Even in a secular society, religious practice is impressive. Our world is full of religious food laws. The Muslim won’t eat pork. The Hindu won’t eat beef. The Buddhist won’t eat meat. The Roman Catholic won’t eat meat on Friday, or fasts before communion. Some people don’t drink coffee or alcohol on religious grounds. And others forget that it is the doctrine of demons that forbids people from marrying and ordering them to abstain from certain foods.
And even Christians feel the pull of food laws. Some Christians value fasting as a religious exercise.
Some Christians are particularly awed by religious experience. Think of the books where someone says they’ve seen heaven or been to hell. Heaven is real. My son had a near death experience. Hell is real, I’ve seen it.
Or people are impressed if someone claims to have seen an angel. Wow, the bible is real after all. You must be a modern day Daniel, or Jacob, to have seen an angel. God speaks to you directly.
These rules can be summarized by Colossians chapter 2 verse 21:
“Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!”?
This is asceticism. But it is religiosity that does not please God. And in our passage today, Paul goes on to show us why.
Last week we saw that our Lord and Christ, Jesus, was greatly afflicted and suffered. He was cut and his body was stripped off his soul in death. He was horribly plunged into death, fully immersed into death, which was his baptism into death.
And Christ, being stripped of his body, paradoxically, ironically, won a great victory. Because Christ’s death has a direct relationship with our debt and guilt. We have a debt, a great IOU that we owe God. We know it. Jesus’ death pays the debt we couldn’t pay, and rips up our IOU.
And we had a great mass of guilt. And when Christ was nailed to the cross, this condemning decree that God’s good law brings to us when it meets us sinful humans, which nails us for our sin, that condemning decree was itself nailed to the cross. The condemnation of the law, ‘The soul that sins shall die’, was nailed to the cross, when Christ became sin and a curse for us.
Our sin is a debt, and God forgave it. Our sin incurs condemnation, and God nailed his own condemning decree to the cross. God has removed our sin and guilt far from us, out of sight, both God’s and ours.
So the devil has no accusation left against you and me. Satan and his demons have been stripped, disarmed, humiliated. For in Colossians chapter 2 verse 15, God[1] stripped bare and boldly exposed the demonic powers and authorities to public humiliation and shame in Christ. Christ’s death denudes and disarms Satan and his legions of their ability to accuse because the basis of accusation is gone. And Christ’s resurrection disarms Satan by snatching from him the power of death, now that Christ has risen and ascended. The powers and authorities are now humiliated and powerless, having lost their power of condemning us and the fear that death holds over us.
So what does the victory of Jesus Christ over the demonic powers mean for religion? By religion, I mean rituals, things like religious food and religious festivals. Does fasting and feasting, does food, make a difference? What about religious experiences, seeing angels or demons?
The answer to all this is ‘none of it matters anymore’. Food doesn’t matter. Experiences don’t matter. Days don’t matter. Colossians 2 verse 16.
Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. (NIV)
Let’s first think about religious festivals and feast days and fast days first. Some Anglican churches go for the seasonal approach to life. You can go into seasons, and be a ‘coloured stole’ parish, and know what ‘Septuigisma’ is and all the moveable and immoveable feasts are.
But in verse 16, we see that religious festivals can be a source of snobbery. Verse 16 again:
Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. (NIV)
This is probably a reference to Jewish feasts. God gave Israel yearly, monthly and weekly festivals.
Now, each item of our calendar – years, months and days – are part of how God has made our world. Regular seasons and calendars give our lives predictability and rhythm. They enable us to celebrate together as a community. A Sabbath or a festival was ‘like a kiss between lovers. It gathered into a special moment what was always true’.[2] It allowed people to gather together with each other and their God. It was a recognition of a special relationship between God and his people.
Some sort of calendar is necessary for us.[3] The God-imposed limitations of space and time we experience require that we must have a time to meet together. A calendar enables us to work effectively, and to rest adequately. A change is as good as a holiday, and so God has built changes into our world, as well as predictability. And our desire for predictability and regularity is met by having a predictable calendar. Habits are our friends. Pity the man who has to work out everything anew.
We Christians have traditionally had Easter and Christmas recognized by our wider society. And we used to have a monopoly on Sunday. But secular society has been chipping away at this for the last 50 years Sport and business don’t want church and family to have its own day.
And of course, some people are grinches and scrooges and generally grumpy and cynical about any celebration. They don’t like Christmas and Birthdays. And the Jehovah’s Witness make that a weird and somewhat distinguishing article of their faith. Of course it is true, we don’t know actually when Jesus was born. But there need be no harm in birthday or Christmas, properly understood.
But the long and the short of it is this, that days and seasons don’t matter. Christmas and Easter of themselves don’t matter. Romans chapter 14 verses 5 and 6:
5 One man considers one day more sacred than another; another man considers every day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. 6 He who regards one day as special, does so to the Lord.
I grew up being told that Good Friday is the most important day of the year for Christians, and for this reason we shouldn’t go to the Easter show. But it isn’t, if you don't think it is. Of course, the things that Good Friday and Easter Day and Christmas represent for us, the incarnation and death and resurrection of Christ, these things matter deeply. And I will use Christmas, Easter and any other day I can get to prosecute the cause of Christ. I will defend the Christian use of Sunday are argue for Penalty Rates on Sunday not because Sunday is a better day than Saturday or Friday or Wednesday, but because, practically speaking, it is necessary to meet at the same time at the same place to have church, and Sunday is as good a day as any, and has good New Testament precedent.
But there is nothing magic about those days or time. I don’t think Christmas or Easter are the most important DAYS for Christians. I think that the things we remember on those days, Jesus’ birth, life, death and resurrection, are the most important things we can remember, and deserve to have a day, and a week, and a month, and a year, and a millennium, in their memory. And in the new heaven and earth, we will remember them into eternity.
And there is a difference between saying the day matters, and saying that the thing we are remembering matters. It is not the day that matters. It is who and what we are remembering on the day that matters.
Christianity is not about special days, and seasons and months. It is about Christ Jesus as Lord.
Paul speaks of the calendars and food laws being a shadow (σκιὰ τῶν μελλόντων) and Christ being the reality, literally the body (τὸ δὲ σῶμα τοῦ Χριστοῦ.) Notice chapter 2 verse 17:
These are a shadow of the things that were to come: the reality [more literally, the body], however, is found in Christ.
A shadow is useful. If the sun is shining from the right direction, you can see someone before they arrive. You can tell if someone is coming towards you. You can make out their shape from the silhouette. You might be able to work out whether it is a man or a woman or a child from the shadowy outline. The silhouette tells you something.
But you cannot talk to the shadow. You cannot hug the silhouette or cuddle it. You can’t take the shadow out on a date, have a meal together, fall in love with the shadow, or marry it. It is just an outline of the body, but it is not the actually body itself. It is the shadow, not the reality.
That is how Paul regards the Old Testament food laws and religious festivals. Chapter 2 verse 17 again:
These are a shadow of the things that were to come: the reality, however, is found in Christ. (NIV)
Christ is the one who was coming. Christ is the incarnate one, in whom all the fullness of the deity dwells in a body. And this embodied Christ can be hugged and greeted, and spoken to. That same body was sliced and cut and killed. Christ is the promise of God embodied, in the flesh. The incarnate Christ is the full reality in the flesh, while the OT is simply a shadowy, insubstantial silhouette. The Old Testament prophesied Christ’s coming in the flesh.
How does Christ fulfill all the OT festivals?[4] If the Sabbath celebrates rest, Jesus Christ says, 'come to me all who labour, and I will give you rest'. Jesus offers the rest the Sabbath promises. He will do so ultimately in the New Heaven and Earth, which is our final place of rest.
And John’s gospel makes it clear that the festivals belong to Christ. Christ comes along and says all of the Jewish festivals are about me. Jesus says, ‘Whoever is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. As the Scriptures say, Streams of living water will flow from within him’, thus fulfilling the festival of Tabernacles (John 7:37-44). Christ is the blessed one who came in the name of the Lord. Christ is our Paschal lamb, testified to by the Passover Festival. Christ is the bread of life. He says ‘He who comes to me shall not hunger and he who believes in me will never thirst. He thus fulfills the feast of unleavened bread and the feast of weeks, which celebrated the nourishment, and provision God continued to provide his people. Christ is the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep (1 Corinthians 15:20) as the firstborn of the resurrection of the dead. The calendar of Israel points to Christ.
But there is another string to the false teacher’s bow. For they are people who like to parade their spiritual experiences. It is possible that the ascetic false teachers used fasting to have trance like experiences. It seems that they wanted to get in touch with the spiritual powers.
Go to Koorong and observe all the books where teachers talk about their experiences? God told me this, God told me that. I had this vision, I saw heaven, I saw hell, I heard a voice, I saw an angel.
Here is my question. How do you know it wasn’t last night’s spaghetti bolognaise? How do you know it wasn’t the prescription pain killer you took? How do you know it is not the early signs of schizophrenia? Or how do we know that it was not just all made up?
Now Paul has had his share of spiritual experiences. He saw the Lord Jesus Christ on the Damascus Road. He reluctantly told us that he was caught up into the third heaven. He had trances and was given messages from God. But this makes Paul’s warning all the more powerful. Colossians 2 verses 18 and 19:
Do not let anyone who delights in false humility [or self-abasement, perhaps an allusion to rigorous fasting practices] and the worship of angels disqualify [or rule as umpire over] you for the prize. Such a person goes into great detail about what he has seen, and his unspiritual mind puffs him up with idle notions. (NIV)
This desire for spiritual experience is actually unspiritual. Such a person is simply proudly boasting. He or she is puffed up without cause by a mind dominated by their senses[5] They are not walking by faith, but by sight.
The only thing you need to believe is the bible. Whatever cannot be shown from the bible is not required to be believed as an article of faith or of necessity for salvation.
Please don’t say ‘God told me this’ or ‘God told me that’. You cannot prove that God told you anything except what is written in the bible, and we are not obliged to believe you. Just say ‘I think this’, ‘I feel this’ or ‘I believe God would have me do this’. Say, ‘I think the bible is saying this, and this is why I think this.’ The only sure place God speaks is the bible. No other source can be trusted in the same way, whether it is pope, prophet or pastor.
I think most people go on about their spiritual experiences because it gives them more authority. It bolsters their authority. Once they say, ‘God told me’, it puts an end to all discussion. It says, ‘who are you to go against me, because God told me?
Well, sorry, but you don’t have to believe God has spoken to any living human. Paul thinks those who make such claims have lost the plot. Verse 19:
He has lost connection with the Head, from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow. (NIV)
They are not super spiritual. They actually aren’t satisfied with living by faith in God’s word. So they want experiences, something they’ve seen, a vision. But Jesus says, ‘You believe because you have seen. More blessed is the one who believes without having seen me’. We walk by faith and not by sight.
Our society is fascinated with food, and people prohibit certain foods. Paul says ‘It is the doctrine of demons that forbids people from marrying and ordering them to abstain from certain foods, which God created for our enjoyment.'
But it is a bubby preoccupation. It is not spiritual, at best it is immature, at worst it is a satanic scruple. The rules are indicated in verse 21:
“Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!”?
And these rules have reached their use by date. Verse 22:
These are all destined to perish with use, because they are based on human commands and teachings. (NIV)
Food does not bring us near to God; we are no worse if we do not eat, and no better if we do (1 Corinthians 8:8). That’s why Jesus declared that the food laws of the Old Testament no longer apply. The kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit (Romans 14:17).
Food does not bring you close to God. Fasting doesn’t bring you close to God. Only Jesus brings you close to God. And you have Jesus, so you cannot be any closer to God than you are now.
The OT had food laws for good reasons. Food laws had the practical effect of fencing off Israel from the nations, discouraging inter-marriage, and therefore protecting Israel from the paganism and idolatry of the nations around them. But now that is all gone. Jesus is taking the gospel to the nations. So Jesus has declared all food clean.
Special rules about food and drink seem spiritual. They are not. They are worldly, earthly. They are actually ‘bubby’. Lent is bubby. Vegetarianism for religious or spiritual reasons is bubby. Gluttony remains a sin, and so too is drunkenness. But religious food laws are actually immature. Look what verse 23 says.
Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.
Fasting does not work. It doesn’t enable anyone to restrain sinful indulgences. You keep hearing this human reason why people should fast. 'Oh, go without, and show how self-controlled you are, and how you can master the body'. Umm, no, it doesn’t teach any such thing. It just leads to people being grumpy, and having fights, and not doing their work. Isaiah 58 verse 4 tells us this about Israel.
Your fasting ends in quarreling and strife, and in striking each other with wicked fists. (NIV)
The three reasons I can see in Scripture to fast are because you want to share your food with the poor, because you want to pray, and the time taken in preparing food takes you away from that, or because you are sad, and mourning, or sorry for sin. These are the three good reasons for fasting. They are entirely practical.
But most fasting is just rules taught by men, and you don’t have to do it. I can find no New Testament command to fast. You are free to do it, you are free not to do it.
You cannot get any closer to God than to be seated with him at the right hand of God. And according to Colossians 3 verses 1 to 4 you already have that. You have been given fullness in Christ, who is the head of everything. You cannot get any closer to Jesus than you are, except if you die and go to be with Christ. So don’t get sucked into false imitations.
Let’s pray.
[1] The subject of the verb is not in the Greek, but I have supplied it.
[2] Walter Kaiser, cited by Tidball, Leviticus: BST, 281.
[3] It is this reality that in part explains Article 34: ‘Whoever through his private judgement, willingly and purposely, doth openly break the traditions and ceremonies of the Church, which be not repugnant to the Word of God, and be ordained and approved by common authority, ought to be rebuked openly, (that others may fear to do the like,) as he that offendeth against the common order of the Church, and hurteth the authority of the Magistrate, and woundeth the consciences of the weak breathren.’ However, this is always subject to the statement of Article 20, ‘And yet it is not lawful for the Church to ordain any thing that is contrary to God’s Word written, neither may it so expound one place of Scripture, that it be repugnant to Another’. The church, therefore, cannot say anything is necessary for salvation when it is clearly not in Scripture.
[4] The following answers are inspired by Tidball, Leviticus: BST, 270-82, an exposition on Leviticus 23.
[5] Lit, ‘the mind of his flesh’.