Self Made Religion

Good morning, Church.

Hear now the words of the true and living God, Colossians 2, starting in verse 16.

Therefore, let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath.

These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.

Let no one disqualify you insisting on asceticism of and worship of angels, going on in detail about 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 a growth that is from God.

If with Christ you died to 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.

These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Good morning.

Thanks for joining us this morning.

My name is James Rathman.

I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church Denver.

Let's pray, and then we'll go ahead and move into our text for today.

Holy Father, we thank you for a cool morning to gather together and worship you.

Lord, I pray that you would give us a deeper clarity of what it means to seek Christ as the head of our lives.

Lord, would you help us to see what that means we shake off and what that means we take on?

Would you show us the boundaries of our faith and of our faith in you?

That it might be supported like a healthy relationship, where in knowing who we are and who we are to one another, that we might honor you and love you as we were created to be.

Lord, I pray that by your spirit you would attend this morning.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So it's a bit of a cooler morning.

That's a nice thing.

But in our building during some renovations that are taking place, you might have noticed if you've used the bathrooms that they're dark.

Maybe you haven't.

Who went to the bathroom?

Okay, so they uh a uh power line was cut, and so our bathrooms are dark.

So if you're going to the bathroom, just a pro tip, bring your phone and uh use the flashlight as if you would leave your phone.

It's like half the reason I go to the bathroom.

So, with announcements out of the way, we're still in the heart of Paul's main argument for this text in Colossians.

And uh his main argument can be summed up in this central verse of the book, which is Colossians 2, verse 6.

Colossians 2:6

And it's one of those deceptively simple verses.

It says, Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him.

This is Paul's whole argument for the book.

As you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him.

This is a young church that has just heard the news of the gospel and they're just beginning to understand what it really means that Christ is Lord, that he has saved them, that he is the one who has brought them in, brought them from death to life, qualified them, and made them a people.

And his challenge to them is that they might mature in Christ.

And the whole path of maturity as a Christian, the whole path of Christian maturity is continuing in Christ in the way that you began in him.

That's Paul's message here.

The gospel that initially brought you in, this message that Christ is Lord, that he has saved you, that is the very path forward as well.

Now, today we're approaching one of the most difficult aspects of our faith, and probably one of the aspects of our faith that is the most offensive just culturally, but perhaps anywhere.

And that's that Christ's claims to be the exclusive way to God.

That if you are to be saved, if you are to know the Lord, if you are to know God, Christ is the only way.

That's an insane claim.

It's it's it when we state it so plainly, there's something that we just bristle against and we already start running counterfactuals in our mind.

I've been listening to this uh series of lectures on YouTube called Awakening from the Meaning Crisis.

YouTube, I think I mentioned this last week, it's a wonderful website, all sorts of videos on there.

And it's called Awakening from the Meaning Crisis, and it's this cognitive scientist who is kind of walking through these different um uh patterns of thought that we've had from ancient cultures up through the modern age and showing how we've entered into a moment where that he calls a meaning crisis, which is that the modern world that we inhabit provides no framework for us to view our lives as meaningful.

And because of that, we're in a deep age of anxiety, and that anxiety manifests itself in all kinds of ways in our culture.

Now, I was listening this past week and he finally made it up to the Jesus part.

We were in uh the pre-Socratics, which are the people before Socrates.

They didn't know that at the time, they didn't refer to themselves as that.

Um yeah, that's just like we're actually the pre-Jonathens.

Just wait.

He's gonna be wild.

Um and uh up through Socrates, and then uh finally through some of the uh Stoics and the Epicureans and then to Jesus himself.

And it's been it's been so amazing to watch because he's not a Christian in his teaching, and he spoke with just amazing confidence, just such some of the best descriptions of these worldviews and philosophies that I've ever heard anywhere.

They're really remarkable.

And then he gets to Jesus, and it's just like this flood of confusion and not knowing what to do with the most central claims of Christianity.

He has place in some of the most beautiful exposition of what agape love is, of this unconditional love, like the way a parent loves a child, where you receive nothing in return, and by loving them you make them a human.

And he shows how Christianity expressed this into the world for the first time.

But then when it gets to these uh these claims, these most central claims of our faith that Christ is Lord, that he was God.

He even says, he says, he says, when we talk about Socrates, it's one thing to talk about Socrates, but when we talk about Jesus, millions and millions of people to this day think he is God.

That's pretty wild, right?

I mean, I I think we're we uh that can be kind of lost on us uh because it's become such a familiar idea.

So he starts to wander around, and I think so much of the wandering that he's doing revolves around this, it's referred to as the scandal of particularity.

That God, when he revealed himself to us in his absolute most highest revelation of who he is, he did not give us a list of ideas like Plato.

He did not give us a method like Socrates, he did not show us a mode of accessing a truth which is lying dormant within us if we only perform the right practices to discover it, like the Buddha.

No, he revealed himself as a person.

Not like a shared hallucination that a group of people could all, you know, rally around, but just one person.

Not one person who exists in all places and all times, one person, one place, one time, one lifetime.

This is the revelation of God in Jesus Christ.

It is so particular as to be scandalous.

But then Christianity is also paired with the scandal of particularity, with this claim of Christ, that He is the way to God for anyone who would come to Him.

That there is no qualification which any person might bring, that they might need to bring in order to come to Christ, be absolutely atoned for, made righteous, perfect in the sight of God, and brought to their highest being, which is a creature of the Lord, a son of God, like we sung this morning.

What who what who is it available to to be called a son of God?

Through Christ, it is available to every one of you.

And to any other group of people, any other individual that you might happen to meet ever, anyone that you see walking down the road, you might look in their eyes and see that person, if they come to Christ, is an eternal son of God who will live and dwell with the Lord in glory for all eternity because of Christ alone.

Christianity, one of the things that will help you interpret scripture better and understand what the claims of Christ are better, is uh it rarely takes two ideas and causes them to meet in the middle.

Typically, it just takes 100% of both.

Who is Jesus?

Uh well he's a man and he's God.

Okay, okay, so he's like really God, but he showed himself to us like a man.

Nope.

Nope.

Okay, okay.

So he's really a man, but then God imbued, you know, some godness qualities into this one particular man, right?

I mean, yeah, nope, nope, that's not it.

Okay, well, how are we going to resolve this?

He's 100% God and 100% a man.

And then we consider what is our what is the claim of faith, what is the claim here?

Is Christianity exclusive or is it inclusive?

Well, you know, it it's in it's in it's totally inclusive for these types of people or whatever.

Or it's uh totally exclusive uh in its claims.

No, we we just took it all.

It's totally exclusive.

What is the way to God?

One man.

One man.

And to whom is it available?

To any who would come to him.

There is no depth of sin, there is no level of egregiousness which can prevent you from finding the Lord in Christ Jesus.

Today, Paul is showing the Colossians that it is not only necessary to know Christ, that he is not just a necessary ingredient, but that he is sufficient.

That in order to come to God, in order to be made righteous before the Lord, to be in God's people, Christ is sufficient.

You need to bring nothing else to the table.

Now, this idea of the sufficiency of Christ is more than just he's able to do it all.

It also means that if we add anything to Christ for our salvation, then we've missed it.

And any addition that we make to Christ for our salvation is actually transforming our understanding of Christ in such a way where we're no longer believing in Christ as he is.

We're no longer seeing him as the all-sufficient Lord, and we are we have transformed, twisted our faith into something that it that it isn't.

So today we're going to see the exclusion that many of the Christians in Colossae were experiencing, exclusion, exclusion from different groups of people within the congregation.

And then we're going to see another level down of exclusion, which was exclusion of individuals from one another.

And then we're going to see how there is nothing that we can add to Christ, which doesn't ultimately take away from him.

Our call is to hold fast to Christ alone.

Alright, so let's jump in and do that.

Um, also a request.

Would you mind grabbing me of water?

My mouth is so dry and I didn't bring any.

Thanks, Krista.

Yeah, is it a little warm?

I hadn't noticed.

I decided to wear my jeans.

It's because I can't preach in shorts, because I don't think the gospel will work.

And now I'm going to preach a sermon about why that's absurd.

All right.

Colossians 2, 16.

It says, therefore, let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath.

Okay, so in this line of argument, remember we're under this hold fast to Christ just as you came in, follow him.

And remember also, thanks, Krista.

Thank you.

Okay.

Oh wow.

Technology these days.

And we're holding fast to Christ.

And he's this is one of the difficulties of interpreting uh Paul's letters.

We only get one side of the letter.

And so we don't know what the questions were that the Colossians were writing.

We don't know the particulars precisely of what the issues or heresies they were facing within the Colossian church.

But we have to kind of uh from hearing just one side of the conversation, come to understand what the issues they were facing in the church and how Paul is dressed is addressing them particularly.

So what we see, but what's important to keep in mind with that is Scripture as we have it is sufficient for our understanding.

God has left nothing out of Scripture.

We have all that we need for life and godliness.

We have all that we need for all God requires of us to know Him.

And so we can trust, although we don't hear the other side of the conversation, the sufficiency of what we have.

So this text says, therefore, let no one pass judgment on you.

Now, to our culture, this is one of those things where it's like, if I were to go preach this from a street corner, you know, let no one pass judgment on you.

I it would be like, yeah, that's great.

That's what I thought it said, you know.

Let no one pass judgment on you.

We love that idea of the absolute freedom that we might experience by having no one around to judge us, in us even being taken out of the realm of having to judge others.

We, those, that's a really liberating and a really freeing idea.

But Paul, but if we consider the command like that of just a, you know, don't judge one another, kind of how we would use that in a common vernacular, then the command is actually kind of impossible to follow.

Because this doesn't say, don't judge one another.

This says, therefore, let no one pass judgment on you.

How are you gonna do that?

Well, there's a couple of ways.

Uh one is you can treat people like a tyrant, and the way that you interact with them is you could you could demand that they live in total agreement with you, and if they stray from that in any way, then you could try and punish them or manipulate them or con them in some way uh into treating you exactly how uh you would like them to conform to you, so that they would no longer pass judgment on you.

And of course, that might gain the appearance of not passing judgment on you, but you wouldn't be able to c to keep them from passing judgment on you, even if you did that.

Second option is you could adopt a posture of absolute ambivalence.

You know, uh I heard an interview with Tim Keller the other day that I thought was really excellent, and he was talking about um uh he he was talking about, sorry, my it just flew through my brain.

Um but Keller was was discussing the uh what to do when people say bad things about you.

And he said, you know, common advice is to say, just consider the source.

Just consider like, you know, the the people who spoke badly to me or about me in this way, like, they're not really worth anything anyway.

And so it doesn't really matter what they think.

You know, how many of you have heard advice like that?

You know, just consider the source.

Uh like I'm so concerned about these people, and I don't even really like them.

So why am I so concerned about what they think?

And he had this wonderful insight, I thought, in saying that's not a Christian response.

A Christian response is not to say, well, I'm better than you anyway.

We have no space for that as Christians.

We we understand the our absolute sinfulness, we understand our absolute decrepitness, and so we're not able to position ourselves in some sort of space where we just view all the opinions of others just ambivalently and consider that there's no truth or knowledge to be known there.

So what does this don't let others judge you mean?

Well, it can't be a call for us to act tyrannically with one another, it can't be a call towards ambivalence to one another.

What this is about, what this word judgment is about, is exclusion.

This is about exclusion from the body of Christ.

Because when Christ died, he made his church a people.

God is rescuing for himself a people out of the world.

And in his rescuing of a people out of the world, he brings us together before him to be known by him.

And in doing so, we are made a community of faith.

But what was happening in Colossae is there were these traditions and practices from the Jewish community of faith, which this Christian movement likely was born out of.

Many of the early Christian churches were converted synagogues.

And so the Jewish believers and the Gentile believers have this sharp cultural division between them.

And the Jewish believers understand that they are the ones that have the promises of God that were fulfilled in Christ.

And what they were saying was in order to truly be a part of this community, you're going to need to participate in these practices that mark us out as a chosen people outside of the culture that we were born in and raised in, outside of this Gentile culture.

And so we see this phrase that's used here in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath.

In all other texts in which this particular triad is mentioned, the subject of these, the food and drink, festival, new moon, or sabbath, the subject of these is not an individual's worship.

So this is not something that you go and practice alone.

But rather, these are these are not just personal acts of worship, but they refer to the system of official sacrifices to be made by all Israel.

And so what this is a demonstration of is these particular holidays, these particular rituals, these questions of food and Drink, which would be dietary restrictions which mark you off in a particular way, or holidays that you celebrate which mark you off in a particular way.

These were ways that for centuries the Jewish people showed that they were God's chosen people.

And by participating in them, you could know that you were a part of that community.

Now, that may seem strange to our ears, but it's actually very normal and very ordinary.

The holidays that we celebrate, we don't just celebrate them because we are a community, we celebrate them because they make us a community.

I don't know if any of you have in-laws, but do you know why you argue with your in-laws about how to spend holidays?

I'll explain it to you.

It's because we understand that holidays, we don't just participate in them because we are a community.

It's because we know that by the participation in them, we become a community.

That our being a family is reinforced by our participation in these things.

We are marked out from the rest of the world as a family because we move through these patterns of holidays together.

And so what the Jewish people were saying to the Gentiles, the Gentile Christians, now they're both Christians, they were saying if you're going to be really marked out as a part of this community, then you're going to need to take the Sabbath on a Saturday.

The Lord's day, like when we celebrate on a Sunday, is not sufficient.

If you're going to be marked out with us, you're going to need to abstain from these particular types of foods.

You know, no non-kosher food, because that marks us out as a part of this community.

Paul sees this, and he sees these additions to the unity of the body, these additional requirements that are being made to the unity of the body, and he understands this is destroying the gospel.

There is an absolute destruction of the gospel by adding to what unites you as a people.

In fact, Paul, let me take another drink of water.

Marco Rubio, that video will live forever.

Paul, because he you can YouTube it later, it's on this great website.

Paul, uh, when he describes what these practices are, he he describes them in this way.

He says, in verse 17, these are a shadow of the things to come.

But the substance belongs to Christ.

These patterns for the Jewish people of holidays, of rituals, of dietary restrictions, these ways that they marked themselves out as a particular community.

I want you to hear how normal all of those things are.

You know, just think of your family.

My mom used to make this dish called oodles of noodles.

It's basically ramen noodles and chicken with like a cream of mushroom soup poured in.

It's so good.

But our eating that and like our knowing about eating that is a uh, it's part of what binds us as a family.

You know, we hear these dietary restrictions, it's like that's so, we can't relate to that.

You know, that's so strange.

But no, this is ordinary human life.

These are the things that we do with one another that make us one people.

We do the same holidays, we participate in the same sorts of things.

Paul is saying that these Old Testament requirements are just a shadow.

And what does a shadow show us?

You know, a shadow does give us some information.

It gives us the outline, it gives us a true silhouette of what's to come.

Perhaps you could even recognize someone by their shadow.

But then when the person has arrived, to be engaging with the shadow is absurd and bizarre.

Imagine building a building and you and you set up all this scaffolding around it.

And you build, you use the scaffolding to move around and to add these, you know, ornate decorations and things, all the stuff it takes to build.

And while you're and then you finish the building, and then you say, you know, I I'm just gonna keep hanging out on the scaffolding.

That's the picture of what the Jewish Christians are doing.

And Paul is saying, you haven't understood what has really taken place in Christ.

The substance has arrived.

All of what we were doing, all of the food and drink and the being marked off as a particular people, all of these things were just a shadow.

They were just the scaffolding, and now the substance who is Christ has arrived.

The substance belongs to Christ.

So, what does that mean?

The only way we are marked as a people, all that holds us together is holding fast to Christ.

This is the dividing line.

This is what marks us out from the world.

This is what makes us a people, is holding fast to Christ.

This is why churches, hopefully, as more people come in, start to look more and more strange.

Where there's friendships that make no sense.

And there's community and relationships that just look bizarre to the world.

Because what is it that could possibly hold these people together in relationship?

It is Christ alone.

And if anything else is added, then it just becomes a way of bringing division into the group.

And part of what that division is demonstrating is we've added to Christ.

And when you've added to Christ, then you've neglected his sufficiency.

And when you neglect his sufficiency, you are no longer considering Christ as our Lord and Savior, as he has revealed himself to be.

Paul continues on.

And he moves from this idea of judgment, which is about exclusion, to this idea of qualification.

He says in verse 18, let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind.

Now, the word qualification has to do with like a, it would be a word that like an umpire would use, or like a referee.

It's a sports word, and it basically it's a way of saying, if you keep acting this way, you won't get the prize.

So Paul is saying, let no one treat you as though the way that you're acting, that you won't get the prize.

And the way that that was taking place in the Colossian church sounded something like this.

There were people who are insisting on asceticism.

So cutting off of all worldly possessions, a complete removal from the world, moving out into a tent in the desert, and that type of retreat, and worship of angels.

This one's harder to interpret, but it can mean that they were viewing the world in terms of these hierarchies that are tiered, and instead of focusing as Christ is the height of the hierarchy, they were saying really the way to attain Christ is by moving up through these higher authorities.

And by moving up through these higher authorities, we will be able to attain Christ.

But we understand, but this is a denial of the gospel, because we understand that the gospel is not in the pattern of us learning how to manipulate the spiritual world so that we can ascend to God.

The gospel is the story that Christ left his throne and sought us out.

Worship of angels can also have this particularly Jewish connotation of holding so fast to the Old Testament law and its rituals and requirements, as the law was delivered to us by angels.

It seems as though there were also people who were going on in detail about visions, particular religious experiences that they have had.

And then the ESV translates it this way puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind.

Though that phrase puffed up, it's more literally translated super humble.

You know, like extremely humble, the most humble people you could ever imagine.

But it Paul's using it sarcastically because Paul, of all the writers in scripture, is by far the most sarcastic.

And he is using this phrase, he's like, oh, you're you're being duped by these people who have come into your midst and they're so humble.

And they've denied the world completely.

And they are able to cultivate within themselves these incredible religious experiences.

And if you just follow the pattern and the rituals and the ways of their life, then you too will be able to have such incredible and powerful and transformative religious experiences, and then you'll know that you're on the way to the prize.

Then you'll be able to finally be sure that you're headed towards the prize of Christ.

And those people were disqualifying those who had no such religious experiences, who didn't cut off the world but still just woke up and went to work every day.

Those sorts of things.

Now, what is Paul saying here?

Is he saying that there is no spiritual world of angels?

No.

Is he saying that there is no such thing as self-discipline in our seeking of the Lord?

Of course not.

Paul isn't even saying that dietary restrictions or that particular holidays or religious festivals or that even circumcision itself as a marker, he's not even saying that these things are wrong.

You know, Paul, it's it's worth noting that Paul doesn't create like a responsive religious character.

You know, Paul isn't saying, hey, um, we're Christians now.

Instead of those, uh, instead of when they, all the Jewish Christians go to celebrate the Passover, uh, we're gonna have this other holiday.

And all the real Christians, you know, are gonna leave those folks behind that want to go and celebrate Passover, and you guys can come and celebrate this holiday, and it's only bacon.

That's the only thing we're serving.

So then we'll know that you guys are the true believers.

He doesn't create something like that.

See, he's saying that the point of the point of these things is not uh uh to say, look at the uh look at the danger or or something in playing with this.

He's saying, look, don't let these things disqualify, don't let them allow you to pass judgment on one another, don't raise any of these things to the level which in the church is reserved exclusively for Christ.

Christ alone is the one who holds you, he is the one who keeps you together.

Christ is the head.

Now, if we explore this a bit, this puffed up without reason by your sensuous minds, these people who are so humble but without reason.

And what they're calling you to is this sort of religious experience.

If you're just able to cultivate some sort of mystical or incredible or fantastic religious experience, then you'll know that you're in the group with us and that God is really working in you and working in you in those ways.

Now, what's it there's an interesting thing happening right now.

I'm gonna take another drink of water.

Hmm.

Delicious.

Such a miserable pause.

I don't enjoy it.

Uh there's a a bit of a renaissance taking place with uh psychedelics in uh they're mainstreaming again because the 60s went so well.

Nobody got hurt that time.

And you'll hear in the dialogue around this, I I have several friends who have had life-changing religious experiences on psychedelics, because I live in Denver, you guys do too, you know, have those friends.

And there's this kind of question for Christians like, what does that mean?

You know, but Christians, we should have that question anyway, because it's not just psychedelics that can create these life-changing religious experiences.

I um uh grew up in Florida, wonderful place a little south of here.

And in Georgia each year, there would be this like unbelievable conference, Christian conference, called the Passion Conference, that I would go to each year.

This is not a bash on the Passion Conference.

I think it's great.

And the experience of that conference is uh almost incomparable.

Like they sell out the whole Georgia Dome.

There you it's like the the most incredible worship experience.

It's like it's like a U2 concert in between the greatest preachers you've ever heard in your life.

And you I remember just leaving an experience like that, and it was it was a profound religious experience.

Then I would go back to church, just my home church, on Sunday morning, and it was like, this place is the worst.

There's no lights in the bathroom, the kids are outside.

And this is this is no way to hold fast to the Lord.

Okay.

Okay, in both of these things, like what's what's is there anything wrong with the Passion Conference?

No.

Even like the the academic research that's being taken pla that's taking place right now with psychedelics and this kind of like renaissance of this way, like, is this is this particularly sinful because of the type of chemicals that they're using?

No, I can't biblically make that case.

But it's doomed.

It's doomed to failure.

And the reason is because imagine you have this incredible religious experience.

But it ties up to no head.

That there's no there's no aim that it creates for your life.

That there's no authority or or framework for your life that this takes place within.

And the way that we're exploring these things is like we just want to feel better.

And we just wanna we just want to take away some of the pains that we experience in our lives, but there's no authority in the way that life works, the way that the world is designed, is we experience it by aiming at particular things.

And when we aim at those particular things, this order flows into our lives around those things.

And all of a sudden, our decisions just start to be almost made for us because our aim becomes so clear.

But what will happen, as happened with the 60s before, is we aimed at the religious experience itself, and we dissolved into chaos around us because there was no head, there was just my personal experience.

And do you know what that makes you?

It makes you super humble because you depend on and judge others by your personal experience.

And so if the if the way of holding fast to these rituals would separate the church into these groups as they added these rituals to Christ, then the way that we add this demand for high spiritual experience and uh uh sort of visions and this sort of mystical realities, we add those demands to one another, we begin to judge others by our own personal experiences, then we fractal even further as individuals get pulled apart in the church, and it just disintegrates.

It becomes nothing.

We'll see our culture repeat this pattern over and over again as we pursue the experience with no head.

So look at what Paul says.

What is this counter to all this addition to Christ?

It says in Colossians 2 19, and not holding fast to the head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God.

The way we order our lives is not by our own ecstatic insights.

Imagine.

Imagine if your marriage, or imagine if the way you related to your children, it's even more absurd, was structured by just how many wonderful experiences they could provide you.

There would be children wouldn't make it past like two weeks.

Because there's no wonderful experiences there.

But then consider your, or consider your marriage.

Like this is healthy insofar as we're having these incredible romantic feelings all of the time.

And we need to add that constraint in order for our marriage to take place.

Your marriage will dissolve because there will be something else, someone else that comes along that can provide those experiences more completely.

And so you'll go after them.

All of these additions to Christ are a way of saying Christ is not the head.

Something else is.

And so it destroys the body, it pulls us apart from one another, and it dethrones the Lord.

So let's move into a bit more of a positive argument.

Paul says in verse 20 through 22, if with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world.

Why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations?

Isn't this not the way we think of religion?

The way that we we think of religion as primarily submission to regulations.

That's how you know that you're a part of it.

But don't you understand how different Christianity is?

How different the claims of Christ are.

If it's even just these like these good things, you know, like a like a holiday, keeping a Sabbath, celebrating a Passover, you know, having a profound spiritual experience, being super humble.

These are good things.

Good things to have.

But when they become the markers that we are judged by or that qualify us before the Lord, then we have destroyed our gospel.

We have dethroned Christ as the head.

Paul says, these have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value.

Value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.

There are two ways that we can approach our sin.

We can approach our sin as something which has been absolutely taken care of on the cross, so that we stand completely clean before the Lord because of what Christ did.

And then, seeing the wonder of Christ's heart, we pursue him out of a love for him.

And so we repent of our sin and we seek to leave it behind as an act of faith in what he has accomplished and our trust that he will continue to accomplish that in our hearts.

Or we can treat our sin as something which we need to overcome in order to attain Christ.

And then once we overcome it, we will be able to come to Christ with a clean conscience.

And what that second option results in is not a death of sin, but only a transformation of the way our sin looks.

Because we can imagine somebody who was greedy and materialistic and you know, unable to have any money in their pocket without spending it, and unable to be honest with someone if they had a hope of more gain.

And that person has a religious experience.

And they say, I'm going to cast off all that was in the world and all that had previously owned my heart, and I'm going to live out in the desert as an ascetic so that I might gain true spirituality.

And in that, they become self-satisfied, pleased with the transformation that they have made.

And Paul says, that type of transformation, which we might look at from the outside, and we might even celebrate it.

And if we went and spent a weekend with them, we might consider this is the way, this is what I really need to do.

This is the way life needs to be like.

And Paul says, that is of no value in stopping the desires of the flesh.

It is of no value.

Because that materialism was put through a religious experience and it transformed into pride.

The flesh is still in charge.

Because what does our flesh want more than anything?

It wants to be in charge.

It wants to be responsible for its own salvation.

And Paul says, only Christ.

Only Christ.

So consider whatever it is in your heart, which you may be thinking, this is how I know I'm saved, this is how I know I'm a Christian.

This is the thing that I can point to that shows that whatever it may be, if it is an addition to Christ alone, as the one who gives us the certainty of our salvation, the dividing line, the judge, the one who qualifies.

It is Christ alone.

We add nothing to him.

And he is sufficient.

Okay, let's see if there are any questions.

No questions.

Great.

Well, part of our participation in Christ is communion.

First Corinthians 11, verse 23 says, For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you.

1 Corinthians 11:23

That the Lord Jesus, on the night when he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

In the same way also he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

The death of Christ is sufficient for your salvation.

Look to it, hold fast to it, defend anything that might encroach on that position.

Defend from anything that might encroach on that position.

Hold fast to Christ.

Holy Father, I pray that as we participate in this meal, that it might be a way of strengthening our faith, of holding fast to you.

That you have given us these means to participate in.

Lord, like like holidays, things that are real participation that hold us fast.

They are all in service of this one end.

Christ is Lord.

Christ is enough.

Christ is the one who defines us.

Lord, let us hold fast to you.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.