Remaining Free of Legalism, False Spirituality and Asceticism
Colossians 2:16-23 · Andrew Molloy · Jun 23, 2019
Colossians (2019), No. 18
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261915175533

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

We're studying Colossians, chapter 2. I was doing 20 through 23, and then last week, 16 through 19 was missed. But I told Roger, I said, hey, these actually go nicely together, because Paul is instructing the Colossians to remain free of legalism. and then remain free of aestheticism in 20 through 23.

So the thought flows really nicely. So it might be good that this was done. And I'll just, I have to kind of fly through because we're doing, what, seven verses now. But then we'll be back on track. And it was almost a disaster because my mom's coffee maker was on the fritz. And I almost was going to call you and say, I can't do it. No, yeah, no, I was on my special coffee. I don't, I don't do the keurigs. So, uh, I just, but it was working this morning. So it's answer from prayer for prayer. And, uh, I was great, so I'm all tanked up on Swedish gasoline. So we'll fly through, and this will allow me to fly through.

So the flow of this passage, 16 through 23, starts in Colossians 2.11, and I'm summarizing these couple of verses here. I've left some out, but I'm getting the gist in. And in him,

11. You were also circumcised, with a circumcision made without hands, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.

12. Thirteen, he made you alive together with him, having forgiven all our transgressions. And in Colossians 2.14, having cancelled out the certificate of debt, consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us, and he has taken those out of the way, having nailed those to the cross, which was two weeks ago, right? Certificate of death. I heard that one, and you went into good detail on that, Roger. So therefore, based on these these facts and these four verses so you see how you have the identification truths 12 through 13 and even Colossians 2.11 and then in 14 you have the statement about these things being nailed to the cross as certificates of death therefore based on these things Paul is giving us four commands because you've been crucified, buried, and risen with Christ. And he ties these doctrinal truths to what he's about to say next in verse 16 and through 23. So the four commands are, and these are from both Merriman and Chester McCauley had these.

The first one is stay free from Old Testament legalisms. That's verses 16 through 17 regarding food, drink, festivals, new moons, and the Sabbath. And then the second command is stay free from man-made religious embellishments, verses 18 through 19. And that deals with worship of angels and taking stands on visions. And then the third command that we're going to look at today, stay free from asceticism, that's verses 20 through 23 regarding taboos and shows of wisdom and humility and self-abasement. If you notice, the first one is the source or the genesis for that is from God, right? The Old Testament legalisms were things sourced from God at one time, but now are done.

The next two, two and three, those commands are just all man-made. Commandment number two and command number three, if you look at that, their source is man. The fourth command, oh, look at that, I forgot to do that. That would have been, that would, yeah, that would have been, That would have been pretty, as you say, but it's like fireworks, they don't go off. The fourth command is keep seeking the things above, setting your affections on things above. That's in chapter three, so we won't get to that, but we will later on. No color? Yeah, right. We're doing the first three commands.

So Colossians 2.16, Therefore, no one is to judge you, no one is to act as your judge in regard to food and drink, or in respect to a festival, or a new moon, or a Sabbath day.

Colossians 2.17, These things are a mere shadow of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. And then, as we always do every Sunday, we tackle this therefore. The therefore is based on the facts presented above, especially verse 14 and the certificate of debt. And it's the connective tissue tying that passage, 11 through 14, to these passages.

So it's therefore based on those things, you're not to have anyone judge you in regard to these foods, drinks, new moons, Sabbath days, which are all pertaining to, um, what are those pertaining to? It's got to be easy. Exactly. Exactly. The Levitical laws. And there's some things contained in the 613. So you're exactly right, Tom, um, of the mosaic economy.

So these guys, these Gnostics were pulling just a few of those out. and putting those in their system that they invented. Why are we not to take part in these things for our Christian walk? I have several verses here that Paul, I think it's all Paul, yeah it's all Paul, and he goes through many things.

One is Romans 10.4 Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes so the law has ended Another one Galatians 2 16 and I'll just read through these quickly you might want to follow along Just to keep us going here Galatians 2 16 nevertheless knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but through faith in Christ Jesus Even we have believed Even we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we may be justified by faith in Christ, and not by works of the law. Since the works of the law, no flesh shall be justified.

Romans 6.14 Sins shall not have master over you, for you are not under law, but under grace.

Romans 14.17 For the kingdom of God is not for eating or drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit." And that addresses eating and drinking. That's what we have up in verse 16 there, regarding food and drink. So they tie together nicely.

1 Corinthians 8.8.

Let me start from 1 Corinthians 8.5. and just read up to 1st Corinthians 8.8. 8.5. For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords, 8.6. Yet for us there is but one God, the Father. from whom are all things, and we exist for him, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through him." I put that in there because that verse really parallels what we studied in chapter 1, right? And verse 16, or 15 through 17, really parallel, saying that Christ is before all things, and we exist in Him, and all things exist for Him and by Him.

That 1 Corinthians 8.6 is a very parallel passage to that.

So moving on to 1 Corinthians 8.7, however, not all men have this knowledge, but some, being accustomed to the idol until now, eat food as if they were sacrificed to an idol. and their conscience, being weak, is defiled. 8.8. But food will not commend us to God. We are neither the worse if we do not eat, nor the better if we do eat. So to eat or not to eat, that is the question, is what 8.8 says there.

And then 1 Corinthians 10.31. Whether then you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all for the glory of God. So those are things that Paul has addressed throughout all of his epistles that he's summarizing there in 2.16. And don't let anyone judge you for any of these things.

I don't have the 1st Timothy 4.3 down, but we'll just skip over that.

You can look that up on your own, 1st Timothy 4.3.

Now the shadow of things to come in verse 17 It's Christ who cast the shadow, right? And so in the Old Testament, you had these festivals, these feasts, and all these sacrifices, but those were all meant to give people an impression of their coming Messiah, and what he was going to do for them. And it's Christ who cast that shadow, So in this that the word for let's see oh but the substance belongs to Christ in the second part of verse 16.

Now the substance I thought was the Greek word hoopostasis. I thought it was because it uses the word substance and hoopostasis is in Hebrews 11 1 You know, faith is a substance of things hoped for. And I thought, oh, that's kind of cool. But I was wrong.

The word substance there in 2.17 is actually soma, the Greek word soma, which is body, which is, you know, your body, my Christ's body actually casting a shadow. So if you think about your affection should be on Christ and not the shadow, not the shadowy things. because they have no value independently of what they meant being a shadow of Christ to come. They were types of Christ. So they were pointing to Christ, they were archetypical, but had no independent existence. So I have do not substitute the shadow for the reality. Do not live in the midst of what Merriman says is shadowy paraphernalia.

And Roman Catholicism has a lot of that in what they do is the shadowy paraphernalia, if you've ever watched the Pope do his things. There's also a, you should A couple of... Merriman and Chester McCauley mentioned that, you know, if it's a sunny day at DIA and you can go out on the tarmac and you're waiting for your wife or your husband to get off the plane that's shadowy, they'll walk towards you casting a shadow, but you don't embrace the shadow. You wait for the real person. Yeah, because why have the shadow when you can have the real person? Or I was thinking, if you're in an unfortunate situation where there's a mass shooter, and you happen to be carrying your sidearm on that day, concealed carry, and you're going to step in and handle the situation with this mass shooter, and it's sunny and he casts a shadow, you don't want to unload your clip on the shadow. because then he's going to know you're around the corner and that'll end badly for you. So that's kind of what this verse is talking about. Don't get caught up with the shadow, but get caught up with the body of Christ, which is Christ.

And then the fact that no one is to judge you in regard to food, drink, or in respect to festivals and new moons or Sabbath days. We should apply And this is Ron Merriman's ancient Chinese axiom to others, and have it apply to you. Years ago I heard him say this on a cassette tape, and then my car ate the cassette tape. But I remembered this ancient Chinese axiom, and that is, you are free to pick your friends.

You are free, secondly, to pick your nose. The third thing is, you are not free to pick your friend's nose. So you just say, you are free to pick your spiritual friends. You are free to pick your own spiritual nose. But third, you are not free to pick your friend's spiritual nose.

He thought that was Chinese, but it's an excellent, you know, don't judge, and don't have others judge you, spiritually. And Christ says that, right? He says that to the Pharisees, and He goes through and says, by how you judge, you will be judged. There you go,

18. Let's move on to 18. Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and the worshiping of angels, intruding into those things which he has or has not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind. The word beguile, and you might have a different word. In my New American Standard, it has defrauding. but it's katabrabuo and it means to rule against or judge down or act as your umpire is the best kind of translation for that. It's arbitrary and negative umpiring.

There was a baseball game just the other night with the Rockies and the Dodgers and the actual umpire threw someone out of the game, but they didn't know who he threw someone out of the game. Did you see that? And the announcers were saying, well, no one's walking off. Who did he eject from the game? He ejected one of the Dodgers who was in the dugout. He ejected the guy in the dugout because the guy was kata-bro-booing the umpire about his pitch calling, right? And the umpire stops and he looks over and he throws Turner, Justin Turner, he threw him out of the game for being the dugout.

So you don't want to cataprobo a major league umpire. Neither do you want to do that to your brothers and sisters in Christ. This umpire, in his vanity, expresses his sin nature by religious rulemaking. It's based on his own egotistic lifestyle with false spirituality. Then he proceeds to declare you as unworthy of his system. Right? So you don't measure up to his system, this umpire. this guy who's catabro-booing you.

Oh yeah, note in your Bible, some of your versions will have intruding into those things which he has seen. Some of your Bibles will have intruding into those things which he has not seen, vainly puffed up in his fleshly mind. I was looking at my Bible, 18, and I have, taking a stance on vision, he has seen. And I had a computer up with the New American Standard, mine's a New American Standard, the computer, blue letter Bible, had not seen.

So even between the two same New American Standard, So it's not a mistake, it's just that later on, later transcripts, they added in the not. But it doesn't matter because, and we looked at that before, you shouldn't worship angels because you have no idea what you're doing or how they're organized. And whether you see something, don't see something, you're not to do it. Ironside had a good summary of this passage and It goes like this.

It sounds like humility to say, in myself I am so utterly ignorant and unworthy that it is not for me to go directly to God the Father or up to Christ his Son. I will therefore avail myself to mediating angels and spirits who can present my cause in a more suitable manner than I can myself.

But this is really pride, isn't it? You're actually And it's 1st Timothy 2, 5-6. There's one meteor between man and God and that is Jesus Christ. It's the same with Catholics, right? They go to Mary because they think that they're too lowly to go directly to Christ himself. So they go to his mother because she has his mother's heart. But that is, what you're actually doing is you're committing another part of your sin nature is acting up when you do that. It's voluntary humility.

Tom. You're on it. Oh yeah. I covered it for you? Yeah. Were you going to... No, no, no. There's nothing to add to that. Okay. You're also denying the revealed truth of God's Word of your intimate relationship with the Son. And you're saying, well I'm going to go to God declares that you are in Him. And you are denying that.

You are saying, well, that sounds too wonderful for me. It reminds me of the Amish. Their religion, they believe that a personal relationship with God is just not something that they can imagine. It's too amazing. They can't have that Scripture declares we have this personal relationship, but no, we want to do something else, and that's our sin nature. Right.

And it's really due to these guys who came along in the mid-19th century, right? Darby and those guys who really kind of amplified the union truths, the union in Christ truths. So this is willed humility, the humility of self, motivated. These guys cast themselves in the role of judge, yet they claim to be humble about it. Some versions say that they actually delight in their voluntary humility. You think you have it, Then you don't. And you can't will it.

Colossians 2.19 And not holding on to the head, which all the body, by joints and bands, having nourishment ministered and knit together, increases with the increase of God.

I sound like the kid on the Wells Fargo Wagon song. Wells Fargo Wagon. From, what's that, Music Man, right? So, not holding on to the head, it's Christ, of course. He is the head of the body, and the church, the firstborn from the dead. This is from chapter 1 and verse 18. And we've covered this before. I think it was even my Sunday to do that. So I'm just repeating that so that Christ has preeminence. He's the head of the body. And it goes into what the church is. It's, you know, joints and muscles and knit together, things like that.

But these Colossians were in danger of losing their connection to the headship of Christ. Stoney says, when we learn the head, we are preserved from the effort of the enemy to give the flesh a place in connection with Christ. Which is a good summary of what it means to not lose sight of the head, the headship of Christ. The Gnostic teachers were using Levitical embellishments, seeking to divorce or sever the believers from the head.

And they were doing this by going into that angel worship and being concerned about the hierarchy of angels. And I think that the result of this is a lack of nourishment. They weren't being truly nourished by the ministry of Christ that they could have been.

Ephesians 4 and 15 through 16 It's truthing in love that causes that growth, that nourishment, and the cohesiveness of the body. Note what Christ says in John chapter 15, I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me and I in him, he bears much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing. And that's You can see how he's talking about nourishment of those branches, can't you? And then the last thing I have for verse 19 is our association with Christ as our head means we have a person as our wisdom, we have a person who is our righteousness, a person who is our sanctification, and a person who is our redemption from 1 Corinthians chapter 1 verse 30. So hold fast and be nourished and vitally connected to only Christ in your religion. Okay, here's the second part of what we're doing. We're on to 20 through 23. And this is where I started and then I added in the 16 through 19.

Yeah, he's an aesthetic, so that's all you need to know about aestheticism. He's on a mountaintop and he goes and meditates on eternity and eats garden seeds and he doesn't eat any meat. And so aestheticism is just a manner of life where people a man seeks to attain a high spiritual and moral state by practicing self-denial, self-mortification, and things like that. It's extreme abstinence, austerity, self-denial. So I just thought that was a really good picture of an aesthetic.

There's two types of schools in Gnosticism. There's Stoicism and Epicureanism. Stoicism says, live nobly, and death cannot matter. Hold the appetite in check. Become indifferent to changing conditions. Don't be fluxed by good fortune, nor cast down by adversity in your life. As a man, you are more than your circumstances. Your soul is greater than the universe.

So the application is to free from the world, to withdraw from it. And aestheticism is in the school of Stoicism there. And we're addressing this in these next three verses, 23-23. The second school is Epicureanism, and that The application for that is eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you will die. You will all die and will die. So there's no reason to deprive yourself of any of life's pleasure. Just go for it.

There's a website. It's a good website too. It's called Epicurean, Epicurious. But it's like a cookbook. They have good recipes. So it's called Epicurious. But this is different. This is really going for it. And Paul addresses this in Colossians 3, chapter 3, verses 5 through 17, which we'll get to. Here's our four commands again. And we're, uh, there's my fireworks. We're just, we're doing this one now. Stay free from asceticism. We've covered, uh, the first two commands. We're gonna go on to staying free from asceticism.

In verse 20, Colossians 2.20, if, if then you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world, why, as though you were living in the world, do you submit yourself to decrees such as, do not handle, do not taste, and do not touch. The elementary principles of the world are the first principles, or the ABCs of religion in this case, but it also can relate to the ABCs or the first principles of nature, even science, the protons, electrons, things like that, the periodic table of the elements. But in this case, it's the first principles of religion. If you have died, to the elementary principles of the world, the if is, of course, a first class conditional sentence. Paul is assuming that the premise is true, since you have died is really a fact, the fact that you died. which we cover like three times every Sunday, because Paul always says that, doesn't he? So then, oh here we go, I don't think I took this out, but we'll see.

I have, why in Sam Hill are you submitting yourself to decrees? And that's my amplified version. But I think that's the force of what he's saying here. Why in the Sam Hill Are you submitting yourself to these decrees, these elementary principles of the world? I really think that he's got that force of language when he's saying that. Yeah, Tom. Yosemite Sam had a different way of talking. Oh yeah, right. As he did, a little more forceful. Yeah, right. I remember that.

The decrees have their genesis from man. They are man-created things. As in chapter 1 and 16, the food, the drinks, and the Sabbath days, those are from God. But these are totally man-made. I thought it was interesting that in chapter 1 of 16, which we covered, the mosaic law things, the Levitical things, God took care to say that those, He nailed those to the cross. He put those as certificates of death, debt on the cross.

Whereas these man-made things in 20 through 23, He doesn't even bother with that. He just says, forget it, you're dead to it. And there I have it, you're dead to it. It's silly to consider even yielding, even for a minute, to these things. A modern view is, if you think about a dead man, a dead man doesn't pay his mortgage, he doesn't eat healthy, he doesn't follow the 88-78 tax return extension, that's due. Just think of someone who died, they're no longer concerned about taxes.

They don't use proper non-binary gender neutral pronouns, which is kind of tying into verse 21, those taboos. Well, that's a taboo for today, right? Using the wrong pronoun. That's a man-made taboo. But the dead just can't respond to it. And that's what we are to do. We are just to be dead to it. Just be totally, how should I say it? non-responsive or unresponsive to these principles of the world that men are putting us under.

I want to cover now verse 21, the do not handle, do not taste, do not touch. Or in the King James, they're handle not, taste not, touch not. They're taboos and they're associated with the aesthetic first principles of the world. Modern examples of taboos are, if you didn't know this, if you give someone an even number of flowers in Russia, that's a taboo.

You can't do that. It has to be an odd number, I guess. chewing gum in Singapore you can't chew gum especially if you put like gum under or um on something in public you get well actually that's not yeah a lot of airports in the UK they don't like they don't like they don't sell gum oh really boy yeah well in Singapore I think you can get Not only arrested. It's a big fine. Or can you get executed? No, you can't get executed. It is a big fine. And you can be jailed. I think they were executed. Jailed, yeah. Well, no. If they see you throwing it onto the street.

Can you chew it? Yeah, you can chew it. But still, that's a taboo, right? Yeah, it is a taboo. You have to do it discreetly. If you're talking to someone chewing your gum, that's not a taboo here. And in pregnant women, China can't eat cold foods for one month before giving birth. So there you go. There's a taboo.

I didn't know. But man's approach to controlling the expression of the flesh or the sin nature or the lust of the flesh is to, one, He tries to tame it by rules like this, handle not, taste not, touch not. The second thing he might try to do is withdraw from the world, as in aestheticism. I'd go up on the mountaintop and not subject himself to any input or What's that word I'm looking for? Stimulus. Stimuli from the world. So it goes up on the mountaintop.

The third thing he tries to do is deny its existence, the existence of the flesh and the sin nature. That's Christian science, right? Sickness is sort of in your mind. It doesn't really exist. That you're wrong. You just have wrong thinking. you shouldn't go to the hospital, you don't have to visit the doctor, things like that.

And Reformed theology denies, to a large extent, the existence of the sin nature. Well, they don't deny it exists, but they said it's dead, and you're dead to it, so it's annihilated, so it doesn't exist. So they have another way of trying to figure out why believe or sin. The fourth thing you can do is to cure the sin nature or to improve upon it with religion. So all four of those things, taming it, withdrawing from the world, denying the existence of your sin nature or the ability to cure it or improve it, all those things do not work. What does work is death. God's method in all these things is death. Taking you through the death, the burial, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. You're associated with him in those things and that's how it is cured. Verse 22.

Those taboos are Let's see, which all refer to things destined to perish with use in accordance with the commandments and teaching of men is the second part of Paul's question in verse 21. But what is this business about being destined to perish with use? The handle not, the taste not, and the touch not. It's kind of a hard verse to parse. and I don't know if I did a great job, but we'll try anyway. The destined to perish with use is, the word for it, with the using is apocrisis, apocrisis, and it relates to consumption, or the things that you're doing are destined for corruption or decomposition, and the very using of them destroys them, is what Vincent says. So if you think about, I don't know, and I can only think about recycling in these days, we have a big, it's taboo too, you have to recycle, but if you don't recycle, you're going to throw it away and it perishes anyway, it decomposes anyway, or maybe it doesn't. But it's so transitory, that's what Paul is talking about, it's just external things, and when you go about your living, and all these things that are meant to perish with use, they're not corrupted in themselves, but you shouldn't be concerned with them, because they're things that are perishing, is what it is. But still, it's a hard little verse, a nut to crack, isn't it? That apocrysis. So, that was my attempt at it. I don't know if I did it, or now it makes sense, or doesn't make sense.

But we go on to verse 23. These things have an appearance of wisdom in self-imposed religion, false humility, and neglect of the body, but are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh. Verse 23. And these things, these categories of things that he's talking about, the commands and doctrine of men, they have a show of wisdom, and who are they showing for? other men, right? Other people. It's just a show. It's an outward appearance of holiness. It's volunteered holiness. It's volunteered humility. It's self-imposed.

And Lightfoot has these two words that I didn't know what they meant. Officious and super, supererogatory. It's volunteered, self-imposed, officious, supererogatory service. this self-imposed religion, the false humility and the neglect of the body. And what does that mean?

So I looked those words and they're fantastic words that we don't use in modern day English. Officious is the assertive assertive authority in an annoyingly domineering way, especially with regard to petty or trivial matters. And I know people who do exactly that. Maybe even me. But it fantastically describes verse 23, officious. Tom, you had a... Overkill oversight. Yes, overkill oversight.

In fact, the word supererogatory gets to that. And supererogatory, I just thought these two words were just fantastic. is doing more than what is asked for. The action of doing more than what duty requires. An act is supererogatory if it is good, but you're not morally required to do it.

So it's, like Tom said, overkill. And now they're judging you on all this supererogatory service. And you think of the churches that are really into these appearances of wisdom and the shadowy paraphernalia, and actually they're doing more than what they're morally required to do. But a fish is just great. Someone who's domineering in the little things, They're expert in these petty and trivial matters, and they're going to let you know that you're not living up to those things.

So the wind-up is its pseudo-spirituality, its pseudo-worship. It preys itself in an arrogant display of false and willed humility. There's that word again, willed humility, willing to be humble. And Merriman has, it robs the believer of his or her glorious station in Christ and the total sufficiency of the grace of the Lord.

So this is a good, this is another, I borrowed a lot from Merriman today, but whatever the religious activity you use to tame or bring under control the sin nature through man-made means, it's futile. And I'm going to give you a picture of how futile it is. So on the one hand you're trying to control the sin nature by religious things, but your sin nature is then bubbling up other sinful things like pride, willed humility, being judgmental, cataproboeing people. So your sin nature is just totally uncontrollable.

Like this octopus here trying to get baptized. It's futile as baptizing an octopus because once you get the octopus down under his, what do you call those, tentacles? Yeah, three spring up, you got four down, and you have seven down, but one springs up. You can't get the whole octopus under the water. It's just impossible.

And that's just the nature. It's always, it's always, or putting socks on an octopus, right? That's hard too. So that's a merriment, and I thought that was great, and it's a good way to end that passage. Alright. Is it clear? I made it through though. All seven verses, so that's good.

Okay, let's close in prayer. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for these verses in Colossians and your ministry way back in 2,000 years ago, this ministry that Epaphras had to the Colossians and their problems, we can see their problems are our problems today and the the effectiveness and the timelessness of scripture to address our needs today in this era too. We thank you for all your grace in providing us the word and we go with this this week and be with us this week. We again pray for Ruth and her surgery and Jesus name Amen.