The “Gospel” of Ritualism

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Well, today is our last installment in this series that I’ve been doing on beliefs that sound superficially similar to what the Bible teaches, but they’re not quite Christianity. And as our society grows more and more confused about the things of God and how to find peace with Him, we’ve been looking at some of the things that people believe, some of the things that are fairly commonly believed, as a matter of fact, in our world, in our country. One of the things we’ve looked at is the idea that God is so loving that we don’t need His forgiveness because He would never judge us in the first place.

In the Bible, we’ve looked at how the Bible says that’s completely false. We’ve looked at the idea that a relationship with God will just automatically make somebody healthy or prosperous, and we’ve seen that that’s not what the Bible teaches either. As a matter of fact, Jesus promised us that we would have trouble as a result of following him.

We’ve looked at the idea that as long as somebody said a prayer or walked an aisle, they’ve taken out that fire insurance policy, that they can sin as much as they want. There doesn’t have to be any evidence of a supernatural change. There doesn’t have to be any evidence of the Holy Spirit at work.

There doesn’t have to be any evidence of us being born again. But as long as we’ve taken out that fire insurance policy, nothing else we do matters. and the Bible concludes that that’s false as well.

We saw last week that the Bible’s pretty clear that if we’re to be saved, we have to be born again. That doesn’t mean that we clean up our lives. That doesn’t mean that we earn our salvation somehow by being good, but it means that God will begin to change us, and that is necessary evidence of salvation.

And if that change, if there’s no evidence of that change there, we need to go back and check our fire insurance. And we’ve looked at the view that God will love us if we just try hard enough. God will accept us if we just work hard enough to be good, that somehow or another we can earn our salvation.

We’ve looked at all of those views over the last month, and today we’re going to look at one more, and it’s pretty similar in some ways to the last one I mentioned, the idea that if we just try hard enough, if we’re just good enough, if we just do the right things, that God will somehow love us. But instead of teaching that, just like the one we’ve already looked at, instead of teaching that God will love us and God will accept us if we work hard to do the right thing and be good enough, the view that we’re going to look at today deals with rituals, and it emphasizes doing a few religious things. But it’s not about trying hard enough to be good in your everyday life, and if I could just be perfect in everything I do, God will love me.

It says, you know what, if I just do a few religious rituals, then God will love me and God will accept me. That that’s how we keep ourselves right with God. And I’ve called this the false gospel of ritualism.

For obvious reasons, it deals with rituals. And this false gospel of ritualism is the belief that participating in enough of the right kind of religious activities will make us acceptable to God. Let me say that again.

It’s the idea, it’s the belief that participating in enough of the right kind of religious activities will somehow make us acceptable to God. And there’s all kinds of religious rituals that fit into this category, this heading of ritualism. All sorts of things that people put their faith in.

Some people put their faith in the fact that they’ve been baptized. And say, well, I was baptized, so that’s all I need to do. I’ve talked to people that have come forward for baptism.

They’ve said, I want to be baptized. I said, well, why do you want to be baptized? Well, because I want to go to heaven.

That’s not how it works. And that gives the opportunity to sit down and explain the gospel to somebody. But some people are trusting in their baptism.

They think, if I just get baptized, then I’m in good with God. Some people think confession to a priest, that this ritual of going through confession to a priest, it doesn’t matter what else you do, but if you confess it to a priest, If you go through that religious ritual, you’re covered. There’s nothing in my Bible that indicates that that’s the case.

The idea that we pray multiple times a day. And in some religions, if you pray multiple times a day, facing in the right direction and you say it in the right language, there’s all these rituals. I could go through a whole list this morning, but there are as many religious rituals as there are ritual lists.

And I could even say, you know, I have my Sunday morning ritual. I have my Sunday morning ritual. I wake up sometime between 7 and 7. 30. I try to remember who I am and what day it is.

I’m not at my freshest first when I wake up, first thing. Once I figure out who I am, what day it is, what year it is, all that sort of thing, I get up and I go start getting ready. I get dressed.

The last thing I do is I pack my briefcase to come to church. I fix my tea. I head out the door.

I go through a drive-thru to get a sausage biscuit, and then I come to church. And then I go through all the stuff I have to do here at church. And I try to keep that in a fairly standard order so I don’t forget anything.

And I could say I’ve got all these Sunday morning religious rituals because I’m getting up and I’m going to church and I’m being religious. And surely that makes me better than the guy down the street who just slept in and then got up and had a beer and watched the ball game because I went through that religious ritual on Sunday morning. The facts are me going through all those religious rituals to come here on Sunday morning and do all the things I do here.

Don’t cut any ice with God. They make no difference with God as far as my eternal salvation, as far as my destiny. There’s nothing about what I do, all my little Sunday religious rituals, there’s nothing about that that makes me acceptable to God.

Many people, as we discussed at the beginning of this series, many people feel the need to contribute something to their salvation. I read you that statistic from Lifeway that said 74% of the evangelical believers that they surveyed said they felt they had to contribute something to their salvation. Evangelicals.

Those numbers are shocking to me. But if even half, if it’s even off by half, let’s say somewhere in the neighborhood of 35 to 40% think that that’s still way too high. And if that’s what evangelicals believe, people who are supposed to be characterized by a belief and understanding of the gospel, then the numbers outside of evangelical churches are much, much higher on the percentage of people who think, I have to contribute something to my salvation.

I have to do something. I have to earn something. I have to work for it.

Many people believe that they need to contribute something to their salvation, and ritualism feeds off of that need. See, we feel like I need to contribute something. Maybe it’s pride.

Maybe it’s we don’t trust God. Maybe it’s we don’t understand the gospel. But we feel this need.

We feel this need to contribute something to our salvation. We feel the need to do something ourselves, to work for it, to have it depend on us. And ritualism stands up and says, hey, I can help you do that.

If you’ll just do these things, if you’ll just check these boxes, then you’re fine. Ritualism feeds on that need. And this is nothing new, this idea of ritualism.

I’m saved because I’ve been baptized. I’m good with God because I went and participated in the Lord’s Supper. I went to church today.

I gave money, whatever the religious ritual is. The idea that that would save us is nothing new. The Apostle Paul was dealing with this in the first century, and as he dealt with it, he flatly rejected it, just as Jesus’ teachings flatly rejected it.

But this morning, we’re going to look at what the Apostle Paul wrote in Romans chapter 2. If you haven’t already turned there with me, I’d invite you to do so right now. Romans chapter 2, we’re going to look at verses 17 through 29 this morning.

Romans chapter 2, verses 17 through 29. We’re going to start by looking at the first four verses of this, 17 through 20. It says, Behold, thou art called a Jew, and restest in the law, and make us thy boast of God, and knowest his will, and approveest the things that are more excellent, being instructed out of the law, and art confident that thou thyself art a guide of the blind, a light of them which are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes, which hast the form of knowledge and of the truth in the law.

So in verse 17, Paul points out that he’s writing to people who were convinced that they were at peace with God because of their religious background, because they performed all the religious rituals that the Old Testament required. And somehow they had missed the message of Christ. Now some of these people that he’s talking about are Jews. Some are Christians from a Jewish background, at least professing Christians from a Jewish background.

And somehow they’ve missed the point of the gospel. And they’re saying, in their minds, they’re believing, we’re okay with God. We’re at peace with God because we’ve performed all these rituals that the Old Testament requires.

And the Gentiles, he’s going to talk about the Gentiles a little bit here in this passage. He’s already addressed them in Genesis chapter, I’m sorry, not Genesis, Romans chapter 1. And I want to point this out to you because I’ve had people tell me in the past, well, the New Testament is just so anti-Semitic.

It just points out where the Jews are wrong all the time. Go back to Romans chapter 1. Paul is pretty hard on the Gentiles as well, okay?

So it’s not saying that the Jews are somehow worse than everybody else. The Gentiles had their own problems being right with God, but now Paul, as a Jew, has turned to his own people, and he’s talking about the rituals. And by the way, this is not just a Jewish issue because a lot of Baptists are wrapped up in the gospel of ritualism.

It’s easy to do if we’re not careful because it feeds on our human nature, our need to feel like we contributed something to our salvation. So these people were putting their trust in religious rituals. They happened to be Jews, but again, the Gentiles had their own problem.

Lots of Baptists in the southern United States have their own problem with this as well. But we can learn from what he wrote to the Jews around him. These people kept the law outwardly, and they boasted, because of it, they boasted about their special relationship with God.

They boasted that they were special to God. God loved them more than everybody else. They were acceptable to God.

And their reason why was to go back to all those Old Testament rituals, all the things that they had to do. The feasts, the sacrifices, the festivals, the washings, all of it. Verse 18 tells us that because of the instruction they’d had in the law, and I’ve wondered myself whether when Paul’s saying this he’s being sarcastic or not.

I can’t really tell. I think sometimes he is a little sarcastic in his writing. That’s why I like him.

But he says, in verse 18, he’s talking about because of the instruction, because of the teaching that they’d grown up having in the law, that they knew God’s will. Of all people, he says, you ought to know God’s will. You know God’s will even if you don’t do it.

See, we’re going to see later on in the passage, they had problems with doing God’s law, but they knew it. They knew it. And because of the instruction they had in the law, they were able to deal with all these complex legal questions, and they were able to discern right from wrong according to the law.

They were able to split hairs over the law, and they were able to make all these decisions. But we see in verses 19 and 20 that being educated in the law and being outward, being morally superior in an outward way, they held themselves out to be these great examples that we’re going to see they really weren’t. Because they knew the law.

Because they did some of what the law required. They were educated in the law. Outwardly, they looked really good and kept these rituals.

They said, we are the examples. He says in verses 19 and 20, you’re confident that you’re a guide of the blind. You’re confident that you’re a light in the darkness.

You see yourself as an instructor of the foolish. You’re a teacher of babes, the ones who are immature in the faith. And he says you have a form of knowledge and the truth and the law.

He says you know a little bit, and because of that you’re confident that you’re the example to follow. They had a light to shine. They had something to teach.

They thought if everybody would just follow my example and try to be more like me, the world would be a better place. Have you ever felt that way? No?

Some of you are shaking your heads. I know that’s not true. I think that all the time in traffic.

If everybody would just drive like me, the world would be a better place. I’m the example. Have you ever thought if everybody would just vote like me, the world would be a better place?

If everybody just agreed with my opinions and my preferences, the world would be a better place. Okay, we all think that way sometimes whether we want to admit it or not. That’s what they felt on a moral level.

If everybody would just be as good as me, the world would be a better place. But what their example teaches us is that ritualism does not make us righteous. It makes us self-righteous.

There’s a difference. Ritualism does not make us righteous. It makes us self-righteous.

The difference between righteousness and self-righteousness is righteousness means that we’re walking in the commands of God. We are living up to God’s standards. Self-righteousness means we’re pretending to live up to God’s standards.

We’re living up to our own standards and judging other people according to those. As we look at the next few verses, we’re going to see that they had rituals, but they didn’t have righteousness. Let’s look at verses 21 through 24.

It says, Thou therefore which teachest another, teachest, it’s one of those tongue-tied days, let’s try that again. Thou therefore which teachest another, teachest thou not thyself? Thou that preachest a man should not steal, dost thou steal?

Thou that sayest a man should not commit adultery, dost thou commit adultery? Thou that abhorest idols, dost thou commit sacrilege? Thou that makest thy boast of the law, through breaking the law dishonorest thou God?

For the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you as it is written. So we see, okay, he talked earlier about them understanding the law. Now we see they understood it, but they didn’t do it.

Because he points out in these verses, they were definitely not living up to their own teachings. And they had serious problems practicing what they preached. Now, there’s an extent to which nobody perfectly lives up to what they preach.

If we had to live something perfectly before we could tell you this is what God says, nobody would ever preach the word of God because I can’t live up to God’s standards and neither can you. But we’re supposed to at least try. We’re at least supposed to be striving in that direction.

And these people were teaching God’s law and holding others to it while they themselves were totally ignoring what God’s law said and they didn’t care. They weren’t at all bothered by it. You know, when I talk to you about having faith and trusting God in the middle of the storm, and then later that week something happens in my life and I start panicking.

I feel bad about that. And I stop and think, wait a minute, I’ve been preaching about faith and here I’m not even living it. And God gets hold of me about that and reigns me back in.

I’m the first to tell you I don’t perfectly live up to everything I preach. But I’m trying. I’m trying.

With God’s help, I’m trying. They weren’t even trying. They weren’t even trying.

Paul asks them, when they were so worried about teaching the law to others, I think he was being sarcastic here. He said, you were so worried about teaching others, why didn’t you bother teaching yourself? Ouch.

You want the knife back? I mean, that’s a pretty cutting comment. You were so worried about teaching others, why didn’t you teach yourself?

And then, because I know that the instinct, the human nature is to say there, wait a minute, you can’t say I’m not. . .

Paul gives them examples before they can even ask him. To quiet their protests of innocence, he gives them examples. He says they were stealing.

These really religious, these really ritualistic guys, they were stealing. They were so driven by greed that they found, just one example, they found ways to swindle little old ladies out of their houses. That’s not me making that up.

That’s not Paul’s opinion. Jesus said that. In Matthew chapter 23, he was writing to the same type of people, the same group of people.

Jesus said, Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for ye devour widows’ houses. They were swindling little old ladies out of everything they had in the world. That’s not stealing.

That’s not egregious stealing. I can’t imagine what is. And this wasn’t Wall Street bankers.

These were the super religious crowd. Sure, I can swindle little old ladies out of their houses during the week, but as long as I’m keeping up my rituals, I’m a good person. No, it doesn’t work that way.

Adultery. He points out adultery. Some of these people were committing adultery themselves, not just by lusting in their hearts, which Jesus pointed out is bad enough.

But some of them were actually going out and committing adultery in a physical way. And let me tell you, I don’t know this from experience, but I was going to say, I can tell you it’s harder to do it physically on purpose. I don’t know that from experience.

I know that from not having gone out and committed adultery. You just get up every morning and don’t go out and have an affair. and you’ve taken care of the not going out and having an affair part.

It’s pretty easy. So it’s actually harder for them to go out and commit adultery that way, and yet some of them were doing that. Some of them were making the effort, I guess is what I’m trying to say.

Some of them were making the effort to go out and commit adultery. And some commentators have speculated that’s what the whole situation was about when the Pharisees and scribes brought Jesus the woman that they’d caught in adultery, and instead of answering them, he began to draw in the dirt, which has become my son’s favorite Bible story. And Bible study, what do you want to study?

Let’s study the story where Jesus drew in the dirt. Okay, my son relates to Jesus now because my son likes to play in the dirt too. Some commentators have said that’s what that was about.

When he said that he who is without sin cast the first stone, he’s not just referring to sin in a general way, but that’s sin. Now, that’s not what every commentator says, but some of them draw that parallel back that there were Pharisees, there were religious people. And we’ve seen some of it in recent years.

We’ve seen some of it in recent months with religious leaders getting up and doing all the right things and saying all the right things on Sunday and yet they’re doing that very thing during the week. It says here that the Gentiles were blaspheming the name of God because of the way the religious crowd was acting and that’s exactly what happens in our day. Every time a Christian leader gets too big for his britches and starts thinking he can get away with anything because he has no accountability and starts living a double life and he’s inevitably found out the world looks at all of us and looks at our gospel and looks at our God and says, see, none of it’s real. He gives the example of idolatry.

He says they were polluting the world. They were so concerned about idols and yet they were polluting the worship of God in almost every conceivable way. They were offering sacrifices improperly.

They were holding back their offerings to God. They were taking things from the temple to use themselves. And Paul points out the hypocrisy of it.

And he said that they were giving the Gentiles a reason to blaspheme God. That even the Gentiles that they looked at, and these people are pagans, they’re heathens, they’re just sinful, they’re nasty. even the Gentiles were looking at these religious leaders and saying, what is wrong with these people?

And again, we see that same thing today. When somebody is not even trying to live up to what they preach, and they get caught, and the lost world sees it, says, what is wrong with these people? Even the lost world knows that they’re not supposed to be doing what they’re doing.

So why, if they were living these kinds of lives, why did these people think that they were so righteous? Why did they think they were so righteous when even their outward behavior so rarely lived up to what they were preaching. I’ve talked about the Pharisees before, you know, that their hearts were a mess, but as long as they looked good outwardly, it was fine as far as they were concerned.

Some of these people weren’t even trying outwardly. So why did they possibly think that they were righteous before God? And it’s because they were circumcised, among other things.

But they’d gone through this ritual of circumcision and said, so I’m part of God’s chosen people. They were putting their faith in a religious ritual. We see this in verse 25, 26, and 27. He says, For circumcision verily profiteth, if thou keep the law.

But if thou be a breaker of the law, thy circumcision is made uncircumcision. Therefore, if the uncircumcision, therefore, if the uncircumcision, verse 26, keep the righteousness of the law, shall not his uncircumcision be counted for circumcision? And shall not uncircumcision, which is by nature, if it fulfill the law, judge thee, who by the letter and circumcision does transgress the law.

So they were putting their faith in this religious ritual. But here’s the thing, here’s the point of it. In verse 25, they were putting their faith in this circumcision, and this circumcision, the whole point of it was to bring them into God’s national covenant with Israel. That the nation of Israel was in a covenant with God.

Circumcision was never meant to be the binding seal that saved everybody from their sins no matter what else they did. It was a sign of being part of the national covenant with God. The individual was still responsible for the way they followed God.

And in many cases we see in the Old Testament the individual was still punished for violating the law of God, circumcision or not. And so he says here in verse 25 that this circumcision, this ritual that brought them into the national covenant with Israel would have been great if it wasn’t for the problem of sin. He says there’s this problem of sin and circumcision does nothing about it.

He says it verily profiteth. It would have been advantageous for them. It would have been a good thing.

It would have been helpful for them to be part of God’s covenant. But with the problem of sin, when they’d broken God’s law, with the problem of sin, that circumcision did nothing. They had broken the law.

They had broken the law. They had sinned and no ritual would ever change the fact that they had sinned. That ritual was not a time machine that could take you back in time before you sinned and erase it.

With their sin problem, he says here in verse 25, with their sin problem, that circumcision might as well have been uncircumcision. He says, and this would have been very hard for them to hear, you might as well be a Gentile. He’s messing with their whole sense of identity because they were all wrapped up in the idea that these rituals were going to bring them peace with God.

And in verse 26, he tells us that if a Gentile who’s uncircumcised was without sin, he hadn’t gone through the rituals, but if somehow he could be sinless, wouldn’t he be better off than somebody who was circumcised but was full of sin? I mean, he asked the question, which do you think really is going to get further with God? Somebody with no sin or somebody with sin but all the right rituals.

And he goes a step further in verse 27 and points out that somebody, he says, couldn’t a Gentile like that even stand in judgment over you? Wouldn’t they be able to look down on you? Yeah, you’ve got your rituals, you’ve got your circumcision, but you’ve got a heart full of sin.

And of course, these are rhetorical questions. The answer is yes. That was unthinkable, unthinkable for them, because they believed that they were at peace with God, they were part of this covenant, all their rituals were going to keep them secure, and the idea that one of these filthy pagans from outside of the covenant would be in a better position with God was unthinkable for them.

but it’s sort of the thing that Paul needed to say to wake them up to get them to realize where they really stood with God there is no religious ritual there is no religious ritual that we can perform that will erase our sin and bring us peace with God and now most of us you might be thinking I don’t care about circumcision most of us don’t look at it in the same way most people in the world today don’t look at it in the same way and say oh circumcision or whatever is gonna is gonna make us closer to God. But we do have religious rituals of our own, as I mentioned earlier. A lot of Baptists have rituals.

A lot of people in churches this morning, Baptists or not, have rituals that they’re trusting in. Maybe you’re trusting in the fact that you go to church. It’s a religious ritual. Maybe you’re trusting in the fact that you go to church.

I go to church, so God will love me. God will accept me. Maybe you’re trusting in baptism, as I mentioned before.

I’ve been baptized, so I’m good I’m covered maybe you’re trusting in the fact that you know here in a few minutes we’re going to we’re going to partake of the Lord’s Supper maybe you’re trusting in that I’ve taken communion I’m good I’m good for a while maybe you got married in a church maybe you’re trusting the fact that you’re going to be buried at a not at a church but a church funeral and you need that and if I’ve done the the baptism and the marrying and the burying and I’ve I’ve lived a Christian life I’ve been part of the Christian culture and surely I’ll be acceptable to God. A ritual is anything that we participate in and give meaning to. And hear me on this, rituals aren’t necessarily wrong.

Rituals aren’t necessarily sinful. I’m in church every Sunday and that’s not just because I’m the pastor. I’ve been in church every Sunday of my life as far as I know other than being sick or being out of town.

I don’t just do it out of habit but I can’t deny that it is part of my weekly ritual. There’s nothing wrong with going to church. I would encourage it. Having rituals is not necessarily wrong.

And some rituals are actually commanded in Scripture. We’re commanded to baptize. We’re commanded to observe the Lord’s Supper.

There are things that the Scripture commands. Those aren’t wrong. When rituals become a problem, when they become wrong is when we start to think that they somehow contribute something to our salvation.

What we actually need is a spiritual cleansing. We’re nearly done this morning. Let’s look at the last two verses here, 28 and 29.

Paul says, for he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly, neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh. But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly. And circumcision is that of the heart in the spirit and not in the letter, whose praise is not of men, but of God.

So in this verse, when Paul, in verse 28, when Paul uses the word Jew, he’s using it metaphorically. Okay, he’s not referring to the Jewish religion. He’s not saying that when we trusted Christ, we became Jews and we somehow became bound to the law.

He’s referring back to this idea of the national covenant with Israel and the idea of being right with God. They thought that being a Jew meant being right with God because you’ve gone through all the rituals. So when he says he’s not a Jew, what he’s saying is he’s not right with God.

He’s not at peace with God who’s just part of the covenant outwardly. Does that make sense? To be right with God, to be a Jew, to be right with God means to be part of the covenant inwardly.

Being part of God’s spiritual covenant with believers in the New Testament to reconcile God with man and for us to be at peace with him. And there is no outward activity, there’s no ritual, there’s no practice that brings us into this covenant. There’s no activity that you can go out and do this afternoon and check off of your list that is going to bring you into that covenant and make you right with God.

Verse 29 teaches that it requires circumcision of the heart. Now that sounds pretty painful, but again he’s not talking about a literal circumcision, he’s using it as a metaphor. Circumcision involved cutting away, and I don’t want to get into graphic detail because it’s uncomfortable for me and probably for you as well.

But circumcision meant cutting away parts that were considered to be unclean. Okay, that’s all you need to know. So when he refers to the circumcision of the heart, in this case he’s referring to the change that God makes in us.

The change that God makes in us when we receive new life in Christ and the Holy Spirit takes up residence within us. He’s talking about looking into the core of our being, into the very center of who we are, and God begins to cut away the things that are unclean. Can you do that on your own?

No. Can somebody else do that for you? No.

The circumcision of the heart takes place when we receive new life in Christ. So what he’s saying here is you don’t get to be part of the covenant. You don’t end up being right with God because of something you’ve done outwardly. You end up being right with God because you’ve gone through Jesus Christ and God has gone in there and circumcised the heart and cut away all the uncleanness.

There’s no ritual. There’s no ritual. It doesn’t matter whether it’s circumcision. It doesn’t matter whether it’s baptism. It doesn’t matter whether it’s the Lord’s Supper down here.

It doesn’t matter whether it