Dr. Arnold will be with you in just a moment, but first, we want you to know how much we appreciate your prayers and financial support. You may help this radio ministry by donating online at yankeearnold.com or by mail at Yankee Arnold Ministries, 7028 West Waters Avenue, Suite 316, Tampa, Florida, 33634. Again, that’s 7028 West Waters Avenue, Suite 316, Tampa, Florida, 33634.
Feel free to send Dr. Arnold your questions or comments to yankee at yankeearnold.com, and he will respond as quickly as possible. Now, here is Dr. Arnold with today’s message.
Did you realize if there’s only one truth about how to get to heaven, where do all these religions come from? Think of how many different kinds of churches there are, how many different rules and regulations there are. You would think everybody should be on the same page.
Everybody should believe exactly the same thing. There’s only one Bible. But some people have preconceived ideas about what they think is right and wrong, and how to get to heaven, and how to live.
So look what he says now. In verse 4, he says, And when they come from the market, except they wash, they eat not. Many other things there be, which they have received to hold as the washing of cups, and pots, and brazen vessels, and of tables.
Then the Pharisees and the scribes ask him, Why walk not thy disciples according to the tradition of the elders, but eat bread with unwashed hand? You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Why aren’t you doing like everybody else does?
Because Jesus knows he don’t have to obey these stupid silly little laws that man makes up. So he says in verse 6, I mean, I love this stuff. I love watching and reading all this here.
Then in verse 6, then he said, Well hath Isaiah prophesied under you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honoreth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. So just because you do certain things for the Lord, don’t make you right. It won’t make you spiritual just because you go to church.
It won’t make you spiritual just because you try to, believe it or not, even witness. It can be a good thing. It can be a right thing.
But if there’s something between you and God, witnessing don’t change that. If there’s something between you and your heart, between you and God, coming to church doesn’t change that. There’s a 1 John 1.9 that can take care of things.
See, God wants the heart of man more than he wants the service. Because if he gets the heart of man, he gets everything else. But sometimes we try to buy God off with the things that we do, the sacrifices we make.
Then he’ll leave me alone, and then I can dabble over here in whatever I want to do, and he won’t bother me. It won’t work that way. Look what he says here in verse 7.
How be it in vain, in vain do they worship me. Are they trying to worship? Yes, in vain.
Accomplices nothing. All those right things they do accomplishes zero. And look in verse 7.
Teaching for doctrine the commandments of men. Not the commandment of God. They’re teaching their own traditions.
They make it up. And he said to them in verse 9, full well you reject the commandment of God. Get this.
That you may keep your own traditions. So they looked like they were so holy. They dressed like they were holy.
They had on their phylacteries in their long gowns, and they had all the stuff. But they weren’t holy. He says, you are a hypocrite.
Now most people would never see that. Most people would not be able to discern that. But we’re talking about Jesus who knows the heart of man.
True. He can see through anything. He knows if you and I are real.
We can fool each other and deceive each other, but you can’t fool God. And so he says here in verse 9, He said to them, Fool well, you reject the commandment of God, that you may keep your own tradition. For Moses said, Honor thy father and thy mother.
Whosoever curse father and mother, let him die the death. But ye say, if a man shall say to his father or mother, it is Corbin, that is to say, a gift by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me, he shall be free. In other words, instead of them condemning the person to death, if they gave us some money, if you gave us some money, we’ll forget about the wrong you did.
So the Pharisees got the money, the guy could treat his mom and dad any way he wanted to, and get away with it. So he says in verse 12, And ye suffer him or permit him no more to do aught for his father or his mother, because as they got old, see they were supposed to look after their own kind. Look in verse 13, we’ll close with this verse.
Making the word of God of none effect to your tradition, which ye have delivered, and many such like things do ye. So go back over there to the Book of Colossians. So this is what is being done.
Now they’re trying to take those same things that they try to do upon Jesus’ disciples and put them on a church. So he says, let no man. Now over in the Book of Galatians in Chapter 1, he says, if an angel from heaven preach unto you any of the gospel, let him be a carpenter.
So it didn’t matter if it was a man or if it was an angel. So they were worshipping angels as though angels was over Christ. So you only worship the true and living God.
You don’t worship any man. So if they were worshipping angels, it’s like these angels are superior to Christ. And nobody is superior.
And so they want to seem like they’re more spiritual and godly. They can see into things and they know the spiritual realm and all this, and they know other things that you don’t know and it’s mysterious. And so you got to look up to them as though they’re so much more intelligent and spiritually minded, and so you got to walk in all of them.
I don’t know one man in this world that I feel intimidated by. I can read and study the same book he can. And there’s no man that’s wiser unless he gets it out of here.
You don’t get it from here. You’re not wise. This is the book of wisdom, the treasure, everything in Christ.
Now get to it. So he makes a statement here in verse 17, which are a shadow of things to come, but the bodies of Christ. So all these, oh, Testament thing with this shadow.
Look there in the book of Hebrews in Chapter 10. I want you to see this. Hebrews in Chapter 10.
And look in verse 1. The shadow was of good things to come, but when it comes, you no longer need to follow the shadow. Follow the real thing.
See there in verse 1, For the law hath a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers therein too perfect. Because if it could, they wouldn’t have to do it every year, but it didn’t. But notice what he does say, and not the very image of the things.
Christ is, as you see, the very image of the Father. He is the crystal clear image, the express image, Hebrews chapter 1 and verse 3, of God himself. So we have the supreme.
He has the right to be preeminent in everybody’s life. There is no other being, angel or man or any other god, anywhere. He is it.
Now, look what he says here in verse 18. Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshiping of angels. You see, never worship anyone under God.
You only worship God, the true and living God. He says, if you voluntarily submit yourselves, you did it to appease the flesh, but it was not a commandment of God to do so. You see, you can submit yourself to some angel, some man, some rule, some law.
It doesn’t mean God gave it, or that was a command of God. And you’ll find yourself thinking, well, I’m right because I did that. I’m right because I did this.
I’m right because, you know, you want to be right with the Lord, and therefore I did this and this and this and this because I am right with God. You see, when the Bible makes a statement, make no provision for the flesh, there’s a lot of things you will not find in the Bible about what to do and what not to do. The Bible did not say, Yankee, I want you to go to Florida and become the pastor of Calvary Community Church.
Boy, that would have been easy, wouldn’t it? Boy, that would have been easy. And I want you to get a Mercedes diesel.
It’s right there in the book. That would have made it so easy. Thou shalt not go to the shows or thou shalt not go to dances.
Thou shalt not… Wouldn’t it have been neat if God had just put on… But he says, thou shalt not make provision for the flesh.
In other words, I as an individual, I should be able to think and reason for myself. I don’t want the flesh to get more powerful in my life. And if I feed those desires, it’s going to get out of hand.
So as an individual, I stay back from the corners, back from the edge, so that I don’t get myself in trouble, trying to protect myself. Every man has to learn his boundary. How far can you go?
And then on top of that, though I may have the liberty or the freedom to do something, I might become a bad example for somebody’s wrong. So I have to back up from it just a little bit, so that I don’t lead somebody astray. This is what the Word of God tells us.
That’s because you are spiritually minded. You want to mind the spirit. If you mind the flesh, the flesh always wants to feel good.
And if I obey this law and this law, and just put on about the laws, it becomes legalistic in your Christian life, and you don’t want to be under the legalism of it. I’ll have a sermon coming up later about what about a school or a college, or even in the family about having, you know, standards. You know, your six-year-old boy that wants to stay up till 2 o’clock in the morning, and you say go to bed at 10 o’clock, and he says, Daddy, show me in the Bible where it says I got to go to bed at 10 o’clock.
If it ain’t in the Bible, you can’t tell me to do it. That’s legalism. Oh, yeah.
What if you go to work at McDonald’s, and they say, I want you to come to work at 5 o’clock this afternoon, and you’re working till 3 o’clock in the morning? You’ve got no authority to tell me to do that. It’s not in the Bible.
Where does it say in the Bible? McDonald’s can tell you to go to work at 5 o’clock. So how do you justify all of that?
Well, there’s a simple little way, and we’ll do that later. Aren’t you glad? Now you know there’s other things coming down the road.
But look at what he says, when you try to seek knowledge outside of the Bible, the human wisdom of the world causes you to be puffed up in your mind, but it’s empty, it’s vain, it’s foolishness, it’s sensual, it’s the wisdom of the world, and it just puffs you up and leaves you empty. It solves nothing. Well, what does it accomplish?
So he says, it’s just in the last three words, his fleshly mind. Fleshly mind. So you can either be spiritually minded or fleshly minded.
Look what he says in verse 18. Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshiping of angels. Your reward.
Now we know that salvation is free. If we’re talking about a reward, then we’re talking about service. And if we’re talking about service, you don’t want somebody to get you on the wrong trail, living the wrong way, for the wrong reason, even though you may voluntarily submit yourself to do it, and rob from you the rewards that you could have had when you got to heaven.
You see, you’re not going to be rewarded when you get to heaven because you did what everybody else wanted you to do. You’re going to be rewarded when you get to heaven because you did what God wanted you to do. So that’s why he talks about being subjected to this, and subject yourself to that.
That’s why you have to be strong enough in the Lord to not surrender your rights to those who want to enslave you. Look up there what he says here in this verse. You see there in verse 20 where he says, wherefore if you be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why?
As though living in the world, and you are on the line of this statement, are you subject to ordinances? Talking about the ordinances of man that they were trying to put themselves under because of the law. You don’t have to.
Don’t put yourself under that which Christ has delivered. That’s why he made the statement in the Book of Galatians in chapter 5 and verse 1. Therefore, let no man put you back into bondage.
Keep your freedom. And it’s a tremendous statement, a tremendous verse, and about not being entangled again with that yoke of bondage. Now notice what he says here.
Now verse 19, you’ll see this in several scriptures, especially in the Book of Ephesians, the one that they wrote to the church there in Laodicea. But he’s talking about in verse 19, and not holding the head from which all the body by joints. See, if you submit, it was voluntary, not commanded by God, and you do not want to submit yourself to anything or anyone but Christ.
That’s why in verse 8 when he says that no man spoil you to the rudiments of the world after the philosophies of man and not after Christ. Don’t let nobody do it. So it’s not just a matter of you got to study, try to find right people.
You got to watch it. People don’t ruin your Christian walk by putting up on you legislation God doesn’t put. Now there are certain things like I’m a pastor.
I got responsibilities. A deacon’s got responsibilities. Elders got responsibilities.
Dads got responsibilities. Mom’s got responsibilities. It’s not talking about the responsibilities that we have.
It’s talking about that which you’re trying to appear to be something that you’re not. Devoting to things that supposedly make you more spiritual than somebody else. And this is gonna make me, you know, something better than someone.
You’ve got to watch and stay away from it. That’s why he says up there in verse 21, touch not, taste not. There’s always people who are trying to say, well, you know, it all depends on what you want to do and whoever your friends are.
There’s some things that you shouldn’t eat. But you know, you can eat pork now. Israel couldn’t eat pork.
But it says, let no man judge you in meat. I like that. They couldn’t eat shrimp.
Oh, I love shrimp. They couldn’t eat lobster. We can eat lobster.
But you see, you do have to use some judgment about how much you eat of anything. Thou shalt not eat pizza. Oh, I’d die.
But see, there’s some people that put you on a vell… and you can’t do anything. You can’t eat.
I’m going to die.
I’m going to die.
You can’t have dessert. Where is it saying in the Bible, you can’t have dessert? I said, don’t say that.
But there is a balance that you ought to have in your Christian life, to know that if I eat too much of this and too much of this and too much of this, I’m going to have clogged arteries and I’m going to die early. Now, if you want to die early, go ahead, I guess. But what you have to be careful of is putting your rules and your regulations upon somebody else and saying, if you do what I do, you’ll be spiritual.
No, because you can do the same thing somebody else does and not be right with the Lord. Can a lost man come to church? Lost man read the Bible?
A lost man can pray. A lost man can obey all the rules and regulations you do. It doesn’t make him spiritual.
It doesn’t even make him saved. So he says up here in verse 22, which all are to perish with the using, whether it’s food or things you can’t touch, everything in this life is all going to perish away. He’s after the commandments and doctrines of men.
And that’s why you want to mark down beside that verse, the book of Mark chapter 7 and verses 1 down to about verse 11 or 12 or so, down to verse 13. He says in verse 23, Which things have indeed a show of wisdom in will worship? Remember this, there is the individual who can worship God according to the will of God, or you can worship God according to the will of man.
You see, people make up their own way of worshiping. I’ll worship God my way and you can worship God your way. Well, what about, let’s just let God tell us how to worship.
There’s people who say, I’m going to get saved my way, and they got their own religion. Or you can get saved God’s way. Well, God’s way will work.
It’s the same thing in the Christian life. Do the same thing. You want to have a way of worshiping the God that pleases God.
So you see, what pleases God? You don’t go by what pleases you or what pleases other people. Sometimes, if you worship God, it’s not going to be pleasing to man.
Hold your place right here. Worship your place right here. Just look there in the book of Galatians in chapter 1.
Galatians chapter 1, and you’ll notice in verse 10, a wonderful statement that Paul makes. Look at what he says. Galatians chapter 1 and verse 10.
He says, For do I now persuade men or God? Or do I seek to please men? For if I yet please men, I should not be the servant of Christ.
Your goal in life can’t be just to please people, but to please God. Because you can please people and not please God. The Lord has to be real to you.
He has to be your heart. That’s why he says, Christ is my life. He is my life.
So whenever you read the third chapter of the book of Colossians, in the very first verse, it’s about, think, heaven. Think, heaven. As he says in verse 1, If you then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above.
Verse 2, set your affections on things above. So we’re not to set our affections on things of the earth. But whenever you do will worship or voluntary submission to whether it’s angels or man and man’s law, it’s satisfying to the flesh because it makes you feel good.
The sacrifices. Why do you think so many people are so willing to do humanitarian needs? To go across the ocean and you give money and they’re great, you know, philanthropists, and they want to give and sacrifice, that’s pleasing to the flesh.
It pleases them to do something like that. And most people, when they do things like that, always want to make sure that somebody knows they did that because they want everybody to know what great sacrifices they made. Because that’s why they do it.
It’s about them. It’s not about that lost man or that person over there, or that poor little kid. It’s usually, it’s about, look how compassionate I am.
I am willing to give my life for this poor little kid over there. Now, you don’t think about a kid. You think about this person.
Oh, that person is so humble. Oh, oh, oh. God knows the heart.
And it’s so easy for people to be deceived. And that’s why you have here in the last part of verse 23 of chapter 2, which things have indeed a show of wisdom in will worship, and humility, and neglecting of the body. I don’t eat this, and I don’t do that.
I don’t go here. You know, there’s some people that deprive themselves of thing called soap and water. They would like to be a hermit some place in a cave, and a little monk in a monastery some place, and let their fingernails grow and all the rest of it, and they don’t cut their hair, and they stink to high heaven because they have no confidence in the flesh.
Oh, isn’t that so humble? Oh, you’re dirty and you stink. And that’s supposed to show you how humble I am.
Maybe you’re just plain lazy, good for nothing. And don’t think that that means that they’re right with God. They’re so spiritual, they’re so holy.
Not necessarily. He said, don’t be caught up into that. Let no man seduce you and cause you to be like that.
So he says, and neglecting of the body, not in any honor to the satisfying of the flesh. See, it satisfies the flesh, but not God. Otherwise, God would not even have had this written.
So God wants you. You are more important. If he can get you and get your heart, he’ll get everything else about you.
If he can get your mind, he’ll get your life. You can try to give him parts of your life and serve him your own way and him never get you. Those are sometimes just ways we buy God off.
You know, tipping the Lord a quarter so that he’ll get off my back and leave me alone, and then I don’t have to give any more than I gave my fair share. But anyway, as you read the book of Colossians, it’s got a lot of wonderful things found in it. Look up here.
Letting this hand represent you and me, the wall represents sin. We all have sin on us. The Bible tells us that man cannot save himself.
We have all sinned. And to pay for this sin is eternal separation from God in hell. And the reason we have to pay for this is because God gave a law that demanded righteousness, and the soul that sinned shall die, and we’ve all sinned.
We’re all condemned. And God wants us to go to heaven, and to go to heaven, we have to be perfect. No sin.
And that eliminates everybody in the world. So the only way God could get anybody in heaven is that he had to pay for the sins of the whole world because he’s not a respecter of persons. He couldn’t choose half the world and pay for their sins.
Because then he’d have to explain why he did that. And he’s not a respecter of persons. God so loved the world, so he had to pay for the sins of the whole world.
And this hand represents Jesus Christ. He’s the Lord God in the flesh. He came into the world because he loves us.
He hates our sin because it separates us from him. So Jesus Christ, who had no sin, took the sins of the world, paid for it on the cross, came back from the dead, said if we would believe he did it for us, he would put this payment to our account. We go to heaven all what Christ did.
He gets all the honor, all the glory. We are completing him. He did not leave anything undone.
All we can do is believe it or reject it. So if we believe it, the payment is put to our account, we go to heaven. You reject it, the payment is not put to your account, you go to hell.
So simple. But it is the best news in all the world. Let’s pray, shall we?
With the head bowed and eyes closed and no one looking around, if you’re here tonight, you’ve never trusted Christ as your Savior, or if you’re watching by internet. Listen to me real good. I want you to know the Lord loves you.
He loves you with an everlasting love. He proved His love for you by sending His Son to die for you. And don’t let any religion, no preacher, try to tell you that you have to keep the law and be good, and earn your way to heaven, because it’s not true.
Eternal life is a gift. God loves you that much. And if you will trust Jesus Christ right now as your Savior, He said He would give you as a free gift, everlasting life.
Would you trust Him? I pray you will. Our Father, we thank you so much for your word that you’ve given us.
We pray, Lord, that each one of us that understand the importance. The law could not save us. It can’t help us to stay saved.
It can’t make us spiritual. And Father, we know that the laws of man, the commandments of man, from whatever source, for whatever reason, cannot add to the Word of God. We just thank you so much for what you’ve done for us.
Help our minds to be clear. Help these things to have discernment in our own minds so that we can learn which is true and which is false and be able to discern the actions and so forth of men. Help us to be wise in Christ and in His plan.
Have you ever heard that faith without works is dead? Or have you ever read James Chapter 2? Does your faith produce good works?
Some teach that if you don’t serve the Lord, you’re not saved. Is that true or false? Pastor Yankee Arnold has prepared just the right book with answers straight from the Bible.
The book is called Gospel Driven Man, and Pastor Yankee wants to send it to you free of charge. Simply write to PastorYankee at Yankee Arnold Ministries, 7028 West Waters Avenue, Suite 316 Tampa, Florida, 33634 and request the book. Or request by email at yankee at yankeearnold.com.
That’s yankee at yankeearnold.com.
Thanks for listening to today’s broadcast. We pray that today’s message was a blessing to you and your family. You may help support this radio ministry by donating online at yankeearnold.com or by mail at yankeearnoldministries7028 West Waters Avenue, Suite 316, Tampa, Florida, 33634.
Friend, one day it will happen. The trumpet will sound and we will be changed. Caught up to meet the Lord in the air.
So live today and every day, believing that the Lord is coming soon. And just keep looking up.
