"The Pharisees and some of the scribes gathered around Him when they had come from Jerusalem, and had seen that some of His disciples were eating their bread with impure hands, that is, unwashed. (For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they carefully wash their hands, thus observing the traditions of the elders; and when they come from the market place, they do not eat unless they cleanse themselves; and there are many other things which they have received in order to observe, such as the washing of cups and pitchers and copper pots.) The Pharisees and the scribes *asked Him, "Why do Your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat their bread with impure hands?" And He said to them, "Rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written: ‘This people honors Me with their lips, But their heart is far away from Me. ‘But in vain do they worship Me, Teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.’ Neglecting the commandment of God, you hold to the tradition of men."
He was also saying to them, "You are experts at setting aside the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition. For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘He who speaks evil of father or mother, is to be put to death’; but you say, ‘If a man says to his father or his mother, whatever I have that would help you is Corban (that is to say, given to God),’ you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or his mother; thus invalidating the word of God by your tradition which you have handed down; and you do many things such as that."
Good Morning my beloved,
We welcome you to worship in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is my honor and great privilege to study God's Word with you today. We are so thankful that the Lord lead you join us. I want to let you know how grateful I am for each of you, for your faithfulness, dedication and commitment to share God's Word with others. People all around the world are desperate for the Word of God. It's a tremendous blessing, but it's a blessing that brings a huge challenge. With more people coming to Christ, pastors and church leaders are asking for more Bibles in their native languages.
We welcome you to worship in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is my honor and great privilege to study God's Word with you today. We are so thankful that the Lord lead you join us. I want to let you know how grateful I am for each of you, for your faithfulness, dedication and commitment to share God's Word with others. People all around the world are desperate for the Word of God. It's a tremendous blessing, but it's a blessing that brings a huge challenge. With more people coming to Christ, pastors and church leaders are asking for more Bibles in their native languages.
We've all been in situations where someone wants to critique what you
were doing, to make sure that you're doing it correctly, implying that you're not and you actually
know more than they do.
In Exodus 20:3, God said "You shall have no other gods before Me." To worship the wrong god in the right way is a very serious problem. However, to worship the right God in the wrong way, is just a serious. In Deuteronomy 6:5
God said, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might." Traditions; why do we do the things we do? Sometimes we do the same things because we’ve always
done them the same way and we've never questioned the reason why.
In our text today, Jesus finds Himself in such a situation with the scribes and Pharisees, the religious leaders of His day, who cherished their man-made tradition more than the Word of God.
Jerusalem was the center of Judaism, and the Pharisees and scribes traveled from Jerusalem to Galilee, which was not a short journey, it was around 50-60 miles, just to attack Jesus' teaching and discredit Him publicly. Jesus wasn’t having it and He deals with them severely because these self-righteous religious pretenders who were supposed to be teaching and upholding the commandments of God, were instead breaking God’s commands, teaching and upholding the traditions of men. In other words, they were worshipping the right God in the wrong way, in fact, they had perfected it to an art; such is the history of the people of Israel. Jesus makes it clear, in verses 6 and 7, God will not accept superficial worship when He says "‘This people honors Me with their lips, But their heart is far away from Me. ‘But in vain do they worship Me, Teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.’" Thankfully, we’re not like that, are we? We would never require people to adhere to things that aren’t in the Bible, to dress a certain way, meet at a certain place, at certain times or require only specific instruments be used for worship songs. The truth is, some people are and some churches still are. Worship is to be dictated and directed by the Word of God, in a way that stirs our hearts to repentance and obedience. True worship is never to be dictated by the traditions and preferences of men.
Let us pray
Heavenly Father,
Father, thank You for Your Word, may we study this passage with gratitude in our hearts. May we repent for empty meaningless worship, going through the motions rather than cultivating a heart filled with praise for all that You have done through Christ on our behalf, even when Scripture confronts us where we don’t want to be confronted, conflicting with the evil of the day. May faithful obedience to Your Word be the desire and direction of our lives, that we would condemn the sin in our lives rather than celebrating it, calling others to do the same. Lord, we pray that You will grant repentance leading to salvation to those whose hearts are far from You and desperately need acknowledge the sin in their lives, both within and outside of the church. All for Your glory and Christ's sake
In Jesus' name we ask and pray
Amen
Today's Message: Separating Tradition From Truth
As we come to the Word of God today, we embark on a new chapter in Mark's gospel, written primarily to Roman Christians and non-Christians who were illiterate, so he is very selective about what he writes, making it a more compact version in order to keep the pace moving rather quickly, which explains why Mark's account is the shortest of the four gospels, but certainly no less important. And in keeping with that spirit, you may have noticed, we're moving through it much more rapidly than we did with Matthew's.
Open your Bibles to Mark chapter 7, verses 1 through 13. I invite you to follow along with me as I read, to set the text in our
minds. Mark 7:1-13. Let's open our hearts and listen what the Spirit of God has to say to us today.
"The Pharisees and some of the scribes gathered around Him when they had come from Jerusalem, and had seen that some of His disciples were eating their bread with impure hands, that is, unwashed. (For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they carefully wash their hands, thus observing the traditions of the elders; and when they come from the market place, they do not eat unless they cleanse themselves; and there are many other things which they have received in order to observe, such as the washing of cups and pitchers and copper pots.) The Pharisees and the scribes *asked Him, "Why do Your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat their bread with impure hands?" And He said to them, "Rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written: ‘This people honors Me with their lips, But their heart is far away from Me. ‘But in vain do they worship Me, Teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.’ Neglecting the commandment of God, you hold to the tradition of men."
He was also saying to them, "You are experts at setting aside the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition. For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘He who speaks evil of father or mother, is to be put to death’; but you say, ‘If a man says to his father or his mother, whatever I have that would help you is Corban (that is to say, given to God),’ you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or his mother; thus invalidating the word of God by your tradition which you have handed down; and you do many things such as that."
Jesus is at the peak of His popularity, everywhere He goes massive crowds of people gather to come see Him, to experience the miracles of healing their sick, delivering people from demons, raising the dead and the most amazing miracle of all, feeding the five thousand. Sadly, there weren’t many who believed in Him, they wanted to have all their needs met.
Let's look at verse 1,"The Pharisees and some of the scribes gathered around Him when they had come from Jerusalem." Here we meet the condemning prestigious religious leaders, the self-proclaimed experts of religious theology who have come all they way from Jerusalem looking for more ways to discredit Jesus. They hate Jesus and they want Him dead, so they're looking for anything they can find to make sure that can happen. False religion always hates the Truth
It's very very important to understand that tradition is handed down by man from one
generation to the next, and must not to be confused with Scripture, that
which comes from God. The problem is when tradition has been added to
Scripture, and people no longer know what’s from God and what’s from
men. That is the issue we see here, the religious leaders were supposed to be protectors of the law, instead, they were more committed to the traditional teaching and were enforcing those laws which served to obscured the law of God.
Verse 2, "And had seen that some of His disciples were eating their bread with impure hands, that is, unwashed." Mark is not indicating they were unsanitary, eating with filthy hands, that's not the issue. The issue was they weren't observing the religion traditions of the Pharisees and the scribes. Other than the ceremonial washing prescribed with regard to priests, as part of their priestly function of offering sacrifices in the book of Leviticus, all the Old Testament stated was to be protective of what you put in your mouth. Obviously, Jesus knew that.
In verses 3 and 4, Mark goes on to explain the issue, in a parenthetical section, "For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they carefully wash their hands, thus observing the traditions of the elders; and when they come from the market place, they do not eat unless they cleanse themselves; and there are many other things which they have received in order to observe, such as the washing of cups and pitchers and copper pots." These were the traditions of the elders, not God's commands. By the way, they weren’t using soap and water to really clean their hands, but would wash one hand by scrubbing it with the clinched fist of the other to signify that they were clean. So it was more about ritualistic external rules for appearances, than actually being clean. In fact, there are some thirty chapters about the ceremonial ritual cleansing of pots and pans in the Mishnah. And when it was discovered the Mishnah needed explaining, they developed the Gemara, which means complete. This is in addition to the Torah, the first five books of the Bible; Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. It isn't any wonder why Jesus said, "They tie up heavy burdens and lay them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are unwilling to move them with so much as a finger."
The word "tradition" as such is not found in the Old Testament, however, it is found thirteen times in New Testament, three of which refers to "apostolic teaching." The other ten times it refers to "the tradition of the elders" or
"the traditions of men." Jesus had no problem in keeping some traditions but did not feel obligated to abide by "the traditions of the
elders," which lean toward ritualism rather than the Laws of God and had no problem with violating them. When God gave Moses the oral law, he was told to pass it along to great
men of the synagogue. Upon receiving the law of God, they were to do
three things with the law of God: First, to properly apply God’s law. To
be deliberate in judgment. Second, they were to raise up many
disciples, so that future generation would be there to apply the law.
And third, they were to build a wall around the law, to let it not
suffer attack. The problem is they had made their tradition equal if not superior to the Scripture, which is common among false religion.
In verse 5, we see their accusation, "The Pharisees and the scribes *asked Him, "Why do Your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat their bread with impure hands?" We're not talking about dirty, unsanitary hands only unceremonially clean hands, the Oral Law was passed down from generation to generation for centuries, and was a huge issue for them, which had nothing to do with Scripture. He didn't care about their meaningless tradition, Deuteronomy 6:5
says,
"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might." A religion that is all about external works and not the heart will never please God. Jesus is pointing out you can to go to hell with clean hands, it's all about the condition of your heart.
Verses 6-8, I love that Jesus ignores their question, He doesn’t deny breaking their tradition, instead He condemns their hypocrisy by quoting Isaiah 29, "And He said to them, "Rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written: ‘This
people honors Me with their lips, But their heart is far away from Me.
‘But in vain do they worship Me, Teaching as doctrines the precepts of
men.’ Neglecting the commandment of God, you hold to the tradition of men" They're accusing Him of violating religious tradition, and He's telling them they're breaking the commandments of God, that's a much bigger deal. The traditions of man will pass away, but the Word of God will remain! Nobody was ever saved from their sin for keeping a tradition.
Then in verse 9, Jesus doesn’t apologize for the offense, instead He issues a serious indictment, offending them even more, "You are experts at setting aside the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition." Replacing God’s Truth with man’s traditions is a very dangerous, damning practice. In verse 10, He isn't mincing words, He gives them an illustration right out of the Ten Commandments by quoting from Exodus, "For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘He who speaks evil of father or mother, is to be put to death’; that's right, we are to honor our parents into adulthood and to violate that is worthy of death. Honoring your parents means to love, to respect, to admire and reverence as well as financial support to meet their needs. They would have understood that, and they were obliterating God's command take care of their parents by creating a man-made loophole, called Corban, to exempt themselves from taking care of their parents.
Verses 11-12, "But you say, ‘If a man says to his father or his mother, whatever I have that would help you is Corban (that is to say, given to God),’ you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or his mother." They would say corban over everything they owned, to prevent them from giving anything to people who were in need and they justified it by Numbers 30:2 which says "If a man makes a vow to the Lord,
or takes an oath to bind himself with a binding obligation, he shall
not violate his word; he shall do according to all that proceeds out of
his mouth." Corban allowed them to give what they had to God in order to appear to be pious while keeping what they had and still doing what they wanted with it. The Talmud said, "To be against the words of the scribes is more punishable than to be against the words of the Scripture."
By the way, the Talmud says that a man was not even bound to give it to God after dedicating it, he could change his mind, breaking his vow to God, and keep it for himself. If we know anything about Satan, we know that he always looks a way manipulate God's Word. False religion corrupts the truth. There is certainly a great deal of false teaching found in many churches today when you compare it to the Word of God. as some pastors attempt to affirm issues like homosexuality and transgenderism as being compatible with Scripture, issues that I believe that God settled in His Word. Unfortunately many pastors seem to care more about being liked and accepted by the world than being approved by God.
We have foolishly deceived ourselves into thinking that there are things that are more important in this life than God. He is worthy of our praise, worship and obedience. To lead a life of sin is to deny His authority in our lives, as well as the power of the transformation through the Holy Spirit. I
don’t deny it's a daily struggle but we cannot allow ourselves to practice ungodly behavior and
giving tolerance to sin, accepting that followers of Christ cannot do and assume we will take part in the Kingdom of God. There's a desperate need for genuine repentance in many pulpits as well as the pews.
That brings us to verse 13, "Thus invalidating the word of God by your tradition which you have handed down; and you do many things such as that." That is strong indictment, striking a devastating blow against their false religion! Jesus set Himself in direct opposition their external religion, rejecting their man-made traditions, telling them the Truth. They must have been devastated by His words, but they certainly should not have been shocked, they knew the Old Testament Scriptures. This is certainly not the passive Jesus Who seeks to find common ground with false religion, we hear so much about today. He confronted their lies head on with the Truth of God and made no apologies for it. When you tell hypocrites the truth, they will be offended, especially by those who claim to uphold it.
In Closing..
True worship is never about us, it's about the Lord. I'm afraid there is a lot of empty praise, superficial worship occurring in the church today, bound up in religious rituals and man-made traditions. There's only one Truth and apart from God's Truth, all religion is built on a framework of lies and deception. We would do well to stop and study Jesus' words, rather than simply pass over them because its uncomfortable to hear. We need to hold God's Word closely. I pray it will cause us to humbly examine our own hearts, that we might live according to the biblical principles commanded by God with a pure heart.
May it be so..
And now may the Lord bless you and keep you;
the Lord make His face shine upon you,
And be gracious to you;
The Lord lift up His countenance upon you,
And give you peace.
Now and forever, in Jesus' name
Amen