I invite your attention back
to the epistle to the Church of Colossae. This is one of the two books
wherein Paul specifically dealt with those who would bring the
believer back under the law. They are the two most scathing
reports in all of Scripture that sets things in order and calls things as they are
in reference to a believer being under the law. If you read the book of Colossians,
you will find that in the previous verses in chapters 1 and 2, Paul
leaves no stone unturned and he has made an unassailable argument
or case for the perfect success of the salvation wrought by Jesus
Christ the worthy Lamb of God. He has left no stone unturned, no I undotted, no T uncrossed. He has declared that Christ has
redeemed His people. Christ has not made a valiant
but unsuccessful effort. He has not left the success of
His work to rely on the favorable will of a ruined and corrupt
man. So perfect was His work that
the recipient of that work is said to be, in verse 10, complete. Complete. That means A finished
thing. A done deal. In the matter of
the salvation of his soul, the believer has need of nothing. He possesses all things that
pertain to godliness in life. Christ has done it all and has
given his children faith to rest in that perfect work. Faith does not save you. When
God gives you faith, He gives you faith to believe that He
has saved you. That is what faith does. It rests
in what God has accomplished. Paul has erected the impenetrable
bulwark of the absolute singularity and success of our Lord in the
salvation of our souls. And the Apostle in our text in
verses 16 and 17 takes us to the necessary consequence
of being complete in Christ. That's the title of my message,
The Consequence of Being Complete. Remembering that the desire and
intent of the philosophers that are mentioned in this book and
vain deceivers who use deceit and vanity for men's traditions
is to bring the believer under the law and make him feel as
if He is incomplete. That you're not quite there.
There's something left that must be done. There's something yet
to do that might enhance or at least maintain your standing
with God. That's vain philosophy built
upon traditions of men. Paul having declared the completeness
of the believer admonishes us to be vigilant in denying these
legalists to get a foothold or any input into our salvation. He says in verse 16, Let no man
therefore, and that therefore is based upon all that He said
about the full and complete and astonishing work of Jesus Christ
on Calvary Street. Because you are complete in Him,
let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect
of a holy day, or of a new moon, or of the Sabbath, which are
a shadow of things to come, but the body is of Jesus Christ. Their motive is to make the believer
think that he needs a recordable righteousness, a visible, evidential
godliness, other than, or in addition to, the Lord Jesus Christ. We, however, according to the
Word of God, the God who cannot lie, are complete in Christ. Do you believe the Word of God? It's that simple. He said, ye
are complete in Him, and He's the
Head of all things. You are complete in Him. That's
a fact for everyone who believes the Gospel that is set forth
in the Scriptures. And this being the fact, we are
to disallow, disregard, disown, and reject any effort from anyone,
any religion to make us to doubt that completeness. Let no man,
is what it says, let no man, and that encompasses any man
and all men, no one, no matter how persuasive, how upright and
moral, how religious, how godly they may seem, is to be allowed
to call into question the success of Jesus Christ, whereby all
His people were made complete. It is without question that anyone
may rightly point out numerous faults and sins in our lives.
Ain't no doubt about that. I don't want anybody to closely
scrutinize my life Do you? They could find much fault, and
we are more aware of that than we care to disclose. If any man
takes a look at our life, there is no doubt that he could rail
reasonable and true accusations against our behavior. What a man may not do, however,
and what we are not to allow anyone to do, is to question
our salvation. Why? Because we didn't have anything
to do with it. We didn't have anything to do
with it. To do that, to question our salvation, is to question
the work of Christ, not us. It's to question the work of
Christ. The fact is that our behavior has never been a condition.
Listen very carefully. Our behavior has never been a
condition of or a consideration in our salvation never before
and after we are redeemed before and after we are given faith
to believe it is never a condition of our salvation now somebody's
going to say well if you preach that you're going to open the
floodgates of sin listen the floodgates of sin are already
open already open, and they ain't going to be stopped until we
die. That's that simple. What we do matters, there's no
doubt about it. We are to pursue good works.
We're to do that which pleases the Lord. That matters, but it
doesn't count. It matters, but it doesn't count
in our salvation. If any man suggests that a change
of behavior might or would make us more complete, We are to reject
that man and his teachings outright. Let no man judge you, he said. Rest assured that a person who
is interested in personal merit will openly judge or call into
question the work of Christ. Or rather, he will not. People
don't do that. You take any religion, they say,
Oh, Christ is sovereign. Oh, Christ is everything. Christ
is Lord. But this is what you have to
do. The minute he says that, he's rejected Christ, though
he wouldn't do it verbally. Men will, however, covertly call
his work into question by trying to put your personal piety on
trial, as if it has something to do with salvation. They'll
do it. He will seek to make you feel
as if you need to prove your salvation, to produce evidence
that you are saved, by some means other than faith in the operation
of God. Such a person cannot abide faith
and cannot understand it because he does not have it and knows
not what it is. Those who have it know that they
are complete in Christ. They know that because they have
faith. And what does faith do? It believes
the Word of God. That's what faith does. That's
why you were given faith. Paul says that since this is
so, let no man judge you. Let no man judge you. Now the
only proper judgment of a believer is simple. Is he a believer?
Does he believe? So Paul teaches us that the arena
in which men will seek to judge you They will not attack faith
itself, but rather add to faith things that they think will enhance
or perfect faith. They will come at you with the
necessity of keeping the law in some fashion or relation. And he speaks of three areas
here in specifics. The three areas of their assault
will be what you eat or drink, whether you observe specific
ceremonial aspects of the law, and the keeping of Sabbaths. Now there's a whole lot of Sabbath
keepers in religion, and they'll get you. I've made many preachers
just living when I tell them the Sabbath, if you're going
to make it a day, it's Saturday. Because it is. It's the seventh
day of the week. But Sabbath has nothing really
to do with the day at all. Sabbath means rest. Shabbat means
rest. And it speaks of one rest, not
our rest, but God resting after he had finished the work that
he'd begun in creation and in the new creation. Most of these
legalists seek to make the Sabbath to be a singular day, the seventh
day of the week, but in context, Sabbath is pluralized here. So
it speaks of all eight sabbaths, which have one thing in common.
Read it. All eight sabbaths have one thing
in common. One phrase is repeated every time a sabbath is mentioned. On this day or during this sabbath,
which some of them were seven years long, some of them were
a year long, one was 49 years long. In these sabbaths, this
is an absolute. There will be no servile work. You are to rest and wait on the
Lord to supply your every need. That's what it is to observe
the Sabbath. That's what it is. Concerning
meat and drink, Men will seek to judge you based on what they
have general or personal convictions about, or the area in which they
live. This is what some people have
called regional sanctification. Regional sanctification. These
restrictions of behavior often have to do with where you live
and the mores of certain specific societies or locales. I heard
a story once of a Southern Baptist missionary who was a teetotaler.
He didn't believe in drinking ATOL. He was going to go to France
to be a missionary. He believed that he could make
the French people stop drinking wine. Needless to say, his efforts
were an utter failure. Northern Baptists don't smoke.
Southern Baptists don't drink or dance. Free will Baptist don't
do either and don't wear jewelry to boot. They call them go to
hell sins if you wear a tie or jewelry or a watch. If you say you are a believer
in any of these sanctified localities, you had better be prepared to
be judged on the basis of what they say you must do or not do. Paul says, however, let no man in meat or in drink. Especially as it relates to ideas
of religious diet. Our Lord made that clear when the Pharisees got on Him
for not washing His hands before He ate. And the disciples were astonished,
you know, because the Lord didn't require them to wash their hands.
They were astonished that the Pharisees, when the Pharisees
got them, they figured, oh man, he's in trouble now, the Pharisees
are after him. But our Lord wouldn't let these Pharisees who live
judging men about everything judge him or his disciples. And
the disciples said, you know, you've upset them, you've really
made them mad. Our Lord said, don't you perceive?
don't you perceive that whatsoever thing from without entereth into
men cannot defile him? What if the religions of the
world today believe that? Think about it. What you take
into your body does not and cannot defile you. Now it can hurt you.
It can hurt you. I gave up smoking last September
because I had a heart attack. But every time I see somebody
light one up on TV, I'm going, dirty rascal, you get to do that,
and I don't get to do that no more. And that's upsetting. I enjoyed
my tobacco, but it hurt me. But it didn't defile me. It didn't defile me. I did it
for over 60 years and it didn't defile me. What thing you take in your body
won't defile you? What about alcohol? A lot of
people drink alcohol, a lot of people are drunks. Did the alcohol
defile them? No. They defiled the alcohol,
but the alcohol didn't defile them. Cocaine, methamphetamines,
horrible things, they will kill your body, ruin your body. Will
they defile you? No way. Nothing you take in your
body can defile you. That's what our Lord said. He
said your problem is in your heart and my heart. What comes
out of the heart is what defiles a man. He said that. What comes out of the heart?
Murderers, murderers, evil eye, lying, fraud, adultery. These things come out of the
heart. That's what defiles a man, not what comes in his mouth.
So our Lord said it before Paul did, let no man judge you in
meat or drink. Let no man judge you in meat
or in drink. Because your problem ain't what's
outside you, your problem is what's inside you. He said don't
let them judge you in holy days. in holy days. I had an old friend,
he's gone on to be with the Lord now. He was mowing his yard one
Sunday after church. And a preacher actually stopped
him. Went over and had him stop his lawnmower and said, don't
you know it's the Lord's day? He said, well it's the Lord's yard
too. And the Lord's grass needs mowing. So he was mowing the yard. They
had people say, don't wash your car on a Sunday. Well, if it's
a nice day and the car needs washing, why not? These things were not to be judged
on. The Holy Days, the New Moon and
the Passover, Pentecost, and the Feast of Tabernacles, what
are being talked about here, each of these had to do with
slain sacrifices. which pictures the death of Jesus
Christ and were no longer to be practiced since the Savior
had taken away the old covenant and established the new. The
new moon was a time of religious worship that occurred at the
first of the month. It was also attended by sacrifice.
The Sabbaths, of course, were eight different ways of declaring
the same thing. Each said that the work was done
and the Lord rested. It's the Lord's Sabbath. His
rest, having finished the work, they all spoke of the finished
work of Jesus Christ, and for us to observe the Sabbath as
a thing to do in order to please God is fallacy. When men do it, they are saying
that Christ's work was insufficient to the task, because I've got
to do this to make it real. It is to say to you that you are
not complete. You're not complete. There's
something left to do. There's work yet to be done in the matter
of your salvation. It is to call unclean what God
has made clean, what Paul said in 1 Timothy. Paul says, let
no man judge you in these things as if they have anything to do
with your salvation, because they don't. They have nothing
to do with it at all. This is what Paul declares in
verse 17. He says these are just a shadow. A shadow of things
to come. But the body, the substance is
Jesus Christ. All those things fall under the
purview of the Old Covenant and are entirely insubstantial. What
did the Old Covenant do? The Old Covenant was a conditional
covenant based upon your obedience in order to receive the blessing
or the cursing of God. That is what it was. And that
covenant never saved anybody. No sins were omitted under that
covenant by obedience to that covenant. In fact, if you find
that this covenant was only given to one people, and that was the
Jewish nation, it wasn't given to the world, just the Jewish
nation, and read how they did, they failed on every hand. They
fell to the point that when it got to Malachi, the Lord said,
I don't even see the sacrifice anymore. And He said, what sacrifices
do offer are bruised and ruined, you blind lambs and dirty bread. And you're offering these things
to God. You wouldn't offer it to your governor, but you'll
offer it to Me. He said, I see your tears, your crying and moaning
and whining and sentimentality. He said, so much that I've forgotten
where the sacrifice is. You're just crying and moaning.
He says, I'm going to rub your face in the manure of your sacrifices."
Read Malachi. He said, but my Son is coming,
the Angel of the Covenant is coming, He is going to step in
suddenly and He is going to purify the priesthood, you and me, as
silver and gold. He said He is a purifier. All that Old Testament stuff.
People say, well, we don't practice Jewish religion. Yes, you do.
I preached at a church in Winston-Salem not long ago. It had the Ten
Commandments on the wall. When I came here, we had the
Church Covenant up here on the wall. It didn't stay long, but
it is up there. And if you ever read that thing,
nobody keeps that thing. It's just a big lie. It's a big
pharisaical, hypocritical thing that people put on the wall so
people feel better about themselves. They ain't like that crowd out
there. You're worse than that crowd out there. People practice the Old Covenant.
They talk about it all the time. Tithing. Gotta tithe. I read where one lady at a church,
I think it was in Louisville, She was an older lady. She was
about 85 years old on a fixed income and she couldn't come
to church very often. They put her out of church because she
wasn't sinning or tithing. And they put it on that bulletin
board out there in front of the church for everybody to read.
And Sister Sosa wasn't tithing. Listen to me. Tithing is not
a New Testament principle. The only time it's talked about
in the New Testament is in a negative sense. It's the Pharisee who
bragged about being alright with God saying, I tithe of all that
I have. Now if you decide and purpose
in your heart to give 10% of your income, fine, because you
have purposed in your heart to do it. But if you do it thinking
that you have kept some semblance of the Law by doing so, then
you are in trouble. Those things are gone. Nobody
was ever saved under that covenant. No sin was ever remitted under
that covenant. Those things were insubstantial. They only were there to set forth
the person of Jesus Christ in type and shadow. And when it
was fulfilled, it says, He taketh away the first and established
the second. The Old Covenant was fulfilled
with Christ. And it was retired from active
duty. Not only that, all these things
are shadows. What's a shadow? Well, one thing,
you can't even see a shadow unless you have light. Can you? That light is Jesus
Christ. And when you read the Old Covenant,
you read the Old Testament, suddenly you see the shadow if you see
Christ. You see the shadow. The shadow
can do nothing. It has no substance. But it does
declare that something of substance exists once the shadow appears
because light is shown upon it. When Christ was revealed in the
light of the Gospel, we look at the Old Testament and see
the shadow that He casts on everything. We do not, however, go to the
shadow for help. Such an ocean would be deemed
utter foolishness in the natural world. I do not want any of you
to try to drive your shadow home from church today, or the shadow
of your car home from church today. I am going to tell you,
you are not going to get anywhere if you do. How much more foolish to trust
the salvation of your soul and believe that you will be complete
by embracing a shadow. Christ is the substance. Christ
is the body that casts the shadow. In Him,
not His shadow, you are complete. Let no man judge you otherwise.
We are going to take the Lord's table. What is the Lord's table? It ain't a shadow, but it is
a typification of a substance, the Lord Jesus Christ. And what
does it talk about? Him being the body. His body
being broken for you, His blood being shed for you. It's the glory of Him. And what
these elements do is saying, what we're saying when we take
these elements, setting forth the death of Christ until He
comes again, we're saying, I'm complete. Don't try to judge
me otherwise. I'm complete in Him. Father,
bless us through understanding. We pray in Christ's name. Amen.