So, here’s the scene . . . Jesus is on this multi month walk toward Jerusalem, toward the cross, toward his place of death, burial, resurrection, and ascension. And everywhere he went large crowds are following him. He’s teaching and preaching and healing and casting out demons and on this day, Jesus is teaching about light and the importance of having it at the center of your life. What he’s telling them is that He is the light of the world that exposes the darkness and brokenness of our souls and that he provides light and life and healing and that we need Him to be at the center of our life.
But some people want to take the light and cover it. They close our eyes. They don’t want to look at the light, the truth, the person, the work of Jesus because they don’t want their darkness exposed. They don’t want to know the areas that Jesus is asking them to repent, to change, to learn, to grow. And so they intentionally close their eyes.
And among those listening to Jesus were the Pharisees and the teachers of the law; People who have, spiritually speaking, closed their eyes to him.
When Jesus is finished speaking, one of the religious guys asked him to come over to his house for lunch. Now remember, these guys are following Jesus wherever he goes just waiting for him to mess up and break a rule . . . because that’s what religious people do. They love it when people mess up because it gives them an opportunity to look down on others and make themselves even more self-righteous.
Here’s what’s shocking and convicting to me . . . Jesus actually goes. He not only hangs out with the sinners who like to have fun and eat chicken wings and throw darks but he also hangs out with religious dudes who are just impossible; they always have to be right and they make up rules and interpret the rules and enforce the rules and if you find a way around the rules they just make up new rules . . . not to mention they’re just boring.
So Jesus is sitting at the table, all the religious guys are watching him closely and the hostess brings in a big bowl of tater tots. And Jesus, God in human flesh, the light of the world, with his dirty, unclean hand, slowly moves his hand toward the bowl of taters and grabs himself a handful of delicious, crispy, and hot out of the oven taters and starts to eat them.
And all the religious guys are mortified . . . Jesus just put his dirty hand in the tater bowl. You can’t do that. It’s like double dipping. “He’s defiled our taters! What will we do with the taters? “
Well, they have a point. His hands are dirty. Jesus knows his hands are dirty. And this is a communal bowl that everyone else was going to be getting some taters out of but now it’s got germs in it.
So the question is why did Jesus do that? Is he being rude? Is he being disrespectful?
But what’s going on here is much more than just dirty hands in the tater bowl. Jesus is confronting their religious system.
You see, washing your hands before you eat isn’t about cleanliness and germs on the taters . . . It’s about a religious ceremony, a very detailed ritual. Before you ate you had to wash your hands a certain way, and then wash them between each course. There were regulations as to the amount of water and the exact way it was to be poured over the hands. And you had to do this the right way or else you would defile your body and thus become “unholy”.
And it was very important that you followed these rules very closely because these religious guys were convinced that what you did, determined Gods movement. In other words, If you do this than God will surely do that.
Let’s be clear, the bible never says, “thou musteth washeth thine hands before thou eateth”. But the religious guys got together and said, You know, God wasn’t real clear about cleanliness at a meal so we’re gonna make up some rules; let’s start with “You need to wash your hands before dinner” and the rules they make are equal to the Bible and will be enforced as such.
But Jesus wasn’t going to play that game. And by not washing his hands before he grabbed some taters, Jesus is saying, “I don’t acknowledge your rules because your rules are religious. You don’t get to add your rules alongside mine.”
Now, had Jesus showed up to the house and they had just simply asked him, “Hey Jesus, my wife is a germaphobe. She’s really worked hard to cook some taters. And Jesus, out of love and respect for my wife, could you please wash your hands before you dig in to the taters?” I’m sure Jesus would have done that.
But as soon as the guy looks Jesus in the eye and says, “Jesus, you can’t put your dirty fingers in the tater bowl because that will make you unholy.” Jesus is like. “I kind of know who the Lord is and since I’m right here in front of you, I’ll tell you what he’s thinking.”
He says, “You Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness.” That must have put a damper on dinner conversation. But Jesus was just getting warmed up . . . “You fools! Did not the one who made the outside make the inside also?”
See, for the religious guys, it was all about the outside, the externals. So as long as the external ceremonies were carried out properly, that was all that mattered. Their inner lives might be a mess, full of greed and wickedness, but as long as they went through the right motions, as long as they looked good and religious on the outside, that was all that mattered.
But Jesus isn’t fooled by appearances. He sees what’s inside. That’s where he wants to go to work – cleaning the inside, not just the outside. He wants to bring light and life to our broken lives and bodies.
In 1 Samuel 16:7 God says, “The LORD does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.” Religion can’t judge the heart. It can only judge the external appearances. And as a result, it often judges wrongly.
You can’t look at the external and make a judgment about that person . . . and Jesus is saying, “Get to know the heart because that’s what’s important.”
And then Jesus says that the biggest problem with religious rules is that the religious people often have preferences that they raise to the level of God’s law. You see, the bible is up here and our preferences are down here but what religious people like to do is to move their preferences up to the level of scripture.
For example:
Alcohol: You may say, “I don’t drink because I come from a family of alcoholics and I see a lot of alcohol abuse.” Great, that’s your preference. But when you lift it up and say, “Jesus turned water into grape juice”, you are now messing with God’s word. Jesus turned water into wine. He doesn’t want anybody to get drunk. He doesn’t want them to drink and drive. He doesn’t want to cause people to stumble. But let’s not take your preference and lift it up to where you’re changing the bible so it works for you.
Vegetarians: You say, “my preference is no meat”. Great! You can hold on to your position. You can be passionate about your position. You can give all sorts of reason for your preference and shout them from the mountain tops. Maybe you’ll even change our mind and our preference will become your preference because we totally resonate with your reasoning. But you can’t say, “No eating meat, thus sayeth the Lord.” Because the bible doesn’t say that!
One more, just because we have nothing else to do. You’ve got children and you need to educate them. Public school, private school, home school, and Christian school . . . what do you do?
You can have a preference. You can have a passionate preference. “For my kids, I believe that this is best” but you cannot raise it up to the level of the Bible and declare war over it.
Now I’ve seen mom’s who are ready to wage war over their preference and they sometimes carry around their preference like it’s some kind of spiritual war medallion or like a title fight champion belt. Look, I’m super Christian home-school mom . . . everyone should be like me because it says so in 2 homeschoolians 3:2. And they are ready to wage war over the issue. They become cage-fighting moms and they try to get other mom’s into a submission hold until they tap out and say, “Ok, you’re right”
Jesus is saying, “You can’t make rules for God. God makes the rules and those are sufficient.”
You can have preferences. You can hold on to them passionately. You can share those with others but don’t confuse God’s laws with your preferences.
So I thought it would be fun to post on Facebook asking people to “give me all the weird religious rules that you have personally experienced”. And I was overwhelmed by the many responses I received both on the wall post and to personal emails.
First, I want to say sorry that so many of you have had to deal so many religious rules but I’m incredibly thankful that despite those rules, you still found the grace of God through Jesus. Alright, you ready?
“When I was in grade school, our pastor wouldn't allow us to go to summer camp because there was a time in the afternoon with an open swim. Open swim time had boys AND girls together in the same pool which is "basically condoning teen pregnancy".
“We weren't allowed to wear shorts during summer church camp because showing that much skin would cause others to lust. Which makes sense when you think about it; nothing turns 13 year old girls on more than the sight of 12 year old boys' knees!”
“When my great grandfather was on his deathbed, he was told by a priest that unless he contributed a significant amount of money to the church he and his children would all go to hell.”
“Growing up my pastor wouldn't let his kids, dance or watch shows with dancing on TV, wear shorts, go to a movie, or play games with dice. Someone gave him tickets to Ten Commandments, and he tore them up standing behind the pulpit.”
“I remember I had to go to the front of the church and repent for watching Dirty Dancing and write an essay on why it was wrong”
“At our wedding rehearsal, we had a minister tell us it wasn't biblical for us to leave our candles lit after lighting the unity candle since we were "leaving" our families. Since when have directions for lighting unity candles found in the Bible?”
“As an adult married woman you should not hold your husband's hand in public. It causes unmarried people to have inappropriate thoughts and you may cause them to sin.”
“When I was young, my stepfather wouldn't let me cut my hair because the bible said that it was a woman's crowning glory.”
“One of the first times I can remember reading scripture in church, I had a grey leather Bible. After church that day, I was told by a gentleman in the church that real Bibles only came in black or red, and only women could carry the red ones.”
“I have a friend who went to preach, and some guy came up to him after service, furious that he was wearing a red shirt (it's Satan's color). After church he went to someone's house for lunch and asked if they had diet coke...then he found out that they believed that drinking caffeine was a sin because your "body is a temple,"
“It was never really stated, but there was definitely a strong undercurrent of belief that "ministry" was being a pastor, or missionary - and these positions were put on a pedestal. It was sort of shoved under the rug that someone could bring God glory through a different career. Needless to say, I struggled with a tremendous amount of guilt and questioned if I was even a Christian after leaving the mission field to go back to school.”
There are more but if I read them, we’re gonna be here all day. Now you may be asking, “Why do you make fun of religious people?” Mostly because I think they’re hilarious. They take themselves so seriously that sometimes we have to have a little fun to invite them to laugh at themselves and repent of their religion and let go of their rules and let Jesus put his dirty hand in the tater bowl.
Jesus continues his conflict with the religious guys and he says that the heart of the issue is that religious people want praise. They don’t want God praised . . . they want to be praised.
He say’s this, “But woe to you Pharisees” . . . Woe is prophetic word. The OT prophets would say “woe” when they were pointing out sin, calling people to repent and Jesus is going to say this 6 times.
He’s basically saying, “Here’s the problem with you religious people. You’re really committed to the wrong things.”
You’re prideful and you want people to know that you tithe. Tithing is where you give your finances generously to God. Tithe literally means a 10th. And these guys were so serious about the tithe that they would tithe out of their spice rack.
They go into their spice rack, “I don’t know if I gave the Lord a tenth of my dill leaves”. If you do that, then you’re the dill leaf, right?
And Jesus says, “You know what, you tithe out of your spice rack but you don’t love God and you don’t help people . . . It’s ok to tithe but if you don’t love God and serve others, than you miss the whole idea of what life is truly about.”
In addition, your pride manifests itself that you guys love the good seats. In that day, the big givers sat up front, facing the people. And the people could look at them and say, “Oh, I wish I was a big giver. I wish I could sit up front. I wish I was important like that”.
He goes on to say that your pride manifests itself in titles and fame. You love it when you’re at Publix and everybody recognizes you . . . “Oh, you’re that religious guy, I saw you up front. I heard that you give 34 percent. Nice hat”. Religious people always got a good hat, and the bigger the hat the more important the guy.
And Jesus says, “Everybody’s impressed by this but you religious guys are hurting people. You’re blinding people to the message of God”. Because religion doesn’t help people, it builds a system that compels people to conform to rules instead of looking to Jesus who brings life and light to our darkness.
Jesus continues, “Woe to you, for you are like unmarked graves, and people walk over them without knowing it.”
Now, it says in the Bible, when a body is buried, we’re to honor that person who is deceased and you’re not supposed to walk on their grave. It’s a respect thing.
And if you do, you’re declared ceremonially, ritually unclean for a week. And you need to undergo purification rituals and bathing to cleanse yourself, and so you’re basically quarantined. So you really don’t want to step on a grave.
So they would put markers over the tombs and they would wash them white so you could see where the tombs were. And once in a while, people wouldn’t do that and you would step on a grave and you didn’t know it, and then all of a sudden you’re defiled and you’re quarantined and you got a big week of work to cleanse yourself.
Here’s what Jesus is saying. Religious people are spiritually dead . . . not only are you dead, you’re defiling other people. People think that you’ve got everything right; you do all the right things, you wear all the right clothes, you sit in the right spots but you’re dead and people don’t know that.
You think you’re making them clean? You’re making them unclean. You think you’re making them holy? You’re making them unholy. You think you’re liberating them? You’re enslaving them. You think you’re bringing them to God? But you’re blinding them to Grace.”
And here Jesus is giving the religious people a choice, “You can have religion or you can have me”.
Well, one of the religious guys says, “Jesus, you’ve insulted us. You’ve hurt our feelings. Look, Rabbi Hank is crying. Now, I know you didn’t mean to offend us. Nobody’s perfect. We all say things that we regret. It would be really nice if you would just say you’re sorry. And because we’re good people, we would forgive you.”
See, this is what religious people do. They hurt people and when they’re confronted, they change the subject to their feelings and then that person feels bad and guilty and their burden becomes even heavier. “Not only do I not have it right, I’ve hurt your feelings by questioning you.”
And Jesus loves them enough to not allow them to change the subject.
He says, “You don’t get it, guys! You’ve been making rules about the rules and intimidating, bullying, enslaving people with your rules. The people are absolutely terrified and they’re overworked and they’re overburdened. You don’t help people. You’re part of the problem, not the solution.”
And this is a really long standing problem and you guys will look back and say, “yeah, there was a day when religious people hurt God’s prophets, but we religious people built tombs and monuments and shrines to acknowledge that.’” We’ve done stuff to get right with God.
He says, “All you can pretend that you acknowledge the sin of the past, but if you’re still the same in your heart, you’re going to do the same thing that was done in the past, where the religious people would rise up and the prophets would come and say, ‘Repent,’ and the religious people would murder them.”
And here comes Jesus, calling the religious people to repent, and they are saying, “We’ve learned our lesson.” And he is saying, “No, you haven’t.” Because what will they do to him? They’re going to kill Jesus, just like their spiritual fathers killed the prophets that he sent before them.
Jesus says, “You know what? I came to save sinners and there are sinners who are looking to me, but they can’t see me because you’re in the way. And you’re telling them the only way to God is through religion . . . and religion gets in the way of redemption.”
And see, the problem with religion is this. Religion sees that we’re sinners separated from God. Religion sees that God is holy and we’re unacceptable in his sight. And so then, religion decides, “We need to do something! Something needs to be done!”
And then the religious leaders rise up and say, “We’ll make a list of rules! And we’ll keep score! And we’ll teach people! And we’ll discipline them and we’ll teach them what to do! And they’re going to obey all of our rules! That’s religion.
It’s all about works. It’s all about somebody doing something. And it becomes an idol. “God, you’re obligated to me because I’m religious, moral, and good. God, you have to love me. You have to save me. You have to forgive me. I’m a good person. I did good things. I’m better than those guys, that’s for sure.”
But here’s the truth . . . You and I and everyone who will ever be saved, is saved by works . . . the works of Jesus.
- Not our works but his. Not what we do but what he has done.
- Not the life we live but the life he lives.
Religion is right that somebody needs to do something.
- Religious people say, “Here’s the to-do list”
- but Jesus says from the cross, “it is finished”. All the work is done.
Jesus takes our sin, dies on the cross in our place, for our sins, as our substitute, rises from death, conquering, sin, and death, and redeeming us from religion, and he gives us his righteousness. We’re perfect in Christ. We’re forgiven in Christ. We’re redeemed in Christ. We’re justified in Christ. We’re adopted in Christ.
It’s all of Jesus’ work, none of our own. We call this grace. It’s a gift.
So . . . Enough with the religion. Enough with the rule making. Enough with the self-righteousness. Enough with the boasting. Enough with the bragging. Enough with the judging. Repent of your religion and come to Jesus.
And some of you, you’re sinners. You know it. Your thing isn’t working. Your life isn’t working. You know you’re not pleasing to God. You know it’s not as it should be. But between you and Jesus there have been a lot of religious people. And they’ve blocked the way and they’ve made it confusing.
Or maybe you want to get to Jesus, but your fear is, “If I got to be religious, is there a way to have Jesus without religion?” I have good news for you! You can’t have Jesus and religion. It’s just Jesus.
And today, he removes for you the religious people and just opens himself to you. He says, “Come to me, all who are weary and burdened and heavy laden. Those of you who have been carrying that yoke of religion, I’ll forgive your sin and give rest to your soul.”
So I invite the religious people to repent of religion and get to Jesus, and I encourage the sinners to repent of sin and not become religious, but come to Jesus.