Walk This Way: Lure of Legalism with Dr. Scott McKee

Good morning everybody. I to welcome those of you joining us online from places near and far and of course good morning to our Farmington Hills campus this morning joining us for this teaching time via video feed. Good morning to you. Welcome everybody. Today we continue our series in the book of Colossians and today we're gonna see Paul give the church at Colossae a warning.

He's given the warning to us as well. Something is about to steal the grace that they've received that we talked about last week. The danger that lurks in every corner of the church of Colossae is the danger of legalism. Today we're going to look at the faces of legalism, how to identify it and how to avoid it. My wife grew up in a very legalistic church, they didn't drink or smoke of course, but they had a lot of extra rules I didn't quite understand.

They don't see movies, they don't play cards, they don't listen to rock and roll. Now I fail to see the the most legalism starts with a good intent, right? The bible speaks against gambling and maybe card games of chance could be considered gambling, so it'll be super safe, we're just gonna lock that out as well and that's okay, you can decide not to play cards. Boy, I failed to see the danger in a game of Uno. Spoons, that's a dangerous game.

But Uno, that draw four is not very nice, it's not evil. The problem isn't that play cards are not play cards, the problem is these rules become the boundary markers for who's in and who's out. Who's on the inside, who's on the outside. These highly visible, relatively superficial rules become the boundary markers of who's in and who's out. And this is what's going on in the church of Colossae as well.

Paul addresses the church of Colossae and say there's someone among you, there's a ringleader among you who probably has some helpers, some cohorts who's acting like a self appointed judge deciding who's in, who's out of the church. And they're deciding based on the following of certain food laws and festival celebrations. The legalists and Colossae were deeply critical of the Gentile Christians in their failure to observe certain food laws and holy day laws. They were actually pushing the new Gentile Christians out of the church for failure to observe these rules and Paul in this passage says there's there's some faces of legalism that I want you to be able to identify and to red flag and to steer away from. And the first face of legalism Paul puts in front of us is a rules oriented approach to faith.

A rules oriented approach to faith. Somebody follows a legalistic pattern of faith says that it's the rules that are most important and most central. There will be a high emphasis on the external. Remember Jesus said to the Pharisees, your life is like a cup where the outside is clean but the inside is dirty. That's what he's talking about here, the rules become sort of an end in themselves and they become a way of keeping score.

Much more than inner transformation, it's not the fruit of the spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self control. Those aren't the boundary markers. It's not inner transformation. It's these superficial rules that become that identify you as part of the family of God. Now let me say what we're not saying here about legalism.

When you try to avoid legalism, we're not saying that we are avoiding absolutes. Commitments to Jesus as Lord and the infallibility of scriptures are absolute as we cling to the to the way that we cling to, not in the spirit of legalism. There is right and wrong and that does not make you a legalist. When we reject legalism, we're also not rejecting or avoiding spiritual disciplines that we talk around here around here all the time like reading the Bible and praying. The difference between legalism and disciplines is that I will practice spiritual disciplines in my life for the purpose of inner transformation toward Christ likeness.

The success is not in the practice of the disciplines, but rather the visible fruit of the spirit that I see born in my life as a result of the disciplines. You can take something as simple as the practice of tithing and use it legalistically or use it in a fresh spirit disciplined approach. When I first learned about tithing, I learned about it as a spiritual discipline that we give not because the church needs money, but because I, for lack of a better way of saying it, have a need to give. And when I give the first 10% of my money, the first day of the week, the first portion of my my pay, it's a daily reminder to me that God is first in my life. It's a reminder that God is the provider of all that I have.

It's an act of trust that God will provide all that I need and it grows me as a generous person. And for most of my life, I have practiced the spiritual discipline of tithing that way, in that spirit. But there are times that I have given grudgingly, given solely out of obedience and grit, I've given but not in the right attitude and therefore it failed to produce the fruit of my life that it's intended to. A legalistic rules approach to the faith will wither your soul inside. And here in verse 17 Paul says, those days are over.

The law is but a shadow. Jesus Christ is here, follow him. Galatians chapter four, Paul gives these warnings. Formerly, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those who were by nature not gods. Those who by nature are not gods.

But now that you know God or rather are known by God, how is it that you're turning back to those weak and miserable forces? Do you wish to be enslaved by them all over again? And all throughout Romans, Paul builds the case that the only thing the law could do is to show us the enormity of our sin. And now you people at Colossae, you wanna use the law as a way to please God. It doesn't make any sense at all.

So the first phase of legalism Paul wants to point out to people at the church of Colossae is that you see people with a rules oriented approach to faith steer clear of that. That's a red flag. A second phase of legalism is a sense of spiritual superiority. Imagine you were part of this little church of Colossae and there's new Christians and long time Christians and someone asked a new Christian, how's your quiet time going? Quiet time was a really big deal in the church my wife grew up in, That was one of the clear boundary markers if you had a quiet time every day whether you were in or out of the club.

And imagine a new Christian might say something like, well, it's going okay. I sometimes forget about it. Sometimes I'm not as disciplined as I'd like to be, but sometimes I pray and I feel like God's not there. Have you ever experienced that long time Christian at Colossi? Sometimes I recently though I've been praying, meditating on a bible verse and that bible verse is really coming alive in my life and I'm learning and growing, so I think it's going I think it's going well.

How about you legalistic Christian? How's your quiet time going? And a legalist says something like this in verse eighteen and nineteen that we looked at today. Well, my deep desire to pursue my devotion with God, I've decided to go without food for the last six days and in doing so I've also mutilated my body with little cuts because I wanted to show God that I love him more than I love my body. And doing both these things together, I've been transported into these heavenly visions where I've actually joined with the angels.

I think it was Gabriel and Michael who were there and I've joined with them in the worship of God. So yeah, I think it's going pretty well. How do you win at that game? The legalists in Colossians were coming up with these outrageous, outlandish spiritual experiences to make them look spiritually superior to the new Christians and Paul says, no, that's pride. That's religious pride, that's legalism.

One of the faces of legalism is there is a smug elitism, a spiritual superiority, a keeping of certain rules that say I'm on a morally superior ground to you and there's a competing and a comparing to see who's higher and that kind of environment fosters a spiritual pretending where I have to hear somebody else's description of their supernatural outlandish quiet time. It's hard to confess where you're really at. These people were saying my way is superior to your way, I'm further along, I put myself in such a position that I am worshiping with angels. The translation there in those two verses eighteen and nineteen, some of some of your bibles, most of your bibles say false humility, but a better translation would be self abasement, which would include fasting, self mutilation, and mortification of the body. Then where it says worship of angels, it would probably better be translated worship with angels.

Paul has some harsh words at the end of verse 18 to say for these people. Paul admits they look spiritually superior on the outside but says don't let them dare disqualify you. Don't let them take your joy away. Then Paul gives a very accurate description of what's going on with these people. He says, you're right, on the outside they look spiritually impressive, but in verse 23 he says, yes, they have the appearance of wisdom, but they go into long details about their spiritual relationship.

They basically, Paul says, have an unspiritual mind and they puff themselves up with idle notions. One translation says, they're putting on errors with imaginary fantasies. Paul says, what they're saying isn't even true, they're making this stuff up or they're having low blood sugar hallucinations because they're fasting, but they're coming up with these fantastic stories to make you feel bad and to make you feel like you're on the outside forcing you to feel like you've got to spiritually pretend. Let it let it not be so. What's fascinating here is that Paul doesn't even find their claim to worship with angels so reprehensible that he addresses it here.

As as a Christian with a Jewish background, this would have been heresy, but what Paul finds more reprehensible is their attitude of dismissive superiority because the truth is there's a huge danger when you look down at other people and we see other ourselves as better than them. The bible has a different idea. The apostle Peter modeled this in the book of Acts. Acts chapter 10, Peter meets the new gentile Christian Cornelius. Peter entered the house, Cornelius met him and fell at his feet in reverence.

But Peter made him get up, stand up, he said. I am only a man myself. This is the apostle Peter. This is a man who walked with Jesus. He walked on the water.

This is the one of whom Jesus said, I will build my church on you. If anybody had a really reason, a good reason for feeling spiritually superior, it would be the apostle Peter. But he didn't do that, put himself on a level playing field with Cornelius, the new Gentile convert and said, stand up, I'm only a man. I'm the same as you. Verse 19 is Paul's diagnosis of the situation.

The person has lost their vital connection to Christ. They're not even plugged into God anymore because he's plugged into God is where we get all of our nourishment. Paul says the true test of whether someone belongs to God or not is neither rule keeping nor spiritual superiority in the form of super spiritual experiences, but whether or not you belong to Christ. Don't make it about anything else. This is the face of legalism.

Now if it looks so bad, if it's a red flag and it's so easy to identify, why don't we fall into legalism? What's the lure of legalism? Why are we drawn to it? I think there's some reasons we're drawn to it. First of all, a rules oriented approach to faith appears to offer safety.

It appears to offer safety. My family and I love to go to the shores of Lake Michigan and we love Mac dune rides where they take you on a thrilling ride up and down the dunes and along the shores of Lake Michigan and the driver stopped and told jokes along the way and the driver I remember at the beginning of the ride said, alright everybody, it's time to everybody fasten your false sense of security belts. Legalism is a false sense of security belt. A rules oriented approach to faith appears to offer safety because you know life is messy and chaotic so can't my religion, can't my faith at least be one place without ambiguity? Because we have a fear of the unknown and there's a great freedom in Jesus Christ, so that leaves a lot to me, but can't you just tell me what to do?

Tell me exactly what to do, remove all ambiguity so I don't have to worry about that. It appears to offer safety, but just as this passage has shown that rules are incapable of transforming us, verse 23 is very very clear, they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgences. So they also offer the safety they offer is not real. And look at the lives of Abraham and David and Deborah and Paul and you ask yourself was following God from them ever about being safe? Was safety ever a part of the equation?

God is too big for any box and he honors the courage that it takes to face the passionate struggle with him to figure out life along the way. So we're drawn sometimes because it seems to offer safety, but it's not true safety. Secondly, think we're drawn to legalism because spiritual support superiority just feels good. It's as simple as that. There's nothing like a little righteous indignation to well your soul up and make you feel great inside.

There's part of us that wants to be God's only child or be God's favorite child or to say to God, God if you compare me to other people, I come out on top right? We want to be the best. We're drawn to legalism because it depends on rule keeping and it appears to offer safety. We're drawn sometimes because we want to feel spiritually superior but as a final reason I believe we're drawn to legalism that's more dangerous than either of these and that is legalism resembles the real thing. It feels like religion, it feels like stuff's happening and we can accept this pseudo faith in exchange for the real freedom that Christ has for us.

Legalism resembles the real thing. So how do we live free of legalism? Few tips today. Number one, stop worrying about your spiritual reputation. This was a big concern for the people to whom Paul was writing and maybe you've worried about your spiritual reputation as well.

Paul says, let it go. Let it go. And the best way to let go of your spiritual reputation is to live in full awareness of your sin. I love what the apostle Paul wrote to his young protege, Timothy. He said, here's a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance.

Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners and then Paul adds, of whom I am the worst. Paul lived with an awareness of the enormity of his sin and the ability of Jesus to handle it all. Perhaps the one thing you and I could practice in order to let go of our spiritual reputation is the practice of daily confession. Confess one sin every day to somebody that you know. Ideally somebody that you like to spiritually impress.

Might be a friend, might be a small group member, might be a family member, might be a spouse. Confess one sin every day even if you got to make it up and you won't have to. Here's a sin I committed to you, I'm amazed how it'll make you feel, amazed at how it'll make the person you confess to feel, it'll change the tenor of everything because spiritually pretending is really dangerous. I saw a note a couple weeks ago from somebody who kind of admitted to this, they're part of a small group and they were in a small group meeting and the small group leaders said let's go around the room and everyone say what today's verse means to them. And this person writes, as I listened to everyone around the group answer with incredible answers and counting the people until it was my turn and feeling the heat on my neck, trying to decide what I was going to say, I knew what I was going to do and I'm ashamed to say I didn't.

My answer was born out of a concern for my spiritual reputation. It wasn't honest, I hadn't read that verse for a very long time, but I had to have something to say that at least matched the level of the people sharing around me. I'm ashamed that I did it. Anybody here ever been there? Let's stop spiritually pretending and stop looking at certain sins as spiritual felonies and other sins as spiritual misdemeanors and we confess only to the minor ones.

We treat confession like a job interview, you know when they ask you, okay, you for your strengths, Tell us what what are your weaknesses are. What kind of weaknesses do we confess? You know I just just care too much. People would say I'm a bit of a perfectionist. I know I shouldn't be but darn it I just want to be excellent at everything that I do.

We treat confession that way and I think the Apostle Paul interesting in his list of sins, he often intermingled the spiritual felonies with the spiritual misdemeanors to show that it doesn't really matter. It's all sin in the end. We let go of our need for a spiritual reputation. Like me wondered if you're all okay with me sitting down during a sermon. Gotta let it go.

Secondly, another practice we can do to to fight to legalism is to practice silent servanthood. Silent servanthood. Now I'm at disadvantage today because I can't tell you about my silent acts of service because it wouldn't be silent anymore. But the New Testament says we shouldn't let our right hand know what our left hand is doing and so every day, maybe maybe once a week, find an act of solid servanthood. Write somebody a note.

Somebody needs some money. Somebody needs a kind word. Somebody needs a gift. Somebody needs to be taken to lunch. Now it wouldn't be silent to that person, but your story doesn't end up as a sermon illustration or as a small group example.

It's only between you and God. Silent servitude is a great antidote to legalism. Number three, practice multiple creative approaches to developing a relationship with God. Multiple creative approaches. Athletes call this cross training.

So if you're if you grew up with the idea of a quiet time, maybe shake that up and try journaling, try walking out in nature, try praying differently, so that you're not bound in a narrow way of developing yourself or in a way that that could be a could become a legalistic boundary marker for you. And number four, last one, joining the practice of joy and celebration. The most outstanding characteristic of people who attend our church ought to be joy. When I was growing up, lot of the figures that got pointed at our churches were, I would never go to that church. That church is full of hypocrites and I want to say, oh, we've got room for one more.

But why do people think that about church, the church of hypocrites and joyless people? You know people that are like that in our churches. I think we're all drawn to people who follow the fresh winds of the spirit not because they don't have disciplines in their life, not that they don't follow God, but they're like a river where the banks are God's boundaries and they just swell up with who God is. I just love to be around them. They're filled with joy.

When you get around them, their joy spills onto you. We need to find joyful people and we need to be joyful people. Look for excuse every day to celebrate and to show a little joy and spontaneously when you feel it bubbling up in you, just let it go. Let your body express it. Sometimes you and I are guilty of practicing faith in a legalistic way.

Sometimes we're guilty of doing it to others to make them feel like they've got to be a certain way in order to be accepted. May it may it never be so. May we find our hope in Christ alone. Let's pray. Oh God, we thank you for Paul's warning to the church of Colossae and to us.

Oh God, may our faith be full and free and real and authentic and joyful. Keep us from the temptation to pretend. The temptation to fall into legalistic faith. Oh God, we recognize this is not a Christian problem or a religious problem. This is a human nature problem.

So whatever that is inside of us, father root that out. Help us to be full and free and live the abundant life that you have for us. May the only only marker that marks someone who's inside is faith in you. May our faith be in Christ alone. As we pray in his name, for his sake we pray.

Amen.