Full Transcript

Hi, and welcome to Share the Word, the best way to learn your way through the New Testament one chapter at a time. We know there are a lot of devotionals and encouraging thoughts for the day from the Bible available online, but our goal is a little more to honestly and systematically present the whole story of the New Testament. So let’s listen in to today’s lesson and go a little deeper. The Problem with Religion, Luke chapter 6. I’ve always felt awkward with people calling me religious and had difficulty answering the question, So I guess you’re pretty religious, eh, Paul? I never know quite how to respond to that because, as a Christian who’s spent a fair amount of time studying the New Testament, I’ve noticed that Jesus seemed to have, by far, the most difficulty in his day with those who were by their peers considered the most religious.

You simply can’t read the Gospels without noticing that over and over. So religious is not something I’ve ever really aspired to be. We’ll see this come up throughout Luke chapter 6, where we’ve reached today, and that’s why I titled this lesson The Problem with Religion. Let’s take a look at a few scenes Luke describes for us. In the first scene, it was the Sabbath day, meaning for the Jews either Friday evening or early during the daytime on Saturday, because their days began at 6 p.m. Jesus and his disciples were walking through a grain field on that day, and some of the disciples were plucking off heads of grain, rubbing the chaff between their hands, and eating the raw wheat to alleviate their hunger.

Some Pharisees, who seemed to follow Jesus around just to see if they could find something to accuse him of. Notice that, and criticized the disciples and said, Hey, what are your disciples doing? They’re breaking the Sabbath day. They wanted to know why Jesus would allow his followers to eat wheat on the Sabbath day. For the Jews, from 6 p.m. Friday to 6 p.m.

Saturday, that period was all about rest and worship. According to their rule book, what the disciples were doing technically qualified as work, harvesting. And when I say technically, that’s what I mean, because they had a very detailed written code book for Sabbath rules and regulations, what could and couldn’t be done during that 24-hour period. So they were calling out Jesus for letting his disciples break these rules. Jesus could have responded to them a few different ways. For one thing, the Old Testament law in Deuteronomy actually did not prohibit what the disciples were doing.

It prohibited commercial harvesting on the Sabbath, yes, like a business enterprise, you know, running tractors and combines, we would say, but not prohibiting someone who was hungry picking something to eat. You see, in reality, the Pharisees’ religious rules in their code book, those things went well beyond the actual law of God in the Old Testament. These religious teachers in Jesus’ day had added a mountain of additional rules they felt were necessary to clarify the gray areas, I guess. This has been referred to as their hedge around the law, you know, a hedge, like a hedgerow, like you would build a fence of hedges around your property. There were laws in the Old Testament regarding what was and wasn’t okay to do on the Sabbath.

But the Pharisees created a boatload of additional rules and regulations, which they demanded their followers keep, which went way beyond the actual laws of God. The idea was, I guess, if you follow our extra rules, this hedge we are building around the law of God, you’ll be protected from ever violating the actual law. Our hedge will protect you from even accidentally disobeying God. That’s what they were pointing to here. Jesus’ disciples weren’t violating anything in the Old Testament law, anything in Deuteronomy. They were ignoring one of the hedge rules of the Pharisees, and they expected Jesus, if he was really a rabbi, to require his followers to enforce these rules too.

But he didn’t. Far from reprimanding his hungry disciples, Jesus called out these critics. He answered the Pharisees’ charge with a question of his own. Haven’t you ever read how David, when he was with his men and was fleeing from Saul and they were hungry, they entered into the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence? And also David gave it to his men. Crickets.

That wasn’t a rhetorical question. Jesus wanted to know their explanation for this passage in First Samuel in the Old Testament, since these men prided themselves on being experts in the Old Testament. He was referring to a time in Israel’s past when King David, a Jewish superhero, was on the run from old King Saul. He and his men were hungry. They went into the tabernacle, the house of worship, and ate the special consecrated bread there that was made only for the priests. This would be like breaking into a church today and eating all the communion crackers.

Jesus was making the point that David and his men were hungry. They were in need. And what better purpose could that bread have served than to feed God’s anointed king and his men? The Old Testament scripture describing this doesn’t suggest that he did anything wrong. So why should you Pharisees have a problem with my disciples eating a few measly heads of grain on the Sabbath day? I’m sure this logic made his enemies wince.

Then Jesus said something I’m sure they didn’t like even more. By the way, he said, the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath. What? I can see their eyes widen. Jesus was suggesting that he not only had the authority to overrule their rules, their hedge rules, but that he had the authority to overrule the actual Sabbath laws. He was Lord of the Sabbath?

It’s as if he was saying, I made those rules in the first place, so I can override them if I want. In the Gospel of Mark’s recounting of this exact scene, Jesus added, Man was not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath was made for man. In other words, God’s rules are for our benefit, not just to confine us, not just to pointlessly control us. This all must have made these Pharisees’ heads explode. And it brings me to the point about the problem with religion. For many who see themselves as religious, and who want others to see them as religious, and who, frankly, most of us see as too religious, their rules become kind of an end for themselves.

Keeping all the little religious rules is their point of pride. But the actual rules God has given us in His Word are not an end in themselves, not just restrictions to test how carefully we will or won’t comply. They are God’s guidelines for our benefit. They have positive purposes. God’s rules are like when a father tells his children what he expects of them because he’s training them to do what is wise and to be safe. A good father does not just make up arbitrary rules to see if he can catch his kids doing something wrong.

No. The things God cares enough about that he’s put them in the Bible for our instructions in the New Testament, in our case, since we are living in the New Testament age, these things are for us, for our benefit, for our good. This is very important to get. We may not always understand why God says do this and don’t do that, just like a child may not always see the wisdom in what his parents set as boundaries around his life. But if God lays down a rule, it’s for our good. Institutionalized religion, on the other hand, just like the sect of the Pharisees Jesus often clashed with on the pages of the New Testament, too often slavishly focuses on compliance with laws and rules rather than focusing on loving God and loving others.

Jesus once said all the laws of the Old Testament hinge on the requirement to really love God and love others. The Pharisees in Jesus’ day were so religious, so concerned about their rules and strictly enforcing them, they often missed the larger picture. And Jesus didn’t want his followers to. His life was about pleasing God and helping people. God would have preferred those Pharisees that day who noticed Jesus and his hungry disciples having to eat raw grain offer them some real food. But no, they were too focused on their religion and its rules to ever think outside that box than to see the real needs of others right in front of their face.

We can see just how badly misfocused these religious leaders were in the next scene Luke shows us in verses 6 to 11. On this occasion, Jesus was in a synagogue service where some of these Pharisees were also in attendance. And there was also in that same service a fellow with a deformity, a withered hand. Luke tells us the Pharisees who were there were actually hoping Jesus would notice this guy and heal his useless hand because it was the Sabbath. And then they’d have another, in their twisted minds, clear case of him breaking the Sabbath laws. How messed up do you have to be to think like this?

These are religious leaders in a church-type setting, not to worship God or to minister to people, but focused on entrapping Jesus. But he knew what they were up to, and again he called them out publicly. He invited that man with a shriveled hand to come and stand beside him, and then he asked his whispering detractors, Which do you think is more in keeping with God’s law regarding the Sabbath, to do harm or to do good, to destroy life or to save it? I can see him looking around that room. Dramatic pause. He gave them a chance to respond, but how could they?

Then Jesus, caring nothing for their misguided rules, asked the man to stretch out his deformed hand, and when he did, it was whole. The response of everyone in the synagogue was of awe and praise to God. No, I’m sorry, that was not the response of everyone. Maybe for some, as they witnessed this clear demonstration of God’s power right before their eyes, but sadly, not for the scribes and the Pharisees, the most religious men in the room. They ground their teeth in anger because Jesus had humiliated them in front of their own crowd. You see what I mean about the problem with religion?

And these are not isolated events here in Luke chapter 6. This thing happens over and over and over in the pages of the Gospels, as Jesus, who was God among us in the flesh, was showing people in his day what God is really like, and the religious leaders actually hated him for it. We need to look at our religion honestly too, through this lens, and ask if our religion, what passes for Christianity today that’s practiced in our societies, is actually leading people toward God, leading people toward truth, leading people toward loving others, helping heal people’s real problems, or whether it has just devolved into something else.

Because apparently, there’s something very messed up in human nature that often causes the most religious among us to lose focus on what God really cares about, and instead replace it with an obsession for rules and rituals and ceremonies, and the desire for power and influencing people. There’s much more in this chapter I’d like to talk with you about, but, you know, we can’t comment on everything in our time frame. We’ll get to the rest of these ideas, especially this ethical teaching in the second half of the chapter down the road when we get to the Gospel of Matthew. I’m not intentionally ever passing over things because they’re inconvenient or hard. Our goal is to focus in each chapter just on one or two big ideas that will help our listeners gain a well-rounded understanding of God and His Word, a well-rounded understanding of the foundational concepts of biblical Christian faith.

If you stick with Share the Word, we will honestly discuss all the big ideas in the New Testament before we are through. I promise. In our sights today, though, and I’m hoping you’re getting this big idea by now, religion can be a problem. To stick a knife into the heart of the empty religion Jesus detested in his society, Luke, beginning at verse 39, relays a couple ridiculous word pictures Jesus painted to spotlight this very problem. Imagine, he says, a blind man trying to lead another blind man. How is that likely to go?

Sooner or later, they’re both going to fall in a ditch. Picture that: a blind man who is sure he knows the way, trying to lead another blind man who’s skeptical and maybe panicked as he’s being dragged along. Predictably, this leads to disaster when they both fall headlong into a ditch. This was a not-so-veiled shot at the religious leaders he had just confronted in the synagogue, who were angry that he showed compassion and healed someone on a Sabbath day. How could such spiritually blind men presume to insist on actually teaching others? How well could they lead anyone toward understanding God better or lead anyone toward developing true godliness in their lives?

They couldn’t. All they were doing was creating followers fixated on the same meaningless little things that they were fixated on. People who’d believe that meticulously keeping rules is what God cares about. To Jesus, this was preposterous. Those men could not spiritually lead others when they themselves were so completely blind to what God really cares about. To twist that knife even deeper, Jesus gave another example.

Imagine a person with a beam stuck in their eye trying to pick a splinter out of the eye of someone else. It’s an obvious absurdity, but try and picture that. You’re on a construction site, and you fall from a roof, and somehow the sharp end of a broken two-by-four ends up sticking in your head. Ow! Ow! Ow!

Ow! But yet you still somehow imagine you can turn and remove a small splinter a coworker has stuck in his watering eye. Who would do that? That’s crazy. You can’t possibly see well enough yourself. Moreover, you’ve got a much bigger problem yourself.

Again, Jesus is pointing the finger right at these religious Pharisees, who he saw as hypocrites, men with large and obvious spiritual issues, yet who nitpicked others who were sincerely seeking after God, even had the audacity to nitpick him. To Jesus, this all was completely absurd. God deliver us from such religious types. I don’t know what your mind is jumping to by way of comparison when you hear these pointed lessons from Jesus. I hope if you find yourself under the thumb of some modern-day religious Pharisee types who are all about rules and expectations of you, but who themselves obviously lack humility, lack mercy, lack compassion, lack genuine godliness, you’re able to see that. That’s the problem with religion.

It doesn’t matter if someone has theological degrees or wears clerical garb, has a big cross around their neck, or is expecting you to call them Father or Reverend or Pastor. That’s exactly like the Pharisees. They wore special clothes so they would be noticed by everyone and tied little scrolls of scripture to their headdresses, demanded to be called by high-sounding titles and so on. Look at me, I’m a holy man. Jesus was not impressed. Neither should we be.

Jesus warned his disciples against that kind of religion. Understand this important point. Believing in and following Jesus is a different matter than being a devout member of a particular church or denomination or a follower of some particular religious leader. The proper role of religion, the role of your church or any Christian organization that you may belong to, should be to help you genuinely understand God’s Word and develop in you the character of Christ so you can follow Jesus in truth. A church or parachurch organization can be a great asset in our lives if the people leading them are godly, sincere, and biblically informed. But here’s a warning.

Religion can also harm others if the leaders running the show are hypocrites who are just interested in controlling people or generating money or in seeming important and influential. There’s a lot of that now, just as there was in Jesus’ day. Jesus pointed out in verse 43, Good trees produce good fruit. He was telling us we need to be kind of savvy fruit inspectors. We need to be wise enough and alert enough to judge if the religious leaders who want to influence our lives and influence our society are themselves bringing forth good fruit. Are they genuinely godly men and women who care about the things God cares about?

Are they producing in their own lives the kind of real fruit godliness should produce, rather than being people who are playing a role, perpetuating a religion, or worse, developing a personality cult around themselves and taking advantage of the naive. Jesus is starkly exposing this unfortunate truth. Religion can be a problem. It can be a real obstacle to people who are seeking God honestly, rather than an asset. These very religious men we read about in this chapter became the actual enemies of Jesus and his interests, the exact opposite of what we should expect from them. Unfortunately, we still need to be very alert to this in our generation.

Not everyone who claims to be a spiritual leader is actually advancing God’s interests. Not every organization that calls itself a Christian church is teaching the things that Jesus said are true or is even faithful to God’s Word today. Many are focused on the things Jesus showed us we shouldn’t necessarily even care about. And we need to be able to recognize those people and those organizations and turn away from them. Let me make a personal comment here to those who are pastors and teachers or who aspire to be. Be extremely careful not to turn your personal convictions and preferences into rules you try and impress on other people.

When you hear a lesson like today’s, you might immediately think about the very institutional religions in our society which have developed a ton of their own rules and rituals beyond what the New Testament teaches, have developed a labyrinth of complex religion around the simple biblical gospel. It’s sometimes hard to find the gospel in some of these religions because they have become so hedged around by centuries of traditions and layers of extra-biblical stuff. But we evangelicals who consider ourselves Bible believers and claim the Scripture alone as our only truth. We can also fall into the same trap.

I know when I was growing up, the church I was in somehow drifted for a time into a bunch of external religious rules, which strangely became equated with godliness and spirituality, when in reality they were just the personal preferences of a certain influential Christian leader at the time. The emphasis subtly shifted from loving God and loving people to keeping rules about how long your hair should be or what kind of music you should listen to, what clothing styles were appropriate and what activities you should do on Sundays. These external rules, they were enforced in ways that made people feel like they were not really okay with God unless they would conform. And I’m sure sometimes sincere people, people hungry for God, were actually turned off by these unchristian attitudes.

This, in retrospect, I realize, was very little different from the spirit of the Pharisees that Jesus sharply rebuked in this chapter. As one Old Testament prophet puts it, his name is Micah, godliness does not come from strictly obeying rules and observing religious rituals. It’s found in the things God is really looking for in us, like doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly before Him. The big idea I hope you don’t miss from this lesson, it’s simple, but oh so important. Let’s be far less concerned with being religious and far more concerned with being like Jesus. If you’re enjoying these commentaries, please help us share the word by passing along the podcast to your friends and family.

There’s no better way to learn the content of the New Testament than chapter by chapter. For more information, visit us at sharetheword.org. From all of us at Share the Word, our blessings and prayers go out to all of you.