Inconvenient Biblical Teaching - I Got Turned Off By Religion
-Jesus of Nazareth, 1st Century
Matthew 6:6 The Message Paraphrase
[13th message of the Why I Don't Believe Series]
The messages in this series discuss how some people who reject Christianity do so because they either cannot accept an inconvenient biblical teaching, or they have an irreconcilable stance against the teachings of Jesus the Christ, or they have found something they think is wrong with Christianity.
Religion
Many people are so over God mainly because of the things they have experienced with religion.
Most of these stem from the fact that we forget that the people who make up the church are all flawed, like everyone else. We touched on this in the previous message of this series.
Many of the issues we have against religion are valid. There is no denying that many people have wrecked the church and this has resulted in many people giving up on it.
If you are one of them, I am sure you have your own personal tragic story to tell against religion or at least you have heard a story someone have told you against it.
Organized Religion
What we forget or maybe not realize is that Jesus didn't come to set up a religion. He didn't build a church building nor asked people for money. He didn't say to live like a monk or not get married or gave us hundreds of rules.
He only has two commands, love God and love people.
And essentially He only had three ordinances (or things we ought to do), baptism, communion and meeting together.
Freedom
Jesus came to set us free from our bondage. With Jesus there is freedom. But as in anything, it was not a license to do just anything and escape the consequences of our actions. There is common sense and the law of cause and effect in play.
If someone did us wrong in a church setting, it is between that person and God. Our God will avenge us. What we need to worry about is our relationship with God. People will do us wrong anywhere else.
The enemy of God after knowing what buttons to push to get to us, will continually keep on pushing those buttons until they stop working. Its goal is to stop you from having a personal relationship with God.
To those who do have a connection with God, the enemy aims to make that relationship into a rigid state of religion, where it is about them and how good they are, and about a legalistic and rigid set of rules and putting on a show and make it appear like they can comply with their made up rules.
These are not of God. The pandemic opened up opportunities for the church to come back to how the church first came to be -- hiding behind closed doors, unseen enemies, meeting in homes, becoming less rigid, going back to the essentials, caring for others, having quiet times with God, having time to read Scriptures, and bringing the gospel to all the world.
This world is coming to an end. Jesus will be back, it is time to be rich in the important things in life and rid ourselves of the unimportant. There is beauty and truth in the teachings of Jesus. Let us get to know Him and His words. Let us look beyond the faults of people, just as Jesus did. Let us come back to the heart of His teachings and let us not do religion. Let us press the reset button and start at the beginning.
Roadmap
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