How are Religion and the Message of Jesus Two Radically Different Things? Here's How

Dum da dum dum dum dum – Dum da dum dum dum dum -Dum da dum dum dum dum!....It’s the Polar Express.    It goes something like that.   That tune is always bouncing around my head and not because I love the movie, the Polar Express.   That song bounces around my head because I have a son that loves the Polar Express.   He cannot get enough of it.

I don’t blame him.  Hasn’t everyone had something they can’t get enough of.  Maybe as a kid, you loved a certain book or cartoon character.  You couldn’t get enough.  Or today, you have an author, a performer, maybe a song you never get tired of.  And every time I see this video on You Tube, it still gets me.  It gets me not because it’s clever, though it is.  It gets me because it’s true.  And yet still so many, including so many religious people don’t get it.  What is the truth it’s trying to tell you?   Well, listen and tell me what you think.

What you just heard in that video, Jesus tells you here, and in a way even more powerful and disturbing.   How do you get the difference between Jesus and religion?  In these words, Jesus shows the way.  Let’s listen and hear what Jesus has to say.

Matthew 7:13-29

How do you know the difference between getting Jesus’ message, and being religious?  Is there a difference?  Yes. But what is it?  It’s the difference between blackmail and belief.   What do I mean?

Before you get there, do you see how seriously Jesus takes this difference between what he is saying, and what many mean by religion.   These words end Jesus’ most famous talk, the Sermon on the Mount.  And all through that ending, heck, all through the sermon, Jesus hammers home the same point.   You can be good, even religious, and miss everything.   

That’s what Jesus means by two roads.   Jesus is saying everyone is traveling somewhere.   Everyone finds some way to give their life meaning or purpose.   But every one of those ways, all move on the same broad path, a path that leads you nowhere you need to be.   But the way that does, Jesus says, that leads to life doesn’t look like it takes you anywhere at all. 

But then Jesus goes further.  Jesus says. This broad way that leads nowhere, even includes religion.  Religion may look like a different path.  It’s not.  It’s the same path.  It’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing.   That’s the problem.  It looks so much like the real deal it’s hard to tell the two apart.  

To show that, Jesus tells you the same thing three different ways.  First, he tells you about two trees.  One produces fruit that nourishes and one that poisons.  But on the outside, the trees look the same.  Then Jesus takes it further.   He says.  You will have people that call on my name, even passionately do that.  But they still don’t get it.    Then he goes further.  Jesus says.  These people might even deliver powerful messages, do great acts in my name, but that doesn’t mean they’ve got it.  The whole time they didn’t know me at all.  

So, what’s the difference?   If these folks look the same, have the same passion for God, even do the same great acts for God, how do you know the difference between the real and the fake?

The difference lies in one word that Jesus uses, one word that has driven translators nuts, because it makes no sense.   Jesus says, “Beware of false prophets, who come to you garbed as sheep, but who are ravenous wolves within.”   Do you see that word “ravenous?”   Everywhere else that word gets used in the Bible, it doesn’t mean ravenous.  It means what it typically meant to anyone who knew the word.  It means extortioner or blackmailer.  But you see the translator’s problem.   “Beware of false prophets, who come to you garbed as sheep, but who are blackmailing wolves within.”   Does that make any sense?   What is Jesus telling you?

Jesus is getting here to the heart of the difference.   On the outside, a religious person is doing great things, even wonderful things, but inside, they’re doing it for the wrong reasons.  They’re doing it to blackmail God, to extort something from God.   They’re thinking.  If I passionately pray, then God will hear me.   If I do these wonderful deeds for God, God will like me.   I’ll have God’s approval, God’s love.  Then I’ll know.  I’ll know.  I am valued.  I am approved.  I am accepted.  

Now, you don’t need to be religious to do the same thing.  You can be doing it other ways.  If this person loves me, then I’m ok.  If I have success or other people’s approval or a great family or whatever you name it, then I’ll know.  I am good.  I am accepted.  My life means something. 

But Jesus presents a radically different way.   Jesus tells you.  You can do nothing to get what you yearn from for God.  Nothing you do will get it.  You can’t extort God. But here’s the point.  You don’t need to.  What you yearn to have, God has already given.   You have God’s love.  You have God’s approval.  You have God’s acceptance.   And none of that has anything to do with anything you’ve done or not done.  And this can be hard to accept.

It’s a crazy thing with my kid.  He doesn’t have to do anything to make my day.  His simple existence gives me happiness.   But I know.  He gets fearful, insecure. If I get upset with him, I gotta remind him it never changes my love for him, my delight in him.   And all human-beings carry that same fearfulness, that same insecurity.   A voice speaks within and says.  “I know who you are.  I know your screw-ups, your twisted thoughts, your pettiness.  I know you’re not good.”  And two ways exist to quiet that voice.  You can scramble to prove it wrong, to show that you are better than the voice says you are.   And that way leads you nowhere.   One day, a storm will hit and will knock those defenses away, and it will take you with it.

Or you can admit.  “Yep, that may all be true. I am a hopeless moral failure.   I am so not good.   But I don’t need to be.”  The creator, the force behind all reality loves me, delights in me.  In Jesus this God gave up everything for me so that I might know God’s love and delight forever.   And I did nothing to get any of that.  And when you know that love and acceptance, that alone leads you to life.  And when the storms hit, you don’t collapse.  Why?  You know.  Your value, your acceptance, your worth isn’t grounded in you.  It’s grounded in what can never be shaken, a God who loves you more than life itself.  That is the path this table proclaims. It is the only path that will lead you to life.  So, believe it.  Trust in it.    And discover just how good, this good news called the gospel really is.