Study the Word

Guest (Male): Can traditions get in the way of obeying God? Find out today on Study the Word with Pastor Tom Keller.

Someone has said that tradition should be a guide, but it can become a jailer. And as Mark Twain put it, the less there is to justify a tradition, the harder it is to get rid of it. Hello and thanks for joining us today for Study the Word with Pastor Tom Keller.

We're making our way through the Gospel of Mark. In Chapter 7, we'll see how traditions of men get in the way of what really matters most to God. We'll learn the tendency to find legal loopholes is nothing new. To help ensure you don't fall into the same tendency, we invite you to join us in Mark Chapter 7 as Pastor Tom begins.

Pastor Thom Keller: Mark 7 verse 1. One day some Pharisees and teachers of religious law arrived from Jerusalem to confront Jesus. They noticed that some of Jesus' disciples failed to follow the usual Jewish ritual of hand-washing before eating.

The Jews, especially the Pharisees, do not eat until they have poured water over their cupped hands, as required by their ancient tradition. Similarly, they eat nothing bought from the market unless they have immersed their hands in water. This is but one of the many traditions they have clung to, such as their ceremony of washing cups, pitchers, and kettles.

So the Pharisees and teachers of religious law asked him, "Why don't your disciples follow our age-old customs? For they eat without first performing the hand-washing ceremony." This scene takes place in the area of Galilee. That's where we are today. Then later in the chapter, we're going up to Tyre, or Jesus is going up to Tyre. We're going to follow his story there.

And this is now the official delegation of Jewish leaders has been sent to evaluate Jesus. But it's more than just an evaluation, really they're trying to trap him. If you remember back in Chapter 3, it said that the Pharisees already at that point had made plans to kill Jesus. So their design here is to take Jesus' life somehow.

So they send a delegation to try to trap him, to get him to say something that would be grounds to set the trap. And that's what's going on today. In verse 5, they say, "Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders?" is a more literal translation there. "Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders?"

And the word "elders" there really means ancients. But the ancients, these were Jewish legal experts of old such as Hillel, who had written the detail on the law. In other words, how do you perform this act of hand-washing, cleansing? And in the third century after Christ, the Jews then codified or compiled all of these teachings into what's called the Mishnah.

The Mishnah would be the detail, and we're going to see how much detail there is actually in this one command. Really the Mishnah, the Talmud, and the Scriptures would almost have equal weighting to a Jew. Almost. In fact, in the Talmud, it says this about the Mishnah, to get a Jewish mindset of how committed they are to these laws, listen to this.

The Talmud says of the Mishnah, "It is a greater offense to teach anything contrary to the voice of the rabbis than to contradict Scripture itself." So what they were saying is, if you're going to contradict Scripture or you're going to contradict the teaching of the rabbis, you're safer to contradict the Scriptures than to contradict the teaching of the rabbis.

So actually, they put the teaching of the rabbis on a higher plane than the teaching of Scriptures. You can see then why this detail carried so much weight to someone that was trying to legally follow the Jewish law. The hand-washing here they're talking about is not for sanitary reasons. It's purely ceremonial.

You were expected to have your hands clean before you ever entered into this act of ceremonial cleansing. It was to make your hands ceremonially clean. You were supposed to use enough water to fill one and a half eggshells. That is what you needed to clean your hands. And then what was done is someone would pour the water over their hands.

Then you would take your fist and rub it into the palm of the hand. And that was to be the ceremonial cleansing. The fist actually cleansed the hand. So then they did a second part where they would take the hand and pour it from the top down and take all that dirty dirt off my very little fingertips to the bottom.

And that was the ceremonial cleansing. And not only was this done before every meal, it was also done between every course. So if you had an appetizer, you'd do it before the appetizer. If you then went to soup, they then did it. Then salad, main meal, dessert. And it would have been a long process.

And they were very serious about this. One rabbi, who once one time failed to wash his hands, when he died he was buried in excommunication from the Jewish faith. He failed one time to wash his hands before a meal, and he was buried in excommunication, which means they didn't consider him to be a Jew of the Jewish faith.

The rabbis said this, that if someone failed to wash their hands in this manner, they were subject to attack from the demons, Shibat, who would cause poverty and destruction to fall on all those who failed to wash their hands. In case you wonder where this came from, all these regulations, it came from one law in Exodus 30.

Exodus 30 says the priests were to wash their hands and feet prior to entering the tabernacle. There were no specifics given as to how; it just says that the priests were to wash their hands and feet before entering the tabernacle. And leave it to a legalist, or a group of legalists, worse yet, to devise what that is actually going to look like.

And it turned out not being just for the priests but for all people. It also mentions in verse 4 the washing of cups, pitchers, kettles; they had to wash everything to keep it clean. Just as one example, if there was a hollow container, say a clay jar made of pottery, it could be unclean on the inside but not on the outside.

A clay jar could not become unclean by something touching the outside. But if something unclean touched the inside, then it became an unclean vessel. So here's the idea: if a fly were to fly in and land on the outside of the jar, that was okay. If a fly were to fly in the house and land on the inside of that jar, it was presumed that that fly could have landed on a Gentile somewhere.

That made the fly unclean, and now they had to break the vessel. Now not only did they have to break the vessel, but they had to break that pottery jar in such small pieces that the smallest piece of it could not hold enough oil to anoint your smallest toe. Because they didn't want you taking that big thing and making some kind of a saucer out of it.

So you had to break every piece; the smallest amount of oil that it could handle would be to anoint your smallest toe. That detail was included in the law. They were fanatics about this. It's also interesting in verse 2 you can buzz past this quick, but listen to what it says. It says "some" of the disciples failed to follow the hand-washing ritual.

If you picture this scene and picture all twelve and Jesus being in disregard of this, just picking up the food and eating, that's not what's going on. It says some of the disciples failed to wash their hands. And it doesn't say that Jesus failed to, does it? Don't you think if the religious leaders are there to take down Jesus, they would have gone after him if he failed to?

It doesn't say, "Jesus, teacher, why did you fail to wash your hands?" It doesn't say that. It says, "Why did some of your disciples?" which in all probability means that probably Jesus did do this. Now there's a little piece that drives this home, and it's interesting, but in Acts 10, where Cornelius is the first Gentile that's converted by Peter.

If you remember the story, Peter's on the roof of his house and he has a vision. He's awake, but he has a vision. And it's a sheet, a huge sheet comes down from heaven and it has all these unclean animals in it, animals that are not permitted for a Jew to eat. And three times this sheet appears, and the voice from heaven says, "Eat of any of those."

They're unclean animals inside. And Peter says something that is very interesting. This scene with Cornelius happened about 41 AD. Jesus' crucifixion was around 29 AD. Twelve years after Jesus' crucifixion, twelve years later, Peter is still living by kosher law. He says, "Never, never in my life have I eaten any of those animals."

Again we have a tendency to think that the disciples and Jesus threw all the law away. We don't know that they did that. They may have kept a fair amount of the law. But what Jesus did do is say that a person is not condemned by not following the law. You're not better if you kept the Jewish law; you weren't worse if you didn't.

But it's interesting when you picture that scene, don't picture all of the disciples not doing it. Just an interesting little side. You know, some of you may feel compelled to follow certain rituals. We've run into this a number of times, but this comes up over and over in Bible studies and counseling, that there's a tape recording in your head.

And it says, "You must do this or you will pay." There's some penalty assigned, there's some kind of a ritual that's really not much different than this: if I don't do this thing, something's going to go wrong, my day's going to go wrong, I have to do it, I've always done it this way. And it runs into this line of dark speech, dark talk.

Dark talk in our heads telling us dark things about ourselves. "You idiot, you fool, you stupid thing. You always blow it, you're always so dumb." All that kind of stuff. There's almost a ritualistic system in place behind all of that. And just keep this in mind, that Satan is a harsh and demanding taskmaster.

And when you get those thoughts, when you get those condemning, that condemning self-talk, when you get that "You've got to do this, if you don't do this," that is never God. God does not make those kinds of demands on you. He is not a demanding, forceful God. His Holy Spirit, he speaks in and through and by the power of his Holy Spirit, that is always a still, gentle, soft voice.

It's interesting, but if you get into Eastern religions and into New Age movements, they talk a lot about spirit guides. And spirit guides are this being from outside of themselves comes into their mind and tells them, guides them, gives them suggestions and ideas. But as you follow the progression of people that have spirit guides over time, those guides become incredibly demanding and forceful.

"You will listen to me. You will obey." The key to breaking this really is to recognize first of all what's going on and that this is not God that's putting that there. God is not going to make those kinds of demands on you. Not in that way. He never screams or demands anything from you. He may ask, he may encourage, he may suggest.

And it's because he loves you. But that voice, that kind of a demand, those kinds of terms that "if you don't do this I'm going to do that," or "if you don't do this every day, this is going to happen," that's never God. That doesn't mean God doesn't want us to do or not do certain things. Of course he does.

That's what his word is about, because he wants to bring blessings into our life. But he's not a taskmaster. Let's go on, verses 6 to 9. Jesus said, "You hypocrites!" That's something for a 30-year-old young teacher to be screaming at these religious elite, these older men. "You hypocrites! Isaiah was prophesying about you."

"Isaiah was prophesying about you when he said, 'These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far away. Their worship is a farce, for they replace God's command with their own man-made teachings.' For you ignore God's specific laws and substitute your own tradition." Then he said, "You reject God's laws in order to hold on to your own tradition."

Just imagine that scene. 30-year-old young guy, this pack of 12 pretty seedy guys around him and more beyond that. And these guys dressed in their royal robes, the regalia, and this young man comes out and says, "You hypocrite!" I don't think they'd ever been talked to like that. I don't know who would have.

I mean, that must have almost been like a 200-mile-an-hour wind just hitting them just straight on. I can't even imagine. There's no account yet in this, this is the first time in Mark that Jesus came at them like that. And my guess is they got red in the face. Don't you picture that? Veins started bulging out in their necks, eyes get big, but they remain calm because the plan is already underway to kill him.

He calls them a hypocrite. The word hypocrite means one who is acting out a part without any sincerity, or one who wears a mask. And so they knew very clearly what he was talking about. And what he says is, "These people honor me with their lips." He's looking at these religious leaders. "They honor me with their lips, the words are there, but their hearts are far from me."

You know, God cares about where your heart is 24/7. Cares about where your heart is right now. When you read your Bible, where's your heart? When you pray, where's your heart? You know, I've shared this before: there are times I wake up in the morning when I'm really tired. I sit down to my Bible reading, I open my Bible, and I always pray before I read.

And I intend to pray this prayer; I pray a prayer that the Holy Spirit, God's Holy Spirit would teach me, instruct me today because the Bible says that's the role of the Holy Spirit. He will teach you, he will instruct you, he will lead you into all truth. So my intent is to sit down and pray God with your Holy Spirit.

But a lot of mornings I sit down, close my eyes, open my Bible and say, "Father, I pray that you would bless this food that it would strengthen me to serve you." And I don't mean it in a really nice figurative way. I lost my mind. I'm praying a prayer to bless a meal when that's not what I want to pray. Are you with me?

See, that's where I am. When I sit down to pray, where's my heart? Am I doing it mindlessly? When you give, where's your heart? "Oh, I have to give, I feel obligated." You know, I remember Chuck Smith saying this one time; he said, "Look, if you feel like you have to give, you feel an obligation to give, don't give."

"Don't give until you want to give." When you sing, where's your heart? When you were singing this morning, where was your heart? During the service today, where's your heart? Where's your heart right now? You know, when God loses the heart of a church, listen to this, when God loses the heart of the church, almost always legalism takes over.

If you go into a church and it's very legalistic, you can almost be certain they've lost the heart of God somewhere along the line. There will always be some form of religion that will take over when a church or a person loses the heart of God. There will always be some form that replaces it. It has to.

You know that this faith thing is supposed to be about something; the heart issue isn't there, and so you then come up with something to replace it. Typically, it's legalism. It's been said this: if you teach the Bible to someone and you never get their heart, if you teach the Bible to someone and you never reach their heart, you create a monster.

You ever know anybody like that? You ever know anybody that really knew their Bible, really knew it, but had no love? You ever know anybody like that? Oh, they're scary people. They really are. Condemning, fault-finding. It's a scary place to be. Let's go into verse 10. He says, "For instance, Moses gave you this law from God: 'Honor your father and mother,' and 'Anyone who speaks evil of your father or mother must be put to death.'"

"But you say it is all right for people to say to their parents, 'Sorry, I can't help you, for I've vowed to give to God what I could have given to you.' You let them disregard their needy parents. As such, you break the law of God in order to protect your own tradition. And this is only one example; there are many, many others."

So as Jesus goes into a specific example, he goes into the Ten Commandments where it says honor thy father and mother. And he says you say that, but your parents are in need, you disregard their need, and in doing so you're nullifying the commandment. And see what they had devised, the footnote if your Bible has a footnote there, it'll say Corban.

Corban is not found in the Bible. It was a very important word to Jews during this period; it's not a biblical phrase; you won't find it in the Bible. But Corban was an ingenious creation of man that allowed a person to say about an asset, an amount of money, a possession, you could take an item and say, "This amount of money or this possession is Corban," which means I'm giving this to God.

And because I give it to God, if someone asks me for it, I have to say no because I've given it to God. Now the little catch in this is God allows you to keep it and to use it, but you've really given it to him. Did you get the picture? So what's happening here is their needy parents going to their children saying, "Could you help? We have a need."

And the children say, "Oh hey, Mom, Dad, I'd really love to. You know, I'm sorry about what's going on, but everything I have I gave is Corban. It's been dedicated to the Lord. I just can't help you." And Jesus is saying by your man-made rule, you nullify a direct command of God. Verse 13 says it exactly: "You break the law of God in order to protect your own tradition."

You know, I wonder how do we do this? You know, this is really insidious. There are ways this thing creeps up where tradition, law stands in the way sometimes of us doing the right thing. I'm going to tell a story and this may push you a little bit, it pushes me, and I'm not going to say that I know what the right decision would be here.

I think I know what I would do, but this gives you an example. Tony Campolo is a professor down at Eastern and a Bible scholar and a writer. He tells a story about being in Africa in a time of a famine. And his time there was over and it was time to fly out. And as the bush plane was there, the engine running, they're getting ready to leave.

He's walking toward the plane, a woman comes running up to him with a baby that is looks to be hours away from dying. This is an area that was kind of steeped in Catholicism. This woman comes running up to him, this emaciated baby in her arms, and she says, "Please, baptize my baby. Please, baptize my baby. He's going to die. Don't let him die not baptized. Please, baptize my baby."

Well, as evangelicals, we don't believe in the baptism of babies. Baptism of a baby doesn't save that child. Our position clearly would be that when that baby dies, it's going to heaven. No question. So for Tony to do that ordinance, that rite of baptism for a child would go against everything he believed about baptism.