Good morning. We're going to read from Matthew 11, starting in verse 20 this morning. Then began he to upbraid the cities wherein most of his mighty works were done, because they repented not. Woe unto thee, crazen! Woe unto thee, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, They would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I say unto you, it shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment than for you. And thou, Capernaum, which are exalted into the heavens, shall be brought down to hell. For if the mighty works which had been done in thee had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I say unto you that it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment than for thee.

At that time, Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and the prudent and has revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father, for it seemed good in thy sight. All things are delivered unto me of my father, and no man knoweth the son, but the father. Neither knoweth any man the father, save the son, and he to whomsoever the son will reveal him. Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am weak, meek, and lowly in heart, and you shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

All right, we're going to actually be in Colossians chapter 2 today, but I wanted I wanted to read that section of Scripture that Brad just read to us from Matthew 11 because, like the rest of Scripture, it complements and reiterates and teaches the same thing, the same good news that we find in Colossians 2 where we're going to be today. And so what I'd like to do is I would like to, first of all, consider what Brad just read. from Matthew 11, and so hold your place in Colossians 2, and we'll turn there in a minute.

But let me just say this at the outset. When the Lord Jesus Christ reveals his saving gospel to us, he always begins by, well, he doesn't begin here, but in this particular section of scripture, he begins with our utter helplessness, And then he sets before us his utter all-sufficiency, and then he also tells us, gives us a warning. And the warnings are always there with the good news. And what we're gonna see today is that the warning is against what we all think naturally, and we have to have God himself reveal to us the way of salvation And this revelation is a revelation of what Christ has done and who he is. So we wanna consider these things today.

And I've entitled today's message, The Body is of Christ. And you'll understand that better when we read this in Colossians chapter two. But here in Matthew chapter 11, it ends with Jesus saying in verse 30, my yoke is easy and my burden is light. It doesn't define right here what that yoke is and that burden is, but the rest of the gospel does. And what it means is that the yoke that we bear is easy and our burden is light because Christ bore everything for us. And in the next chapter, in chapter 12, I want to read this to you.

It says in verse 1, at that time, so it's the same time. that Jesus went on the Sabbath day through the corn, a field of corn, and his disciples were hungry and began to pluck the ears of corn to eat. And when the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, to Jesus, behold, thy disciples do that which is not lawful to do on the Sabbath day. So they're accusing him, they're accusing his disciples, and him too, because he would be accountable for them, of breaking the Sabbath, disobeying God's law. And Jesus answers that, he said to them, haven't you read what David did when he was hungry and they that were with him?

How he entered into the house of God and ate the showbread, which was not lawful for him to eat, neither for them which were with him, but only for the priests. This happened when David was fleeing from Saul, King Saul, and he came to the priest and asked the priest to give him the showbread, which was only designed for the priest to eat. And Jesus says he didn't do wrong in that. That wasn't wrong.

Even though the law said it was only for the priests. And then in verse five, he says, or have you not read in the law how that on the Sabbath day, the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are blameless because they have to do their work on the Sabbath day in the temple. But I say to you that in this place is one greater than the temple. But if you had known what this means, I will have mercy and not sacrifice, you would not have condemned the guiltless, which were his disciples.

For the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath day. So this follows what Jesus said in chapter 11, and they're connected, they're connected. Because Jesus said, my yoke is easy and my burden is light. And here at this last verse we read in chapter 12, he said, the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath day.

And so in Colossians 2, it's going to show us the warning. And that warning follows the revelation of who Christ is and his saving work. And the warning is necessary because of this that the Pharisees came to Jesus to accuse his disciples, the same attitude is also prevalent in religion, and it actually resides in us naturally to think of God and to think of our acceptance with him wrongly, in a way that's not right. And so, if we back up now to chapter 11 of Matthew, I'm chapter 11 of Matthew.

He says in verse 25, at that time, that same time, Jesus answered when he had condemned those who heard, who saw the signs that he had done, and they didn't believe on him. He says this in verse 25 of Matthew 11. At that time, Jesus answered and said, he's answering the unbelief of those who rejected him.

He prays to his father, I thank thee, O father, Lord of heaven and earth. He's the sovereign. That's what that means, Lord of heaven and earth. Because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, the learned, those who have much knowledge but don't understand. They profess themselves to be wise, but they're not wise. And you have revealed them to babes, to babies. That's a very humbling thing when, as an adult, a little child understands something that is so plain and obvious, and you stumble over it because you're looking for something more complicated.

And Jesus is thanking his Father for that. He says, verse 26, even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight. It was necessary because it pleased God that that be the case. To hide these things from those who were self, educated and trusted in their own ability to figure things out.

He says in verse 27, all things are delivered to me of my father. In other words, the Lord Jesus Christ is the sovereign. Everything is delivered to him. The work of creation was delivered to him. The purpose of creation was delivered to him. The sustaining, the upholding of creation was delivered to him. But most especially, the salvation of his people was delivered to him.

All things and all glory. All of the revelation of salvation and of God, all of it was delivered to the Lord Jesus Christ. He, who is the creator, was here speaking as a man. The man speaking is God. God among us, God with us. And he says this, he says, all things are delivered unto me, this is verse 27.

All things are delivered unto me of my father, and no man knows the son, talking about himself, but the father, which means he's infinite because only the father can know him. No man knows the son but the father, neither knoweth any man the father, Save the Son, which means if the Son can understand God, the Father, then He, and know Him that way, then He also is God.

And the ones, or the one, He, to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him. To know the Father, Jesus Christ has to make Him known. He's the only one who can do that. He's the only one who knows the Father. And the father is the one who reveals his son. And the way the father reveals his son is by letting his son disclose his own person and his own will and his own work in the son. And that's when he says here, well, he says here, you can see that in verse 27, that Jesus Christ reveals the father to whomsoever he will. See, he's the sovereign of all, the creator. He's also the sovereign in salvation, isn't he? And the way that he saves, and this is very important, the way that he saves is he reveals, he reveals that salvation in his father.

In other words, salvation is not something that we make happen, it's revealed. We don't contribute to something that's revealed as having been accomplished. Something that God alone performs and brings glory to himself through what he's done, we don't contribute to that, it's revealed to us.

And the result of revealing it is, we see it. The revelation produces sight. And that sight causes us to behold what he has revealed. And when we consider what he's revealed, we see this is our God, this is our Father. And so salvation is a revelation of what is accomplished in Christ and revealed to us by the Father through the word of Christ, through the work of Christ. And that's why he says in verse 28, it's all directed to him, isn't it? Notice these words, this is God speaking in our nature. Come unto me.

Now, in the Garden of Eden, you remember that God told Adam and Eve, you can eat of every tree, even the tree of life, but you cannot eat of this one tree, which was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And in Romans chapter three, around verse 19 and 20, it says, by the law is the knowledge of sin. So the tree of the knowledge of good and evil represented the law of God, and the law of God means a contract, a covenant between God and men that depends upon our obedience in order to fulfill the requirements of that covenant and to obtain the blessing promised in it. In the beginning, in the beginning, God prohibited Adam and Eve to live by that law. Before they had sinned, but in eating of that tree, in other words, depending upon their own abilities, their own performance, their own ability to earn favor or to retain, keep God's favor and enter into life and to maintain that life, anything required of them that they thought they could fulfill. That was eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And they were tempted because the devil promised that if you eat of this, your eyes will be opened. You'll know good and evil. Oh yes, you will.

But that doesn't save. That doesn't keep life. And so in the garden, in the beginning, God forbid, the way of salvation is not the way of the law. It's not by our personal obedience. And then at Sinai in Exodus chapter 19, you can read about it. But when God gave the law to Moses, he said, now, I've brought you out of Egypt, as it were, carried you as on eagle's wings. And then he said, now, if you will keep my covenant and if you will obey it, then you'll be a special people to me, then you will have life, then these promises will be fulfilled. And the people said, everything the Lord has said, we will do. And immediately God says to Moses, now set bounds around Sinai, the mountain, and you warn everybody, do not come up the mountain.

Don't touch it, even if a beast touches it, or a person, they'll be stoned or thrust through with a dart. killed. And so at the giving of the law, which was a covenant, a covenant that depended upon our personal obedience in order to have life and enter life and to gain God's approval and acceptance of us to be able to come near to God. If there was any hope of that, it depended upon us. The law said, stay back. Don't come near. Do not come, don't even look. Don't even attempt to look upon God.

Now, we could go on and on throughout the scriptures. In the garden, at Sinai, this principle holds true. It rings true here. But notice here in Matthew 11 and verse 28. God, in our nature, says this. He doesn't say, don't touch. Don't look, don't come, he says, come to me. That is phenomenal, isn't it? This is the revelation of God, God the Father and God the Son in his words, coming to sinners and saying to them, come to me.

And he goes on, verse 28, all you that labor, To labor here means to strive, strenuously work, endlessly work until you reach exhaustion and then trying to keep working because you can never achieve, you can never obtain what's required. The more you work, The more you are trying against, the more you are opposing your own salvation. The harder you try, the more you fail. The more is discovered and you're exposed in your guilt and in your shame and you feel the weight of it.

Now, there was a purpose in the law, wasn't there? There was a purpose when God gave the law. And the Pharisees, in chapter 12 of Matthew, They thought that that purpose was their own obedience to these temporal, outward ceremonies and laws, these rules.

And some of those rules, like the Sabbath day, were telling them on certain days you couldn't do things. No work on this day. Other rules said on these days you do these things. Feasts, for example. And in the law, there were times, there were seasons, there were feasts, there were new moons and Sabbath days, things to eat, you had to eat, things you couldn't eat, things to wear, things you couldn't wear, things you had to wash before you ate, your hands, and you couldn't touch certain things, like a dead body. All these things in the law. A priest, there are so many laws that they just go on and on and on.

And in Matthew 12, you see that the Lord Jesus says, wait a minute, you are saying the disciples are breaking the Sabbath, but don't you know that David ate the showbread? He wasn't guilty. Don't you know the priest actually break the Sabbath when they perform the labor in the temple? They're not guilty.

I'm telling you that there's someone greater than the Sabbath here, the Son of Man, the one who is God in our nature, the one who says, come unto me, all you that labor, strenuously laboring endlessly in order to achieve or trying to achieve what can never be obtained because you're a sinner. because God is holy and because God's law describes not what he requires of you personally, but of only one whose heart is already aligned perfectly with a full understanding of the mind of God the Father and what he truly requires of us.

And it was in his heart as a man to do that will. He came not only to do it, but to finish the work, to finish it all. He says in Hebrews 10, sacrifice and offering, you did not desire, but a body has thou prepared me. In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin, thou hast had no pleasure. Then said I, lo, I come. In the volume of the book, throughout scripture, it is written of me to do thy will, O God.

And that will, he says, we are sanctified, made holy through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. Now that was the will, Jesus Christ, that lay in his heart to do because he loved his father, he loved his law, he loved his people, and he stooped as God in order to do what his own law required in order to save them from their sins, in order to clothe them in a righteousness that God would look upon and take delight in and approve and accept them in that righteousness. And so the Lord Jesus is saying, come to me. The one who is God in our nature, calling us not to stay back, not to run away, not to, not look and not touch. He says, you come, you eat of me, my sacrifice. You lay hold upon me, you cling to Christ only. And he says, I, he says, all you who labor, I will give you rest. I'm the one who fulfills the law of the Sabbath. The law of the Sabbath was no work on the seventh day.

But in Christ, we look to him who is our rest, who finished the work. And in believing him, we cease from our own labors because we see God would never accept our labors, but he fully accepted Christ's labors for us. See, this is the whole meaning of scripture. It's about the Lord Jesus Christ standing in the place of his people before God as a man and yet as God, the God-man, to answer all that God requires for them. Only he can be to us a tree of life because only he could fulfill what God requires of us.

And this is the good news. This is the good news. I will give you rest. I have finished the work and I will unburden you. all of your offenses, all of the failures, all of the guilt, and all of the shame, and the nakedness of your own spiritual person before God, I will clothe you in my perfect righteousness, and I will bear your sins under the wrath of God, and make satisfaction for them, and fulfill the law perfectly and fully.

Not in symbol, not in type, but actually, and truly, and really. Now, look at Colossians chapter two. That's what scripture reiterates to us over and over again. If we look at Colossians sort of as a snapshot review, remember in chapter one, it says in verse 12 that God the Father has made us meet. He has qualified us to inherit the inheritance of his children. Verse 12 of chapter one, he has made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light. God the Father qualified us to receive the eternal inheritance that the heirs of God, his children, receive. And how did he do that? He did it in Christ. He delivered us, verse 13, from the power of darkness and translated us into the kingdom of his dear son.

The thing is is that Satan's way is to deceive, to darken the truth. And strangely enough, he uses the law with our sinful nature to darken the truth to us. We can't see through. Our perception of God through the law leaves us blind. because we're sinful and we can only see God against us. And so we hate God, we oppose Him in every way. We hate His holiness, we hate His sovereignty, we hate everything about Him.

But then the light of the gospel comes to us and the darkness is lifted and we see the light because we see in Jesus Christ, God, in our nature, calling to us, come to me. Everything God requires in His law and all of the penalty that God would justly bring upon us because of our sin, the eternal condemnation and wrath of God, Christ bears that.

By His stripes, we were healed. And so he says in verse 14, also in whom, in Christ, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sin. So right away, we can see that in Colossians, he's teaching us about our great God and Savior, God the Father, who qualified us, how he translated us, he put us under the rule, the blessed saving rule of the son of his love. And then it was He, who is the Son of His love, who redeemed us by His precious blood, and because of Him, God has forgiven us all of our sins.

Verse 15 says that the Lord Jesus is the expression, the perfect expression of the invisible God. He's the one who reveals the Father, the only one, and we cannot know God unless we see him in Christ, which teaches us the law can't reveal God to us, can it? Because of the sinfulness of our nature, we can't see God in truth and grace. The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.

And then in verse 16 it says, he's the creator of everything, Christ. By him were all things created. Therefore he's the sovereign. And this includes everything in heaven and earth, visible and invisible, all principalities, thrones, dominions, it doesn't matter what rule it is, Christ created it. And it says they were created by him and for him, they serve his purpose for his people. And he is before all things, that means he's preeminent. Not only was he existing in eternity, but he has always been in the purpose of God, the preeminent one.

No one can occupy the place that Christ occupies. And there's no one else who is exalted by God except Him. It's not like there's like, well, there's these, you know, stages of recognition by God and He occupies the highest place and, you know, the Mormons teach this, that you keep working and you're gonna be in the same position as Christ. This shows you the sinfulness of man. There's only one God is exalted.

It's the one who abased himself. It's the one who, though he was rich, became poor, that out of his poverty we might be made rich. There is that maketh himself rich and has nothing, but there is who made himself poor who has all riches. And so this is Christ.

He's preeminent. God has determined to exalt his son alone. but not just himself, Jesus Christ, as the God-man, but with his people. And this is the blessedness of God's saving grace towards sinners, is that his exaltation of Christ exalted him because he saved his people and exalted him with his people so that they're presented to God in him and presented as him. That is unbelievable grace, isn't it? As it goes on, He's before all things, by Him all things consist, He sustains them, He brings them in providence and in salvation to the accomplishment of His will. Christ has the power to raise the dead. And he commands the dead through the gospel to life and gives them light and life and faith and that faith is in himself.

Come unto me, come unto me. Find the work that you could never accomplish, completed, done, accepted, and life given because of it. Find the sin that burdens you and you struggle with it and you say, I gotta get better. But you can't get better. I'll keep laboring. You're gonna find yourself endlessly laboring until you're exhausted in eternal damnation and you can never get out because the law requires and is never satisfied with your performance.

The only one who could satisfy God is God in our nature, Christ. So he says in verse 18 of chapter one, he's the head of the body, the church, the beginning, the firstborn from the dead. He has a preeminence, not only the firstborn in creation, but in the new creation, the firstborn in the new creation. He's the head of the body, the church, his people. He's the one who created them.

They are his workmanship and they are joined to him so tightly bound in his everlasting love that they have a being in Him from eternity, and they're given grace, and they're given life, and they're given salvation all at His expense, and they're presented to God in Him.

It pleased the Father, it says, that in Him should all fullness dwell. Okay, that's the context. He holds up to us this simple truth that even a baby can understand. Jesus Christ is all. He's the Son of God, He's the Son of Man, and He's the one who has accomplished God's will and He gives it to His people. He chooses to reveal the salvation He accomplished and God in that work. He reveals Him. He chooses to reveal Him. His choice precedes any prerequisite that we could ever think or imagine meeting. We were in deficit only.

He chose to save us when we were yet sinners, and He died for us when we were yet sinners, and when we were yet sinners, He made us alive. He gave us faith and caused us to see our salvation is accomplished by Him and enter into His rest. All right, so he goes on to talk about this reconciliation. We were alienated, in verse 21, enemies in our mind by wicked works, yet now has he reconciled, how? In the body of his flesh, through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreprovable in his sight.

And so then in chapter two of Colossians, as we've gone through this, we see that Paul tells the believers in Colossae that he has labored. The Lord Jesus Christ gave him this burden and this commission, this ministry to labor so much that he would exhaust himself gladly for their sake, for Christ's sake, as a servant of Christ. And that in considering what Paul suffered, they would see Christ's sufferings. And seeing how much it cost for them to hear the gospel, their hearts would be knit together as a body with Christ and with one another because of the common salvation, the love they have for the one who so labored. And this is the first part of Colossians 2.

But then he says in verse 2 that he wants them to know this and their hearts to be knit together in this way to the acknowledgement of the mystery of God and of the Father and of Christ, which is all revealed in the Lord Jesus. He says in the next verse, in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, in the Lord Jesus. And then he says in verse four, this I say lest any man should beguile you with enticing words. So he's talking now about the warnings.

Christ is all, Christ has done all. You've been called by him, by his gospel with an effectual, an irresistible grace. You have laid hold upon him, you see your life is in him and everything that you labored under now has been lifted. And God appears in all of his glory to you and he is most beautiful in the Lord Jesus.

And he says these things to us, lest any beguile us, to tempt us to do what we normally did by nature, to trust in something about ourselves, to look to ourselves, to come to ourselves or to come to something else instead of to Christ alone. So I say this, lest any man should beguile you with enticing words. Though I be absent in the flesh, I'm with you in the spirit, joying and beholding your order and your steadfastness of your faith in Christ. as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him. You began this way, you were a sinner, completely under the condemnation, though heavy load of unbearable weight that you could never fulfill and endlessly striving and always failing and finding more guilt and shame and condemnation from God and you will never be able to remove it and you can never satisfy God and so God was austere and intimidating and terrifying, and you hated him.

And here he says, no, when the light of the gospel was shined in your hearts, you saw that Christ is all to you. You saw him, you beheld him, and you laid hold in dependence upon him, and you came to him, and you came to God by him. And you said, Lord, be for me all that God requires, answer every demand, stand before me in judgment, and advocate your cause for me, and plead yourself, and plead your blood, and your righteousness, and be all of my salvation.

That's what faith does. Coming to, receiving, and looking to, and depending upon. the Lord Jesus, alone, to the exclusion of everything else. God has exalted Him alone to the exclusion of everything else, and yet He has exalted His people with Him, and they who have been given this sight of Him by the Gospel now look to Him in faith, and He says, Continue. Abide. Don't leave this. Don't depart. Don't look for another way. There's only one way. You come to the Father by Christ alone. There's only one name under heaven whereby you must be saved.

It's His name. He says in verse 7 of chapter 2, rooted and built up and established in the faith as you have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving. You see what grace does? It produces this steadfast rest and thankfulness. You can't be thankful when you're trying to get to some measure of acceptance. You're always looking at your performance.

You're always wondering, what else do I need to do where I've failed in all these ways, now what? I'm lost, I'm helpless, and I'm hopelessly lost, and I can do nothing about it. It must not be the Lord's will to save me. I'm helplessly lost in my own putrefying flesh.

And the Lord says, no, come to me. Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden. I will give you rest. And then he says, rooted and built up. God planted you. God constructed you. You're his workmanship. And he established you in the faith of Christ.

Therefore, be thankful. Be thankful. Verse eight, beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy. That's man's intellect. Thinking that by my own education, I can understand God, dependent upon my own ability. Vain deceit. They pretend to know some things, but it's all deception. After the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, not after Christ.

You see, when the Pharisees came to Jesus and said, your disciples are eating the grain on the Sabbath day, that's unlawful. Jesus said, no, wait a minute. Didn't David do something that was prevented by the law, forbidden by the law, when he ate the showbread? And didn't all the priests also break the Sabbath? And they're not guilty. What was he saying? Well, he concluded by saying, the Lord of the Sabbath, I'm greater. There's one here greater than the Sabbath, the Lord of the Sabbath.

In other words, what he's saying here, as he says there, as he says here, is that Christ is the fulfillment of everything God was saying in the law. And what men do in their sinful nature is they distort the meaning that has to be revealed because they apply it, they apply the dependency and the strength and the goodness and the glory that results in the life to themselves. They make it conditioned upon them and they don't see the only one who can meet that condition is Christ. And so that's what it means here when he says the philosophies of men, the vain deceit, the rudiments of men, after the rudiments of the world, not after Christ.

For in him, here he goes, he's going to bring us back now. He's going to reiterate and expand on it. He's going to make it so bright that you can't deny the light here. In him dwells all of the fullness of the Godhead bodily. In Christ the man, God is fully present. God came to do what we could not do. God came to save us when we could not save ourselves. No one else could. Only he could. And he did it in his son. And you are complete in him.

Now, at the outset. No more complete. There's never going to be a time when you're more complete than you are now complete because you're complete in Christ. who which is the head of all principality and power. And then in verse 11 and following, we went through this, but he enumerates all the things that we have in Christ.

The law started with this requirement of circumcision. He says, you're uncircumcised in Christ. When he was circumcised, the body of your flesh was cut off in his death on the cross. And that circumcision is applied to you You see, everything God did for us in Christ at the cross, He applies to us in our lifetime. So that the body of our sins was cut off at the cross and it is applied to us when by the Spirit of God we're given sight and life to see it accomplished in Him and we come to Him who is our circumcision. We're completing him. That's what he's doing. He's elaborating on these things of how we're completing Christ and he begins with that first law of circumcision. Christ is our circumcision.

You're circumcised in heart because you were circumcised in his death. Verse 12. Not only that, but in his baptism under the wrath of God, you died buried with him in baptism and the body of your sins was not only put to death, but buried, forgotten, put away, never to be. I mean, all of God's wrath was poured out. That's why that body was dead, put to death.

Satisfaction has been made because he says, wherein also you're risen with Him. When God justified His Son, He raised Him from the dead. The almighty power of God was exerted to raise Christ from the dead. And it was the power of God that said, He is justified. And here's the proof, raised Him to life. And that same power is exerted in us when He shows us by this spiritual life given to us Out of our deadness and our thinking that we've got to do this, we've got to become something. Yes, but only in Christ. Do we have to keep the law? Oh, yes, we do. But Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth. Do we have to answer for our sins? Oh, yes, we do.

And by himself, he put away our sins by the sacrifice of himself. So we were buried with him and we're risen with him through the faith of the operation of God. This is God's work. It's his operation. And the way he performs that operation is he gives us this sight of Christ in our soul who has raised him from the dead and you being dead in your sins. This is our condition, uncircumcision of your flesh. That's what we are by nature.

Has he quickened? He made alive together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses. The reason you're given life is because there's no sin. Life is the reward of righteousness and righteousness means all is forgiven and all that's required is done. He says in verse 14, blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us. Remember when Daniel, in the book of Daniel, there was that son of Nebuchadnezzar, and he was eating and drinking out of these vessels that he took from the temple. And a hand appeared, and it was writing on the wall.

And he asked all of his wise men, what does it mean? They couldn't figure it out. And they brought Daniel in, and he says, this is what it means. and I won't try to pronounce the way it was something like tickle, tickle, you farce or something. But he says, this is what it means.

Let me just see if I can find out because I don't want to mess this up. It's too powerful. He says, sorry. I'm going to find it here. This is shameful that I didn't look this up beforehand, since I referenced it. Give me a minute here. It has to be after his father died.

Oh, here it is. It's in chapter five. And it says in chapter five of Daniel, then was the part of the hand sent from him and this writing was written. And this is the writing that was written, mene, mene, tekel, euphoresin. And this is the interpretation of the thing. Mene, this is what it means. God numbered your kingdom and finished it. Tekel, you are weighed in the balances and are found wanting. You failed, you fell short. Paris, thy kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and the Persians. What does God say about us? All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. That's what the law says.

And in Colossians 2, the Lord Jesus Christ blotted out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us. You came short. Yes, I did. Christ blotted it out. That's what he's saying here. It was contrary to us. He took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross. It was torn to shreds as the nails piercing his body. The law was answered fully. And then he goes on in verse 15, having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a show of them. He exposed them, shamed them openly, triumphing over them in the cross.

And that's when he says this. Now here's the warning again. Notice how he sets Christ before us. Christ is everything. Your life is in him. Your sins have been washed by him in his precious blood. Your obedience has been fulfilled. And notice what he says in the warning. Let no man therefore judge you in meat or in drink or in respect of a holy day or of the new moon or the Sabbath days. And here's the title of our message. which are a shadow of things to come, but the body is of Christ."

When I was in kindergarten, the teacher had a light and they would shine the light on your profile. onto a dark piece of paper and then the teacher would trace your silhouette that showed up from that light shining. The shadow had a silhouette and then they would trace that silhouette and then have you cut it out and paste that black paper on a piece of white paper and put your name on it and send it home to your mom.

Remember that? And we had pictures like that. Look, there's Stanley. What do you see? What do you mean, Stan? Well, there's a shadow. You see that black piece of paper? It's obscure in the details. You can't see any form to it, but you see the outline, just the bare, the boundaries. Just a little bit of it. You get a sense because you know what he looks like. That's him. I recognize him. See his hair is poking up there in the back? That's my brother.

The Lord's saying here that because of the sinfulness of our nature and our self-righteousness and our pride and our self-serving lust, our idolatry, we take his law and we twist it and we try to use it to our advantage in order to hold others under it and differentiate ourselves by it and to put others to shame and to without any justice, judge ourselves to be worthy of life and acceptance with God.

And so we make men serve us either to recognize or to praise us or to enrich us and to make ourselves great in the eyes of men or to bolster our confidence because I think my good works will outweigh my bad works in judgment. But there's this heavy weight this unbearably heavy weight of eternal judgment when we face God at the throne on the last day and we have no answer. But the law was never given to produce righteousness by our efforts. Acceptance with God, life from God, approval from God was never intended to be by our personal labors or our personal worth. It was only possible through the Lord Jesus Christ.

And that's why it says in verse 17, those things are a shadow, just the outline. No details. It's dark. It's obscure. But what it says is there was a body. that cast the shadow. And that's what the shadow was given to tell us about, is the one who cast the shadow.

Everything in the law, whether it be feast days or Sabbath days, Jesus was telling them in Matthew 12, I'm the Lord of the Sabbath. Do we have to keep the Sabbath? Yes, we do. Does it mean that we're all supposed to not work on the seventh day? No, it doesn't.

It means that Christ is our rest. That the work we're supposed to stop doing is the work of trying to gain acceptance and earn life and salvation from God by what we do. We're to find it in Christ alone. And then we're thankful. Then we're at rest. and our sin, which is so heavy, and would bury us lower than the grave, Christ has lifted it.

He was made sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him, clothing on the nakedness of our shame and guilt, taking it away by His own obedience. He's the body. And He had to come in a body in order to be the fulfillment of that law, didn't He? Just as the body is what brings the shadow, so Christ in his body fulfilled the law. He satisfied God in the offering of himself, and he fulfilled all righteousness.

And he says, come to me. Do not come anywhere else. Everything else is a deceit, a deceitful thing, a vain glory. It will not save. But in Christ, you are complete. He goes on, verse 18, let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility. Your reward is a reward of grace. It's not of your labor, not a voluntary humility.

You know, that's when people, you know what humility is, it's like stooping lower than you really deserve to be. We can never get that low, can we? Only Christ could do that. When you have true humility, you're emptying yourself. But you know what we do when we have this pretend humility? We're full of ourselves. So not to beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility, worshiping angels. Well, we can't see them, but let me tell you about them. Baloney. Intruding into those things which he has not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind. He's full of himself. That's what we are by nature. Well, I can't do enough, so let me create this intellectual, spiritual insight that nobody else has to distinguish myself.

And not holding the head, Christ, from which all the body by joints and bands of having nourishment ministered and knit together increases with the increase of God. A man in his pride and sinful pride, he puffs himself up, and the Lord says, the only way you can increase is if God gives you that increase in Christ. Verse 20, wherefore, if you be dead with Christ from the rudiments, you've died to these things, the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, are you subject to ordinances? touch not, taste not, handle not, which are all to perish with the using after the commandments and doctrines of men." That's religion. Religion says, do all these things.

I remember there was two great burdens I got to tell you about just briefly that bothered me through my growing years. One was my mom said, if you don't confess Christ, he'll deny you. So I tried, but I didn't know Christ. How could I confess someone I didn't know? and I was under a heavy, heavy burden. And the second one was that in order to be saved, you gotta cry out to God for mercy. The more I cried, the more distant I felt. And so my crying for mercy became an experience that I would wonder if I'd ever reached the threshold to break through. And you know what? Both were wrong.

Because he shows us that the body is of Christ. Come to me. I will give you rest. When you look to Christ, when you rely on him, when you find all that God has required is met in him, you stop laboring. You cease from your own labors and you enter into his rest. And then you see. In him, God is well pleased. In him, I have access into the holiest of all, the presence of God in his holiness. Anything else is false. Everything else is opposing the truth.

May God give us grace to find our all in Christ. Let's pray. Father, thank you for the Lord Jesus. Thank you that in him we see yourself revealed and what a glorious sight it is, the beauty of holiness fulfilled by God himself in the person of our Savior for his people, presenting us to God in himself as holy and without blame, faultless, saving us to the uttermost, giving us all that belongs to the Son in Lord Jesus. What a Savior, what a salvation. Help us to trust in none other, but trust Him fully. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.