from Jesus, to submit to Jesus, to learn Jesus, to put on Jesus, to worship Jesus, to be the body of Jesus together.
A church that could not survive a day if Christ were not alive and active because His worthiness and His supremacy is not just something you hear from the pulpit from time to time, but is the very reason that we exist.
And so that’s why, as we ended last week, I didn’t feel like we were done. We read from Hebrews 1 and Colossians 1 and Revelation 19 together and considered so very briefly what is it that makes Jesus so infinitely valuable. But I went home with a sense that we had just gotten started.
So we’re going to go back to one of those passages that we ended with last week—Colossians 1:15-20. This is one of the high points in the whole New Testament in terms of describing and exalting the Lord Jesus. And with the permission of the other elders we’re going to walk through these verses together.
Initially I thought we’d take a week to do this. Yesterday I realized I had a whole sermon written and had only made it through the first three verses. And so we’re going to take today and next week to walk through these six verses as best as we can/
But in a sense, don’t consider these two separate messages. Consider these part two and three to last week. Imagine us kneeling down and pausing to stare into the treasure chest, sitting down to study the pearl, marvelling and becoming more convinced together that this Jesus is worthy.
Colossians 1: The Kingdom And Its King
As we turn to Colossians 1, we see that this letter begins, like many of Paul’s letters, with thanksgiving, followed by prayer, which quickly turns, without even starting a new sentence, turns into worshipful instruction about the God to whom He prays.
Verse 9 and 10 pray that the Colossians may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord,” and as we find in verse 12, this includes “giving thanks to the Father.” And that’s Paul’s launching-off point to describing this Father: He’s the one who has qualified us to “share in the inheritance of the saints in light” and who, verse 13, “has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son.”
There’s that language of kingdom we’ve seen so much in Matthew. And Paul’s view of the kingdom is the same as Jesus’. The kingdom of Jesus is where Jesus reigns as king, rescuing people from darkness and bringing them under His saving authority.
And having mentioned Jesus at the end of verse 13, Paul can’t stop talking about him. This king, this beloved Son of God, is the one in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
When we were a part of Satan’s kingdom, darkness wasn’t just around us—it was in us. We loved it. If we’re going to come under the rule of Jesus, we need to be redeemed and forgiven, and we have that in Jesus.
And we’re just getting started. Verse 15 continues this description of Jesus. In most of our modern English Bibles, verse 15 continues a new sentence, if not a new paragraph. But the King James Version preserves the fact that in the original language, verse 15 opens up with the word “who.” This just continues of the same sentence that started back in verse 9, and continues to describe the Son who was introduced in verse 13.
The Father has transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption the forgiveness of sins, who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of creation, by whom all things were created… and on it goes from there. This is all about the king in whose kingdom we’ve been transferred into.
At the same time, there’s a reason we tend to start a new sentence in English, and even why verses 15-20 are grouped off by themselves. These verses do fit together as a unit and are even written with a distinct style. Some think that these may be the words to an ancient hymn that Paul repurposed for this section.
And we should know that Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit, is being deliberate here. It’s not just that he is personally taken up with Jesus and can’t stop talking about him. It’s that, but more than that, it’s because the Colossians that he’s writing to were in danger of losing sight of Jesus. They were in danger of being taken “captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition” as we read in chapter 2. They were in danger of thinking that Jesus wasn’t enough, and they needed to fill up somewhere else.
So Paul writes about Jesus, reminding the Colossians, and years later, us, about how supreme Jesus is. That’s what we mean when we talk about the “supremacy of Jesus.” We mean that He is supreme, better than, higher than, stronger than, greater than, anything or anyone else.
And while there are various ways we can divide up these verses, we’re just going to consider them in two main swaths: the supremacy of Jesus over creation in verses 15-17, which we’ll consider this week, and the supremacy of Jesus over the New Creation, in verses 18-20, which we’ll look at next week. And in regards to creation, we see Jesus’ supremacy on display in five key ways.
1. The Pinnacle of Creation (v. 15a)
First, verse 15 says that Jesus is the image of the invisible God.
God is invisible. We can see what He has made, but not Him. But from the beginning of creation, God has intended to be seen and known by those who are made in His image.
“Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’ So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:26–27).
God made people in His image, meant to represent Him here on the earth, and Genesis closely ties that to the idea of ruling over the earth. After all, God is the king, and so representing Him here on the earth means doing what He does—ruling, reigning, having dominion.
But we know how the story went, and how badly we blew it, surrendering to the snake and having the image of God be marred and broken.
And so Jesus comes as the second Adam, the perfect image of God. Jesus is supreme in this way in that He is not just in the image of God. He is the image of God. Hebrews 1:3 describes this when it says that Jesus is “the exact imprint” (or representation) “of his nature.”
We were made in God’s image, meant to reflect and represent him as far as we could. Jesus is the image of God, as perfect a representation of His glory as the sunbeam to the sun.
This means, at one level, that Jesus is the absolutely perfect and complete human being. He is everything that humans were meant to be in total perfection. And if humans were the crowning achievement of creation, this means that Jesus is the pinnacle of creation as the perfect revelation of the creator.
But it surely means more than this, because Jesus is not just a man but also has a divine nature and is very God of very God. So in Christ, we not only see everything a human was meant to be, we see a visible revelation of who God is.
Look at Jesus teaching, healing, showing compassion, refuting his enemies, feeding the hungry, turning away those who thought they had enough—in all of this, we see what God is like. What Jesus is like, God is like, because Jesus is the image of God.
2. The Firstborn of Creation (vv. 15b)
Next, verse 15 tells us that Jesus is the firstborn of all creation. It’s unfortunate that some groups, like those who call themselves “Jehovah’s Witnesses,” have jumped on this phrase and tried to use it as proof that Jesus is a part of creation, and fundamentally a created being, not the eternal Son of God.
If He’s the firstborn of creation, that means He was the first created thing, right?
And this is so unfortunate for two reasons. First, it’s not true, and second, it means that when we get to this verse we can struggle to just enjoy it and appreciate it because we’re on the defensive.
Let’s take care of both of these problems by thinking back to some of the ways this word is used in the Old Testament. We should remember that in the economy of the ancient world, the son who was born first in a family had a special privileged position. He would often receive double the inheritance of his brothers. He would often have a position of prominence in the family.
But often, God worked around these patterns. Think about Isaac being chosen instead of Ishmael, or Jacob instead of Esau, or how the Messiah came through Judah and not the firstborn Reuban
As well, a few times in the Old Testament the word “firstborn” was used to show that someone had a position of greatness and prominence over everybody else, even if they were not literally born first. Think of Exodus 4:22-23: “Thus says the Lord, Israel is my firstborn son, and I say to you, ’Let my son go that he may serve me.”
Israel was not actually the first nation to be created. And Israel himself, as we’ve seen, was born second. But God chose Israel and gave them a privileged position out of all of the nations, and so he calls them His firstborn to speak to that prominence.
Similarly, Jeremiah 31:9 says, “I am a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn.” In this case, “Ephraim” is used as a stand-in for the whole nation, even though Ephraim was definitely not the firstborn tribe of Israel.
Or consider Psalm 89, which says in verse 20, “I have found David, my servant; with my holy oil I have anointed him,” and then in verse 27, “And I will make him the firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth.”
David was not the first king of Israel, let alone the earth. And he wasn’t even the firstborn son in his family—in fact he was the last. But he is called the “firstborn” because he is first in importance, priority, and privilege above every other king on the earth.
And so it is that Jesus is the firstborn of creation. Jesus, in His divine nature, was never created. Jesus, in his human nature, was not the first man to be born. But He is the firstborn in the sense that David was the firstborn among the kings—first in prominence, privilege, priority.
When Jesus took on a body He became a part of this creation. And the position he holds relative to the rest of the created world is that of firstborn. Nobody is more important than Him. Nobody is more privileged than him. Nobody is greater than Him. Nobody is closer to God the Father or has enjoyed the Father’s pleasure as much as He has.
Go through all the halls of history, line up every great leader, artist, creator, inventor, innovator, writer, and Jesus towers above them all, standing first in rank with nobody close behind.
But notice—verse 15 doesn’t just say that Jesus is the firstborn of all humanity. It says He is the firstborn of all creation. He holds the highest rank out of anything else that has ever been made.
This world is full of wonders. What’s the most incredible thing you’ve seen on this earth? I’ve had my breath sucked away by the expanse of the Grand Canyon, the towering heights of the Rocky Mountains, the majesty of a herd of elk thundering across the prairies, the tiny miracle of a new born baby.
And that’s just here on earth. In the last few decades, thanks to the Hubble and James Webb telescopes, we’ve been confronted with majesty previous generations had no idea about. Nebulas and massive superstructures of galaxies and deep field views showing a scale and scope to our universe that is beyond what we can fathom.
And Jesus is the firstborn of all creation. Higher, better, more prominent than it all. Nothing that has ever been made can compete with Him.
3. The Sphere of Creation (v. 16)
And the reason for this—the reason for Jesus’ position of prominence over all creation—is given in verse 16: “For by him all things were created.”
This is why Jesus, in His divine nature, cannot be seen as a created being—how could He be ultimately created if all things were created by him?
This word “by” here is very interesting. In the original language this is a little word that can be translated a couple of different ways. The ESV has a text note that indicates that the word “in” is a valid way of rendering this word. That’s actually how the NIV puts it: “For in him all things were created” (Col 1:16a, NIV).
And that’s probably the best way of understanding this. All things were created in Christ. As Bible scholar Douglas Moo put it, “all of God’s creative work took place ‘in terms of’ or ‘in reference to’ Christ.” [Douglas J. Moo, The Letters to the Colossians and to Philemon, The Pillar New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 2008), 121. ]
You might still wonder what that means, and if we read ahead to the end of verse 16 we see what this means. What does it mean that all things were created in Christ? It means that “all things were created through him and for him.”
Jesus was the agent of creation. If the Father was the architect of Creation, Jesus was like the foreman, the one who made creation happen.
This gets into some powerfully beautiful truth that goes all the way back to Genesis 1. According to that chapter, how does God create? He uses words. He speaks, and things appear. Is it any coincidence that, in John 1, Jesus is introduced as “the word” who was with God and was God, through whom all things were made, and apart from whom nothing was made that was made (John 1:1-3)?
God creates by means of His word, and that Word is a Person, His Son, the second member of the Trinity.
So Jesus is greater than all of creation because He is the one through whom all things were made. Nothing that exists was made apart from Jesus.
So that’s one part of what it means for all things to be made in Jesus. He is the one through whom things were made. But that’s not all. Verse 16 tells us that “all things were created through him and for him.”
He is not just the agent of creation, He is the reason and purpose and goal of creation. Everything was made for Him. All things were made for Jesus not because He needed anything, but out of the overflow of His glory.
Like a work of art reflects the creativity of its creator, all things were made through Jesus to reflect His majesty and power. If a painting or a song or a house reflects on the person who made it, what does a billion billion galaxies tell us about Jesus?
And this won’t just happen by accident. Jesus being actively worshipped as He orders and rules over this universe according to His will is the goal of all things.
Ephesians 1:10 tells us that God’s “plan for the fullness of time” is to “unite all things in him” (that is, Christ). We get a picture of this in Revelation 5:13 when John hears “every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, saying, ‘To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!”’” (Revelation 5:13).
Jesus is first in rank over all creation because all things were made through Him and for Jesus. And that goes beyond just the things we can see. Look at verse 16: “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” (Colossians 1:16).
Our eyes do not see everything. Far from it. Our eyes are sensitive to a small section of the electromagnetic spectrum, and right now this room is full of things like cell phone signals and Wifi and Bluetooth signals that are real, and effect us, even though they are invisible to us.
So perhaps we shouldn’t be to surprised that according to Scripture, this universe is filled with a lot more than we can see. Ancient beings, powers that have watched and directed the rise and fall of empires, who intersect and interact with the visible world in ways that we do not see but definitely experience.
Daniel chapter 10 describes angels in battle, princes of Persia and Greece fighting against angels who defend the people of God. And these are not human princes. These are spiritual rulers, the ones who are really pulling the strings and directing the flow of history. Paul describes these forces when he writes that “we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12).
We live in a haunted universe, full of beings ancient and strong, structured in invisible empires. Look at verse 16—thrones, plural. Dominions, plural. Rulers, plural. Authorities, plural. Powerful hierarchies. Some are righteous, exercising their authority under the one true God. Some are demon kings on dark thrones bent on twisting the work of God.
I find that the less I remember this, the less my life makes sense. The more I remember that what I see is not all that there is, the more my struggles and sufferingsmake sense. When I remember that “the domain of darkness” mentioned in verse 13 isn’t just a word picture but is an actual reality affecting people all around me, the blindness and unbelief and evil in our world make sense.
But that’s not necessarily the point here in Colossians 1. The point here is that these invisible thrones and dominions and rulers and authorities are created beings, who, along with the things that we can see, were made through Jesus and for Jesus. Though some may be in rebellion to Jesus, even now He is powerful over them, and He is going to subdue them under his feet and get the glory from them that He deserves.
And they know that, which is why the demons screamed in terror when they met Jesus, like we’ve heard in Matthew. So be stunned at the power of Jesus. All things, seen and unseen, no matter how powerful, was made by Him, in Him, and for Him.
4. The Preceder of Creation (v. 17a)
Next, verse 17 tells us that Jesus is before all things. He is not a part of this creation because back before anything was, He was.
The preexistence of Christ is a beautiful truth because it reminds us that long before anything existed, He was there and He was Himself. Perfect, complete, needless, satisfied in the fellowship of the Trinity.
He made all things because He wanted to, not because He had to. And that means that He can’t be manipulated or coerced to do anything He doesn’t want to do. We cannot add anything to Him, nor can we teach Him anything He doesn’t know. There’s nothing He hasn’t seen. There’s nothing He doesn’t have. He is before all things.
5. The Sustainer of Creation (v. 17b)
Finally, verse 17 concludes by telling us that in Jesus all things hold together.
The idea here is that creation isn’t just something Jesus made and then let run, like winding up a clock and letting it tick, or kicking a ball and letting it run.
No, this universe was not just created by Jesus but is held together by Jesus moment-by-moment. Hebrews 1:3 says that Christ “upholds the universe by the word of his power.” This creation is sustained, held together, from one minute to the next, by the words of Jesus.
Have you ever stopped to ask, what keeps this universe working the way it does from one minute to the next? Why does gravity keep powering away the way it does at the same level day after say? Why to the forces that knit the protons and neutrons in each and every atom keep staying at the same fine-tuned level from one moment to the next?
You might be surprised by this, but there is nothing inherent in science that says that the things we see and observe are going to keep working in the future the way they have in the past. If any of you are interested in looking at this more, it’s called the inductive problem, and honest atheists have admitted that it is basically an act of blind faith to presume that anything we see will stay the same way into the future.
Some of you may be aware at how absolutely fine-tuned this physical world is. There are a whole series of physical laws and forces and sub-atomic particles that are so specific, and if they were tweaked just the tiniest little bit one way or another, nothing we see would exist. This is a fact that has led many people to believe in God because there is no way this level of complexity could arise by chance.
But that’s just the half of it. Because not only is this world fine-tuned, but something is keeping it that way from one moment to the next. Someone is making sure that these forces and laws stay the same so that our universe remains as it is. So that it remains intelligible.
There is nothing within science that says it has to be that way. There is no scientific reason why things should not completely change in the next second and every atom would fly apart from itself.
But we know why this doesn’t happen. Because not only is Jesus before all things, but in Him all things hold together.
If any of you are into science you might be familiar with the ways that quantum physics is opening up some really interesting angles on this, showing us how reality itself finds its basis in consciousness, leading some to suggest that God, or more specifically the Son of God, is the eternal mind whose moment-by-moment conscious observation of the universe is what gives it existence.
There’s a lot we’re still figuring out, but it appears that science may be catching up to what the Bible has told us for centuries. This universe came into existence and continues to exist and work in the same way from moment to moment because the all-powerful Son of God holds all things together from one moment to the next.
Would you feel the power of Christ? Stop, and feel your heart beating. The tiny particles which make up the atoms which make up the cells in your body which carry electricity to the muscles in your heart and which make up the blood cells pumping around your body—all of that incredible intricate infrastructure was not just designed by Jesus but right now is being held together by Jesus. You are literally in one piece right now, breathing and beating away, because Jesus is deciding to make it so.
In Him all things hold together.
Conclusion & Application
And this is the son of God whom we follow, whom we love, whom we serve. This is the same son of God born as an infant, the one who spoke the parables, the one who offers Himself to us today as our living saviour and Lord and treasure.
We can’t miss what theses verses have told us, not just about what Jesus has done, but who He is. He is the image of the invisible God. He is still the firstborn of creation—nobody has taken that place. All things still exist for Him. He is, not just was, before all things. And in Him all things hold together—right at this very second.
This Jesus is not just unimaginably supreme but He is. This is not past tense—this is who He is.
If this is who Jesus is, how could we not love Him above all things, treasure Him above all things, value Him above all things, honour Him above all things?
Jesus is the centre of the universe—how could He not be the centre of our lives, the place we fix our eyes?
Would you join me in praying that we would be captivated by Christ and committed to living with joy in His kingdom?