Saturday, May 9, 2020

Traditions Examined - Mark 7:1-13 - May 10, 2020

These are the Sermon Notes for May 10, 2020. Watch our livestream service every Sunday at 9:37 am on our facebook page or watch the livestream recordings any time.

Mark 7:1-13 Traditions Examined
We are returning to the Gospel of Mark, in chapter seven, verses 1-13. What a timely Scripture this is that we are going to examine! I say that because we are living in a time when people are beginning to examine the traditions of the church.
There have been several articles and discussions lately about what it means to “go back to church.” “Church” meaning the event that traditionally happened on Sunday mornings in a church building. Our brothers and sisters in Maine and in various other states now get to do “drive-in” church where everybody just stays in their cars, honk twice to say, “amen,” turn on the windshield wipers to raise their hands in worship, one long honk of the horn because they’ve fallen asleep and are slumped over onto the steering wheel…
This discussion about going back to church and how to do that best is an important one. Every church has traditions and ideas about what church is supposed to be like, CrossRoads Church is no different. But what we have the privilege of doing now in this time where we are not allowed to gather together for corporate worship is to examine our traditions and see if they measure up to Scripture or if they are based just in our own ideas of how we should please God.
Jesus had a similar opportunity in our text today, Mark 7:1-13 where He was confronted by a group of Scribes and Pharisees over adherence to their traditions. So let’s look at that together and see if we can glean any guidance for our own situation as a church family.
Now when the Pharisees gathered to him, with some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem, they saw that some of his disciples ate with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed. (For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands properly, holding to the tradition of the elders, and when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash. And there are many other traditions that they observe, such as the washing of cups and pots and copper vessels and dining couches.) And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” And he said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, 
“‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’ 
You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.” 
And he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition! 10 For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’ 11 But you say, ‘If a man tells his father or his mother, “Whatever you would have gained from me is Corban” ’ (that is, given to God)— 12 then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, 13 thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And many such things you do.”
Now this is only part one of a two part teaching of Jesus on the idea of defilement or what defiles a person, and we’ll look at the second part next time. In the first part of Jesus’ teaching here He deals, in a general sense, with the idea of traditions and their motivation behind them.
The first tradition examined is the tradition of ceremonial hand washing before eating. Now to be clear, since we are in the age of diligent hand washing to avoid a virus, the interest here was not hand washing for sanitary reasons. Their concern had nothing really to do with washing off dirt or germs. Their concern was preserving adherence to the traditions of the elders.
Warren Wiersbe wrote, “The Jews called tradition ‘the fence of the Law.’ It is not the Law that protected the tradition but the tradition that protected the Law!”
We’ve talked about this idea before when dealing with the Sabbath laws. God said to keep the Sabbath holy and that the people were not to do any work on the Sabbath, so in order to protect the Law they put in place specific rules defining just exactly what one could do before it was considered work, how many steps one could take and things like that. 
What began as a desire to keep the Law of God became a law unto itself, an empty law that became even more revered than the Law of God. In fact, in the Talmud, the collection of all these teachings it’s recorded, “It is a greater offense to teach anything contrary to the voice of the Rabbis than to contradict Scripture itself.”
There were Levitical Laws concerning washing and ceremonial cleanness but the traditions of the elders took those Laws to a whole new level to the point where cleanness wasn’t the point, adherence to the tradition was.
I want to skip down to verse 9 and then we’ll circle back to verses 6-8.
And he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition! 10 For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’ 11 But you say, ‘If a man tells his father or his mother, “Whatever you would have gained from me is Corban” ’ (that is, given to God)— 12 then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, 13 thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And many such things you do.”
The Pharisees had developed their own loophole to God’s commands and this truly exposes what their real concern was. 
Verse 10 says, For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’
Honoring one’s father and mother was the fifth commandment, our parents who raised us, fed us, and taught us deserve our love and support when they reach old age and need us to do for them what they did for us, and caring for them in this way is a way to honor God by obeying His commandment. 
Paul also wrote about this in 1 Timothy 5:4, 8:
But if a widow has children or grandchildren, let them first learn to show godliness to their own household and to make some return to their parents, for this is pleasing in the sight of God…
And…
…if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.
But the Pharisees, the traditions of the elders said, ‘If a man tells his father or his mother, “Whatever you would have gained from me is Corban” ’ (that is, given to God)— 12 then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, 13 thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And many such things you do.”
This is in essence saying something like, “Mom and Dad, I know that it’s not really safe for you to live on your own and I do have that nice big spare room but… The church really needs a place to store the costumes and sets for the Christmas play so you’re just going to have to figure something out for yourselves.
There were no nursing homes, there were no convalescent centers, this was a sentence of poverty and destitution.
What this exposes was that the Scribes and Pharisees had no interest in real holiness, or in real cleanness, it had to do with preserving their own wealth, power, and influence. 
Jesus posed a threat to their influence because people were flocking to Him, He was a threat to their power because he came to give freedom to the captives, and a loss of their influence and power over people was a threat to their wealth and comfortable lifestyle.
Traditions can be a way that some people preserve their own power and influence, and as Matthew Henry wrote, “Corrupt customs are best cured by rectifying corrupt notions.”
[Jesus] said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, 
“‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’ 
You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.” 
But what about us?
Traditions sometimes are based on a misinterpretation of Scripture, sometimes they are added on top of the requirements of Scripture, and sometimes they ignore Scripture altogether!
But not all traditions are bad, so how can we tell the difference? How can we tell if a tradition that we hold, something that we do as a church family is a command of God, or is sinful, or is something totally innocuous, something that is just practical?
Scripture is the key! Does the tradition misinterpret Scripture, does it add requirements on top of Scripture, does it ignore the teaching of Scripture?
We must also be careful to avoid using the rights words but the wrong attitude, just because our description or defense of a particular tradition sounds “bible-ish” doesn’t make it correct.
Does the tradition lead to a feeling of self righteousness, as if our adherence to that particular tradition is what makes us acceptable to God in our minds?
Are we just using worldly philosophies cloaked in religious words?
Are we adding a secondary set of rules as if the plain commands of God are not enough?
True confession: It seems as if I’ve made a career out of bucking tradition and questioning everything the church does and that certainly hasn’t made my life any easier, but I don’t regret it. The truth is that if the Bible is not our true source of how we practice our “religion,” we are only leading people to an imaginary god of our own making.
The One True Living God has made Himself known, He has revealed to the world how we can have a relationship with Him through faith in His Son Jesus Christ and be filled with His Holy Spirit so that we can interpret His holy Word. He has given us everything we need, we don’t need to add to it.
Some traditions we hold are outside the scope of biblical teaching, some may very well be against it, and some may be perfectly in line, but let’s all examine them together as a family so that we can know for certain that our traditions are in keeping with the Father’s instruction through Christ and His Apostles so that as we move forward as a church family we bring honor and glory to Him alone.
Amen.