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Hillside O’Malley SDA Church

Lessons from the Life of Paul

David Shin

Conversion and Conviction

Three Years in Arabia

Gospel to the Gentiles

Hermeneutics

Colossians 2:16

The Lordship of Christ

Romans 7

I Keep Under my Body

I Have Finished the Course

Our Father in heaven, we thank you for this Sabbath and this opportunity that we have to rest in the assurance that we can't make ourselves holy.

May you speak to us, for we ask these things in the precious name of Jesus, amen.

Today I want to reference back to an illustration that I used last Sabbath to try to show us the challenge that we have in biblical interpretation.

For those of you that were here last Sabbath, here it is.

I write an email to the Hillside O'Malley Church in 2019, and the email says, we are having haystacks for lunch this Sabbath.

And if you're joining us and a guest and you're not a part of our community of faith, welcome.

Just if you want to know, haystacks is a glorified taco salad.

And that's uniquely known within Adventist circles.

So we are having haystacks for lunch this Sabbath, and the community of faith understands what I mean when I say that.

Go forward 2, 000 years, if you imagine life lasts that long, and there's still human life on planet Earth, a researcher in 4019.

4019 is going through the digital archives and comes across this email from an obscure preacher in southern Anchorage that says we are having haystacks for lunch this Sabbath.

There's a lot of room for misinterpretation.

I remember 1 member came to me after church and said this researcher could have come to the conclusion that we study the book of Daniel don't we and Nebuchadnezzar ate grass for 7 years and so this group ate straw for church on Sabbath, stacks of straw And you can see that there is this hermeneutical interpretive challenge in going back 2, 000 years and trying to understand what I meant when I said, we are having haystacks for lunch this Sabbath.

Now we go to the challenge that we have in interpreting Paul's letters.

Paul wrote epistles, occasional letters to the believers in Corinth, and this is known as Corinthians, or the believers in Ephesus, known as Ephesians.

He also wrote personal letters to Timothy, Titus, Philemon, and they're preserved for us today.

And we need to go through this process of understanding what it meant first so that we can understand what it means today.

It's first God's word to them and then it is God's word to us.

If we go to understanding what it means today without understanding what it meant, Let's take an example of this in 2 Corinthians 13.12.

The Bible says, Greet 1 another with a holy kiss.

Now if a person takes this and goes through the interpretive process of trying to understand what it means today without understanding what it meant in the first century and decides on a Sabbath morning to follow Paul's exhortation to greet everyone with a holy kiss.

It's going to be a lot of people that come in the front door that's in for a surprise.

Well, Paul said to greet 1 another with a holy kiss.

Well, if you go back to try to understand what it meant then, It was a form of greeting back then.

And so the principle would be that we are to engage each other and greet each other in a holy way.

And so the modern equivalent today would be to greet each other with a holy hug, it needs to be holy, amen, Holy hug or a holy handshake.

Now this seems rather innocuous, but there is a passage, and this is the focus of our study today, that has been quite problematic for Seventh-day Adventists, Sabbath keepers, those that uphold the Seventh-day Sabbath.

And this is the only reference in the theological section of the New Testament to the Sabbath.

So let no 1 judge you in food or in drink or regarding a festival or a new moon or sabbaths.

Now before we go into our study to understanding what it meant and then understanding what it means.

I want to read to you some of our evangelical scholars commenting on what they think this means and I'm going to go through them very quickly here.

The New Testament witness in Colossians 2.16 is powerfully against the obligation of Sabbath keeping.

1 can understand why Colossians 2.16 is the only 1 of those references that says the Sabbath is not binding.

He concludes that Seventh-day Adventists, us, are condemned by the text of Colossians 2.14-16.

Torrey, commenting on Colossians 2.16, says this passage is a death blow to all sects who observe the seventh day Sabbath.

Riggle, here is a clear positive statement that the Sabbath taken out of the way, nailing it to the cross, and therefore no 1 has a right to judge us for its non-observance.

This single declaration of Paul's refutes all the theories of Sabbatarians." And here is Walter Martin, the renowned Walter Martin from Questions on Doctrine.

Regarding Colossians 2.16 he says, In light of this scripture alone, I contend that the argument for Sabbath observance collapses.

But this shows us there are different interpretations of Colossians 2.16.

I didn't put it on the screen because I wanted you to read it in your own Bible.

And let's read a few verses before and a few verses after and get a little bit of the literary context of what Paul is saying here.

Let's pick it up in Colossians chapter 2 verse 8.

Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world and not according to Christ.

For in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and you are complete in him, who is the head of all principality and power.

In him you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, by putting off of the body the sins of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in working of God, who raised him from the dead, and you, being dead in your trespasses and uncircumcision of your flesh, he has made alive together with him, having forgiven all your trespasses, having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us, he has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.

Having disarmed principalities and power, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them.

So, or therefore, let no 1 judge you in food, in drink, regarding a festival, or new moon, or Sabbaths, which are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ." You'll notice that Paul begins his argument by saying, you have been circumcised, spiritually, through baptism.

So you have no need a physical circumcision and then he proceeds with his argument.

Now an important thing to do in understanding any letter, because this was written to the church in Colossae, remember it's first God's word to them, then it is God's word to us, and it's like listening to 1 half of a conversation.

You're writing, he's writing a letter to a specific group, a community of faith in the first century, and he's writing for specific reasons.

And we can put together the historical context of the early church and some of the issues that they faced.

And this is an important thing to do when you read any of Paul's letters, is to put it against the backdrop and the narrative of the book of Acts, because it tells you the circumstances that arose in the inception of the early church.

As we noted in an earlier presentation, the early church in Acts chapter 2 was 99% Jewish.

I would say for all intents and purposes 100% Jews.

Those people that came to Pentecost were making a pilgrimage from all parts of the world.

They were there for the day of Pentecost and the reason why the tongues were so important is because every Jew heard their language from the region which they came.

The church goes from 120 to 3, 000 in 1 day, and every 1 of those, now there may have been a Gentile that slipped in there, but I don't think so.

Okay, so 3, 000 Jews become Christians in 1 day, and the church experiences exponential growth.

All of these Christians were circumcised.

All of these Christians kept the Jewish holidays and feasts.

They were very familiar with the law of Moses.

Because of Paul, the church began a radical demographic transition in which Gentiles began to come into the church and the scales began to tip.

Anytime you have an ethnic homogenous group and then other people start coming in, it's okay as long as they're the minority, but once the tip of scales of ethnic population began to tip in a certain favor, there are problems that arise.

And So in Acts chapter 15, you can see that the Jewish Christians had a problem with the Gentile Christians.

And here it is, Acts chapter 15 verse 1 and 5, certain people came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the believers, unless you are what?

Unless you are circumcised according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be what?

These are Jewish Christians going to the Gentile Christian saying, look, unless you go through a surgical procedure, you're not going to make it into heaven.

And this was a huge issue in the early church.

The Jewish Christians looked at the Gentile Christians and says, look, you're not the real thing.

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Series

Lessons from the Life of Paul

Colossians 2:16

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

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