Consequences of Bad Religion

Click below for the sermon manuscript of the second sermon in the series "Going to Jerusalem"

On this journey We will be walking with Jesus through those crucial hours surrounding his crucifixion and resurrection. As we go on this spiritual journey, I want us to carefully observe the individuals on the journey with Jesus. When we look carefully, we will see ourselves.

John 11:47-48 NIV Then the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the Sanhedrin. “What are we accomplishing?” they asked. “Here is this man performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our temple and our nation.”

John 11:53 NIV So from that day on they plotted to take his life.

Christ died during Passover week in Jerusalem. It was the high holy week of the year for the Jewish people. Jerusalem was crowded with religious pilgrims. It does not take much reading of the gospel narratives to realize that religious people crucified Jesus. The voices that shouted, “Crucify him!” had frequently prayed in the temple they were religious people.

The cross is an example of evil that can be accomplished by bad religion.

Scripture Reading: 

John 11:45‭-‬53 NIV Therefore many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary, and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him. But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. Then the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the Sanhedrin. “What are we accomplishing?” they asked. “Here is this man performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our temple and our nation.” Then one of them, named Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, spoke up, “You know nothing at all! You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.” He did not say this on his own, but as high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the Jewish nation, and not only for that nation but also for the scattered children of God, to bring them together and make them one. So from that day on they plotted to take his life.

Text: 

John 11:47‭-‬48‭, NIV Then the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the Sanhedrin. “What are we accomplishing?” they asked. “Here is this man performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our temple and our nation.” 

‬53 So from that day on they plotted to take his life.

Introduction 

Christ died during Passover week in Jerusalem, which was the high holy week of the year for the Jewish people.  It was a celebration of their freedom from Egypt through the miraculous hand of God.  Jerusalem was crowded with religious pilgrims. 

Now, it does not take much reading of the gospel narratives to realize that Jesus was crucified by religious people. The voices that shouted, “Crucify him!” had frequently prayed in the temple. They were religious people. 

Mark 15:9‭-‬10 NIV “Do you want me to release to you the king of the Jews?” asked Pilate, knowing it was out of self-interest that the chief priests had handed Jesus over to him.

The cross is an example of evil that can be accomplished by bad religion. 

I. Religion and the cross. 

A. The New Testament book of Mark records an impressive list of religious leaders who participated in devising Christ’s death. 

Mark 15:1 NIV Very early in the morning, the chief priests, with the elders, the teachers of the law and the whole Sanhedrin, made their plans. So they bound Jesus, led him away and handed him over to Pilate.

The Sanhedrin was a council of seventy men who made all the decisions for the Jews. The tiebreaker was the high priest.

The Sadducees who were part of the Sanhedrin, were the priestly party whose work and interest focused on the temple. They loved a smooth, formal worship service; they had a flair for pomp and ritual. The Pharisees, also a part of the Sanhedrin, were the legalists whose pride in keeping the fine points of the law separated them from “sinners.” The scribes interpreted and preserved the law. The chief priests officiated at worship and spoke the words of forgiveness. 

It was not the down-and-out crowd who crucified Jesus. The up and in crowd did it—the law-abiding, hardworking, religious people. 

B. You see there was this Jerusalem-Rome connection.

The ease with which these religious leaders became a party to evil was partly the result of an unhealthy connection between them and the state. The Romans controlled the Sanhedrin; the high priest was a Roman appointee who acted at the bidding of the Roman officials. The high priest served as a sort of liaison between Roman authority and the Jewish population. The high priests, received their appointment from Rome from the time of Herod the Great, and Rome looked to high priests to keep the Jewish population in line.  

Heres their dilemma: 

John 11:47‭-‬48 NIV Then the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the Sanhedrin. “What are we accomplishing?” they asked. “Here is this man performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our temple and our nation.”

You can hear their panic: "What are we doing? Things are getting out of hand. This man is performing all these signs." Then, they said, "If we let this go on everybody is going to believe in Jesus, everyone is going to accept him as the Messiah." 

They saw that as a tragedy. In their view, the Messiah would lead a political uprising and that would result in the wrath of Rome coming down upon them: "The Romans will come and destroy both our temple and our nation."

Remember now these were the religious leaders.  God was no longer acknowledged as the supreme authority, it was Rome. 

Unfortunately this alliance between them and Rome didn't pay off. The power who they cooperated with turned on them in AD 70 and destroyed Jerusalem and the temple, just as Jesus prophesied.

Mark 13:1‭-‬2 NIV As Jesus was leaving the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher! What massive stones! What magnificent buildings!” “Do you see all these great buildings?” replied Jesus. “Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.”

Only evil can result from an unhealthy connection between church and state. A free church in a free state is the ideal. Then the church can exercise its role which is to petition the state to use its God-given authority responsibly. 

The writers of the US Constitution apparently knew this when the crafted the Constitution and included in the First Amendment “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;”

In the instance we are talking about today the high priest, Caiaphas, out of self-interest, said it was better for Jesus to die for the nation than for the entire nation to perish

John 11:50 NIV You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.”

Caiaphas said what he did for selfish reasons.  He was concerned about his political as well as his religious position.

Jesus did in fact die for the nation but for an entirely different reason. Only through Christ’s death can a nation have the reproach of sin replaced by the righteousness of God. 

Proverbs 14:34 NIV Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin condemns any people.

II. The religious folk the scribes, Pharisees and Sadducees, had lost the concern for people.   

They were concerned only with themselves and their positions.

The thing that precipitated this emergency meeting and conspiracy of the Sanhedrin was Jesus’ resurrection of Lazarus.

Let’s take a look;

John 11:41‭-‬47 NIV So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.” When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face. Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.” Therefore many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary, and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him. But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. Then the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the Sanhedrin. “What are we accomplishing?” they asked. “Here is this man performing many signs.

The Pharisees, who actually did believe in the resurrection of the dead, in this instance, decided that resurrection of the dead was not as important as retaining their religious leadership. For them their positions and the stones and mortar of the temple took priority over sin and mortality. 

That was very sad because God had called the Jews to be “a light to the nations”.

Isaiah 49:6 NIV he says: “It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.”

Israel was to be a light to the nations because Jesus, as the ultimate and everlasting King of Israel, provided salvation for all the nations.

However they had replaced God’s will for all of the nations of the world with concern solely for their own nation, Israel and their status in Israel. 

John 11:48 NIV If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our temple and our nation.”

Religion is an evil force when it becomes an institutional caretaker and loses concern for people. There was a missionary by the name of Billie Pate who said, “The church must translate its heart from the empty cavity of brick and mortar to the throbbing marketplace of human need. Too long it has lifted the cup of cold water to its own lips.” 

B. So what's the most important rules, or right?

Mark 3:1‭-‬6 NIV Another time Jesus went into the synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Some of them were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal him on the Sabbath. Jesus said to the man with the shriveled hand, “Stand up in front of everyone.” Then Jesus asked them, “Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?” But they remained silent. He looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored. Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus.

The Herodians, by the way, were a political party that wanted to restore a Herod to the throne in Judea. They were actually political foes of the Pharisees.  Yet because the concern was   keeping the fine points of the law the rule became, more important than they were willing to join forces with political enemies. 

The Lord is in the business of putting things right; religious rules are of secondary importance to Him. Bad religion, on the other hand, is concerned more with the status quo, and tradition.  The “old-time religion” that some people yearn for may be only an emotional, actionless, and archaic relationship to God that is totally foreign to the abundant life Jesus gives. 

What does 

John 10:10 NIV say The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.

III. Jesus is greater than religion. 

Matthew 12:6‭-‬8 NIV I tell you that something greater than the temple is here. If you had known what these words mean, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the innocent. For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”

Heaven won't have a temple and I don’t think it will have church buildings either.

Revelation 21:22 NIV I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.

Religion had become a burden in Jesus’ day. The religion of the Pharisees brought despair and futility. 

Matthew 23:13‭ NIV Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to. 

‬15‭ “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are. 

16 ‬‭ “Woe to you, blind guides! You say, ‘If anyone swears by the temple, it means nothing; but anyone who swears by the gold of the temple is bound by that oath.’ 

23‭ “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. 

25 ‬‭ “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. 

27 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. 

29 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You build tombs for the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous.

Christ offered joy, hope, life. He offered himself instead of a religion. He asks us to accept Him rather than a creed or dead religion. Caiaphas and his religious conspirators thought they had put an end to Jesus. Instead, his death let life loose for all the world. 

There is a book called “Twenty Centuries of Great Preaching” and in it is a sermon called “the sermon of the gallows” written by a pastor named Martin Niemöller who was imprisoned in a Nazi Germany concentration camp. This is part of that sermon:

"There was in front of my cell window in the Dachau concentration camp a gallows, and I often had to pray for those who were hanged on it, poor souls. 

This gallows put a question to me: What will happen when one day they put you to this test and lay the rope around your neck? Will you then with your last breath cry out, “You criminals, you think you are right in executing me as a criminal, but there is a living God in heaven, and he will show you!”? 

And then the second question followed: What do you think would have happened if Jesus had died that way, cursing his enemies and murderers? You know the answer: Then you would be rid of him; for there then would be no gospel, no good tidings of great joy, no salvation, no hope! Not for anyone, not for you! But—thank God—he, Jesus, died otherwise, differently, not cursing his murderers, but praying on their behalf: “Father, forgive them; they know not what they do!” 

They could not get rid of him, for he held on and kept them in his forgiving love; and his Father heard his prayer and was well pleased with his son. This death marks his final victory:

John 16:33 NIV“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

How did He overcome the world? By overcoming hatred with love, by overcoming evil with good! 

Conclusion 

Think about what the enemy most have thought when he looked at the cross. Religious people killed Christ! Right lost out to rigid rules; self-interest prevailed over service to others; religion took the place of a relationship with God. Evil won.  

But that's not what happened at the cross.  At the cross Jesus triumphed over evil, and He lives. To all who receive him comes faith that changes the world, faith that overcomes evil with good.  Religion didn’t win, Jesus won! 

Because he won, you can win. His victory over sin and death was for you but in order to participate in that victory you must acknowledge Him and His sacrifice for you. Let me tell you what to do. 

Romans 10:8‭-‬10‭, ‬13 NIV But what does it say? “The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart,” that is, the message concerning faith that we proclaim: If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved. for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

Prayer

We pray that we continue to put our faith and trust in You because You know all things. You know what the hearts of Your people need, and we know You will help us through whatever this life brings. 

Jesus, King of Kings, You say that the righteous man will live by faith. Mold us in Your image and fill our hearts with faith in You. Guide our actions so that we can live by faith and have life in You, abundantly and eternally. Cleanse our thoughts of impurities. Keep our eyes fixed on You and You alone. Help us be steadfast in our trust in You and Your Scriptures so that we can live right in Your holy sight. Amen.