Don't Settle For Shadows | Chad Lewis | Colossians 2:16-23

Thank you for joining us for a sermon from Sojourn North.

Well, this I want to thank you for your continued giving.

Uh, there's two ways to give.

You can either give online or we have a giving box in the back, but it's the way we support our church and this mission.

And I want to tell you one of the things that your giving uh helps contribute to.

This past week I was able to go to Florida and be part of a Harbor Network uh summit and got some pictures from this, and I'll tell you a little bit about Harbor Network.

This is us hanging out.

The theme was transformed and transforming, and uh that's Jamal and Amber, his wife, doing a little uh breakout thing.

Uh he's the pastor of Surgeon Midtown.

Next slide is just more worship and hanging out.

There were over 350 people gathered at this event uh representing many, many different churches.

And this last picture is a Polaroid.

They had a Polaroid booth set up.

If you look at me, this is me at the end of the conference, so you can see how tired I am in my eyes.

It's like, man, you look whooped.

I was, but it was a good whooped.

Well, this is my new friend Jeff, who's a pastor in Oregon City, Oregon.

And I did not know this.

This is the first time I met him, but for the last 12, 13 years, he's been knowing of Sojourn and getting Sojourn material.

I'd actually emailed with him several times and not known that it was him because he was getting resources from me to start his church plant in Oregon City, the River Church.

And he's just the coolest guy.

And his area code it got smudged on the bottom, but mine's 502, his is 503, and we live so far apart.

It's crazy.

But this is one of the things that we desire to do as a church is give money to missions.

And so the missions that we do, we break it into three categories: here, near, and far.

Here is ministries in the city, near is within North America, and far is international missions.

So the NIR aspect is church planning.

And 15 years ago, sojourn churches were part of Acts 29 church planning, and we felt like it was kind of going in a different direction, and we had some things in our hearts that we we feel like we need to step away.

So we started our own church planning network with just a few churches.

And that church planning network celebrated 15 years, and that is what is Harbor Network today, and I want to tell you a little bit about it.

We have 130 churches that belong to the network that contribute money to start new church plants.

There's 30 states represented in the network, and there have been 100 churches launched since its founding in 2011.

And this is amazing.

And our desire is to start new churches and to fund new churches.

Currently, the network is funding 14 different church plants, and so we fund for over three years every month to help them.

We give them resources, we do assessments so that they can grow and be healthy.

There's one of the church plants I coach up in Indianapolis where I've gone up there and met with their elders and met with them.

But statistically, 66% of church plants survive the first four years.

But two out of three, so a third of churches don't make it past four years.

In the Harbor Network, because of the intentionality, 88% of churches last four years and then continue on.

So it's our desire to continue to grow this network and continue to pour into pastors' lives and leaders' lives and churches' lives.

Um, because it's a it's a scary stat.

I I'm gonna get it a little bit wrong.

You can proof check me, fact check, but the last time I looked at the average stay of a minister at a church was like a year and a half.

And it's like, well, I get that.

It's hard work and sometimes it just doesn't work out.

Uh but it's our desire that, hey, we can navigate through difficulties.

Are there difficulties in life?

There are a lot of difficulties in life, and we have to we have to push through, and and we can do this because we want to fight for unity.

So if you want to learn more about Harbor Network, you can look on the website, but it's one of the ministries our church uh supports, and it was fun, it was fun.

I'm so encouraged about the network.

I had to pull back because of health reasons in the last years, but now I'm back in.

It's like, man, this is good.

They honored me as a former executive director of the network.

I was a I was a network director for 17 minutes.

Uh no, I did it for a year, but uh yeah.

I'm gonna transition now because I'm just kind of ad-living here.

Okay, so there is a danger in measuring the wrong thing.

There's a danger.

As a carpenter, it's always measure twice, cut once, because once you cut, you can't put the board back together, right?

I was thinking about this.

You want to get healthy, and so you say, part of my health plan is I need to lose some weight.

And you start measuring your weight, and then it kind of goes sideways.

You're really trying to measure your health, but you can get fascinated with the numbers on the scale.

And I know this from doing uh weighing over the years, and and once being a lot heavier than I am now, it's kind of like the psychological thing.

It's like, man, this floor may be too hard.

I'm gonna try to move the scale over to this floor, and it's like, yeah, I'm 0.8 pounds lighter over here, so this will be wire I weigh.

Uh I want to take off my socks.

If I have a watch on, take that off.

And you can get so focused on the numbers, then it's like, man, I should not be eating.

So you you stop eating even healthy stuff, and and maybe the numbers go down, but you've lost the focus of what this was even for.

It was to get healthy.

And lo and behold, that if you build muscle, sometimes you end up weighing more than you did to start with, because muscle is more dense than fat.

I know you know these things, but it's just fascinating that we lose focus.

We can lose focus so easily.

And it can happen like this in our spiritual life because we consider how we measure spiritual growth.

This is how we measured it in my church growing up in my tradition, and maybe I still can fall into these traps.

So think about this.

How do you know you're growing spiritually?

Is it how often you read your Bible?

Is it how consistently you pray?

How regularly you attend church?

How much theology you know, how many things you no longer do that you once did?

These can be meaningful parts of the Christian life and they can show spiritual growth.

But my question is this is it possible to improve in every one of those areas and not grow closer to Jesus?

It is.

So is it possible to become more knowledgeable without becoming more loving?

Mmm, yeah.

More disciplined without becoming more gracious, yep.

More religious without becoming humble, more humble, or humbler, whichever one's the proper tense.

More outwardly impressive without becoming more inwardly transformed.

And the list could go on and on, but Paul would say, absolutely, absolutely.

You can grow in all those external things and not be transformed.

And that's what we see with the religious leaders.

We can see it in our own lives.

Last week Jason just brought the heat.

Uh, he knows Colossians really well, he teaches it in his class.

Uh, such a blessed, blessed thing to be able to watch that on YouTube as I was gone.

But he he shared with us that this it's the theme of the book, right?

It's Christ above all.

Christ above worldly wisdom, Christ above all our sins, Christ above all authorities, Christ.

It's Christ.

We talked about how He is through Him and from Him, everything flows, everything was created, and it's for Him.

And we've looked at the universe and just slides and just said, man, this is what was spoken into existence.

And this is our Jesus who came and walked on earth and showed us what love is.

And so the question is, if we get this huge view of Jesus, it will affect our lives.

But there's a subtle danger even in that because we can become focused on things associated with following Jesus and lose sight of Jesus Himself.

So that's why we stay in relationship, that's why we continue to come back.

And so I I was I rap in my office when I'm preparing sermons.

I really don't, but uh a rhyme came to mind.

The means of grace are to seek his face.

The means of grace that we use are to seek his face, but we can look at the means of grace and just get focused on the means of grace.

And so the question I have for us today, as with the title of the sermon is Don't Settle for Shadows, as we continue to look at Christ through this book, as we do through liturgy every week, through every sermon series, it's all about Christ.

Let's look and say, where in my life have I have I started looking at the means of grace and stopped looking at his face?

Alright.

So with that in mind, let's stand for the reading of God's word, if you wish.

We're gonna look at Colossians 2, 16 through 23.

Paul says this.

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

Those are shad those are a shadow of what was to come.

The substance is Christ.

Let no one condemn you by delighting in ascetic practices and 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.

If you died with Christ to the elements of this world, why do you live as if you still belong to the world?

Why do you submit to regulations?

Don't handle, don't taste, don't touch.

All these regulations refer to what is destined to perish by being used up.

They are human commands and doctrines.

Although these have a reputation for wisdom by promoting self-made religion, false humility, and severe treatment of the body, they are not of any value in curving self-indulgence.

This is the word of the Lord.

You may be seated.

So our outline flows.

Don't settle for the shadows, hold fast to Christ, and remember where real growth comes from.

So the first one, don't settle for shadows.

I was reading Hebrews 10 yesterday morning at the men's uh breakfast, and earlier in the chat it's saying the shadow was pointing to what was to come.

And here it says, these are a shadow of what was to come.

The substance is Christ.

And so when you consider a shadow, a shadow is real.

If you're looking down, I know I just have this vision of being on a park bench and waiting for somebody, and I'm reading a book, and then the sun is behind them, so I see their shadow coming before them, and it's like, oh, I wouldn't stop and just say, hey, you stay there, I'm gonna chill out with your shadow.

Like that doesn't even make sense.

Throughout the Old Testament, God continued to point towards Christ, the Messiah, coming.

So he gave his people practices, sacrifices, festivals, rhythms, the whole sacrificial system, all of these things were a shadow pointing to what would come.

And so the something greater that was to come was Jesus, the Son of God, the Lamb of God, to take away the sins of the world.

And so the problem isn't that shadows are bad, but they aren't the focus.

It's it's the shadow is pointing to what is real.

And we use the illustration sometimes.

It's it's as if like one of the premier places to go in the world is Disneyland, right?

And if you were driving with your family to Disneyland and you got to the sign at the entrance and it said, Welcome to Disneyland.

And then your dad was driving and he parked the car over by the sign and said, All right, let's get out.

Get out your luggage, here we go.

And you're like, What, Dad?

We're it's like, we're here.

Well, kind of, but well, we're at the sign, Dad.

We're not in the, and you get the illustration, I won't keep belaboring the point, but it's like the sign isn't the destination, it's pointing to the destination.

The shadows were pointing to what was to come, and now we have the realization what is real is Christ.

And so the danger isn't simply that we practice the wrong religious activities.

We can do great things, good things, but we can rather start trusting the activities rather than trusting Christ.

We believe in the Word of God, it's precious to us.

But I know, and it's a temptation for all of us, is that we can use this in so many ways.

I've seen this thing used as a club to beat people up, I've seen it used as a proof text to say, like, this is what I believe, so therefore this is what God says, therefore this is, and it's like, but this, we got to treat this as God's word, but what's the purpose for it?

Well, A.W.

Tozer puts it like this.

It's one of my favorite quotes.

It's in the pursuit of God.

He says, I'll read it twice.

The Bible is not an end in itself.

The Bible's important, it's essential, it's foundational.

But the Bible is not an end in itself, but a means to bring us into an intimate and satisfying knowledge of God that we may enter into him, that we may delight in his presence, may taste and know the inner sweetness of the very God Himself in the core and center of our hearts.

Do we study the word?

Absolutely.

But what is the purpose?

It's to turn our affections and our heart toward God, to know him more, to love him more.

I told you I'd read it twice, so I'll read it again.

The Bible is not an end in itself, but a means to bring us into an intimate and satisfying knowledge of God, that we may enter into Him, that we may delight in His presence, may taste and know the inner sweetness of the very God Himself in the core and center of our hearts.

And so sometimes when we read the scriptures, it's dry, right?

And we use that example.

We still go to the Word.

We need to be in the Word because it's like going out on a sunny day, getting vitamin D.

You know that you're being affected by the sun, but if you go out on a cloudy day, you may not see you're being affected by the sun.

But you can come in later and be like, someone be like, Man, you were outside a long time because you're red.

And you're like, What?

I was affected by the sun?

I didn't even see it.

It's like, yes, you were affected by the sun.

And so I think it's a humorous illustration, but it's like, like anyone would talk like that.

But it's like when you're in the Word, you're being affected by the Sun, the S-O-N, and it's shining on us.

And we want it to soften our hearts.

We want our hearts to grow more to be like Jesus's.

All right.

So we want to not trust in the means of grace.

We still stay with the means of grace.

But we don't trust in them.

And if we're doing other things, we don't stop trusting in them and then not turn our attention to trust in something else because it's a simple thing.

And this is what Hold Fast to Christ point number two says.

We don't simply want to reject what is false, we want to move towards what is true.

So the principle is you can you can't simply stop trusting in something and assume everything else will be fine.

You have to shift your trust to something else.

And so the truth is we were created to trust.

We're created to worship.

A.W.

Tozer taught a lot.

He said we were creating as worshiping beings.

It's the most natural thing for us to worship.

But the the problem and the challenge is as fallen humans, we we worship all sorts of different things.

We were created to be filled.

So we can't just not be filled, we'll fill it up with something else.

And God's saying, Come to me because I am what will fill you.

If you've been finding your identity and performance, and then you stop looking to performance to fill your identity and just walk around, you'll find something else to fill you up.

That's why it's turning away and turning to.

And that's what repentance is.

And we have a lifestyle of repentance.

We want to turn away from the things that are pulling us away from God and turn to Him.

And what is His posture towards us in Christ?

It's open arms all the time.

It's the prodigal father running towards us and saying, Welcome home.

So not everything in spiritual, in our spiritual life is drawing us toward Christ, and not everything that looks spiritual is drawing us toward Christ.

And in this passage, he speaks specifically about ascetic practices.

So these rigorous self-denial, worship of angels, which is not something we should do.

We're called to worship God Himself.

Visionary experiences.

Does God still do amazing things?

I think he does.

I've not seen a vision.

I've I've had impressions in my heart of God.

I've had friends had experiences with God.

That my friend Jeremy Cassello, who came and played a concert uh not long ago, he talked about uh this experience where he was going through the toughest time of his life, and he was crushed, and he was sitting on the floor in the middle of the night just crying out to God.

And he literally felt a warming in his soul, a warming in his heart.

And not everyone experiences that, but that was what he needed, and God gave it to him, and he he measures his life as that is the mile marker in his life where things shifted for him.

So we can do all these different things, but we don't trust in that.

We trust in the one who gives these things.

So this is what Paul is saying, and I love that there have been many speculations on what the false teaching was that was going on in the church, but Paul doesn't tell us, and I think it's just such a grace of God, like Jason was saying last week, because the point is not the specific false teaching, it's to get to Christ, to continue to move to him.

Because the irony is the more we go to things that are not Christ, we become inflated by empty notions.

And so, verse 18, or Colossians 1:18, it says, They don't hold on to the head.

Colossians 1:18

The head is Christ.

And so in this passage, the whole body, nourished and held together by its ligaments and tendons, grows with growth from God.

And so I love that final phrase, grows with growth from God.

And it harkens back to Paul saying in another letter where he says, Apollo swattered, I may have planted, but it's God who gives the growth.

And so we remember that we're going to Him for that.

So the application, what does holding fast to Christ look like?

Because when we have these means of grace, prayer and Bible reading and meeting together, like we we want to use those things, but to continue to point ourselves to Christ, it might look like this.

When we sin, we return to forgiveness rather than trying to repair our worth through performance.

So if I if I sin, it's like, well, I can't pray to God for a day because I'm I just I'm messed up.

It's like, no, come boldly.

As we mature and as we as we know him more, we we know that he embraces us and we turn from that and just come into his arms.

When we're anxious, and we will be anxious, that's what my session was at the Harbor Network.

It was stress, anxiety, and the body, and how anxiety is a natural part of life.

And when we're anxious, we bring our fears to him rather than assuming everything depends on us.

That's what it looks like to hold fast to Christ.

When we're succeeding, we receive our accomplishments with gratitude rather than making them our identity.

That's what it means to hold to Christ.

When growth feels slow, we continue trusting His presence rather than condemning ourselves.

When we pray, when we read the scripture or worship, we remember these practices help turn us to Christ rather than earn our acceptance because we are accepted.

And so it's this reality.

It's like, let's preach the gospel to ourselves.

And that gets us to our final point.

Remember where real where real growth comes from.

And this is where we daily preach the gospel to ourselves.

And I have that, I used to be kind of goofy, but I'm not so goofy anymore.

And you say, well, you are, Chad.

And it's like, yeah, I know, I know.

I can pretend.

But when I was campus pastor surgery in Midtown, I would preach probably 10, 15 times a year.

Sometimes I'd lead worship, sometimes I'd do liturgy.

Sometimes I wouldn't do anything on the stage.

I would just go through the services.

And so servants would start showing up early in the morning and I'd already be there and they'd be like, hey, Chad, are you preaching today?

You know what I answer every time?

I say, Yeah, I'm preaching today.

And I was being snarky, and I would follow up and I go, Oh, you mean am I delivering the 40-minute monologue?

No, I'm not doing that, but I am preaching today because I'm preaching the gospel to myself and to you.

Jesus loves you.

See that subversive way I did that?

So if someone asks you if you're preaching today, it's like, yeah, I'm preaching today.

I'm preaching the gospel to myself.

And so we do that every day.

We gotta renew our minds every day.

Romans 12, 1.

It is this reality that we've been reconciled to God.

It's all in this letter.

We've been made alive in Christ.

Our sins have been forgiven.

We've been raised with Christ.

We no longer belong to the old order of things, that we are his for all eternity.

And we can look at the slides of the universe and just say, this is the massiveness of God.

And we can look at the beautiful nature of a small flower, even a blade of grass, and see the intricacies and say, this is what God has made.

So Paul asks this question.

He says, For those who have drifted, who have gone to these other things as saying, my security is found in this, it's Jesus, and I have to do this.

It's he's saying, Why are you living as though Christ hasn't already changed everything in your life?

Those things, the rules, don't taste, don't touch, like all those things are gonna fade away.

Come to Christ.

And guys, I hope my heartbeat, I hope your heart, I hope it's it's clear.

Like my desire is for us to breathe deep as a people, just to be able to go, I'm safe.

I can look at this stuff and say, oh man.

I I shared at my session and I was meeting with a group of elders over Zoom, and I said, these are the ways that uh I didn't even realize it, but I wasn't uh a good lead pastor when I started here because I I was leading from a consensus mindset, and I can explain all that and be like, no, Chad, you're good, you were good.

And it's like I believe I'm a good pastor, but it didn't translate to being a good lead pastor necessarily.

And then it's like I can look at those things and go, oh, and that's why, like a year and a half ago, when I came back, it's like, oh, I need to change these things.

And that doesn't mean I'm perfect now.

There's a lot, I want to continue to look at myself, but my identity is not based in me being the best lead pastor in the nation.

I know I'm in the top 3%.

But it's not, it's like I'm safe in Christ.

I'm loved by y'all.

Y'all give me grace, I give you grace.

Let's do it together.

All right.

So the principle here is that we remember where growth comes from.

Rules can manage behavior without transforming the heart.

Are rules fine?

Yeah, they can be fine.

They can be good.

But we don't trust in rules.

Don't handle, don't taste, don't touch.

He says, although these have a reputation for wisdom by promoting self-made religion, false humility, and severe treatment of the body, they are not of any value in curbing self-indulgence.

I drove down to Florida because I wanted a long road trip just by myself with my thoughts, and I listened to a lot of music on the way down.

And I started listening to music that I hadn't listened to since like 40 years.

And the reason I haven't listened to it in so long, in my tradition growing up, we had a lot of don't taste, don't touch, don't handle rules.

And one of the rules I've shared with you before is like you cannot listen to secular music.

You have to listen to Christian music.

And so I was the good kid, and I just listened to Christian music.

There's some great Christian music.

I got into Stephen Curtis Chapman.

Uh, but then it got a little controversial because DC Talk came out, and it's like, that Christian music sounds too much like the world.

And I've told you this story before, but it still blows my mind when I look back at it.

They said, if you're driving in your car, don't be listening to DC Talk because you might pull up to somebody and they hear that bass hitting, and they may think you're listening to secular music, and they might end up going to hell.

I'm like, even as a kid, I'm like, that don't make no sense.

That don't make no sense.

But I started listening back to old old music, and it was like they were trusting in that.

And there were so many puffed up, and people were doing the best they could with what they had.

And there just needed to be a reformation.

Uh, we had a guy come from a crazy ministry, and he said the only Christian music you can listen to is music that's in three, four time signature.

And I was like, what?

And Sandy Patty had just come out with a new album, and he said every song was ruined except for two songs.

I was like, what?

God doesn't own four, four?

What about six, eight?

My point is this we look at that and say, that's crazy.

I don't know what I don't know.

Where am I doing that in my life?

Where are you doing that in your life?

Where you look at yourself and you say, I'm doing good because of this, or I'm doing horrible because of this, and it's like, okay, just put it on the table and let's look at it.

Say, I'm accepted in Christ.

I don't want to trust in that.

Let's preach the gospel to ourselves and to each other, and let's go.

Shackles have been released, we are free, we've been made alive.

And I think the posture is this: Lord help me, may my heart become more like yours.

In a daily walk with Him.

And I said it a few weeks ago, it's something I heard from Dallas Willard years ago, but grace is opposed to seeking to earn.

Grace is opposed to earning.

I can't earn anything, but grace is not opposed to effort.

To say it theologically is that our sanctification is a synergistic endeavor.

To say it in plain terms, us becoming more like Jesus, our heart becoming more like him, means we participate with God.

He's doing his work, and he invites us to do ours.

We seek his face through the means of grace.

So don't settle for shadows.

And as you turn from the shadows, turn to Christ, hold on to him, and remember the growth comes from him.

And we come today to the table and we're reminded again, as we are every week, that Christ has made the way.

We can breathe deep.

We can look at our lives without condemnation because there is no condemnation in Christ.

We can look with curiosity and just say, Lord, reveal to me what I may be trusting in.

That's that's not you.

What means of grace am I propping myself up with, or what am I not believing?

And just let him show you.

And say, Yes, Lord, help me follow you and cling to you.

And so I'd invite you, if you're a Christian here today, if you're visiting with us or part of our church, I'd invite you to come.

You can take some bread and some juice back to your seat and just hold them there.

We'll have a song being sung.

You can reflect, you can sing, but in all of it, ask the Lord to speak to your heart because he does speak.

And follow his lead.

Let's pray together.

Father, we thank you for your amazing grace.

We thank you that you have brought us to a place where we know you.

Lord, we love you.

And we want to love you more.

We want our hearts to become more like yours.

And so, Lord, in the midst of all that we go through, help us to continually turn our attention to you.

As we get distracted, Lord, bring our minds and our hearts back to you.

Lord, thank you for all the things that pointed forward to Christ.

And Christ, thank you for coming.

Holy Spirit, thank you for dwelling within us and move in a mighty way to bring encouragement, to bring challenge, to bring whatever you see fit.

And may we have hearts and ears to listen.

We ask that you move in our lives, and we ask this in Christ's name.

Amen.