Bad Religion

Good Day, Harvest!
Here are the notes from last week’s message as well as some additional application questions. I don’t know what is currently the matter with the website- you can’t get to the announcements page from the homepage from my computer. However if you type in http://www.harvestsb.org/announcements it’ll take you right there!

Have a great week!
By

Bad Religion
The Gospel of Mark: Mark 7:1-23
The Purpose of the Pharisees: To oppose Jesus even though they themselves were the leaders in their community of faith.

Exposition:
The Practice of Corban: Individuals were allowed to dedicate their wealth or property to the synagogue but retain all rights over the use of said wealth or property. This allowed the religious establishment the ability to increase the offering given to it. At the same time, the individual could claim that whatever resources they owned were not available to lend aid to parents in need.

What makes us unclean: The overwhelming view in the first century was that ritual cleanliness- the practice of obeying certain regulations to maintain a “clean” status before God- was godliness. However Jesus says that it is not the outward adherence to rituals which make a person clean or unclean: it is the state of our heart and how much we love God.

Central Warning: Beware Hypocrisy
We think of hypocrisy as saying one thing and doing another. The hypocrisy of the Pharisees was more sophisticated than that: their hypocrisy was having an outward show of religiousity with no real love for God.

Two Hallmarks of Hypocrisy
1. Selective Obedience: When we choose what to obey and what not to obey from God’s Word, we are not acknowledging Him as Lord or loving Him. Instead we are simply serving ourselves.
2. Shifting Blame: Hypocrisy happens when we focus on external sources as the great evil in our lives- other people, the political climate, the sinful state of the world, the state of the church leadership- rather than seeing the sin in our own hearts as the central issue.

1. Weekly Application Exercises
Take some time to evaluate the centrality of love for God in your life. How often does it occupy your thoughts and concerns in contrast to the mechanics of both your whole life and your spiritual life?
2. How has your heart changed over the course of your Christian life? Can you trace a growing love for Christ as well as a decreased presence of the sins listed in our passage this morning?

More Application Questions
1. How fastidious are you concerning purging your life of the things that offend God? Are there sins which you consider “little” or “not worth paying attention to?” Financial sins? Sins of thought? Gossipping or other sins of the tongue? Realize that all sin is a wounding of God’s heart, confess and make a concrete plan to invite God’s power into  your life to overcome even these sins.
2. In  our sermon this last Sunday it mentioned that honoring one’s father and mother was in large part taking care of them financially in their old age. Have you a plan to honor your parents in this way if somehow their resources were stretched? Would you be willing?
3. What radical commandments in Scripture do you read and come away with a feeling that they are too difficult or impractical to carry out (much like the commands concerning church discipline that we talked about in Matthew 18)? How can you take a step of faith in carrying out those difficult commands?