Stephen N. Collins
Millville – 06/22/08
Being the Church
Part 3: Why Religion Stinks
Acts 4:1-22
Icebreaker: The kindergarten teacher asked the students in her class to bring something related to their families’ religions to class the next day.
She asked for volunteers to show what they had brought to the rest of the class. One boy came forward and said, "I am Muslim, and this is my prayer rug."
Another child came forward and said, "I am Jewish, and this is my Star of David."
Another came forward and said, "I am Catholic, and this is my Rosary."
The last little boy came forward and said, "I am Southern Baptist, and this is my Covered Dish."
Intro: A lot of people in our culture today are confused as to what the Christian faith is really all about. Many people regard following Jesus as a religion. The problem with thinking about it in those terms is that religion is something you do that makes you right with God. But allowing Jesus to be the ruler of your life is all about what He has done for you.
-You see, religion stinks. That’s right, I said it. Religion stinks. I really believe that my purpose in life is to lead people into a real, authentic relationship with Jesus.
-What that means to me is that if you’re here and you’re not a believer, my role as your friend is to help you come to the place in your life where you repent of your sin and turn to Jesus. And what that means if you are a religious person is that my role as your friend is to help you come to the place in your life where you repent of your religion and turn to Jesus.
-Maybe you’re here this morning and you are not a follower of Jesus. I’m really honored that you’re here today and I hope that during our time together today you’ll see what the Christian faith is not. I hope that some of the pre-conceived notions of what it means to be a believer will be corrected.
-Maybe you’re here this morning and you’re a very moral, religious person. Most people in our culture are. And maybe you’ve constructed a very efficient system of religion for yourself that makes you feel a little better about yourself and makes you look a little better to other people. If that’s you, I hope that you’ll hear me out for the next few minutes and that today you’ll realize what true faith is all about.
-But first off, let’s define what “religion” is.
From dictionary.com : “a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, esp. when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.”
-Notice a key phrase here. “Ritual observances.” Rituals that one goes through to get closer to God. Ritual is probably the prime characteristic of all world religions. Ritual places all the emphasis on me. “If I do this…then God will notice.” “If I do this…then I’ll be at peace with God and my fellow man.” The problem with religion is that it is rigid and self-centered with no room for God. And that’s why religion stinks.
-All religions reach up toward God. But Christianity is about god reaching down to people.
-Religion is all about self-help and self-improvement. A follower of Christ knows that in our own power, we can make no fundamental changes to ourselves. Because it’s not an outward change that can really transform us. It’s an inward change. And only God’s Holy Spirit can do that.
-Religion cannot save you. Religion cannot change you. And religion hates being confronted with this fact. When religion is exposed for what it is – a sham that can’t fundamentally change anyone – religions gets angry. (Read 4:5-7)
-When religion is threatened, it exercises intimidation, it emphasized tradition and it employs interrogation.
-This is the reaction religious people have every time something tries to buck their little religious system they’ve set up. Intimidate, fall back on tradition, and interrogate those who disagree.
-Now, let’s bring this down to our level. I’ve see this patter happen in churches before and you probably have too. New things start happening, a church starts moving in a new direction, a fresh breath of God starts blowing, and the religious crowd can’t stand it. Instead of celebrating the new things God is doing, they want to cling to the old things He did 40 years ago.
-And you’ll start seeing this pattern emerge of intimidation, tradition and interrogation. The religious people will start throwing their weight around. They’ll sit there with their arms folded and a scowl on their face the whole service. They’ll grumble and start talking about things they don’t like behind people’s backs.
-And when that no longer satisfies them, the fall back on tradition, making sacred cows out of minor issues. Saying things like, “We’ve never done it that way before, and I don’t like it! I don’t know if (fill in the blank) is really even Christian!” Now, some of these issues that arise are just a matter of preference. And mature believers can get over preference for the sake of Christ. But there comes a point when it’s really just religion in disguise. That point comes as the religious people start treating personal preferences as sacred.
-And then they start interrogating. They ask important sounding questions and force people to take sides. They spread division in the church. And people get hurt. People leave. Leadership comes under undue scrutiny. And I can’t help but believe that’s God’s heart is broken.
-So that’s what religion looks like in a nutshell. And you know what? It stinks. And if you haven’t already come to that conclusion, let me offer you 4 reasons why this morning:
4 Reasons Why Religion Stinks
1. Religion lacks the Spirit’s filling (4:8a)
“Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit…”
Questions: You would never wear a fake seatbelt, would you?
Illustration: Seatbelts can be a hassle. Some people just don’t want to be bothered even when the law requires them to buckle up. According to the Associated Press, a New Zealander named Ivan Segedin took it to an extreme. The police ticketed him 32 times over five years for failing to use his seat belt. Even though this was costing him big money, Segedin refused to buckle up. Finally, instead of obeying the law, the man decided to rely on deception. He made a fake seat belt that would hang over his shoulder and make it appear that he was wearing a seat belt when he was not.
His trick worked for a while. Then, he had a head-on collision. He was thrown forward onto the steering wheel and killed.
Discussing the accident, the coroner described the fake seat belt: "Though his car was fitted with seat belts, an extra belt with a long strap had been knotted above the seat belt on the driver’s side, providing a belt to simply sit over the driver’s shoulder."
Craig Brian Larson, editor of PreachingToday.com; source: "Fake seat belt to fool police causes death of New Zealand driver," The Associated Press (2-22-08)
Main Point: The moral of the story is this: When truly tested, what is fake will fail you. And when it comes to having a real relationship with your creator, religion will fail you every time. You know why? Because it lacks the filling of the Holy Spirit.
-In the Greek language that the N.T. was written in, the phrase “filled with the Holy Spirit” can be explained by the understanding that God was doing the thinking of what to say, and Peter was saying it. God was actually doing the work, Peter was simply opening himself to be used.
-The problem with religion is that it leaves no room for God to use us. Religion seeks to put parameters around our experience with God. It puts us in the driver’s seat, not the Holy Spirit.
Scripture: John 4:23-24
“But the time is coming—indeed it’s here now—when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. The Father is looking for those who will worship him that way. 24 For God is Spirit, so those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.”
-Jesus said that God is looking for people who will worship Him in Spirit and truth. This is the major difference between true Christianity and religion: religion can never worship God the way He desires or deserves to be worshipped because religion lacks the Spirit’s filling.
-Religion asks, “What can God do for me?” A true relationship with God through Jesus asks, “What can I do for Him?”
2. Religion is blind to the work of Jesus (4:8b-11)
“Rulers and elders of the people! 9If we are being called to account today for an act of kindness shown to a cripple and are asked how he was healed, 10then know this, you and all the people of Israel: It is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you healed.
11He is ’the stone you builders rejected, which has become the capstone.”
Illustration:
Questions:
Main Point: The religious leaders in the Sanhedrin could not deny that the man standing before them had been healed. But their religious biases blinded them from seeing this truth.
-Peter even quoted their own prophecies to them when he talked about the “stone that the builders rejected.” David made that prophecy 1,000 years before Jesus was born and Peter interprets it and applies it to the whole council. Remember, Peter was uneducated. He was a simple fisherman. These men he spoke to spent every day of their lives in the Scriptures from the time they were children.
-Yet, because they chose to worship their religion instead of their God, they were blind to what God wanted for them. A man they all knew stood before them miraculously healed. An uneducated fisherman preached with boldness. Their Scriptures were shown to be fulfilled. And still, nothing.
-This brings us to the next reason religion stinks:
3. Religion is unmoved by the Gospel (4:12)
“Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.”
Illustration:
Questions:
Main Point: Why is religion unmoved by the Gospel? Because religion loves to walk the path of love and good deeds, but eventually it faces a fork in the road: follow Jesus or follow a religious system. And this though offends religious people because they believe salvation comes through their own goodness within the system. They are unmoved by the death of Jesus for the sins of the world and are cold to their need for salvation.
4. Religion is silenced by transformed lives (4:13-14)
“When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus. 14But since they could see the man who had been healed standing there with them, there was nothing they could say.”
Illustration: The 19th-century Danish theologian Soren Kierkegaard identified two kinds of religion -- Religion A and Religion B. The first is "faith" in name only (2 Tim. 3:5). It’s the practice of attending church without genuine faith in the living Lord.
Religion B, on the other hand, is a life-transforming, destiny-changing experience. It’s a definite commitment to the crucified and risen Savior, which establishes an ongoing personal relationship between a forgiven sinner and a gracious God.
This difference explains why for many years British author C.S. Lewis had such great difficulty in becoming a Christian. Religion A had blinded him to Religion B. According to his brother Warren, his conversion was "no sudden plunge into a new life, but rather a slow, steady convalescence from a deep-seated spiritual illness - an illness that had its origins in our childhood, in the dry husks of religion offered by the semi-political [churchgoers of our culture], and the similar dull emptiness of compulsory church during our school days."
Our Daily Bread, March 15, 1994.
Questions: Can you relate to that? Have you had past experiences with Christianity and it was just dull and lifeless for you? Why was that? Could it have been that what you experienced wasn’t a faith that was based on a relationship but on a religion?
Main Point: Here’s where religion is at it’s weakest: it has nothing to say when people’s lives are really turned around by Jesus. Religion has no answer for such transformation. Because for a sinner to become a saint requires something supernatural to happen. And religion doesn’t deal in the supernatural.
The first greatest need of our lives is an authentic relationship with Jesus Christ. The last thing we need is a substitute.
Conclusion/Response
-So may I ask you something this morning? What are you basing your life on? What does your relationship with God revolve around? What you do, or what God through Jesus Christ has done for you? Are you serving some religious system you’ve set up, or are you living in a real, authentic relationship with God?
-Maybe you’ve had experiences in your life like C.S. Lewis, who for much of his life saw following Jesus as just another religious system people followed. I hope that today you can see that it’s not about religion.
-Religion stinks. I don’t recommend it. But I do recommend repenting of your sins and allowing God’s Holy Spirit to move in to your heart and have complete control.
-If you’re here this morning and you’ve never entered into a relationship with Jesus, you need to repent of your sins and let the Holy Spirit transform your heart and life.
-If you’re here this morning and you’re a religious person, you need to repent of your religion and begin a real relationship with God today.
