Saturday Morning Post #4: WHO WAS THAT MASKED MAN?

OF COURSE, Jesus wasn’t really wearing a mask to the Feast of Tabernacles, the subject of our #3 Post.  Nevertheless, I’m sure he left a few heads spinning after standing in the temple court and proclaiming, “I am the light of the world…”, as the festival drew to a close. Can’t you just hear the buzz as the Israelites packed up and headed for their homes in the Palestinian countryside? “Who was that guy?”

HE WAS, in fact, “the image of the invisible God!”* The Apostle Paul uncovered that truth and a great deal more a number of years later in his letter to the Colossians. He must have been enjoying one of those mountain top experiences the day he penned those words. Colossians stands as a sort of Pike’s Peak among the range of mountainous truths embodied in Paul's Epistles.

IN COLOSSIANS Paul reveals some of the “mysteries of God” – the purposes of God, unknown to man except by revelation. Christian mystery is not secret knowledge for a few, but rather a revelation of divine truth – once hidden but now openly proclaimed.  One such mystery unveiled in this letter is that “Christ (is the one) in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”**

COLOSSIANS ALSO discloses the astounding reality that the strange man at the Feast of Tabernacles claiming to be the light of the world is himself, Creator of that world. “For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together!”***

JESUS CHRIST—

IMAGE OF THE INVISIBLE GOD!

IN WHOM ARE ALL WISDOM AND KNOWLEDGE!

CREATOR OF ALL THINGS!

CAN YOU IMAGINE having stood in his presence that morning, the festival lights being extinguished while folks prepared to depart Jerusalem, never knowing the true identity of the man who had spoken those awesome words?  "I am the light of the world..." Verily, verily everything’s clearer in hindsight.

*Colossians 1:15

**Colossians 2:3

***Colossians 1:16-17