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Colossians 1:15-23Belgic Confession Articles 20-21
What DID Jesus do?
INTRODUCTIONMy Brothers and Sisters in Christ,RECAP
 -a simple and spiritual being whom we call God-that we come to know God partially through Creation butmost clearly through Scripture-we learned about Scripture and how it is our trustworthyroadmap for faith and life-we learned about the Trinity and how we understand theFather, the Son and the Holy Spirit
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we learned about the creation of the world and how Godupholds it, we learned about sin and how it separates us fromGod, and about election, and we’ve learned about JesusChrist – his humanity and his divinity and why it is essentialfor our livesTonight: We’re going to talk about Jesus Christ and whathappened…what happened while he was here…etc.As we work through the confession tonight I’m going to ask youfour questions centring on the activity of Jesus Christ and the firstquestion that I want to ask you is this:
I. Do you KNOW what Jesus did?
I would say, looking around at all of you who are here tonight, thatmost of us do know the story…
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We know the story of a young, unwed mother who lived in themiddle-east over 2,000 years ago…We know the story of a child who was conceived by the HolySpirit and born in a manger…We know the story of a young man who healed the sick, sought thelost, and preached about the Kingdom of God…We know that this young man entered Jerusalem, was betrayed byJudas Iscariot, suffered at the hands of Roman soldiers, was beatenand mocked, and was finally nailed on a cross with criminals and itis there that he died…And we know that according to our Roadmap – the Bible – that 3days later the stone was rolled away and this man, Jesus Christ,was no longer there but rose from the dead…And we know that his death and his resurrection has significancein the course of human history and in the terms of our brokenrelationship with God.This is what we find in Article 20 of the Belgic Confession…this iswhat we confessed together…
Article 20
The Justice and Mercy of God in Christ 
We believe that God--who is perfectly mercifuland also very just--sent his Son to assume the naturein which the disobedience had been committed,in order to bear in it the punishment of sinby his most bitter passion and death.So God made known his justice toward his Son,
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who was charged with our sin,and he poured out his goodness and mercy on us,who are guilty and worthy of damnation,giving to us his Son to die,by a most perfect love,and raising him to lifefor our justification,in order that by himwe might have immortalityand eternal life.
We also see this in Paul and our reading from the Colossian letter  beginning at verse 19…
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For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him,
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andthrough him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things onearth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shedon the cross.
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Once you were alienated from God and wereenemies in your minds because of your evil behavior.
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But now hehas reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free fromaccusation— The Bible tells us that this story about Jesus Christ is about a problem in the relationship between humanity and God. Paul tellsthat we were alienated from God because of our evil behaviour. Hetells us that we were enemies of God because of our rebellion. Yetsomething in this story of Jesus Christ – how he died and roseagain – solved that problem.And if we want to boil the Gospel message down to one statementof faith so that we know what Jesus did – we can state it like this:
Jesus Christ, the Son of God, suffered, died and rose againaccording to God’s will for the forgiveness of our sin.
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