Playing church is the compromise of God’s new creation, it’s a performance driven façade of spirituality, and it’s a kind of illness within the body of Christ that can lead to the removal of His presence.
Introduction:
- ☐ – The Performer’s Pride blinds them
- ☐ – The Institutionalizer Inertia stifles their growth in discipleship
- ☐ – The Compartmentalizer’s Categorizing fragments their obedience
- ☐ – The Emotionalist’s Experience controls their conclusions
- ☐ – The Intellectual’s Idolatry deceives them
Observations & Conclusions: What dangers lead to “playing church”?
- Elevating human tradition as an authoritative substitute
- Redefining obedience to avoid responsibility
- Pretending to worship
- Ignoring the condition of the heart as the source of unfitness
- Resistance to correction
- Failure to commit to learn
Application:
- Ask: Where am I the most inclined to pretend?
Colossians 2:8
“See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ.”
Matthew 23:13-15
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to. “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are.”
Matthew 6:1-4
“Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. “So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”
Mark 7:14-19
“Again Jesus called the crowd to him and said, “Listen to me, everyone, and understand this. Nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them.” After he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about this parable. “Are you so dull?” he asked. “Don’t you see that nothing that enters a person from the outside can defile them? For it doesn’t go into their heart but into their stomach, and then out of the body.” (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean.)”
John 15:1-2
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.”
Mark 4:13
“Then Jesus said to them, “Don’t you understand this parable? How then will you understand any parable?”
Mark 7:18
“Are you so dull?” he asked.”
Mark 8:21
“He said to them, “Do you still not understand?”