From the Oct. 24 sermon, "Jesus and Religion," out of Luke 11:33-54: Jesus plus anything, even religion, ruins everything. Jesus is harsh with the religious people because they are wolves who close their eyes to the light, make rules for God, want praise for themselves, and defend their idols. Religious rules are all about the external—not the internal—and raise human preferences to the level of God’s laws. Religion doesn’t help people; it binds and enslaves them. Religious people try to be holier than Jesus, but we’re saved by Jesus’ works, not our own.

And here’s the problem: Religious people make rules for God. If you’re at Mars Hill, we love Jesus, we believe the Bible. Everything the Bible says, we believe. We also believe you shouldn’t add to it. That’s what Proverbs 30:5–6 says. "Do not add to his word or he’ll rebuke you and prove you to be a liar." Right? It’s not like God wants you to add to his laws, but that’s what religious people do. And one of the rules they had made was this: You have to wash your hands before dinner. Now the Bible never says, "Thou musteth washeth thine hands." It never says that. But the religious guys got together and said, "Well, you need to wash your hands before dinner and that’s what the Lord says, thus saith the Lord. It’s equal to the Bible. We will enforce it as such. Jesus, welcome to our house for dinner." They all sit down at dinner. All of the religious people are looking. And Jesus is going to break one of the rules. Awesome. Let’s say, for example, there’s a big bowl of mashed potatoes. And there’s the Lord Jesus Christ, God in human flesh, and with his dirty, unclean hand, he gives that look to all the Pharisees and slowly moves his hand toward the bowl of taters and puts his hand in the bowl of taters and takes the taters to his divine mouth and consumes them to the glory of God and the joy of all people. Oh, and the Lord Jesus would have looked at them and said, "This is why I made taters. I knew I was coming and I wanted to eat me some taters. Mmm. Love me some taters."

And so, for those of you who are here, some of you truly, deeply, thoroughly need to repent of your religion. Enough with the religion. Enough with the rule making. Enough with the self-righteousness. Enough with the boasting. Enough with the bragging. Enough with the judging. Repent of your religion and come to Jesus. And some of you, you’re sinners. You know it. Your thing isn’t working. Your life isn’t working. You know you’re not pleasing to God. You know it’s not as it should be. But between you and Jesus has been a lot of religious people. And they’ve blocked the way and they’ve made it confusing. And, "Do this and don’t do that. And stop this and start that." And you’re confused and disoriented. Or maybe you want to get to Jesus, but your fear is, "If I got to be religious, is there a way to have Jesus without religion?" I have good news for you! You can’t have Jesus and religion. It’s just Jesus. And today, he removes for you the religious people and just opens himself to you. He says, "Come to me, all who are weary and burdened and heavy laden. Those of you who have been carrying that yoke of religion, I’ll forgive your sin and give rest to your soul." … Jesus takes our sin, dies on the cross in our place, for our sins, as our substitute, rises from death, conquering Satan, sin, and death, really, truly redeeming us from religion, and he gives us his righteousness. We’re perfect in Christ. We’re forgiven in Christ. We’re redeemed in Christ. We’re justified in Christ. We’re adopted in Christ. It’s all of Jesus’ work, none of our own. We call this grace. It’s a gift. You receive it. And some of you say, "What, you don’t care about holiness? You don’t care about discipline?" Sure we do! We want to be holy, not so that God will love us, but because in Christ he does. Not so that God would accept us, but because in Christ he does. Not to earn God’s merit, favor, love, approval, and blessing, but because in Christ he’s already given us all things. So we want to be holy, not so that God will be pleased with us, but because God is pleased with us in Christ, and if Jesus loves us, we love him, he puts the Holy Spirit in us, he gives a new heart, new desires, new nature. Now we want to obey him. Not out of fear, out of joy. Not so that God will embrace us, but because we already feel his affection. The motivation is completely different than religion. And the result is joy.