Our church has a hand out that visitors take with them that informs them about our church. At the bottom of the card it says, "Go to church because you want to not because you have to." Many of us can probably say at one time or another that we have attended church out of a sense of duty. At youth group last night I asked my students, "When it comes to church, what do you think God has in mind?" It is interesting that during Jesus' ministry the sin he attacks the most is not drunkenness, sexual immorality or foul language, but self-righteousness and hypocrisy. These harsh rebukes are often dealt to the religious leaders of the day. In Matthew 23:1-7 Jesus basically says, "Everything for you is about being seen in public as important people. I mean you love to be looked up to. You love to be respected. You love the best seats where everyone can see you.' And then Jesus says, 'Everything for you is about appearance. How things look to other people.'"
If this is our motivation then God despises our rituals. In Isaiah 29, God addresses the hypocrisy that existed among the Jewish people. He says in verse 13 that they "...draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me." When commenting on this verse R.C. Sproul affirms, "God desires expressions of devotion from the heart and hates empty ritual."
Many people often confuse Christianity with religion, meaning man's attempt to find God, and view the Bible as a list of do's and don'ts, which results in them doing away with the Christian faith altogether. Christianity is a relationship between God and man and the Bible is God's love letter to His people. Christians are people whose hearts have been broken and created anew by a God of mercy and who serve Him and one another out of a love for their creator and redeemer who first loved them.
