Mark Twain said, "Having spent considerable time with good people, I can understand why Jesus liked to be with tax-collectors and sinners." God always desired relationship, not religion. God desires unity, religion seeks uniformity. God desires individuals to be moved by the Spirit as He moves though His chosen vessels, religion desires conformity. Relationship rests on grace and mercy, religion rests on legalism as sets of rules are established. It is so easy for any group to move from relationship into religion. Once established, those in power will squash individuality. But individuality is necessary if the body of believers are to remain viable and usable. This does not mean to conform to society by becoming socially relevant, it means to continuously assess whether or not a body of believers are following Biblical principles or church-established principles. But being moved by the Spirit in the face of the religious establishment will often not be received well. Consider how aggressively the religious establishment sought to kill Jesus and Stephen. Though eventually carried out by the pagan rulers, consider how aggressively Peter, John, and Paul were persecuted by the religious establishment.

We read in Matthew 9:16-17, "No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; for the patch pulls away from the garment, and the tear is made worse. Nor do they put new wine into old wineskins, or else the wineskins break, the wine is spilled, and the wineskins are ruined. But they put new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved." In the history of the church there are always new movements. This is always the case because the establishment church has a tendency to get hard and fixed as it develops traditions which become as hard and stale as law. When God wants to do a new work, it is these traditions and bylaws which prevent it from expanding. It is these traditions which restrict and prevent the moving of the Holy Spirit.

When Jesus healed the paralytic in 9:1-8, we read in 9:3-4, "And at once some of the scribes said within themselves, "This Man blasphemes!" But Jesus knowing their thoughts, said,...". Religious people appear polished on the outside, but God knows our thoughts and motives (Hebrews 4:13). These same religious individuals in their self-righteousness, say in 9:11, "And when the Pharisees saw it, they said to His disciples, "Why does your Teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?" Yet it was these tax collectors and sinners who were open to the teachings of Jesus and eventually the movement of the Holy Spirit, who changed the world, with the religious system rendered unmovable due to their fixed traditions and preconceived ideas.
People need to understand that the church is not a building or a denomination, but the body of believers. When we get a fresh message from the Holy Spirit, which is backed by the sound doctrine of the Bible, we must never fear speaking forth this truth for fear of being ostracized. We read in Matthew 10:27-28, "Whatever I tell you in the dark, speak in the light; and what you hear in the ear, preach on the housetops. And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." They say it takes around 50 years for a movement to become a museum, or for a fresh movement of the Spirit to become stale, trapped in the conformity of religion. For freshness to remain, the Holy Spirit cannot be quenched. When bringing forth a fresh moving of the Spirit we cannot expect it to be received well. In Matthew 10:34-37, Jesus talks how this type of being a vessel will often divide families, but exhorts us in 10:38-39, "And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of me. He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it." We will only hear from God if we are in His Word.