Power in the Pulpit | Colossians 2:16–23

Intro: Do you ever focus on the wrong thing? Here is an example of what I’m talking about. How many of you have ever been cleaning your room and you come across something that is disorganized. For example, maybe it’s some kind of box that needs to be organized so you spend a inordinate amount of time organizing that box. When you’re done you feel a sense of pride about what you got organized, but your room is still a mess. Or, maybe you just moved a bunch of things around and it is very easy to make it seem like that you have cleaned your room. Like maybe you took everything that was in the floor and pushed it under your bed to where nobody can see it and you look at the floor and say, look I cleaned my room. Or, maybe there is somebody that has a different way of doing things than you. When they are working on the task, you can’t even focus on the result because you just feel like they are doing it wrong. Instead of being focused on what really matter, the process distracted you because it was different. In Colossae, there was a faction that had a focus problem. They were focused on the wrong thing. The main idea of today’s text is that we should not place our trust in anything that lifts us up over what Christ has done. As always at Maynard, would you please stand with me as we honor the reading of God’s Word.

Col. 2:16-19.

Exposition: Paul writes in verse 16 Col 2:16 “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.” This is something that in our context doesn’t make a lot of sense, but we remember the audience to whom Paul was writing. The church in Colossae was mostly gentile, but there was probably a small Jewish faction in the church. It seems that this Jewish faction was trying to tell these gentile Christians that in order to be faithful followers of Christ, they must abide by the Mosaic law found in the Old Testament. When Paul talks about food or drink, he is probably referring to the Jewish dietary laws. For example, the Jewish people were not suppose to eat pork or shellfish. When we read Exodus and Leviticus, we find that there were a number of festivals, or what we would think of as a holiday, that were to be celebrated every year. Many of them required a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Paul is telling the Gentiles in this church that they do not have to celebrate these things or refrain from this type of food if they chose not to and they shouldn’t let anybody guilt them into it. We should probably all have this verse on our kitchen or dining room table so that every time we eat a piece of bacon or sausage that we can be thankful for this. I would have said oyster but I have seen how picky you all are and there’s no way any of you eat oysters. Paul also tells them this refers to other areas such as new moons and sabbaths. In the ten commandments God says to honor the sabbath. While we should still have a day each week where we rest, it does not have to be on Saturday as the Jewish people did and still honor it. Remember, the reason we do church on Sunday is because it was Sunday, the first day of the week, that Jesus rose from the grave. Paul is probably telling them they do not have to do all these things on Saturday. The new moon was to be celebrated each month in the same way a sabbath was. The Jewish month began with the new moon. Paul is telling them they did not have to take a day off work each new moon festival and they should not be made to feel guilty for choosing not to do these things in the same way.

Application: In his letter to the Romans, Paul wrote, “Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains, and let not the one who abstains pass judgement on the one who eats, for God has welcomed him.” There are still Christian denominations that practice these things. Messianic Jews believe that Jesus is the savior, but they still abide by the law and worship on Saturdays and avoid non-kosher food. Seven day adventists are not Jewish, but they do the same. They are free to do this. But that does not mean we should feel guilty if we do not do these things. God has given us freedom to make those choices.

Exposition: Paul writes in verse 17 Col 2:17 “These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.” There was purpose to God giving these commandments to the Jewish people. If you read the OT law, there are hundreds of commandments that deal with one remaining pure from the impurities of the world. Dietary restrictions are a good example of this. There really wasn’t a reason given to the Jewish people about why to avoid certain foods other than the fact that they were unclean. Commandments like this showed God’s people that there was purity and impurity. It made them aware of that. But this was ultimately revealing to the people their need to be made pure. This was foreshadowing what God would do in Christ. So these commands were a shadow of what would ultimately be done in Christ. We are all naturally impure because of the sin in our lives. We were in desperate need to be made pure so we could approach God. And this was provided in the death and resurrection of Christ.

Exposition: Paul goes on even further to refute some of the things this faction is teaching. He writes in verse 18 Col 2:18 “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,” Paul tells them not to let anybody disqualify them by compelling them to these practices. The reason being because it is self-centered and leads to pride. We see why when we look at each action individually.

Explanation:When we hear the word asceticism, we can very easily think of asceticism as it is practiced in some Eastern religions such as Buddhism. There are some Buddhists who will hit themselves on the back with whips because they believe suffering makes themselves right with God. That would be sinfully selfish and stupid if Christians did that, but that was not what Paul was getting at. The word for asceticism can be translated humility. Paul is probably telling them that people that deprive themselves of things because they believe it makes them holy. It is one thing to remove something from our lives because it is sinful and we know it leads us away from God. This is a Christ-centered reason to deprive ourselves of something. But if we do it so that we can be holier or right with God, then it has become selfish. We are saying the cross of Christ is not enough. There are things we must do to be made right with God and that is impossible. Paul goes on to address what he calls the worship of angels. We see this idea in the book of Hebrews as well. It seems that this was a false teaching that had infiltrated Judaism at the time and was entering into the practice of Jewish Christians. It is not so much that they were placing the angels as equal with God and worshipping them. But they were calling on the angels for protection. It is believed they did this because they were not worthy to call on God to ask for protection. This runs into the same problem that we saw before. This is not Christ focused. Christ died and rose again so he could be the mediator between us and God. To say one should not cry out to God because they are not righteous enough is to say the cross of Christ was not good enough for them. Or it is a selfish trick where a person wants to make people think he or she is extra righteous because they still, even after trusting in Christ’s death for our sins, does not think they are righteous enough to call on God directly. Once again this makes much of one’s self and little of Christ. The phrase “going on in detail about visions” was slang for repeating over and over again. It appears that people were saying that those that claimed they had mystical visions about the things of God that were special in some kind of way. There was a special emphasis that was placed on these visions. Never mind the fact that they had the teachings of the apostles that spoke of Christ. Never mind they had the Old Testament. It was these visions that made them special. Once again, this makes a person bigger than what God has accomplished for all of us.

Application: This is an example of something Christians today still fall into time and time again. The most popular Christian book of last decade 2010-2019, was the book Heaven is For Real. I imagine many of you have seen the movie so I’m probably about to step on some toes. Just know that I say this out of love. But as both David Platt and John Macarthur pointed out, and I would urge all of you to look up what David Platt had to say on this subject, but as they point out, in this book and others like it, the child who supposedly went to heaven describes heaven and even God in ways that we don’t read about in scripture. He describes the Holy Spirit as being kind of blue. These book describe heaven with much less reverence and awe than what Paul, John and Isaiah describe it with. Randy Alcorn, the author of a book that speaks to what scripture says about heaven, brings up how much of the descriptions of things seen in heaven fit pop culture more than scripture. For example, the child said everyone has wings and the angels have halos. MacArthur writes, “Anyone who truly believes the biblical record, it is impossible to resist the conclusion that these modern testimonies with their relentless self-focus, and the relatively scant attention they pay to the glory of God are simply untrue. They are either figments of the human imagination, dreams, hallucinations, false memories, fantasies, and in the worst cases, deliberate lies–or else they are products of demonic deception. We know this with absolute certainty because Scripture definitively says that people do not go to heaven and come back” These books are popular. And we want to believe them because we want to know what heaven is like. But I also think we want the confirmation that it is real. But doesn’t the word of God give us that confirmation? To put more significance on these so called experiences is to make more of them than we do of Christ. He told us heaven is for real, why is that not good enough?

Exposition: Paul says this all does not lead one closer to God, but further. It puffs people up or makes them arrogant because it fills them with the pride of what comes from one’s sensuous mind. Our sinfulness is what bleeds through. We can never let the focus become ourselves instead of God.

Exposition: Paul then says that when one becomes puffed up like this they are losing their connection to the source. After saying these people are puffed up without reason by his sensous mind, Col 2:19 “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.” We have already seen Paul use this reference to the head before. It means authority, but also the source. The head is the source for all that happens in the body. It is the head that tells arms and legs to move, lungs to breathe and the heart to beat. If one does not have a head it will not grow because it will not live.

Exposition: Legalism does not lead to healthy churches. If our focus is on making ourselves righteous, our works become greater in our mind than Christ’s. When we do this we cut ourselves off from the source.

Illustration:We have all heard the expression, “running like a chicken with its head cuttoff,” right. I actually looked a video of this up for this sermon. I do not recommend you do that. But when a chicken has its head cutoff, its body still moves around for a short amount of time. And it looks like it is still alive. But it doesn’t really move with any purpose. And it eventually stops and falls still. It is the same thing with us when we allow legalism to be the basis of our faith. We may have the appearance a being alive for a while. But in reality we are not. We don’t move with the purpose God has for us and eventually we show what was true all along.

Application: There is a split side to this as well. Christ has not given us a pass on being Holy. We do not have a pass to dishonor God with our lives. I don’t drink alcohol. It’s a choice I made a long time ago. I won’t sit here and tell you that the bible says it is always a sin for people to drink alcohol. It says we should obey the laws of the land, which means underage drinking is a sin. And it says to avoid drunkeness, so getting drunk is a sin. But, I have seen many Christians abuse this freedom. When I was in college I went to a bonfire after a football game with people I knew were Christians. They were drinking and they were glorifying it in much the same way I saw non-christian college students do. This eventually led to somebody I knew who was under 21 drinking. In this moment, they had cut themselves off from the head. They weren’t sinning by their actions. But their attitudes certainly seemed sinful. We must in the same way we avoid legalism avoid sinful attitudes that lead to sinful behavior.

Transition: We see how Paul starts with the hypothetical or broad picture of what he is discussing. But then he moves to how practically how these false ideas have infiltrated the lives of the believers.

Col. 2:20-23.

Exposition: Paul writes in verses 20-23 Col 2:20-23 “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? 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.” Paul is telling the Colossian believers that if we died to the things of the world, then we should not place ourselves back under them. We should not place ourselves under the authority that points at ourselves and not who Christ is.

Application: Young people, one thing you should never do, is make decisions for your life based on what people have taught you and not because the word of God says so. You shouldn’t abstain from sex before marriage because your youth pastor said it’s bad. You should do it because scripture consistently condemns sexual immorality and says that it is as marriage exists between a man and a woman and it is in this union that the two are bonded together. You shouldn’t share the gospel with people because I tell you to, but because in every post resurrection account of Christ he said to. A knowledge of God’s word is often the difference between obedience and legalism. If all we trust in is the teachings of others, we run the risk of following someone other than Christ. We must also be willing to avoid the superstitions that become engrained in our culture. How many of you have ever been told by somebody that was a Christian that something was karma. Karma is a concept that comes from Hindu religion and isn’t even described how we use it in our culture. But we are ascribing to a belief of a force in the universe of something other than God. We are saying that there is a force that rewards good and punishes evil and that force is separate from God. We often times believe something is bad luck. That is trusting in something other than God.

Exposition: Paul ends this passage by writing Col 2:23 “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.” There are a lot of really smart sounding people that can make the case for a works based salvation sound appealing. There are even other denominations of Christianity who have philosophers and theologians that make the case for why certain things must be done in order to achieve salvation. Paul says this brings no value in stopping one from indulging the flesh.

Application: What Paul is saying, is that don’t let somebody who sounds really smart trick you into doing something that only consists of works. The question that you should always ask, is this. Is this action done to make me look or feel more righteous, to feel more right with God. Or is this action done to bring glory to God.

Conclusion: Have you ever thought about how interesting it is that you can look at a mirror and see your reflection but when you look through a window you see right through it. That’s because a mirror has silver or aluminum behind it that reflects the light back through the glass. We don’t see the piece of silver behind it, but our reflections. But because a window doesn’t have that, the light just goes right through it. This allows you to see what’s on the other side. We look in windows and mirrors in the same way, but for different purposes. We look at a mirror to look back at ourselves, and we look at a window to see beyond ourselves. Our religious practice and obedience is pretty similar. When we perform certain religious actions with the purpose of doing something to make us righteous we are doing it so we can look back ourselves and see how righteous we are. But when we look beyond ourselves and look to Christ, it is with the purpose of being rooted in him. It’s the same thing with the reason we don’t do certain things. We are either looking to focus on ourselves or Christ. I ask you tonight, is your sight set on Christ, or i sit set on yourself? Have we placed our focus on what Christ has accomplished for us, or is it on what we think we can do to make ourselves righteous or at least appear righteous? Place your hope in Christ. If you have never placed your hope in Christ, then let tonight be the night.