Colossians - What Freedom In Christ Doesn't Look Like

God Centered Theology

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Chuck Swindoll, in his book, The Grace Awakening, gives this account. He says, One of my favorite stories comes from a man who used to be in our church.

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He and his wife were close friends of our family, but they have now moved to another part of the country. We really miss their joyful presence.

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When he was a youth worker many years ago, he attended a church that had Scandinavian roots. Being a rather forward -looking and creative young man, he decided he would show the youth group a missionary film.

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We're talking a simple, safe, black -and -white, religious -oriented movie. The film projector hadn't even been off an hour before a group of the leaders in the church called him in and asked him what he had done.

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They asked, Did you show this young people a film? And in all honesty, he's like,

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Yeah, so? He's like, Well, we don't like that. They replied.

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And without trying to be argumentative, the youth worker reasoned, Well, I remember that at our last missionary conference, they showed slides.

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And so at this point, one of the church officers put his hand up signaling to him to cease talking. And in these words, he emphatically explained the conflict.

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If it's still, meaning pictures, if it's still, you're fine. If it moves, that's sin.

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So if it's a motion picture, oh, that's sin. But if it's still, that's fine. He was never given any reason why for this, or chapter and verse.

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It was just simply what was told to him. Well, we follow that up with a quote by Jack Deere, writing in,

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Surprised by the Power of the Spirit, he says, The essence of legalism, which is what this young youth worker encountered, is trusting in the religious activity rather than trusting in God.

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It is putting our confidence in a practice rather than in a person. And without fail, that will lead us to love the practice more than the person.

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I'm in a very unique position in that if anybody in the world could preach

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Colossians 2, 16 to 23, and have a life experience to where you could speak essentially on a doctorate level on it,

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I'm that person. I grew up in legalism. I grew up in fundamentalism. I've experienced it.

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I've seen other people that have struggled with it. I've come out of it. I've seen other people to be freed from it.

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And the joy that comes from knowing what freedom in Christ is, rather than what it isn't, is something that a lot of Christians struggle with.

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And false teachers, people that want to try to, ultimately what it is, is when legalism, what you take, and we've talked about this on Wednesday nights, these third level, second and third level issues, things that should not divide

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Christians. You can have a healthy debate, something like eschatology in times, or how you go about doing church, and things like this.

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Things that really shouldn't be a deal. And it's elevated to a definitional level. It's elevated to a first level issue.

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So, things like the deity of Christ, authority of Scripture, justification by faith, the Trinity, those things that are foundational, definitional to the faith, the things that you would very clearly say, you are these things or you are not

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Christian. The legalism takes all those things that shouldn't be on that level, and raises it at least equal to, if not above the foundation and definitional issues.

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So, he's right here, what essentially happens is the people fall in love with the practice, or the doing of a thing, more so the why, or the foundation behind it.

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In both the story of the youth worker, and the quote I gave you, we see what freedom in Christ is not.

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We see what freedom in Christ doesn't look like. You can go back and listen to previous sermons to get the full encompassing understanding here.

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I'm not going to rehash all this now, but these false teachers that were infiltrating the Colossian Church, this heresy that they were teaching was a form of sort of like this elitist spirituality.

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Sort of a holiness that was found independent of Jesus Christ. A spirituality based on actions, and rituals, and traditions, and putting them in confidence, and making sure something was done just right, rather than putting their full trust in Christ alone.

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And see the problem with legalism, the problem with anything that ventures into elevating something to the level of a definitional issue, anytime this is attempted what we do is we engage in a form of legalism that puts chains on Christians that Christ already broke.

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You see? Notice the picture, Christ's hands breaking the chains of sin, breaking the slavery of sin, the bondage of sin.

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Going from a place where we are slaves to sin, we are now slaves of righteousness, slaves of Christ.

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The coolest and the best part in the transformation of salvation is that now you are free in respect of sin.

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You have the power of the Holy Spirit to overcome it. You can actually walk in Christ. An unregenerate person can't do that.

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That's the breaking of those chains. You see it, and we are going to see this pop up here when we get into the text in a minute.

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But the Old Testament law was never meant to be a means of salvation. It was meant to be pointing to the need for a

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Savior. Paul puts it in the book of Galatians, a schoolmaster to teach us that you can't make it to God's standard.

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It was never meant to be about rules, and regulations, and laws, and do this or don't do that. It was meant about being in Christ.

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Now, and we are going to touch on this as well. This doesn't mean that rules, and law, and God's moral law means that God hasn't said that certain things are okay, and certain things are not.

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Obviously thou shalt not murder is still in the Bible, okay? But you shouldn't murder. There is a distinction there when you say, well

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I'm not under law, I'm not under legalism. That's not saying we do away with all rules.

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We do away with God's moral law, and so on and so forth. But to attempt to engage in legalism, that's essentially what you're doing.

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You're putting chains on Christians that Christ already broke. So we're going to start in verse 16.

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Let's take a look specifically, and when you're dealing with Scripture, and you're interpreting it, part of the interpretive process is trying to draw application.

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And you can't necessarily take the exact cultural context, or the specific context of this church, and find necessarily an apples -to -apples direct parallel in 2019.

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But there are things where you can make application. So while the exact nature of the heresy in the

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Colossian church may not be the exact nature of something we may see in our day, whether it's in Emporia, around the country, or even around the world, it takes on different forms.

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Satan knows which things to try to slip in the church. He knows how to slip it into Christians' lives.

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It will take on different forms. The response to it, and the underlying message remains the same.

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Verse 16 it says, "...therefore," meaning in light of the fact, everything he just covered, verse 8 through verse 15, and including the rest of the book, that in Christ you're this, in Christ you're that,

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He reconciled us, we're holy saints, we're God's people. All that into context.

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He says, "...therefore no one is to act as your judge in regard to food or drink, or in respect to a festival, or a new moon, or a

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Sabbath day, things which are a mere shadow of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Christ."

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These false teachers in Colossae were no different than the Pharisees of Jesus' day, with all their rules and regulations, and their elitist attitude.

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That had to be done, things had to be done a certain way, a certain time. They were coming into Colossae teaching all kinds of different things.

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So what you see in these first verses, it was things in terms of what you can eat, what you can drink.

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And these were largely an ascetic type religious atmosphere for these people. So they were really big into the self -humility.

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And not a proper humility, but a fake one. You know they would severely and rigorously keep, you know abstain from things that hurt their bodies, and abstain from food, and abstain from this, and abstain from that, and you can't do this, you can't do that, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on.

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And for them that was their righteousness. You know I'm going to stand before God, and He's going to love me because look at all that.

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No. In respect to festivals, new moons, Sabbath days, they were real big on which holy days you celebrated.

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Festivals, how you celebrated them, when you celebrated them. They elevated them.

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They were so important. You have to do it this way. You have to do this part this way, this part this way.

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Paul says they were a mere shadow of what is to come. They were never meant to be the thing.

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Christ is the head. Christ is all and in all. He's the head. He's the supreme. He's the king.

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These things, even the sacrifices themselves never saved anyone. Their faith in what

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God had said, and telling them to perform these sacrifices, and doing them through that faith is what saved

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Old Testament saints. The same way today our very works don't save us, but it is our faith that leads into works.

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We were created in Christ to be His workmanship. Works is an evidence of faith.

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It's not the basis of faith. It's also the evidence of your salvation, not the basis of your salvation.

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But they were going on and on about this thing, and this thing. And what ended up happening is you had a situation where these so -called elite were judging everyone else.

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They had to be up to their standard. Well, you didn't celebrate that festival like you're supposed to. Haven't you read

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Leviticus 23 .2? You didn't wear this, or wear that, or do this, or do that. You must not be

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Christian. You must not be good enough. Calling people's fellowship and acceptance by God into question.

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Now look, pre -salvation in the unregenerate state, there is none righteous, no not one.

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There's no one that's ever going to be good enough that's going to be perfect. God's admission into His Kingdom is perfection, perfect righteousness.

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It's something that atheists stumble over all the time. The fact that God can demand perfection in the interest of His Kingdom.

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Not a single soul living or has ever lived has perfection. So therefore, how could Heaven be populated by anything other than goose egg?

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Zero. It's because in salvation, Christ's righteousness is credited to our account.

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We're treated by God as if we're perfectly righteous, even though we're not. That's the good news of salvation.

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Not that we somehow achieve a righteousness under our own, but that the very righteousness of Christ becomes ours.

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And it is that righteousness that we stand before God in right standing. The very works that you do as Christians, the very righteousness that you live out and do, still isn't yours.

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It's not mine. It's the righteousness of Christ working in and through you to transform you, to be a witness for the community, to be a witness for those around you that aren't saved.

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It's never meant to be religion. It's never meant to be religious. One of the things

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I talk a lot about when I talk in leadership is I say, don't do it because of the have -to's, do it because of the want -to's.

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If you're doing it because you have to, are you really doing it? I don't suspect

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Daniel was too bad of a child growing up, but I'm sure if your mama told you to clean your room, if you did it because you had to, are you really doing it because you care about your room?

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No, you're doing it because you don't want the wrath of Deborah coming down on you, right? Deborah, you don't have any wrath, do you?

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Brother, I'd pick on you, but that hits home in my house. I never would have imagined in all my years to getting a seven -year -old to do something as simple as put her shoes on.

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It could be so difficult. Hannah, go put on your shoes. Get down the hallway, going to get my stuff.

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Five minutes later, coming back, there's bare feet. Oh, Jesus. So I've started, sometimes

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I fail and I yell at my child. I'm just like, baby, I'm going to ask you one more time nicely.

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I don't understand. It's like a mental block. And then I'm like, I seem to remember another little child named

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Mandy Kane who wouldn't listen. And you know, so what is it they say?

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You see yourself in your children, you tend to get payback. I can even, mama would tell me this story about her mom, used to tell her to her face,

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I pray you have a child one day that rolls their eyes at you and doesn't listen to you.

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And she did. He's called John Robert. I wasn't an eye roller. I was the, you know, had to have last word kind of guy.

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You know, my brother was the eye roller. So, you know, doing it because you want to, that's what you're wanting to teach your children.

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It's teaching them the importance of why we clean a room, the importance of why we do these things. Bringing them to church, why do we do the

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Lord's Supper? Why do we have worship services? Why do we have Sunday school? It's not some ritual to get through.

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It's not something to look at, and that's the thing with creativity and variety. You take the chains off, let people use their spiritual gift.

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You always have oversight with it. You always want to have an oversight in the sense that you're keeping things in watch and making sure people have good direction, but as much as you can, you want to get out of the way and let people learn to do things because they want to.

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Learn to let people use their gifts, develop their gifts, engage in variety. Try new things, and sometimes you'll fail, and that's okay.

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That's perfectly okay. God doesn't expect you to be perfect. Please, Lord, show me where it says that because it doesn't.

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It says quite the opposite. It says you're not. You know what it does say? Walk in righteousness.

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The habit of your life, the continuing, consistent habit of your life should be marked by Christ and righteousness, not what these people were bringing to Colossae, a situation that nobody can live in.

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Rules and regulations and ways to do it, nobody can measure up to that. No human.

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I don't even know if Christ would want that. He'd take what the Father commanded over what these people were commanding. After all,

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Jesus Himself said, take my yoke upon you, for it's easy. Looking at Romans chapter 14, verses 5 through 6,

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Paul in similar fashion hits on the subject and says, one person regards one day above another, another regards every day alike.

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Each person must be fully convinced in his own mind. Notice that, fully convinced in your own mind.

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That means how you live your life in relation to God Almighty is not for you to take to someone else and make them live to your standard.

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Well, I think everybody should drive this way, or I think everybody should have their house decorated this way. I think everybody should do their devotions at 5 a .m.,

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or at 6 a .m., or at 7 p .m. You know, if you don't do it for 30 minutes or more, you're really not doing a devotion, now are you?

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I pray for three hours every night. Well, good for you. Some of us pray without ceasing and do it in five second chunks throughout the day.

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Nothing wrong with praying for three hours, and if you do that, you know what, you'll probably have a much better prayer life than some of us.

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But it's not up to you to make everybody else pray like you do, or read the Bible like you do, or as often as you do, or drive the way you do.

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I mean, you can fill in the blank with literally anything. This is not singling out any number of things. Fill it out with anything.

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And that's what Paul's trying to tell them. Some of you are going to regard certain days as more important. That's okay.

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Some people go crazy for Christmas. Other people are just like, you know,

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I mean, it's all good. I mean, I enjoy it. Some people, their birthday is their thing. I mean, it's just they really go all out.

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For some people, it's Super Bowl Sunday. And for others, they're like, oh God, is this over yet?

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Can we move on to something else? I hate football. Those poor wretched souls need prayer. Brent, there's variety in life.

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Someone said variety is the spice of life. Don't make anyone live up to your standard.

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Worry about this one. There's a reason God did not have a

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Bible that's so big that no one can lift it to cover every possible scenario, every possible rule, every possible situation, because He doesn't want you following Him, checking off your list.

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He says, walk in righteousness. Seek Him.

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Be humble. Humble yourself and God will lift you up. Don't let anybody, whether in these walls or outside these walls, hold you to something above what this has said.

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Now look, God's Word is a high standard. God has expectations of His people.

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But also, doesn't want us in Colossian type fashion, holding standards that we were never meant to carry, and thus putting chains on Christians that Christ already broke.

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You know the people of Colossia were no different than 2019. We have it today. Every church struggles with this.

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It's sort of like we talk about balance a lot. You know I talk about Wednesday nights a lot. You know there's inward -outward balance.

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You want to have care and concern over your own people, but you're also looking outside your walls because you're supposed to be reaching your community.

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You always want to make sure you're in balance. You don't want to be so overly inward -focused that you never look outside your walls. But you also don't want to live every day of your life out there and completely ignore people that are on the insides.

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There's balance, right? Well there's balance to this too. So every church will, you know there's some churches that may struggle more with legalism, some that don't struggle at all.

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But then the other extreme to avoid is you don't want to be over here and say, well, you know rules, checklist, checklist.

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But the other extreme to avoid is, it really doesn't matter what you do, just do whatever you want. Oh, Bible, who cares about that?

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Who cares what Paul, God, anybody? Avoid the extremes. Walk in balance.

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A false balance is an abomination to the Lord. It says in Proverbs, walk in balance. But it still happens today.

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Everything from how people dress, to what they eat or drink, to how they celebrate certain days.

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It may not be a, what do they call it, a Sabbath. Hold on one second, a

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Sabbath or a new moon. It may not be things like that. But it still happens.

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16a, therefore no one is to act as judge. But also notice in verse 18 it says, that no one keep defrauding you of your prize by delighting in self -abasement and the worship of the angels.

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These people even worshiped angels. Worshipped angels. And the thing is, watch it too, it says, taking his stand on visions he has seen.

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So what they were telling these Colossians and the believers is, hey, if you do like me, if you really do these festivals right, if you worship angels and do all these special things, you'll be spiritually elite.

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That will be extra spiritual. And you know what? You'll have visions. No, you won't.

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And if you do, something is wrong. God doesn't operate that way today. There is no new revelation, there is this.

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But they wanted to convince them that if you are just like us, look at all these things you'll have. Elitism.

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Legalism. See if you have Christ, if you have the

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Spirit of God indwelling you, you have no need of anything less than Christ. We are not going to read it now, but if you go back to the paragraph preceding where we are at today, it tells us in verse 10, you are completing

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Christ. Verse 11, in Him you receive a circumcision of the heart. Verse 12, we died and were buried with Him.

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We were also united with Him in His resurrection. Verse 13, He made us alive and forgave us of our sins.

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Verse 14, He canceled our debt. Who is in a better position to tell you how to live your life? The one that entered creation and died for you, or a bunch of created beings who think they know better than God.

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Legalism decays, it kills, it robs you of your identity.

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I know. It didn't matter who I was or what I thought or wanted to be, you were told what to be.

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And you are only good enough if you are that. It didn't matter what the Bible said. We are free to obey

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Christ. We live in freedom in Christ. And like I said, we are going to focus on what that looks like and the joy that comes with that next week.

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Verse 21 and 22, it says, I'm sorry, back up to verse 20. If you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world, why, as if you were living in the world, do you submit yourself to such decrees as do not handle, do not taste, do not touch, do not do this, do not do that, do this, do that.

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It says, they are all things which are destined to perish with use.

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In accordance to the commandments and teaching of men, what he's saying is, don't focus on what the creation tells you, focus on what the creator tells you.

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Don't focus on things like buildings and clothes and money and material created things.

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Focus on what God wants to accomplish in and through people.

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There is one thing that will solve legalism more than anything else in this world. It is tried and true, and I guarantee you it will work.

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It's called O -T -H -E -R -S. Others.

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When you're focused on others and agape love and meeting their needs, you're not focused so much on self and whether or not your demands are being met.

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Too many of what they have is what I call a man -centered theology. It starts with man and reasons up to God.

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I think this, or I feel this, or this is what works, or this is what I want to see, and then we reason back into the scriptures, reason up.

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A God -centered theology starts with God and comes down. We are lower than God.

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We are not God. Verse 23, these are the matters which have to be ensured, the appearance of wisdom, the appearance of wisdom in self -made religion or would -be religion and self -abasement and severe treatment of the body, but are of no value against fleshly indulgence, no value against sin.

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Follow a long list of rules conforming to every possible thing that someone wants to hold over you in your

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Christian life, in your Christian walk. It may make you feel good in the moment because you think, man, I checked all the boxes.

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But when the real battles come, when sin creeps at your door and you've got to stand against it, that won't do anything for you.

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But a close, deep relationship with the

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Creator, overwhelmingly conquer. Overwhelmingly conquer.

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Victorious living, abundant life. And you won't find that in legalism.

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As we proceed to close, just a couple of closing thoughts and then we'll be finished. So many

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Christians today are sucked in by the latest self -help book or religious improvement, latest fads.

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Many churches fall in these regards, too. You see a lot of these, you know, get big, quick schemes, kind of like get rich schemes, or it's a get big, quick scheme.

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Do this five -step program and you have 500 people in your auditorium. There's no place for that.

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They'll seek out and follow all the latest fads, or they'll even go the opposite way and worship the past or resist change for the mission altogether.

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Legalism, man -centered religion is deceptive. It creeps into your life and your church and oftentimes it doesn't enter the radar.

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Before you know it, you're going with what man thinks rather than what God has said. And what is truly tragic in all of it is that the greatest and fastest way to lose joy and growth in a church is to ignore and refuse what

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God has said and rather submit to what man thinks. If you want joy in the church, it comes from being obedient to Christ, obedient to God.

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False teachers, false religious systems, and specifically legalism always focuses on something other than Christ.

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Remember what I said at the beginning? Eat, drink, new moon, Sabbath, religious festivals, worshiping angels, what do they all have in common?

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They were independent of Christ. No mention of Him. So in other words, it's a mindset that says, you must worship as I do, you must use the translation that I use, you must do your service like we do or I want, you must perform these rituals like I prescribe, eat as I do, drink as I do, walk as I do, dress as I do, live as I do.

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And what Paul is saying here on the pages of Scripture, Colossians 2, 16 -23, is that this is not how a

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Christian operates. It's not what freedom in Christ looks like.

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When a Christian or a church is focused on the trivial, when you focus on a man -centered way of thinking and operating, when you elevate that which is independent of God and not in submission to what

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God has said and does not seek God above all else, even if it means letting some of your traditions have to die, and we all have our traditions, then what it means is you will, and watch this now, this is the key for next week, don't miss this, when you do that, when the trivial becomes dominant, you will only go as far as what man can take you.

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Don't miss that. If you elevate the trivial, and we have some struggles with this here, you will only go as far as what man can take you.

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And trust me, man will not take you far. But if you focus on God, if you focus on Christ, and be willing to do whatever

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He would lead us to do, the possibilities are endless.

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And the preview for next week is this, for too long, so many

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Christians have been caught up in what man can do. What I want to see is what