RULES: THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY

"RULES: THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY" Colossians 2:16-17; 20-23 February 3,  2002 Given by Pastor Rich Bersett [Index of Past Messages] Introductory Read Colossians 2:1-23. We'll be focusing primarily on verses 16-17. I want to talk about rules, laws, today. Rules are great and important things when used in the proper way. But they can become tyrannical when misapplied. Here is a short list of laws that apparently were okay in certain historical settings, but are still on the books today: • Young girls are never allowed to walk a tightrope in Wheeler, Mississippi, unless it's in a church. • In Blackwater, Kentucky, tickling a woman under her chin with a feather duster while she's in church service carries a penalty of $10.00 and one day in jail. • No one can eat unshelled, roasted peanuts while attending church in Idanha, Oregon. • In Honey Creek, Iowa, no one is permitted to carry a slingshot to church except a policeman. • No citizen in Leecreek, Arkansas, is allowed to attend church in any red-colored garment. • Swinging a yo-yo in church or anywhere in public on the Sabbath is prohibited in Studley, Virginia. • Turtle races are not permitted within 100 yards of a local church at any time in Slaughter, Louisiana. They've got a cool dress code in South Padre Island, a resort area just off the coast of Texas: No ties allowed! No joke. The first time you're caught wearing a tie, they give you a warning. But if they catch you again, they'll fine you, take your tie away and destroy it! Says the dress code, "The very appearance of a tie causes a discordant note for our visitors." A news article about the religious history of the Chicago area began with this paragraph about Zion, a small town near the city: "Rev. John Alexander Dowie left little to chance a century ago, when the charismatic preacher founded the city of Zion as a carefully ordered religious utopia: He immediately outlawed sin." It was both a great idea and a foolish presumption. God had already outlawed sin from the beginning, of course, thereby proving that pure legalism can't produce godly people. Rev. Dowie should have known that the "law" only confirms our sinnerhood. Laws don't change hearts. Only Christ can change hearts and form "law-abiding" spiritual citizens. In fact, the very purpose of the Law throughout the history of the Old Testament was to instruct human beings on how unable we were to be obedient. Galatians 3:22-25 Colossians 2:16-17 We've been hinting at the presence of false teaching going on in the Colossians church for a couple of weeks. Beginning today, we will be looking at this wrong instruction brought in by the false teachers. There are a couple of categories, but the first one has to do with "legalism". Legalism is a mentality that exalts a rigid adherence to rules as the way to please or appease God. The proponents of legalism are people who are guilty of pride-always obsessing about conforming to an artificial standard in order to exalt themselves. The children of legalism are ruthless pettiness, perfectionism, hypocrisy and cruelty. The legalist says, "I do this or don't do that, and, therefore, I am pleasing God." Or, "If only I could/would do this or not do that, I would be/could be pleasing to God." But the legalist doesn't stop there-he goes on to insist that you adhere to this strict standard as well. Misery loves company. Any time someone gives you a list of rules, and even suggests to you that until you abide by these behavioral guidelines you can never be pleasing to God, be strongly suspicious. Listen, this is the critical difference between the religions of the world and Christianity. Then carefully look over the list. If the rules are not in clear accordance with the Bible, you know you've got a false teacher, a legalist on your hands. In verses 16-17 Paul begins to hone in on three specific kinds of religious behaviors that someone has been insisting they carry out. One is dietary food laws, the next is rules about drink and the final is required observation of holy days. All three of these deal in legalism. Right away, the apostle squares off against the legalists by telling the believers in Colosse to not allow themselves to be judged by such standards. In no uncertain terms he says such standards of moral behavior are wrong. "what you eat" - probably Jewish dietary laws from Old Testament. Once had a man in a church who told me he determined to not eat pork any more, because he had read about it in the OT and decided he would abstain from pork. What do you say? "How nice for you." But what I was afraid of began to happen-he began to insinuate his personal convictions on others, and make it clear that if believers continue to eat pork they can never be pleasing to God. But the fact is, Jesus has overwritten these dietary laws. When the religious tyrants of the first century, the Pharisees and scribes, attacked Jesus because His disciples did not follow the practice of ceremonial handwashing before they ate, Jesus dissed them badly and said, "For it doesn't go into his heart but into his stomach and then out of his body." (In saying this Jesus declared all foods 'clean'.) He went on: "What comes out of a man is what makes him 'unclean'…" (Mark 7:19-20) Paul says that these cultic laws of the OT were merely "shadows," and now that the Lord Himself has come, the reality has appeared. Therefore the shadows are meaningless anymore. "what you drink" - There were no drink laws in Judaism (except against over-indulgence), so these rules were imported from some other religious philosophy, probably some sort of mystical "asceticism". Drinking certain liquids at certain times or avoiding certain types of drink, Paul says, is no basis for determining whether or not a person is pleasing before God. We are all sinners-in and of ourselves displeasing to God-but whatever we needed to bring us into favor with God again, Jesus provided at the cross. We need nothing else. All we can do/must do is appropriate Christ's salvation by faith. Pastors are often asked, "What do you think about drinking alcohol?" "Is it wrong for a Christian to take a drink?" If you are to ask me what the Bible says, the clear teaching is this: drink whatever you want to drink, but only in moderation, and don't become drunk. And a healthy mix of common sense and Christian wisdom says if you're legally underage, don't; and if you're driving; don't, and if your conscience won't let you drink without feeling guilty, don't. Here's what else the Bible says: don't force your personal opinion on the matter onto anyone else. One more: if you stand a good chance of leading someone else into sin by your drinking, don't. The New Testament teaching is not a list of do's and don'ts. It is about a living, loving, dynamic relationship with the Lord. It's about being a believer in Jesus, having the guilt of your sins washed away by His sacrifice and relying for your leading in rights and wrongs on His Holy Spirit living inside you. "with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day" Here again, is a largely Jewish tradition that some people hanging around the Colossians church are trying to foist off on the Christians there as somehow mandatory, required in order to have a meaningful relationship with the Lord. Paul says, "No!" There's nothing wrong with religious festivals and Sabbath observance and so on, but you must not make it obligatory for Christians. The old Law is no longer binding on God's people. Jesus fulfilled and rendered obsolete the Law of the OT, just as it was prophesied He would do. Hebrews 10:9 says Jesus "…sets aside the first [covenant] to establish the second [covenant]." He is the mediator of the "new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance-now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant." (Hebrews 9:15) "By calling this covenant 'new,' he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and aging will soon disappear." So Christians must resist any pressure to be coerced into obedience to some rules or commandments in order to get to heaven or into God's favor. Jesus has already taken our blame to the cross, has abrogated the law by His death on our behalf., and delivered us from the power of the law. To treat some ascetic/religious behaviors as obligatory is a "retrograde" step for the Christian. Further it is tantamount to our admitting the continuing authority over me of some power that Christ has defeated.! Why would any Christian, who has been fully forgiven of his sins, fully inhabited by God's Spirit, and fully motivated by the hope of eternal life, ever want to voluntarily go back under those oppressive powers Jesus conquered for him? 1 Timothy 4:1-4. Colossians 2:20-23. It was on New Year's Day, 1863 that the Emancipation Proclamation was publicly proclaimed, but it was not until nearly two years later that the Constitution made those convictions official. Headlines in every state announced the same message: "Slavery Legally Abolished." And yet, something strange happened. The majority of the slaves in the South who were now legally freed continued voluntarily to live on as slaves. Most of them went right on living as though nothing had happened. They were free, but these tens of thousands of African Americans lived virtually unchanged lives during the Reconstruction Period. In his massive work, The Civil War, author Shelby Foote wrote:"the Negro-locked in a caste system of 'race etiquette' as rigid as any he had known in formal bondage…every slave could repeat with equal validity, what an Alabama slave had said in 1864 when asked what he thought of the Great Emancipator whose proclamation went into effect that year. 'I don't know nothing 'bout Abraham Lincoln,' he replied, 'cept they say he set us free. And I don't know nothing 'bout that neither.'" Tragic! The war finally over, freedom purchased, legal emancipation fully in place, and they continued to live in fear and subjugation. Many Christians allow themselves to live as slaves today. The Great Emancipator, Jesus Christ, fought the battle and won, overthrew our slavery to sin once and for all, but many, if not most Christians, are still held in bondage. Satan, the great cosmic slavemaster, is delighted. And he continues to do all he can do to keep believers held down in shame, guilt, ignorance and spiritual itimidation. Legalism at work One of the devil's primary tools for perpetuating this slavery is legalism. What makes legalism so attractive to human beings and so useful to Satan? Sinful people love rules! One author writes: "There's something comfortable about reducing Christianity to a list of do's and don'ts, whether your list comes from mindless fundamentalism or mindless liberalism: you always know where you stand, and this helps reduce anxiety. Do's-and-don'ts-ism has the advantage that you don't need wisdom. You don't have to think subtly or make hard choices. You don't have to relate personally to a loving Lord. But nothing chokes the heart and soul out of walking with God like legalism." Legalism has no pity on people. It makes my opinion your burden, your boundary, your obligation. Legalism is often one unhealthy person or group trying to control others by a set of arbitrary rules. In the church these rules are often couched in biblical-sounding language and based on direct quotes from the scriptures that are misinterpreted and misapplied. Chuck Swindoll tells about a young missionary family who raised support and left for their assignment. The place where they were serving the Lord did not have access to peanut butter, and this family loved to eat peanut butter. So they creatively arranged with some of their friends in the States to send them peanut butter now and then, so they could enjoy it with their meals. The problem was, they didn't know until they started receiving the supply of peanut butter that the other missionaries considered it a mark of spirituality that you not have peanut butter with your meals. The line apparently went something like this: We believe since we can't get peanut butter here, we should give it up for the cause of Christ. The young family didn't buy into that line of thinking. Their family kept getting their shipments of peanut butter. They didn't flaunt it; they just enjoyed it in the privacy of their own home. The pressure intensified. Though you would expect adult missionaries to be big enough to let others eat what they pleased, right? But they continued to lean on this family, and the pressure got so great and the pettiness so intense that it finished them off spiritually. They finally had enough, packed up and returned home, disillusioned and cynical. What we have here, says Swindoll, is a classic modern-day example of a group of squint-eyed legalists spying out and attacking another's liberty. He also shares the story of a legalistic Christian college where students were to live according to very strict rules. They weren't supposed to do any work on Sundays. None! One young man spied on his own wife and caught her hanging out a few articles of clothing she washed on Sunday afternoon. Are you ready? The guy turned in his own wife to the authorities! I'll bet she was fun to live with the next week or two. There are churches where it is wrong for women to wear anything but ankle-long dresses. Men cannot grow their hair longer than two inches. Women shouldn't cut their hair at all. You can't go to the movies at all if you're part of certain churches. Now, any person or even a group can suggest ideas for religious behavior all they want to, but you cross the line into legalism when you even suggest that to break these rules is to fall out of favor with God. You see the problem with legalism is that it presents a very distorted picture of God. It perpetuates this false notion of God that he is continually angry with people and is just waiting for them to screw up somehow so He can nail them. That is patently false. The Christian faith is not about obeying the demanding rules of a capricious god in a bad mood. Christianity is about having a relationship with the loving Father who created you, Who wants you to experience the best in life and in eternity. This personal Creator-God made you and loves you, no matter how far away from Him you stray. Your sins cannot make Him hate you. Now He is certainly Righteous, Holy and Just, and He does demand that His people be righteous just and holy. But we have all failed at that already and the sooner we admit it the better off we'll be. God, in His love and mercy toward us, has remedied our situation by sending His Son to die in our place, paying the price of our guilt. The Bible says God loves the world and therefore sacrificed His Son so that anyone who believes in Him could be saved instead of damned. If you are living under the delusion that you have to keep a set of rules to belong to God, I urge you to trade that heresy in for a grace-relationship with the heavenly Father. If you're living in fear and worry over the guilt of your sin, trying and failing to live up to religious laws is not helping-it's driving you farther from God. Jesus said to people living in bondage to legalistic rules, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." [Webmaster's Note: Matthew 11:28-30] Here are a couple of exhortations that can help to promote healthy, biblical, non-legalistic faith: 1. Stand firm in Christ alone. Don't ever forfeit your freedom from the Law by getting tangled up in legalistic bondage. "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery." (Galatians 5:1) Whenever you are facing the decision to be obedient to a law or rule or someone's expectations of you, ask yourself, "Is this matter oppressive to me?" "Do I genuinely feel that I am serving God, or am I trying to please people?" "Am I obeying the unadulterated Word of God, am I experiencing the leading of the Holy Spirit in this matter, or am I being manipulated or coerced by some person or group to do their bidding?" 2. Commit to always being HONEST. If you are having a problem with some religious rule or someone's expectation of you, tell them your hesitation. If they listen to you respectfully and carefully show you in the scriptures why they are advising you in this direction or that, and you feel certain it is being correctly interpreted, continue in the peace of the Lord. If not, get up and run. Seek counsel from anyone you know and trust highly in the Lord. But do not submit again to the yoke of bondage. If you are not in an environment where the fellow believers allow and actually encourage your honesty, do what you can to change that environment or get someplace else. 3. Determine now and always to walk in the light of God's grace. Titus 2:11 says, "For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. It teaches us to say 'No' to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age." The key to your continuing freedom is to live in the fullness of God's Spirit and grace. "...live by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit; and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under Law." (Galatians 5:16-18) Conclusion Colossians 2:13-14 says, "...He forgave us all our sins, having cancelled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood oppose to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross." This is a powerful word picture. In the day when this was written the word translated as written code in the NIV was widely known. Whenever a person would be convicted in a Roman court, a certificate of debt or bond would be prepared. The scribe of the court would itemize and write down every crime for which the person had been convicted. This certificate meant that the prisoner owed Caesar a prescribed payment or fine for those crimes. It would then be taken with the prisoner to wherever he would be imprisoned and nailed to the door of his cell. Get the picture here. Your certificate of debt, and mine and that of every human being who ever lived and sinned in this world was nailed to the cross with Jesus. That's how God deals with our sins. Our certificate of debt lists every time that we fall short of God's perfect law in thought, word, or deed. In Roman law, when a person was put in prison and the certificate of debt was nailed to the door, it would remain there until the sentence was carried out. Then they would take this certificate and write across it the words "it is finished". They would roll it up and present it to the prisoner, and he could never be punished for those crimes again. Among the last words of Jesus as he hung dying on the cross was "TETELESTAI" "It is finished." [Webmaster's Note: John 19:30] Your sin debt has been paid in full. And the Lord is handing you your certificate of release. Will you take it?     [Back to Top]