Welcome to Fellowship! We're glad you're here! Please fill out our CONNECT CARD.
Barb Winters is the author of Sexpectations: Helping the Next Generation Navigate Healthy Relationships. She is the mom of a recovered pornography addict, speaker, certified Sexual Risk Avoidance Specialist, and founder of Hopeful Mom: supporting parents in an online world, where she offers encouragement and practical advice to parents and leaders.
Join us for info on how to keep your family safe from the screens that influence our worldview.
CLICK HERE for more info.
Disciple Now is a weekend event for students to grow closer to God together through teaching, music, small group time, and spending time together. We have a guest speaker coming down to teach us more about missions! This is open to all students! The cost is $30 which covers everything for them. If you have any questions, please reach out!
CLICK HERE for more info
CLICK HERE to REGISTER and get more info.
Adventures in Marriage is NOT a counseling program. AIM combines Christian principles with the latest research, and teaches couples practical, attainable skills anyone can learn to love well and create the marriage they have always wanted. Come away with us on a great adventure to discover how to build the marriage you have always wanted with the spouse you already have!
Schedule
FRIDAY, Jan 31st (5:30-9pm)
Dinner @ 5:30pm
9:00 Evening Conclusion
SATURDAY, Feb 1st (9-3:30pm)
9am Kickoff
Noon Lunch
3:30pm Conclusion
SUNDAY, Feb 23rd
1-4pm Final Sessions
Celebrate Recovery is a safe place with kind people who are working together to deal with hurts, habits, and hangups. Have questions? Contact our CR Leader - Tim Hughey
Check our website for upcoming events and over lots of past teachings on many different topics.
Help us forward the mission of Fellowship to share Jesus with young and old, with people across the street and people across the ocean. GIVE ONLINE or at the Giving Boxes at each exit.
1: Who's the BOSS?
Who’s really in charge—at home, in your life, and in the universe?
Join us as we uncover the life-changing truth of Jesus’ authority,
exploring how His rightful place as 'the Boss' transforms our families, faith, and future!
The large population of Jewish people in Colossae would no doubt think of being released from the darkness of slavery under Pharaoh and being transferred into the kingdom of Yahweh. The Jewish people were familiar with how conquering kings would remove people from their homes and transfer them closer to the king (e.g. Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, & Abednego being transplanted from Israel to Babylon)
Redemption is a term used of captives who are either ransomed or released from slavery. In other words, the new master has bought the slave and brought the slave into his kingdom.
❖“image of the invisible God” This same Greek term for image is used when referring to the stamped portrait of Tiberius Caesar on first-century coins (e.g., Mat 22:20, Mk 12:16, Lk 20:24).
The Old and New Testament teach that no one has ever seen God. Consequently, God’s people were commanded to NEVER form a statue or coin to represent His image (Ex 20:4).
Ark of the Covenant
While God told Moses to put cherubim (angels) on the Ark of the Covenant, he was to leave a blank space in between for the “mercy seat”, but NO IMAGE OF GOD (Ex 25:18–22).
The God who has never been seen by human eyes, is seen in Jesus. “He is the image of the invisible God”.
This is one of the first passages that a Jehovah's Witness will twist to try to dilute the deity of Jesus. They take that to mean that Jesus is ‘first created’ by “Jehovah” (Yahweh is God’s true name). In fact, they teach that Jesus was first known & CREATED as Michael, the Archangel. (This is not found in the Scriptures.)’ This is actually a very old heresy (false teaching) by Arius (about 250 years after Paul).
- Arius pastored a church in Alexandria and claimed “there was a time when the Son was not.” By this he meant that Jesus was the most highly exalted of all created beings.
- Alexander, the bishop (of Alexandria), declared Arius a heretic in a local council in 321, & Arius was excommunicated. Arius left for Palestine and continued to teach that Jesus was a created being, and therefore not equal with the Father.
- Council of Nicea (A.D. 325) a group of 318 bishops from all over the empire gathered to discuss the teaching of Ariaus in Nicea. Arius argued that Jesus was not God, but the most exalted creation of God. Arius was banished and the Nicene Creed - signed by all but Arius and 2 bishops.
The early church did not believe that Paul intended “firstborn” to mean “first created”. In fact, Paul could have used a word to mean just that (Greek prōtoktistos “first created”), but did not.
Firstborn does not always refer to the one BORN FIRST, but to one who is in authority over others.
David wasn’t even the firstborn in his family! Chronologically, he was the LAST BORN (1 Sam 16:3-13). Firstborn isn’t referring to birth order but to supremacy over all others - the One to whom all others must submit to.
Think about the significance of the statement. Genesis 1 states:
Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Yet Paul, a Jew who believed the Old Testament scriptures, states that all things were created by him [Jesus].
So WHO created all things - God or Jesus? God created all things & Jesus is God!
Jesus created everything in the universe - heaven and on earth, what is visible (stuff we see - e.g. trees) and invisible (stuff we don’t see - e.g. oxygen). He created the sun, planets, moons, and stars.
Our sun hold 1.3 million planets the size of earth inside it.
The star Betelgeuse has a diameter of 100 million miles, which is larger than the earth’s entire orbit around the sun.
- It takes sunlight, traveling at 186,000 miles per second, about 8.5 minutes to reach earth. Yet that same light would take more than 4 years to reach the nearest star, Alpha Centauri, some 24 trillion miles from earth.
- The Milky Way, contains hundreds of billions of stars, 1 galaxy among millions, or even billions of galaxies.
- What astronomers can see leads them to estimate the number of stars in the universe at 1025, a similar estimate to the number of all the grains of sand on all the world’s beaches.
Jesus also created our incredible earth and everything on it - the plants, animals, humans, and all the fine tuned elements within it that allow us to live (water, the atmosphere we breathe, the temperatures we can live in, our gravitational force, oceans with tides impacted by moon…and over 100 fine-tuned designs that MUST EXIST for us to EXIST.
Paul also writes that Jesus created thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities - visible kingdoms on earth and in the invisible authority of angels including those angels who rebelled and now stand against him, including Satan. ALL thrones, dominions, rulers, & authorities…are UNDER THE AUTHORITY OF THEIR CREATOR = JESUS!
All things have been created through him and FOR him! Can you IMAGINE that claim being made about us?
- ❖He is before all things. Jesus existed before anything. Dr. RC Sproul used to say something like this: Jesus is not only God over everything, He is also God over nothing…because NO MATERIAL THING - no time, matter, or space existed until He made it. He was still God when no universe and no human existed.
- ❖By him all things hold together. Jesus is the GLUE that makes the universe “a cosmos instead of a chaos.” He created all the complexities of gravity, fusion, ocean tides, rain, photosynthesis and more. Jesus created all things and causes all that to continue to hold together…but what if He decided to turn off oxygen right now?Or what if the orbit of the Earth was suddenly disrupted and we began to spin off further and further…
- or closer and closer to the sun? Friendships, families, marriages are held together by Him.
- ❖He is also the head of the church. HE is the authority over us. What Jesus says goes, regardless of cultural pressure that we face.
- ❖He is the firstborn from the dead. Jesus is not the 1st to resurrect - remember Lazarus and several others? But Jesus IS the 1st to resurrect with an immortal body. Lazarus died again. Jesus never did. One day, everyone who followed Jesus will gain an immortal body like Jesus. But HE is the firstborn from the dead.
- ❖He might come to have first place in everything. Paul’s point is clear - Jesus IS THE BOSS! The Creator put on skin, lived a pure life, and died a brutal death….for us! He should have 1st place in all things! He is WORTHY!
- ❖God was pleased to have all His fullness dwell in Him. As should be obvious by now, Jesus is NOT a created being, an exalted angel nor exceptional human. Jesus is God the Son -
God from God, light from light, true God from true God…begotten not made, of one substance with the Father, through Whom all things came into being, things in heaven and things on earth
BIG QUESTION: You were made for JESUS’ GLORY. Are you fulfilling your job description?
Have questions and need some help? …real soon…how about now? Please call or text us soon!
These open-ended questions are designed to help you LIVE what you LEARN with your Family, Friends, or Small Group.
- Read back through today’s teaching passage - Colossians 1:15-19. Take your time walking through the text and share what most challenged or surprised you from today’s teaching. What do you need to do to apply God’s Word to your life this week?
- Read John 1:18. How has Jesus revealed God to us? What are some evidences that Jesus is himself God?
- If someone asked you to explain who Jesus is to them, how might this help? How would you respond to the Jehovah’s Witness who says, “Jesus is the firstborn, meaning first created”?
- Name 2 people can be praying for this week, that they might grow in knowledge & obedience to God. How should praying for the growth of others increase desire to see yourself grow to maturity? As anyone praying for YOU? If not, who might you ask to pray for you that way?
- Share other prayer needs and lift one another up right now.
