Christ-Centered Practices Colossians 2:16-19

Well, good morning and welcome to Faith Bible Church. It's another wonderful day. The sun is shining and to worship our Lord and corporately and to lift our voices in song and to hear the word preached and it really doesn't get much better than this.

And it's a joy to be here with y 'all. So, and those that are watching online, I just, we look forward to seeing you again. For any reason that's keeping you away, give us a call and we can just be an encouragement to you, however we can.

But we're thankful that we can meet as we are. I wanted to thank Jack again for the bulletins. What a blessing they are. I say little things, it's a big thing, but it's simple in a way, but it adds so much to our time.

And so thank you, Jack and Carol for helping out. I'm sure you're involved there as well. So, as most husbands will say about their wives and vice versa. So on the way, by way of announcements, we have a baptism next Sunday.

If there's an interest there that you haven't done that, if you haven't participated in being baptized by immersion, we ask that you would come see one of the elders and we'd love to talk to you about that.

And it's not a scary time, really shouldn't be. It's just a time to share your faith and to share what the Lord has done in your life. And it's always great time of testimonials. Ladies Bible study is on September 18th.

In a couple of weeks, that's from 10 to 11 on a Saturday, going through first Kings. So see Barb about, are there notes available now, Barb? So Barb has those for you. And I had another announcement. Oh, there's a kind of began as somewhat impromptu, but there's men's Bible study that's kind of grassroots formed and they're meeting on Saturdays at 3 .30.

So men, if there's an interest there, it sounds like many of you are already getting some traction there and participating. So what a blessing that is. Here at the church. Are you meeting in a fellowship hall then?

Are you in here or wherever? Yeah, make it through the front door and we'll find a place. That's the important part. And so that's kind of it in the way of announcements. Thank you for Barb for playing the piano and for our musicians, Richard and Pam or Katie.

Pam, thank you, Pam, Mom, for having Katie. And David, thank you. There's just faithful people in this church that every week and Dave and Pam on the soundboard to make all this come together. So thank you all.

When we come to Sunday service, we always talk about being prepared. We're always preparing. You prepare to make a meal. You prepare to go to work. You prepare to have any kind of meeting. It's what we do in life.

But when we're preparing for Sunday services, how is that? We just, it's like the Israelites. They would come, they would prepare for the Sabbath day the day before it's sunset. So I don't know that we even come close to preparing like that.

Probably not, I don't. But I think the intent is there for us. We should be readying our hearts, reading the scripture, getting ready for the Lord's day so that we can come before His throne in a worthy and honorable way.

Do we, so to summarize some of the Old Testament directives of that, it's, and I'm just gonna kind of paraphrase through these, examine my heart and mind. Create in me a pure heart. Give me an undivided heart.

Turn my heart towards your statutes. Search me and know my heart. Give me a heart to know you. Purify our minds, prepare our minds. So as pastor said, even this morning, we are a temple of the Lord. So we are refreshing ourselves and readying ourselves to come before the Lord.

It's clear that we need to do, we need some help in coming to a holy God. And so who is this God that we are preparing to worship and how do we do that? And I'd like to read Psalm 24, beginning at verse three.

You could just listen in. Who may ascend into the hill of the Lord or who may stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who has not lifted up his soul to an idol nor sworn deceitfully, he shall receive blessing from the Lord and the righteousness from the God of his salvation.

This is Jacob, the generation of those who seek him, who seek your face, Selah. Lift up your heads, O you gates, and be lifted up, you everlasting doors. And the King of glory shall come in. Who is this King of glory?

The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle. Lift up your heads, O you gates, lift up your everlasting doors and the King of glory shall come in. Who is this King of glory? The Lord of hosts, he is the King of glory.

So that's who we're worshiping this morning, especially as we come to communion at the end of this service today. So please join with me in prayer. Lord God, we do thank you, Father, that you have gathered us here today, that we might honor you with our offerings, Lord, in every way, Father, that we would remember your grace and your goodness and your mercy to allow us to come before a holy God, an undeserving people, a people of born in sin.

But Father, you have redeemed us through the blood of your son, Jesus Christ. So we do have hope, Father. Thank you that we have that. Lord, we pray for those that are home, that are sick, that are not able to come today, Father.

We ask that you would bless them, that you would make yourself present in their own hearts and lives, Father, that there would be a remembrance and a preparation to them, for them, Father, in recognition of you.

We pray for our neighbors up in the foothills and the mountains that are going through trials now with these fires and what a terrible, seemingly destructive thing that it is, and it is, Lord. But Father, your timing is perfect.

This has not happened out of an accident or beside your ability to know what's happening, Father, but it is according to your purpose. But we ask for comfort, we ask for believers to be able to come alongside those that have suffered, that have lost much, and God, may we not forget that, that your mercies are new every day.

So, Lord, we commit our time to your care now, Father. God, go before us, may the Holy Spirit just reside in each one of us and illumine our minds and our hearts that we might see the truth of your word in a fresh way, Father.

God, bless our time now, we pray, in Jesus' name, amen.

David.

Good morning. God is awesome, in him we trust, and in him we honor. Let's stand and sing.

The scripture for this morning is taken from Galatians 5, verses one through six, so turn with me, if you would, to Galatians 5, verses one through six. Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage.

Indeed, I, Paul, say to you that if you become circumcised, Christ will profit you nothing, and I testify again to every man who becomes circumcised that he is a debtor to keep the whole law. You have become estranged from Christ, you who attempt to be justified by law, you have fallen from grace.

For we, through the Spirit, eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness by faith. For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything but faith working through love. And may the Lord add his blessing to the reading of his word.

That's very sweet to trust in Jesus, and let's stand and sing.

Please turn with me to Colossians chapter two. Verses 16 through 19. Colossians chapter two, verses 16 through 19. So let no one judge you in food or in drink, or 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 in 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.

This is the word of the Lord. Let us pray. Father, we come before you because you have made us righteous and has qualified us in Christ Jesus, and we're united with Christ in death and resurrection. And because of that, God, we do not submit to any physical rituals that the pagans and the Jews submit themselves to.

Father, I pray that as we go out, that your spirit would fill us and guide us to live in a manner that's worthy of Christ, in Jesus name. Well, ever since our rebellion against God, we've always sought a way to make something else into a God, whether it is another human being or a wooden statue.

People have always tried to worship things that are not the true God, and worship by nature is often manifested physically. In the ancient Canaanite regions, the pagans would build statues and feed them by offering up food.

So they're feeding these little gods, and they believed by feeding these gods, the statues, that they would be blessed, that these little gods would bless them with good harvest, good fruit, victories against enemies.

And it's sort of like a vending machine. I put some dollars in and expect to get some goods back. The gods would bless because they got something from them. This means that the core of idolatry, of worshiping false gods, is the desire for control.

As long as I do these physical practices and rituals, whether offering up food or bowing to statues, or any of these things, avoiding certain foods, the deity has to bless me. It is about controlling the deity.

I have earned the blessings by my rituals. And this is no wonder why the Lord prevented Israel from making any image. He does not want to be controlled, nor can he be controlled by humans. Similarly, the Colossian heretics, the false teachers, they idolized by partaking in physical rituals in order to please the principalities and the powers, the angelic hosts, the fallen angels.

And what they would get in return would be a spiritual experience and satisfaction. The fullness of knowledge. They were offering up their bodies in order to gain something back spiritually, a spiritual understanding or spiritual wisdom.

They were restricting their bodies from certain food to gain spiritual fullness in return from these principalities and powers. However, Paul explains how pointless that is. Consider even last week, Paul illustrated Christ's triumphant victory on the cross, which put these angelic beings in utter shame, public spectacle.

He boldly claimed that Christ has the fullness of God and the principalities and the fallen angels have nothing. They're just defeated foes tied up in the back of the parade. How then can these defeated foes provide any spiritual fullness?

In this text, Paul shares what we must do knowing that Christ has forgiven us of all of our sins and has conquered Satan and his angels once and for all. This is the question the text asks us today. In Christ, you have spiritual fullness.

Why seek it elsewhere? If Christ is the standard of spiritual fullness, why adopt any other standard? Which leads to the main point. We reject any human-centered practices because Christ is the center.

We reject any human-centered practices because Christ is the center. Now, my first point, we do not judge based upon the physical rituals because they're just a shadow, but Christ is reality. We do not judge based upon physical rituals because they're just a shadow, but Christ is the reality.

After establishing the fact that Christ has completely conquered all principalities and destroying the record of sin against us, Paul commands the church how we ought to live based upon that fact. Verse 16, so let no one judge you in food or in drink or regarding a festival or a new moon or Sabbaths.

Because the evil powers have been defeated, they no longer hold any authority over you or over any of the lives of Christians. Hence, the church is commanded not to judge according to the old standards, the old customs, the traditions of men.

The list of standards here seems Jewish, but they're not completely from the Old Testament. For example, for the Jews, there was no prohibition or modification regarding what to drink. Sure, there were some Nazarites who avoided wine, but to the Jews, drinking wasn't the prohibition, it was mainly the food.

This means the false teaching that was in Colossae was a mixture of pagan and Jewish religions. Whatever it was, Paul strictly warns the church not to place themselves under such restrictions. The verb to judge is from a legal context.

It is to find some action or inaction guilty. It's to attribute sin to some action or inaction or the person who does them. In this case, Paul commends the church not to judge according to two different categories.

First, do not attribute sin of what is consumed, what is put into the body. Second, do not attribute sin to the celebration of the holy days, quote unquote, holy days. Let's look at the first instance.

The false teachers were judging believers in Christ based upon what they ate and drank. Why is this problematic? After all, didn't Jews restrict themselves dietarily? Well, don't Jews still avoid bacon and shrimp to this day?

Yes, but as Christians, we must live with the reality of Christ entering into the world and dying for our sin on the cross. When Christ came, he specifically told us in Matthew 5, 17 that he is here not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it.

To fulfill does not mean maintain. To fulfill means to bring it to an intended end. To fulfill is to fully accomplish the purpose of the law. Now, how is the dietary law fulfilled in Christ? Well, in the Old Testament, the dietary laws were kept as an outward expression pointing to the inward spiritual purity.

This means consuming what was physically impure, such as pigs, we can imagine how pigs could be impure, and bottom-dwelling scavengers, such as shrimp, right? They would be eating flesh of the dead fish.

Those physical realities would make the Jews unclean under the Old Testament. However, Christ came to fulfill what the law was pointing to. Ultimately, the law was pointing to the spiritual purity that was required before the holy God.

In fact, the Old Testament shows that the law could not be kept by the people to keep themselves pure from sin, the moral purity. It only revealed how spiritually impure and bankrupt people actually are.

This is why Jesus corrects the Pharisees and scribes for thinking that washing their hands before eating would keep them pure, and he condemns their judgment against those who didn't wash their hands.

Ultimately, it is not what you eat or what you put into your stomach, but what comes out of your heart that defiles the person. It is the sinful desire that begets sin, rebellion against God, and makes them unclean.

Hence, in Mark 7, 19, Jesus declares all foods clean. He fulfills the dietary law of purity by dealing with what the law ultimately pointed to, the inward moral uncleanliness. As Christians, we are cleansed not by what we eat or what we avoid eating, but by trusting in Christ who died for our sins because his blood cleanses us.

Christ is the ultimate fulfillment of the purification rites, not food or drinks. This is why Paul warns the church to let no one judge based upon food or drinks.

Why?

It is to go backwards. It is to submit yourselves back to the reality before Christ, the reality of foods making people unclean. So, when the false teachers judged Christians for what they were eating and drinking, they were making the church to live as if Christ had not died on the cross and rose from the dead for them.

How can the church be made unclean from food and drinks if Christ has clothed them in his righteousness already? How can the church be made spiritually unclean from physical things if Christ's blood was already shed for the church?

The answer is it can't. And that's why Paul adamantly commands, let no one judge you regarding food or drink. Second, Paul prohibits the church from passing any judgment regarding holy days, a festival or a new moon or Sabbaths.

While Jews kept these holy days in obedience to God, the false teachers in Colossae kept these days to submit to the principalities and powers, the fallen angels whom they believed had power over certain stars and planets.

These days, however, became meaningless when Christ vanquished them once and for all on the cross. Remember, last week, Christ made a public spectacle out of these principalities and powers. He put them into utter shame before the whole universe.

This begs the question, then why judge Christians based upon these holy days tied to the defeated principalities when Christ victoriously reigns from his throne? To attribute sin to those who fail to celebrate these days is to forget what Christ has truly accomplished on the cross.

There was no more moral obligation for the Colossian church to participate in these matters. It would be akin to celebrating Hitler's birthday. Whenever that is. A defeated foe. Then Paul tells us what Christians submitting to these physical rituals is similar to.

Verse 17, which are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ. These physical rituals to please the principalities and false deities is like chasing a shadow. There is just no substance to them.

They're not real. Paul contrasts this to Christ. Christ is the true substance. He is the true body. He actually has real content. Even going back to chapter 2 verse 9, the fullness of deity dwells in Christ.

Only emptiness and deceit are left with these evil powers. The illustration of the shadow works well in modern times as well. Practicing these physical rituals to experience more of God or have more spiritual experience is like chasing after a shadow instead of holding on to the body.

He is saying they're a shadow of the things to come. As you know, shadows do not hold any substance. A shadow weighs nothing. You can't even touch a shadow. But it is an effect of the physical body when the light shines on it.

However, what does Paul say the real deal is? It's found in Christ. Imagine you're waiting for a celebrity or maybe a pastor you look up to, right? And you've been waiting for hours with your friends and around the corner you see a shadow approaching.

Now, do you follow his shadow or just ignore the person you've been waiting for for hours? Who does that? Will you not look at the person, shake hands with the person, talk to the person, maybe even hug the person?

Or would you rather just chase the shadow and obsess over it? Look at this shape. Look at the the color. Here, Paul is saying if you're focusing on these physical rituals, you're more excited about the shadow than the person.

Paul is saying the real substance is Christ. The real body that casts the shadow is Christ. Why would you chase after his shadow if you can commune with him, if you can be united in him? In a similar way, if we try to make something a standard of judgment for Christianity, especially when the Bible is silent on it, then Christ is no longer at the center.

We're effectively chasing after shadows instead of Christ. This can be a lot of things. One example is the type of Bible translation we use. Now, I have my own recommendations, but this is by no means a requirement that I make this church do it.

Nor do I attribute any sin if someone reads a different translation than I do. This is why it baffles my mind when local churches.

Mandate.

A specific translation of the Bible and calls the other ones false or unreliable. This discourages people from reading the Bible that they own. Not only that, they view those who do not use the same version as less mature Christians.

This is precisely what passing judgment looks like. It does not matter whether you have ESV, NASB, KJV, NIV, NKJV, so on, as long as you consistently read it, understand it, and apply it in your lives.

After all, you're seeking God in his word. There is no reason to judge someone as less spiritual or less mature based upon the translation he uses. Second, judgment can occur with the types of worship music.

For some, unless it's only hymns, it cannot be used. Now, I prefer hymns over most contemporary music out today. However, this is not a standard to judge a Christian less mature or not a Christian just because they prefer to listen to or sing non-hymns.

Just because a church sings another genre of music, another type of music, it does not make them less devoted to Christ. It is the content of the song that shows devotion to Christ, not the genre, not the style.

We got to ask, does it honor Christ? Does it represent Christ well? It's not the tempo of the music or style, but what is it saying? Then there is the other spectrum. On the other hand, there are churches who would judge him singing churches because they lack the passion and are boring.

They may say it is not a proper atmosphere without the lights and the continually relaxing piano backtrack. They also don't see people raising their hands, swaying left and right consistently. And to them, a hymn singing church is a dead church.

Now, what right do they have to pass judgments against the local body of Christ? A local body that is united with Christ in death and resurrection. Again, we cannot pass judgment on what the Bible does not specifically prescribe.

Types of worship music and how they are sung are not standards by which we attribute guilt or evaluate their spiritual health. Rather than focusing on the tempo of music or how they're performed, we must ask whether Christ is at the center.

Are the songs about our emotions, our experiences, our feelings, or do these songs point to who God is, how merciful he is and what Christ has done? If it is not the latter, we are chasing after shadows when we judge other churches for their worship style.

Second, we do not disqualify anyone based upon man centered spiritual experiences because Christ is the head. We do not disqualify anyone based upon man centered spiritual experiences because Christ is the head.

After warning the church to not judge based upon physical rituals, Paul warns against condemning others based upon false spiritual experiences. Verse 18, let no one cheat you of your reward, taking delight in false humility and worship of angels and intruding into the things which he has not seen.

I believe let no one cheat you of his reward is too polite. So I prefer how the translations like ESV and NIV say it. Which says disqualify. Let no one disqualify you regarding these things. Paul commands those who are united in Christ cannot be disqualified by anyone.

How can mere men disqualify who are with Christ, who are united to Christ when God is the one who qualified them in the first place? Now, what are the categories in which these false teachers are attempting to disqualify Christians?

There are three spiritual practices and experiences that they were pushing. First, it is about humility. Now, humility is normally a virtue in the Bible because it is the necessarily correct posture before the holy God.

How can the attention be on anyone else but him when he is the most wonderful, marvelous being there is? Thus, it is extremely inappropriate for men to be prideful before God. It de-Gods God and deifies men.

However, the false teachers were promoting false humility. It looks like humility on the outside, but it draws attention to the teacher, to himself. In the ancient context, it was probably extreme fasting, extreme restrictions on the good things.

It was popular amongst ancient pagans to avoid tasty foods and pleasures. They may never drink wine or never get married because that was the holier way of living. They would place extra restrictions not only on themselves, but they would put it on their followers.

If you want to be like me, you better not get married. This is ironic because by abstaining from all those things, which the Bible doesn't talk about, and teaching others to follow through, it placed extra hurdles into other people's lives.

They placed more focus on them and their teaching, and their crooked ways, rather than on God. People looked at them either in awe or curiosity, why they were having only bread and water every other day, or living on top of a pole for decades.

These people really existed. Nowadays, false humility looks like this, a public self-criticism. Outwardly, it looks like the person is being humble. Oh, I'm horrible at doing that, or I'm not a good blank.

You know, I'm not a good person. I'm not a good pastor. I'm not a good teacher. I'm not a good dad. I'm not a good mom. Or I'm such a failure. This may be done on social media or around other people. The key is there are other people around to hear their self-criticism.

This is not done by himself. And immediately, what does the audience say, right? The people who hear this, they outright deny that claim. Oh, no, you're great at that. No, you're a great dad. You're a great pastor.

Oh, don't say that. You're so good. It immediately draws the attention to the falsely humble person.

It fuels their pride.

What is more perverse is when these people deceitfully practice false humility and proclaim their flaws outwardly for the purpose of getting praises. They do it for the purpose of other people's approval.

They intentionally put themselves down for that reason. And this is not humility. True humility draws zero attention to self. True humility does not focus on self, whether good or bad. True humility points all praises to God and surrenders all weaknesses to God.

False humility places the spotlight on self. False humility attempts to deify self. The second item on the list in which the false teachers tried to disqualify the church was in worship of angels. I have to clarify that Jews did not worship angels.

They were monotheists. They worshiped the Lord. But they had a high view of angels because of the apocalyptic writings. Think Daniel, right? It is angels who come and they reveal secret visions. And now Daniel did not worship any angels.

Daniel worshiped the one true God. So the worship of angel probably had some mixture of pagan influence as well. And what they would do is they would entrust in these angels to reveal new mysteries, secrets, and they would worship them.

Now, the Colossian heretics started urging the church to worship the angels, these created beings. Considering Jesus is the creator and redeemer and everything exists for him and because of him, it was extremely wicked for these false teachers to command worship of angels, mere creatures.

If Christ is best, then why fall down to the lesser? If Christ conquered all, why worship the losers? In fact, many false religions revolve around angels. Why are Mormons called Mormons? Because the angel who gave Joseph Smith, the founder of the religion, a new revelation in addition to the Bible was named Moroni.

The founder of Islam, Muhammad, was supposedly visited by angel Gabriel who revealed to him new things that contradict with the Bible, the very word of God. We have two major religions here who place more emphasis on the words of an angel over the word of God.

Even if these occurrences happened, how can mere words of angels trump the very word of God? Nowadays, modern men want to focus on the extraterrestrial encounters where they believe that these supposed aliens will tell us where humans came from or they even believe that these aliens created us.

This is just modern angelic worship. Other beings, beings that are not like us and they'd rather worship them than God who truly created us. However, we know Christ is the creator and everything that exists owes its existence to God, to Christ.

Christianity is actually centered around God who became human and he reveals himself to us and he saves us from our sin. If our goal is Christ, why focus on the lesser beings? Any attempt at giving credit or honor to anyone but God is an outright rebellion against Christ.

The last one on the list is visions. Intruding into those things which he has not seen. It is about what the false teachers emphasized, things to see. While NKJV clarifies that these false teachers actually have not seen any visions, I think NASB interprets it clearly for us what Paul is specifically warning us about.

Taking his stand on visions he has seen. The false teachers were emphasizing visions related to the angelic encounters. The ancient false teachers were very devoted to having mystical visions. Perhaps these two false practices are related because the angels would guide them in the mystical visions.

Or they believe that. The problem with how the false teachers emphasize the visions is that the focus went back to them. Now, note how the apostle Paul talks about his visionary experience. It is about the message and not him.

He is even hesitant to mention that this person is him. 2 Corinthians 12, four through six, he was caught up into paradise and heard inexpressible words which a man is not permitted to speak. He doesn't even want to talk about what he saw or heard.

In behalf of such a man, I will boast. But in my own behalf, I will not boast except regarding my weaknesses. For if I do wish to boast, I will not be foolish. For I'll be speaking the truth. But I refrain from this so that no one will credit me with more than he sees or hears from me.

Paul does not want any credit for his experience. He's even hesitant to talk about it. It is inexpressible. He does not make the vision or himself the focus. Unlike the false teachers, he dares not to boast about his experience or his special position before God.

Most importantly, Paul knows that focusing on these visions takes the spotlight away from Christ, the ultimate revelation of God, the God incarnate and the word of God who dwelt among us and we have seen his glory.

Why does the church need to focus on unpromised visions? Right. God doesn't promise us visions or experience when we have the very word of God. When he is present to us in his word every day. Open your Bible, read it out loud.

Sadly, this is prevalent in certain denominations of churches or maybe churches. They claim that some of the elite Christians, perhaps the pastors or the elders or the deacons have encountered God in a vision or that God has shown them something specific about the future, the election.

How the world's going to end. Unfortunately, this occurs quite frequently and it's purely man centered. It is about what God has shown specifically to me, what God has revealed to me and nobody else. These visionaries feel superior naturally to other believers, the vast majority of people who did not see any vision.

And these people who have not seen the vision would feel effectively inferior. They end up looking up to these seers, the visionaries. However, this is not even a biblical category to measure a person's spirituality.

The fruit of the spirit does not consist of visions and prophetic words. Spiritual maturity does not involve heavenly visions or angelic encounters. Jesus remained perfect and complete on earth without talking about any visions he had or seeking out visions.

The disciples don't ask him, teach us how to have visions. They do ask, teach us how to pray. This is why we must not disqualify anyone for not having visions. Or prophetic words or supernatural godly encounters.

Because that's not how God works with us. We don't get to ask him, hey, I want a vision now. Now, why are these people who are falsely humble, worshiping angels and focused on visions dangerous? Because these things take the spotlight away from Christ.

False humility gathers attention towards the person. Imagine if someone hasn't eaten in weeks on purpose so they could have an outer body experience. I don't know about you, even my attention would be on him just out of curiosity.

Like how? Angel worship squanders our devotion on angels, created beings who are not God. And visions focus on the details seen rather than the savior, the true revelation of God. All of these things lead to one thing, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind.

Vainly shows the worthlessness. The mind is puffed up with nothing. It's empty. Fleshly is an ironic term to describe their minds because the false teachers believe that they were more spiritual, closer to God by partaking in these visions and worship of angels.

Yet Paul describes them as fleshly, not spiritual, but sinful, earthly, worldly. They're bloated with garbage information and their minds remain unspiritual, sinful, focused on the wrong things and blind to the marvelous savior.

Paul illustrates the sad reality of the false teachers using a bodily metaphor. Verse 19, 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.

If you do any of these things, you're not holding on to the head. Christ, you are a headless body searching for other objects to put on your shoulders. It's only funny in cartoons, but in reality, it's a pitiful and frightening thing.

It is severed from the true source of life and it leads to death, just like all bodies without the head. Then Paul defines the function of the head. Christ, the head provides for the church, the body to grow, to be nourished and knit together.

We're only unified and nourished because of Christ and God causes the body to grow. That's why Christians are to hold fast to Christ. Christ is the only being that unifies the church together. It is not some spiritual experience.

It is not some emotional high. It is not some false virtue. It is not the pastor.

It is Christ.

It is only through Christ, we are nourished and knit together as a body. It is only through Christ that we're able to grow, not pursuing any other false spiritual practices, but only by pursuing Christ.

If a spiritual practice centers around man, be very wary. There are a lot of Bible study books and spiritual retreats that use the Bible, but they incorrectly interpret it to make it centered around the reader.

Those programs often have you start reading the Old Testament stories, maybe of David or of Abraham. And without discussing the context, they immediately place you in the text, right? All of a sudden you become David fighting against Goliath and Goliath is not in written the context, right?

It's not the enemy of God who mocks the living God. That's the context of first Samuel. No, because you're all of a sudden, David, it's your enemy. Goliath becomes your troublesome neighbor. Goliath becomes your job.

Goliath becomes the IRS. Whatever you're facing that day, whatever face you're facing that day, you read that into that. Suddenly scripture, which is written to reveal who God is, what he has done becomes a storybook about you as the main character.

That's a man centered spiritual experience and practice. Before you know it, the crucifixion only becomes an example of what you'd need to do when you go through a trial. You got to carry your own cross like Jesus, rather than an ultimate atoning sacrifice, graciously carried out by the son of God to take away the sin of the world.

And purchase our freedom from sin. Scripture, which starts out with in the beginning, God, suddenly is transformed to me, me and me. And this is why Paul warns the church to reject any man centered practices, but rather hold onto the head, Christ.