They may have overflowing parking lots and pews, but the truth is death and deception are their charter members. Jesus Christ said to the religionists of his day, what we can still say today to both organized religion that is false and individual men and women who are deceived. You might look spiritually alive, you might do the works of religiously minded people, but you are in truth, self-satisfied, self-contented, self-deceived, and self-confident. Have you ever wondered if religion can be a trap? It's possible to look alive spiritually while being utterly lost. In today's message, Stephen Davey unpacks the sobering truth about false religion and self-deception. What does it mean to have a reputation for godliness but lack a true relationship with Christ? Stephen will highlight the danger of trusting experiences, traditions, or good works for salvation. Learn how God calls you to move beyond religious rituals and into a genuine relationship with him.
Stay tuned as Stephen unpacks this right now. There has never been perhaps a day in our world where people are more religiously oriented than today. Just about everybody today has a religion, right?
Everybody is claiming some form of God today. And in our country, in the last few decades, Christianity has seemingly made so much incredible progress. Whether it is through television, television, Christian radio, Christian music industries, Christian publishing houses, Christian bookstores, Christian educational institutions, mega churches, and even best sellers, all seem to indicate that Christianity is moving forward, that Christianity is a power to be reckoned with. How is it though at the same time that the statistics of divorce and abortion and premarital sex and pornography and all sorts of sinful obsessions have found their way the same way within the church, within the world of those who call themselves Christians? How is it that the church who for so many years with great clarity declared that the world needed to repent yet in our generation has the world telling it it needs to repent?
How does it happen? Well, it happens slowly but surely when the reality of a spiritual relationship with Jesus Christ is relegated to the back closet, to the backstage area out of the way and let's get on with the ritual, let's get on with the form, let's get on with the ceremony, let's look good, look right, look alive and yet not know the reality of true life in Christ. Now there is such a thing as good religion. We've sung it in the past, this song, give me that old time religion. We sing that and when we sing that we think about the old time religion being the religion that held high the cross of Jesus Christ, the religion that spoke the truth of God's word centered upon our Lord, warned of sin and judgment. James wrote that pure religion is religion that exercises in selfless acts toward widows and orphans.
Individuals in James Day and to some degree in our day who cannot repay. They had no money to pay for what they received and if pure religion then is related to acts of love, impure religion is related simply to acts of liturgy and ceremony. False religion tends to cater to people who can pay. If pure religion makes an internal difference in the heart of an individual then false religion only cares about externals and the reputation of a person. False religion can be a mega church. What's defined as a church of more than 2,000 people in attendance or about 3,000 of these churches were one of them in America. It could be false religion. False religion could be a best seller. True religion could be a small simple country chapel where a handful of people worship today.
It could be a dusty volume that is overlooked and ignored. False religion is the true enemy of the gospel of Jesus Christ and around the world today one of the greatest obstacles to the gospel of Jesus Christ is not the enemy. It is not demonic attack.
It is not political obstruction. It is in many ways organized religion. The problem of religion is not new to our generation though. Luke chapter 11. Look at verse 37. When Jesus had spoken a Pharisee asked him to have lunch with him. One of the religious professionals, religious dedicated faithful men of this day said to the Lord, would you eat with me and have lunch in my home? And he went in and reclined at the table, verse 38. And when the Pharisee saw it, he was surprised that Jesus had not first ceremonially washed before the meal. There were things that the religious men did and certainly rabbis, Jesus was a rabbi in this culture. But the Lord said to him in verse 39, now you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and of the platter but inside of you, you are full of robbery and wickedness.
This is the man who invited him to lunch by the way. You foolish ones, did not he who made the outside make the inside also but give that which is within this charity and then all things are clean for you. But woe to you Pharisees for you pay tithe of mint and rue and every kind of garden herb and yet disregard justice and the love of God.
But these are the things you should have done without neglecting the others. Woe to you Pharisees for your love of front seats in the synagogues and the respectful greetings in the marketplaces. Woe to you for you are like concealed tombs and the people who walk over them are unaware of it. One of the lawyers said to him in reply teacher when you say this you insult us also.
And he said I apologize for insulting you. No he said woe to you lawyers as well for you weigh men down with burdens hard to bear while you yourselves will not even touch the burdens with one of your fingers. Back in verse 44 the Lord gives this scathing analogy to the religious professionals of his day.
He said you are like concealed tombs and the people who walk over them are unaware of it. Now this takes us back to something that they did in Jerusalem before the Passover. This was sort of a clean up Jerusalem time as they prepared for at least two million additional Jews to flood into the city to celebrate the Passover.
And so what they did was beautify the city and among other things that they did they painted the headstones of graves. Part of the law required that no one come in contact with the dead. Even expanded during the day of Christ to refer to contact with graves. The problem was that people would sometimes especially in the evening not see a decaying headstone or an old wooden decaying headstone or maybe one of dark stone and so they would inadvertently walk across the grave and thus become ceremonially ritualistically unclean and have to then avoid the celebration of the Passover. So with all of the people coming to Jerusalem part of their custom before Passover was to white wash all of the headstones so that they would stand out and they would eliminate as much as possible the accidental defilement of an Israelite. In Matthew 23 the Lord speaks even more specifically in verse 27 he says woe to you scribes and Pharisees hypocrites for you are like white washed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful but inside they are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness so you too outwardly appear righteous to men but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.
Verse 33 you serpents you brood of vipers how will you escape the sentence of hell? The strongest words that Jesus spoke most often in his ministry were toward those who were religious. He says you Pharisees are like white washed tombstones you stand out you draw attention to yourselves you look polished and good and clean but you do not represent vitality you represent decay. People who look at you and follow you and listen to you and rub shoulders with you think that they're following life and after life but they are following death they follow defilement. Ladies and gentlemen the system of religion still today I believe is the greatest most effective most alluring path along the broad road that leads to hell. More people will enter hell through the doorway of religion than any other thing on earth. That's why Satan is so busy counterfeiting the truth in the religions of the world. Religion false religion has and will always be simply in the business of white washing the sinner making the person feel better about themselves whether through the application of oil or water or certain prayers or blessings or whatever merely focusing on the outside and if we can just get people looking right and heading in what seems to be the right direction and using the right words and genuflecting at the right time then certainly we'll get them into heaven.
Jesus said of that religious world in his day and we repeat it for our day it's just the broad road to hell. Just put on a couple of coats of Sunday go to meeting paint and have a few blessings and say a few prayers and sing a song or two. Say nothing of the symptoms of true spiritual life like hunger and thirst for righteousness. Say nothing of true repentance. Say nothing of confessing sin before our Lord. Say nothing of the demands of discipleship and the true reformation of the life that comes out through the lips that is seen in the heart first and evidenced through the desires of life.
Just give me a hymn make me look good and I'll leave white washed and on my way to hell. That is the way of the world's religions. The church today in America is accommodating it like never before. Church growth experts and specialists are in great demand in consulting the church.
I repeatedly throw their invitations in the trash can telling us if they could how to invest in everything from telemarketing strategies to entertainment schedules. How not to offend the unbeliever. How to market the church to the unbeliever. Ladies and gentlemen I submit to you that many a church within mainline denominations have steeples stretching toward heaven masking the fact that their doctrine is leading people to hell. They may have overflowing parking lots and pews but the truth is death and decay and deception are their charter members.
They are involved in religion but on the wrong road. Jesus Christ said to the religionists of his day what we can still say today to both organized religion that is false and individual men and women who are deceived. You might say you have religion.
You might look spiritually alive. You might do the works of religiously minded people but you are in truth, self-satisfied, self-contented, self-deceived and self-confident. Well that's enough of an introduction.
We better get to the text here as I have said all of this to you. I have said it to prepare you for the audience to whom now Paul will turn his thoughts. In his letter to the people living in Rome, Italy he addressed a religious group of people who represent even to this day millions of others who claim to have true religion with all of its ceremony, with all of its ritual, with all of its form. He is going to shock them. He is going to deeply disturb them. He is going to upset them and I am sure that his prayer is that by the grace of Yahweh he will convert them to the way, the truth, the life. I believe that it would have been a good place to start a new chapter about eleven centuries ago. They divided the Bible into chapters and verses. This theme shifts now at verse seventeen and through verse seventeen and on through chapter three and the early part of chapter three Paul will address a new audience. In chapter one you remember he has addressed the immoral man. In chapter two he addresses the moral man and now he will begin talking to the religious man. He will and has already condemned the immoral unbeliever. He has condemned the moral unbeliever and now here the religious unbeliever. He will say all three are guilty before God and worthy of judgment and he begins now to address the epitome of religious faithfulness.
He begins to address the faithful Jew. Remember Paul was a Jew himself. Paul had been a Pharisee that had received as it were the woes that we read from Christ. Paul knew how they thought.
He knew what they rested upon. He knew how they lived and now under the brilliant inspiration of the Holy Spirit he will peel away their defenses and perhaps yours as well. There are six reasons Jews felt eternally safe before God.
The first reason is in the first part of verse 17. He says, but if you bear the name Jew. In other words the faithful Jew felt safe because first of all he had this special name. We know from biblical history that the Hebrew was first referred to as a Jew in the book of 2 Kings where we read a reference to the Jews or Judeans. It's a derivative of Judah, that tribe that literally means one who is praised.
They began to follow that shorter version, that derivative of Judah. They simply referred to themselves as Jews meaning we are ones to be praised. By the time of Christ they turned their national privilege into national pride. The rabbis by the time of Christ had sort of divided the world very clearly into two parties, Jews and everybody else. The rabbis taught statements such as these, God loves Israel alone of all the nations on the earth. God will judge the Gentiles with one standard and the Jews with another.
All Israelites will have a part in the world to come. Abraham sits beside the gates of hell and does not permit any wicked Israelite to go through. Paul will say in effect you cannot skip the judgment of God simply because you bear the name Jew. And I cannot imagine ladies and gentlemen the horrifying moment at the judgment that we read about in Matthew 7 earlier where all those who claim the special name of Jew, all those who claim as he specifically said the name of Jesus, the name Christian, they will stand before him and say we did all of this stuff in your name.
We said the right words and we went to the right places and Jesus will say I never knew you. You claim the name Christian. Well Paul says you claim the name Jew.
That is not enough. There is not safety in the claiming of this name. Secondly the faithful Jew felt safe because of their dedication to the law. Paul went on, but if you bear the name Jew and rely upon the law, the word rely here could be translated to rest upon, to lean back upon, to depend upon. The Jews had great pride in the fact that they had been given the law and had given themselves to the law. And what a wonderful treasure it was for the Jewish nation to have received the law, to be the blessing that God said in Genesis they were to be to the nations of the world by disseminating the truth of the Torah, the truth of the law.
They had taken pride in simply the fact that they possessed the law, not that they were obeying the law. Third the faithful Jew not only felt safe because of his name, his law, but his proud respect of God. You said but if you bear the name Jew and rely upon the law and boast in God. Ladies and gentlemen a faithful Jew would never say anything disrespectful of God. I know people that say they're Christians and they speak disrespectfully of God. I had a fellow a couple of weeks ago refer to the man upstairs.
I asked him what man is that? The Jew would never say anything demeaning or trivial about God. In fact they wouldn't even write his name.
They would only write the consonants and only after putting their pen down, going and washing their hands and coming back and picking up a brand new quill and writing the consonants to the name of God or the names of God and then discarding that pen so that it would never write anything else but these sacred names. They had all of that respect for God. They were his people. He was their God and they were not ashamed of him.
My friend are you? Are you proud to be associated with him? Do you bow your head and thank the Lord for your food at a restaurant or are you embarrassed that someone might see you? Do you acknowledge on Monday what you did on Sunday without hesitation? Are you ashamed to own him as your God? Are you ashamed to speak his name?
No? You think you will get into heaven when we are reading that these Jews who wore their God as a banner of pride are not getting in? What hope do you have? Fourth, the faithful Jew felt eternally safe because of his special knowledge. Paul says you bear the name Jew, you rely upon the law, you boast in God. Now in verse 18 and you know his will. The word for will refers to the revealed will of God through the Scriptures. Israel knew they had a covenant with God. They knew the will of God for them as a nation was to be a blessing to all the world, all the nations of the world. They knew the roots of their heritage. They knew what God had intended for them to become.
They knew all about God's will for them. And maybe you say, oh, but listen, I know God has a plan for my life too. I know his will for me according to the Bible. Ladies and gentlemen, there is a vast difference between knowing his will and doing his will just as there is in possessing the law and doing the law. We are told in the New Testament what the will of God for the believer is and those who claim to know him as Savior. The Apostle Paul wrote in one letter, this is the will of God. What is the will of God, Paul? This is the will of God that you abstain from fornication. That's a broad term that simply means or refers to sexual relations outside the marital bond. The church today calls itself Christian and yet promiscuity within the church is at the same level as that within society.
Fornication, adultery, in many cases divorce has become the justification for nothing more than serial adultery. And yet people say we are confident of heaven. Paul wrote in another epistle to the Ephesians some commands which indicate then these are things that are the will of God. Do not let any impurity or greed even be named among you.
Anybody in here given the greed? He writes there must be no filthiness, no coarse jesting, but rather giving of thanks. Anybody in here disobeying the will of God by not being thankful, by complaining instead? See these are just a few passages that tell us clearly this is the will of God. Now in knowing the will of God just in those brief passages do you feel secure in going to heaven or fearful? Because the more you know about the will of God the more what? The more you realize how you disobey it, right? The more we learn about the holy standard of God for our lives the more unholy we realize we are, right?
That's the nature of the law. That's the nature of understanding the will of God. You see how foolish it is to say well I'm safe because I know the standard of God.
That doesn't produce safety. The Jew says I know the will of God. I have it in the Torah.
All that does is reveal what a law breaker you are. So the Jew who says oh I'm safe because I know the will of God is no more safe than the person who says today I know the will of God because all we learn from it is how we do not keep it. Fifth, the Jew felt safe because of his keen insight. Verse 18 goes on to report you approve the things that are essential.
The word approve, dacamazzo, means to examine or to approve after putting to the test, often to the fire. Jews prided themselves in testing everything, examining the philosophies and world views of history, determining those things that were truly essential for life. They were sharp thinkers. They had spent generations dissecting the Torah, debating the law. They had commentaries on commentaries.
They had teachers upon teachers. They had added regulations upon regulations so as not to violate God's regulations. They had come up with 365 prohibitions in addition to the law so there would be one other thing every day they would not do. They were so convinced that they desired to know and to keep and to fulfill insight into this law but they had missed as Paul will say further in the passage the essential thing. The final thing the faithful Jew had that gave him his misguided false sense of safety was his biblical education. Paul writes in the latter part of verse 18, you are instructed out of the law. The word instructed we could transliterate that Greek word catechized.
You have been catechized out of the law. See the average Jew and the average person in the church today imagines he is safe because he simply knows more about the Bible than the man on the street. He has his copies and he has read it and maybe he has memorized some of it.
He can quote some of it. Well the Jews could say we have received a biblical education in the law. Those who were rabbis of Christ day had most of Isaiah memorized and many of the prophets most of the Torah memorized the first five books of the Old Testament. The Jews could say our parents taught us when we sat down in the house and when we lay down at night and when we walked by the way and when we rose in the morning and we bound them as signs on our hands and as placards on our foreheads. We wrote them on the doorposts of our homes and on our gates, Deuteronomy 6. We immersed ourselves in the truth of the Bible that they had.
How diligent are you? Paul said to them it's not enough. We've got a name. We've got the law. We follow the true God.
We have insight. We have knowledge and we have a biblical education and God set an effect and you happen to be unknown to me. You're simply involved in the externals of religion. You're not spiritually alive. Number one, it is possible for religious exercises to touch the mind and emotion of man without ever changing the heart of man. It is possible secondly for a person to be emotionally moved by religion without ever being spiritually awakened by the Redeemer.
If I could take those two and say the same thing over again just in a shorter sentence it would be this. It's possible to be religious and not redeemed. Christ's religion is a whitewashed tomb hiding decay within. True life comes only through Jesus Christ.
That was Stephen Davey and this is Wisdom for the Heart. Today's message is called The Business of Whitewashing. To learn more about us I invite you to visit wisdomonline.org. Our website is home to Stephen's entire Bible teaching ministry offering hundreds of sermons and daily broadcasts designed to help you grow in your faith. Each day's broadcast is posted right on the home page making it easy to stay connected to our daily Bible teaching.
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