This recording is from Christ Kingdom Church in Avalon Park, Orlando. Visit us online at ChristKingdom.org for our calendar, driving directions, and more audio recordings. Good morning. How's everybody doing? Good. Again, my name's Joe. I'm the pastoral intern here if we haven't met. I get the privilege every once in a while to look at God's Word together with you. This week, one of the days I was driving up to school, I decided to put an old Derek Webb album in my CD player. Anybody like him? All right. And one of his songs from his album, I see things upside down. It's called Nothing is Ever Enough. Look at the lyrics to this song. Next slide. Basically, there, here we go. Okay. She's not real. She's the spokes on a wheel. But the way she moves will take you where you want to go. And you're the one that she steals from. But if not you, she's going to find somebody else. Because nothing is ever enough. Obviously, he's not talking about a woman. He's talking about this tendency in our culture towards to chase after, to hunger after, something that really won't fill us, to thirst after something that really won't quench us. I mean, how many stories have y'all heard of somebody who made it to the top success by the world's standards, only to find that happiness didn't live there either. Searching and searching for something that's not going to fill, and nothing is ever enough. I meet with guys weekly for counseling. And a common theme for all of them is that to some degree or another, they were not affirmed by their fathers. And as you know, that's something that children need, sons need from their father. I mean, after all, in the New Testament, the only times that God audibly speaks, God the Father audibly speaks, is to say, that's my boy, basically, talking about Jesus. Listen to him, behold my beloved son. I mean, how much more do sons need that from their earthly fathers when we're not Jesus? And so that's a common theme. And so they are searching everywhere, addictive behaviors, relationships with other people, careers, to find something that's not there, and nothing is ever enough to fill that emptiness, it seems. Well, you and I, all of us, we all have in a real way, daddy issues, if you will. We're all born with sin. We've inherited this problem of sin in our hearts. We're born into a sinful world, and sin separates us from our creator, from our heavenly Father. We were meant for so much more, meant to live in constant communion with God, the Garden of Eden would spread throughout the whole earth, and we'd be in constant communion with him, and our forefather and foremother jacked that all up, and you would have too, by the way, and I would have. But they did, and invited sin in, and it created this gulf and this separation. And so from day one, you and I, something doesn't feel quite right, because we were meant for more. And many of you, if you're not a Christian, or those of you that are before your Christians, maybe you remember a time when daily it was the striving after something that wasn't there, really, and nothing was ever enough. Well, Jesus did come. He came to be the one who is enough. He came to be the one who would fill the void, fill the emptiness, and that's what he did 2,000 years ago. He walked the earth, and he met people, and he filled their emptiness. He filled that void, what they were longing for. He was it, and it changed them, and then they went, and they told all sorts of other people. And the message spread, and eventually it spread to a place called Colosse. It was found in the Likus valley, a town full of pagans, but also many Jews lived in the area. And a guy named Papras planted this church there, preached the gospel, and people came to faith in Christ. And so then there's this church in the small town in Colosse. They had heard the message that Christ would be enough for them. He would be what their hearts had been longing for. It wasn't long before some false teaching began to surface. Some teachers who would come along and say, is Christ enough? Well, we need him. Yes. He's very important. Yes. But he's not quite enough. There's other stuff that needs to happen. There's other things that you need to do. And so part of this letter that we've been studying for the past few weeks, part of Paul's intent in writing this letter to the Colossians is to say, Christ is enough. Christ is enough for you. And you can almost imagine this. They would have gathered around, and somebody would have read the letter to them from Paul. So this church in Colosse, they would have all gathered around the people to hear the reading of this letter. And they would have heard Paul say, I mean, for instance, in chapter 2, verse 9, for in Christ all the fullness of the deity dwells in bodily form, and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. In other words, Christ is enough. And I don't know about you. I imagine this collective sigh of relief. That's good news because these people have been coming in and telling me I've got to do all this other stuff, and I've got to fit into the Jewish traditions. And I just haven't been able to do that. And Paul saying Christ is enough. See, it's not only in our day where one of the main reasons that people question Christianity as legitimate, is because they'll say, that's it. Have faith in Christ. That's it. That doesn't sound like enough. There needs to be more. I want to do more. And that's not unlike what the Colossians, the church in Colosse, was dealing with in their time. So this morning, we're going to look at chapter 2, verses 16 through 23. We're going to look at what Paul says in response to this false teaching of that day. We're going to take this in little chunks, verses 16 and 17. Therefore, do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a new moon celebration, or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things that were to come. The reality, however, is found in Christ. First point, if you're writing in your outline, Christ is enough to bring you into His family. Christ is enough to bring you into His family. Here's what was going on, or at least here's what some scholars think was going on. We don't know for sure, but based on what Paul's saying here, it sounds like that there were some of those Jewish people, because many lived in this area of Colosse. It sounds like there were some Jews who had come to faith in Christ. But some of them had decided that it was still necessary to hang on to all of their Jewish customs, the dietary laws, making sure they observed all of the annual religious festivals. And there were some who not only felt it was necessary that they did that, but that everybody else in the church did it as well. Even if you weren't Jewish. And so there were some who were going around saying, it's not enough, basically. Christ is not enough to bring you into the family. There's other stuff that you need to do that defines the family of God. And it's these dietary laws, and it's these yearly Jewish festival observances. And so what Paul is saying, and he's coming in and saying, no, that's not right. We don't add to Christ. Christ is enough to bring you into the family. And look what he says, he says, these things that these false teachers were wanting to add on, they're a shadow of the things to come. The reality is found in Christ. Paul's saying, what's the point in getting together and making sure that we observe all of these shadows when the reality has already come. He's saying, what's the point in subscribing to strict dietary laws when those dietary rules and the Old Testament for the Jews were to point forward to who, the bread of life, Jesus, who would be our food. You know, Paul's saying the Passover feast. What's the point in making sure that everyone needs to observe Passover? Why celebrate Passover when it's to remember the Passover lamb that was sacrificed in the Old Testament, that protected the people? The real Passover lamb has already come. Jesus Christ. He's saying, don't let them judge you. Don't let these outsiders come in and say, you've got to do all this extra stuff to get in to the family of God. Christ is enough to bring you in to the family of God. I don't know how many of you have read 1,000 splendid sons. Khaled Hussaini is the book after the Kite Runner. It starts with this. It's kind of multiple stories that all tie together. But in the beginning, it's the story of this little girl named Mariahm and growing up in Afghanistan, raised by her mother. Her mother was the servant to a very wealthy aristocrat in the city. Well, they had an affair and she became pregnant. And of course, he was married and she was just a servant. And she gave birth to this child, Mariahm. And so basically, he had them sent to live on the outskirts of the town to keep the scandal at bay, to keep himself from the shame that was in his past. And so this girl, Mariahm, grows up with her mother raising her in occasional visits from her father, Jaleel, his name. But she's so intrigued by this man because he's her father but she doesn't get to see him very much. And she's never seen where he lives and she's never been in the city. So one day, she runs away from home and she goes into the city and she finds Jaleel's mansion. Her father's mansion where he lives with his family. The gate and she rings the buzzer and his chauffeur comes out and she says, my father lives here. I'd like to come into the house and see him. And the chauffeur says, I'm sorry but he's not here right now. Why don't you go back home and she says, no, no, I'll wait for him. So he closes the gate and hours go by and she's waiting and he comes back out and he says, you know, I think you need to go home now. You're probably tired and hungry. Let me take you to a hotel at least so you can sleep for the night. And she says, no, I want to stay here and wait for my dad for when he gets home. All night she waits in the cold and hungry outside of the gate of her own father's house. And in the morning, the chauffeur comes back out and he says, Jaleel, your father said that I need to take you home. He'd been home the whole time but he hadn't let her in the house because to him she was a shaming presence. Unclean, a reminder that he had slept with his servant. And so she was this unclean child unfit to be a part of his family and she was never allowed into the family. Our God is very, very different. He doesn't let make us wait outside the gates, unclean and unfit. He opens up the door and he says, come on in. We're having a party. We're having food and he says, well, am I up to dress code? And he says, yes, you're wearing the robe of my son, Jesus, come in. But I see it's a party. I didn't bring anything. I don't have a dish. Don't worry, Jesus bought all the food. Well, I really appreciate that but I'm filthy. My feet are dirty. My hands haven't been washed. Yes, you've been washed by my son, Jesus. Christ is enough to take you and I who are sleeping outside the gates of a palace and invite us in and clean us up. And that's what Paul's saying. He's enough to get you in the family. The problem with this false teaching in Colosseum was that if Christ isn't enough to get you into the family, then you're in trouble. Because everywhere else the Bible says he's the only way in. This other stuff isn't going to work and so Paul is warning them, Christ alone is your only way in. Faith in him is the only way in and even that faith is a gift. It's God's grace to you and I. Even that faith he brings into your heart says in Ephesians 2.8, it is a gift for Paul saying it's all Christ doing. Christ is enough to bring you into the family and to bring you in looking just like you do. Now as the Colossians might have done in hearing this, why don't together let's have a collective sigh of relief. He's enough. Second point, Christ is enough to keep you in his family. Christ is enough to keep you in his family. Look at verse 18, says, do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you. Such people go into great detail about what they have seen and their unspiritual minds puff them up with idle notions. Stop right there for a minute. We'll read 19 in a second. So apparently there were not only these people who were saying to get into the family, you've got to observe all these Jewish regulations. But there were those, maybe some of the same people who were walking around pretending to be humble but worshipping angels. So what might have been happening scholars think is that they were so humble that they couldn't approach God themselves and so they had to send messages to God through angels. And Paul says, don't let these men and women disqualify you. Another translation says, don't let them steal your rob you of your prize. Another says, do not let them cheat you. He's saying, you're in the family if you're in Christ. Now don't let these people come in and say, I'm not sure if you can stay in the family until you're like us with this false humility and seeing visions of angels. But Paul says that their humility is exactly that. It's false because he goes on to say in the same verse in 18, these people go into great detail about what they've seen. In other words, they're walking around describing their visions of angels as if to say, oh, you haven't seen a vision of an angel. You don't have this super spiritual insight into what the angelic world looks like. Are you sure you're in the family of God? And Paul saying, Christ is enough to keep you in the family. Not this other stuff. Look at verse 19. He says, they, these angel worshipers, have lost connection with the head from whom the whole body supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews grows as God causes it to grow. The only thing that holds the body together and causes it to grow is what? The head, right? And who is the head? Christ. It's this interesting thing. If you've been a Christian for a little while, you've probably interacted with the way the Bible talks about the church as a body of Christ. But if you haven't, when the church or when the Bible talks about those who are followers of Christ coming together, it calls them a body. It says they're the body of Christ. And it says Christ is the head of that body. And Paul is saying, it's the head that holds the family together. It's the head that holds all the body parts together and causes them to grow. So Paul is saying, it's only by connection to the head that you are kept in the family. It's not by this other stuff. In fact, Paul is saying, he says, they've lost connection with the head. He says, doing some of this stuff, you may not even be connected to the head to begin with. Christ is enough. Don't let someone come in and say, you need to be doing this. You need to be experiencing this. And all of this needs to be happening in order for you to be able to stay in the family. Now, I don't know how many of you regularly see visions of angels. Probably very few. But what ways do you try to stay in the family? What things do you do? Because somewhere inside, you still believe that it's up to you to keep yourself in the family. I mean, is it small group answers, really good answers at your small group? Reading your Bible is a certain amount of time, a day, making sure you make it to a certain amount of worship services a month, evangelizing a certain number of people. What does it that you do to try and keep yourself in the family? Because so that Paul would say, hmm, Christ keeps you in the family. You say, hi, anticipate, Joe, you're telling us we can do whatever we want. We're not doing anything, except for what we want. Now, what I'm saying is that you won't do anything for God until you get it, that it's not what you do that keeps you in the family. To the degree to which you have experienced the crazy grace of God to you is the degree to which you will go crazy in your obedience to him. Does that make sense? You guys seen Les Mizz, movie or musical. Jean Valjean in the beginning, convict. He's on the streets. There's no place to stay and he knocks on the door of a priest's home. The priest answers and he leads off with just, I'm a convict. Here are my papers. Look, almost as if he wants the priest to turn him away. And the priest says, come on, have dinner with us. You can sleep here tonight. So he comes in and he has a bed for the night and he has food on his plate. The next morning he gets up early and he sneaks around, he steals all of the priest's silver and he sneaks out, throws it in a bag and sneaks out. I'll show this guy. He didn't give very far before the police catch up with him. And he tells the police, he says, the priest gave me his silver. The police, of course, know that that's not true and so they take him back to the priest's home and they get back there and it's so shocking when you see it for the first time because the priest confirms his story. He says, yeah, I gave him my silver, release him. He says, but I am upset with you, Jean Valjean because you didn't take the candlesticks that are, I mean, they're worth a pretty penny. Let me go and he goes in, he gets him, he throws him in his bag and he's released and he's freed. And it's something about the grace of God through that priest to this convict that changes him and if you've seen the movie, he goes from a selfish convict to a selfless servant of others. It's grace that changes you and I, that motivates us to want to live for God. The fact that we know, we're already in the family. Do you see this distinction? Do you see it over here is, I've got to keep myself in. I've got to live for Christ. I've got to be super spiritual and have all the gifts and do do do so I can stay in the family. And then over here, I'm in. Look at this place. And I get to stay. So how do I want to honor the family name? See this distinction? Christ is enough to keep you in the family. Collective sigh of relief. Third point, last point. Christ is enough to bring you in the family, keep you in the family. And Christ is enough Paul is saying to change you. He's enough to change you. Some of you might be thinking for I read these verses, I don't really need to change. I don't really want to change. I'm fine just the way I am. My hope for you would be that somewhere in your heart, you know that just the way you are is not just what you're meant to be. There's a gap. There's a distance there. And Paul is saying, there's only one who bridges that gap. And that's Christ. Let's look at these verses 23-23. I'm going to read them all. Since you died with Christ to the elemental spiritual forces of this world, why is though you still belong to the world? Do you submit to its rules? Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch? These rules, which have to do with the things that are all destined to perish with use, are based on merely human commands and teachings. Such regulations, indeed, have an appearance of wisdom with their self-imposed worship, their false humility, and their harsh treatment of the body. But they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgences. So floating around in Colosse, there's a group of people saying, Christ isn't enough to bring you into the family. You've got to submit to all these other Jewish regulations. There's another group that's saying, I'm not really sure if you're staying in the family unless you're kind of elevating, you're getting to the point of being able to see visions, do all these spiritual things and understand these mysteries. Then there's another group who are saying, Christ isn't enough to change you. To change you and to change your sinful behavior, you've got to do what Paul is saying. You've got to obey these rules that what comes with them is this harsh treatment of the body. This word, asceticism, have you heard of it? A big word for denying yourself, pleasure and enjoyment for the purpose of your spiritually growing and punishing yourself. And Paul's saying, this harsh treatment of your body, all of these rules, these aren't what's going to change you. He says they don't even work. In fact, he says they hurt you. He says in the last verse, they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence. Paul says this stuff actually hurts you. Anybody ever done this? I mean maybe not. You've seen some whipped yourself or something, but I'm going to fix this behavioral problem. I'm going to try and try and try and get better in this area. And then maybe you even thought, when I mess up, maybe I can't eat chocolate for a week or something. I'm going to come up with some sort of punishment for my bad behavior. And then you found that it just didn't work. Did it. And so you end up, maybe some of you end up just having to say, Jesus, I can't change this. I'm trying. This is not working. Paul would say exactly because Christ is the one who makes that change happen in you. In college, friend of mine and I, we were both Christians, close friends. We decided that we wanted to challenge each other spiritually, hold each other accountable. We wanted to work on areas in our life of sin and talk about those things with one another, hold each other accountable. And so we did that. But after a while, you know, things kept resurfacing and coming back. And so then we decided, we ended up the stakes here a little bit. Next time you go back to your sin of choice or your behavior of choice, you owe me 20 bucks. Or next time you go back to that, I get to punch in the shoulders as hard as possible. We really did this. You can go ahead and laugh. How effective do you think that that was? Not at all. And that's what Paul's saying. That's not effective. But ironically, what did help? It was one day I went to my friend and I said, I confess for the hundredth time something. And he said, you know, it's obvious that you can't fix this. I mean, you've been trying. And it's not working. Maybe Christ is going to have to be enough for you in this area. Something clicked then because then I left. And I wasn't paranoid looking around every corner, making sure there wasn't sin in the way. But instead I was anticipating God's grace around every corner. That he was going to sustain me. That he was going to do the work in my heart. And that worked. I mean, I'm not perfect by any means. But that was a whole lot more helpful than what I've been trying to do on my own for so long. It's not only Christ's grace that brings you into the family. It's not only Christ's grace that keeps you on the family, but it's his grace that changes your hearts. I mean, do you know right now where you said that God's grace surrounds you? The fact that I can say anything and it makes sense to me or you in any way and maybe only a little bit of it does, but that fact is God's grace. You can sit in those plastic chairs without your back breaking, but really in a sinful world where you should just be crumbling. It's his grace that sustains it. That you can breathe in air and your body takes oxygen and discard carbon dioxide. God's grace to you. And so it's easier sometimes to see that it's grace that brings us into the family. It's his grace that keeps us in the family. Change. I got to do that. When in reality, it's Christ's grace that does that as well that works that change in your heart. Can I tell you one last story? Okay. Some of you may have heard this story. There's a little boy who one day decided to build himself a little toy sailboat. He took a piece of wood and he carved out the hole, shaped the hole. He painted it blue, fitted it with a mast and with sails. And when the boat was ready to go, he decided it was time to test it. So he went down into his city park where he lived and there was a lake. And he tied a cord to the front end of the boat that he would hang on to. And he set the boat, little sailboat in the water. And sure enough, the wind picked up and it caught up in the sails and it started moving the boat along and it was sailing. And then it got to the end of the cord. And then a huge gust of wind came and snapped that cord off and took the boat out into the middle of the lake. The boy was devastated, crying the whole way home. He lost his boat. And he's walking in his city and he sees in a window of a pawn shop, his boat, torn up, sails torn, battered, but he knows that's his boat. Somebody had found it at the other end of the lake and taken it to the pawn shop and sold it and it had a price tag on it of $2. So the boy ran home and got all of his money together that he could, quarters and dimes and nickel and went back up to the pawn shop and bought that boat back. Took it home and he fixed it up, gave it a new paint job, fixed the sails and he looked happily at that boat and he said, I made you, I lost you, I found you, I bought you back, brought you home and fixed you up. What is it that the Colossians needed to hear from Paul? The same thing that we need to hear today. That's by God's grace alone, that he buys you back, brings you into his family, keeps you there and fixes you up. Let's breathe another collective sigh of relief. Last thing, just an application, if it's up here if we have it, and you can take, you'll have a little time in the next song, you can write some of this down and ponder it during the song. If you're not a Christian, what is holding you back from receiving Christ's invitation into his family? You don't believe it, write that down. It seems too simple, write it down. People are crummy, write it down. What's holding you back? Now, second one here, next slide. If you're a Christian, you got a little bit more work. In what ways are you still trying to keep yourself in the family by your own efforts? If you believed Christ alone was responsible for keeping you, how might you seek to honor His name at work, school, and relationships? Which by the way, this doesn't mean just, you know, I'm going to be a good person to honor His name, but would people say that you repent well? Would people say that you're humble? That you know your limitations and you know Christ's power. And then last, what is an area of your heart that you feel powerless to change? Ask Christ to be enough for you in that area? Got those? Let me pray for us, and then the team will come back up and lead us and continue in worship. Heavenly Father, you are a good father. The only one who's truly good. But we do thank you for the fathers and those that are in this room that have done their best to mirror and reflect your character as father to their children. We've got to thank you that you bring us in to your family by your grace alone, and that you keep us there. And so our motivation to serve you and do good is to bring glory to your name. It's not to fight for a spot at the table that we've already been given. And God thank you that our hearts change because of the work that you do in us. God with this teaching from Paul to the church in Colossae, would it have an impact on our hearts this morning, thousands of years later in Avalon Park? Or we pray that you would do a mighty work of change in us, that we would leave this place even today, different people, because of your grace. Lord, pursue God, would you just pursue without limits anybody who's in this room that doesn't know you as Savior? Would you not leave them alone? In Christ's name, amen.