When Religion Gets in the Way of Faith
In this sermon from Mark 7, Pastor Kirt Anderson explores a tension that has existed for centuries and still shows up today: the difference between religious performance and genuine, heart-level faith. Drawing on his own story and a moving account from World War II, Pastor Kirt reminds us that God is not looking for people who check every box. He is looking for people whose hearts are turned toward him.
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Is it possible for religion to actually get in the way of a real relationship with God?
Pastor Kirt opens this message with a honest admission from his own life: he grew up going to church, sat through services year after year, and nothing ever really connected. It wasn’t until he encountered a message stripped of religious formality in a Young Life group that the faith actually touched his heart. His point is direct: religion, when it becomes about performance and tradition over sincerity, can actually crowd out the very thing it claims to point toward.
Why did Jesus criticize the Pharisees so harshly?
In Mark 7, a delegation of Pharisees traveled from Jerusalem specifically to scrutinize Jesus and his disciples. When they noticed the disciples eating without performing the ceremonial hand-washing ritual, they pushed back hard. Jesus responded by calling them hypocrites, quoting Isaiah 29 and pointing out that they had taken God’s law and buried it under layers of man-made tradition. Pastor Kirt explains that the Pharisees had not so much interpreted the law as expanded it, piling on additions until the original intent was nearly unrecognizable. Jesus was not defending poor hygiene. He was defending the heart of the law against a religious system that had drifted far from it.
What does Jesus mean when he says defilement comes from the heart?
Jesus told the crowd, “It is not what goes into your body that defiles you. You are defiled by what comes from your heart.” Pastor Kirt connects this directly to the kind of self-examination God actually calls us to. Rather than checking external boxes to feel spiritually qualified, God invites us to go inward, to be honest about where we have fallen short, and to trust in his grace rather than our performance. The religious answer, Pastor Kirt notes, is “just do all these things and you’re good.” But Jesus points in the opposite direction entirely.
Scripture Focus
Main Anchor Text, Mark 7:1-8, 14-15 (NLT):
“One day some Pharisees and teachers of religious law arrived from Jerusalem to see Jesus. They noticed that some of his disciples failed to follow the Jewish ritual of hand washing before eating… So the Pharisees and teachers of religious law asked him, ‘Why don’t your disciples follow our age-old tradition? They eat without first performing the hand-washing ceremony.’ Jesus replied, ‘You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you, for he wrote, “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship is a farce, for they teach man-made ideas as commands from God.” For you ignore God’s law and substitute your own tradition… All of you listen and try to understand. It’s not what goes into your body that defiles you; you are defiled by what comes from your heart.'”
Additional references: Isaiah 29:13, Romans 3:23, Mark 7:21-23.
A Story That Says It All
Pastor Kirt closes with a story about two soldiers in World War II France who lost a 19-year-old friend in battle and carried his body to a nearby church hoping to give him a proper burial. The priest, learning the soldier was Protestant rather than Catholic, refused to allow burial in the church cemetery. The soldiers buried their friend just outside the fence and moved on.
When they returned the next morning to say a few words, they could not find the grave. Confused, they knocked on the priest’s door again. The priest, visibly broken, told them he had been awake all night, crushed by what he had done. He said simply, “I moved the fence.”
Pastor Kirt’s application was clear: that is what God does. He moves the fence. Not because we earned our way in, but because his grace brings us in. Our efforts to qualify, to fit in, to check the right boxes, they are not what secure our place with God. His mercy is.
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