Video Transcript: Faith in Christ, Not Foods or Festivals

Let no one has judgement on you. There are some very strong judgments and these don't just come from somebody up and deciding to be kind of ornery or be kind of mean or thinking they're going to be nit picky and harsh. Some of these very, very strong judgments appear in the Bible and come from the mouth of God Himself. Here's a sample. If anyone fails to keep the Passover, that person shall be cut off from his people. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day shall be put to death. You shall not eat any of their flesh and you shall not touch their carcasses. It describes a whole bunch of animals and birds and sea creatures you're not supposed to eat. You shall not eat any of their flesh. You shall not touch their carcasses. They are unclean to you. You shall regard them as detestable. And there are other similar statements about foods, sometimes foods related to festivals, about the sacrifices, what you must eat, and what you absolutely must not eat, or you'll be cut off from your people.

These are judgments about food and about festivals, and they come from the Bible. So if you're caught working on the Sabbath, you should be killed, right, because we believe in God's word. Don't we? If you take the Bible seriously, how can you listen to statements like this and then just go on and not be careful about what you eat, not avoid certain kinds of foods or not keep the Sabbath and so forth? Well, this was a very, very difficult question in the life of the early church. And for some people, it still remains a pretty challenging question to think through. In relating what was going on in the Old Covenant, and how anything might have changed with the coming of Jesus Christ and the fulfilling of a new covenant. How do you relate those things? 

There were some people labelled by scholars as Judaizers who insisted that even after the coming of Jesus, and after putting your faith in Jesus, Christians had to obey the Old Testament laws. Males had to be circumcised, they had to keep the laws about what you should eat and what you must not absolutely must not eat. No pork, for instance. And what feasts and celebrations you should observe. You should observe Passover, you should observe the Feast of Weeks, the Feast of Tabernacles and variety of other feasts in order to be saved, or at least in order to be a good Christian. But some insisted on it strongly enough saying you have to obey these laws about food and festivals in order to be saved. So the relationship between the New Covenant and the Old Covenant was simply you take the old covenant commands and the punishments for them and you bring them right into the era we're living now and you tack them on to what you believe about Jesus and receive in him. 

There was an opposite approach and exact opposite approach. And that was, the New Covenant is brand new, in the new, out with the old that rotten old testament needs to be thrown away, and that God of the Old Testament, He's a lord that is an evil demiurge and he has to be trashed and forgotten. People who were labelled the Gnostics, the ones who claimed to have secret knowledge, and also thought bodies were bad, they had a whole variety of other beliefs, but they claimed to believe in the true teaching of Jesus. And they said the Old Testament was evil and the God of the Old Testament was evil. That pretty well solves this problem, doesn't it? You just say well, all those Old Testament judgments and difficulties. You trash their book along with their God. Marcion was one of those Gnostic leaders that he came up with a list of books that are supposed to be the Bible, and he took the Gospel of Luke edited, and most of Paul's letters edited, and that was his whole Bible. Because he wanted to get rid of the whole Old Testament and anything in the new that sounded like it might have a positive view of the old. Well, that's a nice, neat, clean solution to the problem. So you have these two possibilities. Take the old covenant just bring it, the whole in its entirety, and keep it all and add Jesus as the one who is God's Messiah or trash the whole Old Covenant, just replace it with a new one, and decide that the old one was never any good in the first place. 

Now, New Testament Christians, New Covenant Christians had a different approach. They said that Christ fulfilled Old Covenant signs and shadows and these weren't bad, and the God of the Old Testament wasn’t bad. He’s the very same God all along, but the signs and shadows he had given had passed away with the coming of Christ. They were shadows, but Jesus was the body. They were the the glimpses or the early versions, but Jesus was the fulfillment of all that. So New Testament Christians and the church that followed on that road did not go down the road of Marcion and say the Old Testament was bad. Nor did they go down the road of the Judaizers and say, let's just take everything in the Old Testament, and keep living by it as though it is a continuing requirement of God. New Covenant Christian said of signs and shadows, that Christ is the fulfillment of the substance. 

Here's here's one way to think of it. When you're following signs toward the destination those signs are good. They bring you closer and closer to your destination. And so for instance, if you see a sign pointing, this is the road to the Grand Canyon, that sign is not what you should ignore, because it's leading you in the right direction. And similarly, Old Testament signs were leading people in the right direction. They were pointing to Christ and toward the coming Messiah and toward their need of God's atonement and those were very valuable signs. 

Now you need to understand something about signs though. The signs’ purpose is not to draw attention to itself, but to point you to the goal. And when you reach the goal, you delight in it. Do not keep focusing on the sign. The purpose of the sign is to help you get to the goal and delight in it. And if you glimpse the goal but then you turn away, go back to the signs well, is that really smart? You go back and stare at the sign. Well, you're missing out and to go back to the signs you're missing out on the splendor. You're heading farther and farther away from the splendor. And this applies to the the whole question of old versus new covenant signs. When we think of Jesus Christ, he's the final destination, he is the ultimate splendor and if you go back to the old signs, the sacrifice system, the system of feasts, the prohibitions on what foods you may or may not eat. If you go back to those, you are giving an indication that Jesus is not your final destination. If you're taking those as an ongoing requirement, then you have misunderstood. You're going back and staring at that nice Grand Canyon sign and ignoring the Grand Canyon itself. So that's one way of thinking about this relationship between Old covenant festivals and foods and the New Covenant fulfillment in Jesus Christ. 

Now, a little bit more about Judaizers. They required circumcision for salvation. It says so in Acts 15. There were people who said you must be circumcised in order to be saved. They observed the food laws and the drink laws, the kosher laws, the holiness laws. No pork, and a lot of other kinds of foods were also prohibited. Meat must be certified as killed properly. There's a certain way to kill it and a certain way not to and you may touch it if it has been killed properly. Your hands and your utensils must be ritually washed. This was added on the old covenant didn't have even all of that. But the Judaizers often said, well, these things are so important. God had death penalty connected with them that we better add some fencing regulations just to move the fence a little further away from the fatal zone. And so not only should you not eat those foods, but you need to wash in certain ways before you eat them. And you shouldn't share any meals with Gentiles for fear that they're defilement would rub off on you. You should keep on observing Passover, Day of Atonement, Feast of Tabernacles and a variety of other feasts that are described in the Old Testament. And in order to be saved, you need to be doing these things and certainly in order to be a good Christian, you need to be doing these things. And Sabbath observance. The Pharisees kept making Sabbath commands stricter and stricter beyond even what the Old Testament had said, once again, to put a fence around the law to make sure that you didn't violate anything. And so this was the way the Judaizers dealt with things. 

There was two versions of Judaizer, one would be that really, you should just forsake Christ and go back to the Old Testament law. There were some it seems in the book of Hebrews... The book of Hebrews was challenging that kind of thinking, and there were others too who thought they would try out Jesus for a while, but then said, Oh, we got to go back to mainstream Jewish law. There were others who said, No, we're gonna stick with Jesus or we're gonna take the whole law with us as well. We're gonna require you too. And the Bible considers both of those to be disastrous errors. To forsake Jesus and go back to the law would be fatal, but to drag the whole law and its ceremonies and rituals and food laws in would also be a very dangerous thing to do if you made it conditioned for salvation or a condition for being a first rate Christian. 

The apostle Paul had to deal with that and other writers, a variety of times a variety of ways. He speaks of Jewish myths and commands as a threat to people. Now, he himself loved the law of God. Himself loved the Old Testament. But he warned against people who were going back. He said, there are many who are insubordinate, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision party. That's what is sometimes labelled the Judaizers, the people that required circumcision. They must be silenced, since they are upsetting whole families. Therefore, rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith not devoting themselves to Jewish myths and the commands of people who turn away from the truth. To the pure all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure, but both their minds and their consciences are defiled. Notice there again, Jewish myths and commands. The sense that you had to do these certain things and that was what made you a good Christian was something that Titus had to warn people against. 

Now, Paul says in our text, let no one pass judgement on you. Let no one pass judgement on you. And let's just suppose you've got a retired judge and his whole area of law in which he was an expert, and in which his court made decisions, let's suppose his whole area of law was no longer in force. Would you like him jail you because you ate bacon for breakfast? That's the question that Paul is raising here. There's a whole area of law, that is the food laws that are no longer in force. Don't let anybody judge you if you don't keep those food laws, because those laws are not enforced anymore. And this is true, even if, let's say he was a good judge, and in its day, it was a good law. How much more if it's a bad judge? Let's suppose you have a corrupt judge who's on the payroll of the mafia, and he's just out to get you. Would you listen to him if he was gonna throw you into prison because you peel potatoes on Sunday and broke the Sabbath.

Now, remember, this comes in the context of Colossians two, where Paul is talking about the elemental spirits of the world, about the demonic powers and try to use God's good law against people. And so it is like a corrupt mafia bribed judge who was out to get you by any means he can. Not because he loves the law so much, but because he hates you and the demons try to get people to judge each other and also try to get you to be fearful about others judgments of you. Paul says, Let no one pass judgement on you in matters of eating and drinking, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. Let no one pass judgement on you. Questions of food and drink is the first thing he mentions not to let people judge you about. Little later in the passage he speaks of regulations: do not handle, do not taste, do not touch, referring to things that all perish as they are used. He says, you know, this food, the minute you eat it, it's gone. This drink the minute you drink it, it's gone. It perishes in the using. So don't let anybody make a huge deal of it. 

This was not an original thought of the Apostle Paul. Jesus said, Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him since it is not his heart, his spiritual core, but his stomach and his expelled. You eat it, goes in one and goes out the other end. It's not what defiles you. Jesus said this to some Pharisees who were questioning why his disciples wouldn't fast and why his disciples weren’t washing their hands and their utensils and their couches properly before they ate. They had to have that ritual washing or they were being defiled. Jesus says, Oh, give me a break. It's not these things that defile you. It's what comes out of your heart that makes you such a mess. Now he says one more thing, or right after he says this, then the author of the gospel explains one implication. Thus, he declared all foods clean. If you've ever wondered, well, should I avoid certain foods because the Old Testament told me to, just read that again. Thus he declared all foods clean. Is there anything about that that you don't get? Okay, anything? crystal clear. 

But sometimes what's crystal clear takes a while to sink in, especially if you had been brought up with all these regulations. And so in Acts 10 we read about a vision of the apostle Peter. And the apostle Peter had a vision in which some unclean animals were being let down from heaven. Whether it was pigs or unclean birds or certain kinds of fish that you weren't supposed to. We don't know exactly what was in that sheet. It was stuff that you weren't allowed to eat as a Jewish person and in the vision, God's voice said to Peter, take it and kill and eat and Peter said, No way. I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean. God's response was what God has made clean, do not call common. Now this was not just in reference to food. This was leading up to the welcoming and embracing of Gentiles in the family of God and Peter was going to meet with Cornelius and bring him the gospel. He was a Roman army official. But that's one thing that all the food regulations were about in the first place was the separateness of the Israelites from other people. And with the breaking down of the separateness between Jew and Gentile, there was also the breaking down of the food regulations. When Jesus abolished the wall between Jews and Gentiles He also broke down that wall that said, Don't eat this, don't eat that, don't eat the other thing. 

Now Peter still didn't quite get it all the time. He got it. He actually got it pretty clearly. But sometimes there were pressures that would kick in. In Galatians two tell us the time when Peter was eating with Gentiles and living like a Gentile, basically. And then when some Jewish people whom he thought might be a little more finicky about such matters came to town, he stopped eating with the Gentiles and started behaving like a good Jewish person again, and eating only what Jews were allowed to eat and not eating with Gentiles at all, because that might defile him. And Paul got up and he opposed Peter to his face and he said, You are out of line with the gospel. You are denying the grace of God. You cannot do that. He said to Peter, if you though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like a Jew? So Peter, himself in light of the new covenant had stopped living like a Jew. Then all of a sudden, he tried to act like it again when he was in certain quarters and cut himself off from Jewish people. And so Paul reminded him, Hey, I've been crucified with Christ, same passage. I no longer live, but Christ lives in me and the life I live, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. 

So this whole question of foods and drink was a toughy. A tough one for Peter to take to heart and start living by consistently and occasional times in history, and maybe even among some of us maybe a challenge to kind of think through. Not just foods, but also don't let anybody judge you with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. Again, when Paul was writing to the Galatians he gets into talking about the observance of special days and before he does, he mentions these elemental spirits. He says formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods. But now that you've come to know God or rather be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles in there the word is exactly the same, the elemental spirits of the world whose slaves you want to be once more. You observe days and months and seasons and years. I'm afraid I have labored over you in vain. Now he's very worried about these people, because they think all of the feast days including the Sabbath are just as mandatory as they ever were. And he's afraid that they're adding on to the sufficiency of Jesus Christ. And so to the Galatians he says, I wonder whether you really got it or not. To the Colossians he says, Don't let anybody pass judgement on you about these things. 

Now, that wasn't the last time people got into festivals and foods and all of those other sorts of things. In the history of the church, food and drink again became a requirement. The church would require you not to eat any meat on Fridays, and say, Oh, if you did that, it was very bad. Sometimes they would start redefining the Lord's Supper to be almost a magic kind of food and the very food and drink itself had some sort of powers in it. And so food and drink got dragged back in as something it was never meant to be. The church got back into the feast days and festivals and left behind the old ones and they made a whole bunch of new ones mandatory. The whole church here was constructed not just as a guide for worship and to reflect on the ways the Lord, but soon it became a requirement. You had to observe these particular days. If you didn't observe Christmas, you were horrible. If you didn't observe Easter in a certain way, you were awful. And by the way, you better observe Easter on the right day. Victor, the bishop of Rome, which position later came to be called Pope excommunicated the whole Eastern church because they celebrated Easter one Sunday earlier. That was excommunicating offense in Victor's opinion, because feasts on particular days, they matter so very much. Oh, come on. If the Old Testament requirements were no longer in effect, God did not have in mind to replace it with a whole bunch of new days that required and the feast days for the saints, the feast days for this, the feast days for that and we got to there is a time we have Advent nowadays. People say Christmas is the reason for the season. And they're deeply offended if not everybody celebrates Christmas. Back in the days of the Puritans, they punished people if they celebrated Christmas, if they didn't work on Christmas. They went to the opposite extreme, and you couldn't celebrate the day. But the church has had its share of hangups about the special days and the requirements associated with them. 

Priestly rituals, certain vestments, certain colors, certain liturgies had to be followed, or you were violating the will of God and offending the Lord and worshipping Him improperly. And so they traded the vestments of Aaron and his descendants for a whole new set of vestments and made them just as mandatory and got just as hung up on the rituals. The Holy Land. The earth is the Lord's and everything in it and Jesus said, The time has come when they will no longer worship people in this temple or in Jerusalem, but the true worshipers whom the Father desires will worship Him in spirit and in truth. The temple was not a big deal anymore. The Holy Land is not a big deal anymore. But before long the church was back into pilgrimages, and you got special merit If you walked on the soil where Jesus walked, if you went to the holy places where Jesus did his holy thing, if you could touch the holy relics, the bones of the martyrs or the hair of the Virgin Mary or the wood of the cross. And still today, people make their pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and it's just a little extra special if you can get baptized even if you're already been baptized, do it again. The Jordan river that's real baptism. The Sea of Galilee, bring back a little bit of olive oil from Israeli olives and it will be a little better and a little holier and a little more power than your average olive oil you could buy at Aldi. So, that's how the sense of sacred stuff and of course you get preachers on TV selling some of the sacred garbage as well and trying to get people back into sacred systems. 

Another variation on that is some messianic Christians observe the festivals and food laws and accept Jesus as Divine Savior. Now we're going to think through that a little bit more as well as some of these others. Because I mentioned these now, not saying these are all bad. They are all bad as a requirement to be saved. They are all bad as a requirement to make you an elite Christian or an improved kind of Christian. They may be a matter of personal preference in some cases, or of teaching in a local setting. Kind of akin to picking up leaves in the morning. Those leaves aren't any more sacred or any less sacred than the vestments of the bishops, or the Messianic festival might be. They may be teaching aids that are matters of personal preference. They are no longer binding or required or holy or drawing you nearer to Christ than if you don't observe them. 

The former of regulation is set aside. Why? Because it was weak and useless. It was weak and useless in terms of making you right with God. For the law made nothing perfect, and a better hope is introduced by which we draw near to God. Now, in light of that kind of state what do we make of all the things that the church added on that weren't even in the Bible as requirements? Well, if Old Testament regulations of food and festivals were weak and useless, except as pointers to Jesus. Well, if they were weak and useless, then any man made rules certainly aren't gonna be binding. You know that the stuff that the church may have come up in the century since then certainly is not binding if it's not in the Scriptures at all. So Old Testament rituals aren't binding and the church didn't receive some new authority to invent a whole brand new system that was a clone of the old one. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. The statement that comes from Colossians about shadow and substance. 

By the way, substance, what does that mean? For some of you kids may not be sure what substance is. Actually, the word in the original language that the New Testament was written is simply the body. The body belongs to Christ. You've got a shadow over here, and you've got a body over there. So if you're walking along in the sunshine, then you've got a shadow on the ground, but then you've got the real body. And if you were say by the corner of a building, and you saw a shadow coming around that corner, you know that there was a body on the way. Because shadows always go through the body. And so you'd see that long shadow coming and in pretty much the body shows up. And which matters more and which is more substantial. Well of course, the body not the shadow. Well, Christ is the substance or the body, not the shadow. These other things, the festivals and feasts and other requirements they serve as a copy and the shadow of the heavenly things. But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant He mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises. The law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities. So the things to come is all that Christ. It's not just thinking of heaven, it's thinking of the reality that has arrived in Christ. And those other things are shadow. Jesus is the body. 

Now, think of it in different terms. I see the Giuliani's are back there. So maybe they can relate to this a little bit. A shadow of things to come. If a lady is pregnant, she gets to see a shadow of things to come. They do an ultrasound. Before the baby arrives the best you can do kind of is this little black and white, murky snapshot. And that's your best view of the baby. Well, now, after the baby's born, you keep looking at the ultrasound and kissing that ultrasound and saying oh sweet shadow, Oh how I love thee. And you put a framed picture that ultrasound on the wall, you know, an 11 by 14 picture the ultrasound and say, Oh, Shadow shadow on the wall, you're the fairest of them all. You know, that's not how we deal with the shadow. I know ladies get all excited when they see that ultrasound and it makes the heart go pitter patter. But they don't get stuck on it. It's important as a shadow of that baby that's on the way. And so you may file that shadow away in a scrapbook and look at it once every so often, you know as part of your overall scrapbook. But your main focus is on the baby, not the shadow. The baby is the body the substance. The ultrasound is the shadow, which is kind of nice before we actually had the baby there. Once the baby's there, that's what you look at. And so it is with Christ. The shadow is no longer the thing to focus on. The Christ has come. We know who he is. We know what he's like. We know how he spoke. We know what he says to us today, and we focus on that. And we don't take the shadows that were pointing ahead to him as still binding upon us. 

So how do we handle this question of foods and festivals? Well, some said you must keep the regulations of foods and festivals or you won't be saved. That was wrong. The apostle Paul said you must not put your faith in foods and special days or you will not be saved. If that's what your faith is in you won't be saved. You'll be lost because it means that you don't consider Christ is sufficient and that you don't understand who he is and what he came to do. Some might say, well, you don't need that to be saved but it does kind of lift you up to that higher level of Christianity. You must keep regulations of foods and festivals to be a really obedient and elite Christian, although you can be saved without them. No, foods and festivals are a matter of personal preference, so long as you focus on Jesus. Now, I could have gone further and some might make a stronger statement of that, but I don't think I'd be warranted by the Bible. You might go further and say no, you must avoid those foods and festivals or it makes you a lower class Christian or may cut you off from Christ. No, I believe that it is the Bible’s teaching that there are ways that some people might be able to engage in those foods and festivals or in later liturgies, vestments, church calendar, Pentecost you know that the church calendar of special days, you have freedom in those matters as long as you realize what they are and what they're not. I'll show you why I say that. Because this passage says don't judge on such matters. So don't let anybody judge because you're not doing them. But maybe also an implication is don't let people judge you if you are as long as the focus remains completely on Jesus Christ. 

Romans 14 speaks of it in this way. One person believes he may eat anything while the weak person eats only vegetables. Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains and let not the one who abstains pass judgement on the one who eats. For God has welcomed him. Who are you to pass judgement on the servant of another. It is  before his own master that he stands or falls and he will be upheld, For the Lord is able to make him stand. So if someone wants to eat barbecued ribs and eat those good old pork ribs and loves ‘em Oh yummy, you don't judge him for it. If someone's says you know pork and it’s kind of gross. Or, you know, I just don't go that way. You don't say oh, what's wrong with you? Do you have something wrong with you? Are you unspiritual? Do you not realize that Jesus is the fulfillment and sufficiency of the law? That would be a danger if they thought Jesus was insufficient and they were doing it for that reason. But you don't force one person to eat or not eat based on that. One person esteems one day as better than another. Well, another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. 

Now, I have to admit that this is a hard one for me because I grew up with a teaching of pretty strict Sunday observance. And it bothered me a lot if somebody would go out to eat on Sunday at a restaurant for instance, or go shopping on Sunday, because I was brought up to believe you keep the Lord's day holy. And I still think it's good policy to have a day a week that is primarily devoted to that. And yet, it says here, and it says elsewhere, not to get hung up on Sabbaths and it says here, one person seems one day is better than another and others seem all day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. The one who observes the day observes that in honor of the Lord. The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord since he gives thanks to God while the one who abstains abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God. So if your goal is to honor God and focus on Jesus, then don't judge each other on the basis of pork chops or Sunday observance. for the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Whoever thus serves Christ is acceptable to God and approved by men. So then let us pursue what makes for peace, and for mutual upbuilding. So your choices in these matters are to be what honors Christ and is done in faith by the power of Holy Spirit, and what builds other people up. Those are the criteria. The other criteria don't matter very much. 

Well, what about this Lord's Table? You know, if he didn't drink doesn't matter at all, well, Jesus did direct us to do this until he comes again. To take the bread and the wine as the tokens of his body and blood. But the purpose is, in a sense, still shadow pointing to reality. Are both the word and the sacraments then intended to focus our faith on the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross as the only ground of our salvation. This is a question to answer from Heidelberg Catechism. Right. In the Gospel, the Holy Spirit teaches us and through the Holy Sacrament, he assures us that our entire salvation rests on Christ's one sacrifice for us on the cross. The purpose of coming to the Lord's table is to focus on Christ and to keep your faith in Him alone. The minute you start focusing on that cup, and that bread as something that's making you right with God, you have missed the point of the cup and the bread. They are the sign pointing you. They are not the substance itself, but they are very closely connected to Christ by his own command. And so we eat and drink about even those are meant to direct us to Jesus and not to themselves. The substance, the body, the reality, it belongs to Christ. 

And it just brings us back to the whole theme of the book of Colossians. Never study a couple sentences in isolation of the main point. The main point is Jesus. The riches of the glory of this mystery which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Christ in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. For in Him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in Him who is the head of all rule and authority. Paul says all these things now. He's leading up to, he is contradicting false teaching, and he said, You've got fullness in Jesus Christ, you have been filled in him. You don't need to add extras to make you right with God. You don't need to add extras to raise you a notch in your spirituality and in how good of a Christian you are. If you have Christ, you have everything. If you have Jesus Christ, the hope of glory, you have all the treasures. If you have Jesus, you have all the wisdom. And so don't let anybody come along judging you if you are in Christ, and Christ is in you. Don't let anybody judge you on the basis of Old Testament regulations or any other regulations related to foods and festivals. Jesus is the body. Don't focus on the ultrasound, focus on the Christ. Don't focus on the sign. Focus on the splendor of the Grand Canyon. Let's read this verse just one more time together. Therefore, let no one pass judgement on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are the shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. 

Let's pray together. Father, we thank You for Your Word. We thank you for your old covenant scriptures which prepare the people for the coming of the Lord, which pointed to Jesus. We thank you for that holy law of God which shows our desperate need of salvation as well as giving foreshadowings of the coming savior and the sacrifice that he would offer for our salvation, that he would become the bread of life the one who we can eat off and never be hungry again, the one we could drink and never be thirsty again. That he could come Lord as the eternal sabbath. The one is whom we can rest completely and not work not even lift one finger to earn our own salvation and so help us to rest and find our eternal Sabbath rest in our Lord Jesus Christ. Lord, we thank You that You are the fullness of God, and we pray that we may indeed be filled with that fullness so that we lack nothing so that we can be fully content and satisfied in who you are for us. And we pray, Lord, that you'll give us wisdom and discernment in these matters. We pray that you'll help us as brothers and sisters to relate in love to those who may have slightly different practices but an entirely same focus on Jesus Christ the final and fully sufficient one. We pray, Lord, that you will bless us now as we walk with you. Help us not to be intimidated by the well meaning judgments of people who may make a big deal out of things that aren't important anymore, or even the evil judgments of the accused accusations of evil one and the elemental spirits who had tried to drag us away from Christ and His all sufficient sacrifice. We thank you and praise you. In Jesus name, Amen.