Colossians 2:16-19 says...

Today's verses are Colossians 2:16-19, which read, 

v.16, 17 - Therefore no one is to act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day--things which are a mere shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ.

Therefore, because of our new life in Christ given to us and provided for us by the grace of God through the cross of Christ, we and the new Christians in the Colossae church are to beware of those who push man-made traditions and released ceremonial laws from God.  Paul gives us and them a list here. 

• "food or drink" - Under the new covenant, the Christians were not under obligation to observe the Old Testament dietary restrictions.  These were lifted but it doesn't mean that some of them are not beneficial to follow physically and voluntarily.  The point is that food or drink are not the way of salvation and anyone promoting the connection should be disregarded.  
• "a festival or a new moon" - The Jewish people had many festivals to remember God's actions in the past and there was a monthly sacrifice on the first day of each month.  All of these were in place to point them to the coming of the Messiah and His fulfillment of all.  These were lifted with the coming of the Messiah and His once and for all sacrifice on the cross.  Again, the connection of these to salvation should be disregarded.
• "Sabbath day" - The Jewish people kept the Sabbath day, the seventh day of creation when God rested.  Is keeping the Sabbath day the salvation of your soul?  The answer is no and anyone making the connection between the two is to be disregarded.  The Sabbath day was given by God as a commandment to observe, created by the One who provides salvation through His Son and not a day.

All these things were a "mere shadow" of the coming of Christ.  They served their purpose to point to Christ.  They had a substance and it was not in themselves of food or drink, festival or new moon, or a day called the Sabbath.  The substance they had was Christ Himself in which they were created to serve as tools used by God to proclaim a coming Messiah.  He has come and He has obeyed and He has completed all that those things pointed to. 

v.18, 19 - Let no one keep defrauding you of your prize by delighting in self-abasement and the worship of angels, taking his stand on visions he has seen, inflated without cause by his fleshly mind, and not holding fast to the head, from whom the entire body, being supplied and held together by the joints and ligaments, grows with a growth which is from God.

The prize is salvation that has come only one way and only through one person and that is God's one and only Son, Jesus Christ.  If someone is to say "Yeah, you need Christ but you also need this added to His sacrifice to complete your salvation" then disregard that teaching.  The false teachers were masters of adding on to Christ's all sufficient gift of salvation.

They brought into the picture their own and many times physical image to model after.  They brought in the worship of angels along with the worship of Christ.  They brought in personal visions, exaggerated or inflated, to entice people to follow them and pay them.  Do any of these sound familiar to the practices used today within the church culture?

The head of the church is Jesus Christ and He holds together every part of the church.  The growth of the church, which is His body, comes directly from God.  What we have in Christ and what we have in His word is what we have to go on and nothing added to the equation to make it complete. 

We have so much information on so many things, even in the Christian realm, that can confuse us on what to follow.  Paul says to follow Christ and Him alone as the substance of all things.  He is not a "mere shadow" but the actual head of the body of Christ, the church.  Any leading away from that fact or adding to that fact is to be disregarded by these new Christians and by us today.  Let's pray. 

"Lord, with the age of the internet, we are bombarded by tons of information that is good and also much that is bad.  There are false teachers who are doing the same things as in the days of the Colossae church.  May our hearts and minds be fixed on You and know You so that when they promote an image of themselves or certain practices that will insure our salvation that we see the falseness of the claim.  May we keep You truly the Head of the Church and the Head of our lives.  Amen." 

Pastor Adam