WHAT MATTERS
MOST
RELIGION VS RELATIONSHIP
RELIGION VS RELATIONSHIP
Wednesday,
April 12, 2017
9:10
AM
In the end, what
matters most is not what religion you belonged to, what church you went to, or
what denomination you followed.
In the end, it
doesn't matter how good you were, how many good works you did, how much trouble
you abstained or stayed away from.
In the end what
matters is "did you embrace Jesus, God, and all his truth?" "Did you believe him, accepted his gift,
and lived in the faith of Jesus, who loved you and gave himself for you?"
These are the things
that matter. In the end the only thing that matters is whether you believed Him
and lived according to that faith.
So, what's the
purpose of religion? Why is there religion in the world? What does it mean?
What is it?
And what's the aim
of it? Why have religion?
And when we look at
God, then, can we say that God wants us to have religion? Is his purpose for us
to be affiliated with a certain denomination? Is that what he wants? What he
delights in?
What's God's
ultimate goal? His sole desire for us?
His purpose and
desire is for relationship. So, if this is true, then religion doesn't matter.
What matters then?
What matters is if
we believe Him, believe His word, His character, His truth, and then live
accordingly.
His word is our
manual, our guidance, our wisdom. Through His spirit.
Our aim is to know
him. To know we are known. To know what pleases Him. What he says about Himself
and us.
How he wants us to
live. Why he wants us to live His ways!!!
If we believe Him,
then we will believe His promises. His words of wisdom. His guidance. We will
trust Him.
With our
relationships. Our feelings. Our emotions. Our future. We will embrace His
plans.
We will desire what
he desires. We will love what he loves. We will rest in His care. In his
provision. We will let go of hurts. Pain. Doubts. Fears. Stress. Anxiety.
Expectations of others.
We will stop trying
to please others. To live for ourselves. To bow down to the world and its ways.
We will love
eternity and our hope to come. We will hate evil. We will stay away from sin.
And all these things
are the things that please Him, that he delights in. That he loves!
And these are the
things that give us His life! His eternal life. A life that flows from our
everyday trusting His saving power. His saving grace.
And will always be
convinced of our need for Him. Our condition without him. Our sinful state. And
our doomed and damned existence without Him.
We will believe His
gospel. That apart form Him we cannot save ourselves. Our good works are like
filthy rags. We cannot ever measure up to His standards.
And that is what
religion teaches us, sadly. To work hard, to strive to be better for the sake
of "gaining His approval or His acceptance". And we cannot do it.
That is Satan's lie. To get us to try our hardest but out of a heart of guilt
and shame and fear and not out of a heart of gratitude and love.
God will not take
sacrifices. He does not delight in burnt offerings. That's all a lie!!!
Mark 7:1-23
Mark 7The Voice
(VOICE)
7 Then the Pharisees
returned to talk with Jesus, and with them came some of the scribes and
scholars from
Jerusalem.
Scribes
and Scholars (seeing the disciples
eating): 2 Your
disciples are eating bread with defiled, unwashed hands.
3 Now you
need to know that the Pharisees, and all Jews for that matter, held the tradition
of their ancestors that hands must be washed before eating to avoid being
ritually unclean. 4 Likewise, they washed when they returned from the market and
followed similar purity teachings as well, from the washing of their food to
the washing of their bowls, cups, and kettles.
Scribes
and Pharisees: 5 Why don’t Your disciples follow the
traditions passed down to us? Why do they eat their bread with defiled hands?
Jesus: 6 Isaiah
prophesied wisely about your religious pretensions when he wrote,
These people honor Me with words off their lips;
meanwhile
their hearts are far from Me.
7 Their worship is
empty, void
of true devotion.
8 When you cling blindly to your
own traditions [such as washing utensils and cups],[b] you completely miss God’s command. 9 Then, indeed, you have
perfected setting aside God’s commands for the sake of your tradition. 10 Moses gave you God’s
commandment: “Honor your father and your mother.”[c] And also, “If you curse your father or your mother, you
will be put to death.”[d] 11 But you say to your aged parents, “I’ve decided that the support you
were expecting from me will now be the holy offering set aside for God.” 12 After that he is not allowed
to do anything for his parents. 13 Do you think God wants you to honor your traditions that you have
passed down? This is only one of many places where you are blind. 14 (to the crowd that had
gathered) Listen, all of you, to this teaching. I want you to understand. 15 There is nothing outside
someone that can corrupt him. Only the things that come out of a person can
corrupt him. [16 All who have ears to hear, let them listen.][e]
17 When they had come in
from the road, His disciples asked Him what He meant by this teaching.
Jesus: 18 Do you mean you don’t
understand this one either? Whatever goes into people from outside can’t defile
them 19 because it doesn’t go into
their hearts. Outside things go through their guts and back out, thus making
all foods pure.[f]20 No, it’s what comes from within that corrupts. 21-22 It’s what grows out of the
hearts of people that leads to corruption: evil thoughts, immoral sex, theft,
murder, adultery, greed, wicked acts, treachery, sensuality, jealousy, slander,
pride, and foolishness. 23 All of these come from within, and these are the sins that truly
corrupt a person.
Jesus and the
Pharisees. This is the greatest example. The Pharisees were so focused on man
made religion and all the rudiments that they had come up with, that they
completely missed the point of Jesus and His coming.
By obeying the law
they proud themselves of their accomplishments. Self righteousness. They
thought of themselves as better than others because they thought that their own
"efforts and great sacrifices and deeds" made them better than
everyone else. In fact, they added more things to the law in order to make
themselves better.
But who did Jesus
have the most trouble with? Them!!!
He said to them
"I came to the ones who recognize and acknowledge that they're sick. Those
who don't see it cannot be saved or healed".
