Introduction

An awful lot of stuff fills my social media, timelines and what-not from preachers all over the place that gets pretty abstruse, complicated and (as far as I can see) a long way from the cutting edge of mission … or Christian discipleship for that matter.

It cuts very little ice.

So, for example, there’s a total fixation at the moment for some people with the Trinity.

The Trinity is important!

It’s great … in spite of the fact the word never crops up in the Bible, the teaching that God is three in one is important because of what it equips them to do  and so on … but it gets out of balance and out of focus in a world where people NEED to hear about Jesus, and learn to follow Him.

Then there comes to be a focus, a pre-occupation, with ‘counselling’ as if that is the big deal.

Well that’s great.

Counselling has no doubt helped many as it has brought them back to a Biblical mind-set and to the wholeness and holiness that a Biblical mindset brings.

But it isn’t the big thing in and of itself.

Recently, of course, in view of current events, there’s been a similar fascination with the issue of monarchy, human allegiance, whether republicanism or monarchism is the right way.

No doubt we’ll have a think about that shortly, but the point I’m trying to make here is this …

All the good and legitimate things can get overblown and distract from the central and crucial issues … and cause departure from the things that are important rather than increasing the healthy focus of the heart on the big things that all these other things we need for life and godliness stem from.

And when the chips are down, and times are challenging … do you know, it’s actually all about Jesus?

He’s the One.

And as he sets out to help re-orientate, re-establish and actually REPAIR the church at Colossae … guess where the Apostle Paul takes them first?

He takes them first to re-focus on Jesus.

Let’s take a few weeks trying to go there with them, and with Him.

We’ll start at Colossians 1:13-14:

“For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”

What a picture of the pre-eminence of Christ in God’s big plan of salvation!

1) Rescued, v. 13a

V. 13a “ For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness …”

ῥύομαι (ruomai) 'to rescue' (G4506)

to rescue, deliver

It’s not a very common word … the word occurs about 18 times in the New Testament … but it really is about going in, getting hold of someone in a dangerous situation, and dragging them out.

This situation of danger is then described as being under the dominion of darkness.

What’s THAT about?

A) Dominion

This word ‘Dominion’ is actually ἐξουσία (exousia) 'authority’.

It covers the ideas of authority, power, the right to control or govern; dominion, the area or sphere of jurisdiction; a ruler, human or supernatural

It’s not a voluntary association, a social club, a friendship group.

You are under the power of another there.

You are not your own person there.

You are not ‘free’ there.

Someone else is running and ruling you there.

Now, we are familiar with human jurisdiction of that sort.

You turn up to work and the boss doesn’t say: ‘lovely to see you, so good of you to come … now you’re here what would you like to do today?’

It is made clear to you what your duties are, and you have to get on with it.

And that’s fair enough!

When you’re at work, you are on the boss’s time.

He or she is paying you for the time … it’s a fair exchange.

That’s a legitimate authority exercised because you are hiring your labour to your boss.

Or perhaps you find yourself in a situation where a police officer gives you an instruction … perhaps you are at the scene of a traffic incident and you are confronted by an officer trying to direct traffic around the incident.

He or she is trying to retrieve a bad situation so you comply with their authoritative direction because you want to co-operate.

Or maybe you are driving along and you see their blue lights in your mirror and you pull over because you must have done something wrong that you shouldn’t have and that’s fair enough too!

You accept that authority because you are in the wrong … fair enough.

These are all examples of benign or legitimate authority … but this dominion Paul is writing about here is coercive and far from benign.

It is the dominion of DARKNESS.

B) Darkness

σκότος (skotos) 'darkness', the dark.

What’s this getting at?

This word is often associated with the nether-world, with moral bankruptcy and with the opposite of good, god and godliness.

It is negatively defined … darkness is the absence of light, and in Scripture of course, God is light and in him there is no darkness at all.

So, 1 John 1:5 teaches us:

“This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.”

Moral and spiritual darkness, cover-ups to conceal wickedness, turning away from truth and light … totally dispelled in His presence.

Such darkness is His opposite.

Now, the trouble is (Paul tells the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians 4:4) ‘

The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.”

And that’s how this dominion of darkness that fallen human beings are born into gets perpetuated.

They are blinded to the light … not by it … and not seeing what they are missing in the Lord Jesus they (we at one time) just sit in pain in the perilous place of darkness.

God hasn’t sat still in that situation but done something costly and radical with Jesus, and applies it to each individual by the eye-opening work of the Holy Spirit … yup, there’s the Glory of the Trinity at work right there, at the core of God’s rescue of His human race.

“For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness …’

C) Rescued

This is really not a complicated idea …

ῥύομαι (ruomai) 'to rescue' (G4506)

to rescue, deliver

This word occurs about 18 times in the New Testament meaning to rescue, to deliver. 

It really is quite an ‘action’ word … the idea is to drag, out of danger, to rescue, to save.

You see, to be sat there in the domain of darkness where you can’t see the light is to be in an exposed position, with no-one to look out for you … in fact with a hostile person out to knock you about.

You need rescue.

You are a HOSTAGE there.

You are being HELD there, in the dark, unable to help yourself or even able to see the way out.

He has RESCUED us from the dominion of darkness.

But having pulled us out of deep, dark and dangerous water … He doesn’t just walk away and leave us standing dripping on the beach!

Rescued in v. 13a, believers get repatriated in v. 13b

2) Repatriated, v. 13b

            •          A) Brought in

Now this is an interesting one.

μεθίστημι (methistēmi) 'to move'

to move, remove; bring, sometimes (though not here!) to lead astray.

It’s not a common word occurring about five times in the New Testament, but the significance here is that from that point of rescue a person is taken forward, is LED onwards.

The call of Jesus from the very first was not to pray the prayer then clear off and get on with working life out for yourself.

The call of Christ as He walked in those very early days of His Galilean ministry beside the sea was to FOLLOW Him.

He intended to save souls, yes, but by leading them as His FOLLOWERS, His DISCIPLES … ultimately to Glory by way of the glorious Way prophesied so famously by Isaiah centuries before with his vision of the Highway through the spiritual desert of this world.

There is a following to be done as the Lord’s lead into ‘the Way’ is given and followed … repentance is the word for the turning from the old ways onto the new Way of Jesus as repentance, faith and BAPTISM are the gateway to new life in the Kingdom of God.

So, “He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves …”

            •          B) The Kingdom of His Son 

Ah.

Here we go.

Friday’s press, social media posts and what-have-you were strewn with references to the Coronation being a millennia old tradition harking back to Old Testament rituals which indicate it’s antiquity, legitimacy and authority.

Reference got made … as if this were breaking deep knowledge and wisdom … to the prophets adding the authentication of God Almighty for this King and that in Israel’s history.

So, for example, reference is made to Samuel anointing Saul as Israel’s first King.

Before that it was tribal leaders in the days of the Judges … but now along comes the institution of the monarchy in the Old Testament, which much of our modern coronation symbolism does seem to arise from.

But what none of the articles seeking to validate the idea of a coronation from the Old Testament point out is that the history of that goes like this (in 1 Samuel 8) “So all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah. 5 They said to him, “You are old, and your sons do not follow your ways; now appoint a king to lead us, such as all the other nations have.”

And the author of 1 Samuel then spells out the inappropriateness of this: (1 Samuel 8:6-9) “But when they said, “Give us a king to lead us,” this displeased Samuel; so he prayed to the Lord. 7 And the Lord told him: “Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king. 8 As they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are doing to you. 9 Now listen to them; but warn them solemnly and let them know what the king who will reign over them will claim as his rights.”

Samuel warns the people as the Lord instructed him but the people are ADAMANT they want a HUMAN King … not just the invisible God … to rule over them so that they will be like all the other nations around them.

The upshot is that in 1 Samuel 9 Samuel anoints Saul as king, but privately, and then in 1 Samuel 10 the people publicly acclaim and acknowledge Saul as their King and pledge their allegiance to him.

As we know they will live to regret it.

The human kings will take their sons to the army and to war … laying down their lives.

The human kings will profit themselves from the people’s own reserves and resources … taxing and despoiling them of their hard earned cash and stuff.

The human kings will exercise authority NOT in the people’s interest, for their well-being, peace and benefit … but for and in the human kings’ OWN opulent interest.

And (the news articles in the last week have not made this clear at all) this historic monarchy … in the Lord’s clear statement of the position to Samuel in 1 Samuel 8 … amounted not to a rejection of the Lord’s messenger (Samuel) but to a rejection of God Himself as their only King.

Does that mean we should all be republicans?

No it doesn’t.

But what it does is to point up the radical difference between the Kingdoms of sinful men, the folly of a nationalism that looks simply to human institutions of government and leadership because human rulers are sinners, rebels and failures like the rest of us (and BOY did the history of Israel’s monarchy illustrate THAT clearly) and most of all it points up the necessity of prioritising in our allegiances the Kingdom Paul here in Colossians 1 refers to as the Kingdom of His Beloved Son.

Here is a Kingdom where the social, the SPIRITUAL contract is supremely in the favour and to the benefit … for the welfare, well-being and salvation of … its subjects and citizens.

It is the Kingdom … the rule and authority … of His beloved Son

            •          C) His BELOVED Son

Colossians 1:13 “For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves …”

εἰς τὴν βασιλείαν τοῦ υἱοῦ τῆς ἀγάπης αὐτοῦ

The Son of His love.

Now this is something the Lord seems very keen to establish at key points in the Lord’s earthly ministry.

So at the baptism in the Jordan river back in Matthew 3:16-17 “As soon as Jesus was baptised, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. 17 And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.’”

Then in Matthew 17 we read that “After six days Jesus took with him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. 2 There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light. 3 Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus.

4 Peter said to Jesus, ‘Lord, it is good for us to be here. If you wish, I will put up three shelters – one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.’

5 While he was still speaking, a bright cloud covered them, and a voice from the cloud said, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!’”

All the Law and the Prophets … the full course of God’s revelation up until that point … is now being fulfilled in God’s beloved Son and He is very much therefore to be listened to!

And He has brought US … Paul writes to these Colossians … into a Kingdom that offers a very great deal of privilege, prestige and position that is not conferred by the privileged possession of a blue passport!

He has RESCUED us from the dominion of darkness. Rescued.

He has brought us into the Kingdom of the Son He loves. Repatriated.

And one great and glorious thing more …

         •        3) Redeemed, v. 14

“he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”

            •          A) Redemption

redemption (apolutrōsis - ἀπολύτρωσις) 
redemption, a deliverance, procured by the payment of a ransom, release.

Our nation’s armed forces have specialists in this sort of thing … hostage release teams comprising experts in infiltrating hostile territory and high-risk situations, experts in search, experts in close-quarters combat, entry, remote area tactical medics and exfiltration teams of escape and evasion and evacuation experts.

It’s quite a big deal, all directing elite and highly trained personal with advanced resources to get hostages in dark places out and set free.

But in our case it was the God of Glory, the sacrifice of the Son and the power of the Holy Spirit applying all Heaven’s redemption assets and advanced resources … His AUTHORITY … to spring the captive sinner from the dominion of darkness, paying the price of the rebellious folly that got us there, and deliver us into the good place: the Kingdom of His beloved Son in Whom we have redemption, bought back and set free … the forgiveness of the sin that made us captives of darkness!

            •          B) Forgiveness of sins

ἄφεσις (afesis) 'forgiveness'

Again, what we’ve got here is forgiveness, pardon, release, cancellation of a debt

This word ἄφεσις  occurs about seventeen times in the New Testament.

Israel’s experience of monarchy … so many nations’ experience of monarchy over millennia … has had a lot to do with the imposition of burdens and of debt.

The Christian’s experience of Christ the King, the authoritative Lord we delight to follow having been sprung from darkness’s prison, is an experience of the LIFTING of debt foolishly incurred  and of the removal of burdens and impositions to live joyfully to please Him by His grace.

And here’s the thing.

It’s all about Him. Us and HIM. Not the rules, not the laws and obligations, not the tax … but the gift of grace of Him.

            •          C) in HIM

through, by means of; (acc.) because of, for the sake of, therefore

(genitive) through, by means of HIM.

It is PERSONAL.

It is all about “the Son he loves, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”

Are you a monarchist?

Well, I don’t know if it’s wise to be drawn on human monarchy which might have its human benefits but is certainly at least as marred as any other institution in our sin-besmirched world.

But here is a different proposition.

The God of grace restores those who are held captive in the Kingdom of darkness by His grace and by means of the sin-squashing sacrifice of the Son He loves … His hostage release operation pays the price and sets the captives free to live in a Kingdom and under an authority that is not only better by far but works to completely benign and beneficial ends and purposes.

And it is ALL, personally, ours in Him.

By means of the redemption into relationship He establishes with all He calls to walk with Him.

         •        Conclusion - all about Jesus

My friends, brothers and sisters … it is all about Jesus.

Distraction into all manner of areas of Christian interest and involvement are to be subject to and subsidiary to this.

It is all about Jesus.

He is wonderful … why wouldn’t we get stern about keeping our focus very much on Him?

Why would we be shy about the fact that our supreme and unshaking allegiance is safe with Him?

Why would we go spending our time on other theological side-shows that don’t readily and genuinely bring us quickly back to a bigger and better view of Him?

Why would we do that?

Why would we sit under ministry and read loads of books and articles and blogs that don’t bring us quickly and more clear-sightedly to Him?

He is the KING!

No … hang on … he is the KING of kings; he is the Lord of Lords … our God is “the One Who has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”

Where is our focus?

Paul is about to show us glorious, all-consuming Jesus over the next few weeks in Colossians 1 and I really hope you are going to join me on this wonderful journey.