Video Transcript: Self-Made Religion

The Superbowl is today and Troy Polamalu was just named the NFL Defensive Player of the Year. He plays for the Pittsburgh Steelers. And if you happen to be a Packer fan, it would be a very good thing for you if Troy was not playing today, because being the best defensive player in the NFL, you'd rather have him off the field. So what if a Packer fan decided to put on a striped shirt and black pants and raced out onto the field and go to Troy Polamalu and say you're disqualified? You are off the field, your hair is way too long. Well, do you think that would work? This guy's got way too much hair, he ought to be kicked out of the game. Or let's say you're cheering for the other team. And you know that Aaron Rodgers guy, and he throws for a ton of yards and touchdowns. And if you could get him off the field today, you would have a lot better chance if you were a Steeler. And so you come up to him and and you put on the ref outfit the striped shirt and the black pants and you say, you know Aaron Rodgers, I've seen you before and you do this stupid little championship belt demonstration, whenever you guys score a touchdown. I think that stinks and you are disqualified for your little championship belt celebration. 

Now, is that going to work? Do you think that a Steeler fan can get Aaron Rodgers kicked out of the game because he does that sort of thing? Well, there's two major reasons why you can't get somebody kicked out for having long hair or for doing their little celebration. One is, if you're a fan, you have no authority. You can put on the striped shirt, you can yank on the black pants, but that doesn't make you a ref. If the league didn't appoint you to be ref you have zero authority to say who's qualified or disqualified. And so if you're running on the field, don't just think you're some nutcase and call you off. They're not going to listen to you when you tell them to get out of the game. Oh, there's another reason why that won't work. Not only do you have no authority to disqualify anybody, but those are not offenses for which somebody can be disqualified. The league has no rule regarding length of hair. It doesn't have any rule about that little belt celebration thingy. And so you really don't have the right to throw anybody out because you lack the authority and there is no such official rule. 

Now when it comes to our relationship to Jesus Christ, the apostle Paul says, Let nobody disqualify you. And again, there are two major reasons not to let others disqualify you if you belong to Jesus Christ. One is that some self made religion doesn't have any authority from God. It doesn't have divine authority and so it has no right to say who's in who's out or to kick you out. And the other reason is, a lot of the rules they come up with are not from God in the first place. And so let nobody disqualify who doesn't have the authority to do so and who is trying to use rules that don't even apply. That's the central thrust of the passage we just read. 

Now let's look at that in a little more depth. There are folks who want to have a kind of superstar religion that puts them a level above others. It's not enough to be an ordinary Christian who believes in the Lord Jesus Christ and takes to heart the truths of the Bible. There need to be religious superstars and this was going on in Colossae. The Colossians were being recruited by people who were into a kind of what they claim to be a higher level of religion than what Paul and his associates had preached to them. And one aspect of superstar religion is that it is super structured. It tells you just about everything. It tells you how to eat, it tells you what to wear, it gets into matters of food and drink, it gets right down to the last little detail for you. It gets into your schedule. It  tells you exactly when you ought to pray exactly when you ought to celebrate special feasts, and it just has a very long list of how to structure your life. And there's something about that, that appeals to at least some of us we like to be told what to do. Not everybody. But good many people like to have every little detail spelled out for them and a religion that comes along and spells it all out as its appeal. It's super strict. And so asceticism that's maybe a word that a lot of you weren't very familiar with. Yet, it's basically the idea that what's bad for the body is good for the soul. If you do things that are really tough on your body, it's going to result in some fabulous spiritual gains. 

And now the folks in Colossae who were into this kind of religion, thought the body was bad. And so they were going to do whatever they could to punish the body. And it was strict in the sense of just saying, don't handle, don't taste, don't touch, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't don't. And there is also as the passage mentions severity to the body. Sometimes starving the body, just not letting your body have any food that tastes good. If you've got to keep your body going feed it only the blandest, yuckiest food. You know, it's broccoli, you know, a diet of broccoli and water, or whatever. But whatever you like the least that's what you get to eat. Do what's rough on your body. It'll be good for your spirit. I'll get super spiritual and superstar religion has revelations that go beyond that. Anybody can pick up a Bible. But real uppercut religion has secret revelations, and anybody can pray to God. But did you know all the other spirit guides you could pray to and certain angels you could pray to? Why settle for just God when you can get so much other help and so many other levels? Or somebody else might not have it so much the worship of angels, but worshipping with angels because I speak in the tongues not just of men, I speak in the tongues of angels. And so they're joining in worship with a heavenly host and worshipping in ways that go beyond what merely humans worship in merely human language. 

And then there are other visions, and I'm seeing things that you ordinary mortals don't see. And nowadays, of course, if somebody says, Oh, I had a near death experience, and I had a certain kind of vision, we listen to them a lot more closely than we listen to just an ordinary old schmo preacher who's telling us what the Bible says. Anybody can tell you, the Bible says. Not everybody gets a visit of heaven and comes back and tells you it's like, yeah. Oh, it's also super stern. And that's the kind of thing we see warned about in this passage. But again, it seems that a lot of authority because if you don't measure up in terms of the visions you've had, or the regulations you've been following, then you're either not in at all or at least you're at a lower level of faith than those who have risen so high among the superstars. And sometimes even just downright disqualifying those as unspiritual if they're not into these kinds of secret visions and revelations that their religious superstars claim to have been given. 

Now, there is a lot of appeal of this and we're gonna look at a number of different religions that have many of these aspects to them and they are continuing to be a kind of temptation to many who are already Christians as well as something leading astray those who don't belong to Jesus. What does the Scripture say about this kind of superstar religion that super structured, super strict, super spiritual, super stern? Well, the Bible says it's superficial. We saw last week that those who tried to drag back in Old Testament ceremonies and requirements in the age of the new covenant, the Apostle told them that these things were just a shadow. Christ is the substance. When you have Christ the body, you don't need the shadow of all of that anymore. So it's just a shadow, not the reality. He speaks of this person in Colossae who claims to be super spiritual, and he says he's puffed up without reason. He’s just a bunch of hot air. 

He says these things these don't taste, don't touch, don't handle all that's referring to things that just perish as they're used. Or as Jesus put it, food goes in one end and goes out the other and it doesn't make you holy or unholy. It's what's in your heart that counts. And if you all hung up on these perishable things, you don't know the things that are eternal. And he says that it's superficial in the sense that it makes an impression, but it has no real impact. Such things have an appearance of wisdom, says Paul. Sometimes they do make an impression. And you say, Oh, wow, those folks are dedicated. This is serious stuff. This is really life changing revolutionary stuff. And the Apostle says, yeah, it has an appearance of wisdom with the self made religion and asceticism and severity to the body. But it doesn't do anything to actually stop the indulgence of the flesh of the old fallen nature. 

Oh, and it's super stuck. Here's where it really, in a sense gets interesting and ironic. The Apostle says that they're stuck on human standards. It is self made religion. It's according to human traditions and precepts. It claims to be so spiritual, but it's a lot of made up or man imposed stuff, and it gets worse from there. He speaks of the elemental spirits. You're going along with a kind of religion that the elemental spirits, the demons come up with. You thought you were being super spiritual. You’re spiritual all right, but it's the wrong kind of spirits that you're stuck with. And so they're just stuck with the elemental spirits. They're stuck on the world. He says, you died to the world. Sometimes we think of being worldly as people who maybe drink too much or lie too much, or get too sexually promiscuous, or do other stuff like that, or watch bad movies and so on. That's so worldly. 

Well, in chapter three of Colossians the apostle does address some of those things as things to avoid as being worldly. But the first thing he strikes his blowout is worldly religion. This kind of stuff was claiming to rescue you from worldliness. And sometimes when you hear this super strict kind of religion being presented to you, one of the things that blast at is you don't want to be worldly. And so here's the do's and don'ts of being really holy. And Paul says when they come with a list of do's and don'ts longer than your arm, that's called worldly religion. That is self made religion. That's what humans always concoct and come up with whenever they're trying to present what they think is a good kind of religion. And I'm just stuck in the flesh. 

When Paul said, puffed up without reason by His sensuous mind as our translation has it, it literally just has puffed up without reason by the mind of the flesh. Paul uses that same phrase in Romans 8, that the mind of the flesh is at odds with the mind of the Spirit. And if you're not born again, you have the mind of the flesh. And so he's saying they're stuck in this mind of the flesh and it has no value in restraining the desires of the flesh. So that's Paul's take on what self-made religion is all about. It is superficial in various ways. It's super stuck in various ways, in all of its strictness, and sternness and structure and spirituality is just human stuff. And the main reason is because it's lost connection with Christ. Okay, that's what all religion without Christ is, is this kind of stuff. And where there is no Christ, you'll get a lot of other stuff to fill in the vacuum and the gap. 

Let's look at some of the samples we saw. I'll just go quickly against the Judaizers who at that time were trying to get followers of Jesus to go back to Old Testament ceremonies which have now been fulfilled in Christ. They were requiring circumcision for salvation. They were imposing all of the old food laws and no pork, you have to have the proper certification for the meat, you had to have the proper washing, you couldn't share meals with Gentiles and so on. They had all of the particular festival days that had been required in Judaism and they tried to import all of those into Christianity. Sabbath observance was strictly required and the details kept getting stricter and stricter. And so you have the kind of religion that doesn't recognize that Jesus is the fulfillment of all the prophecies and that faith in Jesus is enough. And it adds a whole bunch of other requirements. 

Now, in the centuries that followed, the most successful version of this kind of religion in terms of numbers has been Islam. Islam draws on certain Jewish traditions and on some Christian thinking. It even says Jesus was a great prophet. But it fits the profile in the last part of Colossians chapter two almost to a tee. First of all, there is a lot about food and drink in Islam. No alcohol, absolutely prohibited. No pork. Meat must be certified as killed properly. A Friday observance is strictly required. Not Sunday, not Saturday, but Friday. But they have that same regulation and legislation of a particular day and everything that goes with it. Asceticism, being tough on the body. Every good Muslim must observe the month of Ramadan with fasting. It is one of the five pillars of Islam. You can't be considered a good Muslim without it. And so from sunup to sundown for a whole month you must go without any food. You must have any water during that period. There must be no marital intimacy from sunup to sundown. And so you have this whole month where you're getting closer to God by depriving yourself and it's not just suggested that fasting sometimes can be spiritual helpful. It is required that you fast in this way for a month. 

And then your prayers. You don't just pray to the Father. You pray at the set times. There are five times a day when you must pray. You are not a good Muslim if you don't. You must wash in a certain way before you pray. You must make sure what geographical position on earth you are and bow in the direction that is most towards Mecca, the holy city of Islam. When you pray, there are certain words you must repeat preferably in Arabic. And as you say those words there's a different position for each set of words that you say. I've lifted this from a Muslim website that shows you the different positions that you should be in when you pray and they associate certain words that you recite while you're in those positions. Everything is defined for you. You're told what, whether to bow, where to place your hands exactly, what to say, it's all spelled out for you. And Jesus is not God and He did not die on the cross. 

In Buddhism, you have asceticism and the kind of super spirituality and particularly among some Buddhist monks. They're allowed to eat only between sunrise and noon. You're out. You eat between sunrise and noon. No alcohol, no music, no dancing, no marital intimacy. You avoid any relation at all with anyone of the opposite sex. You  isolate yourself. You learn to hold the proper positions of the body and all of those will be defined for you. Yoga comes from some of that. What positions you need to be in for proper openness to the spiritual powers and revelations. And you're seeking a kind of vision that will get you out of this ordinary human reality and beyond it, where you lose your selfhood entirely and are swallowed up in Nirvana. Again, some of this looks pretty familiar in terms of the list of self made religion that we've seen in Colossians two doesn't it? 

Or the Latter Day Saints the Mormons. No alcohol, no coffee, no tea, no tobacco limited meat consumption, vegetarianism would be preferred. Going back to Old Testament times. Polygamy was in for a while with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. It's out now because in order for Utah to get statehood, polygamy had to be outlawed. And so one of the Mormon leaders had a revelation about that time that polygamy was out. But Joseph Smith, the Prophet of Islam, had 32 wives and Brigham Young, the Great Leader of the Mormons who followed upon Joseph Smith had 56 wives. In their doctrine, Jesus became a God. He was born of a union of God the Father, physical union of God the Father and Mary and he became a God and we can become gods. How we do that? Largely through the ceremonial ordinances that are prescribed in the temples and the various spots that are prescribed for that purpose in Mormonism, as well as by our good works. 

Again, in terms of angel visions, and angel worship. Joseph Smith claimed that the angel Moroni revealed all of these things to him, in addition to what had previously been shown in the Bible. And they're run now not by divine authority only, but they claim that the president of the Mormon Church and its council of 12 continue to have the gift of prophecy and of new revelation from God. So we have again, this kind of super spirituality with strictness on what you eat, on ceremonies having saving power for you, on the revelations given to the original founder and on the continuing revelations to their current counsel. 

Now, what goes on in all of these what they have in common as I said, the main problem is they're not holding fast to Christ. Judaism says Jesus is not God and ceremonial law is required to be faithful to God. Islam says Jesus is not God. He did not die. Judas was made to look like Jesus and Judas was the one nailed to the cross and Prophet Jesus was taken directly to heaven and never died and following Sharia Muslim law is what saves us. Buddhism says Jesus is no more divine than anybody else. I mean, in one sense we're all divine and another sense none of us are divine, but the path of Buddhism is that you save yourself and it is stated that way, in so many words by Buddhist authorities. Mormons say as I mentioned already, Jesus was born of a physical union of God the Father and the Mary and so you count on your ceremonial ordinances and good deeds to help you grow up into divinity as Jesus grew up and became more and more divine. What they all have in common is their lists of stuff and their lack of Christ. And the Apostle Paul dealt with those things in his day and under God's guidance wrote about it. 

And very often people go on as though such things have never been written. And not just among those who deny Christian orthodoxy. The Adventist to their credit, do believe in Jesus Christ as divine in salvation through his blood, in the doctrine of the Trinity, unlike some of the others I've just mentioned. But you get a few of these things still that are additions, of food and drink, no pork, of vegetarian is best, no to tobacco and alcohol. That's gonna be kind of familiar list. I know a few Baptists think that way. Sorry about that. There are a few others too. I don't drink much alcohol, but I don't require it of others. Okay. There's a big difference between saying I think it's best to abstain and say I think it's a requirement of God that all abstain. I think it's very clear from the Bible that it is not a requirement that all people abstain from alcohol. God gives wine as a gift that blesses the heart of man, according to the Psalms. You can't say it a whole lot plainer than that, except for maybe the Son of God, changing water to grape juice. 

Anyway, we'll leave all that alone. The fact is that there are things that are required by various people who hold the Christian orthodoxy that aren't biblical requirements. The Sabbath, the Seventh Day Adventists have very strict regulation about that. They say that it is the sign of the true Remnant Church of God, and that violating the Sabbath may well be the mark of the beast in the final tribulation. They've got the visions. Ellen G. White is an inspired Prophet and following her teaching is a mark of the true remnant church. Now, as I said, this Seventh Day Adventists are in a somewhat different category. I mean, some consider them a cult others not because they do teach the truth of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the Trinity. They do teach Jesus as God, atonement through his blood and justification by faith. So this is in a little different category. These may be errors and yet not fatal errors. But they're things to be very cautious of. 

I’ll just give you a bit more from the official Adventist declaration. They say Revelation 12 identifies the church in the last days as the remnant which keep the commandments of God and how the testimony of Jesus Christ. We believe that this remnant church is describing the Seventh Day Adventist Church which not only keeps the commandments of God, but has the testimony of Jesus Christ, which is the Spirit of Prophecy. In the life and ministry of Ellen G White, we see God's promise fulfilled to provide the remnant church with the spirit of prophecy. We consider the biblical canon closed. So that sounds good. No, that means the Bible is done. And it's the Bible and nothing else is the Bible. But then there's that however. I always hate howevers after people just made an excellent statement. We consider the biblical canon closed. However, we also believe as did Ellen G White's contemporaries, certainly not all of them, that her writings carry divine authority, both for godly living and for doctrine, and therefore we recommend that as a church, we seek the power of the Holy Spirit to apply to our lives more fully the inspired counsel contained in the writings of Ellen G White, and that we make increased efforts to publish and circulate these writings throughout the world. So you've got Jesus plus. I don't like Jesus plus. 

Then of course, I've mentioned particular groups but the Church throughout the ages has had its problems and we need to keep looking closer and closer and closer to home. That's often how the Old Testament prophets were. Amos would start with some far off, far out group of people and say, okay, God's judgement is on them. And then, you know, as the prophecies move to keep getting closer and closer, all of a sudden, he's right, talking about Israel and Judah. And I need to do that in this sermon, too. In the church, it's had its share of asceticism over the years that what was bad for the body was good for the soul. It had its holy hermits living out in the desert and being considered a cut above everybody else. You'd have its notion that singleness was godlier than the marriage and eventually some wings of the church started requiring that anybody in church leadership had to be single. Because singleness was superior to marriage. Some would resort to starving or whipping themselves and this is not just third century monks. When they're making the case for canonizing and making a saint of John Paul II, one of the witnesses who claims the one sign of his great Holiness was the way that he would punish his body and even inflict pain on it and sleep on the floor instead of in his bed and so on. So this is not just ancient, outdated stuff. This still exists among people who believe in the Trinity today. 

Angel worship, spirits go betweens. The church got into say, well, there are various spirits who have gone to be with the Lord and the spirits of saints and of the Virgin Mary can add to the intercessions with God. At the time that this episode was being written, they talked about angel spirits as intermediaries. There were certain versions of Jewish philosophy as well as a In Greek that said the Creator God is far above everybody and we're way down here and in between there's a variety of spirit intermediaries, whether angel or human spirits. But it goes right back to that whole idea of angel worship again. And of visions, these revelations we go beyond Jesus in the Bible. The claim that mystics have seen things that God didn't choose to reveal to others, or that the pronouncements of Popes are on the same level as the Bible just as the pronouncements of Ellen G white among the Seventh Day Adventists are on a level with the Bible.

Or near death experiences. Those are very popular nowadays. 90 minutes in heaven or embraced by the light or a whole bunch of other books that become very popular. I know that there are people who say they have seen glory and experienced the light and had fabulous near death experiences and know that there's a place reserved in eternity for them, who have no belief in Jesus Christ whatsoever. But they have their vision. And their vision is what holds authority with them. What does Paul say about that? He says they're going on in detail about visions, but it's a lot of hot air if they're cut off from Jesus Christ. The church has come up with its own system. In the case of Rome, the seven sacraments in which church officials are providing salvation by dispensing sacred rituals. And you can lose your salvation, get it back again, lose it, get it back again. The way to get back is you go to the sacrament of penance, and you confess and the priest absolves you and then you've got to go again. Those that whole system is replicating what we've been warned against that man made religion takes into its hands a power and authority that only God has. When men pull on the black pants and put on the striped shirt, or maybe put on their clerical robes, this does not put them in God's place with the authority of God Himself. And so we have to be aware of that. 

And we also, those of us who are maybe more Protestant and not Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox need to be aware of how these things are creeping up on us. Again, banning worldly amusements. Now there are a lot of movies you'd be better off not seeing. There are lots of dances you'd be better off skipping and so on. But making these the essence of godliness to avoid them and say these are what constitutes worldliness. You have got to pay attention what the Bible says about worldliness and worldliness means that you have a religion that is all do's and don'ts and a detailed list. That's worldliness. Men shall not wear pants Oh, Holy God, I promise never to wear pants and woe be upon me if I do, whoever said that, you know. We may associate that with godliness. And I'm not saying that if you want to dress all the time you go right on ahead. But God didn't say you had to. Okay. And if God didn't say it, don't listen to anybody else who tells you you have to. 

Sunday strictness, I grew up with some of that and it's good. I think it's very healthy to have a day that's different from others. To have a day of rest and worship and to skip a lot of stuff you ordinarily do during the day. But the legislation gets to be oh, you can't go hiking, you can't play games, you can't do this, you can't do that. Now, I was kind of on the tail end of that. Our family wasn't that rigid or strict on that. But I know a lot of people who grew up in a very strict setting like that and would despise those who didn't have such a strict view of keeping their Sundays. Oh, here's one homeliness is holiness. If thou does not homeschool, thou art a fallow sinner who is a cut below the outstanding Christians among us. And home birth, you know, that's the way to go. Natural Foods only man, now if you don't eat organic, what does God think of you? And country living is quite a bit more holy than living in the city because we know the city is worldly and on the pit of corruption. Now, of course, nobody quite puts it that way. And I hope none of us quite believes that way. But the fact is, there are you can get way out of proportion, where stuff that you kind of associate with being overall healthy and a good idea instantly becomes God's requirement for everybody or your standard for measuring. These things do not make you loftier in your relationship to God or superior to other Christians who may be on a somewhat different path.

And prudery to be approved is to be scared to death of the opposite sex and anything associated with it. You pan boy girl interaction. You kick people off campus for holding hands in public. And you make sure that if you dress at all, you look like you put on a tent. And intimacy of any kind is kinky. And so, you know, kids growing up in this environment, even after they're married, there's always some sense that what's bodily and associated with the opposite sex is kind of icky and, you know, to maybe put up with that best rather than simply to be delighted in as a good gift from God. So these are some of the ways that worldly religion can poison even those who are Orthodox Christians and take away some of their joy and get them to looking away from Jesus Christ and to other things that are not so central. 

Let me just remind you, again. Super structured, where it's giving you all the details of the do's and don'ts in every area of life. Super strict with a lot of don'ts. Don't Don't, don't don't and the body is bad. Super spiritual. Where are you getting revelations I'm getting. And super stern. You just don't measure up. Poor you. These are the characteristics of worldly religion. And let me remind you of Paul says, it's a shadow. It's a bunch of hot air, it's puffed up. It's perishable. It's dealing with perishable stuff, not the permanent, eternal things, and it doesn't restrain the indulgence of the flesh. It makes an impression in giving you a sense that it has an appearance of wisdom, but it doesn't really change you. You're stuck to what's human, you're stuck with the elemental spirits and the devils. You're stuck on this world. You're stuck in the sinful fallen nature of the flesh. So beware of that self made religion. Paul deals with this more clearly in a greater length and more harshly than with any of the other sins he gets to dealing with later. Jesus dealt with Pharisaism more harshly than he dealt with any of the other sins, because it's the essence of worldly religion. Beware of it. 

Let's review just this passage again. Let's just read aloud the passage together. Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels going on in detail about the visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind and not holding fast to the head, from whom the whole body nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments grows with the growth that is from God. This is the mirror side of fleeing self made religion. You need the growth that comes from God. You need the life that comes from God and that comes in union with Jesus Christ. And the deadly thing about self made religion is it's all about self and not about Christ. Let's read this together. If with Christ, you die into the elemental spirits of the world, why as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations – do not handle, do not taste, do not touch, referring to things that all perish as they are used – according to human precepts and teachings. 

Now, what he's saying here is a set of rules you have died to and once you've died to a set of rules you don't bring out those rules again. Let's say, you decide you're no longer basketball player and football is your game. Now you're gonna play football by the rules of basketball, you can't go anywhere without dribbling. That didn't work very well did it? It's illegal to go anywhere in basketball with the ball unless you're dribbling the ball. You can’t just run and carry it or you can carry that older slip and start dribbling the football. That thing doesn't dribble very well. And if you take all that old set of rules that kind of are imposed on you by the elemental spirits, you kind of dribble your way through life with those. The ball squirts this way in that and you're dead to that. You're not a basketball player anymore. You're a football player. You're not the old kind of religion anymore. You're a Christian. And when you're a Christian, you don't play by the old rules. Self Made religion can't change your sinful self. That's what we have to keep in mind. 

Let's read this together. These had indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they're of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh. So again, connection with Christ is what matters most. Hold fast to the head. Jesus is enough. I hope you've gotten that message after about 15 or 16 sermons from Colossians. Jesus is enough. He is the image of the invisible God. In him all the fullness of God is pleased to dwell. You have received fullness in him. And if you have Jesus, you don't let anybody else tell you to add other stuff on top to improve on Jesus. When you have Christ revealed in the Bible, you don't try to add on top of that. 

Another thing, be nourished and knit together as members of the church body because another deadly thing here was a spiritual elitism, which said I'm better than the body. I'm better than the others. I'm trying to rise and improve upon those ordinary run of the mill believers in Jesus. Know your greatest strength comes when you're part of the body, not when you're trying to separate yourself from the body of believers and be superior to it. And so we need to reject the elemental spirits. That's been mentioned at least three times just in Colossians two, how the elemental spirits have this role in religion. And why would we reject them? Well, because Jesus disarmed them and he didn't disarm just so we could go right back under their sway again and under their power. And the other reason given is you died to all that. You're out of basketball. You're in a football. You're out of elemental spirit religion, you're in the Holy Spirit religion. And so you need to reject those things.

And there are four different statements made in Colossians two that I just want to breeze through real quickly to remind you of again. Let no one delude you. Let no one take you captive. Let no one judge you. Let no one disqualify you. Remember, back when I preached on let no one delude you. There was a story from a Silver Chair of CS Lewis where there is this woman who comes across as this beautiful and wonderful ruler and she's telling them all these things about the unreality of the real spiritual world. And then when she shows her true colors, she's this nasty serpent. And that's what Paul says is true. Don't be deluded, because behind all the sweet sounding, nice looking stuff is this nasty serpent, the devil and his demons trying to get you away from Christ. See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world and not according to Christ. Christ set you free from all of that. And after that evil army has been defeated are you going to run after them saying, Oh, take me prisoner again, subject me to all of your slavery again? No, Paul says, Don't do that when Jesus has set you free don't let them capture you and haul you off to be their slaves again. 

Don't let anybody pass judgement on you in questions of food and drink or these other things. They're the shadow; Christ is the substance. So a retired judge who was trying to enforce rules that are no longer in effect is not somebody you listened to and you certainly aren’t going to listen to somebody who’s on the mafia payroll, who is trying to use outdated rules to wreck your life. Let no one pass judgement on you. These were the shadows as Paul before the baby arrives in ultrasound as your best view, if you remember that. And you may like that ultrasound, but when the baby arrives, you don't keep smooching the ultrasound and you don't frame a 11 by 14 photo of the ultrasound and say ultrasound, ultrasound on the wall, you're the fairest of them all. You don't do that. Because the reality has come. In the same way, there are legitimate given laws from God in the Old Testament that are now rendered obsolete by the coming of Jesus. And the rituals of the law gave the kind of ultrasound shadow with that system of sacrifices and other things. But now that Christ has arrived, you focus on Him and not on all that other stuff. 

And then finally, Paul's fourth statement of don't let anybody do this to you is simply let no one disqualify you. Self Made religion has no divine authority, and self made rules are not required by God. There is no rule against the long hair or the belt celebration. There are no authorities up in the stands who can just whip on a striped shirt and black pants and tell you how you got to play the game. Let no one disqualify you. If Christ has qualified you, you are in. And if Christ has made you part of his body, you are alive and you are growing with the growth that comes from God not the phoney baloney kind of growth that comes from all the do's and don'ts that others might try to impose on you. This is so very important for your and my spiritual life that we realized that worldliness and the flesh and the devil are not just matters of alcohol, or not just matters related to sexuality, but our first of all matters of who do we trust. Who is our everything? Is God's fullness in Jesus or isn't it? If your answer is isn't you've got worldly religion. If your answer is yes, he is the fullness and I've been made full in him, then you are free, then you are truly a Christian. 

Let's pray together. Father, we thank you for the wonderful revelation in Jesus Christ for the free gift of grace, of fullness in him. We pray, Lord, that you'll help us to discern in our own lives where the work of the elemental spirits and of the false systems of this world may still be dragging us down and pulling us away from a single minded focus and trust in Jesus. We pray too Lord for people in our world who are still trapped in self-made religion and do not know the grace of Jesus Christ and do not have salvation in him. We pray for you and your mercy and your love to show yourself to them to help them see the truth of the scriptures to help them see the adequacy, the total adequacy of Jesus, and all that he has done for us and help him Lord to be able to leave behind the old way of the letter and to take up the new way of the Spirit and of the life that comes from being united to Jesus into his body. Lord, help us to live in that joy. Help us to be ambassadors and witnesses for Jesus. We pray in His name, amen.