Sánchez cautions against external, hypocritical religion in chapel sermon

“Don’t let your religious activity deceive you into thinking that just because you’re doing something for Jesus, you’re okay,” Juan Sánchez, senior pastor of High Pointe Baptist Church in Austin, Texas, cautioned during his March 22 chapel message at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and Texas Baptist College.

In his introduction of Sánchez, Adam W. Greenway, president of Southwestern Seminary and Texas Baptist College, said Sánchez “incarnates” what Southwestern Seminary is striving for in developing “leaders, pastors, and ministers who are able to rightfully handle and minister the Word of God with clarity and conviction” and to meet the needs of “an incredibly challenging cultural context today where there are issues we must confront that weren’t even on the radar screen, 5, 10, 15, 20 years ago.”

Sánchez was appointed associate professor of theology in the School of Theology at Southwestern Seminary in January of this year.

Sánchez warned about the potential of believers to become caught up in hypocritical and external religious activity. Directing the attention of the assembly to Mark 11:11-21, Sánchez expounded that in the passage, Jesus cursed a fig tree, cleared out the temple, and then returned to the fig tree to remark on its fruitlessness. In this passage, he explained, “Mark is helping us understand there is a specific judgment on the people of Israel for their fruitless religion.” 

He added, “Christianity is a heart religion, and when God has our heart, when we are pursuing Christ, when we are clinging to Christ, that relationship, that union and that communion with Christ bears fruit.” 

Sánchez noted that Jesus condemned external religion, highlighting verses 11 through 14. After explaining He is the anointed Son of David, Jesus went into the temple as Israel’s king, Sánchez observed, to “make an assessment” about the activities occurring there. He added that Mark’s gospel reveals, after assessing the situation, Jesus went to Bethany. The next day, Jesus returned to the temple and responded to the activities in the temple with “righteous indignation.” He added, “Jesus is purposeful. Everything Jesus does is with intention.”

In verse 14, Sánchez highlighted Jesus’ curse on the fruitless fig tree, which symbolized a prophetic judgment against Israel. 

“In Jesus’ day, Israel was busy with religious activity, but it was only external, and it was fruitless,” Sánchez observed. “This was the point that Jesus was making. And as Israel’s king, Jesus had the authority to judge Israel’s religious activity” as well as their fruitlessness.

Likewise, Sánchez explained, Jesus has the authority to inspect and judge the fruit of religious activity among today’s Christians. The cursing of the fig tree, he added, should serve as a warning to the church that often judges by outward appearance while the Lord judges the heart. 

“Beware of mere external religion,” cautioned Sánchez. “We have to constantly ask ourselves, ‘On what is our eternal hope resting?’” he said. “Our hope rests on nothing, but Christ alone. And this is what Jesus is trying to expose in Israel’s religion. They were counting on the busyness of their religious activity.”

Sánchez observed that the New Testament talks often about fruit. He said, “Mere external religion may show promise of fruit, but it produced no fruit, and Jesus will judge His followers by their fruit. Christianity is a religion of the heart, and out of the heart flows an abundance of fruit.”

“One of the first fruits that a Christian bears is a fruit of repentance,” Sánchez reminded the assembly. He also noted that the Bible also mentions the fruit of the Spirit, the fruit of light, the fruit of righteousness, and the fruit of lips as qualities that should set believers apart from the world.  

Jesus also condemns hypocritical religion, Sánchez added. In verses 15 through 21, he explained that Jesus’ anger was not so much about what was happening in the temple, but rather where it was happening. Noting Jesus’ reverence for the temple court as the “house of the Lord,” he observed that the money changers had turned it into “a den of robbers,” referring to Isaiah 56:7 and Jeremiah 7:11. 

“Israel was the display nation as to how God worked through the world to bring a people to Himself and fulfill the Abrahamic promises,” Sánchez observed. He noted that the Jews in Jesus’ day had taken over the one place where foreigners could come to pray, and that “their empty religious activity had pushed out non-Jews.” 

In their religious hypocrisy, Israel shut out foreigners from God’s temple and trusted in their temple worship rather that trusting the God of the temple, Sánchez said. “And as their king, Jesus had every right to judge their fruitlessness,” he added. 

Sánchez noted that the temple was destroyed when Jesus was killed, but by rising from the dead, Jesus became the temple of the living God, and thus He became the focus and the place of worship. 

“Jesus is saying that the hour has come where worship is no longer about bricks and mortar; worship is about a person, about Himself,” Sánchez explained. “True worship is worship that is grounded, and rooted, and focused in everything that God is for us in Jesus Christ. By killing Him, they made Him the focus of worship. They made Him the new temple.”

Through the preaching of the Gospel, believers bear fruit around the world, Sánchez said, but he cautioned against religious activity that might keep people away from worshipping God. He pointed out that the Christian’s religious activity may discriminate against others inadvertently and unconsciously. 

“How do we welcome people who are different than we are into our gatherings?” he asked, cautioning Christians against “preaching ourselves” in a way that God’s voice cannot be heard. He added, “our tendency is to demand that everyone sacrifice their preferences so that we will be comfortable,” but noted that “the Gospel demands that we all sacrifice our own preferences for the good of others. We should all be serving one another.” 

“Let’s go out of our way to welcome all peoples into our gatherings and into our churches,” Sánchez urged.  

Ending his message, Sánchez said that hypocritical religion bears no fruit and keeps people away from worshipping God. He concluded, “we cannot manufacture fruit. Fruit is produced only when we cling to Christ and rest in the Spirit working in us.” 

Sánchez has served as the senior pastor of High Pointe Baptist Church in Austin, Texas, since 2005. A past president of the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention, he is scheduled to deliver the convention sermon at the 2022 Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting in Anaheim. He is the first Latino pastor to be elected by messengers to give the address.

The entire sermon can be viewed here.

Chapel is held every Tuesday and Thursday morning at 10 a.m. (CT) in MacGorman Chapel on the campus of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Chapel may be viewed live at swbts.edu/live.