The Spiritual Sorrow Complex

06/17/2018

Ryan Hayden Mark

The Religious Solemnity Complex

Take your Bibles again and turn to Mark 2. Our text this morning is going to be verses 18-22.

Last week, I started a new series I’m calling “The Four Dysfunctions of Religious Conservatives.”

I am a religious conservative. No one would deny that. Almost all of you would fit the same description. We believe the Bible is the very word of God. We believe the Bible should be our sole authority in faith and practice. We actually go to church. We give to the church. We are kind of old school.

And one of the most shocking things in the gospels is that the biggest bad guys in the stories of Jesus weren’t the worldly crowd, and they weren’t the religious liberals. They were the very conservative religious crowd of their day: the Pharisees. They were religious conservatives. They were us.

Last week, I told you about the beginning of the Pharisees. They started as a revival movement. They started as a “Back to the Bible” movement. Over centuries, they stood firm for the faith even when invaded and persecuted. They knew the Bible better than anyone else, and they were determined to be teaching and living it. If you step back from the gospels and just look at the history, there is a lot to like about the Pharisees.

And yet, for all the Pharisees had going for them, they were monsters. They made life miserable. They caused all kinds of problems. They opposed Jesus at every turn.

So the question I want us to consider this month as we look at Mark 2 is: How do conservative religious people—people who love the Bible and are trying to please God—become monsters? What went wrong? How would Jesus live differently?

Let’s make it personal: How could we become monsters? How could we turn the Bible into a prison, and, no matter how well intentioned, how could we turn religion into a sickness?

I think we see four answers to that in Mark 2—what I’m calling “The Four Dysfunctions of Religious Conservatives.” We see these four things when we notice a contrast between these conservative religious Pharisees and Jesus.

Last week, I gave you the first way we can be religious monsters: By getting a superiority complex; by looking down at the world around us.

Let’s look at our text this morning and see a second way:

(Mark 2:18-22)

”18 And the disciples of John and of the Pharisees used to fast: and they come and say unto him, Why do the disciples of John and of the Pharisees fast, but thy disciples fast not? 19 And Jesus said unto them, Can the children of the bridechamber fast, while the bridegroom is with them? as long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. 20 But the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then shall they fast in those days. 21 No man also seweth a piece of new cloth on an old garment: else the new piece that filled it up taketh away from the old, and the rent is made worse. 22 And no man putteth new wine into old bottles: else the new wine doth burst the bottles, and the wine is spilled, and the bottles will be marred: but new wine must be put into new bottles.”

The second dysfunction of religious conservatives I see in this chapter is what I’m calling the “religious sorrow complex.” Before I can explain what that is, I need to show you what was going on in these verses.

In our text last week, the Pharisees accused Jesus of eating with publicans and sinners. In our text this week, they did something different. They were attacking Him because Jesus and His disciples didn’t fast.

Now we know right away that that isn’t true. Jesus fasted for forty days. Jesus taught about fasting in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus isn’t anti-fasting, so what were these Pharisees talking about? How could they accuse Jesus and the disciples of not fasting?

The Old Testament only commanded one fast day per year for the Jews. You could be a faithful, Bible-following Jew and fast only on the Day of Atonement. That was the only requirement. It was just one day per year. Of course, people were allowed to fast more than that, but it was between them and God. It wasn’t mandatory.

But, by the time Jesus had come around, the Pharisees had this tradition of fasting twice a week every week. On Mondays and Thursdays, they wouldn’t eat all day (until after dark). They would make a big show of it, too. They wouldn’t wash their faces, and they would just try to look miserable. It was a point of pride for them.

Jesus and His disciples didn’t play that game. It’s not that they didn’t fast. They did. They just didn’t make a big show of it and didn’t do it twice a week every week. They didn’t go around trying to look miserable and sad.

Actually, they looked happy. They had joy. This really bothered the Pharisees, so they asked Jesus about it.

They said:

”Why do the disciples of John and of the Pharisees fast, but thy disciples fast not? ”

Jesus gave them two answers.

First, Jesus compared His disciples to a wedding party.

In Jesus’ day, a wedding party was a big deal. It was a week long! It was a week of nonstop joy and happiness. If you were a part of the official wedding party, then it was supposed to be one of the happiest weeks of your life. This was such a big deal that the rabbis granted an official break from all religious requirements for wedding parties.

So Jesus was saying that while He was around, it was supposed to be happy. It was supposed to be a time of joy. When He went to the cross and when He was put in the grave, then there would be a time for fasting and mourning, but as long as Jesus was around, this was a time for joy.

Jesus’ second answer was to compare Himself to new cloth and new wine.

New cloth shrinks, so if you patch really old clothes with cloth that hasn’t shrunk yet, it’s going to shrink up and break your clothes.

In Jesus’ day, they would put grape juice in goatskin bottles. As the grape juice aged, it would expand and stretch the bottles. If you put new grape juice in old bottles that were already stretched out, it would break the bottles.

So Jesus was saying that He came to bring something completely new, and that their old religious system wouldn’t be able to hold it. Jesus wasn’t a patch to the religion these guys practiced, and Jesus wouldn’t fit in the bottle of their constrictive religion system. Jesus was bringing something new and something that was characterized by joy and gladness.

So what does this little episode teach us about the Pharisees? What possible pitfall for religious people do we see here?

Last week, I told you the first dysfunction of religious conservatives we see in this chapter is a superiority complex—looking down on people. In this little story, we see something else. I’m calling it a solemnity complex.

Here is a definition:

The religious solemnity complex is the belief that God doesn’t want us to be happy and joyous, and that we are only holy if we are miserable and serious all the time.

Now I know you’ve met very fine religious people—people who are serious about God—who walk around all the time like they are sucking on persimmons.

“How are you doing, brother?“

“Oh, I’m suffering, but I’m getting through.”

There are people who can never be happy without feeling guilty about it. They think that if there is anything that brings them joy in life, it must be worldly and must be forsaken. They think that if they laugh, they may have just committed a sin. They are spiritual Eeyores.

That’s bad enough, but these spiritual Eeyores take it further. They don’t just live miserably. They try to please God by inventing forms of sacrifice and hardship that He never prescribed. In other words, they try to make God’s commands in the Bible harder and tougher.

That’s what I think was going on with these Pharisees. I’m calling it the religious sorrow complex.

So let me pray this morning, and I’ll give you a couple of principles from the Bible that will help us overcome this religious sorrow complex.

Let’s pray

The first thing I want you to understand about this idea of being sorrowful and uncomfortable for Jesus is...

1. God is good and all of his laws are intended for our flourishing.

Thomas Paine is a guy whom most Americans know as the one who wrote the pamphlet “Common Sense” that helped spark the American Revolution, but Thomas Paine was actually a vehement anti-religion writer in his day. He was like his generation’s Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens. He hated God, and he hated religion.

Paine grew up in a very strict Quaker family and ran as far from that kind of life as he possibly could. I was reading years ago, and I read one sentence that from Paine that really made me think. He said:

If the god of the quakers had invented the flowers, they would come in only black and white.

Think about that. As a young boy, Paine looked at the conservative religious people around him and thought that their God was someone who just wanted to suck all the life out of life. Their God was someone who wanted to enforce a bland and colorless existence.

I think a lot of Christians believe in their heart that God is a grumpy old man who wants to take all of the joy and gladness out of their lives—no smiling; no fun; no enjoyment.

They believe that God’s laws are designed to make us “holy,” and their idea of “holy” is 50% “weird” and 50% “miserable.”

Nothing could be further from the truth. God is good, and God’s laws and requirements for us are good. They are designed for our benefit and happiness. We’ll talk more about this next week, but let me briefly say that God knows better than us about what we need to be truly happy and joyful. We as religious people have this sick tendency to take God’s laws and twist and distort them. We make them stricter than God intended and suck the joy out of life.

Listen, folks: God isn’t anti-fun. God invented fun. God invented joy. The reason we have this amazing variety of tastes and food is because God put them here for our enjoyment.

God isn’t anti-creativity. The reason why we have these creative minds is because our Heavenly Father was the Creator, and we are made in His image.

God isn’t anti-humor. I believe God has a sense of humor. I mean, come on, remember the story of Balaam’s donkey. God had to be laughing about that one. I don’t think that Jesus spent His time on this earth walking around completely solemn all the time, never smiling, never laughing, just 100% percent serious.

God isn’t anti-romance or anti-sex. The reason why we have romance and family is because God gave them to us to enjoy. Read Song of Solomon sometime. God’s not against that stuff. It has its proper place, but He’s not against it.

If you believe living for God is accepting a life of gray colorless misery, then you don’t know God. If you believe that God’s laws are God’s way of enforcing misery into our lives, then you really don’t understand the Bible.

God isn’t anti-joy, anti-happiness, or anti-life. God wants you to live a life of joy and happiness, and to live a full and fulfilling life. He just knows the best way for that to happen, and that you, left to your own devices, will mess it up.

A second point I want to make about this this morning is...

2 . God derives no joy from our self-inflicted misery.

In the Middle Ages, there was this movement called monasticism. Men would become monks, separate themselves from the rest of mankind, and try to live as miserably as possible. They would starve themselves or only eat the blandest and distasteful of foods, and take years long oaths of silence. Some of them even made these shirts out of hair specifically designed to be as uncomfortable as possible. They did all of this believing that it pleased God.

I don’t think God derives any joy from us making ourselves miserable in the name of religion. I don’t think it makes God happy at all.

There are people who are always giving things up for God. They enjoy bowling, so they are going to give up bowling for God. They enjoy reading and gardening, so they are going to give up reading or gardening for God. They enjoy pizza, so they they are going to give up pizza for God.

You get the idea. I don’t think that kind of thing makes God happy at all. Now there may be a time to give up bowling, pizza, or gardening if it’s becoming a god in your life—if you need to give it up for self-discipline—but don’t think that the act of denying yourself things God has given us to enjoy makes Him especially pleased with you.

Most of that stuff is legalism. Most if it is trying to please God by our works. Most of it only makes sense in context of trying to work your way into God’s good graces.

Turn with me to 1 Timothy 4 and we’ll read verses 1-5. 1 Timothy 4:1-5 says:

”1 Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; 2 Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron;”

So false teachers will come in the last days and speak lies and the doctrines of devils. What are these doctrines? Keep reading.

“3 Forbidding to marry, [and commanding] to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth. 4 For every creature of God [is] good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving: 5 For it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer.”

Do you see it? God isn’t against the good of this earth. It needs to be kept in perspective. It shouldn’t rule over us, but He wants us to receive it with thanksgiving.

Okay, so you might be saying, “What about sacrifice? What about all of the sacrifices in the Old Testament? What about Abraham giving up Isaac?” Wasn’t that people making themselves miserable for God’s sake?

That brings me to my next point:

3. Jesus satisfied God’s demand for sacrifice.

Every sacrifice in the Old Testament was pointing to Jesus. They were all a picture of Him. When Jesus died on the cross and rose again, that did away with any need for a sacrifice. Nothing else had to die for God to be satisfied.

The pagans were always cutting themselves and sacrificing their children, thinking that this made their gods happy and pleased with them.

But listen to this and hear this: We don’t have to try to make God happy. We don’t have to work, make ourselves miserable, or give, give, give in order to win God’s favor. God’s favor was earned through the death of Jesus Christ.

If you are suffering through church, giving, or keeping your life clean because you think that will make God happy with you—because you think that will somehow tip the scales in your favor—you are doing good things for the wrong reason. Nothing you do is going to be enough to erase your sin and please God. I repeat: Nothing.

The only hope we have is in what Jesus did for us.

Galatians 2:16 says:

”Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.”

Ephesians 2:8-9 says:

”8 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: [it is] the gift of God: 9 Not of works, lest any man should boast.”

God is satisfied through what Jesus did for you. In other words, Jesus took the test and passed for you. Jesus paid the debt for you.

Let me give you one more point and then I’ll wrap this up.

4. Everything we do for Jesus should be done out of gratitude and joy.

The New Testament talks about rejoicing 41 times.

Philippians 4:4 says:

”Rejoice in the Lord alway: [and] again I say, Rejoice.”

1 Thessalonians 5:16 says:

”Rejoice evermore.”

1 Peter 1:8 talks about rejoicing with ”joy unspeakable and full of glory.”

Many, many times the New Testament talks about having joy. Joy is one of the fruits of the Spirit. All of our faith is supposed to be characterized by “righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.”

The Christian life isn’t “I have to make myself miserable so that God will be happy with me.” It is “God is happy with me in Jesus, so let’s live for God in joy.”

Conclusion

So let me wrap this up by asking you a couple of questions:

The first question I want to ask is: Are you still trying to please God with your works as a way to go to heaven?

Because if you are, you either haven’t been saved or you don’t understand your salvation. Jesus did that for you. All He asks you to do is believe in Faith. ”Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.”

The second question is for the rest of us: Do others see your Christian walk and see joy or do they see self-imposed misery?

In other words, do you give the impression that the only way to be holy is to be miserable?

Let me ask you another question: What kind of message do you think that is sending about our God? Why would anyone want to serve a God that takes pleasure in you being sad?

Look at Jesus here. He and His disciples were so happy and so full of life that they offended the grumpy religious people of the day. Let’s be like Jesus and forever get rid of this idea that God wants us to be miserable for Him.