Sermon Tone Analysis

Commandments, Traditions and what defiles us.

“Simon says” that most children eventually learn to play.

The object the game is to listen clearly and obey quickly but to only do what “Simon says.”

I would suggest to you that as believers we develop something similar that we might call “God says”.

The object of this exercise would be to list some things that are clear commands in God’s word, but in the midst of the God says, to slip a supposed command that might be good but God did not command it or Jesus did not say that.

But our version of the “God says, we would begin with our Bibles open and leave them open if God, Jesus or the Bible says that in the case of a statement not being true, we would raise our hand with a closed Bible.

So in our version, every statement would begin with God says.

The question did God, say it, did Jesus says, is this a truth clearly taught in the Word.

The “God says” challenge might go something like this

God says, “You shall have no other Gods before me.”

Ex 20:3

God says, “You shall not murder.”

The Bible says that Eve took an apple from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil - - not an apple - unnamed fruit

Jesus says,

Matt

Jesus says, “Whatever you wish that others would do unto you, do also unto them.”

The Bible says that when Jesus was a child, 3 kings from the east visited Joseph, Mary and Jesus at a home in Bethlehem - , - not really kings - wise men, magi, astrologers

The primary meaning of Hebrew 10:25 is that believers should not forsake meeting together as a church

Heb

NOT REALLY - while gathering together as church - Sunday is the by product, the context is stirring up good works and warning each other of sinful behaviour.

Heb 10:

The church - called out - assemble for a purpose.

One of the main purposes is what does the word says and what do we need to do?

The believers in understood that.

When we do not know what God said, what Jesus said, what the Scriptures says and how to weigh what religious leaders say we should do, there will inevitably be tension and conflict.

In a sense, that is what was happening in the first part of .

Except when it came to the Pharisees and scribes, to “What does God say?” and “What does God command?” they added, “What do the Elders say/tradition?” as the trump card for everything.

For the Pharisees, scribes and religious leaders of that day, nothing was more important than the tradition of the Elders.

While what God commanded was important, it was the Elders’ teaching and tradition that had to be remembered and obeyed.

Mark’s record record of this next section begins with a preamble that ends with question posed by the Pharisees and scribes.

This was the second question that Jesus was asked with regard to His disciples.

The first was asked people with regard to fasting.

Mk 2:

When believers do something that deviates from the accepted norm there will be questions.

Worship on the first day of the week rather than the Sabbath.

When we meet.

Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs

Style of worship - traditional, contemporary, blended - drums/no drums

It is natural for questions to be asked.

With the questions need to ask what prompted the questions.

The Pharisees and scribe’s question.

Mk

With the increasing impact of Jesus’ministry, He was now approached by 2nd group of Jewish religious leaders that had come from Jerusalem.

Previous group - scribes from Jerusalem -

This might have been in some way the result of the Pharisees in Capernaum - near Gennesaret - consulting with the Herodians how to destroy Jesus -

Their question had nothing to do with hygiene and germs and washing dirty, grimy hands before eating.

It not about germs, if they had any sense of germs and infectious disease.

It was all about ceremonial cleanness and ritual.

It involved ceremonial washing.

For the average person, there was no OT commandment for this.

The exception would be for priests before entering the tabernacle.

Ex

There was further direction for priests who came in contact with something unclean -

Those who were not priests and came in contact with a bodily discharge, were expected to wash themselves and their clothes.

- - Having mentioned that, the washing here so as not to be defiled is all about ceremony.

There hands were deemed defiled, unclean - according to the tradition of the Elders.

In his study Bible notes, Dr MacArthur explained, “The ceremony involved someone pouring water out of a jar onto anothers’s hands, whose fingers would be pointing up.

As long as the water dripped off at the wrist, the person could proceed to the next step.

The water was then poured over both hands with the fingers pointed down.

Then each hand was to be rubbed with the fist of the other hand.”

In Jesus’ day, the Elders of the Pharisees had compiled a very long list of what made one unclean,

Next to the Qumran community, the Pharisees were the most scrupulous sect of Judaism with regard to matters of cleanness.

Unclean for Pharisaic rabbis were any form of human excretion (spittle, semen, menstruation, etc.), women after childbirth, corpses, carrion, creeping things, idols, and certain classes of people, such as lepers, Samaritans, and Gentiles.

This list implicates both Jesus and the disciples of several earlier violations of ritual uncleanness, since they have been with lepers (1:40), tax collectors (2:13), Gentiles (5:1), menstruating women (5:25), and corpses (5:35).

Ritual washings were a means of cleansing and protecting observant Jews from the above defilements.

(Further on the Pharisees, see at 2:18.)

Most of this was totally arbitrary and is many cases ridiculous.

It is important to understand that “cleanness” was not limited to or even primarily concerned with matters of hygiene, nor are distinctions between clean and unclean entirely understandable on the basis of rational explanation alone.

The Mishnah, for instance, declared that the Aramaic sections of Daniel and Ezra rendered the hands of anyone who touched them unclean, as did the Holy Scriptures themselves if they were translated into Assyrian.

On the other hand, translating the Aramaic sections of Scripture into Hebrew made them clean (m.

Yad.

4:5).

This text is one of many instances indicating that “cleanness” was a ritual or cultic distinction as opposed to a practical or hygienic distinction.

One way to convey the power of the Jewish distinction between clean and unclean, perhaps, is to draw a parallel with authoritarian societies and organizations, where people avoid all contact with a person who is under suspicion or who has been fired, for example, so as not to endanger their own position.

So precise were there ceremonial washings of the Elders that in verse 4, they washed - immersed - baptiso.

Mark also mentioned that the Elders had other prescribed traditions.

To modern readers the cleansing of objects listed in 7:2–5 may appear exaggerated.

Some may even suspect Mark of anti-Jewish polemic.

Neither appears to be the case, however.

A variety of evidence from the first century essentially corroborates the Pharisaic obsession with purity as described by Mark.

Jacob Neusner notes that the dominant trait of Pharisaism before A.D. 70, as depicted in both rabbinic traditions and the Gospels, concerns conditions regarding ritual purity.

It is worth remembering that fully twenty-five percent of the Mishnah is devoted to questions of purity.

Archaeological excavations continue to discover Jewish mikwa’ot or cleansing pools that were a standard feature of Jewish homes and settlements in the first century (see Mishnah, tractate Mikwa’ot).

Mikwa’ot have even been uncovered on the summit of Masada, one of the most arid places on earth.

2. Jesus’ statement explaining the problem with their question.

Mk

Statement not a question

Scriptural basis -

An example of how they - the Elders - rejected the commandment of God to establish tradition.

Commandment of God - ;

Tradition of man - Corban - give to God

Making void the word of God

Many such things you do.

We should note that Jesus answered their question with the Word of God.

Although in their eyes, Jesus was without credentials, the Word of God the prophets were regarded as having almost as much authority as the Pentateuch.

Jesus did not the Elders or the Talmud, He referred to the Scriptures, which are our final authority.

When Isaiah prophesied about hypocrites like you.

Some have suggested that there is also an indirect reference to Ezekiel, the prophet

E

In referring the Pharisees and scribes, Jesus was borrowing a term from Greek theater that was less offensive than it would today.

He was saying that you are wearing a mask to play your part.