Hold Fast - Colossians 2:16-23(Feb 28, 2016)

All right.

Well, good morning, Harvest.

Good morning.

Good to see you all here.

Today you can turn in your Bibles right now to Colossians chapter 2.

Colossians 2 · chapter mention

We're going to be finishing up the second chapter of this book here this morning.

And as you're turning to that and kind of getting yourself situated a little bit, I have a picture that I want to show you.

If we can get that uh thrown up uh on the screen here.

This is uh one of my favorite pictures of uh my daughter Karis from a couple of years ago.

And uh this was uh she was watching a movie uh with Ange and insisted on um when the bad lady came on, it was a Disney princess movie or something.

Uh when the bad lady came on, she had to close her eyes and uh hang on tightly to uh to mummy.

And uh it's just one of those sweet things.

Ange happened to get uh a picture of it, and uh it's uh it's always been one of my favorites ever since that.

But uh the reason why I uh would show you something like that is because uh our passage this morning uses the phrase uh holding fast.

Okay, holding fast or holding tightly.

And the idea here uh being that as as Christ followers, we're supposed to cling tightly to Jesus Christ.

We're supposed to cling tightly to him, we're supposed to cling tightly to the truth, tightly to the gospel.

We're to hold on to those things uh and the truth of that and not let it go.

And if we do, though, if we do, we can find ourselves in a world uh of hurt.

Now, um, as we talked about uh a bunch last week, a couple of times throughout this um letter, is that uh this letter to the Colossians deals a lot uh with false teachers and uh with uh the teaching uh that they were communicating to this church.

And it was really uh disrupting them big time because essentially this false teaching was changing, okay, changing or warping the gospel message.

Okay, it was it was it was tweaking that, it was it was shifting it.

And uh Paul Paul jumps in here and he's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

You can't you can't do that.

Do not go down that road, do not change the message, do not change the truth.

Okay, Jesus, Jesus is all you need.

He is all you need.

Do not latch on to what these snakes really, do not latch on to what these snakes are telling you to do.

Okay, don't do it.

Okay, hold on to him alone.

And that's what they're saying here.

And that that encouragement, actually, it's it's I guess you could say it's more of a warning, um, is just as necessary for us today.

Okay, we need to hold fast to Jesus Christ with so many differing opinions out there, so many different pastors saying different things, different leaders and authors and bloggers, not to mention our own fleshly desire that wants something contrary to the truth, okay, trying to sway us.

Okay, because of that, we need today, more than ever, to hold fast to Jesus Christ.

Right?

We need to.

And so that's what we're gonna be going uh this morning.

If you would stand, we're gonna read this passage uh together and honor God's word as we do that.

So this is Colossians 2.

Uh, gonna be reading 16 uh down to the end of the chapter, verse 23.

It says this, this is the Apostle Paul.

He says, Therefore, let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or in regard to festival or a new moon or a Sabbath.

These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.

Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind, and not holding fast to the head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God.

If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to its regulations?

Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch, referring to things that all perished as they are used, according to human precepts and teachings.

These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.

Let's pray.

God, we come before you this morning with uh with a challenging passage, um, Lord, that that really does, even though at first glance it may not seem like it, it really does speak to our hearts and what our struggle is and what our culture is going through today in 2016.

Lord, what what the heart of man struggled with in the first century church is the same thing our hearts struggle with today, Lord.

I pray that your word would come alive for us.

I pray that we would understand it, Lord.

I pray that we would be able to apply it to our hearts and go forth here armed for battle, ready to uh take on our own flesh and our own sinful nature, Lord, and the other mixed messages that we often hear out in the world.

Lord, would you protect us?

Would you protect your church?

Maybe hold fast to you and the truth of the gospel, not let it slip through our fingers, as it's so easy to do, God.

Equip us, strengthen us.

We pray all this in Christ's name.

Amen.

Amen.

You can take a seat.

All right.

So, first thing this morning, um, if you have, uh by the way, we do this every single week, and a lot of you would already know this, but maybe you're new here.

We have a bulletin that we hand out to you each and every week, and they've got uh sermon notes in there, a lot of blank spaces and the outline of the sermon so you know where we're going, and this is that's up to you to take that.

If you want to use that, you can write notes in there.

Some of you guys do it on your phones and iPads and all that kind of stuff.

That's all good too.

Okay, but here's the first thing, and you'll see it there.

Um, I will hold fast to Christ alone for everything I need, rejecting any teaching that says otherwise.

We've got to reject any teaching that says otherwise.

Now, hey, what what does the gospel teach us?

What does it teach us?

Now you might be thinking, well, a lot of things, and that's true, but but the bottom line here of the gospel is that it teaches us that we are broken and and dead because of our sin, and that only Christ was able to save us from all of that.

Only Christ could do it.

And if there are any if there are any people here this morning who do not have a relationship with Christ, first of all, we're really glad that you're here because this is the kind of place where you can come and and and come face to face with the God of the Bible, the God of the universe.

And we just want to be real clear, real up front, uh, right out of the gate here, um, that uh that you need Christ as Savior.

Okay, we're not trying to be harsh about any of that ever.

We want to communicate to you that there is a God who created you, who loves you.

And ultimately he created all of mankind to know him and to be in a close relationship with him.

Here's the problem though.

It started with Adam and Eve, sin entered the world.

Whose fault do you think sin was?

It was ours, right?

It started with Adam and Eve, and it's been passed on to each one of us, and all of our sin is ultimately against our Creator.

It may not feel like that, it may not seem like that to you, but God created you to be in a relationship with him, and our sin wrecks that.

Why?

Well, because God is perfect.

God is pure, he is blameless, he's never made a mistake, he's never sinned, not even once.

And here's the thing, he can only be in a relationship with those who are perfect.

If you've sinned, you've messed that up, and he can't just pretend that none of that ever happened.

He can't sweep it under the rug, or he wouldn't be a good God.

He'd just be letting evil run the day.

Now here's the thing: we can't fix the problem that we created.

We can't do it.

None of our morality, none of our good works, none of our religious duties that we think we're doing, that we think earn something with God, none of it does anything good.

And that's why God had to send his son, Jesus Christ, to live the perfect life that we couldn't and then die as a sacrifice once and for all to pay the penalty for all the sin of all of mankind.

And we would say this if that's stirring something up in you, I would say that's the Lord drawing you to himself.

And if you want to know him and you want to have that deep need that your heart has satisfied, here's what you need to do: you need to admit that you've got sin in your life.

You need to admit that that has offended God, but understand that God loves you anyways, and he wants you, okay, he wants you to have your sins forgiven through what Christ did on the cross.

All it requires is admitting your sinfulness and asking Christ to be your savior.

That's what it is.

And I'm coming at you right off the top here with that.

Because without that, none of what we're gonna be talking about here this morning is is gonna make any world any difference in your life.

It's really not.

You have to know him first before you can start putting into effect some of these things that we're talking about.

And so the gospel, bottom line of the gospel, is that we're dead in sin, but God saves us because we couldn't do it.

That's what the gospel teaches us.

And then it also teaches us that that going forward, once we ask him to be our savior, going forward, we're supposed to find our healing, our hope, our joy and satisfaction, our peace and our purpose, all of that, our completion as people.

We're supposed to find all of it in Jesus Christ alone.

All of it.

All of those other pursuits that we can go after, whether it's money, drugs, sex, rock and roll, whatever it might be, okay?

None of that satisfies us the way that we need it to.

Only Christ does.

And that's really what Paul and the other New Testament teachers all throughout this all throughout the Bible are constantly pushing us towards.

Constantly reminding us that Christ is enough, and we don't think uh we don't need anything else.

Okay, but here's the thing that's not what the false teachers in Colisei believed.

Okay, they didn't believe that at all.

Check out verse 16.

We'll see this here.

We're gonna go through this, follow along in your Bibles.

It says, Therefore, let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food or drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath.

Now, at first glance you might be like, well, what does that have to do with anything?

What does that have to do with my life?

What is he even talking about here with new moon, sabbath, food and drink, people not judging me about that?

But what you have to remember here is that these things were big time tied to the culture of these people uh in the first century.

And uh it was tied very much to Jewish practices and and Judaism.

And if you're wondering what Judaism is all about, I just encourage you, read the first five books of the Old Testament.

Okay, read the Pentateuch, we call that.

And it'll give you all you need to know and probably more about what all the different laws were uh that God had uh for his people.

Okay?

And uh these laws, let me just sum them up real quick, they kind of involved uh all kinds of regulations around um what kinds of foods they should and should not eat.

Certain foods made them spiritually unclean, uh, that kind of thing.

There were rules around uh different festivals and celebrations that they did, and they had to do them a certain way and at a at a certain time, and there were other religious practices uh as well.

But at the end of the day, okay, the purpose of all of it, you might be wondering, like, why?

Why all of these rules and why all these laws and why was it so intense and so specific and tedious?

Well, what God was trying to do through all of it is he was trying to teach his people, this is the kind of God that I am.

I am perfect, I am blameless.

And he was also trying to show them that, hey, this is who you are.

You are not perfect, you are not blameless.

All of these laws, the nitty gritty ones, all that, you can't possibly obey them.

You you can't follow these.

And really, what it's what it was supposed to do is supposed to stir up a desire for something more.

It was supposed to point towards Jesus Christ and the need for a savior.

Now, fast forward, okay, one of the main things that Jesus did when he came and he lived a perfect life and he died on the cross is he came and he fulfilled the law.

Okay, so all of those rules and demands and regulations, all of those things are fulfilled in him.

He lived the perfect life that we could not.

He obeyed it perfectly, which means that the Colossians, okay, and then fast forward all the way to us in 2016, okay, we no longer need to do all of these things to satisfy God's righteous demands.

Jesus already did it for us.

Now, the problem here in verse 16 is that these teachers, they were obviously saying something to the effect of no, you still need to obey these laws.

Or you still need to do them.

You need to stay away from certain foods because that makes you a better person.

Um you need to obey these religious festivity laws, and you need to uh you need to um basically sacrifice at new moon.

New moon was just like the first first day of the month, and they would uh they would offer sacrifice.

You need to do that and follow it religiously, you need to uh worship on the Sabbath day, and they had a million rules that they added in that were all extra, and even on top of what scripture said, Okay, now hear me on this.

Okay, what they were saying when you strip all of that away, the bare bones of their message is that in order to be truly pleasing to God, you had to, yes, trust Jesus as your Savior.

Okay, what he did uh was great, but then on top of that, okay, on top of that, you also need to obey these laws.

Okay, that's how you got get God to really like you.

Okay, you obey these laws as well.

And at the end of the day, this is what they were saying.

The false teachers were telling the Colossian church that Christ alone was not enough.

They needed Him plus obedience to these laws in order to be uh accepted by God.

So you see that?

It wasn't just Him, but they needed Him plus their obedience in order to be accepted.

And so Paul's like, he's like, don't let anyone pass judgment uh on you about this kind of thing.

He's like, don't let anyone condemn you if you're doing or not doing these things.

Don't let anyone burden you uh with these laws.

You can't, you can't possibly obey these laws perfectly.

That's why Jesus had to come and do it for you.

Right?

He's already completed it, it's finished, it's done.

Okay, keep going, verse 17 there.

Verse 17 says, um, these are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs uh to Christ.

What's he saying there?

Well, what he's talking about here, he's talking about a shadow.

Am I making a shadow?

Yeah, you can see my kind of my uh frame over there making a shadow.

There it is, you can see it.

Um my body's making a shadow because of the way that the light is uh is shining on me.

And he's saying here that the shadow, okay, the shadow has no reality.

That the shadow is not it's not real, you can't touch it.

There's no substance to the shadow.

It's the reality, it's me, that creates the shadow.

And so what he's saying here is that Christ is the reality and what he has done.

And the law was just a shadow.

Another way of putting it maybe is that the sha uh the the law foreshadowed uh Jesus Christ.

It was all pointing to him.

In other words, he's like, you're missing the point big time, big time if you think it's all about obeying the law.

All about following all of these rules.

It's actually more about what Christ has done than what you are doing or not doing.

You keep reading, verse 18.

Verse 18 says, I'll let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind.

Okay, so what we're seeing here is that the false teachers ultimately were insisting on legalism.

You've heard the word legalism before.

A lot of people think that legalism is simply following rules.

Not true.

Not true.

Like if somebody says, well, we have we have a certain way that we do that here, and you know, we've got some rules to do something for you.

Legalistic! Well, no, it's not necessarily that at all.

It's your motive and your approach to different rules.

Here's a good definition for legalism.

You can throw that up here.

Uh by one of my spiritual heroes, Tim Keller, but you can write this down.

This would be really key.

It's legalism is looking to something besides Jesus Christ in order to be clean and acceptable to God.

Okay, it's looking to something else other than Jesus to be made right in God's eyes.

Okay, and so what they were saying is you need to, and the specific examples they give us in the verse here, is you need to be an aesthetic.

Uh, what's an aesthetic?

Well, I kind of picture like a monk, a monk.

Okay, kind of hard on their bodies, you know, beating themselves into submission, thinking, you know, they were like, you need to be, you need to be practicing self-denial.

You need to be severe to your body, you need to be ultra strict as a way of overcoming your deficiencies.

And they're also saying, you need to worship angels.

That's what the verse says.

So not just Jesus Christ, but you also need to be involved in angel worship.

Or, or they were also saying, hey, you know, I've had these visions about what's true, and and those visions prove that I have higher knowledge, and I'm kind of all of that, and you better follow what I say because I'm a notch or two uh better uh than you.

And what Paul says here is that these teachers are puffed up.

They're puffed up without reason by their sensuous minds.

They're they're out to lunch.

Okay, okay, they're they're wandering around out there in left field somewhere, they have no idea what they're doing, even though they think that they are.

They're just following their feelings, they're following their emotions, they're following their own flawed thinking.

Listen, you don't need these kinds of things to make you pleasing in God's sight.

Why?

Because Jesus makes you pleasing in God's sight.

Right?

He has done it.

You don't need any of that kind of stuff.

You don't need these things to make God love you more.

Why?

Because God already loves you through what his son Jesus Christ did on the cross.

You've already got all of those things completely.

These things, these extra legalistic things that we do that we think we have to do, they don't get us any further ahead in God's eyes.

Do you realize that?

In fact, it's actually the opposite.

They force us to take a step in the wrong direction and just get ourselves caught up in problems.

Okay, resting in anything other than Jesus to make you acceptable in God's sight reveals that you don't really believe that Christ alone is enough.

Right?

To Christians, that should be rattling.

That should be alarming.

It should force us to be like, no, Lord, I need to know you.

I need to know the truth about you.

I need to grasp, I need my heart to grasp what you have done and not look to other things to try and fulfill my life and make me acceptable in your sight or to make me feel happy or make me feel complete or any of those things.

You alone, Lord, are enough.

And our job as Christ followers is really to constantly.

Okay, and we need to do this every day.

Remind ourselves of what one pastor said, and I love this.

He said, Jesus plus nothing equals everything.

Love that line.

Jesus plus nothing equals everything.

Don't add your works to it.

Don't add laws and rules.

We need to reject any teaching that says otherwise.

And so let me ask you this.

Hey, what are the legalistic traps that you fall into?

What are the legalistic traps that we fall into in our day and age, in our culture, in North America, uh in Canada, in the GTA specifically?

Okay, we we've seen here how the Colossians were tempted to live according to a Jesus plus something equals everything mindset.

Okay, they were trying to add works to the law to earn God's favor.

Okay, but what's the what's the something that you try and incorporate into the equation?

Okay, there's probably not a person here who's like following Jewish dietary food laws, right?

Like that's not a big deal.

We're so far removed from that kind of thing.

We're not thinking about religious festiv uh festivities and celebrations and angel worship and you know all of those kind of things.

Those those we're a little more removed from that.

Okay, but make no mistake, we do have these legalistic tendencies.

We really do.

We all have them.

Okay, so what are the things that you struggle with?

Let me give you a couple examples here of ones that we typically uh struggle with uh in our hearts and in our minds and in our lives.

Okay, how about this?

Jesus plus looks equals everything.

Jesus plus looks.

Right, how caught up are we as a culture in this?

Right?

I need to look a certain way, I need to have the gym membership, my clothes gotta be just right, I gotta have the best haircut I gotta have, you know, my kids all gotta look a certain way, and we're so caught up in appearance and being on the latest diet and getting the six-pack for summer, and you know, all of that kind of stuff.

It's all about looks.

And some of us, we don't even want to leave the house unless we spent like two or three hours in front of the mirror making sure that everything's just straight, just right.

Right?

Our hearts struggle with that.

I feel I feel like I need it in order to be complete.

That's a Jesus plus something mentality.

Right?

That's one.

How about this one?

Jesus plus money equals everything.

Yeah, Lord, I'm happy to be a Christ follower, I'm happy to uh live for you, um, but uh but I better have money too.

Right?

I I better be able to go on all the vacations, I better be able to put my 12 kids through college, I better uh be able to have the You know, whatever, right?

Money, stuff, things.

Right?

And we can have this sense that, like, if I don't have these things, there's an emptiness there.

Those things are never gonna fill that emptiness.

Jesus plus nothing equals everything.

But these things won't cut in.

Now this one, Jesus plus success equals everything.

Jesus plus success.

You a perfectionist?

You perfectionist?

I struggle with this a little bit.

It's really frustrating.

And because I get frustrated, I want to fix myself and I want to fix the frustration.

So it's like this vicious circle of deathly perfectionist perfectionism.

Okay, but some of you, you struggle with the fear of failure.

If I were to fail in some endeavor, whether that's maybe raising my kids, it might be some business thing, it might be serving in the church.

If I were to fail at that, I would be devastated and I couldn't go on.

Okay, success.

Success is your God.

Success is your false gospel.

Here's one.

Jesus plus man's approval equals everything.

Man's approval, you start, you struggle at all with people pleasing.

You struggle with the fear of man.

And for you to the thought of having anybody be upset with you, the thought of having to ever confront somebody, or or heaven forbid, someone confronting you and making things awkward and tense, that would just, that would wreck you.

It might mean that your heart wants it too much.

All you need is Jesus.

You know, we're and the Bible says we're gonna have people hate us.

We're gonna have people think that we're ridiculous.

We really are.

And our hearts need to wrestle with that and uh get to the point where we're okay with it.

Here's two more.

Jesus plus a relationship equals everything.

A relationship is another huge one for people.

You know?

You have so how many people how many single people here have had, you know, maybe a well-meaning, uh well-intentioned aunt or someone come to you and say, When are you gonna get married?

Right?

The worst.

The worst ever.

And it kind of creates this like, oh man, I better get married because to get married means that I've arrived as a person.

Right?

We treat them like that.

Right?

And what does it show?

It shows that that person believes that you have to get married in order to matter, to be complete.

It's a Jesus plus a relationship.

But we struggle with this.

We desperately want the girlfriend, we want the boyfriend.

Maybe it's a different relationship.

Maybe it's I desperately need my family to be back together.

It's fractured, it's fallen apart, and I and life's not worth living unless I have my spouse back or my kids back or something like that.

Jesus plus a relationship equals everything.

Here's the last one.

Jesus plus, I don't know, going to church, reading my Bible, praying.

We can live in that kind of a mentality.

It's it's religious duty.

You know, if I'm not performing these religious duties, uh, I'm nothing.

And I'm falling behind, and and Jesus doesn't like me anymore, and those kinds of things.

Okay, listen, all of these things that I just mentioned, whether it's it's uh it's money or success or having people like you, none of those things are bad things in and of themselves.

Okay, I want I want to be real clear about that.

It's not wrong to have money.

Right?

It's really not.

There's lots of wealthy people in Scripture who who uh who are godly, right, who the Lord loved and who loved the Lord.

It's not wrong to have these things.

It's how we approach them.

Do we need them too much?

Have they become idols?

Have they become false gods?

Have they warped our understanding of the gospel because we feel we need them more than we should?

I heard one guy say once that they're good things, it's a good thing that's become a God thing.

Okay, I love that too.

But do you see how our hearts operate this way?

You notice that?

If you're not sure what your legalistic tendency is, just ask yourself this question.

You know, what's the one thing my heart feels it must have in order to be happy or secure or complete?

What's the one thing I must have?

And when you discover what that thing is, or more likely things, right?

I've got like a lot of these on the list here and more.

When you discover what though your things are, you can begin to reject those lies.

You begin to speak to yourself.

I love how the psalmist, when when David's writing out a lot of the psalms, so much of it he's just preaching to himself.

Right?

But I have tr I've trusted in your steadfast love.

Lord, I know that you're the only one that I need.

I know that you will rescue.

He's teaching, he's instructing his heart as to what's true.

And we need to do that.

We need to tell ourselves, hey, listen, I don't need to have the hugest wardrobe in the world to matter as a person.

Right?

All I need is Christ.

He informs my identity and uh and who I am.

And as you start to do that, and you start to tune your heart to the fact that Christ alone is all you need and all you need to hold fast to.

As you do that over time, as the Spirit works in you, your heart's gonna start to release its grip on these idols.

And it's awesome.

So many of you have have been in that place, you've been following the Lord for a while, you've been attacking these kinds of things with this mindset, and you're and you're realizing these idols that you used to love maybe years ago, maybe even just months ago, it's starting to lose the grip.

And you're like, I I don't I don't feel like I need those things like I used to.

And what's happening?

Christ is becoming sweeter to you.

And you're like, I love him more, and my my affections for Christ are being stirred up, and and he's the one I'm focusing on, and all those other things, they're drifting off, and that's a good thing.

Right?

It's amazing.

Keep pushing after that.

The Lord wants to change your heart, it happens through the truth of the gospel.

You'll start to live according to what's actually true.

Okay, I will hold fast to Christ alone for everything I need, rejecting any teaching that says otherwise.

And here's the second thing: knowing that my growth, okay, my growth is found in him.

Okay, just take a look at verse uh 19 now.

Verse 19 says, he's talking about the false teachers, and not holding fast to the head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God.

And so here, uh what Paul's saying is that the the false teachers they failed to hold fast to Christ.

In this verse it says the head, right?

Capital H.

It's talking about Jesus Christ.

Because from the head, what happens?

From the head, the whole body, which is really referring to you and I as the church, uh, were nourished.

We're knit together through its joints and ligaments, we're unified.

So as we, okay, as we hold fast to Jesus to the head, um, we become healthy.

We become healthy.

Don't you want that in your in your walk with Christ?

Don't you want that to grow strong, to grow mature?

When you first come to Jesus, you have no idea what's up and what's down, do you?

Remember those days?

Some of you are living there right now, and you're like, I don't know, and I'm like, I'm all over the place.

I don't feel like there's any stability in my life.

Well, keep holding fast to him.

That stability is gonna come.

You're gonna become healthy, as it says here, and and then I love this, and you're gonna grow with a growth that is from God.

Very important verse.

Underline that, that from God part.

Because I think this verse sheds some really good light on how we grow as Christians.

It really does.

Um when I was um when I was in my early 20s or so, the Lord um really broke into my life and uh really humbled me, um, ripped a carpet out from under me basically and uh and broke me down.

He he grabbed hold of me, and and from kind of those those years on um started to um we really started to grow our relationship.

I got saved when I was like eight years old, and I kind of grew up going to church, you know, every, you know, probably three, four, five times a week sometimes, and but I didn't really develop my own relationship with God until my uh twenties.

And I started to take it seriously, and I started to kind of read scripture and and uh get discipled.

But I remember in those first couple of years in my 20s, I really had no idea what what growth in the Christian life was really all about.

I I didn't really know, I didn't have a good uh understanding of it.

I remember I remember spending uh some time, really those first couple of years, thinking that that uh that yes, Jesus is the one who saves me.

Okay, I understood that.

Put my faith in Christ, and I asked him uh to be my savior for sure.

I got all of that, but I figured that that once I got saved, okay, from that moment on, okay, my my growth was really on me now.

Okay, it's it's it's on me.

I uh the ball's in my court.

Um I Jesus is the one who saves me, but now I take over, and and uh and that's what I thought it was.

And and uh I felt this, this is kind of my mindset.

I felt that if my if if I was doing my religious duties well, things, uh things like reading the Bible and praying in the morning before I got up, if I was going to church and kind of taking off all the boxes, I was like, man, the Lord must love me.

Look, I'm doing great this week.

I really was, and that's how that's how I approached the whole thing.

But if I like slept in and I remembered literally driving, I I worked in Brampton.

I remember driving uh in my car to work one day and thinking, man, I didn't get a chance to pray properly, and I didn't get a chance to read my Bible and start the day off right.

I remember having this overwhelming sense that God must be so disappointed in me.

He must think that he must be like giving me the thumbs down.

Right?

He doesn't love me.

And the whole thing was that I felt like I had to uh some uh I felt like I had to grow by somehow impressing God uh through my uh through my works.

I had to earn his love.

I had to earn, maybe in some cases, uh his forgiveness.

I had to earn uh respect and and favor uh all of those things.

And I mistakenly thought that uh God's responsibility was to save me, to justify me, and my responsibility was to make myself grow.

I thought my responsibility was my sanctification.

I take over from here.

Well, verse 19 shows us what real growth is all about.

It says that it's from God, which is to say that not only does God justify us, but he also sanctifies us.

He sanctifies us too.

And and our job is simply to put ourselves in a good position where we allow God to do his thing.

Right?

I love this.

I love uh 1 Thessalonians 5, verse 23 and 24.

1 Thessalonians 5:23

He says this, now may the God of peace himself sanctify you.

So who does the sanctification?

God, right?

He does it.

And then later in verse 24, he says, He who calls you is faithful, he will surely do it.

So there's a promise.

He's gonna do this.

If you know him, he's gonna grow you.

You may not have seen growth for a little while, you may be discouraged and uh or may have kind of drifted away from all of that, but he's gonna do it.

If you're truly saved, he's gonna work in your life.

Growth comes from God.

Hey, put yourself in a good position, in a good position for the Lord to move, for him to work.

And we do that by by holding fast to the head, by pursuing Jesus.

Lord, I just want to know you.

I just want to, I just want to love you more.

And we can do that by doing certain things, like feasting on God's word.

Do you do that?

Or do you do you come to God's word and you're just like, man, I want to read this because I want to know who Jesus is.

I want to be closer to Him.

That's the mentality, that's the motive, that's the approach.

It's all response to what Christ has already done for us.

It's not, hey, I better read my Bible to get God to like me today.

Right?

That's not what it is.

That's legalism.

So it's like Jesus is enough, maybe not.

I need to add to it by doing works.

No, we need to put ourselves in a good position by simply doing things like feasting on God's words, where his Holy Spirit is gonna work through us.

Through praying, pray with your spouse, pray with your kids, talk about the Lord and what he's doing.

He's gonna work in a powerful and amazing way.

So by coming to church, by sitting in front of teaching, okay, where the Lord, you're just you're just sitting down, Lord teach me, Lord, instruct me, encourage me today, change me, make me more like Jesus.

Okay, that's putting yourself in a good position.

That's holding fast to the head.

When you do that, you're gonna see growth.

You really are.

So you can see there, it's about our sort of emotives to these things, it's about our approach.

Listen, holding fast to Jesus Christ, that's the key to real growth.

Holding fast to Him alone.

And these false teachers, they were blowing it.

They obviously did not believe this.

They they did not uh believe that Jesus was all they needed.

They thought that they needed something else on top of it in order to truly grow.

They needed their rules and strict adherence to those things and and their beliefs and their teaching and their thinking.

It was starting to infect the church, and it was starting to affect them as well.

And they were getting off base, and that's why Paul writes this.

Well, how about you guys?

Where are you at when it comes to your growth lately?

Are you growing?

Maybe for you, your story is kind of like mine, and and you've been super legalistic about it, and and you've been trying to grow, but but you're coming at it as a way to earn something from God as opposed to responding to the fact that he loves you.

I just want to show God love back because I love him.

You've got it backwards.

You're taking over, you're trying to be the author of your growth instead of realizing that that growth comes from him.

He's the one that's gonna do it in my heart.

He creates it in you.

Or maybe for you, your growth lately, it's just kind of stalled out.

Right?

Or you're you're you're puttering along at a snail's pace, and maybe maybe it needs to speed up a little bit.

Okay, and and maybe it's been a long time since you've really experienced much growth in your walk, or you've you've gotten frustrated about it, you've been discouraged, or maybe there's some laziness involved in the equation somewhere around there, and uh you're not holding fast.

You haven't been putting yourself in these good positions to be able to develop and mature and grow.

Maybe you're here this morning and you just need some encouragement.

Encouragement to continue to hold fast.

Maybe you're going through something difficult and it's hard, and you're you're being tempted to quit.

You're being tempted to pack it in.

And I don't know about this, and I'm not really, I'm not really seeing the help that comes from the Lord that I see him saying comes when I read the scriptures.

I'm not seeing that.

Maybe I should just, maybe I should just forget the whole thing.

I want to encourage you, keep holding on.

God knows when he when you need that prayer answered.

He knows better than you do.

Sometimes he waits till the 11th hour.

But he wants to do these things in you to give you a greater love for him.

Okay, hold fast.

That's how you're gonna grow.

Okay, last thing here.

Holding fast to Christ alone requires that I fight my tendency to fix myself.

I've got to fight my tendency to fix myself.

Now, we've obviously been talking a little bit about this kind of all the way through the passage, because that's kind of the way Paul frames it up here, but take a look at where verse 20 says.

Verse 20 says, uh, if with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to its regulations?

He's saying, he's saying, hey, why are you giving in to the evil spirits that are leading and directing these false teachers?

You think, well, why are you doing that?

Because why?

Because ultimately, if if if someone's teaching something that's false, you strip it right down.

It's coming from Satan.

Right?

Everything that's false, everything that's not true comes from Satan.

So he's like, why are you following these evil spirits?

He's trying to shock them, right, into understanding that it's not, it's not okay that you're doing this.

It's not no big deal.

It really is.

You're following Satan at the end of the day.

Why are you why are you giving into this?

And last week you might remember we looked at uh verse 15, right?

Verse 15 in chapter uh two, uh the verse, the last verse of last week, and it showed us that that Christ has already triumphed over all of these rulers and authorities.

And so Paul's like, hey, don't submit to these, to this conquered power.

He's like, Christ has already stomped it into the ground.

He's like, Why go after that?

Why follow those things?

It makes no sense.

You're not getting yourself anywhere good.

They keep going, verse 21.

He says this about it.

He says, Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch, referring to things that all perished as they are used.

He's talking about food laws and eating food and all that kind of stuff, according to human precepts and teachings.

He's like, hey, don't gauge your growth in Christ on how well you follow food laws and other man-made rules.

Okay, how well you follow this system does not fix you.

It does not it does not contribute to your growth and your maturity.

Then he says in verse 23, love this.

He says, these things, I love it, these have indeed an appearance of wisdom, an appearance of wisdom, promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value, no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.

So what Paul's saying here is that following a legalistic system that says Christ is insufficient, okay, these guys are teaching the insufficiency of Christ.

He's saying if you're following that kind of system and I need to add my works into it to be truly holy, only gives the appearance of wisdom.

You understand that?

He's saying, yeah, sure, you might look super hardcore because you're not eating certain foods that other people are.

Right?

You might you might look intense and you might look all captain serious about your faith.

Okay, but none of it is what Jesus says you need to do.

So how how helpful is it really gonna be in the end?

None of it's actual wisdom, he says.

It's uh it's a farce.

And the reason for that is because it's fundamentally opposed to the gospel.

It's opposed.

Gospel tells us Jesus is enough.

That's all you need.

And on top of that, all of this self-made religion, this severity to the body, this asceticism, all of that, it doesn't have any real power, anyways.

It's stopping uh the desires of your flesh.

Right?

It doesn't.

Only God's power can change our hearts.

Do you realize that?

I'll give I'll give you the example, okay?

Um some guys, a lot of guys actually, would struggle with um lust on some level.

Maybe it's pornography.

And something that can be very helpful is in s installing um like purity software on your computer to block you from certain sites or or something that records kind of the sites you've been on and then sends it to an accountability partner.

Um that very helpful.

Very helpful.

And it can it can allow you to take some drastic action against uh a strong struggle like that.

But is that all you need?

It's not.

It's not gonna ultimately change your heart.

You could get rid of all of the all of the temptation in the world to look at pornography and to lust.

You could never go to the mall and walk by Victoria's Secret, you could never go outside and go to the beach in the summertime, you could never do all of those things and lock yourself in a room.

Is that gonna cure your problem of lust?

No, right?

It's not.

Because our hearts conjure these things up.

We have a desire of the flesh.

We don't need to see those things to have these, to have these things come up in our life.

So coming up with these rules and these systems doesn't truly fix you.

Only God's spirit and his power uh does it.

He's like, you're literally wasting your time if you think that these things are truly fixing you.

There's no, there's zero value in in holding on to that.

Now, have you ever wondered how the Colossians got so fooled up in this?

How they get so tricked and duped and all that kind of thing.

Why couldn't they see clearly that these guys were false teachers?

Well, well, here's the thing it's because the teaching was actually very subtle.

Because the false teachers, they weren't like, hey, you don't need Jesus anymore.

Okay, that guy, what he did, he came, that was wrong.

You need to just simply follow all of our rules.

No, it was much more subtle.

They were saying what Jesus did was awesome and you need him.

But if you wanna, if you want to truly be great, if you want to take your faith to the next level, if you want God to really love you, you need to also do all these other things.

And so for them, they would have heard that, being young in their faith, immature in their faith, and they would have been like, well, of course I want to be truly mature.

Of course I want to love God more than I do now.

And so, yeah, I'll do all these things.

And so Paul's like, whoa, whoa, you're you're you're you're you're getting away from the purity and uh and the truth of the gospel, and you're no longer making your salvation about grace, you're making it about works.

You really are.

But at the end of the day, when you boil it right down, the error of this teaching was the belief that Jesus was pretty good, but not good enough.

That's what they were saying.

You still need to fix yourself, you still need to do something because what Jesus did, not bad, but not great.

That's kind of what they were saying.

Now make no mistake.

Okay, all of us have this tendency in our hearts.

We all have this tendency to try and fix ourselves.

Do you realize that about yourself?

You want to fix yourself?

We all have a hard time accepting the fact that that our salvation is a gift of grace.

I don't have to do anything.

No.

No, you don't.

You don't you do you do you do not do even one thing to earn it.

Um, not at all.

Okay?

But it shouldn't be too surprising that we struggle with that.

Because we live in many world systems, systems in our world where where we do have to earn things to move up in the world.

Right?

We we we live in these kinds of systems.

A couple of examples.

Okay, you got any students in the house here?

Okay, you want good grades?

How do you get good grades?

Cheating.

Okay, you want to get good grades?

You gotta work hard, don't you?

You gotta work hard to do that.

Is that a good thing?

Yes, it is.

It is.

Hey, you want that promotion at work?

What do you have to do?

You have to earn it.

You have to earn it.

You gotta work your way up the chain, up the ladder.

How about this, guys?

You want to get the girl?

What do you have to do?

You have to show her that you're worthy.

Right?

You have to show her that you're worth dating, worth marriage, marrying, right?

Your marriage material.

Now, all of that stuff, that's not bad stuff.

It really isn't.

We just have to understand that God's economy is different.

When it comes to salvation, when it comes to growth in our lives, it's all a gift.

It's all a gift, and we simply receive it.

But because our hearts are warped because of sin, because sin affects us so deeply, we're thoroughly depraved.

Because of that, uh we struggle with this and we feel uh need to earn our salvation and our growth and the blessings that God has given us.

Some of us think that when God blesses us, I need to pay him back.

Do you realize that's that slapping God in the face?

You can't pay him back.

It's such arrogance to think that, well, I guess I better serve in the church now because he's done some good things to me because I need to I need to earn.

You can't.

Your serving in the church is pretty lame compared to what Christ did on the cross for you, right?

I'm not saying don't serve in the church.

We need you.

Listen, we need to fight against this tendency to fix ourselves.

We really do.

And so what do we need to do?

We need to train ourselves, like I've mentioned a little bit already as we go through this, and you're gonna hear me say this a billion more times on the Sundays that I preach, but we need to train ourselves to love the refreshing truth that God saves us and we do not.

Love the truth that God fixes us himself.

He does it all.

Let your soul marinate in that awesome reality.

If you just hear it and it goes in one ear and out the other, it's not marinating.

That's why we read scripture, that's why we continue to come to church regularly.

Because we need that reminding.

Our hearts always wander.

You know, prone to wander, Lord, I feel it.

We sing that song.

We used to, like a hundred years ago, maybe.

Right?

We sing that, prone to wander, Lord, I feel it.

We do, we wander.

We need to remind ourselves of this and come face to face with it often.

You can't earn something that God's already given you.

We need to praise him.

Do it constantly, do it all during the day, do it with people, do it by yourself, do it out loud, do it quietly.

Do it when you listen to worship music, do it when you read the Bible, do it when you go on a walk, do it when you drive your car, do it when you work, do it when you talk to people.

Praise God constantly.

Thank him for his grace.

Hold fast to Christ alone for everything.

He is all we need.

Right?

Is this a process where we're trying to get it?

Do our hearts we get it one second and then we we drift away from it the next?

Yeah, totally.

Right?

Salvation is a bumpy road.

Don't ever think that like you get saved and then it's just like smooth sailing up to awesome growth, it's easy.

It's not.

It's hard, it's bumpy, it's ugly.

We take a step back, we take two steps forward.

Sometimes we take like five steps back and then like two steps forward, right?

And it's like this.

That's why we continue to train ourselves and teach ourselves that the Christ is all we need.

He's enough.

Let's pray.

God, we do want to worship you.

We want to thank you for what you have done for us through sending your Christ uh your Son Jesus Christ.

Lord, we know that we fall short, Lord.

I pray that that would push us, push us, Lord, to knowing you, knowing the gospel, loving the gospel, asking questions when we don't understand it, coming to a better understanding, seeing our hearts change.

And Lord, would you just encourage people who are discouraged here today?

Lord, would you instruct our hearts?

Would you show us that you are actually at work?

Because it's easy to go days, weeks, months, maybe even longer, where it doesn't feel like you're at work at all.

Lord, I pray that where we've made mistakes, where we have erred, Lord, that we would repent, or that we would ask for forgiveness.

Because we know, Lord, that you are quick to forgive.

Because, Lord, you are loving God.

So, Lord, I pray that as we uh worship you here, Lord, I pray that it would be a response from hearts that are so grateful, Lord, that our that our worship would be spilling out, that it would be gratitude coming out because of who you are and what you have done, because of the gospel, Lord.

We pray all these things in Christ's name.

Amen.