Traditions!

 Colossians 2:16-23

Jan and I grew-up with the normal traditions, so when our daughter showed up we had to make some decisions about what we told her was in keeping with the traditions of the culture or were we going to establish our own customs?  We celebrated Christmas as the birthday of Jesus Christ on December 25, each year.  And because it was not our birthday, we kept the gifts on Jesus’ birthday to a minimum for each other.  Today, Jan and I do not exchange gifts on Christmas, and it’s our thing, not something anyone else may want to do.   But we do have a tradition of celebrating a birthday for the whole month of our birthday.

Now it seems strange that our policy of not telling our daughter there was a Santa Claus caused many to believe we were terrible parents.  But we did teach her there is a real person named Jesus who is God in the flesh, and that today He sits at the right hand of the Father.  We never told her there was a tooth fairy or an Easter bunny, but on Easter Sunday we celebrated that Christ ejected out of the grave in victory over death and the grave, and with all that baggage she is a mom of two boys, has a husband who loves her, and is a follower of Christ, a productive citizen today.

Now I shared that not to encourage you to do likewise, but to share this was the battle the church at Colossae was up against.  The Jewish members wanted to keep or even pressured the church to observe Jewish dietary laws and holy days.  So the Apostle Paul, gives them this directive, “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 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.”

It was not only traditions but also false teachers that were coming into the church teaching about visions of angels and the end game was to take the Colossians away from Christ and in doing so disqualify them from keeping a focus on the cross and the risen Savior.

These are not my words but they are essential; “Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves that Jesus Christ is in you? —unless indeed you fail to meet the test!“  An unexamined life will fall prey to false teachers!  So do not put your trust in what a teacher or preacher tells you but go to the Scripture and make sure that what is being said agrees with the Bible.  For that reason, I do not believe anyone should use anyone’s Paraphrased Bible as his or her source of truth, and that includes the Message. 

The Spirit of God wiggling Paul’s lips had this to say; “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.”

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice