Truth over Tradition

Mark 7:1-13

If you brought your bible turn with me over to the Gospel of Mark chapter 7. The Gospel of Mark chapter 7 and in a moment we are going to read verses 1-13 of the Gospel of Mark chapter 7.

America is a nation that is rich in tradition. A tradition is something that is handing down of from one generation to the next. It can be information, beliefs, or customs and we have many of them in this country.

For example, we have holiday traditions such as fireworks on the fourth of July, eating turkey on Thanksgiving day, or putting up a Christmas tree in December.

We have family traditions such as gathering around a table for dinner, celebrating birthdays together, or reading bedtime stories to our children.

Not all of our traditions are good though. For example, some people traditionally overeat, over work, or abuse drugs and alcohol, and those traditions get passed down to the next generation as well.

We also have traditions in the church. Some of them are good and based on the Word of God, like communion, baptism, prayer, fellowship, and worship.

Others are manmade traditions like, dressing a certain way to come to church or reading one particular translation of the Bible.

Even the way we conduct our service is based on tradition. Some of you would be very confused if you came to church this morning, and I preached the message before we ever sung a song, but you need to ask yourself why. Because it is a tradition.

 In our passage this morning we are going to see a group of people, called the Pharisee’s, that created traditions, not based on scripture. Yet they taught their traditions to the people as though it was the very truth of God’s Word.

They did that because they wanted to have power and control over the people’s lives. They wanted the people to follow them, instead of following God. And what we see is Jesus condemns them for what they are doing.

 The message that we learn from this story is; The truth of God is more important than our tradition.

Everything we do and everything we teach needs to be based on the truth of the Word of God and not on the opinions of people.

And that is what we are going to talk about today. So, lets read this passage here in Mar 7:1-13 and talk about Truth over Tradition.

Mark 7:1–13 KJV

Then came together unto him the Pharisees, and certain of the scribes, which came from Jerusalem. And when they saw some of his disciples eat bread with defiled, that is to say, with unwashen, hands, they found fault. For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, except they wash their hands oft, eat not, holding the tradition of the elders. And when they come from the market, except they wash, they eat not. And many other things there be, which they have received to hold, as the washing of cups, and pots, brasen vessels, and of tables. Then the Pharisees and scribes asked him, Why walk not thy disciples according to the tradition of the elders, but eat bread with unwashen hands? He answered and said unto them, Well hath Esaias prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. Howbeit in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. For laying aside the commandment of God, ye hold the tradition of men, as the washing of pots and cups: and many other such like things ye do. And he said unto them, Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition. For Moses said, Honour thy father and thy mother; and, Whoso curseth father or mother, let him die the death: But ye say, If a man shall say to his father or mother, It is Corban, that is to say, a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me; he shall be free. And ye suffer him no more to do ought for his father or his mother; Making the word of God of none effect through your tradition, which ye have delivered: and many such like things do ye.

Lets pray together,

Father, we thank you for Your Word, because Your Word speaks to us about ourselves.

Lord I pray we could learn to lay aside anything that truly does not align with Your Word and learn to follow You with all our heart not making anything of ourselves or our opinions and preferences more important than what You have given us in Your Word.

I pray this in the name of Jesus, Amen!!

In our passage this morning we see, that some of the Pharisees and some of the scribes have come from Jerusalem to Galilee.

And it is no mystery why they have come there, they want to trap Jesus.

They want to catch Him breaking their law so they can accuse Him, arrest Him and hang Him on a cross, which they will eventually do.

At this point in our story there is already a plot to kill Him. Although, the Pharisees themselves were not going to kill anybody, they were going to have Him killed by the Romans. But, they had to figure out how they were going to do that. So, they needed to catch Him breaking their law.

 This really was not going to be too difficult to do, because Jesus did not follow their laws. He did not follow their traditions, because their traditions were not based on the Word of God.

Their traditions were legalistic and oppressive to the people and what we see taking place in this passage is Jesus calls them out for it, and He condemns them for it.

And We need to understand today, that religious practices do not save us. Religious practices do not make us acceptable to God.

The reason we like traditions and religious practices, whether it is washing your hands or dressing up for church, is because it something we can do on the outside, that makes us feel good on the inside.

What Jesus teaches us here is that Truth is more important than tradition, and true righteousness is not a matter of outward appearances or religious practices, but it is a matter of inward attention to God.

We will break this passage down into two parts. First, in Vs 1-5 and we will see The Investigation.

The scribes and Pharisees come from Jerusalem to investigate Jesus, to try and catch Him breaking their traditions.

Then, in Vs. 6-13 we will see The Condemnation. Jesus condemns the scribes and Pharisees for making their traditions more important than God’s commands.

First, we see:

I. The Investigation

Vs. 1 says, “Then came together unto him the Pharisees, and certain of the scribes, which came from Jerusalem.”

It is important at this point that we understand who the scribes and the Pharisees were, because every time we read about them it is always something negative.

For example, In Matthew 3:7 John the Baptist called them a “brood of Vipers,” when they came to him asking why he was baptizing people.

In Matthew 23 Jesus called them a bunch of whitewashed tombs, who looked good on the outside but they were dead on the inside.

Every time we read about the scribes and the Pharisees they are standing in opposition of Christ.

 The Pharisees were a religious sect, and there were three main religious sects in Jerusalem at the time of Jesus.

There were the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes. The Pharisees and the Sadducees usually held some kind of positions of authority on the Sanhedrin. And the Sanhedrin was the council of the Elders that ruled in Jerusalem.

The name Pharisee means “separated ones” and they were called this because they had a strict interpretation of the Old Testament law. Especially, concerning areas of purity and obeying the Sabbath.

They were living interpreters of the law of God for the people, and they took great privilege in their interpretation.

The Pharisees came onto the scene about a hundred years before Jesus was born, and they continued throughout His life. But, like most of biblical Judaism they disappeared after the first century.

Just because a person was a Pharisee did not make them a ruler of the people, and there were about 6000 Pharisees during the lifetime of Jesus.

A scribe on the other hand was always someone who was very important. They were always a ruler, because a scribe was someone who could read and write.

So, a scribe was someone they relied on to prepare documents and draw up contracts and interpret the scripture. A scribe would have been a lawyer or a judge in that day.

That is probably why, we see them in our story. These Pharisees came from Jerusalem and they brought some scribes with them.

These were probably a group of Pharisees that didn’t have much power. They were sent to Galilee to do the dirty work for the Sanhedrin.

In any event, they were trying to catch Jesus in some type of legal loophole so they could accuse Him of breaking the law, and that is why the scribes are with them. So, they could record it and document it.

It did not take them long to find it. We are told in Vs 1-2 they gathered around Jesus when they saw some of His disciples eating with unclean hands.

It is important to understand this has nothing to do with personal hygiene, but it has everything to do with religious legalism.

This doesn’t mean we should go home, and teach our children not to wash their hands before they eat. What this means is we should teach our children to watch out for religious zealots who want to control their lives and manipulate them.

And just so you don’t think that is a stretch of the imagination and couldn’t happen today, consider recent history.

Robert Morris was a televangelist and Pastor of a mega church in Texas. He is now serving a prison sentence for sexually assaulting a twelve year old girl in his congregation.

Last year a youth minister was arrested in Washtenaw county Michigan with over 60 counts of sexual abuse. And another in Midland.

And how many people remember the branch Davidians in Waco, Texas?

Religious manipulation itself, is a tradition of men, and there should always be a series of checks and balances in the church. One man does not have authority in a church.

The Pharisees were religious manipulators and they gathered around Jesus but they couldn’t manipulated Him.

 At this point, we are given an explanation. Notice Mark breaks into our story in Vs. 3-4, to explain to his readers why the Pharisees were doing this.

These verses prove to us that Mark is writing to a predominantly Gentile audience, because he has to explain to his audience the customs and traditions of the Jewish people.

 Mark’s audience is not much different from us today. We read this stuff and it doesn’t make any sense to us.

Why are these people constantly washing their hands and practicing all of these ceremonial cleansings?

Because this is what the High Priest would do when he was offering a sacrifice on the altar. And the Pharisee’s wanted the people to do this as a part of every day life.

Notice Vs. 4, it says, “And when they come from the market”

This leads us to believe many of these traditions were racially motivated. You see it was in the marketplace where they would come into contact with Gentiles. Gentiles would be there buying and selling food or pots, pans, cup.

So, the Pharisee’s wanted to make sure they washed themselves and anything they may have touched or bought from the Gentiles, because that stuff would be considered unclean.

Mark goes on to tells us in Vs. 4, “And many other things there be, which they have received to hold.”

In other words, they had a lot of these traditions and rules, which is ok, but they wanted everyone else to follow their rules, and if you didn’t, you were not a good Jewish person.

Sometimes I think we do this same thing in the church. We can have a legalistic attitude toward people, and we condemn people who struggle with sin that we don’t struggle with.

For example, we might condemn someone who has been through a divorced,  because we have a strong marriage. 

Or we condemn people who have issues with their children, because we don’t have those same issues, and we do this with every area of life. Why? because sin always seeks to cover itself in pretend righteousness.

The worst thing we can do as a Christians is be a hypocrite. That is what the Pharisee’s were.

Because it ruins your witness. It dishonors God. We may not be as manipulative as the Pharisees, but we have our own hypocrisy and it will keep people from coming to know Jesus.

 Finally, in Vs.5 the investigation reaches the point of interrogation, and the Pharisees finally build up enough courage to question Jesus for not following their traditions.

It is important we understand, if the disciples were guilty of breaking their law, then Jesus, as their teacher would be guilty to, because He is responsible for their actions.

 However, If you remember every time Pharisees have questioned Jesus in the past, it has gone horribly wrong for them.

Remember in Mark 2, when the disciples were walking through the corn fields, picking the heads of grain on the Sabbath, and the Pharisees caught them and said they were breaking the law.

Jesus said, “no their not, the Sabbath was made for man not man for the Sabbath.” OR Remember when He healed the paralyzed man, lowered through the roof at Peter’s house. Jesus said, “son, your sins are forgiven.”

The Pharisees said, “only God can forgive sins.” Jesus said, “your right, and just so you know that’s who I am, He said, get up pick up your mat and walk.” And the man got up and walked away.

   Now they have come to question Him again.  Jesus is at the height of His popularity with the people. He had just fed more than five thousand of them with a loaf of bread. The people wanted to take Him and make Him their King.

The Pharisees were aware of all this, and they are jealous, and their goal here is to try and turn the people away from Jesus. The want to make the people question who He is.

 BTW, This is something we see in our society today. People who do not know Jesus want you to question who Jesus is.

They want to reduce Him down and create doubt in your heart. It has always been amazing to me that people who do not have a relationship with God do not want other people to have a relationship with God.

Why is that? Why is it that Atheists, who say they do not believe in God spend their life trying to disprove something they do not believe in?

  People who do not believe in Jesus, for some reason do not want you to believe in Jesus and that is what we see in this story. The Pharisees were trying to discredit Him before the people.

     But, they were getting ready to get more than they had bargained for because The truth of God is more powerful than Tradition.

And the next thing we see in this story is:

II. The Condemnation Vs. 6-13.

Jesus condemns the Pharisees for their wicked hearts, their false teachings and their total disregard for the truth.

What I find interesting about this passage is, Jesus never condemned people for the sin in their life. He would always say to someone, “Your sins are forgiven, go and sin no more.”

But He never condemned them. I think about the woman caught in adultery. She was chased to Jesus and they were ready to stone her.

He said, “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.” And then He tells the woman, “Go and sin no more.”

I think about how Jesus befriended the publicans and the sinners, and how He welcomed the tax collectors, like Levi and Zacchaeus.

 But these Pharisees, were religious bigots, and they received His full condemnation. Why?

Because they rejected Him, and they rejected truth. They taught false things about God. This should teach us a lesson about the way we treat people.

We tell people the truth about their sin, but we do not condemn them. And we should not tolerate people who teach false things about God.

Listen the Pharisees aren’t the only ones who have replaced the Word of God with traditions; Christians have done this as well.

For the first 1,500 years of the church, there were thousands of rules and regulations that developed in the Roman Catholic Church and later in the Eastern Orthodox Church.

For example, there was an important doctrine started in the Catholic Church called Papal Infallibility. They taught that when the Pope spoke “ex-cathedra,” (from the chair) everything he said was to have as much authority as the Bible itself.

 Then in the 1500s a group of Christians protested the authority of the Pope. They were called Protestants, and their defining doctrine was Sola Scriptura, scripture alone.

But even the Protestants developed their own traditions. For instance, John Calvin was the founder of the Presbyterian Church, which was known as the Church of Scotland.

John Calvin always wore a hat to church, and he only took his hat off to pray. So, for several hundred years all of the men in the Presbyterian Church wore hats and they only took them off to pray.

But according to biographers, and researchers the only reason John Calvin wore a hat was because his church in Strasbourg was an open-air church.

There were always pigeons that roosted in the top of the church, and Calvin was afraid he was going to be bombed by the pigeons, and he just hoped it did not happen during prayers.

But to be safe, they wore the hats for the rest of the service. It just shows us how we can be blindly led by tradition and never really know why.

I love how in Vs. 6 Jesus doesn’t quote the traditions of men, but He quotes the Word of God. He says, “Rightly did Isaiah prophesy about you hypocrites.”

This word “rightly” here means, he was spot on. Isaiah was appropriate in what he said. He was on the money.

This is a quote from Isaiah 29 and Isaiah was talking about the false teachers in his day.

Isaiah’s prophecy was 800 years before the birth of Christ, and Jesus says, you Pharisees are just like them, you are leading the people astray.

 Notice  Vs. 7 tells us they were, “teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.” In other words, they were teaching their traditions to the people as though it was the very truth of God.

The Pharisees were falsely representing God to the people, and Jesus condemns them for it.

I want you to notice the downward progression we see in these passages from verse 8 through verse 13.

In Vs. 8 they were “laying aside the commandment of God for their traditions.”

And by commandments Jesus means the whole council of God. The entirety of His Word, His promises and His law.

Then in Vs. 9 they were rejecting the commandment of God, that they may keep their own tradition.”

And finally in Vs. 13 Jesus says, They were, Making the word of God of none effect through your tradition.”

It was a downward spiral that started out with neglect and ended in total disregard.

I cannot help but think this is an example for us in our lives. If we choose not practice the spiritual disciplines of our faith, of coming to worship, of spending time in prayer and of studying the Word, we will go from neglecting God, to setting God aside, to total disregarding God in our lives.

We will become like the Pharisees, honoring God with our lips but our hearts will be far from Him.

  I want you to notice the contrast between Verses 10 and 11. In Vs. 10 Jesus said, “For Moses said,” and in Vs. 11, “But you say.”

In other words, their traditions were not only contrary to the Word of God, but they contradicted the Word of God.

And then Jesus gives them an example here of how they made up their own rules so they could intentionally break the fifth commandment. The fifth commandment says, we are to honor our mother and father.

They could say everything that belonged to them was “corban.” Corban meant that it was dedicated to God, and by doing that, they could keep their money for themselves and not take care of their parents as they got older and could not take care of themselves.

They were hypocrites, who were acting holy but living in shame. The word hypocrite literally means an actor, or a role player, someone who wears a mask. We do not have to look far to find this in our society today.  

The lesson in this for us is, as Christians we need to be real. We need to expose ourselves to the truth, so that we can be healed and changed by it.

Pretending to be something we are not doesn’t make us holy it make us hypocritical.

What Jesus is teaching us in this passage is sin does not condemn us, any more than religion save us.

We are all sinners in need of a Savior. The only thing that condemns us is the rejection of truth.

Jesus is truth. John 14: 6, “He is the way, the truth and the life.” The Pharisees were rejected Him and creating their own truth and He condemned them for it.

  We want to accept Jesus and the truth we find in the Word of God and be changed by it.

Paul told Timothy not to be blown away by every wind and doctrine. 2 Timothy 2:15, Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

As Christians we need to be grounded in truth because the Truth of God is more important than our Traditions.

Lets pray together,

Father I thank you that you are the truth!! No matter what the world says, is true, my God the truth is found in You and Your Son the Lord Jesus Christ. Thank You for helping us to navigate through this world and find You, Lord!!

In Jesus Name I Pray, Amen!!