Rekindling the Flame #1 – The Preeminence of Christ: Why Jesus is First in Everything

Colossians 1:15. I’m going to change all the pronouns into nouns. Christ is the image of the invisible God. Christ is the firstborn of all creation. Through Christ all things were created: things in the heavens and on earth. He created the visibles and the invisibles, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities. All things have been created through Christ and for Christ. Christ is before everything, and in Him all things hold together. Christ is the head of the body which is the church. He is the beginning. Christ is the firstborn from the dead. Why? So that Christ will come to have first place; that is, preeminence in everything. For it was the Father’s good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him.

I’d like you to note this: it doesn’t say what the fullness is. Fullness is a proper noun here. For it was the Father’s good pleasure. It was a good pleasure. It was actually…we’ll read it this way. It was the pleasure of the fullness to dwell in Christ. It was the pleasure of the fullness to dwell in Christ. The fullness had the pleasure to dwell in Christ. Whatever there is that is fullness, that fullness was pleased to dwell in Christ.

Now, I don’t utter a word of this that I don’t mean, and I’m going to ask you to take to heart everything I say. I’m going to ask you to recast your life around everything that is said here, because the subject before us is the first place…the preeminence of Jesus Christ in all things. Now it was the good pleasure of fullness to dwell in Christ. You and I are here to learn just one thing. The preeminence, the centrality, and He is the center. He is the supremacy and preeminence of all things.

Now, that stops everything in the universe. If that’s true of the Father, who made sure His Son would have preeminence in everything, then it is the Father’s intention that Jesus Christ will have first place in you. Now I don’t know how to emphasize that except this must become the habit of the life of the church and the churches: that Christ takes preeminence first. Christ taking preeminence in the universe also means Christ coming to have preeminence in your life and mine.

That means that a people, wherever they go, whatever they do, whatever they face, the first thing they do is Christ. You come to Christ, and then you work from there out. If you have troubles, you don’t start with yourself; you work with Christ. If the church is the church, whatever she says, whatever she does, she starts with Christ. Sometimes we get something in the mail, sometimes we open a news article or a new Christian magazine, and there is this big two-page conference on healing, conference on power, conference on end things, conference on worship, conference starring so and so and so and so, who are going to bring us the word of God today. I have never heard of a conference on Christ. I never have. Have you ever heard of a conference on Christ?

I would like to have a conference, a national conference, maybe $50-100,000 worth of advertisement in which there would be absolutely nothing spoken of but Jesus Christ. If I were to speak at that, I would bring the message I’m bringing to you here tonight: that Jesus Christ was to become, by the will of God, preeminent and first in everything. That means Jesus Christ has the gyroscope of the universe: coming this way or this way…it always centers on Christ.

There are those other than us in this room who actually know what Jesus Christ’s place is in all things, and when I say all things, I mean all things. What does all things include? It includes all things. Even creation is clearer about the place of Jesus Christ than we have established it in our day. In fact, this is to bring us back to rekindle the flame. Second Timothy 1:6: that flame is the flame of Christ in our hearts. Christ first in your problems, in your family, and in your life. Christ your morning; Christ your everything. We start there, and we work from there. Christ is to be first place…first place where?

I need to go through the entire Bible. Number one, it was God’s will and His purpose that Christ be first place, preeminent, supreme, central. So the first person involved in any of this is the one who is living right now in the eternals, and we didn’t even exist yet. But the Father took pleasure and wanted to make His Son first in everything. So He gave all things to have subjection to Jesus Christ. The first one is the Father, and I would have to go through the New Testament at least to see what the Father felt about His Son. John’s 17, John 13, John 1, Matthew, Mark, Luke, Romans- every place we see the Father determined that He has a Son, that is first place in everything.

Now, that’s too much. Just keep it in mind. Perhaps we’ll come back someday, and we’ll go through the Father’s view of Christ as being first. The Father has glorified the Son so that He might have first place. Where and when? Alright, before I go any further, to those of you I’m speaking to now, to those of you who I will never meet, I think it’s Ephesians 1:17 that says…it’s a prayer of Paul. I pray that you might be given a spirit of wisdom and revelation, that you might have a spirit to come to a full knowledge of Jesus Christ, a revelation…a spirit of wisdom, and a spirit of revelation, that you might come to have a knowledge, an experiential knowledge, of Jesus Christ.

We cannot get anywhere in this world without revelation. The Lord spoke to the Pharisees and said, “You search the scriptures, and in them you might have life, but you will not come to me.” They had Scripture, but they did not have Jesus Christ. They lacked revelation. All of us lack revelation. If we have revelation, we have insight into Christ that goes deeper than the human mind can get from reading Scripture. An ignition deep within you says, “Wow”… something in you… and suddenly, sometimes in a flash from one end of time and eternity to the other, you have a revelation. You will never understand the preeminence of Christ, and neither will I, until you and I have a revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ.

In Galatians, Paul said, “How did these things come about in your life?” And it was, he said, “By hearing, by faith.” And in Romans, Paul said, “You have heard, and therefore you have believed.” I have something new I want to say to all of you, and I’m taking my stand here. The church will not last without revelation. She’ll dry up. And revelation comes by hearing. Now then, just as soon as hearing comes, so does faith.