Do You Hate Religion?

Do you hate Well, this is a term, a phrase we hear all the time, it seems like, in our modern day society. People will say, I hate religion. Or they'll say, well, I'm spiritual, but I'm not religious. And so, they paint with a very broad brush the entire field of religion. As if everything about religion is bad. Is this what the Bible teaches? Or does the Bible teach that there is a type of religion that even God disdains, but there is also a type of religion, a pure and undefiled religion, that God appreciates and loves? Because I believe as we go through the Bible, we're going to find both types of religion. And so we need to be very careful with the idea that we hate religion when we just, in fact, despise a certain type of hypocritical religion. that some people seem to practice. Imagine that you, you love ice cream cones, you love cake, you love pie, you just love all sorts of things that, that are made with milk. But one day you get a glass of sour milk. Are you going to start hating milk in every form from that point forward? Or are you just going to hate milk that has spoiled? Well a reasonable person, an intelligent person isn't going to give up that which is good just because something has corrupted what was good. You get rid of the corruption. You don't take part in the corruption. And so if you have sour milk, you just don't use it to make your ice cream or your, or your chocolate shake or whatever it is you want to make out of milk. You just avoid the things that you know are already bad, but then you use the things that you know are good, and then it's okay to enjoy it. The Bible says this about religion in Colossians chapter 2 and verse 23. The Apostle Paul is talking about different things that people do, physical things that people do just for appearance sake. Not because it's the right thing to do necessarily, but they just want to be seen by men and thought of as being religious. And so he said, these indeed, Colossians 2. 23, these indeed have an appearance of wisdom in promoting self made religion. And asceticism. Asceticism is this harsh treatment of the body denying yourself certain things that you really don't need to deny yourself of. You're just, you're just living with an aesthetic asceticism point of view where I'm going to give this up and somehow that's going to make me righteous. When in fact, there's a lot of things that are very fine for you to partake in. These indeed have an appearance of wisdom in promoting self made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh. Sometimes you'll run into people who hate religion, but they like sin. And they're very vocal about their hatred of religion. They've seen somebody who is claiming to be religious, but they're a hypocrite. Nobody loves a hypocrite, do they? And so they equate that hypocrite's religion with all forms of religion. And then, in a very hypocritical fashion, they get involved with sin, as if it's okay for them to do that, because it's no worse than what the other person did. Well, that's not the way to live. Bye bye. I knew a very fine lady one time who is just really an exemplary Christian in most aspects, but one time she was talking about being mean to somebody and she had a comment. She said, it's no worse than what they did. But if what they did is sin and what you did is no worse than sin, doesn't that make you a sinner? Doesn't that put you in a position of being endangered as far as your eternal soul? We don't need to use as our standard the bad things in life and make, and make a comparison of ourselves to the bad things. You're better than the devil, I'm sure. But really the one you need to be comparing yourself to, the one I need to be comparing myself to, is Christ. And so the religion that we need to be comparing our religion to is the religion of Jesus, not the religion of those who would make up their own rules. In Matthew chapter 15, Jesus said this, and he's quoting from a passage in Isaiah that was written some 700 years earlier. It was about a group of people who were trying to impress people with their own rules, trying to appear to be godly, but in fact, they were doing very ungodly things. Matthew 15 verse 8, Jesus said, These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain. Their teachings are but rules taught by men. So often the thing, the very thing that we hate about religion is we see people teaching things that just aren't so. As a matter of fact, we can put our finger on it in the Bible that what they're teaching is the exact opposite of what the Bible teaches. And many people at that point, because they want to do what they want to do, or they're intellectually lazy, they will then say, I hate religion because. Because there's, it's just filled with hypocrisy. People saying things that the Bible does not say. But again, you don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, do you? You throw the bathwater out, you throw the dirty water away, and you reject the rules that are just taught by men, made up by men and taught by men. But you keep with the rules of God. Sometimes our modern day worship services are little more than rock concerts, and sometimes they're just as lascivious and suggestive as some of our rock concerts can be. And people will see that, and they'll see the worldly nature of it, and, and that'll turn a lot of people off, who understand that that's not what religion was meant to be. But there are others who are attracted by that type of entertainment. And so there are some people who are lured and enticed by false religion, where there are others who are so absolutely appalled by false religion that they'll even put off correct religion. Here is worship in the way that it's not supposed to be done, so I just won't worship. But again, that, that makes no sense. There is a religion that God talks about, that's very clearly defined within the Bible, that God accepts and Commands. In James chapter 1 and verse 27, religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this, to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world. Do you see the type of religion that God expects that he looks at as pure and undefiled? It's to take care of those who are in unfortunate circumstances. Those who might not be able to take care of themselves because of, of things that are, that are beyond their control. And pure and undefiled religion goes beyond just helping others out. It also involves keeping yourself undefiled, unstained by the world. That means you don't get involved in sin. And when you do, you repent of that sin. This is what God defines as pure and undefiled religion, and it's something that we must practice. If we're going to be pleasing to him. And so if we have somehow got the idea that all religion is bad, we really do need to reassess our conclusion on that because not all religion is bad. The way God distinguishes good religion from bad is this bad religion is manmade religion. Rules taught by men, made up by men. But pure and undefiled religion is taking care of other people, keeping yourself from being polluted by this world and the sin of this world. So in fact, there is a good religion that we must not only practice, but we need to love that. And of course, the false religions, we are to despise that. God despises that. But we also need to be very careful in not hating the people who are practicing this false religion. It's that old idea of hating the sin but not hating the sinner. You're hoping they'll repent. You and I have both been in situations where we needed God's forgiveness. We had sinned and we needed to repent. And aren't we glad that God gave us that opportunity to do so. Don't we need to be is filled with mercy. as we look to others and, and hope and encourage them to repent. They may not even realize that they're involved in a false religion. Well, we can encourage them to study from the word and find out whether they're right or not. If they'll study with us, we can try and convince them with the reasons that we have from the Bible. But, but don't just hate the sinner. You do hate the sin, but we're to love the sinner, even to the point of loving our enemy. We want them to change so that they'll be our, they will be our enemy no more, and even more important, so that they'll be an enemy of the cross no more. Well, maybe one of the ways to understand what religion is, is this type of a definition. Religion, true religion. is going to be the application and the practice of our faith. Faith, we're told in Romans 10, 17, comes by hearing the message and the message is heard through the words of Christ. So our faith is educated. It's not something we just can't help but believe, or we can't help it if we don't believe it. It's something that we've investigated. It's something that has been an intelligent approach to trying to find out what God wants us to do. Faith comes from hearing the words of Christ. And so when we talk about religion, we are very much talking about applying that faith, these words of Christ. We're talking about practicing these words of Christ. We're talking about exercising a pure and undefiled religion that does take care of widows and orphans and others that have found themselves in difficult situations. We're practicing pure and undefiled religion by keeping ourselves unspotted from the world. We're doing our best not to practice sin, and when we find ourselves in sin, we stop doing it. This is the type of religion that God views as pure and undefiled, and we have to have that in our lives. There, there's something else about this. There's a lot of people, when they look at, at religion, everything is just black and white for them, or cut and dried. It's either or. There's a lot of people who, because there are some people who are smug in their obedience, have decided that that means that they're practicing a saved by works religion. And maybe some people are, but that does not preclude the need for obedience. It just precludes the need for being around people who think they're earning their own salvation. We need the grace of God in order to be saved. We need the shed blood of Christ. He, He died on the cross for our sins in order to be saved. but there is still a part for us to do and it's obedience. Are we earning our salvation? The answer is no, but you can earn hell if you're not careful. We need to do our part to exercise pure and undefiled religion, not because somehow that makes us good enough to go to heaven, but because this is the standard that God has set forth for religion. So, One of the things that we need to do when we talk about religion is to make sure we understand the difference between man made religion and religion that is defined by God. And the only way we can do that is if we go to the word, because if you're relying on mom and dad, if you're relying on aunt Gladys, if you're relying on your preacher or your priest or your pastor, or this religious guru over here, or maybe I should say spiritual guru over here, because he probably hates religion too, but if you're relying on men. To tell you what true religion is, you might find yourself getting involved with a man made religion, might you not? So you need to do some investigation for yourself. We've talked about this a lot recently. We still are part of the church, that body of the reconciled, the saved. Once we have been obedient to God's plan of salvation, to the gospel of Christ, God adds us to the church. And so we do need to meet together and be together and encourage one another. But we need to make sure that we are using the Bible as our standard, not the rules that these men that we gather together with have come up with. And again, the only way you can tell the difference is if you know what the Word of God says. So, You're going to have to do some work. You're going to have to study. This is an opportunity, by the way. This opportunity to study is a great gift. I think it was Thomas Edison that said most people don't recognize opportunity because it shows up at the door wearing overalls and it looks like work. Opportunity is. Maybe it was Ford who said that, I can't remember the person who said it, but what a true statement. When people see opportunity too often, it looks too hard to people, and so they just don't even try. And so they come up with ideas like, I hate religion, but I love Jesus. And, and again, we have to be very careful. The two are not mutually exclusive. True religion, pure and undefiled religion, is The doctrine of Christ. And so we need to know what Christ has said. And then there's, there's one last thing. One of the hardest things for us to deal with in life is hypocrites. Isn't it? We see somebody who preaches one thing, but, but they do another. We need to be very careful not to just reject what they're preaching because they're a hypocrite and they're not doing, they're not practicing what they preach. We need to make sure that we're getting our information on how we're to live before God, how we're to be spiritual before God from his word. And even if some hypocrite is preaching the right thing but doing the wrong thing, you don't throw out the right teaching because it's not his in the first place, it's God's. You hang on to that, but you avoid the hypocrite, don't you? If you can get him to repent, by all means do. But again, don't reject something just because somebody is not practicing it perfectly. We all struggle. with God's religion. We all struggle with pure and undefiled religion. We all struggle with hypocrisy and we all struggle sometimes with man made religion. We need to be gracious enough and forgiving enough with others that we can allow them to make mistakes and still keep the door open for them to come back on God's terms. Do you hate religion? If you do, you hate something that God loves. If you hate man made religion, well, that's something that God hates too. But if you hate all religion, again, you're just throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Get rid of the good, cling to that which is good. And if you can do that, if you can truly have a heart that reaches out to people who are in difficult circumstances to where you'll actually help them, and if you'll realize that there is a right and wrong, a standard as defined by God, and do your best to live according to that standard, not because you think somehow you're earning your salvation, but because you know this is the terms of God's grace. And because you love God and Christ, why would you want to do anything else other than be obedient to them? If you can do that, then you'll be practicing pure and undefiled religion. And someday we'll get to be with God and Christ and all the rest of those who have done their best to practice that pure and undefiled religion. We cannot hate religion. We do have to avoid those things that are wrong about it and try and correct it when we can. But I really hope that you can see that there is a religion that God requires us to live by that will enhance our life, not harm it. And so don't hate religion. Do your best to find out what pure and undefiled religion is and then live it. and you'll have a pretty good life. I appreciate your listening today. It's the message for today. I hope it gives you something to think about, but until next time, I pray that God will bless you richly as you do your best to seek to serve him, to find out what he says about religion and then to make that religion your own. God bless you.