Substance, Not Shadow – Colossians 2:16–19 (Oct. 4, 2026)

If you got students in kindergarten through third grade, they can go ahead and head out to their class now.

The rest of us, if you would, go ahead and open up your Bibles to the book of Colossians.

If you haven't been with us this fall, this is a letter that the Apostle Paul writes to the church in Colossi.

And really what Paul is doing is he's writing to sort of combat a false teaching that is beginning to rise up in their midst.

And so really what we've been looking at throughout this series is the supremacy and sufficiency of Jesus.

And we're going to see more of that this morning.

We're just going to look at a few verses this morning, verses 16 through 19.

If you don't have a Bible with you, there should be one under a chair around you.

We'd love for you to grab that, take that home.

We'd love for you to that that to be your Bible if you need a Bible.

You can also open up your bulletin, find the passage there.

There's even some pages to take notes on if that would be helpful.

But this morning we're going to look at substance, not shadow.

I I wonder if you're familiar with the Disney classic Peter Pan.

Like the old school animated version, the one that birthed the best ride at Magic Kingdom of all time.

Don't hate, like I love it every time I get on.

I know it's a terrible line, but it's just magic.

It is nostalgic.

It is wonderful.

Well, maybe you remember the beginning of that movie, I think has a somewhat of a memorable scene.

Uh Peter Pan comes to the darling house in the middle of the night.

And do you remember why he comes to the house?

He comes to the house to retrieve his shadow.

Which I think is such an interesting thing.

And he uh comes into the house to retrieve his shadow, and right in the middle of his sort of seeking pursuit of the shadow, Wendy catches him.

And Wendy makes this statement.

She says, I knew you'd come back.

I saved your shadow for you.

Now, here's what's interesting to me is that Wendy and the boys, they had the shadow.

They had Peter's shadow, a shadow that looked like Peter.

Even in the movie, if you can remember it a little bit, the shadow even acted like Peter.

It dodged Peter's attempts to catch it.

When Peter finally did grab it, it fights against him.

They had his shadow, but they longed for him.

They longed for the reality.

See, a shadow is real, but it's not full reality.

I think this is why uh sort of trying to understand your shadow is like one of the quintessential childhood memories, isn't it?

I don't know if you maybe remember this yourself, or I can remember my boys when they first were figuring out their shadow.

They'd like move and their shadow would move and they would do this, and they'd be just like, this is crazy, and then they'd try to outrun their shadow or run away from their shadow very unsuccessfully.

Even when they were starting to figure things out, you'd like stomp on their shadow and they'd like flinch for a second.

You know, maybe you played the game Shadow Tag.

You actually remember that?

You'd run around, you'd try to stomp on each other's shadow, and then if someone stomped on your shadow, you'd like groan and croak and collapse like they had stomped on you.

But of course, they hadn't stomped on you.

It didn't hurt you because you aren't a shadow.

Now, here's something I think we can all agree on.

We want, we don't want a life of shadow.

We want one of substance.

You don't want the shadow of a scrumptious meal or a big cone of ice cream.

You want the reality.

You don't want to live in the shadow of a house.

You want to live in a house.

You don't want the shadow of a friend.

No, you want a real, tangible, huggable, look in the eye, communicating friend.

Ultimately, we all want substance, not shadow.

And that's what the apostle Paul wants for the Colossian church.

And that's what he wants for us as well.

Here's the key thought of our passage.

It's in verse 17.

Here's what he says These are a shadow of what was to come.

The substance is Christ.

Now, here's what's interesting.

On both sides of this truth, Paul gives warnings.

Why does he give warnings?

Because it is tempting.

In fact, it is so tempting.

Church, it is even easy to live this Christian life grasping for the shadows instead of enjoying the substance of Christ.

See, that was the danger of the false teaching in Colossae.

If these uh if this church, these believers, if they were to follow these false teachers, it would ultimately lead to a life of shadow instead of a life of substance.

And here's Paul's concern for us this morning.

He wants to make sure that we don't confuse shadow with substance.

Here's what I want you to think about as we walk through this passage together.

What would it mean to do that?

What would it look like to confuse shadow for substance?

Or maybe this question Are you longing for, or even living for, things that are actually shadow and not substance?

Here's our main idea.

Don't get caught up in shadows when Christ is the substance.

Church, this is so important for us to grasp that we do not want to get caught up in shadows, which is so easy to do when Christ is the substance.

That's what our passage is going to teach us.

Hopefully, you've got your Bibles open.

We're gonna look at verses 16 through 19 of chapter 2.

Let's uh look at it now.

Here's what Paul says therefore, don't let anyone judge you in regard to food and drink or in the matter of a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day.

These are a shadow of what was to come.

The substance is Christ.

Let no one condemn you by delighting in ascetic practices or the worship of angels, claiming access to a visionary realm.

Such people are inflated by empty notions of their unspiritual mind.

They don't hold on to the head, from whom the whole body, nourished and held together by its ligaments and tendons, grows with growth from God.

We're gonna look at two points this morning.

The first one is going to be long, but there are some sub-points that are going to help you out as we work through it.

The first point is a life of shadow.

Now, I just want to make us aware of something.

Most commentators, scholars assert that our passage and the passage we're gonna look at next Sunday are some of the most debated in the whole of Colossians.

Also, probably the most important.

Because here we see the very heart of the false teaching.

And in fact, uh many will say that verse 18 alone might be the most difficult verse in the entire New Testament.

But here's what I want to encourage you on.

The precise details might be difficult for us to grasp, but I don't think the key point is.

See, as Paul is describing this false teaching that is becoming more and more prominent in the church in Colossae, uh, he we may not be able to understand its every detail.

Like, like we're gonna be left still thinking, I don't know exactly what this false teaching is that Paul is combating.

But we will be able, I think, to follow its main tenets.

And I think we're able to get a pretty good grasp of what a life of shadow looks like.

But before we do that, I want to make sure that we understand the sort of tenor of this false teaching.

And to do that, we need to look at Paul's two warnings.

Look at the first warning, verse 16.

Look at what he says.

Therefore, don't let anyone judge you.

Now, the idea of judging here is a negative one.

And that's important to say because there is a right type of judgment.

There is a good judging that even Scripture commends us to.

But here we're talking about something that is not that.

We're talking about a belittling.

We're talking about a looking down on another.

And you can see that because the second warning kind of amplifies it.

Look at the second warning in verse 18.

Let no one condemn you.

That's stronger, isn't it?

To condemn is to sentence, it's to disqualify someone.

In the context here, based on what we're talking about, this is a disqualifying of someone's life in Christ.

Even perhaps their very salvation.

And I think this is why this is so important, is that these false teachers, they're not just sort of promoting some add-on to the Christian life.

They're saying that this is the way of life.

So important.

They're saying that if you aren't with them, if you aren't doing what they do, if you aren't experiencing what they experience, then you're on the outside.

In fact, you're a second-class Christian.

You're a lesser citizen of the kingdom if you're a citizen at all.

See, these aren't suggestions from the false teachers, they are requirements.

And here's why that's so important.

Listen carefully.

Because here's how shadows get confused with substance.

It's when religious practices or experiences begun to become on par with Christ himself.

When the things that were to point us to Jesus actually become substitutes for Jesus.

Don't worry, we're gonna unpack that and see how that happens.

See, that's why this false teaching is so deceptive and destructive.

Because we can live a life of shadow and think that we're living a life of substance.

And so I want to make sure that we understand this.

Let's look at what this life of shadow might look like.

We're gonna kind of look at three sort of main shadows that we might imagine that we see in this false teaching.

First is the shadow of religion, the shadow of religion.

I think about religion in mostly a little bit of a negative sense when I say that.

Verse 16, look at it.

Therefore, don't let anyone judge you in regard to food and drink, or in the matter of a festival or a new moon, or a Sabbath day.

I think what's really clear is that this false teaching had some deep Jewish roots.

The fact that Paul mentions Sabbath here just gives that away, that this is something to do with the Old Testament, with Judaism.

See, it seems like these false teachers were asserting that it was essential that one follow the Old Covenant dietary restrictions and laws.

That they should abstain from food and drink, certain food and drink, probably most likely meat and wine.

And that also they should observe these sort of special Old Testament days: New Moon, Sabbath day, uh festivals.

Now, why?

Why would these false teachers be saying that we should observe and uh kind of submit to these things?

Well, it's in order to be holy or in order to be clean.

That's likely why they're saying that.

See, these dietary restrictions and these special days, they were a part of the old covenant ceremonial law.

And I know maybe that sounds a little bit like, okay, what is that?

Well, think about it this way: they were avenues in which God's people were marked as God's people.

God's people abstained from certain food.

They didn't eat certain food that might contaminate them or make them unclean as a way to sort of be marked off from a Gentile pagan world.

And they were observing certain special days and festivals.

Most of the time, those days and festivals were when they went to the temple and sacrifices were made for their sin.

So here's what I think is happening.

These false teachers are claiming that if one wanted to be truly acceptable to God, if one wanted to be able to enter into the fullness of God's presence, then they must hold on to these laws and these days.

But know what Paul says.

Look at verse 17.

Here's where this verse kind of finds its context.

These are a shadow of what was to come.

The substance is Christ.

That word substance is literally body.

Paul is painting a picture for us.

Christ is this body that casts a shadow backwards.

And what is that shadow?

Well, these ceremonial restrictions, these laws, these days, they were all shadows that pointed to the coming of Christ.

These sort of ways in which uh people became clean, uh holy, set apart, they were all pointing to the one who would truly make them clean and wholly set apart.

See, the point is that the promise uh has been fulfilled now in Christ.

That Jesus is the true priest, that he's the true temple, that he's the true sacrifice, that he's the true Sabbath, and that he's the true salvation.

So here's what this means: it means that if we seek to be clean or acceptable to God or to have access to his presence through Old Testament laws and days, rituals, that is to ignore the substance, to ignore Christ, and to stay in the shadow.

It's to confuse the shadow with the substance.

Okay, that's a lot.

I think most of us would say, you know what?

I don't think I'm in that much danger of retreating to Old Testament rituals and days and things like that.

Maybe that's the case.

But I do think the shadow of religion is very much alive and well amidst us.

See, I think the great majority of us, at least at some point in life, when we thought about what is Christianity or what is the Christian life, we uh thought about uh questions like how do I become acceptable to God, or how do I go to heaven?

What does it mean to be a Christian?

We thought that it was about doing the right things.

We thought that it was about doing more of the right things than of the wrong things.

Maybe some of that thinking is still true for you this morning.

Maybe you're not a Christian here and you've come this morning, and that's a little bit of why you've come.

You want to be made right, you want to be acceptable to God, and you think, well, the way that I do that is by coming to church.

It's by doing certain things, religious things.

Friends, I just want to encourage you that that is to confuse the shadow for the substance.

I want to be really clear.

If you're here this morning and maybe you're know that you are sinful and you want to be forgiven, there is a way to be forgiven of your sin.

There is a way to actually be welcomed into God's presence.

But it is not by what you do, it is by what Jesus has done.

It is by coming to Jesus and Him alone.

It's about receiving Him.

But, church, do you see how this shadow of religion can sort of creep over us as well?

I think most of us in here probably recognize that we are made right with God by what Christ has done.

And yet, how easy is it for us to say, but we keep right with God by what we do?

I think that is so deep in our sort of soul and life that we can read scripture, we can gather with the church, we can pray, we can sing praise, we can give generally generously, and we can do all of it in order to be good with God.

In order to be right with God, in order to be a good Christian, instead of because we are good with God.

We can actually think of these things as requirements of grace, things we must do in order to get God's grace, instead of what they are, means of grace.

Ways in which we put ourselves in the grace that we already have in Christ.

Those are two very different things.

See, we live in the shadow of religion.

Think about this again.

When the very things that should point us to Christ become substitutes for Christ.

Or think of even just you gathering right here now with us this Sunday morning, or maybe even think about your serving or your ministry or your giving.

Why do you do these things?

Do you do them to be right with God?

Sort of feel like a good Christian?

Or do you do them to know and enjoy Christ?

Maybe this is a better way to ask the question.

Maybe get to the heart of it.

When you don't do these things, or when these things are lackluster, or you feel like you're failing in those things, do you feel like a lesser Christian?

Do you feel like a second-class Christian?

Like you're not living up to the standard?

Friends, that is living in the shadow and not the substance.

That is the shadow of religion.

But let's look at the shadow of idolatry.

So there's another shadow in here that we see right in the middle of verse 18.

Paul talks about the worship of angels.

And you might think this might be the most obscure part of Paul's description of this false teaching and probably the most foreign to us.

Look at what Paul says in verse 18.

These false teachers, they were delighting in the worship of angels.

Now, I think for many of us, our sort of skepticism of such worship is likely more due to the fact that we deny the existence of the spiritual world, that there are even angels or demons, or at least maybe we don't deny them up here, but in our life and heart, we sort of think that's not real, much more so than we have such a heightened view of God's glory.

See, I think many of us, we think the worship of angels is a little bit crazy or weird.

But in the ancient world, it wasn't at all.

Do you actually remember when we walking through the book of Revelation this past uh spring?

Do you remember the Apostle John's experience?

Revelation 22, 8.

Here's what John says.

I, John, and the one who heard and saw these things, when I heard and saw them, I fell down to worship at the feet of the angel who had shown them to me.

John actually does this twice in Revelation.

Now, very clearly, the angel says, Don't do that.

Like that is not, because the worship of angels is idolatry.

And remember, idolatry is simply the worship of created things instead of the creator.

It's the worship of lesser things.

And you might be wondering, but why would anyone worship angels?

I actually think Paul makes a connection here.

Look again at verse 18.

These false teachers, they delighted in the worship of angels.

And then what immediately follows it?

Claiming access to a visionary realm.

Now, here's where it's hard to know for certain what's happening here, but it seems like these angels offered something.

That there was something to gain from this worship of angels.

Almost if you bow before them, you'll get access to what they have access to.

If you bow before them, if you worship them, you'll see things that they see, you'll experience things that they experience.

Worship them, and you'll get more of the divine.

Now I want to be really clear.

I think there's a darkness here and evil here.

Certainly that would be true of all idolatry, but I think especially because angels in scripture never allow themselves to be worshipped.

So I think it's really likely that these are fallen angels, maybe even demons.

Because the idea is that uh throughout Colossians, do you do you remember how many times Paul has repeated this phrase that Christ is above all authorities and powers?

Do you actually remember the verse that leads into this?

Verse 15 of Colossians 2, look at it.

He, Christ, disarmed the rulers and authorities and disgraced them publicly.

Those were demonic rulers and authorities, and Christ has triumph.

Over him.

He has disgraced them.

He has disarmed them.

I think there's a reason to think that this worship of angels is in some sense demonic.

Now, I think before you dismiss this as just sort of problems of a pre-Enlightenment era, we need to think about our own era.

Do you know what the fastest growing religion in the U.S.

right now is?

It's witchcraft.

It's paganism.

It's the worship of spirits.

Friends, the idea is the exact same in it.

That if you worship created things, if you worship spirits, you do so in order to gain divine power, in order to secure protection or health or peace or control.

See, idolatry, we've already mentioned it this morning in our gathering, is trusting in something other than God to give us what only God can give.

See, these sorts of religious things, these sorts of idolatrous things, they are examples of confusing the shadow for the substance.

And yet, I think if we're honest with ourselves, we know that the shadow of idolatry keeps far past spirits, angels, things like that.

Because we know of the idol of money.

We even talk about in our society sometimes of bowing down to the almighty dollar.

And why do we worship money?

Well, it's not because the piece of paper is super impressive.

We don't even have that sort of stuff barely anymore with cash.

No, why do we worship money?

It's because of what the piece of paper can do for us.

It's the access that it can gain us, the seeming power, control, safety, pleasure it can purchase.

See the same idea here?

Same sorts of things?

See, we bow down also to idols of family or friendship or sports or music or leisure or food.

Anytime we take a good thing and make it an ultimate thing, anytime we fail to move from the good gift to the greater goodness of the giver, we are stopping at the shadow and not making it to the substance.

That's idolatry.

That's the very heart of idolatry.

And you know what?

We can do this in even church circles.

I don't know if some of you saw this video, but I recently watched the coronation of the skull of Saint Agatha.

A Vatican cardinal came out and kissed the skull of a 1700-year skull of a deceased saint.

Kissed it to venerate it.

Some of us, as we look at some other Christian traditions, we think, man, that line between veneration and worship, man, that's a tough line to distinguish.

That sometimes it can seem like what's happening is they are seeking favor of God by bowing before things other than God, venerating or even worshiping relics and saints.

And before we think, well, that's not our problem, we too, as evangelicals, as Protestants, and it can seem like sometimes we worship celebrity pastors, certain podcasts, uh influential Christian podcasters, sometimes even our favorite worship artists, thinking that if God is blessing them, then maybe He will bless us if we follow them.

That I'm okay with uh with God because I'm in their fold, I'm in their ministry, and clearly they're being blessed.

You know, a phrase that I've heard often as a pastor in 20 years?

I've heard this pastor, put in a good word with God for me.

And I don't like, there's a way that that's an okay statement, and I get the sort of it's a sweet thing in some ways.

But but I think what Paul would want to say is to say, well, Jesus is that good word.

Friend, Jesus is the, you have Jesus.

He's the only word that you need.

See, here's the question I want you to think about.

Are you, are there ways in which you are worshipping the shadows of idols instead of the substance of Christ?

Are there ways right now in your life that you are stopping at the shadow and not getting to the substance?

Or you're looking for in the shadow what actually only Christ can give.

That's the shadow of idolatry.

Last one, the shadow of experience.

It's probably the worst title of the three.

It's pretty easy to maybe misunderstand this, but I'm gonna try to be clear here.

Look at the middle of verse 18.

We've already seen part of this, claiming access to a visionary realm.

Such people are inflated by empty notions of their unspiritual mind.

Here's what Paul is describing.

I think what these false teachers are doing is they're going on and on about these grand visionary experiences.

And in fact, these experiences puff them up, inflate their ego.

They look down on those who haven't had such visions, who haven't had such experiences.

They think themselves more godly because of these visions.

Don't miss Paul's verdict.

Paul says these visions and their descriptions are empty, vain notions, and they actually come from an unspiritual.

That word is fleshly, worldly mind.

See, I don't think this scenario that Paul is sort of describing for us is too difficult to imagine.

You imagine these false teachers, they're just talking all the time in great detail, almost boasting in these grand experiences and visions that they've received.

And they're claiming that they have unique access to the spiritual realm.

That's why people should listen to them.

That's why people should listen and follow their teaching.

Because their teaching or their experience, their revelation actually gives them authority.

It elevates them.

I think it's worth noting before we kind of apply this that Paul himself had some pretty grand uh visions.

2 Corinthians 12, Paul talks about being caught up into the third heaven, into paradise, and says nothing about it.

Right after he says, I boast in Christ.

Or you might think of the Apostle John, who saw visions of heaven.

But what was most central to him and to those visions?

The revelation of Jesus Christ.

Here's what I think is so important.

Neither of them saw their experiences as qualification.

No, it was Christ who qualified them for salvation and for ministry.

Such an important point.

Now, you might go, well, that seems like a difficult application for us today.

I'm not sure it is.

I think we see all around us, don't we?

Teachers, preachers, leaders who go on and on about these incredible visions or revelations or experiences that they've had and they amass grand crowds in doing so.

And I think sometimes we like the Colossians, we are tempted to sort of look in, follow along, listen, and even wonder are we missing out on something?

Is there more out there than Christ?

You know, these false teachers often they speak very little about Christ and a lot about their experience.

They don't talk much about sin.

They don't talk much about the cross, they don't talk much about our need for grace, they talk much about power and being able to harness that power.

They talk much about the encounter that you can have if you join them.

But you know what?

If we examine our own hearts, that sort of prominence for spiritual experience, it's there too, isn't it?

Sometimes we can seek spiritual growth that swings from mountaintop experience to mountaintop experience.

Such an easy thing to sort of think of.

It's easy, maybe, for us even to judge our Christian life by how we feel, by our experience of it.

Almost to think that spiritual highs equal spiritual maturity.

In fact, sometimes this can happen in a negative way.

We can hear other Christians uh tell about these happenings in their Christian life.

And then we look at our own Christian life and think it's kind of paltry in comparison.

We we lack these things.

Maybe we even begin to doubt our standing with Christ because we haven't had such experiences.

Church, don't miss the danger here.

If we start to think that the Christian life is about grand experiences, then we'll start to seek them.

We'll start to prioritize them.

And that means that we will seek the ideal and maybe give up on the real.

It means that we will be all about consumption, consuming, and very little about community.

It means that we will want the extraordinary and kind of downplay the ordinary.

See, church, there's a lot of danger in this.

Because if we start to think this way, we'll leave our study of the Bible, we'll leave either gathering, even gatherings at church on Sunday, we'll leave times in prayer, disappointed.

Man, that didn't move me.

I I didn't feel that like I wanted to.

There was nothing there to get me.

Friends, I think if we do that, then when suffering comes our way, we'll be shocked by it, appalled by it.

In fact, we won't even be willing to deal with things that are difficult or hard.

And ultimately, we'll be grasping at shadows, and we'll lose the substance Christ.

See, I wonder if maybe you think of two marriages.

And you sit down with one of these couples, and and you sit down and you go, how's marriage been?

And they tell you about their business successes, they tell you about their kids' activities, they tell you about their incredible, incredible trip to Europe, they tell you about how much they enjoy their lake house.

And then you sit down with another couple.

And that couple talks about some of those things, but mostly they just talk about each other.

Mostly they just talk about how the other spouse has cared for them.

They just talk about the joy of being together.

They they talk about sometimes even the hard times, but how those hard times have actually brought them closer together?

Which of those would you say is the more solid, true, substantial marriage?

Well, it's the one that doesn't talk about all the experiences and all the things that came out of the marriage, but the marriage itself.

Christian, what do we talk about?

All the things, the experiences, the benefits, that's or Christ himself.

We're living for the shadows or for the substance.

See, we don't want a life of shadow.

We don't want to substitute religion or idolatry or even experience for Christ.

That's why we don't want to get caught up in the shadows when the substance is Christ.

So we've looked at a life of shadow.

Now let's look at a life of substance.

Now, this is gonna be a little bit shorter because in some port, not because it's less important, not at all, but because our passage doesn't deal with it as much.

And in the weeks to come, we're gonna see this just played out over and over again.

But our passage does tell us a lot, or at least some really good truths, about what it looks like to live in Christ.

Look at the very beginning of verse 16 again.

Maybe you notice this word, therefore, don't let anyone judge you.

See that first word?

Therefore.

It's a word that points backwards.

And here's what that means: that when Paul says, don't let anyone judge you, or let no one condemn you, both of those warnings are predicated on something Paul has just written.

Well, what did he just read?

Uh right.

Look at verses 9 and 10 in Colossians 2.

What does he say?

The entire fullness of God dwells in Christ, and Christ fills you.

Christ has the fullness of God, and we have the fullness of Christ, which means we lack nothing in Christ.

But you know what else he says?

Look at verse 13.

He says, We were dead in our trespasses, in our sin, and he made us alive with him.

How?

Forgiving us all our trespasses.

Christ has erased all our debt, he is taking it away, nailing it to the cross.

This is all that we looked at next week.

And what is Paul's point then in connecting these two things?

Church, in Christ, no one can ultimately judge us.

No one can ultimately condemn us.

This is why Paul, I know I say it so often.

Romans 8:1.

Romans 8:1

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

That means God does not condemn us in Christ, which means no one else can condemn us in Christ.

Friends, I think this is so important that to judge us or condemn us is to judge Christ.

It's to condemn Christ, it's to disqualify Christ because we have died with Christ and been made alive in Christ.

We are in Christ.

And here, brothers and sisters, is the truth that I want to make sure that every single one of us who are in Christ grasp this morning.

There are no second class Christians.

I just want you to hear, you may have barely gotten here this morning.

You may be embattled with sin, just struggling as you come in.

You may hear the talk of other Christians, and you may feel so weak in comparison, even like an uh even ignorant.

Maybe you even feel like an imposter because you don't know all that they know, because of how much you struggle.

Friends, I want you to be comfortably comforted by these words of Thomas Brooks, the Puritan pastor.

Here's what he says the weakest saints are as much united to Christ, as much justified by Christ, as much reconciled by Christ, and as much pardoned by Christ as the strongest saints.

Christian, hear this very clear.

No one's a better Christian than you, because no one has a better Christ than you.

No one's a better Christian than you, because no one has a better Christ than you.

We all have the same Christ.

Friends, that is such a glorious truth.

Here's the problem when we get caught up in shadows instead of the substance.

It makes us, our lives, more shadowy.

We become shadows ourselves.

Here's what I mean.

When our Christian life becomes more about our religious performance, when it becomes more about our experiences, when it becomes more about these lesser things of the world, we often feel less real and less solid in Christ.

But the more that we look to the substance, the more we look to Christ, the more substantial we become in a sense.

The more solid we become.

Think about it.

When is it that you feel most fragile as a Christian?

Is it when you're looking to your own works?

When you're looking to your own experiences, when you just keep on looking to the things of this world and the things that you do, when is it that you feel most solid or stable as a Christian?

Isn't it when you look to Christ?

When you remember and reflect and live in the reality of what Christ has done to save you, when you remember that his righteousness is your righteousness, that his standing is your standing, when your identity, your hope, your joy is not fundamentally in who you are and what you do, but in who he is and what he has done for you.

Maybe you've heard the well-known illustration by Tim Keller.

You've probably heard it from me.

But here's what he says: he imagines a lake.

And this time is coming, unfortunately, for us that is frozen.

Not yet, but it is out there.

And he imagines this lake that is frozen, and he talks about what is it that's going to keep you if you walk out on this lake.

Well, it is not how confident you walk onto the lake.

It doesn't matter how timid you walk out onto the lake.

What matters is how thick that ice is.

That's the only thing that matters.

And his point is that what saves us is not how strong our faith is, but how strong the one in whom our faith is.

Now, let me add to that illustration a little bit.

How is it, once you got on that lake, that you would start to feel more solid, more confident in being on that lake?

Well, probably be you'd start grounding yourself onto the ice, like probably even actually pushing it down onto it, looking at it, feeling it.

The more that you looked and saw how substantial the ice is, the more substantial and solid you would feel and be.

See, point that is the point, friends.

A life of substance is lived by keeping our eyes on the substance, keeping our eyes on Christ.

This is Paul's point in verse 19.

Look at it.

They don't hold on to the head from whom the whole body, nourished and held together by its ligaments and tendons, grows with growth from God.

What's the central problem of this shadowy false teaching?

Paul says it doesn't hold on to the head.

Who's the head?

Do you remember Colossians 1.18?

He, Jesus, is also the head of the body, the church.

Such a powerful metaphor.

That the head is the authority of the body, that the head, in one sense, is the source of the body.

Well, everything about the body comes through the head.

If you want to think about how it is that you're nourished or grown or built up, don't get too critical of this biology here, because it may not be great.

But the idea is that you feed through the head, through your mouth that goes into your body to nourish it and build it and grow it.

And here's what Paul's saying: same is true spiritually.

That we are nourished and we are grown up and we are built up by Christ's power, by Christ's word, by Christ's grace, by Christ's works.

Friends, here is the problem of the false teachers.

Paul is saying they've eventually they've essentially lost their head.

Like in all the ways that you might think of that.

They've lost Christ.

Church, may that never be true of us?

May we hold on to our head?

May we hold on to Christ?

And maybe you're sitting there going, but how do I do that?

Let's go back to verse 17 one more time.

These are a shadow of what was to come.

The substance is Christ.

How do we live a life of substance where we don't get caught up in the shadows?

We don't stop at the shadows.

We follow the shadows to the substance, Christ.

Here's what I think that means practically.

When we open our Bibles, we do so to seek Christ.

When we gather as a people, we do so to meet with Christ.

When we pray, we do so in Christ and ask for more of Christ.

When we minister to one another, when we uh serve one another, we are serving up Christ and doing so for Christ's glory.

When we enjoy the fellowship of a good friend or family member or a spouse, what we're actually enjoying, every single thing that is good about them, enjoyable about them, beautiful about them, is actually the outflow of Christ in them.

It's actually the outflow of their creator.

Friends, even when we, like our family this past week, watched our favorite team, the Braves, beat the Phillies finally, finally beat the Phillies, and we watched Michael Harris just crush a three-run Homer, and we saw the beauty of that swing, and we saw the power of the body, and we saw the united cheers of the fans, and we joined in with that.

Church, we don't stop there.

We go, but what about the beauty of the creator who created it?

What about the power of the one who made it?

What about the joy and the unity that is possible in our creator, Christ?

That's what we do always in everything.

We move from the shadow to the reality, to the substance who is Christ.

But what about when sadness comes?

What about when difficulty happens?

What about in suffering or even in sin?

Well, here's what those darker shadows remind us is that this world, this life, ultimately is a shadow, Ecclesiastes says.

See, here's the thing we need to remember that Christ is the one who saves us, who makes us substantial in one sense, and who is making a world, a new creation, in which there will no longer be shadow, only substance.

One of my favorite books is C.S.

Lewis's The Great Divorce.

And in it, he goes into a hell-like situation and he picks people up from that kind of arena and he takes them through a crack in heaven, and then they walk out into heaven.

And when they walk out, they are like shadows.

And the ground is hard, it's real, it's substance, and it hurts their feet.

And then the people, the new creations in Christ come to greet them and they walk on the ground.

And in fact, the ground shakes a little bit because they are solid in Christ.

See, friends, not getting caught up in the shadows and recognizing that Christ is the substance is important in this life because we're actually made for substance.

We're made for a real and new and better world.

So we should never get caught up in shadows when Christ is the substance.

Let's pray.