1. The religion Jesus confronted was a 1 st Century Judaism. Describe the characteristics of this religion.

In Jesus’ day, the religion he confronted was a 1 st C. Judaism carried along by the scribes and Pharisees. As you read through Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, Jesus was always bumping heads with them. The impression I get is that he does not simply bump into these people from time to time, but that he deliberately steps into their path and confronts them. It’s like he deliberately steps into the path of an oncoming care and whambo! There is confrontation. Jesus confronts and challenges the whole shape of their religion.

Now the Pharisees and scribes were tremendously religious people. We must not miss this. They accepted the authority of the O.T. for example. They had a tremendous zeal to please God. Lack of religion was not their problem. But what had happened over the years was that the rabbis had put layers and layers of interpretation and commentary on the O.T. so that by the time of Jesus, the Jewish religion had inherited a very complex and sophisticated and laboriously worked out grid through which they ran the whole religion of the O.T.

Simple commandments of the O.T. had been broken down into tens of hundreds of prohibitions and subdivisions and categories – each generation adding a few more. So it became a religion of umpteen number of little rules and regulations.

Just to get a feel of this: One of the categories of work forbidden on the Sabbath was tying a knot. You couldn’t use both hands to tie a knot. But women were exempt because they needed to tie up clothing. Or you could move a chair on the Sabbath but it must have no more than one cross rung, because if it had more than one, it becomes a ladder and its work to move a ladder. I like this one: if you moved a chair it must be carried, lifted off the ground and not dragged, because they had dirt floors and if you dragged the chair it left a furrow, which became plowing and plowing is work! Healing is work and so that was not allowed on the Sabbath. Well, Jesus stepped right in front of the scribes and Pharisees and said, “No – stop – all these rules and regulations are not true religion!”

2. Have you experienced in your life some of these same characteristics in religion?

3. What alternative religion did Jesus offer people?

So once again Jesus called religious people to turn from a false religion to true religion. But what is true religion? What was it he turned their eyes toward? HIMSELF! He is true religion. He is our righteousness. He is the way into the kingdom of heaven. The way into the kingdom of heaven is not through living up to rules and regulations; not through man-made doctrines and traditions. The way into the kingdom is through HIM, through faith and trusting in Him! Jesus came precisely to set us free from the Law. He came that we might enjoy the freedom there is in him. True religion is freedom in Christ.

4. Pastor Dave says “True religion is freedom in Christ?” Do you agree or disagree? Why?

I like to think of living in Christ, in his kingdom, like a horse in a pasture. You take a horse down to the pasture – take the saddle and bridle off and there he goes running across the field – kicking up his legs, shaking his mane in the wind. He stops at the stream and drinks – then gallops away to the other side and stands under the shade, lies down, rolls on his back. That is what Christ has done for us. Christ has set us free from rules and regulations to enjoy all the different aspects of our experience.

That’s a wonderful teaching! It’s what the author of this book Joshua meant when he said that Jesus came to set us free to grow as human beings, to become beautiful people as God intended.

5. Why do you think there is something inside us that prefers rules and regulations over freedom?

But there’s a very curious thing, I think, as we live in this pasture of the kingdom of Christ. There is something in the human heart which fears freedom more than anything else. There is something inside us that prefers rules and regulations even while we have the freedom of the pasture. I think its because the law is more cut and dried, we can get a better handle on it.

The very high teaching that Jesus gives about having a heart like his and responding in each situation with perfect holiness is a terrifying commandment. Because at the end of any given day you know you have not responded with the heart of Jesus in every given situation. So its much easier if you have a sort of hybrid between law and gospel, a hybrid between rules and regulations and Jesus – where you have a list of dos and don’ts. Now the list may vary from group to group. For one its “I don’t drink, I don’t chew, I don’t go with girls that do.” For another it’s a different list. It’s very satisfying to have a list of dos and don’ts because at the end of any given day, you can go down your checklist and say, “I did witness to someone on the street, I did this, I did that, I didn’t do that.” If you have a checklist of 5 dos and 5 don’ts – at the end of the day you can feel quite pleased with yourself and most importantly you know where you stand with God. The Jews were tremendously comforted because they knew – or thought they knew – where they stood, because they Law was explicit. But how far this is from this higher teaching of freedom in Christ, of having a heart like Jesus in responding to different situations. The Jews certainly feared it – we can see how they finally had to get rid of Jesus. But I think even as Christians we fear it.

6. Do you believe that by obeying religious rules and regulations that we can become good enough to be accepted by God?

Now where did the scribes and Pharisees and where do Christians today who hold this hybrid of Christ plus does and don’ts, go wrong? I believe that where they are we go wrong is in harboring a notion deep inside that obeying religious rules and regulations we can become good enough to be accepted by God. It’s the notion that somehow we can merit the acceptance of God. This was the Pharisees mistake at its most basic level. And I believe there are remnants of this notion in Christians who hold to this hybrid religion. In both cases sin is not taken seriously enough and consequently the grace of God is not taken serious enough. God is so hold, He cannot be appeased. Yet he is so merciful that he offers forgiveness. This is what the Pharisees lost sight of. And in doing so perverted the whole religion of the Bible. Religion was reduced to something external. And Christians who hold to this hybrid are in danger of doing the same. Jesus confronts this head on.

One of those places in in Mark 7. They notice that Jesus’ disciples were eating with hands defiled, i.e. unwashed v. 3-5___. But then Jesus throws his bomb at them, v. 8-9___ “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God while holding fast the tradition of men.”

7. Jesus said, “You have got to be more righteous than the Pharisees?” How can we become more righteous than the Pharisees?

What is this commandment of God Jesus is referring to? It’s the great Commandment of Deut 6:4, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart – soul – might.” God’s requirement is singular: loving – obeying him from the heart. The heart is the center of who we are. It is the center of gravity of us as persons. It’s the core of who we are. Jesus is ruthless and cutting here. He says you put aside the Word of God, the commandment, what god has spoken and you hold fast to the traditions of men, this checklist. I require the internal thing. You reject that and hold on to the external thing. And you look at the checklist and see all your check marks and pronounce yourself blameless before God.

You see in the Pharisees and legalists’ religion, a person could fulfill all the external rules and still have tremendous hatred in his heart toward someone. He could be inwardly scorning someone and still consider himself blameless before God. Why? He’d passed the checklist.

Now with this in mind we come back to Jesus’ words, v. 20____. Do you get the feel now of this charge to his disciples? You have got to be more righteous than the Pharisees. Can you imagine a Pharisee overhearing these words? “More righteous that we are? How unbelievable! I mean its all we can think about, day in and day out: washing a pot, how many steps we take, washing our hands, what kind of knot we tie, every chair we move.” They were so religious and righteous in their own eyes, they had no time to think of anyone else. And Jesus zeros eight in on their self-righteousness and says – that’s your problem. You are self-righteous and therefore nowhere near righteous enough!

Do you see the two different kinds of religion? The one a religion of man reaching up for God to try to establish some sort of righteousness of one’s own with God. The other, a religion of God reaching down to man with a righteousness that comes to us in Christ.

Why do the false religions of man reaching up – fail? For two reasons. 1) Because God requires heart obedience. He is not interested what we last cooked in our pot, or whether we washed our hands before the meal in the right way. Without obedience from the heart, all these thousands of rules are empty before God. Absolutely irrelevant. 2) But secondly, and this is the clincher. From our hearts is exactly where we have nothing to give. The Bible says Out of the heart comes all manner of sin. The heart is the source of our problems. It is our seedbed for sin. See the problem? We have here what psychotherapists would call a double-bind. We’re in a crossfire with no way to move. What god requires of us is obedience from the heart, and that is precisely what we are unable to give!

At this place we feel ourselves crying out with Paul, Oh wretched man that I am, who will deliver me? And from the side of man’s religion there is but silence. From that side there is no one to deliver. And we need to feel that. The seriousness of our sin. The holiness of God. Silence.

But from the other side finally comes a voice: “I can deliver you!” Who is speaking? It’s Jesus, the Son of God. True religion, is God reaching down in Christ to us in our sin, down into the midst of all the muck that comes out of our hearts, down into our pretenses, disguises, selfishness; but reaching down in mercy and forgiveness, cleansing us from sin through his death on the cross, and giving us a new and clean heart, a heart with which we are now enabled to believe in him and give him obedience.

Matthew 5:20____. The whole character of the kingdom of Heaven and our relationship to God is a gift given. Salvation, righteousness, a new heart – are all gifts given us by god –which cannot be earned – but can be received by faith in Christ who in his death paid for our sins. And then with his help, trying to serve him from the heart, with a heart now in which God is working.

8. Talk about the freedom there is IN CHRIST.