"I Believe in Christ, But I Don't Believe in Organized Religion!" | Matthew 21:33

[00:00:00] We'll truth, Daily, This is Daily Truths with Dave Ahlman.

[00:00:08] Every once in a while will hear somebody say, I believe in Christianity, I believe in Jesus Christ, but I don't believe in organized religion.

[00:00:18] Does that mean you believe in this organized religion?

[00:00:23] It's a bad joke.

[00:00:26] I want to ask you a question this morning. How does God preserve your faith? And it may not be as simple as you think.

[00:00:33] We're in Matthew chapter 21 and as you remember, Jesus has had some difficult words with the chief priest and the elders.

[00:00:40] He told a parable. He talked about that a couple days ago.

[00:00:44] And now he dives into this parable beginning at verse 33.

[00:00:48] Here another parable. There was a master of a house who painted or planted a vineyard and put a fence around it.

[00:00:54] And dug a wine press in it and built a tower and leased it to tenants and went into another country. Now who is the master in this? That's God.

[00:01:05] Who are the tenants that's farmers who would take care of the vineyard while the master was gone?

[00:01:11] That's the leaders of the nation of Israel. The chief priest scribes and Pharisees. What is the vineyard?

[00:01:16] That's Israel. And the thing I want to talk about real quickly today is this. What about the watch tower and what about the fence?

[00:01:25] Well, in vineyards in the early church, this is what happened.

[00:01:30] A fence was built and a watch tower was built because the fence was to keep out animals and the watch tower was to keep out thieves.

[00:01:37] Right? And so here is my point. Basically, Jesus is saying, God wants the nation of Israel and their faith preserved and protected.

[00:01:48] And the same thing can be said about you and me. God wants your faith rooted in Jesus Christ to be preserved and protected.

[00:01:57] And how does he do that? Well, we think about people who say, you know, I believe in Christ, but I don't believe in organized religion. It's organized religion that helps preserve and protect our faith.

[00:02:09] Basically, the watch tower and the fence that preserves and protects our faith is this. It's the word of God proclaim red, shared, uttered both in church and an devotional life

[00:02:24] and in small groups and Bible study, that's what preserves, strengthens and solidifies our faith. And so does the sacrament. You could say that the watch tower is the word and the fence is the sacrament.

[00:02:38] We come to church, broken, battered and bruised by our sin. We repent of our sin. We receive the body and blood of Christ in with another, the bread and wine of communion to preserve, protect and strengthen our faith.

[00:02:51] And here's another thing that Christian fellowship does in church or in the body of Christ. Sometimes when you're down, sometimes when you're discouraged, sometimes when you need to pick me up. You can go to a Christian friend within the confines of the local congregation of friends that you go to church with and you can talk about the things that you're struggling with and what can they say? They can say thanks to encourage you to point you to Jesus to make you more deeply rooted in the things of God.

[00:03:21] I need Christian fellowship. So when people say, I believe in Christ but I don't believe in organized religion. They're basically saying, I don't need to grow. I don't need fellowship. I don't need that. My faith preserved. I can do it on my own. A few months ago, I shared a story about loving to use my web or grill and I used the story of Bracass. Remember we said that when you put the Bracass together and you light them.

[00:03:51] You can't even mention if you will. The burning of each ember feeds on each other and the whole thing starts to ignite but when you take one ember and put it off to the side, that ember goes out.

[00:04:04] It's the same thing with our faith. So when people say I don't need the church, I don't need organized religion. They're basically saying it. I'm willing to go at a loan. Well, that's not going to go. That's like a vineyard being built without a fence, without a watch tower.

[00:04:19] And we need a fence and we need to watch tower. And that's where the word, sacrament and fellowship all come in. So if Satan sometimes is tempting you to say, I don't go to church today.

[00:04:32] Don't fellowship today. You can go to a loan. He's a liar in the father of lies. We need the church. We need to go to church. We need to hear the word of God.

[00:04:41] We need Christian fellowship. That's the watch tower. That's the fence. That's how our faith is protected and preserved. So bottom line of this, he going to church.

[00:04:54] And that is today's daily truth. Have a great day in the Lord Jesus Christ.

[00:05:00] Thank you for tuning in to daily truths with Dave Olman.

[00:05:03] Pastor Dave Olman is the pastor of Mount Hoorchurch in Boulder, Colorado.

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[00:05:18] Come back tomorrow for your next daily truth.