The Shadow of the Cross | Beth Moore | Substance & Shadow Pt. 1

[Music] would you turn with me to the book of Colossians chapter 2 the book of Colossians chapter 2 what I'd like to do with your permission is read you 19 full verses before we ever get started we're going to lock in on a theme that comes late in our reading but I want to give it some context I'll tell you a little bit about colasse in just a little while as we go through the lesson but I want to begin by reading it now let me tell you something I intended to just teach chapter two well let me tell you it's so full by I mean you've got you got you a whole theology lesson within the first three verses then another one in the next three and another one and the next three and another one in the next three it's that kind of thing and so I thought okay we're we're going to go for a piece of it that the Lord has really uh led me toward and then we're going to expand it from there so we're going thematically but I want to read it to you first now listen how I'm going to do this when it's a a long reading what I like to do is be able to look up some so that I can look out at you and it somehow keeps the attention a little bit better so that it won't get tedious because I want you to feel it now I'm going to be teaching out of the CSV which I dearly dearly love but I learned this book out of the ESV and so it's the natural my natural inclination to return back to the verbage and and to the language of this particular translation it's what I want you to hear it in because you'll hear it in the csb as we go in it this weekend so Colossians chapter 2 I want you to just would you just get into the passages with me I I can't say enough how much the point of our scripture study and our our our our Bible attentiveness is about engag engagement with God and we don't separate the words of God from the mouth of God what we're after is God himself and so as I read through these passages let it let it settle in interact with it let there be if there's not any kind of of verbal or or audible groaning but let there let there be groaning inside the pure beauty of it the pure be the these verses are so beautiful I don't know what to do with them so let them settle on you as I read them to you the Apostle Paul to the Saints and colasse who he has never seen with his eyes there's already a church in that city of Believers established through the prophets and apostles Christ Jesus being the Cornerstone but he himself has not seen them with his own eyes he's just heard about them good things and troubling things so I'll begin to read he says to to them for I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those at lead AA and for all who have not seen me face to face that their hearts may be encouraged be knit together in love to reach listen carefully all the riches of full Assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery I'm going to read that again that their hearts may be encouraged being knit together in love with those around you to reach all the which is a full Assurance of understanding I want to pause there for just a moment and say this much to you I believe with all of my heart this is one reason I believe so strongly in a Community of Faith whatever size it may be I I love personal Bible study that is part of my ongoing life I'm in the scriptures with the Lord every single day one on-one just the two of us just me and God but I firmly believe that there is a limited understand understanding that we get from the things of scripture and from the things of our faith when we are alone in it and not in communities of Faith because there's something about being with one another and hearing the faith of one do you remember when Paul said to philimon and and I pray that the sharing of your faith may be used so that you will come to the full knowledge of every good thing that is in you because of Christ he is not talking about witnessing he's saying as you share with one another what God is doing in your life through Christ then you build up the other one I you know what I never thought to pray like that I never thought to approach the Lord like that I I didn't understand that's what that scripture meant think about it again Ephesians chapter 3 when he says that you may comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height and to know the love of God which surpasses all knowledge in other words together with the Saints so that's what he's saying here in this letter being knit together in love to reach all the riches of full Assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery which is Christ now he's writing to a people who have been raised in an atmosphere of lots and lots of heady philosophy and so he wants them to know you know from the beginning that in your love of mystery and of all the mysterious things I want to tell you what is the mystery of God Christ in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible Arguments for though I am absent in body yet I am with you in spirit rejoicing to see your good order and the firmness of your faith in Christ therefore as you receive Christ Jesus the Lord so walk in him rooted and built up in him and established in the faith just as you were taught abounding in Thanksgiving see to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit according to human tradition according to the elemental spirits of the world and not according to Christ for in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily what do you even do with that I'm just going to read it again for in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily and you have been filled in him who is the head of all Rule and Authority just to to give you a little idea of what some of the attitude is here Paul is going what in Heaven's name are you looking for out there you have got it all right here it is right here before you it is all in Christ you are incapable he is saying to them and he is saying to us of getting to the bottom of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge that you would find in Christ Jesus verse 11 in him you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands by putting off the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ having been buried with him in baptism in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God who raised him from the dead listen carefully and you who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh God Made Alive together with him having forgiven us all our trespasses by canceling the record of death that stood against us with its legal demands this he set aside nailing it to the Cross he disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open Shame by triumphing over them in him these are going to be our thematic scriptures therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath these are a shadow of the things to come but the substance belongs to Christ let no one disqualify you insisting on asceticism and worship of angels going on in detail about Visions puffed up without Reason by a sensuous mind and not holding fast to the head if you have an ESV if you have several of the formal versions you will see a capital letter head from whom the whole body nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments grows with a growth that is from God grows with a growth that is from God the Colossians were in a culture where there was great emphasis on the mysteries on high knowledge that that might be attained to by harshness to the body or a certain way of being or doing by following certain kinds of rules that would put you to a great test but if you were able to do them you could attain to this Superior kind of spirituality and he has come to take that apart he is speaking to both Pagan belie pagans who've become Believers that are mixing their old Pagan beliefs a little of what they liked best about it in with their Christianity as well as those who were Jewish that have become Christians and they're mixing in a little bit of that and he is saying to them that is of no value to you in who you are in your identity with Christ your sufficiency is completely in Jesus and there is nothing else you can do to get you to a higher place where he is concerned and so he's he is he is unraveling that particular error and we want to see him do it as well I want you to see something I want you to hear it in the csb I want to read 16 and 17 again now I'm reading in the in the Christian Standard Bible it says this therefore don't let anyone judge you in regard to food or drink or in the matter of a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day I want you to remember those three things these are a shadow of what was to come the substance is Christ now I got to tell you after learning it in the ASV and after seeing it in in several formal versions and then reading it here and it can be translated any one of these ways uh the substance belongs to Christ the substance is in Christ and the csb says the substance is Christ what one of the things I love about about having several translations to look at is is it just a little bit of change just a little bit of a different wording and suddenly something pops off the page the substance is Christ it says then in 18 let no one condemn you by delighting in aesthetic practices or worship of angels claiming access to a Visionary realm such people are inflated by empty Notions of their unspiritual mind these are Shadows of the things to come but the substance belongs to Christ what I want to suggest to you is that the ramifications of having those two things confused are absolutely enormous but to have them straight is a freedom that really is beyond description for a human being I want you to see with me that those words that shadow in substance in a Greek those words would very simply be skia that would be Shadow Soma substance so there's even the sound one of the things that I love about Paul's writing and I really really love this in the Old Testament because there's so much uh narrative art in it where there are so many plays on words because most of us don't read the original languages we can't appreciate that it's not just what the word is saying it is how the word is saying it it's the gorgeousness of how the words are going together and and Paul must have really loved words for one thing there would never be an end to a sentence his sentences would go on a full paragraph long and there would be just no breath taken anywhere in the whole sentence but he also you can see you can hear him have a certain rhythm in in a lot of his writing and you can certainly hear it here with a shadow and substance skia and Som skia and Som Shadow and substance what does he mean I I love what scholar J d g done says speaking of Christ he is the reality which casts its shadow backward in time now you and I are going to deal with how we feel about Shadows this weekend and we're going to find that our range of ways that we think of shadows as as to whether or not it's a positive connotation or it's a negative connotation as much like it would be in the scriptures there's also all of that if you did a word search on the word Shadow from Genesis to Revelation and I did exactly that in preparation ation for you you would see the full range of things you would see Job saying over and over again my life is just a shadow I mean it means nothing there there's no substance to it and of course there's substance to it but I mean he just feels like it it means nothing it's just disintegrating before my eyes there's all of that kind of thing there's the shadow that is scary there are all the things that we think of there is Shadows that it's it's Shadows are beautifying they're terrifying they're verifying they're mystifying typifying and they can be magnifying and here's what I want to say you they all the Ayes are wrapped up in Shadows and when you and I turn a corner I was having a conversation with someone uh yesterday and talking about it was my cousin driving the car and he was talking about driving when he said I only have a couple of miles left before I run out of gas and I said well you're not a woman women do not have the luxury of just like having one more mile left in their tank why because we're vulnerable and because we feel like that's in the shadows scary as frightening and there's something about Shadows so mysterious to us and yet so beautiful that when you look at a scene I sit out and and as often as I'm home I sit out and watch the sun go down through uh through the trees we live in in surrounded by trees and a tin in a tiny little place in in the woods and I just can look through all the trees and and the beauty of it is in the shadows that the sun is making as it goes through the trees I want to build six points with you that talk Shadows with us that give us understanding so that we can sort out these two things and the very first one is this Shadows can't exist apart from light oh I love that point somebody go amen so whenever you are in a time where you feel like you are really in a shadow it's it's like a a Darkness has been cast over you whenever you are in a time like that you need to know that you cannot be in a shadow that the light is not close by because the only way that shadow is happening is that the light is causing it so on the other side of that shadow there is the light and the brighter and and and more intense the light then the more intense the Shadow and so you got to know and I got to know that light it's light that literally creates shadows and in front of every shadow is the light the title of our study this weekend is Shadow and substance and so here's what I want to do with you uh with your patience I I want to to take a moment this is this is one way I really love to study I want to take a moment and I want to Think Through the basic Elementary science of Shadows so let's just think that we're sitting in a classroom for just a moment in a public school and what is a shadow and what makes it work because sometimes we just think well I mean I know what a shadow is yes but how does it work and what are the elements that go along with it so let's do a little of that so that when we get into the Les Elementary Theology of Shadow and substance it will begin to make more sense to us so I want to tell you a couple of different things and the first one is this and these are not things that you need to write down just facts about Shadows is that Shadows are comprised of three components so in order to have a shadow there are three components and those three components are that there's got to be a what did I just tell you a moment ago there's got to be a light and then there's got to be some kind of object and then there's got to be some kind of surface so what I've asked my co-workers to do here at living proof is just give me a little bit of light so that I can show you what we mean by Shadow so I've got if you can see around me I've got the light behind me it's going to be an intense light and I've got me a surface there and then I'm the object that is between the light and the surface so you can see the outline of it I mean if I turn to the side you'd go that's Beth Moore's nose if I have ever seen it in my entire life now if I did this right here my husband would love me most of all because I would look most like a deer and he's a deer hunter and you you know because we could do all sorts of things we could do a snake we could do talking we could do ducks we could do swans we could do lots of things because all we need to do is even though this is not real not something that we can touch tangibly it's coming from something else we know that if we got a light it's coming straight at us and we're between it and the surface we have what we call a shadow this is what it takes to make a Shadow so this becomes the point that we get into with our shadow and substance to cast a visible Shadow a clear Shadow the object needs to be opaque now tell me some synonyms of the word opaque what would what would that be solid absolutely solid so we need something solid that the light is not able to be translucent through or transparent through because that's what's going to cast The Shadow is that which is of substance that which is opaque that which is solid so I bring up this particular illustration for you to see that here we have a demonstration of the Cross and here we have the shadow of the Cross you've got something that's solid here that's not transparent not translucent and you see its shadow over here these seem like very Elementary things but they will play into our lesson as we go through it so three things are necessary the light and the object and the surface and and the surface really does matter there's a difference between putting something on a flat surface like this I chose this surface very very specifically because it was going to give us the best Shadow if this was say for instance fake fur it would look totally different if it was a if it was sequins totally different we're looking for a surface when it's it hits a surface that is nice and flat then it's going to make a clearer Shadow than what we would see otherwise now here's an interesting thing Shadows are rarely exact duplicates of the object that is blocking the light we know that we know that because we've seen them before there something that looks shadowy to us that can look really scary to us the way a tree can do at night with the light of the Moon whatever it may be that which is somehow frightening to us and we have to turn around and see what what is the real thing that is casting the shadow a shadow can be a disfigurement or maybe that's too strong a word it can be a variation it can be a um it can be a suggestion of without being a complete replica of and and and it depends on what angle the light is coming from that's going to make a big difference and what the object is and what the surface is going to be that it's projected on now here are a couple of things that I really love um I love that we find if we think about the Sun and that's our best example of something that that we all would understand that cast shadows and I want you to think with me how it works because of course the Earth is spinning around spinning around spinning around the sun feels like the sun is moving but no no we're moving we're moving and so the sun does this wonderful wonderful thing our shadow is going to change with the angle of the light so say I'm standing out in a field and then the Sun is going to come up my shadow is going to be the longest behind me when the sun is the flattest does that make sense because it's coming up over the horizon so if I'm turned this way and this is East the isn't it oh thank you God thank you God that was a word of knowledge that you just saw okay thank you God thank you God okay so to the East and so that the sun is coming up there so it casts the longest Shadow here so it's going to come up it's going to come up it's going to going to come up and the more it comes up the shorter that shadow is going to get and when it's right over my head and it's straight up noon then the shadow might not even be visible it depending upon the size of my hair so it just and then it's going to do a 180 because then it's going to go the back Direction and it's going to then cast The Shadow this way when it sets to the West it's going to cast a shadow this way way now this is something that the scriptures understood fully this kind of verbiage is all over it but I've gotten you a couple of verses that I want to read to you Jeremiah 6:4 says this it references this very phenomenon that I'm talking about woe to us for the day is passing the evening Shadows grow long in other words the day is almost over the day is almost over because the shadow has grown long Psalm 10923 I fade away like a lengthening Shadow I am shaken off like a locust these are ways that the psalmist describes what it is like for that lengthening Shadow to say you are coming toward the end of your days did you know you can now give through our app to support the show thanks for watching living proof with Beth Moore we hope this message encourages you to love and live God's word click subscribe so you won't miss any teaching thanks so much for watching

Channel: Living Proof Ministries with Beth Moore

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Keywords: Beth Moore, Bible teaching, Bible, Bethmoore, Women's Bible study, Bible study, Bible preaching, Women's leaders, Beth, ElizabethMoore, Bible Studies, Living Proof Live, Living Proof Ministries, Living Proof with Beth Moore, Beth More, God's Word, Studying God's Word, Women's Bible studies

Id: Wg2fUCCOIog

Length: 24min 18sec (1458 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 02 2024