In June 2022, a lottery ticket was sold at a retailer in Scarborough, Ontario, and when the draw took place, that particular ticket won a $70 million prize. Some of you may know this, others may not, but lottery tickets expire after one year. Despite a media blitz by the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation, nobody came forward to claim the $70 million prize, and after the year had passed, the lottery corporation declared it officially unclaimed. All that money went back into the prize pool.[i]
Now, imagine you’re cleaning your house one day in July 2023, and you find that lottery ticket. Can you imagine the regret you would feel? For a moment, you might think of all the dreams you could have fulfilled, only to have them crushed instantly. You wouldn’t dwell on it too long, though. But that kind of regret, should it happen, is nothing compared to the regret people will experience at the end of time when they realize what a treasure was being offered to them in the person of Jesus Christ. At that point, because their life in this world has ended, that offer has expired, and it’s too late for them to receive that gift.
This is why it’s so important for us to recognize the treasure that Jesus Christ truly is. My goal today is to present that treasure before you. If you have not yet received Him as your Lord and Savior, my hope and prayer is that you would do so. But even if you have received Him as your Lord and Savior, I have hopes for you as well. My hope is that you would grow to know, with greater awareness, this great and wonderful gift that God has given to us in the person of Jesus Christ.
We’re going to explore this by looking at several passages from the book of Colossians. If you have a Bible, you can turn there now.
Paul’s Encouragement to the Colossian Church
In this letter, Paul is writing to the church in Colossae, and he’s also hoping that this letter will be shared with other churches in the region. His goal is to encourage the people in those churches because they’re going through a very difficult time. There are people spreading teachings that are not true, undermining the truth of the Gospel. These false teachers were promoting a heresy at that time, saying, “Yes, Jesus is great, but for true salvation—to get the whole package, the full experience—you have to do a little more. You either need some secret knowledge, perform special rituals, or strictly adhere to rigorous rules regarding what you do with your body and how you live in the world.”
This is a very serious problem, and Paul addresses the heresy at its core, focusing on who Jesus is and the worth of who He is and what He’s done for us. Here’s why he does this: if you get Jesus right, you get everything right.
This approach that Paul takes can also be helpful to us in our personal witnessing to others. Many of us, myself included, sometimes feel the burden of needing to prove that God exists and feel we must say and do the right things to convince others of the truth we know. But, in reality, we don’t need to do that.
This approach was shared with me by Pastor Dave Hilderman, who is with us today, and it’s also part of what the “Three to One” course is about, which we’re hosting here at Walnut Grove. You don’t need to prove everything. All you need to do is have a conversation about Jesus. It would be quite audacious for anyone to claim that Jesus Christ never existed, so you can simply ask the other person, “What do you think of Jesus? What do you think of the claims He made and the things He did?” Jesus did incredible things and made remarkable claims. Who do you think Jesus is? Every human being would benefit from, and in some way must, respond to Jesus Christ and who He is and what He’s done.
This also applies to us in our ministry and mission as a church. The only way someone can avoid acknowledging Jesus Christ as their Lord is by diminishing either who He is or what He’s done—or both. So, understanding and seeing the true value of Jesus is crucial, both for us and for others.
Paul takes a two-pronged approach in his writing, which you can find in Colossians 2:9-10. His approach is this: he writes, “For in Christ, all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form.” That’s part one. And part two is this: “And in Christ, you have been brought to fullness.”
The Fullness of Christ
Behind our English word “fullness” is the Greek word pleroma. You don’t need to know that, but it conveys a richer sense of the word “fullness”—a sense of rich, overflowing abundance that satisfies and brings contentment and peace. This is the kind of fullness that is offered to us in Jesus Christ. Because of the rich, overflowing fullness of Jesus, He is the answer to the great questions our cosmos longs to have answered.
First of all, how did we come into being? In response to that question, Paul points to Jesus and writes: “For in Him, all things were created, things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him, all things hold together.”
In the book The Case for Faith, Dr. William L. Bradley is interviewed by Lee Strobel. Some of you know that in our DNA, there’s a four-letter structure that holds information. Dr. Bradley said, “Every cell in the human body contains more information than all 30 volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica.”[ii] You can tell this interview took place a little while ago because the Encyclopedia Britannica isn’t as widely used anymore, but you can imagine—30 big books, and one of your cells has more information than all of those volumes combined. So, where did the information for our genetic coding come from? This is an audience participation moment! Let’s try this again: where did the information for our genetic coding come from? No, no, no—everything was created by and through whom? Jesus! Okay, where did the information for our genetic coding come from? Yes, Jesus.
Second question: how can we be healed? All of us are broken in different ways, and we long for healing. Paul points to Jesus and writes: “Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now He has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in His sight, without blemish and free from accusation.” That’s from Colossians 1.
In his book The Reason for God, Timothy Keller writes, “All life-changing love entails an exchange, a reversal of place. But here is the great reversal: God, in the place of ultimate power, reverses places with the marginalized, the poor, and the oppressed. The prophets sang songs about God as one who brought down rulers from their thrones and lifted up the poor. But never, never could they have imagined that God Himself would come down off His ultimate throne and suffer with the oppressed so that they might be lifted up.” [iii]
So, who is the one who took our place in suffering for sin, so that we could take His place as a child of God? It’s Jesus.
Third question: How can we have hope? Once again, Paul points to Jesus, and he writes these words: “Since then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. And when Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory.”
N.T. Wright writes about this very passage in his book Surprised by Hope, saying, “Notice Paul does not say, “One day you will go to be with Him.” No, you already possess life in Him. This new life, which the Christian possesses secretly, invisibly to the world, will burst forth into full bodily reality and visibility”[iv]—and that will happen on the last day.
So, who fills us with new life now that will burst into full reality at the end of time? It’s Jesus, yes.
What Does All This Mean for Us?
So, what does this all mean for us? Well, there are times in life for all of us when the challenges before us seem to be more than we can bear, and there is no sign of any relief in sight. Life seems empty, and we’re worn out and drained. Dear friends, when that happens, that’s when we most need to look to Jesus and remember that in Him, the fullness of God has come to you, and Jesus has filled you to overflowing with all of His life, His forgiveness, His grace, and His peace. And Jesus filled you to fullness by emptying Himself.
As it’s written in Philippians 2, “Jesus, though being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to His own advantage. Rather, He made Himself nothing.” The Greek word here has the sense of “emptying oneself.” Jesus emptied Himself for you by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.
The Woman Who Won Because She was Known
I began with one lottery story, and I’m going to end with another. In 2012, also in Ontario, there was a lottery ticket that won a $50 million prize. Once again, nobody came forward to claim it. And once again, the lottery corporation had a media blitz to try to encourage people to check their tickets. But what was different this time was that they knew when and where the ticket was purchased. It was purchased at a Shoppers Drug Mart. So, they went to the Shoppers Drug Mart and asked to see the security camera footage from that time. They saw a woman buying a lottery ticket, and she used her credit card and her loyalty card.
The lottery corporation now knew who she was. They found out where she lived, went to her home, and told her all that had happened. And guess what? She said, “I don’t have the ticket anymore.” But the lottery corporation was able to identify the coat she was wearing and the purse she had, which matched that of the woman on the security camera, and they gave her the $50 million anyway because they knew who she was.[v]
Dear friends, the rich, full, abundant life is not a matter of lottery tickets, and it doesn’t depend on what we know or what we can do. The rich, full, abundant life that we all seek is received from the One who knows us.
See, Jesus knows you, and you are a treasure to Him. He laid down His life for you so you could have life with Him. And so my prayer is that Jesus will be your treasure of truth, sustaining you throughout your life, especially in hard times. For as we read in Isaiah 43: “But now this is what the Lord says—He who created you, Jacob, He who formed you, Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you. I have summoned you by name, and you are mine.” Amen.
(This message was shared at Walnut Grove Lutheran Church in Langley BC and St. Luke Lutheran Church in Surrey BC on November 3, 2024. For more info, please go to wglc.org or sllc.ca.)
[i] “$70M Lotto Max ticket sold in Scarborough officially declared ‘unclaimed’,” CBC News (Internet; available at: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/70-million-dollar-lotto-max-ticket-unclaimed-1.6932615; accessed October 30, 2024).
[ii] Lee Strobel, The Case for Faith (Grand Rapids MI: Zondervan, 2000), 110.
[iii] Timothy Keller, The Reason for God (New York: Penguin, 2008), 195-196.
[iv] N. T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (New York: HarperCollins, 2008), 149.
[v] Irish Mae Silverstre, “Time’s ticking: Winner has just weeks left to claim $64 million lottery prize,” Daily Hive (Internet; available at: https://dailyhive.com/canada/lottery-winner-lotto-649-unclaimed-ticket-alc; accessed October 30, 2024).
Farewell to Shadowlands 