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Hey, let's turn to the Bible. Matthew chapter eleven, verse twenty-eight says this. Then Jesus said, Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light. If you've been coming to church for a while, if you are a Jesus follower, you have likely had that situation where you go to work on a Monday or to school or wherever it is, and someone says, How was your weekend? Or what did you get up to this weekend? And it's a bit like that moment uh in A Beautiful Mind, John Nash, and like the formula is going you and you think about all the things you could tell this person and you're wondering, Do I tell them that I went to church? Do I have that conversation and say, Well, I go to church? And you're like, Do I say it? You know, like, and then you just go, Yeah, it's good. And that's the end of the conversation. And perhaps uh you don't take that moment to share that church as part of your life. Uh, for me, I can't avoid that very much these days because people, when you're having those conversations where you meet people and they say, What do you do for work? Uh, I do church for work. It is I am a pastor, and up until uh six months ago, I was an accountant, and that was an easy thing to communicate, but now I'm a pastor, and sharing that with people often leads to an awesome conversation because you can ask them then, like they're they're mind blowing, they think you want to say, you know, mechanic or whatever the typical jobs are uh around the place, uh, but they generally don't expect me to turn and say, I'm a pastor. And I was having this conversation on the sidelines of the underlying soccer training uh with a guy who is a diesel fitter for West Track, and then he asked me what I do, I said, I'm a pastor. I said, like, have you ever you know had experience with church or you know that sort of thing? And he said, Oh, I'm not religious. And he said, My wife, she's not religious either, so we'll just we're not religious. And I think there's this thing where whether you're outside of church or in church, no one really likes the idea of religion. And religion has this interesting undertone. The definition of religion is an organized system of beliefs, practices, and worldviews concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe. And in our opening verse that we just shared from, Jesus doesn't say, Come and I will give you religion. He doesn't say, Come and I will give you a new set of rules. Jesus doesn't even say, come and I'll teach you about God. Jesus is unique in the world's religions because he doesn't point to a distant God, he doesn't set us doesn't point to a set of philosophies, Jesus gathers to himself. Jesus says, Come to me. In our opening verse, Jesus talks about taking rest for our souls, and it seems like the opposite of that is in our mind when we think about religion. Like religion is not rest for the soul, religion is trying your hardest, working your best, and hopefully you might appease God or measure up. But consider how faith works as opposed to religion. So it's by the Holy Spirit that you encounter the person of Jesus, and by faith you receive grace. What does that mean? You might be in a church service like today, and whether it's the worship or the preaching or simply being in the presence of God, the Holy Spirit moves within you, and you get a revelation of Jesus. You get a revelation that there's this God who loves me, and there's this God who cares about me. You may have picked up a Bible and started reading the pages, and the Holy Spirit reveals the truth, not about the rules you need to follow or the wisdom, just wisdom for life. It reveals the person of Jesus. Matthew 16, Jesus is with his disciples, and he says, uh says, then he, Jesus, asked them, the disciples, but who do you say I am? And Simon Peter answered, You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God. And Jesus goes on to say, You're blessed because you've got this revelation. You don't just understand this idea of a God, you understand that I, Jesus, and are the embodiment of it. And that's the good news of the gospel. That in the brokenness we receive a revelation of what Jesus did. Paul in the New Testament describes it this way in Ephesians chapter 2 says, God saved you by his grace when you believed, and you can't take credit for it. Religion is like a system whereby you try and build enough credits in the bank to reach God. But the Bible says that we receive grace, this free gift that Jesus gives, and we can't take credit for it because it's a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. So when Jesus says my yoke is easy and my burden is light, he's inviting us into a way of living, not merely a set of rules. And this can be a difficult distinction to make because ultimately Jesus does want to transform our lives. Our lives should look different after time spent following Jesus. But Jesus came to redeem and restore a broken humanity. So what does that mean? You may have heard the story of the Garden of Eden, and Adam and Eve are living there, and life is perfect for them. They are in right relationship with themselves, with each other, and with God, and then sin enters in, and all those relationships become broken. So Jesus doesn't just want to deal with that idea of sin in our past, but he wants to come and redeem our today. He wants to transform us back to that experience that Adam and Eve had. The trap we face is that we start with forgiveness through grace. We come around Easter time with, oh, how amazing. We have communion, how amazing. Jesus died for me. But then we try to make redemption, that ongoing transformation, about our effort. So religion says, I obey so that I will be accepted. If I do all the right things, God accepts me. But the gospel says, I am accepted, so therefore I will obey. Our identity is transformed by the good news. So when Jesus says, Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, take my yoke upon you, and I will find rest for your souls, he's making it very clear that he isn't presenting religion as the answer, he's presenting himself as the answer. So my question today is what religious ideas, practices, and worldviews that we talked about before as the definition do we need to reclaim? What are some things that we've put into the box of, oh, that's just a religious thing, and we kind of don't like it, and we maybe know we should, but um we have difficulty and there's friction with it when in fact it can be reclaimed and redeemed? What things have lost their value because we've lost sight of Jesus in them? What things do we see as religion as simply boundaries as constraints, not as opportunities to live the life that God has called us to? And rather than seeing them, rather, how can we see these things as an invitation to rest? So tonight I'm going to speak on the title if you're taking notes, and I encourage you, particularly our young people, be note takers. Buy yourself a nice paper notepad, get a pen, do it old school, it'll change your life. Quite literally, it could actually change your life. Uh, my title tonight is Redeeming Religion. Let's pray. Jesus, we thank you for your spirit, which is here with us today. Would it reveal to us the truth of who you are? We open up our lives to you before your word and before your truth, and we pray that it impacts our lives and transforms us. Amen. I'm gonna tell a story. I should preface this story by saying that I used to be a youth pastor. Uh, there might be some people in this auditorium that I was their youth pastor at one stage. In fact, Tim leading worship today, I can remember teenage Tim. Uh, we both had hair at the time. Uh, but that's changed. One of the things about being a youth pastor, one of my favorite nights of the year, I don't know, I don't know that you guys still do this, but it was called toilet night. And I reckon we may have got up to four or five toilet nights. I think toilet nights probably are the nights that most bless Sally, uh, wherever she is up the back. I think if if you remember, you know, if she remembers anything I preached as her youth pastor, it was probably around toilet night. And uh it was toilet themed. It was the games were toilet themed, the preaching was toilet themed, and kids loved it. The things you do for youth ministry. So I say all that to say this is a true story. Church is a vulnerable place, and I'm willing to be vulnerable with you. Agneth, I'm gonna be vulnerable with you here. This is a story about little Hamish. He was in primary school, probably about 10 years of age at the time. My wife is now getting worried about where this story is going. And I was at church and I had to go and do a number one. That's a we for anyone who's not sure what the number one is. Some of you might see where the story is going already. And I was at the uh urinal, which for those of you ladies who have maybe never been in a male toilet, uh, that's the wee wall. Um, anyway, too much information already. Uh, and I was there, and I have to use the right word because we're in church. Uh, I had to do a little flatulence while uh doing the number one, and I can already see a few faces in the room that know what's about to happen. And poor little Hamish, well, he thought he was doing just a flatulence, did something else. And the uh technical term is follow-through. And uh yeah, it's all right. I was little, it's I've grown past this, I think. Um and in that moment of fear and just like embarrassment, I was the only one in the bathroom at the time, praise the Lord. Thank you, Jesus. Uh I tried to cover it up. I tried to deal with it, I panicked, I went into uh the cubicle and started, you know, dealing with the mess that I'd made of myself. Uh, and I started plotting. I started thinking of like, how do I get out of this with no one knowing, with like just keep my reputation, my 10-year-old reputation intact. And uh and I I think I hid my box of shorts that I was wearing at the time, and uh I went and got my mum's keys, and clearly this plan is not going well. And uh I got the keys, went back, fetched my underpants, and I hid my underpants in the back of my mum's car. It was it, I don't know what it, I can't remember what it was, whether it was night church or something like that, but that's where my underpants stayed for the whole night. And uh the next morning I realized I had to deal with this, and I I snuck back out and I was about to deal with it. Now, you're wondering why did you tell that terrible story? And I can't tell you how this story came to my mind this week, but maybe it was uh but there's this word in church world and in the Bible, it's called repentance, and we're very quick to label repentance as this religious word that we're a little bit uncomfortable with. And if we did a survey across this room, most people in this room would um put repentance with some sort of negative connotation. Like we think repentance is feeling bad or embarrassed or ashamed that we've made a mistake, like little Hamish in the toilet cubicle, and like we're trying to figure out what to do with the stinky, disgusting undies we've made a mess of. But repentance isn't holding on to those soiled undies, thinking that they're worth more than the alternative. Repentance isn't sorry, repentance isn't about being sorry, it's about turning to life. And luckily, in the light of day, with the panic and the emotion gone, I realized these things should probably just go in the bin. There's no point trying to save them, and I threw them in the bin and it was done. But in Philippians 3, and we need the Bible very quickly, uh I once thought, this is what it says in Paul's writing in Philippians 3, verse 7. I once thought these things were valuable, but now I consider them worthless. Like that next morning going to the back of my mum's car. Because of what Christ has done. Yes, everything else is worthless when when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake, I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ. So, what is repentance and how do we reclaim it and redeem it? It's realizing what's valuable. That perhaps that thing that we're feeling guilty about or that thing that we know we need to change is of no value to us. And perhaps we've held on to it a little bit longer than we should, like the underpants, because we've not got the revelation of the full, infinite value of who Jesus is. So we often talk about repentance as the areas in our lives that aren't towards God. Like we're walking this way, away from God, and then we repent and we turn towards him. And Georgia, can you bring up the shoes? Georgia encouraged me to try this uh illustration today. Uh, I feel it's slightly dangerous because I'm on a stage. Uh, it's also slightly dangerous. I ran a half marathon this morning, uh, so you can leave them there. I will put them back on before people sell my socks. And these are my wife's shoes if you're wondering where I get these shoes from. And oh, oh, and there's a buckle underneath there. And this is kind of this is kind of how sin works. We we put on something that doesn't fit, whether we know it doesn't fit, or whether we put it on because every because Claire wears them, so I'll try them. And we're trying to do life a certain way that God never intended us to do. And if I tried to run in these shoes right now, I would snap an ankle and fall on the stage, and grace would have to catch me, like when Sioni was uh uh stage diving a few weeks ago. But Hebrews 12 tells us that we have to lay aside every weight and sin that so easily ensnares us so that we can run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus. And whether we know it doesn't fit, or we begin to realize that we're wearing the wrong shoes, and I'm grateful that I didn't have to run a half marathon in these shoes today. Repentance is the act of taking it off and putting on his yoke, which is easy to bear, and his burden is light. My prayer when it comes to redeeming repentance is that we would turn repentance into a positive action and not a negative emotion. So that's our point number one today: repentance from a negative emotion to a positive action, that we would learn the joy of surrender as we discard the things that are of no value for the infinite value of knowing Jesus. When you see weights and sins for what they are, things that take you away from the one who has rest for our souls, then we understand the beauty and the purpose of repentance. And I could list a bunch of things that might be an area in your life that needs repentance, but I'm gonna trust that the Holy Spirit does that. And I'm gonna trust that as he reveals himself to you, that you will see those things which take you the take you away from him for what they are. As Paul writes in the New Living Translation, which is a great translation I would recommend, uh discard them all, counting it as garbage, so that I can gain Christ. What's the garbage that you're trying to wear when Jesus wants to give you something that fits properly? Amen. I'm gonna put my shoes back on. You can think about that point for a second. Okay, point number two. So we started talking about how we start in faith by grace, but how quickly we can move into faith in our own works. And no doubt when it comes to religion creeping in to our faith, the spiritual disciplines fall into this trap. So when we talk about spiritual disciplines, it's like all the Christian stuff that we do. Uh, there are different models and different representations on them, and maybe they'll come up on the screen in a second. Uh, Richard Foster, who uh wrote some books a while ago, has 12 disciplines, inward and outward and corporate or shared disciplines. Uh the easiest ones to think of when it comes to disciplines are things like prayer and reading your Bible, uh, worship, which is what we've done tonight. Um, and so you've done some spiritual disciplines tonight. Well done. You showed up to church, that's community, you worshiped, you're doing well. Uh, when we sit down for dinner tonight, we're gonna do community. That is a spiritual discipline for you to be involved in. Actually, sitting at a table with another believer and opening your life to them. Uh, John Mark Commer, who is a bit more modern and uh down with the cool kids, he uh he has nine spiritual disciplines that he talks about in practicing the way. Uh, he throws in things like Sabbath and generosity and witness. And the trap is that all of these things can feel really hard. Like it's like grinding them out to get them done. I mean, fasting, for one thing, is a spiritual discipline. Um, there are some people in this room that might enjoy fasting. Uh, but I run a lot and I eat a lot. So fasting is a scary thing for me. Uh, reading the Bible, um, I know for some of us, we we heard uh that if you were here when uh Benjamin Wendell spoke, uh, we all kind of know we should read the Bible, but maybe after two minutes, um our phone uh interrupted brain is just distracted, and and some of you are like, two minutes is a long time to concentrate. I'd like to get two minutes of concentration. And things like Bible reading can become hard work, and the spiritual disciplines just become this chore on my to-do list, like mowing the lawn. I know I should mow my lawn more often, but I just don't want to. There's people who look at me like, I mow my lawn every week, I love it. Well done. Maybe by sheer will or grit we get them done and we tick them off and move on. The problem is the Pharisees who knew more about the Bible than everyone else seemed to be the people that Jesus liked the least. So it's not like getting the religious things done is a means to itself. The trap is that spiritual disciplines is when they're done to be spiritually performative. Perhaps it's just me because I have that personality type where I have Strava, which is kind of like the social media for runners, and then I have an app that uh tracks, it's an app that tracks all my running activities. But on top of that, I still like to keep my own spreadsheet to track my running activities. Uh I wear a heart rate monitor to track my heart rate. I have my watch that keeps things, and I'm tracking week on week, and I'm looking at progress, and that's how we can if you have that personality type that's a bit like me, that's sometimes how we think of the spiritual disciplines. Like, did I do more than last week? Am I becoming better at this? And and that's how I approach my running, but it's a trap for me to approach my spiritual disciplines that way. And whether you have those sorts of compulsive behaviors like me or not, when religion infiltrates spiritual disciplines, the performance mindset just makes them another list. Like I've read my Bible, tick, prayed for a bit, tick, went to church, tick, and performance focuses on measuring our spiritual output. But if you can imagine for a second, if I applied that to my marriage with Claire. Like I said, I get, you know, I said I love you today, tick, border flowers, tick, probably haven't done that for a while. Uh, remembered our wedding anniversary, tick, and I've ticked off the list. But in the process, if I don't know Claire, if I don't engage with Claire, do you think she's uh experiencing the fullness of my list? Or is she missing the part that she wants most, which is the relationship with me? And that's how we have to see. The spiritual disciplines. They don't exist to measure your performance as a Christian, like a religious set of rules. They exist to facilitate a relationship with Jesus. So how are the spiritual disciplines redeemed when they move from performance to practice? Spiritual practices are not about earning God's approval. We've received that by grace. You are already approved and loved because of what Jesus did. Spiritual practices are about creating space to be transformed by God's presence. So when we realize the spiritual disciplines aren't a destination in themselves, they are not the thing we're trying to arrive at. If I pray for two hours, I have arrived. I am, you know, just like Claire. That's a joke. People like, does does Claire pray for two hours? Yes, but I think she's asleep half the time. And if we go back to our analogy about my relationship with Claire, it's not that it doesn't take effort. We have to create intentional space for one another. And in the busyness of life, with three young kids and church stuff going on, she's working outside of church, with all that going on, we have to be intentional about making time. So I'll clean up the kitchen, I'll sort out the kids, I'll mow the lawns occasionally, but just not recently. But I don't do it to earn my relationship with Claire. I do it out of response to my relationship with Claire. And when you see the spiritual disciplines as a response to Jesus, performance focuses on measuring spiritual output. Practice focuses on abiding with Jesus, on being formed into his image. Performance says, How am I doing? But practice asks the question, Am I being present? Now suddenly distracted prayer is still prayer. You can stop judging yourself by some sort of religious standard that you're trying to achieve and just continue to build your relationship with Him. Bible reading, where you don't feel like a dove has descended from heaven and revealed some miraculous thing. Perhaps you haven't gone outside and seen a uh a battery miraculously appear. But if you've spent time in the presence of God, you've opened yourself to grow in Him. And just like the relationship with Claire and I started as an awkward first date and kind of grew from there, day by day you build in your relationship with him. And I want to encourage you when it comes to spiritual disciplines, don't treat it as a performance. Understand it is a practice of creating space for a relationship with him. And if we can redeem our spiritual disciplines from a performance to a practice, then we can begin to experience that relationship with him. Amen. So number three, and this one will take a little bit more explanation. Number three is about creation, from idols to honor. You know, religion is a funny thing, and the world looks at religion and they think it's curious that we worship what we worship. But religion or church, we kind of look back at the world and say, Well, you're worshiping all sorts of things. The world might be worshiping sex and sexuality, it might be worshiping power and authority or you know, status, um, it might be worshiping money and the pursuit of more and more stuff. And I heard someone recently talk about how a European friend had observed to them that Australians have a tendency to worship their children, that their whole lives revolve around their children. So even good things like family and children can quietly become the ultimate thing. Things that begin to define our identity and purpose. So when we talk about taking creation from idol to honor, from an idol to something we honor God with, creation is anything that exists that God created. And an idol is anything that steals away our hearts away from God. So consider our marriage, and it's a gift that blesses my life. But the moment my love for my marriage outweighs my love for God, that marriage becomes an idol in my life. And we can go through a long list of things that are always competing for our worship, competing for our attention, and competing to outweigh our position with God. And that is the condition of the human heart. And when we talk about that gradually being shaped into the image of God that we talked about with the spiritual disciplines, that's something that needs to happen because our heart so quickly drifts from God to the other things. Tim Keller writes this He says, if we look to some created thing to give us meaning, hope, and happiness that only God Himself can give, it will eventually fail to deliver and break our hearts. An idol is anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, and anything you seek to give you what only God can give. And by that definition, all of a sudden, idols aren't just, you know, uh totems or statues that we worship. Idol become the very things that we grapple with each day in our lives. But religion can do this awkward thing where, and if you've been in church long enough, you've probably experienced it, where we kind of make idols out of idols. Um perhaps I should say religion just tends to replace one idol with another one. Where the world turns good things into ultimate things, religion often turns the rejection of those things into the thing they worship. And an idol doesn't stop being an idol just because we put religious clothes on it. The world says this is it like that sexuality or sex is everything. Express yourself, follow your desires, and often rich religion can respond and say, Well, purity is everything. Your value is determined by your sexual record. And your, you know, you've done all if you've done all the right things, then that matters. And our sex, which is a good thing that God created, for some people, because of religion, it becomes a thing that's full of shame or taboo, full of guilt. But Jesus came to redeem us, and through redemption, we are restored to relationship with God, and now we can see sexuality in its rightful place. That is a thing from Him, and there's uh constraints to it, there is boundaries to it, but we can use it now to honor God. It isn't something we worship, it isn't something we place our identity in, and we learn to handle it appropriately, to put it in its correct context. Our heart isn't on the created thing that God created, our heart is on the creator. And money does the same thing. The world looks at money as the source for all security, significance, and freedom. And religion can respond in two extremes of that spectrum. And I'll invite the band to come. Firstly, uh, there's the prosperity idol. And maybe you've seen some of the uh more outlandish uh prosperity preaching that sometimes sneaks into church. And and it kind of creates an undertone that if you're not blessed financially, you must be doing something wrong because blessing only blessing comes if you're doing all the right things, God will bless you. But there are some people who live in poverty across the globe who have more love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, self-control, the fruits of the spirit in their life. So clearly they are walking in relationship with God, and whether poverty or prosperity, it's not an indication of our spiritual performance. And at the opposite end of the spectrum, there are people who would say, the poorer you are, the holier you are. And they've got well, if you have wealth, you must be greedy. So, like there's these two things where they're taking money and finances and they're turning them into a different type of religious idol. But as the gospel works in us, and as we experience the work of Jesus in redeeming our hearts, the created thing stops being an object of worship. And the created thing stops being an object of idolatry, and the created thing becomes something we can use to honor our Creator. So our marriage doesn't become the thing that I worship and give my all my attention to. My marriage becomes a tool to honor God. I don't pursue money and stress about money and chase money and make money the thing that my heart deeply desires. I then take money and I use it to honor God. And we can go through the list, and you have your own list of things that have a way of creeping into your heart, and your heart begins to long for those things, that you've got to realize that you can take that thing, and when it's in its rightful place, you can use it to honor Him. If you're uncomfortable with church talking about money, then maybe you need to examine your hearts. Maybe you're worshiping that money that we keep talking about. If God is in our right, is in his rightful place in our hearts, we aren't holding on to money so tightly. We're honoring him with our wealth. And if we redeem the religious mindset when it comes to wealth, careers, sex, family, time, and talents, religion says, if I obey, I'll be accepted. But the gospel says, I'm I'm accepted, therefore I'll obey. What is the power of the gospel? What is the revelation of amazing grace? It's that it transforms not our external efforts, but it transforms our internal motivations. It transforms our heart. The gospel doesn't just change what we do with money, sex, or success, it changes who we do it for. Everything becomes worship offered to him. It reorientates everything toward honoring him. So as we close tonight, I guess when we consider how we redeem repentance, spiritual disciplines, and idols, first we have to consider who Jesus is. Is he just a religious idea? Is he just someone confined to the books, to the book of the Bible? Or is he more? I want to encourage you, repentance isn't just a religious activity. It's about coming to him with everything that makes us weary, with all our heavy burdens, and taking rest in him. When we understand who he is, repentance is not this negative emotion, it is this beautiful, positive experience of coming to the one who gives us rest. The spiritual disciplines aren't about wearing a religious garment, trying to fit in to something that doesn't fit. In our own efforts, it's about learning to know Him. We take His yoke upon us, being taught not through spiritual performance, but the practice of being with the One who teaches us. And as the idols of this life lose their power, through His gospel of grace, we find rest for ourselves. Our lives are in the rhythm of a yoke that is easy to bear and a burden that is light. Would you stand to your feet? I'm gonna pray for all of us tonight. And if you feel comfortable, would you close your eyes and open your hands to heaven? And if you feel comfortable, maybe you could invite the Holy Spirit to speak to you. About what areas, what dirty rags are you holding on to that you need to let go and walk in repentance? What idols in your heart do you need to put in their rightful place and beginning to honor Him? Heavenly Father, we pray as your people, Jesus passionate about you, soften our hearts. And right now I pray that you would break religion in this room, religious hearts that perhaps religion has put shame on them, failure on them, perhaps religion has made their hearts distant from you. But I pray that, Holy Spirit, you would reveal yourself to them, reveal Jesus to them, that they would get a revelation of the grace that is towards them, of the gospel that is working within them, and that they would experience rest for their souls in the person of Jesus Christ.