MAN CANNOT RESIST BEING RELIGIOUS
Religious people really do want to do the right things to please God. But they have two main problems. The first is the tendency of the flesh to be religious (i.e. to sin). The second is the influence of other religious people who appear to have God all figured out.

While both are serious obstacles to pleasing God, the first problem cannot be solved until the second problem is solved. This is because religion is learned from others whom we trust. But as long as people continue to trust other humans for truth, they will remain in bondage to religion.

The essential problem is the challenge to stop trusting religious people for truth about God. Unless a teacher is a New Covenant disciple, that teacher is a false prophet who bases his/her preaching/teaching on the literal words of the Bible. If a teacher does not teach and equip people to learn how to listen to God’s spoken voice, that teacher is an idol because he/she wants people to believe what he/she says about God instead of sending them directly to God so people can learn to hear his voice spoken to the heart. As long as people continue to consult human idols for wisdom about God, God will let them have their idols and suffer separation from God.

Making the switch from listening to human teachers to listening to God directly is the process of transitioning from being an Old/First Covenant religionist to becoming a New Covenant disciple. But separating from human teachers is hard. Often our teachers are people with whom we have very close relationships. That is why Jesus said that New Covenant disciples will find that religious people with whom they were once close will become enemies. The way God puts it, what was formerly an idol becomes the enemy.

The influence of religious leaders on the beliefs and religious activities of those who follow the leaders and subscribe to their beliefs and religion is the hallmark of Old/First Covenant religion. We see this principle represented in Judaism in the following ways:

We find evidence of these Jewish religious principles in rabbinic Judaism with its 613 Mitzvot (i.e. commandments), in observance of religious traditions and in synagogue practices.

Christians who do not observe Jewish laws or traditions, will be surprised to learn that Christianity has made subtle revisions to the forms of rabbinic Judaism. The following list shows the ways that Christianity has adhered to  literal interpretations of New Testament scriptures and selectively integrated them with choice parts of the Old Testament that Christian scholars find relevant to Christianity:

Neither Jews nor Christians would want to admit that the following facts are true:

The main point here is that both  have man’s fingerprints all over them in the following terms:

In other words, both religions consist of religious laws that are made by and enforced by men.

After reviewing these similarities most people will say “So what? No big deal?” To such people we point out that the human influence on these religions are man’s ways of establishing and preserving his religions — not God’s ways. They are not God’s preferred, New Covenant ways which prescribe that men will no longer need anyone to teach them about God because his laws are written on their hearts.

None of the three, monotheistic, Abrahamic religions (i.e. Judaism, Christianity, Islam) recognize the New Covenant. Christianity thinks of itself as a New Covenant religion because Jesus is strongly identified with the New Covenant. Nevertheless, Christianity is not really New Covenant because all strains of it embrace false prophets who function as other gods and idols and because it employs all kinds of religious paraphernalia (i.e. sacred objects) in worship.

Since none of these religions can be legitimately called New Covenant, they are, by default, Old/First Covenant religions whose doctrines and religious practices are based on the teachings of generations of religious leaders who have added to, subtracted from, and revised the works of previous leaders. Through this process, all three religions have experienced ongoing re-creation by religious leaders with their own visions of God and his ways based on their personal literal interpretations of select parts of the Bible. Collectively and individually they have created (i.e. built) three of the best-known reputations (i.e. names) that together comprise more than one-half of the world population. It can be rightly said that they have all participated in the building of very popular and well-known idols.

If God was truly the source of inspiration for these religions, religious leaders would not have conceived so many conflicting doctrines and worship practices that are so easily recognized and associated with each religion. Furthermore, there would not be so many subdivisions within each religion. No rational person can imagine that this wide variety of religions could be inspired by one single god. There is no uniformity and no consistency in their doctrines or their worship practices. Worse yet, there is open hostility and division between them.

There is no other way to explain the evolution of these three religions and the multitude of their respective sects than to conclude that each one is the result of a process (i.e. human work/effort) by which men have created personal idols (i.e. religion) that each considers to be the true religion. The godliness they represent and submit to is their true god. But, that personal god does not represent the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

No rational person who stops to think about it could agree that all these religions represent the same god. Even within the many sects of each religion, they are too different to be coherent. So what they say is monotheism is actually polytheism. They are all worshiping “other gods”. In misrepresenting the character (i.e. name) of God to the world, they have all broken the third commandment.

The fact that these religions and their subdivisions are in conflict with one another is another clear indication that they do not represent one, unified god. And if they do not represent one god, they represent multiple gods. That they are divided indicates that they are kingdoms of Satan that will not stand forever. The real God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, is one God — not many. All these man-made, religious gods are idols and “other gods”, about whom God warns his people that they should not worship them or serve them.

The Bible gives us a prophetic picture of how religious gods and idols are created in the story of the Golden calf where we find the first symbolic reference to religion as the work of man’s hands (i.e. the mental and physical human labor required to establish and maintain idolatrous religions). This work of creating and maintaining religious idols is the specific work that God had in mind when he told his people to rest from their work.

When God told his people to take a day off, he was not talking about occupational work or household chores and he was not talking about one day of the week. Rather he was referring to eternal, continuous resting from all kinds of religious work — including the work of making and serving religious idols.

Knowing man’s propensity to create religion, God allows that man will work at creating and maintaining religion for an indeterminate period of time he calls six days. But God also allows that, after doing religious work for six days, on the seventh day (i.e. the eternal period of time that follows the sixth day), man should cease (i.e. rest) from his creative/re-creative religious work and worship God in spirit and truth — not through religious activity.

The Sabbath (i.e. seventh day) therefore, is nothing more than the period of life when we no longer create or serve religious leaders (i.e. other gods) or the religious institutions. When we get to that place/time we enter into God’s rest in the Promised Land. We are then New Covenant disciples.