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3. Today's "Moment with Mark" (50) - Jesus on Religion

• Today's "Moment with Mark" (50) - Jesus on Religion

  10 January, 2013

  One day some Pharisees and teachers of religious law arrived from Jerusalem to confront Jesus. (Mark 7:1 NLT)

  
  Now it begins! It was inevitable that, sooner or later, Jesus would clash with the religious establishment. In fact, the seeds for this confrontation were sown back in Mark 3/6 where we read,  "At once the Pharisees went away and met with the supporters of Herod to discuss plans for killing Jesus".

  
  There is a world of difference between religion and true faith....between religion and revelation. Religion consists of the rules and regulations that are man-made and represent our every endeavour to reach out to God on our terms and conditions.

  True faith, on the other hand, is the result of God's initiative in reaching out to us via self-revelation or self-disclosure. Religion is an aberration of true faith, a distortion of what God intended. Jesus was the perfect expression of what God intended for the human race.

  Sadly, the Pharisees had somehow become those who represented religion. Mark gives us a glimpse as to what that looked like as seen in their lifestyle (vs.2-4).Jesus' opening line to these religious leaders was uncompromising, confronting and left no doubt as to where He stood so far as legalistic religion is concerned. From the very outset He drew a line in the sand and said.
   

  "You hypocrites! Isaiah was prophesying about you when he said, 'These people honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far away. Their worship is a farce, for they replace God's commands with their own man-made teachings.'   For you ignore God's specific laws and substitute your own traditions."  (Mark 7:6-8 NLT)
   

  Obviously Jesus had never read "How to Win Friends and Influence People!