The Religious Superiority Complex

Every great story has a great bad guy.

Stories without bad guys are kind of boring. Snow White needs the wicked witch. Sleeping Beauty needs Maleficent. Beauty and the Beast needs a Gaston. Batman needs the Joker. The Boston Red Sox need the New York Yankees. You get the idea.

The gospels, the stories of the life and death of Jesus, have a consistent bad guy. The problem is that the bad guy in the gospels isn’t who you would think. It isn’t the scary Roman soldiers with their powerful oppression. It isn’t the wicked Herodians with their do-whatever-you-want attitude. It isn’t the corrupt Sadducees who were incredibly liberal and politicized. It isn’t the tax collectors, the prostitutes, or some hated minority. The bad guy in the gospel records is us.

By “us,” I mean conservative religious people; the people who were serious about obeying God; the people who loved the Bible; the people who held to the old traditions. These people in the gospels are represented by the Pharisees.

I’ve always been fascinated and obsessed with the Pharisees. Since I was in college, I’ve read everything I could about them. What I’ve found out might surprise you.

You see, the Pharisees were not monsters. At least they didn’t start out that way. When you read the Old Testament, the Jews kept chasing idolatry. The Old Testament sometimes seems like just the chronicle of the failing Jews. They failed over and over again to resist temptation and love God. They chased idol after idol. Finally, God had had enough and sent them into captivity.

When they got back from captivity, there was a group of Jews who had a revival, and they said, “Enough is enough. We need to separate from all of this wicked nonsense, serve God, and become the people who truly live by the Bible.” These people called themselves “the separated ones” or “the Pharisees.”

And they were serious about it. They really did love the Bible. They really did want to please God. At one point between the Old and New Testaments, they chose certain death by the hands of the Greeks over compromising their faith. They passed on their religious way of life from generation to generation and by the time Jesus came on the scene, they were a powerful force in Israel. They were the people who loved the Bible, and they were the people who were trying to live it out in their daily lives. They were the conservative religious people.

The Pharisees are us. Once you realize that, the gospels take on a whole new meaning and have a whole different application in our lives.

And paradoxically, they—the religious people, the moral people, the conservatives, the old time religion crowd—are the biggest bad guys in the story of Jesus.

Let’s read as our text this morning Mark 2:15-17:

”15 And it came to pass, that, as Jesus sat at meat in his house, many publicans and sinners sat also together with Jesus and his disciples: for there were many, and they followed him. 16 And when the scribes and Pharisees saw him eat with publicans and sinners, they said unto his disciples, How is it that he eateth and drinketh with publicans and sinners? 17 When Jesus heard [it], he saith unto them, They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”

Mark 2 and the beginning of Mark 3 gives us a series of stories with one common theme: The bad guys - The Pharisees.

• When Jesus heals the man sick of the palsy, they are sitting there (it’s standing room only, and they are sitting) judging Jesus and trying to catch Him in His words.
• In verses 3-17, when Jesus calls Levi the tax collector and makes him one of His disciples, the Pharisees are there to criticize.
• In verse 18, the Pharisees are giving Jesus and His disciples a hard time about not fasting like they thought they were supposed to.
• In verses 23-27, the bad guys show up again to pick on the disciples for supposedly breaking the sabbath by eating a snack when they walked through a field.
• And in the first part of chapter 3, they are in a synagogue on the sabbath, trying to judge Jesus because He dared to heal someone on the sabbath day.

I think we can look at the Pharisees in this chapter and see four things, four traps, four sicknesses, that we as conservative religious people have to be especially careful not to fall into. These are four ways that conservative religious people like us can turn into monsters. There is a popular business book titled The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Over the next four weeks, I’m going to preach a little series from this chapter called: The Four Dysfunctions of Religious Conservatives.”

For the next four weeks, we are going to look into these stories, and we are going to see four traps that we as conservative religious people are prone to fall into. These are four ways that we as Bible believers can turn into the bad guys; fours ways we can become monsters.

Can I be honest with you? My favorite people are Christians. Church people are my people. I can tell you where every one of my best friends will be this morning, but church people have also been some of the biggest monsters in my life. True religion is life-saving and life-giving medicine, but even life-saving medicine can be abused. Well-meaning religious people can be ugly. We are going to see that over the next four weeks.

And we are going to see something else as we look at these four things: We are going to see Jesus. When you put Jesus next to the religious monsters, He becomes so much more attractive and so much more powerful. And the truth is that the only remedy for these dysfunctions is a long look at Jesus.

So let’s pray and I’ll preach on the first of these dysfunctions, something I’m calling “The religious superiority complex.”

Let’s pray

The first dysfunction of religious conservatives that we see comes out in verses 13-17 where Jesus called a man named Levi to be his disciple. Levi was a publican (a tax collector).

Levi, of course, would go on to become Matthew. This tax collector would end up writing one of the four gospels. He would be faithful to the end and would preach the gospel to many people. History tells us he became a missionary and traveled around the world preaching the gospel. Like all of the other disciples, he would probably end up dying for Jesus as a martyr.

But at this point he was a publican. He was a tax man.

Nobody likes a tax man, even today. The Topps trading card company is never going to make a set of IRS auditor cards.

But the tax men of Jesus day were much more hated than the tax men of today. The tax collectors in Jesus’ day were kind of franchisees of the Roman Government. Not only did they take what the Roman government demanded, but they could find ways to add extra fees and tolls to enrich themselves.

Nobody was more hated by the conservative Jews than the publicans. It was the most despised job in Israel. Being a publican in Israel was something like being an abortion doctor today. It was a job that made you very rich and also a job that immediately meant that you were hated by most people.

So Jesus comes and says to this publican, “Follow me,” and the publican just gets up, leaves his life behind, and follows Jesus. Then he invites all his publican friends to eat with Jesus so He can change them as well.

And the Pharisees—the religious crowd—look on, and they can’t stand it. They say in verse 15: “How is it that he eateth and drinketh with publicans and sinners?”

In other words: “How dare he, a religious teacher, eat with a bunch of sell-outs, worldlings, and prostitutes!”

That was their attitude.

You see, the Pharisees hated the publicans and other groups so much that they couldn’t imagine anyone spending time with them for any reason whatsoever. Even though it was evident that Levi was giving up being a publican and following Jesus, they couldn’t stand it.

This is the religious superiority complex. Let me give you a couple of points about this:

1. The definition of the religious superiority complex

The religious superiority complex is this:

It is when religious people begin to look down and hate the very ones they should be reaching out to and lifting up.

When you fall victim to the religious superiority complex, you move from the idea that God hates sin to the idea that God hates people. You start to see people as an enemy to be destroyed rather than as a mission field to be reached.

Jesus said in John 3:17:

”For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.”

But when you get the religious superiority complex, you start to condemn everyone. You start to think that this is the heart of God. You believe you are the good ones, and they are the bad ones. You are the ones who follow the rules, who read the Bible, who go to church, who pay the tithes, and those people—all those people you see at Wal-mart or you watch on TV—are just kindling for God’s wrath.

You start to see people as the enemy: Those Democrats; those Mexicans; those people at the church down the road.

You start to compare yourself with them and pat yourself on the back.

And before long, you start to believe two things:

One: That you are kind of all right. You are a pretty good person. I mean, Christ might have saved you, but He didn’t have to save you from much.

The second thing you begin to believe is that God hates them, and they are beyond God’s mercy. You would be okay if God judged them all.

And this leads me to...

2. The Root Problems with the Religious Superiority Complex.

There are two root issues with the religious superiority complex.

The first of these is that when we get like this...

A. We underestimate God’s mercy and grace.

Listen to me. God is far, far more merciful than we give Him credit for. God wants to save sinners more than we ever could want Him to save sinners. We are so prone to forget that.

This morning in Sunday School, we talked about the parable of the lost sheep. That’s an amazing parallel to this story. It really shows the heart of God. He wants to go after the lost sheep and then rejoice when he is found again.

This week in my devotions, I read the book of Jonah. Jonah was called by God to go to the biggest city in the world at the time, Nineveh, and preach the grace and mercy of God to them. He didn’t want to do it. He hated the Assyrians. He tried to run from God’s call.

You know the story. He ended up in the belly of a fish. He repents and gets spat out. He reluctantly goes into the middle of this great city and preaches a super short message, and the Ninevites repent. They turn to God.

And Jonah was mad about it. He went out to the desert overlooking the city to stew and whine about it. A plant he was using for shade shrivels up and dies, and Jonah is mad at God about it. It’s a really weird way to end the story.

But there is one amazing verse at the end of Jonah I want to read to you because it shows the heart and mercy of God. Jonah 4:11 says:

”And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and [also] much cattle?”

God was saying, “There are 120,000 children in this city, and you want me to destroy it? There are innocent animals in this city, and you want me to wipe it out?”

That’s what the religious superiority complex does to us. It makes us hate people. It makes us think that God hates people, too. It makes us forget that God is merciful to the core.

In the story of Jonah, God showed mercy to the heathen sailors. God showed mercy to the Ninevites. But do you know who got the most mercy in that story? It was Jonah.

And that brings me to the second root problem with the religious superiority complex...

B. We forget that we are the recipients of God’s mercy and grace.

I don’t know about you, but there are things in my past I’m not at all proud of. There are things I’ve said, thoughts I’ve thought, things I’ve watched that would thoroughly humiliate me if you were to know them. When God saved me, He saved a proud, arrogant, lustful, rebellious, angry little punk. It was an act of mercy. It was an act of grace.

And do you know what? I need that mercy every day. I’m so grateful for Lamentations 3:22-23, which says:

”22 [It is of] the LORD'S mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. 23 [They are] new every morning: great [is] thy faithfulness.”

I wasn’t just dependent on the mercies of God to get saved. I’m dependent on the mercies of God to stay saved. I’m dependent on those mercies every day.

And you are, too. If you are saved today, God didn’t save a righteous man or woman; He saved a sinner. And let’s be honest: You rely on that same mercy every day.

But if we are not careful, we’ll forget that. We’ll start to think we are something. We’ll start to think we aren’t that bad. Then we’ll look around at the world and think they are a mess deserving of God’s wrath, and it gets ugly, folks.

We start to project to the world that God hates people and wants to destroy them.

It’s a particular trap for conservative religious people. It’s a trap for us.

Now, I’ve given you a diagnosis. We’ve identified the sickness. Let’s look at the medicine.

We’ve defined the religious superiority complex. We’ve talked about the two root issues of the superiority complex. But in this passage we have...

3. The cure to the religious superiority complex.

And listen, folks: The cure isn’t an idea. It isn’t a maxim. The cure is a person. The cure is Jesus Christ.

The religious superiority complex says, “God hates people, especially those people.”

But look at Jesus here. Look at Him! Jesus cares about these people. Jesus loves these people. Jesus can save these people, transform these people, and use these people.

How can this be? How can God be good and still show mercy to people who are bad? God is the Judge, and a good judge punishes. If we had a judge that just forgave everybody, we’d throw him out.

This is a real problem. The Bible puts it this way: How can God be just and be a justifier of the wicked?

How can Jesus be holy and show such mercy to unholy people? How can Jesus be just and show grace and love to wicked people?

I mean, shouldn’t the crooked tax collectors of this world pay? Shouldn’t the thieves pay? Shouldn’t the murderers get theirs?

You know the answer. God can show love and mercy to the sinners because God already punished their sin.

At the end of this book of Mark, Jesus would be put on a cross to die, and the sins of those wicked people would be put on His shoulders.

John 3:16-17 are two of the most famous verses in the Bible, and they are very appropriate here:

”16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. 17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.”

God loves sinners. Jesus died for sinners.

If you are a sinner this morning, come to Jesus. Put your faith and trust in Him. He didn’t come to condemn you; He came to save you. He came to heal you. He’ll show you His mercy and grace. Why not do what Levi did in this story and get up and follow Him? Trust Him. Believe on Him.

Most of us this morning give testimony that we’ve already done that. Do you know what we need this morning? We need to remember that same message: God loves sinners. God shows us mercy and grace.

The Apostle Paul said in 1 Timothy 1:15:

”This [is] a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.”

If you have been the victim of the religious superiority complex today, repent of that. Look to Jesus and let it fall away.

For our invitation song this morning, I want us to sing “Amazing Grace,” and I want you to think about the words. ”Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.”