Reformation Sermon 2005
Reformation Sunday
Jeremiah 31:31-34
October 30, 2005
The Danger of Being Religious
after J. Brokhoff
Introduction: Two young boys were close friends. The one asked the other to come to his church. Although he declined to go, the friend insisted that he go with him to his church. Finally, the boy said, "I can’t go to your church." "Well, why can’t you?" asked the friend. "Because," he answered, "I belong to a different abomination."
Religion can be an abomination. Have you ever stopped to think that through the ages, God’s people, were victims of religion? The prophets, like Jeremiah who gave us our text, were persecuted by religious people. Jesus was crucified by the religious leaders of His day. John Hus was burned to death by church authorities. The church excommunicated Luther, and sought to end his life.
Because of its human element, religion can deteriorate to where it is a curse to humanity. On this Reformation Sunday, we are reminded that the purpose of the Reformation was to cleanse and reform the church of false teaching and moral corruption. What happened to the condition of religion in Luther’s time also took place in the sixth century B.C., when Jeremiah lived. The religion of Judah was in a deplorable condition. It was so rotten that God told Jeremiah that it should be discarded and abandoned for a new religion, a new covenant. God promised Jeremiah that he would make a new start, give Israel another chance. It would be God’s kind of religion, a true religion that would be a blessing to all people. It would be a religion not based on Law but based on the heart and based on faith. It would be a religion not connected to what people do but what God has done for people in His Son Jesus Christ.
A Personal Religion
God’s kind of religion is a personal religion. Thus, he says in our text: "I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they will be my people." You cannot get more personal than that, can you? The law of God is to be in people. God himself will write it on the tablet of the heart. And there is a personal relationship: "I will be their God and they will be my people."
Perverted religion de-personalizes people. This kind of religion makes people think more highly of things than of people. The church today can be guilty of this. We often put primary emphasis upon buildings, budgets, and programs. People sometimes come in second in our concern. A church is considered a great success, not for the number of people served but for the size of the church and what it does. I recently read a newsletter from a church I once attended. Part of it talked about their outreach ministry, their evangelism program. It went on to say how outreach was important because if they got more people to attend church there would be more people to pay the bills and their would be a greater talent pool to be shared with the congregation, more members for choir, more people for their programs and on and on. There was not one mention that outreach should be about sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ, saving the lost, giving hope to the hopeless. It said nothing about a personal relationship with the living God through faith in Jesus Christ.
Even for us it is tempting to reduce religion to a book of numbers, “how many people came to church? How many people took communion? How much money was taken in? It is tempting to calculate our own success based on numbers. We must ask ourselves, “What is our motivation for wanting new members to join us? Is it for us? Or is it for them? For Jesus, religion was a one-to-one relationship. The one lost sheep was as important as the ninety-nine which stayed in the flock. It is true to say that Jesus died for us all, but it is most important to remember that Jesus died for me as an individual.
True Christianity is a personal religion, because it is based upon and is centered in Jesus Christ. The Word became a person in Jesus. No one can be a Christian until they have a personal and intimate relationship with Jesus Christ. From the beginning, people have become Christians through a personal experience with Jesus - people such as Peter in a fishing boat, Paul on the road to Damascus, Luther in the Black Tower.
In the sixteenth century, the church had become de-personalized. Luther and other Reformers worked and sacrificed to give the church back to the people. In Luther’s day, the church was an autonomous hierarchy which had full control in all matters. At best, the people were to be obedient and faithful servants of the church. The people were deprived of the Bible. It was in the Latin language which most could not read or understand. Actually, the Bible at Luther’s time was on the list of forbidden books. The church said, "We’ll tell you what is in the Bible, and only we can interpret it for you." This caused Luther and other Reformers to translate the Bible into the language of the common man so that every person could read the truth of God for themselves. To this day, the Protestant church is known as the church of the open Bible for the people to read. Yet, the irony of our times is that while the average home in America owns four Bibles, very few people read the Bible, yet claim to know what it says.
In the area of worship and church, the people were, at best, spectators. The people had no part in it. They were told to use their rosaries for personal devotions, while the priests went through the Mass. Luther was convinced that this was not true worship. He claimed that every Christian has the need and the duty to thank and praise God. Accordingly, he translated the Mass into the language of the people and reformed it to enable people to participate in the liturgy. Luther was one of the first Reformers to write hymns, such as "A Mighty Fortress," so that people could praise God by their singing. We have been given a great heritage whereby we can participate in prayer and praise, and worship.
In Luther’s age, the people had little or no part in prayer in terms of direct communication with God through Christ. The church taught that the ordinary person was unworthy to go directly to God in prayer. A person needed intermediaries - priests, saints, martyrs, and the virgin Mary - to intercede for them. Luther brought prayer back to the people by teaching the biblical doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. It simply and rightfully claimed that every Christian has the right and privilege to go directly to God through Christ without the benefit of any intermediary. The gain was made at great cost to the Luther and the Reformers, and yet we take prayer so lightly and casually as to neglect the privilege of prayer.
A Truthful Religion
According to God’s Word in our text, a true religion is a truthful religion. Listen again to our text: "And no longer shall each man teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest."
To know the truth is not an easy thing. Pilate asked Jesus, "What is truth?" Many of us sit in Pilate’s seat. We do not understand the truth of God, and we are subject to partial views of the truth and even embrace what is not the truth. One time, two beggars were approaching a house to ask for food. In the front yard was a huge dog that bared its teeth, growled, and at the same time wagged his tail. The one beggar was afraid to go to the front door. His associate said, "Don’t be afraid. The dog is wagging his tail." "Yes," replied the other, "I see that, but I also see his teeth , and I don’t know which end is telling the truth."
The Reformation was a period when Luther and the Reformers proclaimed the truth of God in opposition to the established church. The people were not hearing the truth. They were taught that a person is saved by accumulating merit by doing good works: buying indulgences, attending Masses, and going on pilgrimages. The Reformers re-discovered the truth of God in the Scriptures: by grace are you saved by faith. A person is justified by faith. The truth was summed up in the motto: "Grace alone, faith alone, Word alone." To this day the Protestant church is based on and lives by that truth.
In our times, we are faced with sects and cults that do not teach the truth of God even though they claim the word, "church." We have talked about them in the past. We also have "churches" that deny the reality of sin, sickness, death, and hell. They deny the incarnation of Jesus Christ, God born as a true man and they go on to deny the resurrection Jesus Christ. Some Christian churches mix the truth with error. While they preach the good news of God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ, they deny that God offers and actually gives us forgiveness not only through His Word but through the waters of baptism and through simple bread and wine, Christ’s true body and blood. This is truth mixed with error. /// You may be asking, "How do we know we have the truth of God? Where can one get the truth?" The truth of God is recorded in the Bible. For this reason, we say that it is the Word of God. In the Scriptures, God reveals himself and speaks to us the word of truth. We accept it at face value, not interpreted by our human reason. A Liberating Religion
God’s kind of religion, the kind we should have, is a liberating religion. God says in our text: "I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more." God, in a true religion, forgives and forgets! Now that is good news for us! It is a liberating religion - free from sin, free from guilt, free from hell, free from condemnation, free to live and love and to be loved by God!
False religion enslaves people. In the sixteenth century, the people in the Roman Church were enslaved by false teachings and the hierarchy of the priesthood. They were bound to work out their own salvation by obeying the laws of the church and by earning their way to God’s acceptance by good works. Contrast this with the freedom we have in the Christian religion. We are free from having to make things right with God, for Christ has already done this for us. We are free from having to fulfill the demands of the law, for Christ fulfilled all the laws for us. We are free from guilt because of God’s gracious forgiveness. There is nothing we have to do or give to gain God’s favor. There are no conditions to be met before God accepts us. God’s forgiveness is not based on "if" we are good, "if" we are obedient, "if" we are faithful. No, God’s favor and forgiveness is not based on "if" but it is “because." Because God loves us, because He wants to have a relationship with us, because Christ died for us, because God wills us to be saved, we are made children of God. We are free to be ourselves, to enjoy life, to live in God’s presence now and forever.
There is a danger in being religious. The people were religious in the time of Jeremiah and they were religious in the time of Martin Luther. Many people are very religious today. Unfortunetly many people have the wrong religion. True religion is not focused on what we do to please God, rather it is focused on what God has done for us in Jesus Christ. When we focus on Jesus Christ, crucified and risen form the dead, who now sits at the right hand of God, we know the truth, and the truth sets us free and it reforms our lives. Amen.
