Christocentric 1 – Interesting But Irrelevant

In the beginning was the Word... and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

A computer too old to be useful raises the question many ask of the Bible: is it interesting but irrelevant — or living and powerful?

An Old Computer and an Old Book

On Christmas Eve I came home to find a big box on my front porch — a gift from a friend. If you know me, you know I like Apple computers. I have an iMac in my office and at home, a Mac Mini running our TV, a MacBook Pro, an iPhone, an iPad, and an Apple Watch. So what do you give that person? An Apple Macintosh 512 — the only one he doesn't have.

It was the second-generation Macintosh, older than everyone on the worship team this morning. It has a thousand times less processing power than my watch and no internal memory; it runs on floppy disks. It actually works, which is amazing. But while it is interesting to look at and to remember how far we've come in thirty years, it is basically useless. When my kids look at it they ask, "What is that? Why can't you touch anything on the screen?"

I point this out because a growing number of people view this book — the Bible — the same way. Interesting as a point of reference for where we came from, but in the 21st century essentially useless. That raises the real question: is it? Is it futile or foolish to gather week after week to open this book, which is actually a compilation of 66 books written by 40 authors over about 1,000 years, on three continents, in three languages, and 2,000 years old to us?

What the Bible Claims About Itself

My hope is that as we open this book we will see it is more than interesting — it is important and powerful. The Bible says of itself that it is living and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, cutting deep into our hearts, a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. To update that, it reveals what is in your heart.

Another book of the New Testament says this is given by the inspiration of God — that God breathed it, as holy men of God were moved by the Spirit to write. In 2 Timothy 3:16 Paul says all Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is therefore useful for four things. First, doctrine — it teaches what is true and right. Second, reproof — when we see what is right, it rebukes us, showing where we fall short. Third, correction — it shows us how to get back on the right path. Fourth, instruction in righteousness — how to stay on that path. Why? The next verse says, so that the man or woman of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Testing the Claims

These are bold propositions. The Bible self-proclaims itself to be living and powerful, a revealer of our hearts, useful to show us what is right and wrong and how to return and remain. But it is easy to say something about yourself that isn't true. So how do we test these claims? Through simple deductive analysis: do the claims of Scripture actually work out? Does it reveal what is in our hearts and produce the outcomes it asserts?

This test is not something I can do for you. I can open the Scriptures week after week and share what God has shown me, but you must test it yourself and see if these things apply in your own life. We can't go only on what is said from a pulpit on Sunday; we have to dig into the Scriptures for ourselves. I certainly can't share every truth in 41 minutes on a Sunday morning — sometimes it takes us a while just to get through one book.

I believe the Bible to be exactly as it proclaims itself, because I have experienced and observed it. Over nearly twenty years of studying, applying, and teaching the Scriptures, I have seen marriages devastated by adultery reconciled and restored, lives destroyed by substance abuse made whole, people consumed by unforgiveness and anger made gentle and joy-filled and serving in children's ministry, and people gripped by self-hate and thoughts of self-harm restored simply by walking in what the Word says. The evidence points to the fact that the Word of God is living and powerful.

A Mine of Wealth

Some of you have received one of these little Psalms, Proverbs, and New Testament editions from the Gideons. I love what it says on the opening cover:

The Bible contains the mind of God, the state of man, the way of salvation, the doom of sinners and the happiness of believers. Its doctrines are holy, its precepts are binding, its histories are true and its decisions immutable. Read it to be wise, believe it to be safe, practice it to be holy. It contains light to direct you, food to support you, comfort to cheer you. It is the traveler's map, the pilgrim's staff, the pilot's compass, the soldier's sword, the Christian's charter. Here paradise is restored, heaven opened and the gates of hell disclosed. Christ is its grand subject... It involves the highest responsibility, will reward the greatest labor and will condemn all who trifle with its sacred contents.

There are those today who say with an increasingly loud voice that the Bible is interesting but irrelevant — interesting only as a literary work, the literary equivalent to the Macintosh 512. And yet when you walk through the Scriptures and obey and apply the Word of God, you find that it is living and powerful and useful. That is why we go through the Scriptures here each week, verse by verse, and why today we begin Colossians — a small four-chapter book near the end of your Bible, right after Philippians and before Philemon.

Christ Is the Center and Foundation of Life

This book points to a very important truth, and it's point number one on your outline: Christ is the center and foundation of life. That is why this series is called Christocentric — a big word that simply means Christ-centered or Christ-focused.

In John 10:10 Jesus said, "I have come that you may have life and that you may have it more abundantly." That is a bold claim. God incarnate came so that you and I might experience life to its fullest. Every human being desires this. A 17th-century French philosopher essentially said that every person is trying to fill a void within them that only God can fill. They try to fill it with all sorts of things, but only God — only Christ — can truly fill it. A life without Christ at the center is incomplete and lacks substance.

All 7.3 billion people today are trying to fill that void with something. One great philosopher of the 20th century sang, "I can't get no satisfaction," and another sang, "I still haven't found what I'm looking for." Both songs rose to the top of the charts and stay there because they strike every soul. People still try — with pleasures, power, possessions, substances — thinking, if I just get this, then I'll be satisfied. Read Ecclesiastes; it is one man's journey to fill that void. Look around and you see the world writing its own Ecclesiastes. When someone like Barbara Walters interviews a person who has everything, you discover they still don't have what they're looking for. Because if Christ is not the center of your life, life lacks substance.

Paul writes that Jesus is the only foundation upon which we can build a life that will stand. There is no other foundation. Yet people constantly try to build on other foundations, which means, as Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, their lives are built on sand. When the storms of life come, whatever foundation that isn't the Rock who is Christ is devastated.

A Life Without Christ Is Incomplete and Lacking

These bold propositions lead to point number two: a life without Christ is incomplete and lacking. If you're not a follower of Jesus, that sounds absurd, because you think you've finally found joy in your job, your relationship, your new car. But all of those things are temporal pleasures.

Consider this: beginning a couple of years ago, 10,000 baby boomers a day are retiring — people born between 1946 and 1964. Many come to a dreadful conclusion upon retiring. They invested their entire lives finding substance and satisfaction in a career, and now it's gone. They've lost their joy because they lost what they thought was their identity — teacher, lawyer, doctor, construction worker. And they still haven't found what they're looking for, because a life without Christ is incomplete.

Without Him, your life is out of alignment. Most of us who have driven know this from an early beater of a car: take your hands off the wheel at 50 miles an hour and it pulls hard to the left. Your right arm got strong from constantly fighting it, and you grew used to it — "it's just the way it is." Then someone else gets in and says, "What is wrong with your car? Get it fixed. The tires are out of alignment."

Many people's lives are out of alignment, and they've simply learned to correct it. They've learned that if they drink this, take that, or do this thing, it'll be okay. We live in a nation where it is socially acceptable to be a workaholic, so many correct their alignment with work — but now 10,000 a day are retiring and asking, "What does a workaholic do now?" Your life is out of alignment because Christ is not the center; you are not living in a Christocentric way. And that is true not only of people who don't know Jesus, but of people in the church.

The Letter and Its Church

Paul wrote this letter around AD 63 from Rome, in prison awaiting trial before the highest court of the land for being a preacher of the gospel. While waiting, he wrote four letters. We've studied three this year: Ephesians (a series called Identity, where we found our identity is in Christ), Philippians (Happy and You Know It, where our joy is found in Christ), and Philemon (Unchained, where our freedom is in Christ). Now in Colossians we will find that our fullness and completeness are found in Christ.

Paul didn't plant this church. Colossae was about a hundred miles east of Ephesus, and the church was likely planted about eight years before this letter, while Paul taught at a school in Ephesus. The history is in Acts 19. As a former Jewish religious leader, Paul would begin in the synagogue on the Sabbath, and they would invite him to teach. He taught for months, always the same way: he would speak about the Messiah, and the people loved hearing about the Messiah — the one the Old Testament prophets said would come to restore wrong things, make broken things whole, and redeem lost people.

Week after week more people came to hear about the Messiah, sitting on the edge of their seats. Then Paul would reach the crux: "The Messiah has come." They had no Twitter or Facebook, so this stunned them. He has come to Israel, raised the dead, given sight to the blind, healed the sick, cast out demons. The people would be amazed — until he said, "And He was crucified, rejected by our people in Jerusalem." "No, that's not possible." But then Paul reached the best part: "He didn't stay dead. He rose. I met the risen Savior, Jesus." And about that time, the Jews in Ephesus, as in Thessalonica and Corinth and everywhere else, kicked him out.

Faithfulness Rewarded with Fruitfulness

Acts 19:9 says Paul went down the road to the school of Tyrannus, and for two years he taught the Scriptures there every single day. Acts 19:10 tells us that during those two years all who dwelt in Asia Minor heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks. It was through that faithful daily teaching that the church in Colossae, a hundred miles east, was planted.

This is a great encouragement to me — point number three: faithfulness to Christ is always rewarded with fruitfulness in Christ. I heard a startling statistic this week from Lifeway Research: the average pastor in America stays at a church for 3.6 years before giving up. And it's not just pastors. Walking out your faith with integrity, reflecting the grace and forgiveness of Christ at the office, on the construction site, at school, or as a mom or dad in the home — it's difficult. The temptation to give up is always there: "It's too hard. There's no fruit." Yet Paul simply did what God called him to do.

Turn back a few books to Galatians 6:9, written by the same Paul:

And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart.

Circle the word if. Let us not grow tired of doing the right thing over and over; in due season you will reap a harvest if you don't faint. The problem is we're all tempted to faint and throw in the towel. But fruitfulness follows faithfulness.

Seven years ago this month my wife and I moved into our house, a foreclosure. Almost nothing in the yard was alive except three palm trees and a huge green grapevine — green everywhere, but not a single grape. We pruned it back, and I thought it was dead. The next spring a couple of shoots came; we trimmed it again — no grapes. The following year, about three grapes; we pruned it again. It wasn't until the third year that it produced sixty bunches of grapes. I'm no grapevine expert, and they didn't all turn out great, but the point stands: faithfulness is the key to fruitfulness, and so often we're tempted to throw in the towel.

Why Paul Wrote

Paul surely had hard days where he was tempted to give up. Yet he plodded along, and eight years later there was still a church in Colossae. In prison in Rome, Paul received word — likely from Epaphras, mentioned in the opening verses and probably the man who planted the church after hearing Paul's teaching. Epaphras told Paul about the things happening at Colossae, and Paul sat down to write.

We will see that the reason for this letter is that false teachings and destructive doctrines were entering the church, drawing them away from their Christocentric focus. Their fixation on Jesus was being shifted, taking them out of alignment, pulling them from the simplicity that is in Christ Jesus to focus on feast days, new moons, and certain religious efforts to make themselves better. Christians get out of alignment when they start thinking their faith is found in dietary rules, worship days, and signs in the sky. It's not. So Paul writes to help them regain a Christocentric focus.

Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, to the saints and faithful brethren in Christ who are in Colossae: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. We give thanks to God... praying always for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and your love for all the saints; because of the hope which is laid up for you in heaven... which has come to you, as it has also in all the world, and is bringing forth fruit... since the day you heard and knew the grace of God in truth; as you also learned from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant, who is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf...

Jesus Is the Christ

Bible teachers and theologians have said this is the book with the highest Christology, the most Christ-centered focus. The word Christ is used 24 times in this small book, six times in the opening verses alone. Paul not only speaks about the Christ but identifies who He is, using the name Jesus four times. Jesus is the Christ — the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies about the One who would come to redeem lost sinners.

That is the foundation of the Christian faith. In Matthew 16, in the northern part of Israel where much pagan worship occurred, Jesus asked His disciples, "Who do men say that I am?" Some said a prophet, some this, some that. Two thousand years later people still have all kinds of opinions. Then He asked, "Who do you say that I am?" Peter, the loud mouth of the bunch, spoke up: "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." Jesus said Peter was right, but flesh and blood had not revealed it — God had. And He said, "Upon this rock I will build My church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it." The rock is this simple truth: Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.

Since He is the Christ and the Son of God, He is also Lord. Twice in these opening words Paul says "Lord Jesus Christ." Lord is not His first name, Jesus His middle, and Christ His last. Lord is His title, Jesus is His name, and Christ is His mission — He came to redeem lost sinners and set us back in alignment, so that we would be Christocentric.

Complete in Him

Why do we need Christ as the center? Turn to Colossians 2:9:

For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power.

In Jesus resides all the fullness of God, and you are complete in Him. That leads to point number four: our lives must be Christocentric. If you're a follower of Jesus, you're a Christian — even though that term is not highly valued in our culture — and it makes sense that your life would be Christ-focused. If I asked you to follow me home in your car, you would intently watch where I'm going; your focus would be centered on me. When another car gets between us, we change lanes to keep our eyes on the one we're following. Of course, then, if you follow Jesus, He must be the center of your focus.

But if you're not yet a follower of Jesus, understand that your life still needs to be Christocentric, or you will be incomplete — because a life without Jesus lacks substance and has no center. So Paul writes both to believers being drawn away from their center and to unbelievers, exalting the reality that Jesus must be the center, because in Him dwells all the fullness, and you are complete in Him.

Over the coming weeks we'll ask: how do we become Christocentric? How do we maintain a focus on Christ at the center, and how does that transform our reality day to day? This whole world is living disconnected from God and, as a result, disconnected from one another. That's why we exist as a church called Cross Connection — to live in connection with God and with one another and to extend that to the world, because it comes through Jesus and what He did on the cross. We want to discover what it means to be connected to Christ, and then carry that to the school campus, the construction site, and the office, so that others who are disconnected and lacking a center would find what they're really looking for.

Closing Prayer

Jesus, we thank You for Your grace — the grace You gave by giving Your life for us, taking our sin upon Yourself and dealing with it on the cross, so that we would have forgiveness in You and find connection with You, with God, and with one another, and be transformed. We thank You that we can experience the joy and fullness of having Your life in us, Christ in us, the hope of glory. Help us to live that out.

Lord, I pray now for any here whose lives are out of alignment — whether because they've never had You come into their hearts, or because they've become distracted by peripheral things. Draw them by Your Spirit to Yourself right now. If that's you, and you recognize you need Christ to re-center your life, would you lift your hand where you are? God bless you. Jesus said whoever calls upon Him will not be put to shame; whoever believes in Him and confesses with their mouth shall be saved. Pray with me:

Dear Jesus, my life is out of alignment. I need You to come in and transform me from the inside out. Make me a new creation. Become the center of my life. Forgive me of my sin and make me whole in You, and help me to walk following You with You as my focus. In Jesus' name. Amen.