Meet Ben Pukas

My buddy was having serious phone trouble the other day. He Googled what could be wrong (never a good idea), and just about every article told him that he would have to replace his phone. Distraught, he made a beeline for the Apple store where an associate took it to the back. It was like watching his child go in for surgery. Although he expected the worst, they came back and said his phone had clumps of dog hair in it, and they cleaned it out. His phone made a full recovery.

We have a tendency to do this in our faith. We expect the biggest hindrance to Christianity to be atheism. However, there is something that does more damage to Christianity worldwide than all the atheists combined: religion. Paul addresses the religion of the day by stating three privileges that the Jews received.

The first of those privileges is their title: Jews. They were proud of their name because it showed that they were God’s chosen people. I know I can be guilty of this. I can be so proud of the church I attend that I can talk more about Watermark than I talk about Jesus. The second of their privileges is their Book or their Law. The Jews were commanded by God to meditate on His Law day and night, but they were more concerned about knowing the Law than they were about knowing the Author of the Law. The third privilege was their good deeds, and this is where verse 21 comes into play. Paul attacks their hearts. You see, all of the privileges of being a Jew—their name, their Book, and their good works—were outward. They were external. But Jesus didn't care about their religious adherence even to good things.

The biggest threat in our faith isn’t found in the hearts of non-believers; it's found inside of us. When the church we go to, the Bible we read, and the good works we do become more important than the God we serve, all of those things become meaningless. Jesus doesn’t care about our religion; He cares about our hearts.