Jesus Rescues: The Hope That Changes Everything*

No matter where you are or what you face, Jesus has the power to completely rescue you. In this encouraging message from Colossians 1:11–23, Pastor Chris Teien shares how Christ rescues us from darkness, death, and even ourselves. Through personal stories, clear teaching, and gospel hope, this episode calls you to trust Jesus fully—and to help others experience His rescue too. 

Link: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2285086/episodes/16335651

Key Points:

• Jesus Rescues You from Darkness – Colossians 1:11–14. Christ transfers us from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light, giving us strength, patience, and joy.
• Jesus Is the Creator and Supreme Over All – Colossians 1:15–17. Jesus holds all creation together and shows us the very image of God.
• Jesus Rescues Us from Death and Brings Peace – Colossians 1:18–20. Through His death and resurrection, Jesus reconciles us to God and secures eternal peace.
• Jesus Rescues Us from Ourselves – Colossians 1:21–22. Even when we were far from God, Christ’s sacrifice brought us into His presence, making us holy and blameless.
• Jesus Rescues Us to Help Rescue Others – Colossians 1:23. We are called to stand firm in the gospel and share the hope of Christ with a world in need.

Personal Stories

• Reflections on personal salvation and how Christ continues to sanctify believers.
• Stories of handing out New Testament Bibles and Hope Cards to encourage evangelism.
• Emotional testimony about his son’s salvation and struggles, emphasizing that salvation is based on Christ’s work, not our performance.
• Encouragement to use life experiences and faith tools like “I Am Second” to reach others for Christ.

Quotes

• "Jesus doesn't tell you to give up—He tells you to live in the salvation He has already accomplished."
• "Christ is supreme, holding all creation together—and He is holding your life together too."
• "The greatest miracle isn't a spectacle—it’s a soul rescued and transformed by Jesus."

Takeaways:

• Reflect on how Jesus has rescued you from darkness and brought you into His light.
• Boldly offer others the hope of Christ—through prayer, conversation, and simple acts like sharing a Bible or testimony.
• Trust God’s continued work in your life, even when you stumble or feel unworthy.
• Pray for the Holy Spirit to empower your boldness and strengthen your faith daily.

Scripture:

• Colossians 1:11–23 – Christ’s supremacy and rescue
• Acts 26:17–18 – Turning people from darkness to light
• 1 John 1:5–7 – Walking in the light
• Hebrews 1:3 – Jesus as the radiance of God's glory
• Romans 8:28 – God works all things for our good
• Philippians 1:6 – God will complete the good work He began

Keywords:
 Jesus rescue, Colossians 1, gospel hope, redemption, salvation, Christian growth, sharing your faith, darkness to light, I Am Second, evangelism

Challenge:
Jesus has already made the way for your rescue—out of darkness, into light, and into a life of hope and purpose. Trust Him, live boldly for Him, and help others find the rescue their hearts long for.

18m0520de Jesus Can Rescue You

The WELL Faith Podcast offers encouraging, Bible-based messages from Pastor Chris Teien and guests. New sermons are released every Sunday. Replay episodes are marked with an asterisk. Find us online at ChrisTeien.com and Rockwell.Church in Virginia, MN. Email comments to wellfaith24@gmail.com

Transcript

Chris T 0:16

All right, so if you have your Bibles, your digital Bibles, your online Bibles, your U Version Bible, whatever, your tablet will be in Colossians chapter one, verses eleven to twenty-three, which are actually a lot of verses to cover in a short period of time. But I wanted to talk about how Jesus can completely rescue us, completely rescue us from whatever it is, from rescue us from addiction, rescue us from difficulty, rescue us from persecution, rescue us from hopelessness, rescue us from all of the things in this passage in Colossians. Paul is fighting Gnosticism. He's writing to the church to keep them pure in doctrine and trying to help them to see that Jesus is sufficient. Some people in the church were falling into this false teaching, thinking that they needed something more than Jesus, that they needed to go beyond what Scripture was, what God was revealing through Scripture at the time, and they needed to go beyond. And this passage is showing us that Jesus is sufficient, that Jesus is enough, that Jesus is all that we need, and that we should pursue Jesus. And if we realize who he is, then that will help us doctrinally, that will help us physician, that will help us to be anchored in our faith, to know what we believe and why we believe it, even when difficulties and storms come. Jesus can completely rescue us. Number one, he can rescue you and me from the darkness so you can live in the light with Jesus. The world is a really dark place. I mean, I don't know where I would be if I didn't know Jesus as my Lord and Savior. I can only imagine the person that I would be if I hadn't come to know him at an early age and if I wasn't saved, and I don't follow everything in his word 100% perfectly. As a matter of fact, the more you grow in Christ, the more the Holy Spirit points out to you areas that you're not a hundred percent perfect. That's kind of like pole vaulting if you're able to even do that. Have you tried to pole vault before? So I have never gotten very far off the ground, though I did try. And so it's like the Lord says, You're saved in me, and I'm gonna set the bar here. So why don't you live your life like this? And you get over the bar, and it's like that's great. That's great. According to my word, there's some things that you might want to work on with your character, your motives, those types of things. Let's set the bar a little higher, and then you reach that. And so the Holy Spirit's constantly moving you forward in your ability to be more and more like Christ, your ability to go higher and higher, your ability to clear a bar that's higher and higher. And it's not just like, well, you're miserable and you'll never amount to anything. And I know you hit the bar when it's right here, but the bar is way up here, so you might not might as well just give up. But Jesus never says give up. A matter of fact, he says that your salvation is based on what he has done, not on what you do. So live in that, enjoy that, and seek to follow the Lord. So Colossians 11, I'm sorry, Colossians 1, 11, Paul writes, We also pray that you will be strengthened with all his glorious power, so that you will have all the endurance and patience you need. May you be filled with joy, always thanking the Father. He has enabled you to share in the inheritance that belongs to his people who live in the light, for he has rescued us from the kingdom of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his dear son. So we have this great opportunity to be like Paul and to pray for others. We should pray that for ourselves, but we can also pray that the people around us, the people that we care about, the people that we know would be strengthened with his glorious power, that they'd have endurance and patience, and they'd keep living for Jesus, and they keep serving Jesus, and they'd keep whatever their ministry is, everybody should have a ministry. I'm pastor of a church, and yes, that makes me a minister, and people call on me to do weddings and do church things, but you're all given opportunities to do ministry. So the pastor, according to Ephesians chapter 4, verse 11, says we're pastors are supposed to equip and help make things happen, not to do all the work. So you have opportunities to do ministry, to be ministers. And one of those things you can be doing is praying for people and encouraging them so that they would have endurance. I mean, when you think about the darkness and the sin and the things that are around us, there is just so much darkness. We see it in the media, we hear it in the songs. Some of the popular songs that people listen to are really dark. I mean, when you compare God's perfect design for sexuality and God's perfect design for the way that we live, compared to the things that people sing about and the things that people put in videos and the things that people put in movies and things like that, it's really dark. And without Christ, I think that our world would be a very dark place. Can you imagine if where we live now, in the in the country that we live in, there was no Christian influence, there was nobody standing for Christ, how dark it would be. When we get saved, when we receive Christ as our Lord and Savior, we are transferred from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of Jesus, to the kingdom of light, to the kingdom of, well, Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, so that we are in Him. So He rescues us from the darkness, so that we can live in the light with Jesus. And we all need to know that when we feel overwhelmed, that Jesus can rescue us, when we see people around whose lives are a mess, we know that Jesus can rescue them. And we need to do all that we can to encourage and to pray, to be, when we pray, to be thankful for our faith and the faith of the people around us, to ask God how we can make a difference in people's lives, to shine the light in their lives, and to ask the Lord what he wants us to do in the lives of others, to ask God to give us a deep spiritual understanding and to give them a deep spiritual understanding. And that means that maybe you come alongside them and you help them to grow in their Christian faith. So I told you I was gonna do this all summer, and I hope it's not like a broken record, but I really want you to pass out these New Believer, New Testaments, how to find God things. And each week I've been putting something in the bulletin that is like a copy of a page in there. And this week I put from page A19, What has God done for you? And uh, so here it's in the front here, which makes this a great discipleship book. Talks about being saved and justification and how Jesus took our our penalty and has forgiven us. And point number one on here says God promises us his gracious forgiveness. Number two, God has balanced out our moral and spiritual budget. Up to this point, salvation has been God's responsibility. From this point on, it continues to be his responsibility, except that we are responsible for the wise investment of our capital of character. That is, we are responsible for living as God desires us. It's as if your checking account were empty, but then someone made a hundred thousand dollar deposit. What you do with the money is up to you. Number three, God calls us his children. So this is a great discipleship book. And so now I've gone a step further because I know that one problem that you have when you carry these, well, for me, when I carry these in my truck or my car, or I've got these little pockets on the back of my truck bed that I can stuff things in. And I notice that the humidity gets them and they turn yellow or they get dirty. So now I found perfect ziploc bags to put them in. So I have some of these for you if you want the ziploc bags. And now we also have hope cards in ziploc bags. But I really need you to help me because I feel that God put it on my heart that we should try to do all that we can to put these New Testaments in every home in Bell Plain and Jordan in the region, which we could use some donations towards the Bibles are$3 each, that'd be great. If you like come into some extra money and want to donate towards Bibles, that would be great. But more than that, I can't put them into everybody's hands the way that you can. And when you put them into somebody's hands and then you want to get together with them and follow up, it makes such a big difference in their life. So, number one, rescued you from the darkness so that you can live in the light with Jesus. Makes a total difference. Acts 26, 17. Jesus says to Paul, I am sending you, Paul, to the Gentiles to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me. That's in Acts 26. And in 1 John chapter 1, verse 5, this is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light. In him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his son, purifies us from all sin. So we are redeemed. We are able to walk with Jesus, separated from the hold that Satan has on us. It's no longer we have to give in to temptation. He doesn't have the we're not like puppets on his strings. We're set free to make a choice, to do what's right. So believers in Christ are made qualified to share in Christ's inheritance, are rescued from Satan's dominion of darkness and made into God's children. We are brought into Jesus' eternal kingdom, and he redeemed us or brought our freedom from sin and judgment and forgave us for all our sins when we received Christ. Vance Habner was somebody that Billy Graham really appreciated, an evangelist preacher. And he wrote in the book Seasonings we hear much these days about loving our fellow men, but we forget that the first commandment is, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God. We cannot properly love our neighbor until we love God. And we cannot love God aright until we are born again and become as children, sharing his nature. Trying to get a pagan generation to obey the golden rule in an unregenerate society to abide by the Sermon on the Mount is a waste of time. So we need to help people come into a right relationship with Christ before we expect them to start to live like a Christian. We should pray about that. Now, in this part of Colossians, it is a hymn. Many Bible scholars believe it was a hymn that maybe it was in existence before Paul wrote Colossians, or maybe Paul adapted the hymn. Paul was under the influence of the Holy Spirit to write scripture according to 2 Timothy 3.16. All scriptures God breathed. Or maybe Paul wrote this, but from verse 15 to verse 20, it is a hymn. I don't know how the music goes. Maybe Dan knows how the music would go to this hymn. Maybe somebody's put it to music, but it points out who Christ is. And it's one place in scripture that really makes it clear how Christ is supreme, how Christ is preeminent, how Christ is all that we need. Colossians 1 15. It says Jesus our rescuer is creator and supreme over all creation. So Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. He existed before anything was created and is supreme over all creation. For through him, God created everything in the heavenly realms and on earth. He made the things we can see and the things we can't see, such as thrones, kingdom, rulers, authorities in the unseen world. Everything was created through him and for him, and he existed before anything else, and he holds all creation together. So this is the Savior we're putting our trust in. And if we believe Scripture, then this says that Christ is all in all. Not only was he there at creation to make everything, but he's holding it together. In the journey Bible study series, when you try to grasp how Christ is holding things together, Tommy, I think his name's Tommy Higgle, writes to grasp a vague idea of Jesus' power, consider the universe. The universe is so big that a scale model cannot be made. For example, if a scale model reduced Earth's size to a one-inch ball, the nearest star, other than the Sun, Alpha Centauri, would have to be placed nearly 51,000 miles away. The model couldn't be put on Earth because the circumference of the Earth at the equator is only 24,900 miles. However, not only does the magnitude of his creation boggle our minds, but so does the smallness of it, such as atoms and molecules that are invisible to human eyes. All these things were created by Jesus and for him. Christ is the visible image of the invisible God, which means that he is God with a face on it, that he is the exact image of God. Hebrews 1 3 says the sun radiates God's own glory and expresses the very character of God. And he sustains everything by the mighty power of his command. When he had cleansed us from our sins, he sat down in the place of honor at the right hand of the majestic God in heaven. Jesus is a radiance of God's glory. Jesus is God in the flesh. Some cults try to say, well, since Jesus was the firstborn, he's not God. And the Bible doesn't use the word Trinity. So how could you believe in the Trinity if the word's not in the Bible? But the Trinity is God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. You know that. But Jesus is God. He showed us how to live when he was here. He died for our sins. He rose again and he's coming back someday. But he is our rescuer. Jesus, our rescuer, is creator and supreme over all creation. And we can trust him. Number three, Jesus can rescue us from death and bring us peace on earth and in heaven. So this hymn continues. Christ is also the head of the church, which is his body. Christ is the head of the church. He started the church. He began the church. He is the purpose of the church. He's the leader of the church. And we are his body. We are his hands. We are his feet. We serve him. We're his mouthpiece. We do all of these things. And we use our spiritual gifts to do that. Christ is the head of the church, which is his body. He is the beginning, supreme over all who rise from the dead. So he is first in everything. So there were some other people in the Bible who died and were brought back to life temporarily, but they died again. But Jesus was the first to rise from the dead and to stay alive. That's what the Bible says. If you believe Scripture, that's what we believe, and that's what makes Christianity real. That's what that's our what our faith is based in is Jesus' power as God. For God in all of his fullness was pleased to live in Christ. And through him, God reconciled everything to himself. He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth by means of Christ's blood on the cross. So Jesus has already paid the price for our sin. In the Old Testament, they would offer temporary sacrifices until the day when Jesus would die on the cross for sin. He was the ultimate sacrifice. So by his blood, he paid the price for our sin. And I think that you know that also. But what a great hymn. What a great thing to look at this passage were Colossians 1, 15 through 20, and maybe pray that back to God. Maybe in your devotions you would look at this and you would pray something like, Oh Lord Jesus, we thank you so much that you are, I thank you so much that you are the visible image, the invisible God, and that you go on from there. You just use it as a platform to pray this back to God. I again, I don't know if it's ever been put to music, but it's a hymn, and it's it's a great one for you to learn. In this New Believers Bible, also, if you flip the page, there's a section that talks about Jesus being divine and that he's eternal, that he's creator of all things, that he holds everything together, that he's the head of the church, that he's the leader of all who are arise from the dead and the only way to peace with God, and all sorts of information about that. Would it be great to come alongside somebody and to talk, use this for a discipleship manual and to talk that through with them and to help them understand their new faith in Christ? What a great opportunity that you could have if you would use this tool. Number four, Jesus can rescue us from ourselves. Rescue us. Do you need rescuing from yourself? I mean, if you think about the things that you could fall into, the temptations that you could have, you could be a really righteous man or woman of God and give into some temptation that could destroy your life. We were hearing about people in the news and even pastors that have done things that shouldn't be done. Even years ago, one pastor is being accused of things that were inappropriate, and it was like 20 years ago. But there are so many things, so many temptations, so many things that we can do wrong, so many things in our past, skeletons in our closet, but Jesus can rescue us from them all. Jesus can rescue us from ourselves and bring us into his presence. Verse 21. This includes you who were once far away from God. If you received Christ at an early age, it was easy for you to say, Well, I was a child and then I received Christ, and you look at your sins, and it's like they weren't very major. You know, what was your what did you do? What sinful things? Well, you know, I sometimes I use bad words and I didn't share my toys, you know. But as you get older, you might have a longer laundry list of when you are far away from God. It seems like if you're not walking with God, then you are walking away from God in rebellion against the things of God. You were his enemy, separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions. See, God knows your thoughts and actions. He knows what you're thinking all the time, and he knows if you're truly on board with him, if you're truly worshiping him, if you're truly following him. Some people come to church and they say the right things and they act the right way, but God knows their heart that they're not truly walking with Christ. But we need to bow the knee and come into a right relationship with Jesus Christ and humble ourselves and follow him. Yet now he has reconciled you to himself through the death of Christ in his physical body. As a result, he has brought you into his own presence, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault. So, how did this happen? How are you standing before God without a single fault? Because Jesus Christ died on the cross for your sin and you receive Christ's that payment for your sin, for your salvation. So it doesn't say that you worked your way all the way to the end of your life in a perfect way, and then you get to be saved because you got it all right. Instead, it says that Christ reconciled us to himself when he died on the cross. So there's difficulties in life. People go through bad things, as you know, my son. It's been two years now since my son died, and so he went to this church and he received Christ at an early age and of his own choice. He had the Ten Commandments tattooed on the back of his legs. He had family, friends, and faith tattooed on his chest. He was a Bible quizer, and he had this some days following after God, and some days following after the world, and the world was pretty exciting to him. Somehow he started using drugs and died of an accident, accidental overdose. And I believe that he is in heaven because of this. There's this lady I knew that she was a missionary up on the iron range, and she was this godly woman, led all these women to Christ, did all these children's ministries. And when I visited her in the nursing home, she would like curse like a sailor. The things that came out of her mouth were so unsanctified and so unrighteous. But I believe that she's still saved, not because she ended her life perfect, but because of what Christ did in her life. I knew a guy in a church that was a church leader and he got depressed and he killed himself. He really sad for his family and everything. But I believe that he is in heaven, even though he went through this depression and this difficulty, because not that he finished his life perfectly, but because he received Christ. Christ came into his life, adopted him as the child of God, assured him of salvation, gave him the Holy Spirit. So it's not how you end, it's what you do now. And so for the last two years, I've carried around the I am second thing on the back of my truck in hopes that it might help somebody, might help somebody. There's a Nike product manager that shares about how he was addicted to drugs and how a lot of his friends are dead and how his life has changed. And I think to myself, if somebody is struggling with all of these things on this list, because these are the topics they cover on these videos, the I Am Second movement has been going for 10 years. It's still going now, but anger, pride, sex addition, sex addiction, substance abuse, abortion abuse, uh, affluence, cancer, child abuse, contentment, death, disabilities, divorce, eating, fatherlessness, forgiveness, grief, identity, infertility, marriage, meaning, molestation, overcoming, prison, prostitution, purpose in life, racism, relationships, satisfaction, self-esteem, success, transformation, trauma, war, work. Those are all the topics that these people talk about on this I am second video that's on YouTube. They've got a website. And so I want to show you a video clip of what the movement has been doing over the years, and then also show you the clip of some of the baseball players. It takes a couple minutes.

SPEAKER_01 20:23

It begins and ends with the central story of humanity, the single greatest drama ever to unfold. A love story of epic purchase told through the lens of individual narratives in a simple, intimate film. Second and rallying each other. Step into the community in a clear simple profile. And a revolutionary group. They were it Facebook and tweeted. Underrun it again. It's found. Expeditions are organized. Old spreads from Romania to Nepal and Colombia to today. Lives are transformed in simple obedience. And the movement becomes supercharged. Breaking barriers where cultures collide in every corner of the planet through the infinite power of the story. Yours. Mine. A new relationship occurs. Belief is formed. People live second. And the story is told again and again and again. I am second.

SPEAKER_02 23:27

Do I even matter? Why should I be here? I had so much anxiety about my own life. I thought it was about me. The one thing that I'd love more than anything in my life was taken away. I knew I wasn't making the right decisions. I knew I was being selfish. Everybody wants peace. I want, I want joy too.

Chris T 23:57

Alright, so I don't really know if people respond. No one ever like asked me what they must do to be saved when they see the thing on my truck. Sometimes they're like, what does that mean? So I added a dot com to help. You have to try new things to try to be effective in trying to lead people to Christ. Pray about it and see what God gives you. So maybe He'll give you a talent. Maybe He'll give you a sports team. Maybe He'll give you something that you can use for spiritual fishing. Number five, Jesus can rescue us so that we will help rescue others. Colossians 1 23, but you must continue to believe in this truth and stand firmly in it. Don't drift away from the assurance you received when you heard the good news. The good news has been preached all over the world, and I, Paul, have been appointed as God's servant to proclaim it. When you look at this, it looks like you have to be perfect to the end to be saved. You must continue to believe this truth and stand firmly in it. It doesn't say or you'll lose your salvation or you'll go to hell. No, it says you must continue to believe this. Don't drift away from the assurance you received. So you should follow it, you should stand in it, you should believe it, you should trust it. So some of the Bible commentators, I don't have time to go into it, said that basically in Christ, if you're truly in Christ, if you're truly saved, if you're the prodigal son, if you walk away, you will return. You will come back. You will come back to Jesus. And so Jesus can help rescue us. And we're going to continue this point next week, actually, because we're going to talk about bold faith, how we can share our faith. But Philippians 1, 6 says, I am certain that God who began the good work within you will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ returns. We're all in a process to become more like Jesus. We're all somewhere along the way. The people that you're praying for, you're trying to reach, they might be way back here. You might be here and wish that you were further ahead, but we're all in a process and we need to keep coming back to Jesus. We need to keep spending time in his word. We need to keep praying that he would empower us and make ourselves available. And maybe we've never received Christ before as our Lord and Savior. And a prayer doesn't save you, but believing in Christ does, repenting of your sin does. Praying is a good way to start that relationship by praying something like, Lord Jesus, I know I'm a sinner. Please forgive me of my sin and come into my life and save me and make me the person you created me to be. Something like that is a great way to start your relationship with God. Jude 123, rescue others by snatching them from the flames of judgment. Show mercy to still others, but do so with great caution, hating the sins that contaminate their lives. Which is a great warning that as you're trying to reach people, don't fall into the stuff they're falling into. I mean, it's one thing to overlook what they do because you're trying to reach them, but it's another thing to be tempted and fall into the same type of sin or compromise that they're in. Don't do it. So next week we're going to talk about unleashing your faith and being bold. And I'll share the story next week of Ad Nairam Judson, who was a missionary to Burma for many years and saw very few converts, but years later, hundreds of thousands of people had come to Christ because of his ministry. So come back for that next week.