The River 2025/26 ALIVE Lesson 18

All right. Good morning. Welcome.

So good to be together and I'm so glad

we can open up God's word today

together.

You know, in Spain there's a church.

It's a now famous church

and its walls are covered from floor to

ceiling with artwork, religious art. And

one of their most treasured pieces was a

painting of Jesus Christ. It was painted

in the early 1900s and they believed it

to be a beautiful image of Christ. But

over time, the colors have faded and the

paint has started to crack. And so theu

community decided that it would be good

to restore it to restore it back to its

original way so they could see the

beauty of what they saw as Jesus. And an

older woman in the congregation

volunteered to do the task.

Yet when the work was done, it was

unrecognizable.

It was became a distorted image of the

original, it was a caricature that

didn't look like it at all. So now the

visitors that would come to see this

painting might look at this and think,

"This is Jesus."

It was a shadow of the original.

And Paul's writing to a church that made

a similar exchange, replacing the

original for a replica,

the original for a substance of a

shadow.

Now, Paul quickly reminds the community

how quickly it is and he knows how easy

it is to drift from the sufficient,

beautiful, all-encompassing reality of

the gospel of Christ. and that as they

begin to attach lesser things to it or

shadows, it becomes less than what the

original was. It it goes far away from

the original whole.

And that's what Paul's addressing in our

passage today. Now, for our passage

today, it's one of those texts that can

feel a little dense and sometimes it can

feel a little far removed um as we read

through the text about the different

things that Paul's talking about. So I'm

going to go through instead of verse by

verse I'm going to journey through the

passage in a different way. We're going

to do it in three sections. It's

Colossians 2:16-23.

Colossians 2:16–23

And here are three parts of our journey.

First we'll talk about cave dwelling.

And then part two will be crossing

water.

And then part three is Christ living. So

three C's. We've got cave dwelling.

We've got crossing water

and then Christ living.

And our main truth for today is going to

be Jesus is enough.

Jesus is enough. That's what we'll look

at today in our passage.

And I'll start by reading the passage as

a whole this morning as we work um start

in the first part of cave dwelling.

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. These are shadows

of the things to come, but the substance

belongs to Christ."

Let no one disqualify you, insisting

onesism or worship of angels or going in

detail about visions puffed up without

reason by his centrist 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 regulations

and do not handle, do not taste, and do

not trust, referring to the things that

all perish as they are used according to

human precepts and teachings.

These have the appear have indeed an

appearance of wisdom in promoting

self-made religion, necessitism, and

severity to the body, but they are of no

value in stopping the indulgence of the

flesh.

Now, Paul uses a word in this passage

that I want to focus on today, and the

word is shadow. It says, "These are the

shadows of things to come, but the

substance belongs to Christ."

Now, we know a shadow isn't real. is

never the thing itself. And that's what

Paul's talking about today. And here's

our first truth that we'll look at that

Jesus is the substance

and everything else is shadow.

That's what Paul's telling us in our

text today. That Jesus is the substance

and everything else is shadow.

Now about 400 years before Paul, there

was a philosopher named Plato and he

wrote an allegory and it's influenced

western philosophy ever since. Imagine

this is how it goes. Imagine that

there's people living in a cave. They're

spending their entire lives in this cave

and that's where they started and

they're down at the bottom of the cave

and behind them is a light. there's a

fire and it casts shadows onto the wall

that's in front of them and that's all

they can see, right? They're chained

down to this wall and so all they can

see are these shadows as they move

forward across the wall and these

shadows are all they've ever known. And

so they're all they ever seen and so

they start naming them and they start

arguing about them and they build entire

systems of meanings around the shapes on

the stone wall.

But then one day, one of them makes it

out. It climbs up all the way to the top

into the light of the sun. And at first

it's disorienting, like they can't see

because their eyes are blinded by the

sun. But then their eyes as they slowly

adjust and look around, what do they

see? They see the sun and they see the

sky and they they see the birds flying

by and the grass on the ground and they

realize that this is the real world.

All they had known was shadows before.

But now that they see the real world,

they know it's the real thing. And so

they go back down into the cave to tell

the others. They want the others to

know. And at first, now they're

disoriented again because now they're

going back into the dark. And their eyes

are having a hard time adjusting. And

they try to tell the people there good

news. But they sound like a madman

because they're still trying to adjust

to the light. and they're telling them

all these things about all this reality

that they've never known.

And they start getting upset

because they're starting to disrupt this

cave that they had made peace with, this

reality that they had made peace with,

this shadows that they had come to know.

And yet, even inside the cave, if they

would look around, there are some

indications of a reality that is there

something more. There's carvings maybe

left behind from other people who had

gotten out and come back. Or maybe

there's just a little bit of light

peeking through the top of the cave that

if they could see it, they would know

that there is indeed something more than

this.

Augustine called it the heart's

relentless. The heart's relentless until

it rests in God.

C. Lewis called it a piercing,

inconsolable longing for something out

there just beyond reach.

And those longings, those longings that

we feel are clues from the real world

that something is out there, something

ready to break through.

And Paul's writing to a people who have

been freed from the cave yet seem like

they're wanting to go back in. They've

been freed, but there's something that

they're going back to, back to the cave.

And he's saying Christ is not just one

of those images along the wall. Those

people, they were used to, the

Colossians were used to worshiping other

gods. And so it was easy for them to

just tap Jesus onto what they had

already believed.

But Paul is saying, "No,

he's not one of the shadows.

He's the light itself. He is the sun

that shines on all things." And so he

asks, why would you go back to the

shadows when you have the sun itself?

C. Lewis named this the shadowlands.

Any existence that mistakes shadow for

the substance.

In my favorite of his Narnia books, The

Last Battle, he paints a picture of what

it looks like to finally make the way

out of the shadows. It's a part where

the children are running and they

finally enter this new Narnia, this new

world, and they cry, go further up and

further in. It's this endless country of

amazing things. They're running deeper

and deeper into this an endless eternity

of this country that is more real than

anything they've ever experienced

before. Anything that it's more real

than anything that their previous world

could offer.

And that's what Paul's vision is for the

Colossians. It's not a world of to-dos,

the do not eat, do not handle, do not

touch, but where the substance himself

dwells

and everything lesser has been left

behind.

You see, the Colossian believers were

facing two types of temptations.

They were so saturated in the culture

around them that it was easy to go back

or to add on to it. And some of them

were being pressured to go towards the

Jewish Torah observance to go back to

that. So that was one of the

temptations. It was the dietary laws,

the sacred calendar, the Sabbath

regulations,

and none of which were bad things. I

mean, in in fact, they were holy things

God had given to them,

but they were always meant to be shadows

pointing towards forward to Christ.

And now that Christ had arrived,

clinging to these shadows was like

running back into the cave.

Or maybe you could think of it this way.

It'd be like if you're standing next to

your friend and you try to grasp onto

their shadow on the ground on the

pavement thinking that's the real thing.

But when the real thing is actually

standing next to you, Paul's saying

that's what this is like.

So that was one of the things. The

others in Colasse were drifting towards

the Greco Roman mysticism of angels of

aesthetic self-denial or visions.

And these had the appearance of wisdom

as Paul tells us in verse 23. They

looked spiritual

but they are not holding fast to the

head. He says in verse verse 19, they

are not of Christ.

You see, the first the Greek

philosophical tradition of the first

century Romans had a world that was

taught that there was a two-tiered

cosmology. And this was beyond all

behind all of their thinking. There was

the material world, which is the

physical world, the one that we could

touch. And they thought of it as lesser

or bad or even corrupt. And then there

was a spiritual world where they saw it

as something that was a realm that was

pure and more real and something to

obtain.

So when the teachers arrived in Colasse,

these false teachers, and they were

offering all these other things as

different paths to achieve spiritual

reality, they found it very familiar and

in fact very attractive.

But Paul tells us that the physical

world is not the problem. In fact, Jesus

had entered it, the incarnation, right?

When God himself became human,

Jesus rose bodily from the dead. And the

new creation wasn't escape from the

matter. It was matter redeemed and

glorified.

And that's a very different story than

the ones the Colossians were being told

by the false teachers.

And notice what happened, what Paul says

happens when the body does not hold fast

to the head. He says in verse 19 that is

from the head from Jesus that the whole

body nourished and knit together through

its joints and its ligaments grows with

the growth that is from God.

So everything flows from the head, flows

from Jesus. the life of the body, the

growth of the community, and the

nourishment of each person.

But when you go looking for life in the

shadows instead, in the things around

you,

you've disconnected yourself from the

actual source of growth. And there's

actually there's no formula for it.

There's no shortcuts. These were all

shortcuts to try to get to where they

were headed. But you cannot grow if

you're not connected to the head.

And everything Paul names, they're all

attempts to find a shortcut that

bypasses this head. And there's no such

head. That weighs only confusion.

Stay connected to Jesus and you will

grow. But you let go of him and you will

wither.

But here's where the Christian story

parts from Plato's. In Plato's cave, the

only hope is that someone will climb out

of there. Someone will escape and then

return to convince the others.

But the gospel's different.

Someone

entered the cave. Someone chose to enter

the cave to free us and to bring us

home.

This is the incarnation where God

stepped in and he entered the dark and

he entered the shadows and he sat with

the prisoners and he pointed to what was

above.

And then at infinite cost,

he freed them from their chains and

brought them out.

He brought us out into the place where

we really belong.

In Galatians 5, it says, "For freedom

Christ has set us free. Stand firm,

therefore, and do not submit again to

the yoke of slavery."

But Paul is not talking about something

entirely new. This story is as old as

the Exodus, which brings us to part two

where we're going to talk about crossing

water.

And in part two, crossing water, our

truth number two is God has brought you

through the waters.

God has brought you through the waters.

And in the Old Testament,

over a thousand years earlier, when God

called his people out of Egypt, he led

them to a new life through the Red Sea,

through the waters. The waters parted

and they walked on dry ground to the

other side and their old life was gone

and the waters closed and there was no

path back.

And yet within weeks of this happening,

they were wanting to go back to Egypt,

saying, "Would that we have died by the

hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt

when we sat by the meat pots and ate the

bread to the full? for you have brought

us out to this wilderness to kill this

whole assembly with hunger.

So they were nostalgic for their

enslavement. They were romanticizing

their chains.

They thought it had they had it better

back when they were enslaved.

And then now standing at the wilderness

between the old life and the promised

land with a cloud that God was leading

them in a cloud in his presence ahead of

them and nothing familiar around them.

They wanted to go back.

And likewise, Paul is saying that

believers have passed through the waters

too.

Not the Red Sea, but the but through

belief in Christ and through baptism.

Colossians 2:12 that we read last week

Colossians 2:12

says it this way. buried with him in

baptism in which you were also raised

with him through faith.

We are buried with him in baptism

in which you were also raised through

him through faith. So down into the

water through it and then up the other

side.

Baptism follows the same pattern as the

Red Sea in Exodus.

And this pattern can be found throughout

the whole Bible. And this pattern is

this that God rescues his people by

bringing them through the waters,

through death into new life.

And as we read in Colossians 1, he has

delivered us from the domain of darkness

and transferred us into the kingdom of

his beloved son in whom we have

redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

Baptism is a moment of declaration

saying that this is what I believe and

this is who I am now. I've gone through

the waters. I belong to a new world. The

old life and the shadows I once held on

to don't have a claim on me anymore.

And Paul is saying what is true of Jesus

is true of those who belong to him.

He died. they die. He was raised, they

will be raised. And that's for us.

Now, in a few weeks, we're going to

celebrate Easter, the day when the whole

story of this through the waters and out

the other side reaches its fullness from

the cross to the empty tomb.

And on Easter Sunday, there'll be an

opportunity to be baptized, to make that

crossing, to say with your body, what

you do, believe with your heart. I am

going through the waters. I'm leaving

the old world behind. I have left it

behind. And now I am a resurrection

person.

And so, if you've never been baptized,

this is your invitation today. If you're

feeling that stirring, please talk to me

afterwards. I'd love to have you have

that opportunity on Easter to do that.

And it's just a few weeks away. And so

there's still time if you want to get

baptized.

But whether or not that invitation is

for you today, each one of us in the

room has a question standing before us.

Have you decided to leave the

Shadowlands

or are you still decorating the cave?

Have you decided to leave the

Shadowlands or are you still decorating

the cave? I mean, Paul seems to be aware

of this tendency that we have. This

there's this temptation to stay in the

shadowlands

to stay in our chains and make the cave

in fact livable.

I mean, it's like we pray we're hanging

pictures on the wall or making co it all

cozy there and we're staying there in

our chains.

But Paul names three lies that we tell

ourselves

that when we make peace with the cave

that this is what we tell ourselves and

these lies are still with us today. And

it can happen slowly, quietly without us

even noticing.

The same way the paint fades

the way the colors crack. You look up

one day and you realize you've been

living by what you've been living by is

not quite the original. and you long for

more.

So Paul addresses this first lie,

the lie of you do need you need to do

more to be enough for God.

And this is the shadow of performance

that you need to do more to be enough

for God. The belief that you must serve

more, give more, try harder, and then

you'll finally be sufficient.

And it can be meticulous in its

discipline yet void of joy.

And we know this lie today when we

reduce the life of faith to a checklist

either for ourselves or for others. And

then we measure ours or others

performance or their standing before God

according to how these boxes are checked

by what we fa think faith should look

like.

or when we try to legislate compliance

instead of loving people into the

kingdom. But Jesus never handed anyone a

checklist. And he's not handing you one.

It was never about what we do or if

we're good enough. He said, "Come to me

all."

Now, the second lie Paul addresses is

that you need to experience more to be

enough for God.

the belief that Jesus isn't quite enough

and that you need to experience more to

be enough. You need visions or

revelations or some sort of higher

encounter that will finally make your

faith feel real.

But Paul says growth does not come from

chasing experiences. It comes from

holding fast to the head which is Jesus.

And we know this today in the pursuit of

the next trend or the next book

revealing the secret or the next

revelation that will give you some sort

of supernatural experience that you will

that you're hoping for that will help

you feel like maybe your faith is real

instead of simply abiding in him.

And then the third lie Paul addresses is

that you need to sacrifice more to be

enough for God.

It's a hidden quiet belief that the

suffering is more spiritual somehow than

joy. That God loves the version of you

that's running on empty more than the

version of you that's actually

flourishing.

The part of you that feels guilty with

rest or can't accept help or thinks that

God just wants you to suck it up and

hold everything together.

Which of these three lies is loudest in

your life right now?

Paul's word for all of these things, for

all of these lies,

he says it's of no value.

And at the heart of it is the real

question.

Is Jesus enough for you?

Not are you enough for God? The gospel's

already answered that you're fully

accepted, fully forgiven, fully loved,

and fully received in Christ. The

question is whether you actually believe

it, whether you can rest in what he's

already done. Can you receive all that

he has done for you or will you?

So the question remains, is Jesus enough

for you?

You see, we easily make the mistake of

falling in love with what Jesus can do

us for us or what he can give us in

instead of falling in love with him for

who he is.

And here's who he actually is.

The God who is compassionate and kind,

who is wooing you towards himself.

Jesus who says, "Come to me all who are

weary." and the spirit who's your guide,

your helper, and your comfort.

That's the substance.

And that's what your longings have been

pointing to all along. So stop

searching. He is enough.

C. Lewis tells us something about why we

settle for shadows.

He wrote, "It would seem that our Lord

finds our desires not too strong, but

too weak.

We are half-hearted creatures,

fooling about with drink and sex and

ambition when infinite joy is offered

us,

like an ignorant child who goes on

making mud pies in a slum because he

can't imagine what it's meant by the

offer of a holiday at the sea. We are

far too easily pleased,

far too easily pleased with the shadows

or the mudpies building our mud castles

while Jesus is offering us so much more.

So, what mudpie are you holding?

What are you settling for that's keeping

you from the holiday at the sea that God

is offering you?

Sometimes it's simply control.

There's a strange comfort in the

familiar,

even when the familiar is painful.

It's a cave we know feels safer than the

light that we don't.

And the disciple Peter understood this.

The night that Jesus walked toward them

on the water, do you remember the storm

was raging and Jesus gave that

invitation and he said, "Come."

And Peter stepped out.

But scripture says, "But when he saw the

wind, he was afraid and beginning to

sink, he cried out, Lord, save me." And

Jesus immediately reached out his hand

and took hold of him.

Now, what sank Peter wasn't the storm.

It was already raging when he stepped

out of that boat. What sank him was the

moment he shifted his gaze from Jesus to

the wind. The moment the circumstances

became louder than the invitation.

And isn't that what Paul is describing

in Colossians? The people who had

stepped out. They had crossed the waters

of baptisms. They had left Egypt behind.

But then midst stride

they looked back at the wind.

They looked at the familiar structures

of the world and their old ways of life

and they began to sink back into them.

Yet notice

Jesus immediately reached out and caught

Peter

midsync.

And that's who's calling you out of the

cave.

And Jesus is already reaching toward you

even before you finish asking.

And if that's you, if you're midwater, I

want you to know you're in good company.

I've been there.

There was a season ago um years ago now

that I didn't quite know where I was

with God.

I had come to believe that if I said yes

to God and I said yes to what he was

calling me to and if I was obedient

enough and faithful enough and brave

enough, he would bless me before more

than I could measure and that it

wouldn't be quite as hard and that

circumstances would somehow cooperate.

And when they didn't and I said yes and

they got harder, I didn't know what to

do with that.

I had been looking at the shadows. I had

been looking at my circumstances trying

to read God through them.

And the circumstances were telling me a

story of a God I didn't know. And I

couldn't reconcile

what that meant. What that meant for me,

what that meant for my faith, what that

meant for who God was.

And I remember thinking of Jacob

wrestling with God through the night,

but he was refusing to let go even when

his hip was pressed out of socket. And I

felt like that's what I was doing. I

felt like my faith was just holding on

by teeny tiny thread.

And through the dark and through the

pain, I was saying, I will not let go

unless you show up.

And that became my prayer. I am not

letting go until you show me who you

actually are.

I needed to actually meet him.

Instead of looking at my circumstances,

I needed to learn who he really was. Not

the shadow I had constructed, not the

Jesus who had I thought had promised me

ease or if I performed correctly, it

would go great.

But I needed to know the one that Paul

describes in Colossians. The one that's

the substance. The one who entered the

cave to not not to make my life

comfortable,

but to make me new.

And what I can tell you is now on the

other side of that season

is this. That tiny thread was enough. It

was enough for God. I just needed to be

open to his direction and to his reach

and be willing to let him replace the

shadows that I had built with the

substance.

And he pulled me out. Not at once. It

was slow

but yet faithful. Over time, there was a

voice that kept saying, "This is the

way.

Walk forward." And he pulled me out one

by one, little by little, step by step.

And the Jesus that I met on the other

side of that season was more real and

more good than the one I had been

following before.

And it was worth giving everything up

for.

I had wanted easy,

but what I learned to want was Jesus.

Now, some of you might be standing on

the shore. You're watching from a

distance, deciding whether to even

believe whether any of this is real,

whether the water will hold, or whether

Jesus is actually out there or just a

figure in the dark.

And this is for you. He says, "Come.

The invitation is real."

And then there's some of you who are

already out of the boat. You stepped out

a long time ago. You said yes to Jesus.

And you crossed the waters and somewhere

midstride

the wind got loud

and now you're midwater and you're

sinking.

This is for you, too.

Immediately

Jesus reached out his hand and he's

reaching it out to you. He's reaching

now.

He reaches through his word.

this passage right now. It's not a

history lesson in ancient Colass. It's

the living word of the risen Christ

spoken over you in this moment where

Paul says, "You are not that person

anymore.

That's for you."

And he reaches out through his spirit

who's present in this room right now.

And he's the one that's making the word

land somewhere in you rather than

passing through your ears.

And he's saying the old world does not

have a claim on you. You already belong

to the new one.

So let him take hold of you. That's the

invitation.

Listen to the way the message

translation conveys Paul's words from

Philippians.

It says, 'I am not saying that I have

all this together or that I have it

made, but I am well on my way reaching

out for Christ who has so wonderfully

reached out for me.

Friends, don't get me wrong. By no means

do I count myself an expert in all of

this, but I've got my eye on the goal

where God is beckoning me, beckoning me

onward to Jesus.

I'm off and running and I'm not turning

back.

So it leads us to next part, part three,

Christ living.

So you know those signs you find in

shopping malls or parks or the zoo, the

ones with the bold arrows that say you

are here?

Well, the whole point of them, right, is

to tell them where you are, not where

you're going, where you are. And so, in

this passage, it's like Paul is now

holding up a you are here sign.

And he's saying to the Colossian

believers, and he's saying to us, here

you are. You are here. And the sign

points to the place where heaven and

earth overlap in Jesus.

You are here. And truth number three is

new creation is here.

Because of Jesus, new creation is

already here

and you are here.

Paul's question in verse 20 is

essentially this. You have died and if

you've been raised,

if that's where you're standing, why are

you acting like you're still back in the

cave?

If you're here, why are you acting like

you're back there? Here's

how it is in verse 20. 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 regulations?

So when Paul says, if with Christ you

died, the Greek construction there, it

assumes that the condition is true. He's

saying you did die. It already happened.

The baptism is real. If you were a

believer, the baptism real, the union

with Christ in his death is real, which

means union with Christ in his

resurrection is real, too. And you are a

new creation living in his new creation

kingdom. That is where you are and that

is who you are. Colossians 3 says, "If

then you have been raised with Christ,

seek the things that are above where

Christ is seated at the right hand of

God."

If you are a believer, you are not a

cave dweller anymore.

You are a resurrection person. You are a

new creation person, a person that

belongs to the age that's already

breaking in.

And I want to close with a vision.

As you may know, my family loves

musicals.

And the end of the Lay Miz musical stood

out to me. It's a reprise of a song that

occurs earlier in the in the play. But

at the end, after all the barricades and

all the suffering and all the deaths,

they sing a final vision of the world

that they long to see. And I want to

read you their words.

Say, do you hear the people sing?

Lost in the valley of the night. It's

the music of a people who are climbing

to the light. For the wretched of the

earth, there's a flame that never dies.

Even the darkest night will end and the

sun will rise.

They will live again in freedom in the

garden of the Lord. They will walk

behind the plowshare and they will put

away the sword.

the chain will be broken and all the men

will have their reward.

Now the prophet Isaiah saw this world

coming long before the musical was ever

written.

He said, "He shall judge between the

nations and shall decide their disputes

for many peoples.

And they shall beat their swords into

plowshares and their spears into pruning

hooks. Nations shall not lift up sword

against nation, neither shall they learn

war anymore.

This is the world that Jesus has

inaugurated

where the swords swords become

plowshares and the wretched find their

freedom and every t tribe and tongue

worship together before the king in

peace and in rest.

And it began with resurrection.

every act of justice, every embrace of

the marginalized, and every community

that loves across its divisions. These

are the moments of the new world

breaking in now.

And the old world with all its rules and

regulations and its shadows and its

perishing things,

Paul reminds us that was never the

destination.

But you have to leave the cave to see

it.

You have to stop clutching the shadows

and turn towards the substance.

And there's only one direction

forward.

Isaiah says, "And your ears shall hear a

word behind you saying,

this is the way. Walk in it when you

turn to the right or you turn to the

left."

So you don't have to see the whole path.

You just need to hear the voice and take

the next step.

Jesus is the real thing and he is

enough.

Are you ready to walk out into the

light?

Let's pray.

Lord, we come before you so grateful for

these truths.

so grateful that we can be people of the

light, that right now we can walk in

your freedom.

We confess that we've been living in the

shadows and sometimes even decorating

the cave and we're chasing

what you can give us instead of who you

are.

But Lord, you're the substance

and you're the one that is reaching out

to us to bring us into your new creation

life. You brought us through the waters

and so today we open our hands and we

turn towards you

and we hold on and we want to walk

forward and we want to walk forward with

you. So help us this week to see you to

see your light and walk forward with one

step towards you. We ask these things in

your name. Amen.

Enjoy your groups.