Loopholes

Chad Zudweg

Christian • Sermon • Submitted 4 years ago

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Christians try to find loopholes to get out of doing what the Bible says. Disciples read the Word and do what it says.

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Loopholes

Christian

We have been in a series called, “Christian”.

Last week we had Dan Seaborn so if you have been following the study in your small group we didn’t preach on that but we are back on track this week with what would be Part 7 in the study.

In case you are visiting or haven’t been here, this series has been about how the word “Christian” isn’t really defined in the Bible.

We tend to define “Christian” any way we want it.

However, the Bible does define the word DISCIPLE.

We’ve been talking about the difference between a Disciple and a Christian.

Today the title of the message is called, “Loopholes”.

We as people love loopholes.

We find loopholes anyway we can.

And it starts at a young age.

It’s like if I were to tell my kids that they can’t watch a “show”.

But then I go downstairs a few minutes later and they’re watching a movie.

I would be upset and tell them that I told them they can’t watch a show.

And then they look at me and say, “we’re not watching a show, we’re watching a movie.”

We love to find those loopholes.

Those technicalities.

And the thing is “Christians” LOVE loopholes.

All religious people love loopholes.

Every religion has some kind of book that gives them direction on how to live life.

And every religion has theologians that find loopholes and help people get around DOING what the book actually says to do.

This is what makes religion so great.

You have a book that you can read and have something to talk about with people but when you find something you don’t like or don’t want to do you find a loophole to get out of doing it.

What Christians do really well is take one verse and base a theology around it to justify what they are doing.

For example let’s talk about confession!

If you grew up Catholic you know all about confession.

Confession for the Catholic church is basically, hey I can bring my big bucket of sin and just dump it on this priest and then I’m good and can go back and fill my sin bucket up again.

See Christians in churches like ours do the same thing, we just skip the priest and go straight to God.

Because we look at verses like this.

1 John 1:9 “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”

So wait, I can sin all day long and then just go in my room, get on my knees and confess those sins to God and He’ll just forgive me?

Sign me up!

Because the issue is we want the benefits that we think come from being a Christian. (eternal life)

But we don’t want to do the things that the Bible tells us to do.

And that’s why Loophole Christians love theology.

Because you can do whatever you want in the name of theology.

“Well my theology is…”

And you can make a theology over anything you want.

If you want to justify sinning you can find a verse to back up that theology.

If you want to justify treating people like garbage, you can find a verse to back it up.

If you want to know if you are a Loophole question here’s a great way to find out.

Loophole Christians ask questions like, “How close can I get to sin, without actually sinning?”

“How bad can I be, how mean can I be and still be ok with God?”

Basically, “How close to the edge can I get and still be a Christian?”

Disciples ask a different set of questions.

And Jesus came across this all the time.

You see Jesus had to deal with the Pharisees.

The Pharisees were obsessed with the law.

They were so obsessed and wanted to make sure nobody broke the law that they made laws to keep you from breaking the law.

We do this all the time as parents

Remember when you were dating?

And you would go downstairs to watch a movie and turn the lights off.

Your parents would come down and say, “hey, we don’t turn the lights off!”

What do you mean? You yell at me all the time to turn the lights off!

They’re making a rule to keep you from doing the thing they really don’t want you to do.

So when Jesus shows up they have hundreds of these rules.

And we’re going to look at a time when Jesus confronts the Pharisees about this.

Matthew 15:1-2 “Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked, 2 “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don’t wash their hands before they eat!”

The tradition of the elders was basically a group of people who came after Moses and made all these laws to try to protect them from actually breaking the real laws from Moses.

So the Pharisees attack Jesus about his disciple not following these teachings of the elders, not Moses.

And what happened over time was Priest would do a ceremonial washing of their hands to represent being pure.

At some point these elders decided that everyone should be doing this.

Clearly Jesus was not teaching his disciples this and it upset the Pharisees so they try to call him out.

Which they learn once again that you don’t mess with Jesus.

Jesus doesn’t answer the question but instead calls THEM out for what they are doing.

Matthew 15:3-6 “Jesus replied, “And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition?

You’re accusing me of breaking a tradition that you made up but you break the ACTUAL COMMAND of God.

“For God said, ‘Honor your father and mother’ and ‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.’ 5 But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is ‘devoted to God,’ 6 they are not to ‘honor their father or mother’ with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition.”

So what’s happening here is the Jewish people know about the law to honor your father and mother.

What’s hard is Moses didn’t give them a deadline of when you turn 18 you can stop honoring your parents.

So that meant when your parents got older you needed to take care of them and maybe even help pay their bills.

So they found a loophole.

There’s another law that talks about dedicating everything they have to God.

So what they did when their parents were old and needed help paying the rent or anything, they would say, “Oh sorry dad but I’ve dedicated everything to God and if I give it to you I would be taking away from God.”

So they manufactured a rule that enabled them to NOT help their parents and still feel like they are not breaking the law of God.

That’s why Jesus said, “Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition.”

You’ve made a rule or a law that actually nullifies the word of God.

Yet you’re more concerned with that tradition then what God actually wanted you to do.

You’ve found a loophole where you can twist the word of God so it can serve YOUR purpose.

Matthew 15:7 “You hypocrites!

You know how we talked about how Jesus was full of Grace and Truth?

Here’s some of that truth coming out.

Because Jesus doesn’t like it when we use his Father’s words to avoid doing his Father’s will!

It upsets Jesus when we take his Father’s words and twist it for our benefit and we end up not doing His will.

Unfortunately, Christians do this all the time.

We find other “Christians” who agree with us because they want to be able to do certain things and you feel better about yourself when you surround yourself with other people who think like you.

That’s why you have some churches who are super conservative and political and they care more about politics than they do what the Bible says.

And then you have really liberal churches who you wonder if they have the same Bible as we do.

Think about how we have different denominations.

Because different people in history found verses that they really liked and made a whole theology around it and ignored other parts of scripture.

And people twist scripture in incredible ways.

Andy Stanley tells the story of a man who brought his daughter in so they could meet with Andy Stanley.

This father was fuming mad because his daughter was in a relationship with a man of a different race.

And at one point the man pulls his Bible out.

To which Andy Stanley was thinking, “wow, he’s bringing out scripture, I can’t wait to see where this goes.”

The man opens up the Old Testament and shows him where Moses married a Moabite woman.

And then he says, “And God didn’t let him into the Promise Land!”

Andy Stanley talks about how yes he married a Moabite woman and yes he was not allowed into the Promised Land, but the two had nothing to do with each other.

But this is what loophole Christians do.

Find some random scripture and some story to fit what I want to be true.

So Jesus knows that this is what many of the Jewish people are doing.

They’re way more concerned with a command rather than the Commander.

So He knows He needs to take it back to the basics.

This is why He tells them our theme verse for this series.

John 13:34-35 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

He’s saying let’s just forget about all these laws that you’re trying to follow.

Let’s just start with a command that’s going to get you off on the right foot.

LOVE ONE ANOTHER

This is how they will know you’re my disciples.

Not by how you follow the rules and laws.

But by how you love one another.

And they started to do this.

All of a sudden they lived life by looking through the lens of LOVE about everything.

So they were able to gather and meet with each other, even if they didn’t agree on everything.

Because before they started yelling at each other and telling each other how terrible and wrong they are, they said, “wait, we need to bring it back to love.”

So about 20 - 25 years later the church is spreading throughout the world.

And there’s a church in Rome where Christians are getting persecuted and fed to lions.

And Paul brings it back to this point again.

Romans 13:8 “Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law.”

He’s saying make sure you pay all your debts, EXCEPT the one debt that you will NEVER be able to finish paying off.

Your debt to love one another.

You OWE it to everyone to love them.

Romans 13:9 “The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,” and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Meaning, yeah I know you’re stuck on all these individual commands but let me simplify if for you.

If you love your neighbor as yourself, there’s a good chance you won’t break those commands.

Why?

Romans 13:10 “Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.”

Think about that

A lot of the commands God gives us are things that will harm someone or even ourselves.

And Paul is saying, Love doesn’t hurt people.

He’s saying, don’t you dare twist the words of Jesus and use one of His commands to justify you NOT LOVING SOMEONE!

You Hypocrites!

Disciples don’t look for workarounds and loopholes

Christians do

Religious people do

Disciples don’t read the Bible looking for ways to not follow what it says.

Disciples don’t constantly look for scripture that they can throw in everyone's face and tell them how terrible they are.

I loved Andy Stanley’s quote when he said, “Christians use the Bible like a mace. Disciples use the Bible like a mirror.”

Instead of using the Bible to attack people we should be looking at the Bible and seeing how WE need to change.

You see the question that disciples should wake up every morning and ask themselves is very simple.

“WHAT DOES LOVE REQUIRE OF ME?”

This should be the lens that every DISCIPLE lives their life.

Not just what does the Bible say.

Because we’ve shown we can twist what the Bible says.

But every situation with your kids, your spouse, your boss.

You need to ask yourself, what does LOVE require of me?

We’ve got some crazy stuff going on in our country right now with this election.

And it’s disturbed me greatly to see the responses from people on both sides.

We get so caught up in what we think is right politically that we think we’re allowed to not show love to people.

And we start our sentences with things like, “as a Christian…”

And then we talk about how disgusted we are with people and how evil they are if they don’t agree with us.

That’s not asking the question, “What does love require of me?”

And I get it.

I have my own political views and I want to scream and shout and say certain things to people.

But I have to remember that they will know I’m a disciple of Christ by how I love them.

Church let’s not be loophole Christians.

Let’s not look for ways to try to avoid what God calls us to do.

Let’s read His Word and DO what it says.

It’s like I’ve said before.

Don’t read what you believe, believe what you read.

And let’s keep love at the forefront of everything we do.

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