Do I Qualify?

English Standard Version (Chapter 2)

Let No One Disqualify You

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. 17 These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. 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, 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.

20 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— 21 “Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch” 22 (referring to things that all perish as they are used)—according to human precepts and teachings? 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.

In Mozambique, we had a community that we were a part of

A community of missionaries and foreign aid workers

It was a great community and we made so many good friends there

But there was this weird dynamic at work amongst the missionary community

And it’s something that I don’t know if a lot of people were aware of, but it’s something that I felt and maybe it was due to my own insecurity

But it was this weird little dance we did with each other

I’m not talking about a literal jig

But it was a little dance that I would call, “Who’s the Best Missionary” dance

It was this little game that we played whether intentionally or unintentionally trying to establish who was the most vested in being in Mozambique

Who really was sold out and was a “true” missionary

We would do this thing (again consciously or unconsciously) we would try to “one up” each other

Oh, you have air conditioning in your bedrooms? That’s cool. Yeah, we haven’t been able to afford that, but we sleep just fine without it

Yeah, we prefer not to spend our money on rice. Our house helper usually makes us chima and matapa. Our kids love it

Oh, you imported your dining room table and chairs? yeah, i just went up to that carpenter on Rua Eduardo Mondlande and had him build us one

Oh, you’ve never driven down to Johannesburg? Yeah, we can’t afford to fly so like last year, we drove 3 times. Man, that one time it was during the rainy season and, boy you should have seen the potholes that we had to go rhrough!

We’d talk about the places we had been…you don’t know where Mecula is? yeah, it’s that little village up there in the Niassa wildlife refuge

Or we’d demonstrate how well we could speak Portuguese or Mekhuwa

It seemed like we were always trying to “one up” each other

And it seems kind of funny as I look back on it

But at the time, it wasn’t very funny.

Because what this little dance made me do was ask the question of myself, “Do I qualify to be here?”

Do I qualify to be a part of this community and to minister to the people of Mozambique

Am I a proper missionary?

I wasn’t so sure sometimes

You know, this is the way it is in life, isn’t it

You get a new job, usually you have to qualify that you are fit to do that job

And that’s the way life is and we can accept that

But what about when it comes to church?

What about when it comes to being a part of the family of God, or the people of God

This is the area where things can get unfunny really quickly and where I’m sure that many people carry a lot of pain.

It’s the question of “Do I qualify? Do I really belong here? Am I a ‘true’ believer?

If you have grown up here or in a single church all your life and that is where your family goes, and you know the culture and all of that, you may have not had to wrestle with this question in a very intense way

But many people do

If you are new Believer, or if you move to a new community

I’ve had to deal with it on various levels as I moved around quite a bit and tried to fit into other communities

I remember a number of years ago attending an all-day church conference with some relatives out west

And they were part of a very conservative group

Very conservative people

All in all, it was fine, and folks were nice

but I remember that feeling of....”man, I wonder what these folks think of me? I don’t belong here. I don’t qualify to be here because I’m not dressed right and I don’t have a King James Bible”

And it was, perhaps, just a small glimpse into what a lot of people must feel as they look from the outside in at our neat and tidy churches

Unique cultural practices

Unique understandings of the bible

We have centuries of history of walking with Jesus

And I think many people actually wonder, “Would I qualify to be part of this group? Would they judge me? Would they disqualify me?”

I would like to join that church down there, but I don’t think that I would “fit in” to their culture

When it comes to church, we try to define who qualifies to be part of us and who doesn’t

And the implication is, that this is what I have to do in order to be acceptable to God as well

And some of us are able to jump through the hoops

And some of us aren’t. And what happens to those who aren’t able to jump through the hoops?

Sunday School papers

Sometimes I sort of wince inwardly at some of the stories in there

Family really wanting to be part of the conservative Mennonite Church

Worried about all of these issues

Girls were concerned about the size of their prayer veilings

Concerned about the color of their vehicle

Dad didn’t have a plain coat

When it comes to church, we struggle to define these questions of identity

And questions of “Do i qualify? Do I belong?”

And to be honest, I think that many times, in our human ways of understanding, we make things a lot harder and more complicated than Jesus, the LORD of The Church, intended thnigs to be

But, as with most questions, these aren’t new questions

It was something that the Colossian church was dealing with

They were also wondering who really does qualify to be part of this church

Doubtless, there was pressure from outside the church and from inside the church

In this passage, there are two warnings, or strongly worded exhortations:

Don’t let anyone pass judgement on you (vs 16)

Don’t let anyone disqualify you (vs. 18)

And if these warnings are here, then this would imply that this indeed is a tendency that we have with each other

That we try to pass judgement on each other, and we try to qualify or disqualify each other

And in order to do that, we use “standards” to measure whether or not

Regarding some things. And then he mentions quite a number of things

food and drink

festivals

new moon

Sabbath

Asceticism

Worship of angels

Visions

I’m not going to go into detail this morning about what these things all mean

But obviously they were dealing with questions about as a Believer...

what you could eat or drink

What religious festivals or holidays did you have to observe?

Do we have to observe the Jewish Sabbath? If so, how does that look?

Asceticism—depriving your body of pleasures and comforts in order to be more holy

Worship of angels—if angels are real and if they are more powerful than us, shouldn’t we worship them?

Visions—should we expect that everyone has them? If people have visions, what do we do with that? If someone has a special revelation, is that something we should all follow?

And there were two things going on here that are closely related to each other:

Judging

a lot of times we like to quote, “Judge not that you be not judged”

mostly when someone calls into question something that we do

But what Paul is talking about here is “condemning”

Don’t let anyone condemn you

Disqualifying

People comign along and saying, “Ooops, I’m sorry, you are out of the club, buster.

I heard that you ate some meat that wasn’t quite Kosher. Sorry, man, you can’t be a true believer if you do that

What? You didn’t observe the Festival of Trumpets? And you call yourself a Christian?

You need to correct these things or you are going to be out

And even more seriously, I’m concerned that you are in danger with God because you aren’t following these rules that we have laid out

Now, we can look at the people who were doing the judging and the disqualifying and say, “Goodness gracious. How could they? tsk tsk”

These people were concerned about preserving a way of life, a religion, a culture

and Christianity was flying the face of the things that they perceived to be important

Now, I have to say that this is sort of difficult to talk about because this probably brings up memories and thoughts about how many of us grew up

Because many of us grew up with a fairly strict code of living, where there was quite a bit of emphasis put on ways of living

things we could eat or drink

Things we could wear

Things we could watch or listen to and places we could go

You could call them religious practices—how our faith played out practically in every day life

And if we didn’t do those things , there were consequences.

And too often, I think we felt either judged or disqualified if we were not able to live up to certain standards that were set out for us

We understand this history that we have

And we understand that there is pain associated with this

Now, is Paul saying here in this passage that we should NOT have a code of living?

Is he saying that we should NOT discern how God wants us to live.

Should we NOT honor God with all of our decisions and live lives that are holy?

NO! He is absolutely not saying that!

But rather I think that this is meant to be a caution for us

Don’t let these things become “the point”.

Vs. 17—these things are a shadow of things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ

Paul—”These are good practices, but they are only a shadow of things to come.

A shadow is not the real thing

A shadow is only an indication that there is something real there

“The substance belongs to Christ”

The reality is in Christ!

We tend to get tunnel vision and lose the big picture

Maybe we could picture the rules that we set up in our church as “guardrails”, meant to keep us on track

But so often it’s the guardrails that become our focus instead of “The Way”, that is Jesus

We form our identity by the guardrails instead of by The Way

I remember driving the road to Yellowstone Park

A beautiful road

I think that road had guardrails

But I don’t remember the guardrails. I remember The Way there

But the danger is with us that we form our identity around these “guardrails” that we put in place, and they become the point of our focus

I think I told you of one conservative group that I’m familiar with

Their church document over 80 pages long!

And it spells out some of the most minute details about how they are to live in order to be members of that group

And I read those things, and I wonder, “How much energy must it take for a church member to make sure they are heading all of these decrees?”

And how much energy must it take in order for the church leaders to make sure their members are following all of these decrees?

I read this document, and I thought, “How does one keep this ‘Decrees for the Keep’ from becoming the point

it is easy for us to become super focused on keeping rules in order to indicate or decide how holy we are

And that’s the problem

But this is not just a problem in the conservative world

People that leave the conservative world

They proclaim their “freedom”

make a big deal about what they are allowed to do now

They make a big deal about what they are allowed to wear

And they post pictures of themselves on social media doing things that they weren’t encouraged to do before, but now they are free so now they can

And I think, “You know what? They have the same problem that they did when they were in the conservative church. These things for them are still “the point”

churches in the larger evangelical world…all of them have their things that so often become the point

Blue lights on the stage

Carefully groomed and preppy worship leaders

huge amount of energy is put into maintaining a certain appearance

And there is an aweful lot of judging and “disqualifying” that goes on between churches if things don’t “appear” the way that culture has deemed that it should appear.

These things so quickly become the point

Another danger is that these things have an appearance of wisdom

The guardrails that we put into place or the code of conduct that we observe does indeed have an appearance of wisdom to it

People step into a huge modern megachurch

And they have all these programs in place, and things run like clockwork

And they have a massive stage and the latest in sound and video technology

And they have professional musicians

And this slick looking pastor

And you think, “Man, they’ve got it going on! They must be doing something right! God is really blessing them!”

Or in our own communities

People drive for hours to come and visit the Amish/Mennonite communities

And they see these tidy farms and these neatly and quaintly dressed people people who live different and talk different and are peace-loving, they have big, intact families

And they think, “man, to live like that! Those people are just something. Their lives look so …perfect

And the same can be true when they step into our churches

And you kinda have to agree. “Yep, we can make ourselves look really good”

We can put things in our lives that have an appearance of wisdom

Verse 23 talks about how we can promote self-made religion, asceticism and and severity to the body

Maybe if Paul were living today he would have said, “These things can be used to pull the wool over people’s eyes”

They can be used to hide what is really going on down deep inside

Because here is the ugly truth

No value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh (vs. 23)

You know, it’s one thing to live a disciplined life

But it’s another thing to expect that this will produce holiness in your life

You can grow up in the most strict of settings where things are severe and strict and regulated

But you and I both know that this does nothing to stop the indulgence and the desires of the flesh

sexual immorality

Pride

Greed

These things have all touched our conservative circles. Sometimes these things are talked about and are public

There are many other things that simply aren’t talked about

You can have churches with very few rules, and churches with a lot of rules.

But the people inside of them are still the same.

We can try to rule out this behavior and that behavior and declare that we aren’t going to act like that

But these rules do nothing to stop the indulgence of the flesh.

If we are a proud person, that is going to show

If we are an angry person, that is going to come out

If we are greedy, that is going to come out

If we are sexually immoral, sooner or later, that is going to come out

The problem is, that we can’t legislate morality. And we can’t legislate spirituality

We can enforce a certain behavior, but that’s not true spirituality

Ultimate problem: Not connected to The Head— Christ

This is the problem

The problem is that the standards or guidelines that we put into our lives can be disconnected from Christ

Instead, they connected to things like tradition, familiarity, identity to a certain denomination

And we use these things to condemn others and keep others out

And Paul says, when that happens, we are not connected to Christ

This is where it becomes legalism

The other week when Carmen was here, I was reminiscing with him about a guy whom we both know

I worked at Choice Books with this guy

And one time this guy was kind of giving me a hard time about attending United Bethel which was a more conservative church

And he was basically saying that because we were more conservative, that meant we were legalistic

And I remember telling this guy that conservatism does not mean legalism

And I hold to that. Just because we are conservative, doesn’t mean we are legalistic

But it can so quickly become that! It can so quickly become legalistic

Because we can become so focused on obeying the rules that we have set up in our lives, that we loose connection to our Head—Christ!

Paul says, “Look, it’s not these things that should define you. Rather, it’s CHRIST!

Verse 19

From Christ, the whole body is nourished

From Christ, the whole body is knit together through its joints and ligaments

From Christ, the whole body grows with a growth that is from God!

Christ is, or should be, where we are connected.

He is where we get our belonging and our identity. He is the one who qualifies us!

Christ should be so much the point of our focus that Paul says this in verse 20

You died to the elemental spirits of this world!

There’s that expression again—the elemental spirits of this world (also in vs. 8)

And in this context, I believe that he is talking about physical things

Where physical things like clothes and food and drink and church buildings and service orders, and all of these things, when those become our identity instead of Christ

Paul says, “You died (or at least should have died” to this way of thinking

This is thinking humanly, not according to Christ

He calls them “human precepts and teachings” verse 22

He says, “You died to this way of thinking. So, why do you want to go back and submit to ordering your life in this way?”

Because it’s in that way of thinking that we start to condemn each other. We start to disqualify each other

5. Now, just for a few minutes, I want to share my heart with you

Folks, there are 100’s, thousands of people in this community who are looking for a place to belong. They are LONGING for a place to belong

And too often our churches have been used as a sanctuary from the world

But here is my heart for us here at Fairview:

I value my upbringing in the conservative community

I believe strongly in many of the things that have identified us as conservative Mennonites. I think they are good applications of biblical teaching.

However, I do NOT believe that these things should stand as a barrier to people coming to the LORD

I do NOT believe that these things should be used to disqualify people from coming here an being able to belong.

As hard as this is for us to say and admit, we are living in a community and society that is changing rapidly

And while I value greatly my own upbringing, the church and community that I’ve been a part of

I believe that in the midst of a changing world, we need to adjust our thinking concentrate even more keenly on what the mission of Jesus is

And what we are going to do about it

Not on maintaining church standards, but what the mission of Jesus is

MAKE DISCIPLES OF ALL NATIONS—and teach them to live and be like Jesus

And a key piece of that is having a church body that is geared toward that mission

And what that looks like is having a church body that is place where people can come and belong. Not show up and realize almost immediately that they are disqualified

because they don’t understand our culture

Because they don’t

But a place where people can come, be taught about who Jesus is

what He has done for them

His invitation to them to follow Him

To introduce people to Jesus, lead them to Jesus

And then teach them about what it means to live in the Kingdom of Jesus

And we welcome them into our midst with the awareness that they may never believe fully like I do. They may never practice completely like I do

And if some of the distinctive things that used to be part of our church standards are a part of that picture of living in the Kingdom of Jesus (and I think they should be), then we include that in our teaching and dicipling

But we don’t make these things the point for someone to be “qualified”. And we don’t disqualify people based on these points

We don’t give the message to people that “You are never going to belong here fully until you are able to follow all of these standards”

do I believe in non-resistance? yes, but I’m not going to disqualify you if you don’t come out on it the way I do

Do I believe that drinking alcohol as a regular practice should be avoided? yes, but I’m not going to disqualify you if you come out at a different place than I do. You know what the Bible says about it. Question is, are you going to obey what Scripture says about it?

If it’s an obvious place of sin in your life that’s a different story

And if it’s offending other people, and you don’t care, that is also a problem

Do I believe that the prayer veiling is a biblical practice? yes, but I’m not going to disqualify you if you think differently about it. I would encourage the practice, but I’m not goign to break fellowship with you over it

I don’t see in Scripture that I am supposed to do that

What I envision for church is a place not where everyone looks and believes the same about everything

But a place where people where someone can come, belong, and be discipled into following Jesus

And you know what? That makes for a messy church. Not a neat and tidy one, but a messy one

But, also, hopefully, a more authentic one. A place where we are allowed to be honest with each other about where we are on our disicpleship journey with Jesus

Deep breath

Now, I realize that I have probably really rocked the boat this morning

and maybe I raised more questions that I can possibly answer. I don’t know

I will admit to you that I don’t have all the answers.

I am just sharing my heart with you this morning.

And maybe this is a place where a conversation can start

And one thing I’m sure enough about, and where I keep coming back to, is that Jesus Christ alone should be our focus

Our life

Our unity

And that we need to let the Holy Spirit teach us how to follow Scripture in such a way that

Proclaims our freedom in Him

Draws others into a life-giving and life-changing union with God in Christ

That is my desire for you and for us here at Fairview