Text: Matthew 15:10-20
Focus: faith
Function: the difference between religion and faith.
10Then he called the crowd to him and said to them, “Listen and understand: 11it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles.” 12Then the disciples approached and said to him, “Do you know that the Pharisees took offense when they heard what you said?” 13He answered, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted. 14Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind. And if one blind person guides another, both will fall into a pit.” 15But Peter said to him, “Explain this parable to us.” 16Then he said, “Are you also still without understanding? 17Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach and goes out into the sewer? 18But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles. 19For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. 20These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile.”
I just gotta say, I love that line from verse 17 in the King James version where it says, “Into the drought.”
Over the last couple of years, with all of the political division and what that means to associate with Christianity you might have heard the phrase something like: “I don’t follow the Christian religion, I follow Christ.” or “I believe in spirituality instead of religion.” Or probably the most prominent one, “Christianity isn’t a religion, it is a relationship.”
I can preach a sermon unpacking those statements, and we will consider the thought behind them in the sermon, but today I want to look at what I call, along the same lines as the phrases, the difference between religion and faith.
I hope at the end we see that our eternal reward is bound up in loving others instead of merely doing ritual with hearts that are still bitter and unloving.
We use the word religion to translate the word in the Greek NT that is probably best translated as piety.
The Puritans, who fled England for the New World were Pietists. And that was made obvious by their dress and all the rules that they had when they practiced their religion.
The Early Brethren were also influenced by the Pietists when they adopted the simple dress. Although it was more than that, the idea behind the simple dress was a symbolic action from the command to “come out from among them and be separate.” 2 Corinthians 6:17. It is called the uniform of the Christian and among the plain circles it is also a description of who is truly in and who is truly out of the kingdom.
And that is where religion takes over from faith.
Just as Jesus said how we eat doesnt make us any more or any less a part of the kingdom, so also does what we wear.
Remember last week’s sermon and the scripture that says that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved?” Romans 10:13.
We learned that salvation is trust, or rest, in Jesus and the work that Jesus did for us on the cross.
Salvation is by faith in Jesus and that kind of faith is best expressed in the way that we love the other.
If we want to practice religion, then we learn more and more to love and forgive, even our enemies. That is how we live our our Christian faith, in love.
And the problem with making up rules and a code or standard of dress so that we can use to easily identify who is in and who is out is that it leads us to pride and it can also have the affect of keeping us from loving others.
The Pharisees had these rules and were now excluding Jesus’ disciples who were great men of faith.
So why did Jesus say these things in this passage? We read in the verses right before that the Religious leaders were criticizing Jesus’ discipes because of the way they ate their food.
The discipes didn’t perform the ceremonial ritual of hand washing when they ate.
If you read the OT law, you read how that was important. There was a pool for washing that the Priests used right before their official duties. And out of those commands came a rule that everyone must perform this certain ritual before they ate in order to properly follow the Jewish religion.
Jesus came to set us free from the law and its commands and that freedom was already happening with the disciples. Since they were already in a right relationship with God through their trust in Jesus, they were clean and didn’t need to ceremonially wash. They were free from the bondage of the law and apparently celebrated it to the point that the religious people were offended.
We might relate it to the way we pray before a meal. Jesus gave thanks for the bread and brake it right before he fed the crowds and right before the last supper and communion.
So we give thanks for the meal and part of our religion. It is a tradition and is important to us.
But that doesn’t mean that people who do not pray before a meal are not believers, some of them apply the command of Jesus to pray in secret instead of public to include praying before meals. Matthew 6:6
When we pray before a meal in public, it is a public witness and our tip should reflect the generosity of living by faith that Jesus demands.
That doesn’t mean don’t pray before a meal, it simply means if you do, be generous, they are counting on it to survive.
I don’t want to harp on that subject here. But I bring it up as a practical way to help us see that we can merely practice religion to help us feel good about ourselves, or we can truly love our neighbor and fulfill the law of Christ as we live our lives.
Jesus wants the latter, where we live by faith. This “living by love” practice instead of ritual takes faith in many ways.
For example.
It takes faith to be generous. We then have to trust that if we give to the poor or the less fortunate, God will indeed, as God promised us, pay us back because we lent the money to God that we gave to the poor. Proverbs 19:17
It takes faith to forgive people who have harmed us. It takes faith to rest in the provision of God’s mercy and judgment on our behalf. We let God judge, the problem is, God loves the one we are angry with. You see, it takes faith to practice following Jesus.
It takes faith to not get caught up in the political rhetoric and divisiveness and rest in the fact that God is indeed in control, even of elections.
Religion can be mere ritual if it isn’t coupled with a life lived by faith.
The Pharisees were relying on external acts of worship in order to please God. Those acts of worship can be big and glorious, even thrilling, but God is asking for people who will trust the Christ in the way they live.
What we are doing here, depending on each other for community, encouragement and support works for me. I feel and sense the Holy Spirit whenever we gather.
My God is the God of whose mercy triumphs over his judgment. So, I am generous with grace and I see the tent of God’s people as being big enough to eventually include everyone. When people ask me what I believe, I tell them, I believe we should love one another because everyone who abides on Love abides in God. 1 John 4:16
And when we abide in love, we are practicing true religion.
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