Hold on to Your Head!
Colossians 2:13-15 · Miles Driedger · Oct 18, 2026
Colossians, No. 12
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/101826216281236

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Well, good morning. It's wonderful to be together this morning and just thinking about those, you know, every joint and ligament and we'll get into that as we go. But that's what we are. We are one body together with the body of Christ all around the world, past and present. And what a wonderful wonderful privilege it is to be a part of his body, the body of Christ. So let's just begin with prayer this morning. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for the privilege of being your body, one with the Lord Jesus Christ.

The individual members knit together in one body and feeding on your word. I just reminded this morning, Lord, of the wonderful privilege and joy that it is to be able to gather together and to just focus on what you've said to us, your word. Just the fact that you have communicated with us is so awesome and so necessary, so vital. And so we just pray this morning that as we look into your word, that you would give us the understanding that we need, that we would be able to be nourished by it as we take these things in and understand and just absorb them into our thinking and our understanding so that we can walk, so that we can function in this world as you would have us to, walking by faith. So Lord, we just pray that you would teach us now in Jesus' name, amen.

On June 6th, 1944, the Allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy. And at a tremendous cost, the Allies gained a foothold in France. But from there, the Allies would have to fight their way all the way back to Germany. And the advances were rapid. Thousands of troops were moving east, and they all needed to be fed, fueled, and armed.

And a failure to supply those critical needs would have been catastrophic. But there was a problem, because leading up to D-Day, the Allies had bombed the railroad into oblivion. The railroad tracks were unusable. And they did that in order to hamper the Germans' ability to bring supplies in their defensive of Normandy. And so the only way for the Allies to forward critical supplies to the troops would be overland by truck.

And so on August 25th, 1944, the U.S. military launched a strategic mission which they called the Red Ball Express. Anyone familiar with the Red Ball Express? I wasn't, but I've been reading John Whitcomb's biography, and when he arrived in France, he was sent to assist the Red Ball Express. And that's how it first came to my attention.

But for the next 85 days, American soldiers would operate nearly 6,000 trucks, delivering on average approximately 12 and a half, this is a number, 12,500 tons a day. 12,500 tons of supplies every day were being forwarded to the front lines. And though you may never have heard of the Red Ball Express, victory in Europe would have been impossible without the Red Ball Express and other similar supply lines. because an army without supply lines is doomed. And I want you to keep the image of the Red Ball Express in your mind as we look at today's verses.

Because in verse 19, Paul says that Christ is the head who supplies his body, the church. He's the one who can supply what we need as we face life in this world. Yet the church is full of counterfeits. Instead of depending on Jesus' supply, we try to supply ourselves. Instead of depending on Him, we depend on ourselves. And as Paul's gonna point out, that's arrogance and it's futile.

And that's what we're gonna see this morning. And we're gonna see what God has really done to supply our every need. But to review here, let's just catch up on where we've been at for the last couple of weeks. Two weeks ago, we were in verse eight. And Paul says there, do not be taken captive by ideas that make the Christian life about what I can do. That's a summary.

And these ideas that find their way into the church are consistent with human wisdom. And last week we talked about the beaker Christian, right? Borrowing from Jim Henderson, right? The Muppets, me, me, me, me, me, right? The Christian life that is all about what I can do. And this mentality that, well, if I'm gonna have a godly life, it's gotta be me who lives it.

And it's a major breakthrough as a Christian when you realize that the Christian life is beyond your ability. It's not something that you can do. That's a breakthrough, but it's also very defeating, is it not? To realize your inability. And that's discouraging, but it's critical. But a lot of Christians never get there because it doesn't line up with human wisdom. Human wisdom says, I've got to do it, I must be able to. But if you never understand your inability, then the Christian life will always be about trying harder.

It'll never be the not I but Christ life that we read about in Galatians 2.20, you know, not I but Christ. And you'll never have that kind of life so long as the Christian life is about what I can do. Human wisdom always turns the Christian life into self-effort.

And Paul is warning the Colossians to beware of that kind of thinking. And in verses nine through 15, Paul answers the question, why? Why should we beware of these kinds of ideas? Why shouldn't we fall into these ideas that make the Christian life about what I can do and about my own self effort?

And the answer that he gives is essentially that God in his grace has given you a brand new life in the Lord Jesus. God has supplied that because He knew that you couldn't do it. He understood what we didn't understand. He understood that you, as a sinner by nature, could only produce one thing. And what does a sinner produce? Right? Sin. We didn't understand that, but God knew it all along.

And God took care of that problem. We know that every Christian has believed the fact that Jesus died for their sins. If you are a Christian, you at some point at least understood the fact and put your faith in the fact that Jesus Christ died for your sins. But what a lot of Christians have never realized is that not only did God deal with our sins on the cross, but that the cross also dealt with them, the sinner. And in verse 12, Paul tells us how God took care of this.

He says that we are joined to Christ in his death and resurrection. And he uses the term there baptized, which is not water baptism, but it's speaking about our identification, or being placed into, or being identified with the Lord Jesus Christ, joined to him in his death and resurrection. And Paul compares that death, he uses the analogy of circumcision.

Right, again, not physical circumcision. He's using this as a picture of what happened through our death with Christ. Just like circumcision is a cutting, a severing or a separating, we've been separated from the power of the sin nature. And it's an irreversible work. That's the idea between, you know, why use the image of a surgical procedure to amputate part of the body?

Because that's, this is an irreversible surgical procedure that this separating or severing from the sin nature. And now, as believers, we can say, I don't have to sin. I'm no longer a slave to sin. And not only were we separated or severed from sin's power, but we've also been given a new life.

Verse 13 says, he made you alive together with him. And that phrase, or the words that are kind of split up there in the English, he made, alive together, is one word in the Greek. It's only used here in Ephesians 2, verse 5. Well, let me just read Ephesians 2, 5. It says, even when you were dead in, sorry, when we were dead in our transgressions, God made us alive together with Christ. That made us alive together. Mounce explains this as, this word is to make alive together with another, or this, to make a sharer in the quickening of another. Okay, so when Jesus Christ was raised to life, you were made alive together with him.

You share in his life. The life that we have as Christians is the life of another. It's a sharing in the life of the Lord Jesus Christ. And the Christian life is all about walking by faith in that fact. Walking by faith in that reality. The fact that I have been separated from the power of the sin nature and that Jesus Christ is my life. It's Jesus who lives his righteous life through me. And it happens as I depend on that by faith. As I trust that to be true. As I trust that he is my life. And I reckon on that fact. lives his life through me.

There's no other way to have a righteous life. It has to be Jesus living his righteous life through you. And so Paul has explained in verses 9 through 15 what God has done to make us, to give us a new life in the Lord Jesus Christ. And on the basis of those facts, he's saying, don't fall for anything that makes the Christian life something for you to do. You have been joined to Jesus Christ so that he can do it through you. So on the basis of what God has done, understanding those facts, we have the grounds for rejecting all these ideas that make the Christian life my work, and we can allow the Lord Jesus to live his life through us. Our job is to trust him. And we can say that faith is depending on someone else to do what we can't. That's really what faith is. And beginning in verse 16, Paul now returns to this command from verse eight, and he gets more specific, right?

So he begins pointing out specific ideas, things that the Colossians were hearing, things that were being taught and were coming into the church, and all of them making the Christian life depend on them rather than depending on the Lord Jesus Christ.

So let's read verses 16 through 19, and then we'll begin with verse 16. Paul writes, 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. Let no one keep defrauding you of your prize by delighting in self-abasement and the worship of the 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. So beginning in verse 16, we notice that Paul uses the word therefore. And as I said, he's picking up on the command that he gave back in verse eight, right?

See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception. In other words, don't be deceived by works-based ideas of the Christian life. Why? Because of what God has accomplished for you through the cross. And it's inconsistent to think that the Christian life is lived by your effort when you've died, and Jesus is your life, right?

And now Paul wants to get specific about these works-based ideas, and so he brings up food and drink, and then he brings up festivals, new moons, Sabbaths. So we have there, you know, food and drink, Okay, things related to our physical sustenance, things that we consume, take into our physical bodies. And then he has these three things, festivals, new moons and Sabbaths, which we could say are external rituals. And what these five things listed here really point to are the Old Testament law, the law of Moses, because these are the kinds of things that God gave instructions regarding. It's kind of a summary statement if we were just to, you know, lump all these things together, well, what is this describing?

Well, this is talking about God's law, and it's the law that was given to the nation of Israel, and it was popular to think that trying to keep God's law is what the Christian life is all about, and that's still popular today, right? It's a very, very common mentality to think that, well, the Christian life is lived by obedience to the law. Maybe not all the laws, because people will get into saying, well, we're not under these laws, but we're under those laws, and so forth, but at least the Ten Commandments, right? I mean, and that the Christian life is to be lived by obedience to God's law is a very common idea within the church today.

But what did Peter call the law in Acts chapter 15? This is one of my favorite New Testament comments on the law because they're discussing this in the Jerusalem Council and Peter calls the law a yoke which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear. Which isn't to say that there's anything wrong with the law, right? But there's something wrong with man. Whether you're a Jew or a Gentile, We all have the same sin nature. And the law was never intended to produce a righteous life in us. It was intended to show us how sinful we are. To show us that we needed a new kind of life.

Turn over to Romans chapter seven. We don't have this on the screen, but turn there in your Bibles. Romans chapter seven, verses seven through 13. And this is one of those key portions of scripture that explains some things about the law and about the sin nature, right, where these things are kind of brought together. And Paul's dealing with this question about the law. Is there something wrong with the law? And so beginning of verse seven, he says, what shall we say then? Is the law sin? Is the law the problem? May it never be. On the contrary, I would not have come to know sin except through the law. For I would not have known about coveting if the law had not said, you shall not covet.

But sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, produced in me coveting of every kind. For apart from the law, sin is dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin became alive and I died. And this commandment, which was to result in life, proved to result in death for me. For sin taking an opportunity through the commandment deceived me and through it killed me.

This is a key verse here. So then the law is holy and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. And verse 13 sums this up. Therefore, did that which is good become a cause of death for me? May it never be. Rather, it was sin. In order that it might be shown to be sin, by effecting my death through that which is good, so that through the commandment, sin would become utterly sinful. And what Paul is trying to explain here is that the sin nature cannot produce righteousness. And even when placed under a perfectly righteous law, which God's law in the Old Testament is, there's nothing wrong with the law.

We don't want to make that mistake. When we talk so often about the fact that we're not under law, we can get this idea, well, there's something wrong with the law. That's never the case. The law is perfectly fine, perfectly good. The problem is with us, right?

And the sin nature is such that even under a perfectly righteous law, the sin nature will use God's righteous law as a springboard for sin. And you might not see that because you think, well, can't we produce some good in response to the law? But we have to understand what the sin nature is. This is where we really have to get clear on this because the sin nature will go one of two ways with the law. The sin nature is either going to respond in rebellion against it, which would be sin, or it's going to respond in a self-righteous obedience, which is also sin. We just don't recognize it. We often think that the only sin is the immoral behavior, the breaking the rules, right?

But the Bible is clear that anything produced by the flesh is sin, whether it's this rebellious disobedience or whether it's self-righteousness. If it's coming out of the sinful flesh, it's unacceptable to God. What is Romans 7, 18? If we carried on just a little bit farther in Romans 7, Paul would say this, for I know that nothing good dwells in me that is in my flesh, in the sin nature, nothing good, okay?

And as we're all familiar with Isaiah 64, 6, which tells us that all our righteous deeds are as filthy rags. And we see both sides of this throughout the Old Testament. You know, God gave his law to the nation Israel, and sometimes the nation was in just total disregard of the law, right? And the Lord disciplined them for that, right? But we also see times when the nation was technically keeping the law, but it wasn't from a right heart. And there's a great verse in Amos, Amos 5, 21, God's words through Amos.

He says, I hate, I reject your festivals, nor do I delight in your solemn assemblies. God's upset about the fact that Israel's keeping the law? No, he's upset about the fact that they are keeping the law as external, outward, religious observance with no heart relationship to the Lord, right? All of his stuff is external.

And you know, the same thing was going on with the Pharisees in Jesus' day, wasn't it? Jesus speaking to the Pharisees in Matthew 23, verse 27. He says, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness.

We have to understand that the sinful flesh can keep up this external obedience to the law, right? At least to some extent. And it might have others fooled. You might even have yourself fooled, right? But that is not righteousness. That is a self-righteousness.

As Paul calls it in Philippians 3, he calls it a righteousness of my own derived from law. And that's not the righteousness that God is looking for. He's not looking for your, self-centered, proud observance of the law, he's looking for the righteousness of his son, which is what we have as Christians. But when you take a Christian and put him under the law, what are you doing?

You're giving the sin nature the very thing that it needs to get going. And it's gonna go one of two directions with that, right? It's gonna respond in rebellious disobedience, or self-righteous obedience. But either way, you're producing the works of the flesh, right? You're not being energized by Jesus Christ. You're the one doing the living, and it's self and not Christ. And so what does Paul say?

He says, therefore, no one is to act as your judge. Literally, do not let anyone judge you. This is, it's actually imperative there. Do not let anyone judge you. In other words, don't allow anyone to put you under law as a system, because the law isn't gonna be any help to you in your Christian life. All the law can do is activate your sinful flesh.

So, it's critical that we understand that, but don't misinterpret this either. Don't misinterpret this as saying that we're not to judge one another's actions as believers, right? The New Testament is clear that when you see a brother in sin, you're to go to him and you're to seek to restore him. It's not as if there's no such thing as right and wrong, right? Because you're a believer.

The question is, and the issue is, how are you going to live that? How are you going to live a righteous life? And what we have to understand is that law, the rule of law, isn't going to do it. The rule of law isn't going to produce a righteous life, right? So don't let anyone judge you by putting you under a law system to produce that righteousness.

And then we come to verse 17, and Paul's continuing on, and he's talked about these, you know, food, drink, this new moon, Sabbath, festivals, and he talks about these things, he says, which are a mere shadow of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. Now, don't get too abstract with this. This verse might seem a little bit hard to understand, but Paul is actually using a really simple analogy. The word translated substance is simply the word for body, soma in the Greek.

And so we have here, we have a shadow, and then a body, okay? And you have a shadow, if you were to walk outside today, right? But your shadow isn't your body, right? Though it does give a pretty good idea of what you look like, at least in a basic way, right? We all have our own distinct shadows. And Paul is saying that the things of the law, everything that was represented by what he talked about in verse 16, They are a shadow.

They are a picture. And what do they picture? They picture the kind of person that God desires to have fellowship with, right? And of course, that's Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the one who cast that, the kind of shadow that we see represented in the law, a righteous life. And then we see here that they are a shadow of things to come, right? And this is a reference to the day when God will dwell with man in perfect fellowship, right? And that day is still coming, right? But God can't dwell with sinners. And so if there's going to be perfect fellowship between God and man, we've gotta be a new kind of man. There's gotta be a new kind of man if God is going to have this, coming day when he will dwell in perfect fellowship with mankind.

And what we're seeing here, what Paul's getting at, is that the law pictures that kind of man, right? Because it pictures the character of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus is that kind of man. And putting yourself under the law means that you're trying to live up to that righteous standard. You're trying to live up to that kind of righteousness.

You're trying to imitate God's righteousness by means of the flesh, and that can't work. That can't, you can't, you're never gonna produce it. All you can produce is your own righteousness, which is a self-righteousness and totally worthless, right? But God separated you from the power of the flesh and raised you to new life in Christ so that it would be Christ living his righteous life through you, not you trying to live like Christ.

So that's the idea here in verse 17. The law is a shadow or a picture of the kind of person who can have intimate fellowship with God. And Jesus Christ is the only man who is that kind of person. And if we're going to have that closeness and that fellowship and intimacy with God, we're going to have to be like him, right? We don't become like him by trying to be like him. We had to have been placed into union with Jesus Christ, which is the mystery that Paul talked about in chapter one, Christ in you, the hope of glory. Christ in you, the hope of glory, sharing in his essential nature, sharing in his kind of righteousness so that we can have this intimate, close fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ. or with the father.

What the law gave us a picture of in the Old Testament is what Jesus Christ is. And no one in all of history has ever approximated that righteousness through trying to observe the law, through trying to be what the law showed, what the law gave us a picture of.

And so verse 18, Paul continues on, he says, let no one keep defrauding you of your prize by delighting in self-abasement and the worship of angels, taking a stand on visions he has seen inflated without cause by his fleshly mind. And Paul is talking about these false teachers, let no one keep defrauding you, these people that were bringing in these ideas. And the words, let no one, keep defrauding you reflect the Greek present tense verb with this negation on it.

And so the idea is that the Colossians were already being defrauded or beginning to be taken in by these ideas. They were being cheated. They were being judged by these false teachers. And Paul is saying, stop it. Don't let these guys keep leading you astray. And we see two things. that give us the flavor of these false teachings, okay? What does Paul say? He says that they delight in self-abasement.

And your translation might even have the word humility. And you think, well, what's wrong with humility? Well, we have to understand contextually, right? This is not positive, okay? In verse 23, Paul connects this same word with the severe treatment of the body. Okay, so this isn't a genuine humility, This is kind of a man-made loneliness. Our kids have been studying the Middle Ages, and it's interesting to read about the monks in the Middle Ages who would weave the most horrifically itchy shirts that they could, hair shirts, right? And they might even weave in some shards of glass or something to make it really, really uncomfortable.

And that's the kind of thinking that's going on here. This is asceticism, technical word for it, right? And this kind of thing, I mean, goes on to varying degrees all over the world, right, still today. So this is what we have here by self-abasement.

And the other thing is the worship of angels. And both of these things come up over and over again in man-made religion. And that's the giveaway that is wrong, okay? that these same ideas show up over and over again in all of the human man-made religions. This idea of self-abasement and worship of angels, it shows up in the Eastern religions, it shows up in Western religion. It shows up in tribal religions, in the far-flung regions, all over the place. These things show up. You know, and with this self-abasement, whether it's depriving the body or even physically harming the body, right? It's the same idea.

It's rooted in this false idea that there's some, through this harsh treatment of myself, that God is somehow pleased with this external show of humility. Oh, you know, I'm just, Treating myself so so miserably so horribly that God somehow that is pleasing to God Right, that's just such a show of our lowliness or humility But what's kind of the interesting flip side of that, right?

You know, what's what's the what's actually the focus of it? What do you say when you when you read or see, you know? Some story some monk that sat on a pole for however many months or whatever or locked himself in a you know It's like who's the focus? the monk, you know, me, I am the focus. And so what is really behind all this humility is pride. Oh God, look at me and what I'm willing to do for you, right? And so that's this self-abasement.

And then we have the worship of angels and this shows up all the time, all over, right? Glorifying spiritual beings, praying to angels or spirits. the spirits of the deceased even, so people think, right? And there's this idea that you can tap into this power, right?

And when you're looking for power from angels, who are you not looking to for your power? Lord, right? You're looking to a creature. You're looking to a created being, not the creator. And really, you're dabbling in demonism. Any angelic being that offers you power is not from the Lord, okay?

And so this worship of spiritual beings always goes along. And it's the idea that what God has told us is not enough. We need to go outside of God and his word and get some special revelation through whatever form, whatever form that might take. We passed a bus on the drive this morning called the tarot bus. No idea what that's about, but they had pictures of tarot cards on the side of it. I mean, people are going all over the place to try to find some mystical meaning, some secret spiritual information that is not from the Lord. But what's the problem with these things, fundamentally, right? Self-abasement and the worship of angels. We might not see, really, a connection between these two things. They might seem like two very different things.

But the central problem is that the focus is everywhere but the Lord, right? Verse 19, as we talked about, is gonna talk about God's supply for your Christian walk, right? And in verse 18, we have the kinds of things that we think will supply our need, the kinds of things that we think will produce a Christian walk. And whether the focus is on self, right, or on angelic beings, anything we look to to supply some special power for our Christian walk, right, if it's not from the Lord Jesus Christ, it's a fraud. It can't produce the real deal.

So what kind of things do you and I look for in our lives for power in our Christian life? Are you looking to yourself? Are you looking to your ability? Is the Christian life for you a grit your teeth kind of a thing? Self-effort? Or are you going to work up a greater love and devotion for the Lord? Or are you looking to someone or something else other than the Lord Jesus? And this doesn't have to be just angels, right? the mystical, some secret knowledge, some book that you read, some extra biblical literature, something that's not God's word, right?

Some emotional experience, some human wisdom. What kind of things do we look to? Don't read verse 18 and think, well, yeah, that's for the Colossians 2,000 years ago. No, this is for us today. There are all kinds of things that we look to for power in the Christian life that are not from the Lord. and we need to be aware of what those things are in our own lives.

And then verse 18 continues, taking his stand, these false teachers, taking his stand on visions he has seen inflated without cause by his fleshly mind. And Paul is telling us what's at the root of these ideas, right? What are these false teachers depending on for these things? Where are they getting this stuff, right?

And now, A quick note, there's a textual variant in this phrase, taking a stand on visions he has seen. And literally, it could be translated, entering into or delving into things which he has seen. But your translation might actually say, entering into things which he has not seen. And you think, well, that's confusing, because that's exactly the opposite, isn't it? Is these things he has seen or things he has not seen?

And just to be, we should be more honest about this as Christians, sometimes we defend how You know, we have the exact, you know, Greek manuscript. We don't have the originals, okay? So when we talk about Greek manuscript evidence, you know, we have to be honest. Well, on the one hand, the Bible has far, far more manuscript evidence than any of the other historical classic Greek literature.

So don't, you know, don't buy into anyone. People believe that, you know, we have Plato's writings, you know, and they're true, and we have like a handful of copies. and none of the originals. And with scripture, we have thousands of copies and none of the originals. But people never question Plato, they only question the word of God.

So on the one hand, we have all kinds of manuscript copies, right? But at the same time, there are variants. But what you have to understand when someone comes to you with, oh, the variants, we don't have the original, is that there are no variants in scripture that call into question any important key doctrine.

And so when you come to something like this and you think, oh, boy, one of them says things he has seen and one says things he has not seen, it's a difference of one word, right? Just a negative to negate that, things he has seen or things he has not seen.

And you might think, well, that makes it completely opposite. But what's interesting is that when you do contextual study and contextual interpretation, what you do is you're reading something within the context, the flow of thought in which it sits. And what you'll find out here is if you study this is that it really doesn't change the basic idea. And you think, well, how is that? Isn't it exactly opposite? Well, just pay attention to the context, right? Which is very clear.

Because the context is clear that we're talking about someone who is causing harm to believers. So this is a negative thing. So however we take this phrase, this is a negative statement, right? So if we take this as, you know, this person is taking a stand on things that he has seen, then the emphasis is on what he has seen, that he has some special insight, some special revelation, some mystical truth that he claims to have, which implying that nobody else has this. I'm taking this stand on what I know and you don't, right? And of course, nobody can question me because nobody else got this special revelation out of their hat. And so that's a correct interpretation.

But what if it's things he has not seen? Well, then the idea is that the person is talking about things that he doesn't understand. He's talking about things he has not seen, right? And so it's kind of interesting how either way you take it, it has the same basic idea. Either someone is teaching things about what only they know, extra biblical kind of information, or things that they really don't understand. But the idea is the same. They're talking about things that they have no right to be talking about. That's the idea. They're bringing human wisdom to the table rather than what God has said.

And that's always a problem, right? Which is exactly what the end of the verse says, where Paul says, inflated without cause by his fleshly mind. And I love that as a way of describing pride. Puffed up for no good reason, right? These people think that they have a special corner on wisdom, and it's just plain arrogance, puffed up without cause in their own fleshly mind. And that's why it's a problem, right? It's from their own fleshly mind. It's rooted in their mind, not in God's word.

1 Corinthians 4, verse 6, Paul says this, just using the same words, he says, now these things I have figuratively transferred to myself and Apollos for your sakes. that you may learn in us not to think beyond or to go beyond what is written, that none of you may be puffed up. Sorry, that was my note, that is the same word. That none of you may be puffed up, that's the same word. Puffed up on behalf of one against the other, okay? And, And that's the idea.

When we go beyond the written word of God, we are puffed up, we are arrogant. We're bringing our own thoughts to the table rather than the word of God. We're elevating our finite pea brain against God's omniscience. And that can only be described as arrogance.

And then we have verse 19. And this is just a continuation. So not only are they inflated without, Uh, cause, uh, by his fleshy mind, it says, 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. And, and that's the problem.

That's the problem with these false teachers. They are depending on their own wisdom, their own human philosophy. It says the secret of the Christian life rather than accepting God's word that Jesus Christ himself. is the secret of the Christian life. Okay, Paul says that these ones who are defrauding are not holding fast to the head. That's their problem. And Paul's referring here back to what he brought up in chapter one, verse 18, that Jesus, he says, is also the head of the body, the church.

And so these blind guys have departed from God's provision. They're essentially saying that Jesus is not enough. that we need something else because it can't be sufficient to just trust Jesus, right? And so they add all of their gimmicks into the Christian life. But in doing so, what have they done? They've let go of the head. They've let go of Jesus.

That's the problem with the Jesus plus game. You can't be fully trusting Jesus while at the same time, you're partly trusting your own method, your own strategy, right? Trusting Jesus to live through you means trusting him entirely. And anytime you introduce something else that's going to help you produce fruit, you're not really trusting Jesus at all. You're denying his sufficiency. You're denying that Jesus is enough.

And in the rest of the verse, Paul tells us what the head does for the body. And there's this parallel that he's showing us between the physical head of your body and Jesus Christ. Just like the head provides life to the body, when you're failing to trust the Lord Jesus, you're failing to receive from Him the life that only He can provide. And every time we accept some other method of producing the Christian life, apart from faith in Jesus Christ, we're cutting ourselves off from the life that He provides. Look at how Paul describes the relationship between the head and the body. From which the entire body, being supplied and held together by the joints and ligaments, grows with a growth which is from God. Life and growth flow from the head.

If you lose your physical head, you've lost your physical life, right? So far as I know, we could ask Bob about this later, I don't think anyone's done a amputation of the head and survived. If you've lost your head, we get the thumbs up, okay. On scientific authority, we can tell you with full assurance that nobody has ever survived the removal of their head.

And as a believer, right, you can cut yourself off from your spiritual head. Now in saying that, I don't mean that you can lose your salvation, okay? But you can cut yourself off from the source of a growing, fruitful Christian life. Just like if you cut your head off, your body is still your body, it's just not alive.

It's not very fruitful. It's gonna be laying on the floor, okay? It doesn't mean that it's not your body. It's just dead. Okay, and so in the same way, if you cut yourself off from the head of the body, Jesus Christ, you're still a part of the body. You're just a dead part of the body, an unfruitful, unproductive, no life in you. You kind of lose your salvation, okay? Because as a believer, you've been made a new creation in Christ Jesus, a permanent member of the body. And you can't reverse that creative act of God, right? But you can fail to bear fruit as a new creation. And that's because being a fruitful Christian requires more than just having been placed in the body. It requires ongoing dependence.

Receiving from the vine the sap that produces the fruit. Jeremiah 17, seven through eight has this beautiful way of putting it. Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is in the Lord, for he will be like a tree planted by the water that extends its roots to a stream. You're just talking about tapping into that source of life. and will not fear when the heat comes, but its leaves will be green, talking about fruitfulness, right? And it will not be anxious in the year of drought, nor cease to yield fruit, right? But look where it all begins.

Blessed is the man whose trust is in the Lord. We have to trust Him for that life. And as we trust the Lord to live through us, we're receiving from Him everything that is necessary for fruit bearing. And that's how the Lord accomplishes His work in the body. Paul writes that this growth is from God. God is the one who is growing the church, and that is both numerical and spiritual, right?

A growth in maturity, because the church is not done yet, okay? You know how we know that the church is not done yet? Because we're still here, right? Okay, because when God has completed his work of building the church, both numerically and in maturity, he's gonna take us from here.

He's gonna gather us up in the rapture, and we can look forward to that day, but let's not be so focused on that day that we forget what the Lord is doing today, here and now, because we're still here, right? The Lord is building his church, and you and I are part of those joints and ligaments, we're a part of that. My friend John Clark, who's a pastor in Georgia, he said this, or something to this effect, that if you knew that the God of the universe was building something on planet Earth, wouldn't you want to be a part of it?

Even if it was a donut shop, Wouldn't you wanna have some part in that? God is doing something, he's building something here. Wouldn't you wanna be involved in that? Well, he is, but it's not a donut shop, right? He's building the church, something of infinite value as compared to donuts, but you get the point. The church is what God is doing, is what he's building, right?

This group, this body made up of all those who have put their faith in Jesus Christ, all those who have received Jesus Christ as their savior. a body of believers who are to grow up in the likeness of the Lord Jesus Christ, functioning together as a body to affect the growth of the body, every part contributing, every part playing its role. And so the body grows, both numerically and in maturity, conformity to Christ. And notice the way that Paul describes the church, made up of joints and ligaments, or you might have ligaments and sinews. And that's us.

And it's interesting that Paul chooses to use these, would you call them connective tissues? These things that connect bones to muscles and ligaments. I don't know if you've ever had a torn ligament. I know some of you have had severed nerves. The body doesn't function too well when those connections are lost, when those connections are broken. And the body, doesn't function at all when his connection to the head is lost, right?

For the church to function effectively and to grow, it requires that each individual member be receiving from the head, Jesus Christ, and then through our interconnections with one another, working together, growing together, this life is being shared throughout the body, right?

But holding fast to Jesus Christ is the key. depending on Him as the source of our Christian life. And that's why Paul is warning against those who teach something other than dependence on Christ alone. As soon as we begin to depend on some human effort, some human, some strategy of living the Christian life, we're the ones doing the living, not Christ. All we have is the flesh seeking to imitate spirituality. We might be producing something, but it's not his fruit. And you might build some religious system, but it's not the church. And so we have to be receiving from the Lord Jesus Christ if he is to be causing the growth and if he is to be building his church.

So let's recap what we've talked about in verses, we've been in 11 through 16. But just backing up to look at nine, through 15, we have Paul explaining the work that God has done to sever you from the power of the sin nature and to give you a new life in Christ.

And we said this is very parallel to Romans 6 here. It's kind of Romans 6 in a nutshell, right? And Paul explained that it happened through baptism, not water baptism, but through identification with the Lord Jesus in his death and resurrection so that we've died to sin, right, just like circumcision, The sin nature has been cut off, not gone, but its power is broken. And now, rather than serving the sin nature, we have Christ as our life.

Right, so that's verses, up to verse 15. And then Paul begins verse 16 with the word therefore. Right, in other words, given these facts, given this work that God has done, we are free from the power of sin. and we have been made alive together with Christ, given those facts, we need to stop listening to those who make the Christian life some religious works-based performance system.

And Paul, he highlights those who would want you to observe the law, and this is one of the, as we said, one of the most common misconceptions in the church, that the Christian life is just a matter of keeping the 10 Commandments, or whatever assortment of the commandments, right?

But Paul says that those things are a shadow. They're just a picture of the real deal. The law isn't something that you and I can live up to. Not that there's anything wrong with the law. It's just the law wasn't given for us to obey in the flesh. The law was given to show us our need for something else, for a new heart, for the Lord Jesus Christ as our life.

And the picture of righteousness that was painted by the Old Testament law points to Jesus Christ, that he is the, the substance of those things. He is the body that casts that shadow. And that's what's so amazing about being joined to the Lord Jesus Christ as our life. The Christian life is all about Him, Jesus, living His righteous lives through us, not you and I trying to live up to a certain standard.

And then in verses 18 and 19, Paul deals with this issue of asceticism and mysticism. We've got self-abasement, which is trying to earn favor with God through, you know, subjecting myself to hardship and difficulty, inflicting suffering. And we have the worship of angels, which is dabbling in the spiritual realm, the mystical, seeking enlightenment, seeking some secret knowledge or wisdom somewhere other than God's word, right? And so these are the two kind of elements that are so common and show up over and over, and they're kind of the giveaway to these false religious systems as it involve your striving and agonizing to please God, or does it involve some secret kind of spiritual, mystical information, some emotional feeling that you work up, all of these kinds of things that are something less and something false compared to what God has for you.

All of those things are really just pride, arrogance. Rather than accepting God's Word, we go beyond, we look for something else. And so rather than that arrogant way of handling the Christian life, we want to understand genuine humility. Genuine humility is accepting what God has done, just accepting what He's finished and holding fast to what He's providing, holding fast to the head, Jesus Christ, trusting that Jesus is able to supply everything that the body needs, allowing Him to work through us to build His body, to mature us, to produce through us the life of His Son.

And our responsibility is faith, just receiving from Him the supply that we need for every moment of our walk. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank You for this truth, we thank You for Your Word, we thank You that You have provided everything that we need in the Lord Jesus Christ, that he is the head supplying to the body, individually and corporately, everything that's needed. Everything that is needed for every moment as we walk through life to accomplish your purposes, to be the witness to the Lord Jesus Christ in this world. that as you build the body, as people see the life of your son in us, that Jesus Christ is glorified. And so Lord, we pray that we would hold fast to the head, that we would recognize those things in our lives, those areas, those places where we're not depending on the Lord Jesus, we're depending on something else. Help us to see that, teach us to reject those arrogant human fleshly ideas, and to simply come to you and to trust you about the life that we have in your son. In Jesus' name, amen. Thank you.