I got this certificate because I sometimes led in prayer at meetings of the Moorpark City Council. I say “led in prayer,” because the pastors who had performed this service at the request of the Council were asked to stop. A court decision in Burbank led the Council to decide that prayer was no longer appropriate - or at least not our kind of prayers.

The kind of prayer portrayed in the cartoon I saw might have been okay - “Our father, mother, higher power, dear man or woman upstairs, to whom it may concern or if anybody’s up there listening.” But we prayed in the name of Jesus. The name Jesus was the killer. You can talk about God all you want and most people won’t take offense. But mention Jesus to some people and it’s “Katie, bar the door.”

Jesus is the most controversial person who ever entered human history. He called God’s kingdom, “My kingdom.” Every prophet had been self-effacing. Jesus was self-advancing. He claimed to be the Truth. He claimed to be the Bread of Life, the Light of the World, the Resurrection and the Life, the Way. He identified himself clearly as the One of whom the prophet Isaiah wrote. He also said, “I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” Are these words you would expect from a man who called others to humility?

Jesus made both direct and indirect claims to be God. He referred to himself as the “Son of Man” -- a title of divinity from Daniel 7. He accepted the description, “Son of God.” When Simon Peter confessed his faith that Jesus was the Messiah, Jesus commended Peter’s insight. He said, “ I and my Father are one.” The response to this was that the Jews picked up stones to stone Him, accusing Him of claiming to be God. After all, if that wasn’t true, it was blasphemy. Jesus claimed to forgive sins. Only God can forgive sins. He claimed that He can give life. Only God can bestow life. He claimed to teach the truth. He claimed to be the judge of the world. How many great claims could a person make? Then, to top it all off, He came back from the dead.

British biblical scholar, John Stott, in his helpful book Basic Christianity says of Jesus:

“To know Him was to know God;

To see Him was to see God;

To believe in Him was to believe in God;

To receive Him was to receive God;

To hate Him was to hate God;

To honor Him was to honor God.”

So why is it that many people today don’t want Jesus? You can’t pray in His name in public. Why is this so? Why is God a-okay but Jesus a “no-no”?

It’s simply that Jesus is offensive. Jesus is the polar opposite if generic. Jesus gives God a very specific face and profile. And this means that people are not just left free to paint the face of God however they like. You can hear the word “God” and you can mentally define God in whatever way makes you most comfortable. Apart from Jesus, God is very blurry and many

people prefer their God to be blurry.

I know that. I know that the name of Jesus offends some people. So why did I insist in praying in His name -- and why did my fellow pastors do the same?

It’s because we know who Jesus is. We know, as Paul writes in Colossians 1:15-17, that it is Jesus and only Jesus who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation -- that by Him all things were created that are in heaven or are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or powers -- that all things were created through Jesus and for Jesus — that Jesus is before all things and in Jesus all things hold together.”

In Colossians 1, Paul gives us quite an answer to the question. ‘Who is Jesus?” We’ll unpack this a couple of phrases at a time over several sermons. This is rich stuff.

The first thing Paul says, in verse 15, is that Jesus is “the image of the invisible God.”

Now God tells us in the second commandment that we are not to make images of God. The reason we are not to make images is that our images will get in the way of the image that God has given Himself. An eikon is a representation, or reproduction with precise likeness. It is not an accidental copy – like two eggs that are alike - but a purposeful copy. The word eikon was used of the image of image of Caesar stamped on a coin. Here Paul uses it for Jesus - who is the God of the universe stamped in human flesh.

Paul is telling us that Jesus Christ is supreme in the universe because He is its God. He is the “visible likeness of the invisible God.” Jesus is the image of God we can see. He is the speech of God we can hear. We don’t need to wonder what God is like. We can look into face of Jesus, and hear His word.

And if Jesus Christ is the image of God, then it immediately becomes clear that without Jesus Christ the concept of “God” loses definition. Apart from Jesus Christ, God is simply a mirror or mirage of human longings and desires.

A woman named Frederica Matthewes-Green wrote of her religious search before she met Jesus, “The faith I was building out of my prejudices and preconceptions could never be bigger than I was. I was constructing a safe, tidy, unsurprising God who could never transform me, but would only confirm my residence in that familiar bog I called home. I had to have more than that.” She eventually discovered that Jesus is the “more than that” of God.

Now when Paul writes in Colossians 1:15 of Jesus as the image of the invisible God, he is not writing in a vacuum. He is writing to confront a very specific assault on the young faith of the Colossian Christians.

The challenge is from what is called syncretism. Syncretism is a ten dollar word for cafeteria religion. In cafeteria religion, you choose a bit of Buddhism, a heap of Hinduism, a cup of Christianity and produce your own religion.

I preached on this syncretistic tendency last January in a sermon “When the Elephant Talks.” You can pick up a copy on the back table this morning or on the web site.

The specific issue the Colossians faced was called Gnosticism. Gnosticism was a part of the philosophic view of Greed influence culture. It was seeking to absorb the good news of God’ love in Jesus into it’s elitist, intellectually superior embrace.

The word “Gnosticism” came from the Greek word for knowledge which is “gnosis”. The gnostics claimed to be the insiders who grasp how the universe really works. Gnosticism is what you would get today if Christian Science was married to Mormonism. In fact, both Christian Science and Mormonism acknowledge Gnostic roots.

Gnosticism is all a bit complicated, but here’s the short version - kind of Gnosticism 101.

The basic Gnostic assumption is that spirit is good and pure but matter is evil. God, who is spirit and good, is therefore separate from the world and not directly involved in its creation. In fact, all matter including this physical world was created by angelic emanations from God -- kinds of copies of copies with each copy being worse than the last. And finally a copy got so bad that it could create evil matter.

You should picture a kind of Jacob’s ladder stretching from heaven to earth. On the ladder are these angelic emanations from God. The higher you go up the ladder, the more godlike the emanation. The Gnostics say our job is to climb up the ladder. We must get past each emanation of God by special knowledge and secret passwords.

Now if the Gnostics are right, the impact on our Christian hope is total.

First, throw out Christmas -- the affirmation that God became human flesh in Jesus Christ. For if matter is evil then surely the true God couldn’t and wouldn’t become flesh in Jesus. In the Gnostic view, God is remote and inaccessible except through a long chain of intermediaries. Jesus Christ was one of these. But Jesus was close enough to God to share the divine abhorrence for any direct contract with matter -- so Christmas didn’t happen.

This means you can also throw out Good Friday. If Jesus wasn’t really flesh, His death on the cross was not real. Throw out Easter. For there was also no point to the resurrection.

Throw out forgiveness too. Paul has just told us in Colossians 1:14 that in Jesus we have “redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” But the Gnostics say we aren’t saved by Jesus at all. We are saved by knowing what the Gnostics know. And this means that we need to be a whole lot smarter than the average man and not just smarter than the average bear if we are to be saved.

Throw out confidence in prayer too. For if Jesus didn’t come in the flesh, He doesn’t really know what it means for us to be us. If the Gnostics are right, we don’t have “a great high priest who is able to sympathize with our weakness” — no matter what Hebrew 4:15 says. The true God is too distant to know you and too pure to care about your material self. The little godling emanations that are closer to you are only closer because they are evil -- and they don’t much like you. So prayer is out -- although magic might do the trick.

With all of this, you can see how John writes so bluntly about these Gnostics in 1st John 4:2-3: “By this we know the Spirit of God; every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God; and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God; this is the spirit of the antichrist.”

Now all that was background so you can understand what Paul means when he tells the Colossians the core facts about who Jesus is in Colossians 1. He is the image of the invisible God. Paul then says in verse 15 that Jesus is also “the first born of all creation.” We must be very careful to attach the right meaning to this phrase. As it stands in English it might be interpreted to say that the Son was the first person to be created. But in Hebrew and Greek thought, the word firstborn, prototokos, is a word about status, not time.

The title Firstborn is very commonly a title of honor. Israel, for instance, as a nation is called the firstborn of God in Exodus 4:22. The meaning is that the nation of Israel is the most favored child of God. Firstborn is a title of the Messiah. In Psalm 89:27, as the Jews themselves interpreted it, the promise regarding the Messiah is “I will make Him my firstborn, higher than the kings of the earth.”

Firstborn is not used in a sense of time, but in the sense of special honor. So when Paul says of Jesus that he is the firstborn of all creation, he means that the highest honor which creation holds belongs to Him.

Who is Jesus, really?

The early Christians wrestled with this question as we must. As they wrestled with this question, they identified three incorrect ways of viewing Jesus.

First there were those who said that Jesus was only God. They denied His human nature. Some said that He didn’t have a human soul or a physical nature. Others claimed that Jesus lacked a human will. He was God not a man.

Second, there were those who said that Jesus was only human. They said that Jesus was the best man who ever lived, a perfect teacher and example, but in no sense God. The only way that He could be viewed as one with the Father was in His fullness of life. He had a God-quality of life.

A third group claimed that Christ was the first and highest created being but not God. They saw Him as having some divine power and energy - but said He was not a person identical with God.

The early Christians saw that all these various endeavors to minimize the full deity and full humanity of Jesus run directly counter to biblical revelation -- and the awesome fact of the resurrection. Whatever God is, Jesus is. Whatever we are, Jesus is that too. We can speak neither of God nor of the world without speaking of Jesus Christ. All concepts of reality which do not take Jesus into account are abstractions.

Our generation isn’t immune to these early infections that faced the early church. There are some who believe Jesus is a great man like all the other great religious leaders. He may be a cut above but that is all. He’s nothing unique. They say “I believe in Jesus because He is taught in my culture and is right for Western democracies just as Buddha is right for the Oriental cultures, Hindu for the Indian culture, and Mohammad’s vision of Allah for the Arab culture.”

In the congregational survey we completed a year ago last April, one of the questions was whether or not we agreed with the statement that “All the different religions are equally good ways of helping a person find ultimate truth.” Thirty five percent of the people who completed the survey said that they either agreed with the statement or were neutral or unsure.

We obviously need greater clarity. This is one of the main reason I am preaching through Paul’s Letter to the Colossians. For Colossians is perhaps the best place to go in the Bible to get our heads straight about who God is and How He has revealed Himself to us. The reason that is vital is because we will never know true hope until we know the true God. Fuzzy theology will drag you down. But a clear focus on who God really is--and what He has done for you--will bring you life.

The Christian faith is meant to be universal. Jesus is not just a bright chapter in the history of religious heroes; he is not just a shining star in the galaxy of noble men. He is what life is all about. He began it; He governs it; He will judge it. Obedience to Him is not just a congenial option. It is an eternally binding mandate. To be linked to Jesus Christ is to be tied to the deepest purposed of life - the purposes that are imbedded in creation itself.

The major theme of Colossians is Jesus as Lord. This Lordship can be a difficult theme for us to grasp. For we don’t live under a monarchy. We live in a Western democracy. We choose our leaders. (Go, Gary Coleman!)

A king, however, isn’t chosen. And Jesus is King.

One of my favorite theologians is Calvin. Not John Calvin, though he’s okay, but Calvin in Calvin and Hobbes. Calvin comes into the room where his father is reading the paper. Calvin says to his father, “It’s time for a new dad. When does your term of office expire?” His dad replies, “I was appointed Dad for life.” Calvin screams, “For life! What about a recall vote? What about impeachment?” His father says, “There are no provision for either.” Calvin, with his hands on his hips says, “Did you write this constitution yourself or what?” “Well, your mom helped some too!”

In the same way, Jesus isn’t Lord because we worship him. He isn’t Lord because our culture has elected Him. Jesus isn’t Lord because we worship Him and isn’t less Lord if we don’t worship Him. He is still Lord. He isn’t worse off if we refuse to follow Him. But we are.

Those are the things I know. Those are the reasons I couldn’t offer a bland generic, “to who it may concern” prayer for the City Council. But, I got a nice certificate.

I also still pray for the Council. The Bible tells us to pray for those who are in government. We weren’t there to pray for the cameras. We were there to pray for those who have authority.

So before each meeting of the City Council - about 6:20 p.m. outside, before the Council meeting, a small group of pastors and lay people gather outside to pray for the Council, the City, the City staff and the schools.. The Council members know we do this. Some appreciate it. The one’s who don’t need it even more.

You are welcome to join us. I’d be delighted to have you come.

But watch out. We’ll be praying in the name of Jesus.