Colossians chapter 2, verses 16 through the end of the chapter. Hear now God's holy word. So let no one judge you in food or in drink regarding a festival or a new moon or Sabbaths, which are a shadow of things to come. But the substance is of Christ. Let no one cheat you of your reward taking delight in false humility and worship of angels, intruding into those things which he has not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind and not holding fast to the head from whom all the body nourished and knit together by joints and ligaments grows with the increase that is from God. Therefore, if you died with Christ from the basic principles of the world, why, as though living in the world, do you subject yourselves to regulations? Do not touch, do not taste, do not handle, which all concern things which perish with the using, according to the commandments and doctrines of men. These things indeed have an appearance of wisdom and self-imposed religion, false humility and neglect of the body, but are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh. Amen. There are times and there are situations when people become their own worst enemy. And they're their own worst enemy because they are the ones that hurt themselves. We no doubt face outside pressures. And yet there's times when the hurt comes from one's own self. I mean, think about it for a moment. Anything from football. A football player can commit a foolish penalty and it can totally change the game. Or some unforced error. Or something like soldiers can commit fratricide. In the heat of the battle, they can shoot their own fellow soldiers. A businessman can just make a foolish financial decision and before you know it, they're bankrupt. Or something more sinister, a drunkard, keeps going back to the bottle and he's just hurting himself. And this idea can also be applied to Christians as they live their Christian life. We face outside forces that affect us and that attack us and that can hurt us, namely the devil and all his demons and all those under his power, under his sway, the world. And oftentimes, It can be the case where Christians can just hurt themselves. And that's exactly what's going on, to some degree, or at least they're on the brink of this in Colossae. They're on the brink of this. Paul has been telling them all the way from verse 9. in some sense through the whole epistle thus far, but especially in verse nine, all the way through verse 15. He's been telling them, listen, Christ is better. He's so much better than all these other things and doctrines that these false teachers have in Colossae. Christ is God. He completes you. All that you need for salvation is in Christ. He regenerates you. He forgives you of your sins, all of your sins. He delivers you from the power of Satan. All these other things that are quasi-Christian, some of them aren't even Christian. They're trying to add to the doctrine that Epaphras has given you. It's foolish. It's nothing. Don't listen to them. And what he does is, in verses 16 to the end of the chapter, like any good preacher in his sermons, or any good pastor in his counseling, he takes biblical truth, And he applies it specifically to the person at hand, to his congregation. There's three applications in this text that I just read to you. There's three applications from the fact that Christ is so much better, that Christ is sufficient. And those three are, two of them are directly a command, and the last few verses is a question. It's an implied command. Because what they're doing is they're hurting themselves. There's things that they do based on this false teaching. They're cutting themselves off in a sense. They're minimizing the grace of Christ that's available to them as God's people. And the lesson that we learn here is that God's people hinder the transforming grace of Christ that comes to them whenever they observe the ceremonial law. whenever they submit to man-made methods of mortification, or whenever they turn away their focus from Christ. That's the lesson. God's people hinder the transforming grace of Christ that's available to them whenever they observe the ceremonial wall, turn their focus away from Christ, or submit to man-made methods of mortification. I want to cover this lesson to you under three principles, three points this morning. The first one is verses 16 through 17. We see here that they're observing the ceremonial law. And this is one of the ways that they're hurting themselves. The observing of the ceremonial law. Now, verses 16 has the ceremonial law in mind. He brings it's that aspect of the old covenant that Christ abrogated that was pointing to him that he fulfilled. He says in food or in drink. There's various food laws. Leviticus 11 would be one place where we see that. Perhaps you recall that the Jews could not eat pigs, swine. There was a bunch of other laws, like hooves and scales on a fish, all these different things. Those are some laws. They had drink. There wasn't as many drink laws. The Nazarite vow forbid the one who took that vow to drink alcohol, drink wine. refused. They were forbidden to drink alcohol. These are just some of the drink laws that is in reference here. It's the ceremonial law. There's nothing inherently moral to them. There's also a reference to the holy days of the Old Covenant. You have a festival or a new moon, or Sabbaths. These were the feasts that pointed them to Christ. Pointed them to how the Lord had saved them. I think of Feast of Booths, you have Feast of Unleavened Bread, which is tied to Passover. You have Pentecost. And these, or ceremonial, they were done away with. We don't celebrate them anymore, because Christ abrogated them. Now there is some discussion here about Sabbath. Some people think that what's in view here is the fourth commandment. That there is no Sabbath to keep. There's no Christian Sabbath. Something that I noticed in many of the more modern commentaries that I referenced. Perhaps this is something we can look at down the road, perhaps even next week. But suffice it to say that 1 Chronicles 23, I'll read this to you, verse 31. This verse references all three types of days. Feasts, New Moons, and Sabbaths. And what Paul is doing here is he's just using this verbage, this language of the Old Covenant. Who's Paul? He's a Hebrew. He's a Hebrew of Hebrews. He knows his Old Testament. 1 Chronicles 23, I'll read verse 30, concerning the priests. To stand every morning to thank and praise the Lord, and likewise at evening And at every presentation of a burnt offering to the Lord on the Sabbaths and on the new moons and on the set feasts. You see the phrase there and there's several other places. There's five places in the Old Testament where this language comes out. These things were shadows. They were shadows of things to come. The body, okay, the substance is of Christ. And of course, this is a metaphor you're all familiar with, shadows. Kids, you probably can look down and you can see your shadow, some shadow even now, kids. The shadow, your shadow that comes from the lights in this room here, tells you something about you. And maybe in another context, you can see a shadow of someone, maybe that person's a man or a woman or a child. There's something real there. There's something of some substance. But it's not the real thing. And this is the metaphor here. And I could go on and on, preach a whole sermon on how the Old Testament ceremonies were shadows and pointed to Christ. I'll give you just a few examples or just two examples. Concerning the food and drink laws. The basic idea is that God is teaching them something about sin. Something about their need to be clean and how Christ would do that. Or take the festivals. Take the Feast of Unleavened Bread or some of these others. They're all pointing, reminding God's people of how they've been saved. Passover, deliverance from Egypt, pointed us to how God in Christ by His Spirit delivers us from the slavery, the bondage of the devil and of sin. So there's shadows in that sense. The old covenant ceremonial law was not bad. It wasn't bad. It was the gospel. It was the gospel to the old covenant people of God. It was good, it just wasn't the real thing. The substance or the body is of Christ. And the point is this, Paul says, let no one judge you. In other words, don't regard these people who go around and say, oh, you're not really holy because you don't observe the food and drink laws. But it's not just that. It's don't do it anymore. Don't get into this. Don't observe the ceremonial law. It's what he's getting at. It's obvious implication from this. Now, I must say, just as a side point, that dieting does not promote holiness. You can be gluten-free. You can be vegetarian. You can be paleo. It's not wrong. But don't begin to think, oh, I follow the right food laws or something like that. But the real lesson here is this. We need to not observe the Old Testament Seminal Law. Now, in my short time of doing pastor-type work, I don't know if I've ever met a Christian who literally wanted to do this. But I do think this is a struggle for Christians. It's in a different way. The Old Testament Law No doubt God's people in the Old Covenant were still required and God still wanted them to obey in the heart. But they did have outward visible manifestations of godliness. Those who obeyed the laws were godly. They were showing faith in God's Word. But as Christians we can go back to this. We can have an ordinate desire to quantify our godliness in outward manner and outward ways. And in that sense, we're going back to the ceremonial wall. I want you to think about this. Now, before I give some examples, I'm not saying that God is not concerned about what you do and what you don't do. He is. I'm describing an attitude, an inordinate desire to quantify godliness in outward ways. I don't wear jeans. I don't wear shorts. And I don't have a TV. And I always tithe. And I always read a chapter of my Bible every morning. And I always say hello to my neighbor. And I always walk my dog. And I always tithe. You see, many of those things are good. I want you to tithe, by the way. I want you to be modest in your dress. But where's your mind? Where's your focus? This is a way of going back to the Old Covenant. And it's a way of hurting yourself. It's, if anything, a perverting godliness. Certainly a distraction from Christ. That's the first way, the first thing we see here. And Paul, again, he's a good pastor. He's a good preacher. He's a good minister of the word. He's applying this principle, Christ is sufficient, to their situation. Now there's a second way that they're hurting themselves. That they're hindering the grace that they have in Christ. They're turning their focus from Him. It's pretty simple. Now verse 18 through 19 has got a lot in it. But I want you to see that fundamentally what's going on here is they're turning their focus. They're living the Christian life, right? They're going down the road of the Christian life and they're not focusing on Jesus. That's what they're doing. Now that's the general problem. Now the specific problem is they're taking delight in the worship of angels. Notice how he says, let no one cheat you of your reward. Okay, they're hurting themselves. They're being robbed of the good thing. They're going after something else. Taking delight in false humility and worship of angels. This is really one idea. What's going on here is that they're saying this, oh, I'm such a sinner. They have a false humility. I'm so sinful that I need another mediator. I can't go directly to God through Christ because I'm just really bad and I've really sinned and I really need to repent and I need an angel. And they worship or they adore or they reverence angels in some way. That's what's going on here. It's a false humility that New King James rightly inserts the word false because humility is good. And this is a false humility. And they're not doing this because they have a good biblical argument for it, perhaps even no argument for it. They don't know what they're doing, intruding into things which they have not seen. They're ignorant. They're doing it from pride. They're vainly puffed up by their fleshly mind. They're following their reason, what seems good to them and not revelation. And that's the specific problem. But what I want you to see here is, This is contrasted in verse 19. All of this is at the expense of something. They're not holding on to Christ. They're infatuated, they're focused on angels. They're not focused on the Lord Jesus Christ. Not holding fast to the head. This is obviously a reference to Christ. He's using a metaphor that the head and the body, and he points out that the body is nourished And it's unified, okay, by joints and ligaments. It's, again, the metaphor of the body. It's nourished by the head. Christ grows the body, grows the church with the increase that is from God. This is why you want Christ. One of the reasons why you need to focus on Christ, because he grows you. I prefer the King James rendering. It is true that we grow with increase that is from God. Christ the head, he nourishes us. It comes from God. The power comes from Christ, through Christ. But I prefer that the translation grows with the increase of God. Love, godliness, love, joy, peace, patience, self-control. These are the things that we want to grow in and to work out in our life. As we remember in Philippians 2, work out your salvation. We want to grow in sanctification and holiness. And Christ does that for us. Now, I must say that this is one place where we have to just, it's clear, don't worship angels. Don't adore them. The Roman Catholic Church gets past this verse by saying that, well, we offer Latria, Latria, it's a Latin word, a different type of reverence. It's not what Paul's talking about here. We can adore them in some way and we can pay homage to them in some way. Revelations 19.10 is an important verse and I want you to think about this. There are Roman Catholics all around us. John the Apostle in Revelation 19.10. He is either speaking to an angel or a glorified saint. In this context there is really not much difference as far as application. Notice what this angel says to John in Revelation 19.10. And I fell at his feet to worship him. But he said to me, see that you do not do that. I'm your fellow servant and of your brethren who have the testimony of Jesus worship. God, don't pay any homage to me. OK, that's one lesson here that's clear. Now, you might be thinking to yourself, again, I don't struggle with the worship of angels. But do you struggle with turning your focus away from Christ? That's really the lesson here. Christians can, true Christians, just like the church in Colossians, again, Colossians chapter one, Paul has gone on and on about how he knows the true church is there. Christians can lose their focus. They can get sidetracked. Now what you can do is you can follow your pastor. You can trust your pastor, not the Christ that your pastor counsels you or preaches to you. You can depend on your mentor or some celebrity preacher. Okay, listen, those people, at some point I'm gonna disappoint you. And if you're clinging to me or clinging to someone else, you'll be disappointed. You'll be shaken. You won't be disappointed if you keep your focus on Christ, the Christ that these people exemplify in their life and they teach to you. There's another way that we can I think commonly Christians do this. It's fairly common in the church. It's a little bit more on track with the mysticism we see here. This ignorant spiritualism. Maybe it's called Christian mysticism or maybe it's just subtle ways in which people now can just get off track from Christ. I was talking to a minister this week and he told me a story. This is just one way There's this man in Scotland, he's a long-time member of this Scottish church, and this church is a very big church, but only in the building. There's only 40 or 50 people there, a church that could hold hundreds. And he always would sit in the balcony. Well, in order to save money, and you can imagine, they actually built a structure within the sanctuary that could suit 40, 50 people. You know, better dealing with, you know, maintenance and things like that. And they noticed that this man stopped coming. Why isn't he coming? He said, listen, you guys shut me out. My seat's in the balcony. And it was the seat. Okay, you see this mysticism? It's like, as if the seat was special. You know, you can follow the church, and this is where I was baptized, this is where my parents grew up, and this is, you know, my church, but not follow the Christ of the church. Mysticism. Missing Christ, turning away from Christ. That's just one thing to think about. Focus on Christ. I'm gonna come back to that at the end of the sermon. Notice a third way that Christians, okay, God's people who have access to Christ, who are in a church, can hurt themselves. They can hurt themselves. Verses 20 through 23, they can submit to man-made methods of mortification. Let me explain what I mean by mortification. Mortification is a theological word. It's referring to that aspect of the Christian life where you actually go about deliberately, consciously killing sin. Okay, kids, it's actually good for you to kill something. It's sin. You need to kill sin, okay? It's mortification. Verse five of chapter three of Colossians here. Therefore put to death your members which are on the earth. Then he lists several sins, okay? That's what's going on here. Now in verse 23, This is where the idea. Verse 22 summarizes verses 20 through 22. It's at least in reference to that. And notice that all these things they're doing are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh. They're trying to not indulge the flesh. They're trying to mortify the flesh, in other words. And there's no value to it. That's the idea. Okay, so mortification's in view. Now, what he says in verse 20, He says this, you've died with Christ from the basic principles of the world. We saw weeks ago, the basic principles of the world is a reference to the ceremonial law. It's a reference to those things that have passed. They were used as elementary things, beginning things to teach us something about Christ, but they've passed since the death of Christ. Now, why do you, as the living in the world, do you subject yourselves to regulation? So he's saying this, is that if you're no longer bound, to obey those regulations that God appointed, why would you submit to the regulations that man has appointed? It's just an argument. You're no longer living in that country. If someone moves from one country to another country, you're no longer bound to follow the laws of that other country. You've died. Why as a living in the world do you subject yourselves to regulations? And again, the specific issue here, verse 21 and 22, It seems pretty clear that there's food laws again. It's not just the food laws of the Old Testament, but just food laws that they just made up. Do not touch, do not taste, do not handle. And the reason why I focus in on food is because of verse 22, which all concerned things which perish with the using. And the reference there is the digestion process. Jesus mentioned it in Mark chapter 7 when he said that Verse 19, because it does not enter his heart, but his stomach, and is eliminated. That's the reference. That's the specific problem. But he couches all that with, these are man-made. These are regulations that are meant to mortify the flesh, that are the mere commandments and doctrines of men. Verse 23 has some interesting material for us. count on a man-made method to have an appearance of wisdom. I want you to think about that. Paul acknowledges that. Indeed, these things have an appearance of wisdom. He mentions self-imposed religion again. Some of these things that they're imposing are not just food laws, but things that touch religion. It's not just worship. I think y'all are pretty familiar with the second commandment. In the worship of God, we can't create anything. Nothing can be imposed. We receive it. We sing the Psalms, we read scripture, we preach. Our worship is very simple and word-centered. But it's not just worship. It's religious things. Observances, rites, ceremonies. Self-imposed religion. There's no place for it. It appears to be wise. It appears to be wholesome. Okay, you can count on that. I mean, again, he mentions humility, a neglect of the body. There's nothing wrong inherently neglecting the body. Fasting is a, it's kind of outdated. I mean, I can kind of raise my hand on that too. I mean, fasting and prayer is, fasting perhaps, that form of neglecting the body was historically overused or misused in the church, but it's a good thing. He's not forbidding that type of thing. But in this case, all these have no value against the indulgence of the flesh. No value against the indulgence of the flesh. Now, I want you to think about one thing here. Man-made methods of mortification, don't submit to them. Not just that, whether it be mortification or whether it be religion, you need to be very conscious that what you're doing in your life is from scripture. Okay? Is this from Scripture? You know, the traditions that you have for yourself, for your family, for your church. Why are we doing this? Those things that touch religion. Why am I doing this? Have you ever asked yourself that question? Why am I doing this? Is it biblical? Does it come from the Bible? That's a given. Now, I want to say this as well. If we're supposed to reject Man-made methods of mortification. But we're supposed to mortify the flesh. And it's helpful to mention at least one divine method of mortification. You do want to kill your sin, don't you? Kids, you want to kill your sin? The one divine method, it's not here mentioned, but I want you to think about it, is removal. Removal. If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. That's obviously a powerful metaphor. Paul said it more abstractly in Romans 13, 14. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill its lusts. Don't go there. Get rid of it. If the secular music you're listening to, and I'm not condemning secular music entirely, but if the secular music you're listening to causes you to think bad things and have bad emotions, then just get rid of it. That's what he's talking about. Remove it. So our lesson this morning, God's people can hurt themselves, and they need to stop it. God's people hinder the transforming grace of Christ that comes to them whenever they observe the ceremonial law, take their focus away from Christ, or submit to man-made methods of mortification. My question for you is this, are you hurting yourself? Is there a way that you've hurt yourself? And not just that, how can you take advantage of the grace that is available to you in Christ? And I want to just close with this. Verse 19 says, not holding fast the head. If you wanna make use of the grace that comes to you in Christ, focus on him. Hold fast to him. There is no way that we can grow in godliness, we can grow in our obedience to the Father if we don't focus on Him. Without trusting in Him, without focusing in His wisdom, going to His word, it's all about Christ. Preachers preach a Christ-centered message because God's people are to live Christ-centered lives. Is this what you're doing? Are you hurting yourself or are you focusing on Christ? Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we come to you this morning, and we ask that you would help us to make good use of all your many blessings. We ask that you would help us to hold fast to your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray that you would renew our mind. We pray that you would renew our wills, that you would give us a healthy understanding of ourself, and that we would cling to Christ preeminently. For we ask all this in Jesus's name, amen.