All right, if you would, let's grab our Bibles and turn together to Colossians chapter 2. Colossians chapter 2. We began looking at Colossians a couple of weeks ago. What I told you I wanted to do is, as we were kind of moving through this summer and figuring out sort of what's coming, as we pray for our pastor search committee, and as we see what the Lord's will is, the goal was really simple for me, at least, insofar as I had the opportunity to preach. I just want to take a broad overview of what Paul has to say in Colossians. Because at the heart of Colossians, there are things that are at the very heart of the Christian life. We began last time thinking about reality. What does real life look like for a Christian? What does it actually mean for us to live in connection to Jesus as our Savior and as the one who redeems our souls? And last time we thought about what it means to live a worthy life, the kinds of things that make us worthy of the God who has loved us and sent his son to save us. This week we come to Colossians 2 and we find in verse 6 and 7 really what stands at the heart of all that Paul wants us to understand. This is what he says, The word that's translated here in the ESV as walk may be translated in another translation as live your lives. The picture of walking is one of the living of life that we experience on a day-to-day level. And what Paul is saying is that everything about our lives, as we recognize Jesus as the Savior of our lives and as the Lord of our souls, we're supposed to live all of our lives in connection to Jesus. And that changes everything about what it means to live in this world. So what I want to think about this morning as we come to Colossians 2 is what it means to live a full life. What it means to live a full life. Our students have heard me say this before. This is not something that originated with me. I think it originated with C.S. Lewis. But every every single one of us is created with a void that we're seeking to fill. Lewis called it a God shaped void. Every single one of us was made to dwell in fellowship with the God who created us and to know the satisfaction and joy that comes from living in connection to him as he fills us and works in us and as we live our lives in ways that are pleasing to him. But one of the great difficulties that we have as we live in our particular context and and honestly I think as we live in any context one of the great difficulties that we have Is Hannah gonna go with you? Okay, sorry, kid stuff. One of the great difficulties that we have is we have a hard time believing that what God has given us is enough. Can you ever have too much of a good thing? Yeah, yes, I trust that you can. Some of you told me about vacations, right? There's a critical point where you've had too much vacation and you just have to come home because you realize there's nothing else to do. Some of you are like, I've never heard of such a thing. But some of us have experienced that. Sometimes we take two good things and we put them together thinking they're gonna make something even better, but actually when we put those two good things together, we ruin both of them. When I was in college, one of my roommates, one of my best friends, he was from New York City. He had grown up, his dad was NYPD. And he had grown up in sort of the classic New York family. They were Italian and Irish and Polish and Puerto Rican and all kinds of different things. But a huge part of his family was Italian. And so he grew up eating Italian food. So one night he decided that he wanted to introduce us to his authentic homemade Italian food. And his favorite thing to make, his favorite thing to eat, was what he called spaghetti with quick sauce. I didn't know what quicksauce was, but it's really actually simple. He would get cans of whole tomatoes, he would get a potato masher, and he would crush those tomatoes up, he'd put them in a pot, he'd add olive oil and minced garlic, and he'd let it simmer for a long, long time. And it would make this wonderful, simple, beautiful, little, tasty, tomato-y, and it was just good. It was good stuff. So he decided he was going to make this for us. This is the first time I'd ever eaten it. And so we all get together, our friend group, we're gonna get together, we're gonna eat some pasta, and we're gonna watch a mafia movie, and probably shouldn't have watched that one, but we hung out together and we enjoyed eating. But one of my other friends who came over, he was invited to the party, he had a hard time believing that something so simple as tomatoes, olive oil, and garlic could be sufficiently flavorful to satisfy him. So when no one was looking, he snuck back to his room, and he fiddled around in the pantry, and he pulled out some basil leaves. And he ran back over to our room, and when no one was watching, he snuck into the kitchen, and he dumped a few of those basil leaves into my friend's sauce. My friend was furious. He said, if you add something to what I'm making, you're going to ruin it. And the reason was, if he added something else to it, it wasn't going to be what he was expecting. It wasn't going to be what he was wanting. He had certain associations and memories tied to this sauce, and adding something extra, even if it was good, and even if the two things may have made sense together, was going to ruin it for him. And so he was furious, he took a spoon and he scooped that basil out, he dumped it in the trash. And I think he managed to salvage it, at least in his mind. The same thing can happen in all sorts of areas. We take two things and we think they're gonna help. We think we need to add a little something extra to make things better. And what we actually do is we ruin the most wonderful of things in their simplicity. As we come to Colossians 2, Paul is concerned about the way that we can do that with the gospel. The gospel and the Christian life are wonderfully simple. We say this when we sing a song like trust and obey. I mean we can summarize the entirety of the Christian experience with the song trust and obey. Trust and obey for there's no other way to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey. We get that. But so often our temptation is to look at the gospel and say well surely there's something more I need to add to this. Surely we can make this better in all of its simplicity because so much of our heart cries out there's got to be something beyond this. Surely God wants more from me than what he's telling me. And what happens, Paul shows us in Colossians 2, is that when we add different things to the gospel that aren't at the heart of what Jesus has done for us, we risk losing the gospel and forgetting all that Jesus has done for us and missing that Jesus alone is the one that can satisfy the deepest longings of our souls. So I want to read Colossians 2 and I just want to ask one big question as we come to it. How does Jesus offer us full lives? Another way of asking this is how is Jesus enough? Let's read beginning in verse six of Colossians 2. Therefore, as you received 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. and you have been filled in him who is the head of all rule and authority in him also 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 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, putting them to open shame by triumphing over them in him. 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 his sensuous mind and not holding fast to the head. from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God. If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to its regulations? Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch, referring to things that all perish as they are used, according to human precepts and traditions. These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh. So we come to Colossians 2. At the heart of Paul's concern is to show us the thing that he's already mentioned, we've looked at a little bit as well. He wants to show us what life in Christ really looks like. And a word that shows up repeatedly, the word that appears in the title of this sermon begins in verse nine, for in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him. Now, I wanna pause before we jump into the body of what we're gonna look at today, and I do wanna mention that we're gonna think about how Christ has done everything for us. And some people throughout the history of the church have thought that that means that God requires nothing of us. that obedience really isn't all that necessary. You can actually see remnants of this in what Paul says in Romans. He asks the rhetorical question, should we sin all the more that grace may abound? What we need to recognize is that the Christian life includes both elements of faith in Christ and the receipt of his righteousness for our own and the demand that we begin to look and live like Jesus. So we need to recognize that obedience is vitally important to the Christian life. But what Paul is concerned to show us in chapter 2, he's going to get to the obedience portion in chapter 3, we'll be there next week. But what Paul is concerned to show us in chapter 2 is that Jesus is enough in every sense of the word. So let's look at three things in this text together that help us to understand how Jesus leads us into and grants us these full lives. Number one, notice with me that Jesus satisfies every demand. Jesus satisfies every demand. We all understand that we were created by the God who exists and who upholds all things by the word of his power. One of the things that I say all the time, I've probably said it in this gathering, I know I've said it to our students, that if you create something, you own it, it's yours. God made you, therefore he owns you, he possesses you, and he has the right to command everything about your life and mine. And so God gives us certain expectations that we're supposed to conform to that flow out of who he is as the righteous and holy God who made everything that exists. God has given us those things in Scripture, so that even as we consciously rebel against those things in our consciences, the Scriptures themselves testify to what God demands of us. But what we also all recognize, through the brokenness of the world in which we live, and through the brokenness that we experience in our own hearts, is that we do not keep the demands of God perfectly. We call that sin. Every single one of us is plagued by the sickness of sin. And that sin is something that we willfully and knowingly participate in just as every other person who's ever lived has, except for one. So we recognize that sin is a problem. But there's another problem, right? Even if we recognize in our hearts that we are sinners, there is no way that we can do enough to make God forgive us for all the sins that we've committed. The infinitely holy God against whom we have sinned demands an infinitely complete judgment against us because of our rebellion against him. And so we're left with this tension. What do we do? How can we appear before God? How can we be reconciled to him, brought into peace with him, and enjoy a relationship with him? And sometimes we think, hey, maybe there's some steps that I can take. Maybe if I just do my very best to keep the Ten Commandments. You remember the rich young ruler who came to Jesus? He asked Jesus what he needed to do to inherit eternal life, and Jesus said, keep the commandments. He listed out several of them, and the rich young ruler said, all these I've kept since my childhood. And Jesus said, there's one thing you lack, go steal everything you have and give to the poor. If you were reading closely, there's one commandment that Jesus left out. He left out the command to covet, because coveting is something that we do with our hearts that we can't see outside. And by calling that man to sell everything he had and give it to the poor, Jesus was attacking the fact that this man was characterized by a covetous heart. And so for all the good that he had done, he could not measure up to God's standards. The Apostle Paul hits this really hard. If anyone was righteous prior to coming to Jesus, it was the Apostle Paul. And yet he can say over and over and over again that every good thing that he'd done, he counted it as worthless in comparison with knowing Jesus. We cannot satisfy the demands of God with respect to our lives. We can't satisfy them in order to earn his favor. We cannot satisfy them in order to obtain his forgiveness. And so we're left with this important question. How can we be made right with God? And Paul attacks this issue in verse eight. He says 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. As we read throughout chapter two we see that there are at least two different views that are threatening the boundaries of the Colossian church. On the one hand, there was a group of probably Jewish Christians who were teaching them that they needed to go back and to submit to the Old Testament regulations and ceremonies if they were going to be made right with God. And on the other end of the spectrum, there were pagan Christians, people who come from paganism, who were saying, hey, I really like this Jesus stuff, but I kind of miss the way we used to do things in the old world. So could we kind of bring some of the less aggressive things over here? Maybe that would help us out some. Maybe that would make us a little bit more pleasing to God. And the problem is even if those things can seem pretty insignificant in the grand scheme of things when we start bringing other things into the heart of what it means to know Jesus and to experience his love and grace and mercy we begin to dilute the power of the gospel to save. And so Paul then goes into the glories of the gospel in verse 9 he says for in him that is Jesus the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily. Jesus is fully God and fully man which means he is fully qualified to do everything that we can't. In verse 10 he says and you have been filled in him who is the head of all rule and authority. Paul is saying there is nothing that you need other than Jesus. He explains this in light of a particular Old Testament ordinance beginning in verse 11. He draws the Colossians attention, he draws our attention to the ordinance of circumcision. Without going into detail about circumcision, we know that circumcision was given as a sign in Genesis chapter 12 and then 17, sorry, Genesis chapter 17 to Abraham, a sign that God was in a relationship with him that we call a covenant. And Abraham's family was to keep this throughout their generations to separate them from the world and to show them as God's covenant people. And one of the things that began to creep into the early church and their questions about what it meant to live as new covenant believers in connection to all that God had done in the Old Testament was what do we do with this ordinance of circumcision? You can see this in what Paul writes in Galatians, for example. Without going into all of the details, what the church decided, we see this in Acts as well, is that circumcision was not necessary to belonging to God's people. Circumcision was not necessary to belonging to God's people. But circumcision kind of came to stand for all of God's requirements, what it meant to belong to the people of God. And so even as these Colossian believers are wrestling with what it means to be Christians, they're wondering, what do I have to do? What do I have to do to be right with God? And Paul says, nothing. In verse 11 he says, in him, in Christ, also 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." So Paul says, listen, there's no need for you to be circumcised because Christ has already accomplished in you and for you what circumcision was always designed to point to, which is the new life that is ours in Christ as the old man is put to death and we're made new in Christ, represented in baptism. Paul is saying there is nothing you lack because Christ has accomplished it all for you and he's now accomplishing it in you. And in verse 13, he begins to broaden his way out. He says, 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. What Paul is saying is this. You cannot satisfy the demands of a holy God with respect to your life, but you don't have to because the heavenly I owe you that you were written, Christ has nailed it to the cross and you bear it no more. Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, oh my soul. The penalty for your sin has been paid. The judgment of God has been poured out on Christ so that we can say with Paul and Romans, if there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, You can enjoy fellowship with God because Christ has dealt decisively with your sin. So many of us I think are living with doubts that God could really love us. And the reason that we live with these doubts is because we continue to examine our own lives and we ask rightly what good in me would make the God of the universe desire to know me as his own child. And the answer to that question is that there's nothing good in you that would cause God to desire to know you and to love you as his own child. But that's not the foundation for your experience of a relationship with God. What makes you right with God is that Jesus has died for your sins, has brought you into a relationship with God so that now Jesus clothes you with his own righteousness. And when God looks at you he sees Christ. Jesus satisfies every demand. Notice with me secondly that not only does Jesus satisfy every demand of God, but Jesus silences every accusation. Jesus silences every accusation. Sort of under the surface, bubbling under the surface of what Paul says in Colossians 2 is that this reality of spiritual power and authority at work in the world and of alternative religious systems that were threatening the believers then that threaten us now. You can see pictures of this in verse 8, see to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit according to the human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world and not according to Christ. Paul is saying there are all kinds of religious systems and ideas that are telling you different things and perverting the truth of God. Paul tells us elsewhere that behind idolatry is demonic activity. False religions are rooted in the activity of demons. Do we understand? We don't understand that. I don't think I don't think as well as we should. People who are living in rebellion against God and in unbelief are under the influence of Satan and his legions. Paul can say that the God of this world Satan has blinded the hearts and minds of unbelievers so that they cannot perceive the light of the gospel of truth. We recognize that there are immense powers of spiritual darkness at work in this world. There are alternative ways of approaching life and views of godliness that are opposed to Jesus. And when we look back at the ways we fought in the past, and when we begin to be influenced by the ideas that are at work in our world in the present, one of the things that can begin to happen is we begin to feel a sensation of guilt. Look how sincere those unbelievers are over there. Maybe there's something wrong with what I believe. Look how passionate those people are about their religious commitments. What's wrong with Jesus? Why can't I be so passionate about Jesus? And setting aside that there are real hard issues in us, one of the things that we need to understand is that the enemy delights to cause you to doubt the goodness of God and the faithfulness of Jesus to accomplish your salvation. Because if you are living in the midst of turmoil and doubt, you will not be faithful to what God has commanded because you will not be sure about what you're supposed to be doing. I mean, when my children doubt the legitimacy of my threats, when I tell them that I'm going to punish them if they don't do what I say, what do they do? They disobey because they're not sure that there are real consequences for what's happening. When doubt begins to creep into our minds, it affects our actions. And as we think about our connection to Jesus, when doubt about the goodness of God and the sufficiency of Jesus begins to work in us, we begin to reject what God is doing. and to live in ways that are contrary to the gospel. But here's the good news. Not only has Christ satisfied every demand of the law, but the accusations of the evil one that are constantly being fired at your heart, they're short lived because he is a conquered enemy. Notice what Paul says in verse 15. He says, he disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him. The answer to the accusations of the evil ones, the answer to the accusations of our own consciences about who we are in Christ and how we could enjoy fellowship with God, the answer is the cross. Because at the cross, Jesus dealt decisively with our greatest enemies and ensured that we can live from and for his victory in all things. The devil cannot gain sway over you because the devil belongs to Christ. He has defeated him, he has bound him, and he is working to accomplish his purposes in spite of him. And no one can resist the authority of the exalted Jesus. So what we need to understand is that every accusation that can fly in our faces and wrestle with our hearts, every single one of them has been dealt with in Christ. And we don't have to live under the burden of the bitterness and the difficulty that comes with recognizing that we're sinners. Conviction should compel us to repentance. But we don't have to live under this false sense of insecurity and a lack of assurance because we look to what Christ has done and we see the completion of his victory. Jesus silences every accusation. The last thing I want you to see is that Jesus settles every debate. Jesus settles every debate. It seems like the Colossians were having real disputes among them, which makes me feel better, by the way. Like when we have little spats that happen inevitably among church members, usually over here, thankfully, pretty insignificant things, makes me feel good to know that the church has always been dealing with that. But these weren't just little things. These were big things. These were theological fights over the very heart of what it means to be a Christian. And so Paul is going to speak to these things, and he's going to show us how we're supposed to think about all kinds of issues in the Christian life. Verse 16, he says, We've already heard about circumcision, now he talks about the kosher laws that the Jews were required to keep, and he talks about the different religious festivals and the calendar that they observed. And what Paul is acknowledging here is that there were Christians that were feeling guilty because they weren't sure what they should do with all these commands that God had given in the Old Testament. But notice what Paul says is his great answer to these issues. Verse 17, these are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. Here's what Paul is saying. Paul is saying it at the center of all of history. The great lens through which we perceive all that God has been doing and will do is Jesus. The Old Testament signs that were given, things like circumcision, things like food laws, things like the calendar, things like the sacrificial system, God had given them with an expiration date. They were designed to point the people of God in the Old Testament to the coming of Jesus and all that he would do. But what happens to shadows when the real thing comes? I just got back from camp with our students. We had an awesome time and thank you for praying for us as we were there in Western Kentucky. I was really excited though at the end of the week when we got home on Friday afternoon to know that my wife and children were coming home soon. They had gone to visit some friends. Now, I want you to imagine that as they were pulling into the driveway, as I saw the minivan rolling in, my wife gets out of the car, and there, as the sun is hitting her, there's a shadow that's being cast across the driveway. Do you think that I'm going to run up and bow down on the ground and kiss the shadow? No, that's stupid. when the real thing has come, I'm gonna kiss the real thing, right? We don't love the shadows when the real thing is present. And this is exactly what Paul is saying. Why would we go back and embrace all of the shadows and think that those are going to add something to what we have when we have the fullness of the real thing in Jesus himself? So we begin to understand that the way that we interpret the Bible the way that we interpret all of life is in light of who Jesus is. Jesus is the center point around which all of human history is orbiting. And so Jesus must be the center point of the way that we read the Bible of the way that we pray of the way that we do church together. He possesses all authority and he is fully sufficient to keep all of our attention. I can assure you that there is more than enough in Jesus to keep us busy for eternity. We're not going to show up to heaven and say, hey God, so good to be here. Thanks for giving me knowledge of everything. Because we are finite. We can't know everything as God does. So I'm convinced that part of what we're going to be doing for all eternity in the new heavens and the new earth is learning about Jesus. the depths and the riches of what he has done, and glorying in the greatness of his love for us. Jesus is the center point of history. And so when our different debates and disputes about theology or practice in the life of our church come up, we don't appeal to obscure rules in the Old Testament. We interpret all things in light of Christ and who he is and what he has done. Not to give ourselves license for sin, but because Jesus actually cranks up the demands on us and gives us his spirit to empower us to live lives that are truly pleasing to him. There are other issues though, not just Jewish demands on these Colossian believers, there are issues with pagan traditions. Verse 18, let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism, that's like harsh treatment of the body that's designed to make us more religious. in worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by a sensuous mind, and not holding fast to the head, from whom the whole body, nourishing it together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God." What Paul is saying here is that when we get so concerned about extra biblical things in our lives, even if those things don't seem particularly bad to us, what those things can begin to do is they can begin to pull us away from Jesus. We can get so obsessed with our traditions that we're creating. We're going to see that in a moment. We can get so obsessed with what we know and what seems familiar to us from our culture that we can miss Jesus because we're distracted by all these things. In verse 20 he says, If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations? Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch, referring to things that all perish as they are used, according to human precepts and teachings, not God, but according to man. He says in verse 23, These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh. I think sometimes we have a kind of attitude like the Pharisees. The Pharisees had really good intentions. If you go back and you look at the history of how they came to be, they were just trying to help the Israelites live lives that were faithful to God's word. But over time, they began building all of these systems and traditions around the law of God that were intended to keep people from crossing the line. And as that began to happen, they began to elevate their traditions over what God really required of his people, which is summarized in the greatest commandments. There's a constant problem that we face where we think, hey, we've got to add some stuff to make all this work. If we're really going to be holy, it's not enough just to look at Jesus and what Jesus requires of us. We need to create other things that will help us to do that in every aspect of life. Whether we're talking about our obedience and in the regular course of the pursuit of personal holiness, talking about our devotional practices, if we're talking about our engagement and missions in evangelism, if we're talking about the structure and organization of our churches, we can begin to think, well, hey, Jesus, what Jesus has given us is not enough. We need we need a little bit more. And what Paul shows us here is that what Jesus gives us is sufficient to help us to do all things necessary for a faithful life before him. Jesus really is enough. And we run a risk when we begin adding all these things that we're going to miss Jesus in the midst of all kinds of religious experience. Hey, think about, you probably know people that fit this category. Think about the people that spend their entire lives in church. and hear the gospel over and over and over again, and serve in all kinds of different capacities, but either through some sin in their lives, walk away from the church, and show that they never really knew Jesus, or who recognize later in life that they never really knew Jesus and come to faith in Him. We've all known people who fit these categories. What does that show us? But we can busy ourselves with all kinds of wonderful things in the life of a local church, but we can miss Jesus and what he's done. We can replace Jesus with all kinds of outward observance and miss the heart of the gospel. So what do we do? The first thing I think we need to think about is we got to check everything that we do as believers against Scripture, rightly understood. That's not to say that anything needs to change necessarily, but we ought to have a hard attitude that always is willing to reexamine our lives, our church's life together, all that we're doing in Scripture in light of Christ. That's hard because sometimes that means we discover that we're doing things that we don't even know why we're doing them. And maybe some things need to change. But we need to be willing to say, hey, everything that we're doing, we're going to do it in connection to Jesus and in light of what he's required of us. One of the hardest things is that maybe we need to simplify our personal lives, our church's life, to keep the main things the main things so that we can keep our eyes fixed on Jesus. At the heart of all of this though I think is the problem that we began with. Our hearts struggle to be satisfied with Jesus. But the problem isn't that Jesus isn't enough. The problem is that we aren't understanding him for who he really is. All of us are longing for something, every single one of us. If you're a believer here this morning, you long for fellowship with Jesus, whether you realize it or not. And we all experience those times of refreshing when suddenly it's like the clouds begin to clear around our minds and we see the goodness of Jesus and we're drawn back into connection to him and we glory in who he is and all that he's done. We call that revival. Maybe you need to examine your life and ask yourself, hey, am I am I seeing Jesus for all that he is? And is he satisfying the deepest desires of my heart? Because we can assure you, those of us who are walking with Jesus and have that Jesus really is enough. Maybe you're here this morning and you're an unbeliever and maybe you're realizing that you're an unbeliever, but nobody else here knows that you are because you made a profession of faith a long time ago. Maybe you're here and you're an unbeliever and you are seeing as you look at your life, hey, something is missing here. All this talk about knowing Jesus and finding joy and peace and satisfaction and fullness in him. I don't got that. I know the stories. I went to Sunday school. I went to vacation Bible school. I know the big ideas. I may read my Bible sometimes, but I'm missing this Jesus. Well, the good news that we have this morning in the very text we looked at is that what brings you into connection with Jesus is not your ability to clean yourself up. It's the work that Jesus has already accomplished on your behalf. So come and believe in Jesus and receive his fullness. We can say with so many great hymns, we can speak about Jesus paid it all. He didn't pay some of it. He didn't pay the majority of it. He paid all of it. And if you come to Him, you can experience fullness in Him. All of it is yours. You know that I love to sing the Psalms. We've sung two different versions of Psalm 23 in my tenure here as associate pastor. One we have not sung and believe me there are a lot of them. It's called The King of Love My Shepherd Is. Maybe you've heard it before. This is how it begins. It's a paraphrase. The king of love my shepherd is. His goodness faileth never. I nothing lack if I am his and he is mine forever. The good news this morning, whether you're a believer or an unbeliever, is that whatever you feel like you're missing, whatever you feel like you're lacking, you can find it all in Jesus and you can find joy and peace and rest in Him. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the time we've had together this morning. We thank you for your word, for its truthfulness and its beauty. We thank you that you have shown us who Jesus is and what he has accomplished. Lord, I know that there are things that I will have said that are unclear. There are questions that may be lingering in our minds, but Lord, I pray that one thing would be abundantly clear, that Jesus satisfies every desire of our souls, that he is the ultimate expression of your faithfulness to your people. Lord, I pray that believer and unbeliever alike, we would find joy in knowing Jesus, in connection to him. Lord, if there are any here this morning who have not trusted Christ, I pray that you would bring them to faith so that they could know the satisfaction that comes in knowing him. Lord, as we respond, I pray that you would help us to worship now in spirit and in truth, in Jesus' name. Amen.