Sharon Reformed Presbyterian Church · Sermon study sheet

Religiosity - A damnable mistake

Bryan Schneider · February 4, 2023

Mark 7:1-23

sharonrpc.org/sermons/religiosity-a-damnable-mis

Summary

Religious habits and church attendance can conceal a heart far from God when tradition exists without living faith.
The Pharisees' ritual washings begin as sincere attempts to guard purity but expand beyond Scripture and become human commands imposed as divine law.
Tradition becomes legalism when it replaces God's command, creates loopholes for disobedience, and gives people a basis for judging others.
The Corban practice displays religious hypocrisy by dedicating resources to God as an excuse for refusing the commanded care of parents.
Defilement comes from within the fallen heart—evil thoughts and actions—not merely from food, unwashed hands, or external contact.
Self-cleansing is a delusion that lowers God's holiness and covers inward corruption with an appearance of righteousness.
Jesus alone cleanses sinners from the inside out through his blood, so believers confess sin and rest in his finished righteousness rather than their own.

When I say I am a Christian, am I describing living faith in Christ or merely family habit and church attendance?
Which personal or church traditions have I begun to treat as though God commanded them?
Do my extra rules lead me to pride, comparison, and judgment of believers whose practice differs?
Have I used religious giving, service, or language to avoid a plain duty God actually commands?
Am I blaming external influences while refusing to confess the evil that arises from my own heart?
Have I lowered God's holiness enough to imagine that outward respectability can make me clean?
Am I resting only in Christ's blood and righteousness for forgiveness and acceptance before God?

Religiosity: The outward performance of religious habits and identity without inward cleansing, faith, and obedience.
Tradition of the elders: Inherited interpretations and practices that became binding rules beyond the commands of Scripture.
Fencing the law: Adding precautionary rules around a command, which becomes dangerous when human safeguards are treated as God's law.
Corban: Property declared devoted to God, here used as a religious loophole to avoid caring for one's parents.
Defilement: Moral impurity arising from the corrupt heart and expressed in evil thoughts, desires, words, and acts.
Justification: God's free acceptance of sinners as righteous because of Christ's righteousness received by faith alone.