Satan’s Counterfeiting of Christianity

Transcript

GRM 976
1/14/2007
Satan's Counterfeiting of Christianity
Colossians 2:16-23
Gil Rugh


I want to follow-up on what we studied in our last time together. We looked into II Timothy 1 and the first part of chapter 2 on our responsibility as God's people to the Word of God, to hold it fast, to guard it, to teach it. And what we are entrusted to do as the church who is the pillar and support of the truth. And I want to follow-up on that by talking about the warning that Paul gave to the Colossians in Colossians 2 about matters that were already infiltrating the church at Colosse while Paul was living. And he wrote the letter, deals with what is sometimes called the Colossian Heresy.

As background I want to read you some material concerning some current things going on in the evangelical church, the church that claims to believe the Bible is the Word of God, claims to believe that Jesus Christ is the only Savior and so on. When I use the word evangelical, that's what I'm referring to. There will be a couple of terms that will come up in what I'm reading—postmodernism, referring to that period of time roughly from 1960 down to the present time, characterized by a rejection of absolute truth, objective truth, propositional truth. It is subjective, truth is something that comes to us through our own individual experiences, the postmodern mind. That's an oversimplification. You also hear of the emerging church, emerging church, and again using that one expression, it has some various names given, that is within the evangelical umbrella, at least in the claims of those who represent it. And it is geared toward reaching the postmodern world. And their view is that modern people, particularly young people, in our day are not open just to be preached at, just to be taught truth. And so they really have three authorities, and this is going to come out. They believe the scripture is authoritative, they believe tradition is a necessary source of truth for us, and experience. So these ideas will come out in what I'm reading, and this isn't consecutive in any way. It's from various sources and so on. Then I want to read something from a Roman Catholic source.

One of the common beliefs circulating among the supporters of the emergent church is a concept called vintage Christianity. According to this view experiences effective in attracting Christians to come to church in the past should be reintroduced today in order to attract the postmodern generation who are hungry for experience. In other words, we ought to have vintage Christianity. But when they talk about vintage Christianity, they're not talking about going back to the New Testament. They're talking about going back to the Middle Ages, go back to the 3rd and 4th and 5th centuries and draw from the experiences of those. That's why I say tradition becomes a source of learning about God for them, not the scripture alone but now tradition. One writer who has written a book on this subject promoting this idea has written, we should be returning to a no holds barred approach to worship and teaching so that when we gather there is no doubt we are in the presence of God. I believe that both believers and unbelievers in our emerging culture are hungry for this. It isn't about clever apologetics or careful exegetical and expository preaching, or great worship bands. Emerging generations are hungry to experience God in worship. What I want you to note, he has disassociated having an experience with God, if you will, coming to know God, being interested in learning about Him and more about Him from the careful exegetical or expository teaching of His Word. Rather our generation is hungry to experience God in worship. No we've removed it from the objective truth of God's Word to something that you will experience or feel, what you are feeling while you're in worship, your emotion. We sometimes hear people say, well I don't feel like I worshiped today. What does it feel like to worship? We were meeting with a man who does sound and was evaluating our sound system in the church. We were just visiting with him this week, and he was talking about a week ago he was in a large church in another state. He said they have the larges subwoofers he has ever seen. He said when he got within 12 feet of those, he had to tell them to stop, they were so loud. He said the whole purpose was to create an experience by that rumbling bass so that people would have a feeling that they wanted to create in that service. That's artificial. So we want to experience God in worship, this man writes.

Another writer explains how worship and other activities that stimulate the senses are attracting postmodern generations. Postmoderns prefer to encounter Christ by using all of their senses. That's part of the appeal of classical liturgical or contemplative worship. The incense and candles, making the sign of the cross, the taste and smell of the bread and wine, touching icons, being anointed with oil, postmoderns want a god they can fell, taste, touch, hear and smell, a full sensory immersion in the divine. Now you'll note we are not getting any scripture. Now these people claim that they have as authority the scripture, tradition and experience. But you see what happens as soon as you add something to scripture as authoritative. Somewhere along the line the scripture is lost. Now we have to be concerned about what the people in our generation, the generation in which we are living, they want a full sensory immersion in the divine. Whatever that means. In other words, the want to feel something, they want it to be experiential.

One person observes, often Christians who have been attending church all their lives find the changes their pastors are implementing disconcerting. They see the trend away from Bible teaching to multi-sensory stimulation. And one person has written a book entitled, Creating a Sacred Space for Vintage Worship. So aesthetics is not an end in itself, but in our culture which is becoming more multi-sensory and respectful of God. Did you know our culture was becoming more respectful of God? Glad to read that. It's becoming multi-sensory and more respectful of God. We have a responsibility to pay attention to the design of space where we assemble regularly. In the emerging culture darkness represents spirituality. We see this in Buddhist temples as well as Catholic and orthodox churches. Darkness communicates something serious as happening. So in other words, now we have to be sure we create a dark worship space. They're not just talking about dimming the lights on occasion for something that's going on, they're talking about we learn from the Buddhists, we learn from the Roman Catholics, we learn from the Greek/Russian Orthodox that darkness communicates that something serious is happening. So you see what we want to do, we want to manipulate people and give them a sensory experience that they will identify as worship. But you understand, you can use these same sensory things in a different setting and create a certain mood and a certain response.

Let me read a little more. Here is another man who has written a book, Ancient Future Faith: Rethinking Evangelicalism for a Postmodern World. And here's what he says. The primary source of spiritual reading is the Bible. I mean everybody who is going to claim to be evangelical has to throw that in. The primary source of spiritual reading is the Bible. But we now recognize that in our love of scripture we dare not avoid the mystics and the activists. Here he is talking about particularly going back to the Middle Ages and so on, the Roman Catholic mystics. Devotion to the great devotional literature of the church is essential. More and more people are turning to the great works of the mystics. And then he provides a list of the works and they are basic Roman Catholic monastics, hermits, those who followed the monastic lifestyle, that withdrew from society to contemplate and meditate. And supposedly through that means they came to experience God. The Word of God is not a focus in that. To immerse ourselves in these great works is to allow our vision to be expanded by a great treasure of spirituality. Now you note you no longer just go to the scripture for your spiritual nourishment and food. But now you have to go to the Roman Catholic mystics and there is a great treasure of spirituality.

And he goes on to write, a goal for evangelicals in the postmodern world is to accept diversity as historical reality, but to seek unity in the midst of it. This perspective will allow us to see Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant churches as various forms of the one true church, all based on apostolic teachings and authority, finding common ground in the faith expressed by classical Christianity. Now note what he has said. Basically he has said, set aside your Bible and we will find common ground in the faith expressed by classical Christianity, the work of the mystics, the Roman Catholic mystics. That will be our common ground and that can bring the Orthodox church, the Catholic church, the Protestant church together. So the doctrinal differences that are laid out in scripture are not what is important. So you see as soon as you set something up with scripture as authoritative, the scripture, tradition, experience, those are the three authorities they're using. At first they say the scripture is #1, and that's just on paper. In reality to produce our unity we have to set aside any differences we might find through the scripture and go to other sources. Our tradition, go back to the Middle Ages and the mystics and earlier, 4th century and so on. And then your personal experiences and feelings.

Another writer in this area, and he teaches at an evangelical seminary. The emergent language is more than a verbal language. It involves pictures, symbols, actions, even smells. To speak emergent, the church will need to use more than words. The good news is that we can find this emergent language in our own faith, but we will have to look back a long way. Not all the way back to scripture, all the way back to the Roman Catholic mystics. To connect with emergent people, however, we will need to look back much further than the 20th century or even the Reformation. Ancient practices that seem to have spiritual significance for emergent people are often found in the 3rd century, the turn of the first millennium or the drama of worship in the Middle Ages. Learning about the depth of practice in the church year of the mystery of an ancient Eucharistic prayer is learning about the work of the Holy Spirit in the church. Now how do you get classified as evangelical here, when you're trying to tell people you don't go back to the scripture. You go back to the 3rd century, the 4th century, the end of the first millennium, you go back and learn the mystery of an ancient Eucharistic prayer. You know what the ancient Eucharistic prayer has to do with, in that context of the Eucharist where the Roman Catholic priest changes the wafer into the body of Christ and the cup into the blood of Christ. In that context the partaking literally of the body. Here is where we learn about the work of the Holy Spirit in His church. What do I have to learn from an unbiblical teaching about the body and blood of Christ that will help me understand the work of the Holy Spirit. Now again, that this is being written isn't surprising, but that these people can claim to be evangelical. And yet they're not taking us back to scripture any longer, they're taking us back to the mystics, to the ancient times.

Let me just read you one more quote on this and this is from one of the writers that are recommended for your reading, and he's more recent. He's a Roman Catholic _________ monk who died in 1968. And he was greatly influenced by other religions, even though he was Roman Catholic, and on the evangelical list of those you need to read and go back to, he's one of them. And here's what he said, a quote from him. I believe that by openness to Buddhism, to Hinduism and to these great Asian mystical traditions we stand a wonderful chance of learning more about the potentiality of our own Christian traditions. Now we're not going to the Bible, now we're not even going to Roman Catholic monks, now we're going to the Buddhists to learn. Because once you abandon scripture, where do you stop? He said on another occasion, I see no contradiction between Buddhism and Christianity. I intend to become as good a Buddhist as I can. Now he's a Roman Catholic monk. We say, obviously the man didn't understand the Bible. Then what are these men writing these books claiming to be evangelicals, recommending his writings for? I scratch my head and say, evangelical doesn't mean anything anymore. And he's the one who is credited with starting the modern day version of what we call contemplative prayer, that becomes a big thing among some evangelicals.

Well you're enjoying this so much I have to read you just something else. Aren't you glad we usually just study the Word and don't dig into garbage cans? I want to read you the testimony of a Protestant evangelical, Protestant Calvinist evangelical who converted to Roman Catholicism. And this is one of several testimonies I could have selected, I just ________ this out of a book I was reading, but there are several. And I'm not talking about people who didn't know their Bibles. This man was trained in an evangelical seminary and has a PhD and now teaches in a Roman Catholic school. Here is his testimony. One day he attended Roman Catholic mass. One day I made a “fatal blunder.” I decided it was time for me to go to mass on my own. So he went to a certain parish he mentions here, and right before noon I slipped quietly into the basement of the chapel for daily mass. I wasn't sure what to expect, I thought maybe I'd be there and there would be a priest and some nuns. I got in the back seat, all of a sudden ordinary people came in off the street. They came in and genuflected, knelt and prayed. Remember genuflect is where they go down because the priest has consecrated the wafer, then it's put in a _________ it's called, a box with a window so you can observe the true body of Christ. So since that's the true body of Christ, it's truly, actually, physically Christ, of course they bow before it. Well he observed people doing this. Then a bell rang. A priest walked toward the altar. I remained seated, I wasn't sure if it was safe to kneel. As an evangelical Calvinist I had been taught that the Catholic mass was the greatest sacrilege that a man could commit—to resacrifice Christ. So I wasn't sure what to do. After pronouncing the words of consecration the priest held up the host. You've probably seen this on the Catholic channel, where he holds it up. I felt as if the last drop of doubt had drained from me. With all of my heart I whispered, my Lord and my God, that's really you. And if that's you, then I want full communion with you, I don't want to hold back. Then I thought, wait a minute, I'm a Presbyterian, I can't do this.

But the next day I went back and the next and the next, and within a week or two I was hooked. I don't know how to say it, but I had fallen head over heels in love with our Lord in the eucharist. His presence to me in the blessed sacrament was powerful and personal. As I sat in the back I began to kneel and pray with the others whom I knew to be my brothers and sisters. I wasn't an orphan, I had found my family. I knew Christ wanted me to receive Him by faith, not just spiritually in my heart, but physically as well, onto my tongue, down my throat, into my whole body and soul. That was what the incarnation was all about. This was the gospel in its fullness. Do you see anything scriptural here at all? Having the physical body of Christ put on his tongue, feeling the physical body in his throat, feeling the physical body going down into his stomach. That's what the incarnation was about, that's the gospel in its fullness.

He goes on. Each day after mass I spend a half hour to an hour praying the rosary. Now listen to this. I felt the Lord unleash His power through His mother before the blessed sacrament. I begged Him to open up my heart to show me his will. Now you see one thing leads to another, now we've gone from the Eucharist to the rosary, and now it's the blessed mother who is communicating blessings. If you've watched the Roman Catholic channel you've seen Scott Hahn and his wife on there, and they can be very effective because of their knowledge of evangelicalism. And they'll talk about, oh we just didn't know until we entered into a relationship with the blessed mother and knew what she could do for us. I've read other of his material and quite clear he wasn't a true believer.

But you know some of this stuff is coming in, it's becoming confusing. Now we have large portions of the evangelical church being influenced by this kind of thinking. Because once you move to experience, now we're comparing a Christian's experience with a Buddhist's experience. And now what about the experience you might get at a Roman Catholic mass. And if experience is determinative, who decides? And now we've reduced a relationship with God to a certain kind of feeling. You'll note in none of this was there scripture, there was not any scripture given, because it's not based on scripture. It's based on a feeling he had when he went there. And that's where I would caution you. If you're going to be involved in any of these kinds of things, you have to be very careful. You don't go in and sit down in the devil's camp and say, I dare you to confuse me. I can assure you, you do that day after day as he did, you will be confused. The devil is no one to be played with, and he can make masterful counterfeits that taken in light of scripture he can give amazing experiences. He can do wondrous things. The book I took this out of, you can read a whole chapter in there relating from Pope John and others and current priests, of the miracles that occur in the context of the Eucharist. That people giving testimony, I looked through that little window and there was the face of Christ on the wafer, and others who will substantiate that the wafer began to bleed on other occasions. Where does it stop? Now we base a relationship with God, the issue of forgiveness of sins, the issue of preparing for eternity on the basis of shared experiences. And we just don't know where we'll end up. But we know it won't be where the scripture is.

Come to Colossians. This is not something new. The devil is not an originator, he is a counterfeiter. And he takes what God has done and creates counterfeits, and you understand if you are a good counterfeiter, you make it as much like the original as you can, but it's not genuine. If I ask you, would you like $20? You'd say, sure. I pull out a kleenex and write $20 and put a face on it, hand it to you and say, buy lunch. You'd say, that's not worth anything. Why? It has a face on it. Here, let me write George under it or whoever, Jefferson............ It says $20. It's not real. You say, nobody makes a counterfeit like that, we don't use Monopoly money as a counterfeit. But you know what? There are people who do counterfeits, but to have any chance of passing, at least for a time, it has to look as much like a genuine $20 bill as possible. What do you think the devil does with counterfeits? I'm going to counterfeit the evangelical church, what am I going to make it look like? Well, I'm going to bring elements in that will make evangelicals think there may be something to it. But of course it can't be genuine. And what do you have to remove? You have to remove truth, and so that's what happens.

Paul is writing to the Colossians, he states his goal in Colossians 1:25, the end of the verse, the last statement. So that I might fully carry out the preaching of the Word of God. Down to verse 28, we proclaim Him, Christ, admonishing every man, teaching every man with all wisdom, so that we may present every man complete in Christ. For this I labor, striving according to His power which works mightily within me. Come down to chapter 2 verse 8, see to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ. You see already the church at Colosse there were false teachers bringing this teaching that was not according to Christ. It was through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men. And they were confusing believers in the church, thinking that the teaching you have from Paul, other apostles, that's good, but that's not enough. That's not all there is. Of course we have to hold to that. But then if we're going to develop spiritually, if we're going to reach out to the generation around us, if we're going to have a fuller Christianity, you need more.

Well after showing them the completeness of Christ, down through verse 15, he warns them of three dangers, three aspects of the false teaching—legalism, mysticism, and asceticism. We're just going to highlight these, and I think as we walk through these you'll see some of the connection to what we read here in the last few minutes. First he wants to deal with legalism in verses 16-17. and some of the issues they are dealing with we're familiar with from Judaizers. And the Judaizers were those who claimed to believe in Christ, claimed to believe in the new revelation given through the apostles. They just claimed that there was also more. You had to be circumcised, you had to keep the law, you have to observe certain regulations from the Old Testament. So he gives a command in verse 16, therefore, let no one act as your judge in regard to food or drink or respect to a festival of a new moon or a sabbath day. Things which are a mere shadow of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. Don't let anyone sit in judgment of you and say you're not being spiritual, you're not going to truly be saved, you're not going to truly grow, you're not going to truly impact people unless you add this. You know what happens always, as we allow the flesh and fallen men to influence us, we gravitate toward the physical. We want to feel something. We're not surprised, this is not unique to our generation. We act like we've made a great insight and discovered something about postmodern people, they are sensory, they want to feel it, they want to touch it, they want to experience it. That's true all the way back here in writing to the Colossians. You know what they want to do? They want something tangible. These false teachers want to bring............ Well you know you also have to observe the right food laws, the right drink laws, have the special days. These are all part of it. At least they had the Old Testament law, they're going back to Moses and trying to implement that in the church. Now note, they're not denying Christ directly, they're saying that's not enough, but at least they're going back to something that's scriptural. They're misusing the scripture. We have people today that say, we need something sensory that you can touch, that you can feel, that you can experience. Let's go back to the Middle Ages. If Paul condemns those who wanted to bring Moses and the law of Moses into the church, how much less foundation do we have to bring Roman Catholic mystics in as authoritative in the church.

And none of these things have a place. We oughtn't to think, well it's the postmodern generation, they just won't accept teaching. They need experience, they need something to touch and to feel and to handle. Well that's not new. What do you think the appeal of legalism was? Certain foods, certain drinks, certain days. That's great, that's what we like. We say, that wouldn't be us. It is too. Think about it. You come in next week and this room is all different. You'd say, I can't worship there, I don't even feel like I've been in church. Why? You understand the church at Colosse, the church at Corinth, those churches met in people's houses, where people lived. Went in and sat down in the living room or the family room, turned off the TV and had church. That's what went on in New Testament times, they met in a home, sat on somebody's sofa. How in the world can the church worship on a sofa? I mean we begin to identify the physical things with true worship. Does it really matter? You think I have an ulterior motive, I'm getting you ready for something. I'm not, I mean, I don't have any plans. Could you worship God in something other than a church pew, a bench? Well I'll have to think about that. You know some people find it hard to worship in an auditorium that's shaped like this because they like the long, narrow and high peak, because that's the way I was raised. Some of you have come from liturgical backgrounds, numerous people over the years have said, we don't say the Lord's prayer. We don't every recite the Lord's prayer, I really don't feel like I've worshiped. At least that's something biblical, but I mean........... We get tied to certain physical things we do and we all............ You know, if somebody is sitting in your seat and you had to go sit someplace else, you'd say I find it hard to concentrate and worship today. Somebody was sitting in my seat. Well lordy be, how could you worship?

All these things we become attached to so we want to be careful when we read that the Colossians would do this. We say, oh, how could they do that? These people wanting to reach our generation and say, well, you need these physical things, you need icons, you need candles, you need incense, you need darkness. What's wrong with that? Come in next week and we change everything here from seating to carpet to the slope of the floor ................. You'd say, I'm going someplace else.

I've shared this with you. I pastored a small church while I was a seminary student. Celebrated its 100th anniversary while I was there. We had two dear, elderly people, they always sat in the back row. Well there were only 40 people in the whole church, I mean, you spread them out........... So the board thought, we'll put some little ropes down there and bring everybody together. You know those two people left and never came back. I went and visited them at home, they said, you closed off my bench. I can't worship there anymore, we'll never be back. The years I pastored there, they never darkened the door of that church. They had been there forever, they never came back. Now see worship gets identified with that certain setting, and even that certain seat, and they sat there for years and they couldn't worship in any other seat.

So Paul says, don't let anyone act as your judge in regard to food or drink, in respect to festivals, new moon, sabbath day, things which were a shadow. Even unto the Old Testament law, the Mosaic law which was given by God for a certain purpose. It was to prepare the way for the coming of Christ. Remember the schoolmaster? To prepare the way to Christ, in Galatians. They were a shadow, they're not the reality. Now Christ has come, even those things are done. How appalling when we have people writing today to say we're learning about the ministry of the Holy Spirit, we want to go back to a Roman Catholic monk and study a eucharistic prayer from the Middle Ages, and that's how we'll learn about the Holy Spirit. And then you read this stuff, and some of it I didn't read, but candles and incense and icons and things you can touch and handle and feel and experience. That's what it's about.

So when he says, let no one act as your judge, it's given as a present tense command. That ought to be our ongoing practice. Doesn't mean we can't do certain things. We can have certain kinds of ___________, but we need to be careful that we don't begin to identify that with worship. This is a building we use as the church of Jesus Christ in this place. That's why, even though we sometimes fall into the practice because it is common practice, this isn't the sanctuary. God doesn't dwell in this building like He dwelt in the temple or the tabernacle in the Old Testament. He dwells in us individually and in us corporately as the church, but not in a certain building. So we have to be careful, this is the church, we wouldn't do that in the church. There are certain things that would not be appropriate to do in this building or other places where people assemble. But worship........ Remember the Samaritan woman in John 4, Jesus confronted her about her sin and talked to her and what did she immediately want to talk about? Where do you think the best place to worship is, here at Jerusalem or on Mt. Gerizim? Well Jesus said, salvation is of the Jew so the Bible is right. Jerusalem is the place God has appointed, but that's not the issue. The issue is worshiping God in spirit and truth. ________________ constantly, it's the physical location, it's the physical thing.
Somehow or another we think evangelism is _______ if we have candles, if we have icons, if we move to a eucharistic service where people get the actual, physical wafer that is the body they can touch, and the cup that is the blood. And they can feel that going down their throat, now.................... Legalism.

Go on, verse 18. The next thing he deals with is mysticism. 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. Not holding fast to the head from whom the entire body being supplied and held together by the joints and ligaments grows with the growth which is from God. That will connect directly to our study of the spiritual gifts that we will be beginning. In verse 19 when he says not holding fast to the head from which the entire body supplied and held together by the joints and ligaments. That's all the gifts functioning together as we'll see as Paul develops it. What happens to these false teachers? They're not holding fast to the head. Remember Paul's instruction to Timothy? To hold fast to the Word, to have a firm grip on the Word. Here you hold fast to the head, you can't separate the two. You say, well, we don't want to divide over doctrine. Remember I read you that statement where we can have our different beliefs, but we'll be brought together in unity by studying these ancient mystic writings. In other words we let go of Christ to reunify in something else, as though Christ and His Word are separated. Just what do you know about Jesus Christ apart from scripture? Nothing for sure. Oh, yes, I prayed this morning, I felt His presence. Well what about the Buddhist who prayed this morning and “felt” the presence of the divine. Well, he's wrong. How do you know you're right and he's wrong?

We have a hymn that I've used as an example. You ask me how I know He lives, He lives within my heart. Well you know it's true He lives within my heart. But you ask me how I know He lives, He lives within my heart. What does that mean? I've experienced it, I feel it. You know the little children's song has it much better, Jesus loves me, this I know, because I feel it. No, because the Bible tells me so. That's why we know. How do I know that He dwells within me? The Bible tells me He does. How do I know the Spirit of God resides within me to exercise control over me? The Bible tells me so. How can I interpret experiences through the scripture? But once you abandon scripture and say, well we'll have our experience, let's study this mystic. And all of a sudden we have people who are of different doctrinal beliefs and different beliefs about the scripture, but we all feel the same thing. What does that mean? Does that mean we're experiencing God? I mean, you make your experience determinative. Well I want to look for a church where I feel like I worshiped, which means what? A church that has the largest subwoofers in the state, that can rumble the bass and give you a sense of awe. You can go to the movie and get that, right? I mean I can go to a movie and cry, you can go to a movie and cry. Isn't there a song, movies always make me cry? I mean, we go there and say, everybody in the theater is bawling. We say, hey, he didn't die, I just read he's got a new movie coming out. Don't cry. But somehow even though you know that, you're moved to tears and people walk out and they're dabbing their eyes and they're just drained out, it's been such an emotional experience. Had nothing to do with God. So we think now that we can create these kind of experiences in a religious context, that means people are experiencing God. No.
Again, this is not anything new, but the evangelical church needs to be aware of it, the church at Colosse needed to be on guard, those who were delighting in self-abasement, worship of angels, taking his stand on visions he has seen, in verse 18, inflated without cause by his fleshly mind. Remember when we looked into I Timothy 6:20, and Paul warned Timothy to be on his guard. Watch out about that knowledge that is falsely so-called. We have people who have come to think they have something more, something else, something better, something more effective. Not holding fast to the head. Serious matters.

Self-abasement. You know it all comes from man. Visions he has seen. I read this and if I had read you the other experiences the evangelical converted Roman Catholicism, I didn't find any scripture in any of them. They all went through the same pattern. I went and sat in the mass and as I sat there over time pretty soon I began to think this is really Christ, and my heart was just so gripped. Next thing you know mother Mary is communicating to him, and it's all based on his feelings, his experience. That's why we have to come back to the truth of scripture. I'm not saying there is not emotion in our relationship with the living God, but you know it's like you wake up in the morning and you turn over and say to your husband or wife, well do you feel like you love me? I mean I can say this about Marilyn and me. When I get up in the morning I don't even want to talk to her, and I don't want her to talk to me. I've shared with you, one morning I was shaving in the bathroom and............ The Lord knew what I needed, she is happy when she wakes up, I'm just satisfied to open one eye. And I'm shaving away and she's talking. I finally just stopped, I gathered up my stuff and said, Marilyn, I can't do this in the morning and I went down to the other bathroom and closed the door. Did I not love her? Of course I love her. What do I feel like? I don't even want to talk about what I feel like in the morning, I'm not a morning person. I get up, that's good. What do we feel like? I mean every one of us would have been divorced a dozen times if we did it just on the basis of feeling. Yet somehow in our relationship with God and our worship with Him it's the feeling, our experiences. We can't reach our generation if we don't have experience. Understand that the devil just keeps recycling his old heresy, he just puts a new suit of clothes on and here it comes again. Same thing that the Colossians had to deal with—mysticism.

I wrote down the definition of mysticism from Webster's Dictionary. Mysticism is the belief that direct knowledge of God, spiritual truth or ultimate reality can be attained through subjective experience. Mysticism is the belief that direct knowledge of God, spiritual truth or ultimate reality can be attained through subjective experience. That's what the Roman Catholic mystics were doing, they left society, withdrew to a monastic style of life so that through their subjective experience and contemplation they could ultimately enter in to a fuller experience of God than other people could have. What about the Word of God? That's God's plan. As newborn babes, long for the pure milk of the Word that you might grow with respect to your salvation. What about all these other things? As newborn babes long for the pure milk of the Word that you might grow with respect to your salvation. Be diligent to show yourself approved unto God, a workman that needs not to be ashamed, handling accurately the Word of truth. You have people taking a stand on visions they have seen, people writing books and they note, this is the way it is. That's not humility, that is great arrogance that you would come up with Plan B to God, you would have a better plan. How does Paul reach the Jews? He preached the gospel. When he changed cultures from the moralistic, legalistic Jews to the paganism of the Gentiles, what did he do? He preached the gospel. Jesus Christ crucified, buried and raised the third day to pay the penalty for our sin. It's the same message. We think the pagan culture of the day is going to respond like the Jews with their................. It's the gospel which is the power of God for salvation to Jew and Gentile alike. We think, well this is a postmodern day, that sounds really scholarly.

You know there's no end to it. I was reading some of this, they say in Europe they view postmodernism as passe. One of the writers I read from Europe said postmodernism is passe everywhere except in America. I mean they don't even use the word in their intellectual writings anymore. You know the church is just running as fast as it can to make the next change, it's always trying to jump on the train that's already left. Done, something new has come, and we don't know where we are. We have the unchanging truth of God.

The third thing that Paul warns the church at Colosse about, down in verse 20—asceticism. Legalism was the first, mysticism the second, asceticism. If you died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world, why as if you were living in the world do you submit yourself to decrees such as do not handle, do not taste, do not touch. Yet all these things refer to things that are perishing. These are in accordance, the end of verse 22, with the commandments of teachings of men. The church, they could save themselves untold grief if they would just stick with the Word of God instead of the teachings of men. I mean this is the problem the Colossians had. But you know Paul says to the Colossians, this is in accordance with the commandments and teachings of men. We have the Word of God, why does the church so readily give up the Word of God to substitute the teachings of men.

These are matters, verse 23, here's why they do it, to be sure, that have the appearance of wisdom in self-made religion and self-abasement and severe treatment of the body. But there is no value against fleshly indulgence. This is nothing, it's worthless and worse than worthless when it comes to dealing with spiritual matters, when it comes to dealing with sin. We have to be careful because you sit and see someone and you read about a monk and he gave up all the benefits of a comfortable life and all association with family and friends and withdrew from society and he had such a commitment and was willing to sacrifice everything and just pour himself into the pursuit of knowing God better without the distractions of the world. And you say, you have to admire that kind of commitment. You ought to run from it. Paul says that has the appearance of wisdom in a self-made religion, self-abasement, severe treatment of the body. But it is worthless when it comes to dealing with sin, producing any real spiritual growth.

So we're going back looking to these people for how the church can mature and develop? Again, I want us to see this is not new. I get sick of reading, if we're going to reach the postmodern world, well this is what postmodern people are like and they.......... They don't want to hear truth, they never wanted to hear truth. Since when do unregenerate, godless people want to hear truth? We know we roll from the seeker service into the emerging church because we have this idea, there just are people out there falling over themselves looking for truth, looking for salvation. If we would only approach them properly, then they would want the message. Which means, Jesus Christ didn't do _____________. I just don't understand where this thinking comes from and how it can get into a church that claims to be biblical, claims to believe the Bible. And you understand, long after we make our token tip our hats, oh yes, the Bible is our authority. We keep that there because that pacifies Christians. But if we just abandon that we go on and do what we want to do. And we allow tradition and experience to begin to shape us, and what we really have is a large number of unregenerate people like the evangelical testimony I read you, have never truly been born again. And so they end up with an emptiness in their life.

I was reading another, he called himself a Dutch Calvinist, evangelical. In fact his writings are still promoted in apologetics. But there was an emptiness, there was something not there, and yet he found it when he began to partake of the Eucharist. Well you know you can know a lot about Christ, you can know a lot about the Word of God and never have experienced the power of God's salvation. But people are left to find something that they're grasping for, and so we move to this mixture that I don't have to deny Christianity, but now I've expanded because now I've included these things—the traditions and the experience. And that's now why we move on, we have to share our stories, because we learn about God not only through our personal experience, but through one another's experience. And as you tell your story and I tell my story and Roman Catholics tell their story, and the Greek Orthodox tell their story, we are learning how God is working in spite of our differences. And we come to unity on the basis of our stories, not on the basis of scripture. That's a devil-produced unity, not a Spirit-produced unity. And that's what's going on.

I could have brought the writings, but I didn't want to fill the whole time, a man was saying we get together and talk about the scripture, but then when we meet together as a church, the people who are going to be in charge of the service, they talk about the passage they're going to deal with. But then when the church gets together, the largest portion of it is sharing their stories as how they might relate to that scripture, because it's from the stories that we learn about God and His continual working. You know the Supreme Court a while back said that the Constitution is a living document, so it can be interpreted not as the founders who wrote it intended it to be understood then, but as we would understand it in light of our present day. So we find things in the Constitution that Madison or Jefferson or some of these men would have never dreamed could be there. That's the way these men view the scripture. It's the Word of God, but you understand we don't believe in what they call foundationalism. There's not something foundational here that is unchanging, because the Bible is a living document and so it has to be reinterpreted and reunderstood and redefined and reapplied today. And how are we sure how it ought to be redefined and reapplied? We share our stories, and from our experiences, then, we back up to the Word of God and we know how to reunderstand and reinterpret the Bible in light of the way God is working today. You say, what do we have? We are adrift on the sea of man's opinions and the devil has effectively castrated the church so that there is no power left. As newborn babes we long for the pure milk of the Word that you may grow.

I talked to someone recently about this matter, and when we got done they said, well I guess it's, we had been talking about the matters I've been reading about, a little bit of good in it and a little bit of not good. I said, no, it's all bad, all bad. You give me a plate of food that is good and you stir in just a little bit of poison, what do I have? Good food and a little bit of poison. No, I have poisoned food. You mix error in with the scripture, you have nullified it's power, you have nullified its effectiveness. That is the one great effective strategy of the devil in the church. Let the church think mixing error with the Bible is not significant, so you can listen to a Roman Catholic service and they read scripture and they quote scripture and sometimes they _____________. It's the error that's mixed in that is the antidote, the power doesn't work. That's why Paul said the Judaizers who would assent to the coming of Christ, would agree He was the Messiah, would agree He died, would agree He was raised from the dead. But said you also must be circumcised to keep the law to be saved. Paul said they are cursed to hell in Galatians. Because they didn't have any truth? No, because they mixed the truth with error.

So we come back to we have to be on guard, we have to be careful. We have to be aware. Legalism, mysticism, asceticism, these things all may have an appearance of spirituality, they may have a certain draw and attractiveness to us because we are fallen beings. You understand, it is only God's way that He has chosen to reveal Himself and the scripture is that revelation. And we must remain firmly planted ____________. _________ is based upon it, our hope for eternity is based upon it.

Let's pray together. Thank you, Lord, for your truth. Thank you, Lord for speaking simply and clearly. Thank you for your gospel, the message of Jesus Christ, the one who died to pay the penalty for our sin, was raised in glorious victory. That is the message that men and women of every generation, of every culture, in every society must hear and believe to be saved. Thank you, Lord, that your Word is an unchanaging Word. It comes from the unchanging God. It doesn't mean one thing one day and another thing the next day. It didn't mean one thing 2000 years ago and something different today. But it is your Word forever settled in heaven and we can plant our lives upon it, build our hope for eternity upon it, and have the confidence that you will honor your Word because you are a faithful God. May our church remain faithful to this truth until Christ comes. May we individually be faithful to you and your truth until Christ comes. We pray in His name, amen.