In Vain do they Worship Me
Sermon • Submitted
0 ratings
· 74 viewsNotes
Transcript
Mark 7:1-23
Mark 7:1-23
OPENING REMARKS
Today as we focus on the faceoff between Jesus and the Pharisees besides the Galilee we are going to see the following:
That any worship that involves the mouth but not the heart is in vain.
That it’s possible to get so caught up in keeping earthly traditions, that you might actually miss the heart of God.
That Jesus tells us the biggest problem that each individual faces in this world isn’t external but is internal. It is the problem of sin; which isn’t something outside of a person that occasionally gets the better of them, but it’s something that is a constituent part of their very nature.
1 The Pharisees and some of the teachers of the law who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus
Jesus and His disciples have arrived on the North Western short of the Galilee and people have been coming to them from all over and He has been healing them.
Then we’re told that the scribes and Pharisees who had come from Jerusalem surround Jesus and begin to question Him.
This is the second time in Mark’s Gospel that this has happened, that men have travelled up to Galilee from Jerusalem (some 90 miles) to pick a bone with Jesus. The first time in chapter 3 they accused Him of having a demon, now they accuse his disciples of being unclean and of not following the tradition of the elders.
The Pharisees and Scribes of Jerusalem viewed themselves as the creme of Jewish scholarship, they were seen as the spiritual leaders of the nation at the time. And here they were busying themselves, travelling all the way up into the provinces to dispute with this Galilean preacher. You can imagine their thoughts ‘who is this man? He hasn’t even studied in Jerusalem? Who does He think he is to be teaching the people? And the foolish people have gone after him! We’ll set them straight!’
There is a kind of stiffness, a stuffiness in the scribes and pharisees, an arrogance that we want to avoid. They were convinced that if God was going to move in their nation, it was going to happen their way. The Messiah, in their view, wouldn’t come from some backwater town, the son of an unknown carpenter! He would look and dress like they did, he’d have studied under Gamaliel like they had, he’d be a zealot for the traditions of the elders, he would be known by them and would like and respect them. Jesus didn’t fit their little box, and they hated him for it!
Sometimes if we’ve seen God move before in a particular way let’s say, it’s easy to start thinking that He will only move in that particular way. For example, if we encountered God in a powerful way once at a conference, where there were thousands of others, an incredible worship team and you just got so touched by God there, it can be tempting to think that God will only show up in that kind of an environment. So we might begin trying to recreate that environment, perhaps criticising churches that ‘just don’t get it’. When really it was just one way of many in which we may encounter God, and it had little to do with the environment. You can get whole church networks who are committed to recreating the move of God they experienced 40 years ago, so much so that they can get offended at what God is doing in the here and now. Let’s not be like that!
2 they saw that some of his disciples ate with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed. 3 (For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands properly, holding to the tradition of the elders, 4 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.) 5 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?”
The Pharisees take issue with Jesus’s disciples this time, they ask Jesus why His disciples don’t hold to the tradition of the elders and eat bread without washing their hands. Then from verse 3 to 4 we get this kind of parenthesis, explaining to non-Jewish readers the kind of ritual cleansing rules that were involved in the tradition of the elders the Pharisees were referring to.
When they were saying the disciples hadn’t washed their hands, they weren’t saying they hadn’t cleaned them before eating. They were talking about a second ceremonial washing, where you would take a cup of water and pour it from your fingers to your wrists and recite a prayer, and then pour water from your wrists to your fingers.
This kind of ceremonial washing wasn’t prescibed in the law of Moses, it wasn’t a scriptural command found in God’s word, it was a command found in the tradition of the elders, a collection of rabbinical teachings held by the Pharisees and scribes.
The only ceremonial hand washing found commanded in the law was for the priests entering into the temple to perform their duties. Yet the pharisees said Jesus’s disciples had impure hands. They certainly weren’t impure according according to scripture, but according to the legalistic code of the tradition of the elders they were. The Pharisees believed that their teachings and traditions were every bit as authoritative as the word of God and they judged Jesus’s disciples as having done something wrong, something impure, not because they had broken God’s commands, but because they had broken the traditions and commandments of men.
These Pharisees did have a responsibility to run the rule over itinerant preachers and prophets, they were supposed to discern if they were from God. But they came all the way from Jerusalem not to judge Jesus’s ministry according to the scriptures, which would have been proper, but to judge Him according to their own traditions!
Every major heresy in church history has flowed from a desire amongst men to elevate their own teachings and traditions over and above scripture. It’s why the church needed a reformation in the 16th century. Priests were teaching the commands of men as though they were the commands of God;
“As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs.” Johann Tetzel
The Roman Catholic church taught that one could purchase spiritual merit from the church in order to help lost loved ones out of purgatory!
Of the many man made traditions taught at the time this one has to be one of the most destructive, that you could effectively buy your way to heaven! The Roman Catholic church grew extremely wealthy off the back of this teaching and priests would often live licentious lifestyles with the money they accrued from unwitting church folk.
We think of the modern day Johann Tetzels, living large off the back of the health, wealth and prosperity gospel. Telling Christians that if they’ll sow a seed of £1000 God will ‘release their blessing.’ How we need another reformation in our day!
6 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;
7 in vain do they worship me,
teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’
8 You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.”
Jesus, the first and ultimate reformer just absolutely eviscerates them! He doesn’t spare them, He doesn’t pull any punches, He doesn’t go to them privately afterwards and just have a quiet chat with them. He confronts them publicly and calls out their error.
Why does He do that? Wouldn’t it have been more loving to just let them have their say and move on? I want you to see here that even though Jesus’s words for these men are strong, they are loving. These men were pretending to be the shepherds of God’s people, all the while they were judging the true Good Shepherd of God’s people. Jesus was loving God’s sheep by exposing the false shepherds, and He was loving the false shepherds by exposing their hypocrisy!
People often say, whats the need for calling out false teachers publicly, you don’t know them, if you haven’t gone to them privately you shouldn’t be calling them out publicly. This idea comes from Matthew 18:15-17
15 “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. 16 But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. 17 If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.
This is what Jesus taught us to do when a fellow Christian sins against us personally, we go to them privately first because the sin was between the two of us. However, a false teacher isn’t sinning against you privately, they are sinning publicly by broadcasting false teachings, a public sin needs to be confronted publicly, not privately. It’s not loving to let God’s sheep get led astray by false teachers because it’s ‘mean’ to confront them.
He goes to the book of Isaiah and says that Isaiah was actually prophesying about them! The prophesy Jesus quotes is found in Isaiah 29:13
13 The Lord says:
“These people come near to me with their mouth
and honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
Their worship of me
is based on merely human rules they have been taught.
Now, Isaiah’s prophecy was about the people of Jerusalem in his day, before God sent them away into exile. Yet Jesus is saying that this prophecy was also about the Pharisees of His day. This shows us how the word of God though it was written by men who lived thousands of years ago can be made to apply to our lives today. We can say with David ‘The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want’, we know that God’s word to His people Israel through Jeremiah in Jeremiah 33:3
3 Call to me and I will answer you, and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known.
Are just as applicable to us as God’s people here in the 21st century.
Jesus calls them hypocrites. This is a Greek theatrical term used to describe an actor, if someone was a ὑποκριτής they were a ‘play-actor’ a ‘pretender’, someone who pretends to be something they are not.
How were these men hypocrites? They honoured God with their mouths but their heart was far from him. They loved to talk about the high things of God; theology, orthodoxy, orthopraxy, but not because they loved God, they just loved being right! It’s possible to love right doctrine, but actually miss the heart of God in it. These men were puffed up with pride because of all that they knew, instead of being humbled by the God that all of their studying revealed. Knowing things about God and about the Bible isn’t any use to us unless we know the God who the Bible reveals.
Their worship of God didn’t flow out of a grateful, ransomed heart, but instead was merely perfunctory. It was just bare religion, there was no life in it, no love, no passion.
Instead of truly teaching God’s people what they needed, ‘the commandments of God’ they had neglected this and were instead teaching their own commandments as if they were God’s commandments. Revealing who they really were; play actors, false shepherds, hypocrites.
Jesus, quoting Isaiah says ‘In vain do they worship me’, so in other words their worship, however sincerely they might have felt about it was utterly futile, there was no end in it. God did not accept it.
Put simply, what makes worship acceptable to God is not how sincerely it is offered, or how passionately it is offered. God will only accept worship which is offered in spirit (or in other words from our hearts) and in truth, in accordance with what God has revealed about Himself in the scriptures. It’s no use offering passionate, heartfelt worship without any care for truth, nor is it any use offering worship which may be theologically correct but is dry as a bone, not coming from our hearts but rather learnt by rote.
9 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.”
Verse 9 is a joy. It tells us that Jesus on occasion used sarcasm to illustrate a point! Ah, how wonderful to know that our Lord has a sense of humour and also that it was on occassions rather dry!
Jesus uses an example to show how these Pharisees were using their own traditions to actually get around obeying God’s commands. We can see how they felt excused in being disobedient to God because they were especially pious in following their ‘holy’ traditions. They didn’t see their traditions as being seperate from God’s commands but an extension of them. And that’s how they felt self righteous by obeying them.
Sometimes we can let tradition actually prevent us from obeying God’s commands. We can let them keep us from God’s heart if we’re not careful.
Traditions are things that have been passed down to us by older generations. They can be good or bad. Praying before dinner is an example of a good tradition. But if I take that tradition to the nth degree and say that no one can eat in my house until they have prayed I may end up not obeying God’s command that I should love my neighbour!
Each of us has been raised with certain traditions in church; attitudes towards how sung worship ought to be done, how we ought to dress for church, whether we should drink alcohol or no. Though we might have strongly held convictions of these things, none of these to keep us from fellowship with other believers. To do that would be to invalidate the word of God in order to hold to our traditions.
The Pharisees felt that through holding to their traditions one could maintain their cleanness.
14 And he called the people to him again and said to them, “Hear me, all of you, and understand: 15 There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him.” 17 And when he had entered the house and left the people, his disciples asked him about the parable. 18 And he said to them, “Then are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, 19 since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.) 20 And he said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him. 21 For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, 22 coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. 23 All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”
Jesus had some bad news for them. For all of their washing rituals, for all of their cleansing processes they could never maintain their cleanness. It was impossible. Because the uncleaness they wanted to purge wasn’t on their hands, their feet or anywhere on their bodies, it wasn’t coming from the outside to contaminate them, the contamination was coming from within them, flowing from their hearts, from the very core of their being. Evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, deceit, envy, slander, pride and foolishness.
Why did Jesus list all these things? Because there isn’t one person sat in this room that can’t identify with something on that list.
“I sicken as I think how man has plagued his fellow man by his sins. But I will not go through the list, nor need I; the devil has preached upon this text this week, and few have been able to escape the horrible exposition.” Spurgeon
Jesus wanted the Pharisees and the people listening to Him to see that true holiness wasn’t a matter of washing your hands, the contamination ran far, far deeper than any act or ritual could cleanse. We don’t just need an improved heart, we need a new heart!
26 And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.
The heart is a reservoir. It’s the source of all our deeds.
23 Above all else, guard your heart,
for everything you do flows from it.
Jesus wanted us to see that the reservoir of our heart was dreadfully polluted. That no matter how much we worked on it, no matter how much we tried to treat the waters of that reservoir it’s flow could never be pure. Just like the waters of Marah that were too bitter to drink for the Israelites in the wilderness.
22 Then Moses ordered Israel to set out from the Red Sea, and they went into the wilderness of Shur. They went three days in the wilderness and found no water. 23 When they came to Marah, they could not drink the water of Marah because it was bitter. That is why it was called Marah. 24 And the people complained against Moses, saying, “What shall we drink?” 25 He cried out to the Lord; and the Lord showed him a piece of wood; he threw it into the water, and the water became sweet.
There the Lord made for them a statute and an ordinance and there he put them to the test.
Those bitter waters were the waters of your heart, that piece of wood is the cross of Jesus Christ. When we take that cross into our heart we are truly cleansed, the reservoir is no longer polluted but instead is good for others to drink.
So have you come to the place where you know that no amount of dead religious observance can purify you? Are you ready to die with Christ to sin and be raised to life with Him in God? If there’s any doubt in your mind as to whether or not you are saved, then today is the day to make sure.
13 For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”