“Following Jesus or Man-made Religion”
John 5:1-16
Sermon Series: “Getting Acquainted With Jesus”
Introduction: Jesus provoked a conflict with the Jewish religious leaders in order to confront their legalism. It was no accident that He did this miracle on the Sabbath. It was very intentional that Jesus told the man to take up his bed and walk. They had taken the Sabbath, which God had set up to bless Him by people worshipping and bless people by them resting, and added a bunch of man-made rules to it. They were missing the real purpose. The Pharisees were adding to the Word of God. Of course, when we add to Scripture, we end up taking away from it because we lose the reality that Scripture as inspired by God is totally authoritative and sufficient.
Message of the Miracle: God’s gracious, powerful, and saving work is experienced in our lives by following Jesus and not by following man-made religious rules.
Personal Application: Are you relying on Jesus and His grace to be made right with God or are you relying on man-made rules and human effort?
How do we know which one we are relying on? Let me share contrasts between divine grace and human effort. Please evaluate your life based on these contrasts.
1. Legalism tries to earn favor with God through human effort and rule keeping while grace causes us to trust Jesus as our only source of righteousness (see Romans 3:10-4:4). Legalism glorifies us because we can take credit for our righteousness, but grace glorifies God because He gets all the credit (1 Corinthians 1:26-31), and salvation is ultimately about glorifying God. We are not good. Jesus is good. Micheal Spencer wrote, “Faith is discontentment with what I am, and satisfaction with all God is for me in Jesus.”
2. Legalism is about outward conformity to human standards while grace brings about an inward transformation (see Romans 7).
3. Legalism imposes a standard of authority other than or in addition to Scripture while grace upholds Scripture as it is. Grace deals with sin while offering forgiveness at the same time. Legalists make their personal convictions authoritative and impose them upon others. It is impossible to please a legalist.
4. Legalists set themselves up as the standard (instead of Jesus) and criticize and condemn those who are not like them. I am not referring to expecting Christians to obey Scripture, but I am talking about external, peripheral matters.
5. Legalism says that God will love us if we obey while grace affirms that we can obey because God loves us. Grace brings freedom from sin-not freedom to sin. It does not just cover sin, but it also gives us a new, transformed heart (see Romans 6 and Titus 2:11-15).
6. Legalists live according to a hypocritical, double standard while grace enables us to be honest about our true spiritual condition (see Matthew 23:3-4).
7. Legalism deals with non-essential externals while grace leads us to the real substance, which is Jesus (see Colossians 2).
8. Legalism causes people to live for human approval while grace enables us to live for God’s approval (see Matthew 23).
9. Legalism is rooted in pride while grace humbles us (see Luke 18:9-14).
10. The end result of legalism is bondage while grace brings us freedom.
