OLD/FIRST COVENANT RELIGION IS IDOLATRY AND PROSTITUTION
While there are many characteristics that distinguish faith from religion (see Two Covenants Part 1 and Two Covenants Part 2), there are several main disconnects between religion and faith that are worth studying:

As we read the Bible, it is easy to see why the Jewish and Christian religions have adopted the religious characteristics by which they are so well known: All of the features listed under the Religion column above are based on literal interpretations of the Biblical. This being true, we might logically wonder how religion could possibly be idolatry and ask the following questions:

The answer to these questions is that the Bible uses physical things and bodily actions to represent spiritual truths. We should not, therefore, always interpret what we read in the Bible literally. We should, however, listen for God to reveal to us the deeper, spiritual meanings of the literal words. The ability to hear God’s voice, however, is greatly confused by the practice of listening to the voices and reading the words of human mediators who presume to teach from their interpretations of the literal words of the Bible.

The model for human mediators (e.g. pastors, priests, theologians, rabbis, prophets, evangelists, etc.) is found in the laws of Moses which are the basis of the Old/First Covenant. These mediators teach and administer doctrines and laws (moral and ceremonial) that govern beliefs and guide religious activities. The laws of Moses and the Old/First Covenant also go into much detail about physical structures (i.e. tabernacle, altars, etc.) and physical things (i.e. water, fire, wine, wash basin, utensils, menorah, incense, sacrifices, blood, clothing, etc.). When interpreted in simple, natural terms, these all point to the iconic, observable indicators of religions around the world. The problem is, however, that these Biblical references to natural things and physical activities are only Symbols, Signs, Types, Copies, Shadows and Patterns of spiritual truths that God wants to communicate to his people.

For example, the ubiquitous presence of human mediators (i.e. priests and prophets) and physical objects (e.g. temples, incense, water, food, clothing, etc.) in Old/First Covenant worship rituals reliably predicts that they would be the basis for the form and function of religion. Therefore, religion’s justification for including human mediators and physical objects in worship has always been the reasonable, but wrong, notion that if human mediators and physical objects were exist in the Bible, they should also be included in religion.

Bible stories often report how God relates to large groups of people all at one time in one place under the direction of human mediators who teach about God or guide in ceremonial worship. We also see it in Jesus teaching in the temple, Sermon on the Mount, Pentecost and other events where Jesus or a disciple preached a message to a large group of people. From these examples, generations of religious leaders have concluded that they should gather and organize people in unique congregations where members will relate to God as a group through a religious leader. This all seems very reasonable when we interpret the Bible literally, but it is not what God really wants from his people.

We also find many Bible stories that reveal how God relates to individuals privately. Notable examples include Adam, Noah, Moses, all of the prophets, Levitical priests serving in the Holy Place of the tabernacle and temple, Peter, the Apostle Paul and John, all of whom had intimate encounters with God. Religion interprets these stories of God speaking with spiritual leaders as the rationale for choosing and hiring called, spiritually elite religious leaders (i.e. clergy) to report what God has said to the spiritually deficient congregation (i.e. laity).

The long-standing practice of training and hiring professional clergy to speak on God’s behalf to the non-professional laity has convinced generations of laity to believe that they must have spiritually gifted religious leaders to hear from God for them because the laity does not have the special anointing that the religious leaders have. These distinctions between clergy and laity creates the religious environment that requires religious leaders to constantly affirm their qualifications to lead by putting their righteousness on public display so that people can see and hear them interacting with God through prayer, wearing certain kinds of clothing, performing ministry services, and preaching. If the leaders do not do these things, they would soon lose their jobs. If they do their jobs, people will continue to give them income, honor, titles, position and authority to lead them and preach to them on God’s behalf.

The fact that leaders preach and teach from the Bible and use God’s name does not alter the fact that they have intentionally inserted themselves between God and man in a way that discourages people from studying the Bible themselves and listening to God’s voice themselves. In effect, religious leaders become stand-ins, or substitutes for God. They usurp God’s desire and right to interact with his people intimately and directly — just like a husband has a right and desire to be intimate with his wife. God calls this unwanted, unjust, uncalled for intervention between God and his people harlotry and prostitution because religious leaders presume be a husband to God’s bride. This relationship that human teachers/leaders have with God’s people fulfills his definition of an idol and an “other god”: They are physical, human, observable substitutes for the real God who cannot be seen with the natural eye or heard with the natural ear.

Religious leaders and the people who follow them fail to understand God’s perspective on these relationships. Reading the literal Bible, they see the models for religion in Biblical priests, shepherds, prophets, evangelists, and other Biblical characters who hire out their self-qualified spiritual gifts to serve God. Based on these literal interpretations of the Bible, generations of God-fearers have believed that this clergy/laity relationship is what God wants. Thus they create religious organizations and train religious leaders to conform to their expectations. It is an example of everyone doing what seems right in their own eyes in total ignorance of what God really wants which is that his people love him with all of their heart, mind, soul and strength.

In God’s view, when people follow religious leaders and listen to them instead of listening to and obeying his voice, they have divided their love between God and the religious leaders. Divided love does not satisfy the requirement that God’s people love him with all of their heart, mind, soul and strength. Divided love enables the religious environment in which harlotry and idolatry flourish.

Divided love and affections that people have for their religious leaders causes many problems:

This is only a very short sample of hundreds of ways that religious leaders interfere with God’s work. To summarize, it can be said that religious leaders are paid employees who conform to written human laws which preempt God’s spiritual laws written on their hearts. It can also be rightly said that the organizational context in which religious leaders conduct the work for which they are paid is a business that can be observed with the natural eye.

In God’s view, the entire business of religion is a robber’s den where religious leaders and their followers exchange money for religious merchandise (e.g teaching, sacraments, rituals, writing, music, jewelry, clothing, etc.). This is the religious system that Jesus symbolically destroyed when he drove out those who were buying and selling merchandise in the temple.