This week we are looking at an event from history that is
recorded in a section of an account of Jesus life that is recorded for us in
the Bible called the gospel of Mark. Yesterday we looked on as the Pharisees and some of the
scribes had made the trip from Jerusalem to northern Israel to check up on
Jesus. And as they came to check up on Jesus, Mark tells us that these
self-righteous religious leaders saw that some of Jesus disciples were
eating their bread with impure hands, that is, unwashed.
We talked about the reality that the issue was not
that Jesus disciples were eating with dirty hands. Instead, we discovered that
because the priests were entering into the very presence of the Lord in the
Tabernacle, the priests were required to carefully wash their hands and feet so
that they would be ceremonially clean as they served as a minister to the Lord.
However, while this command was only given to the priests who would be entering
into the tabernacle to serve and minister to the Lord in the presence of the
Lord, in Jesus day, this command that had been given by the Lord to the priests
had been extended to be required of every Jewish person according to the oral
tradition what was taught by the Jewish religious leaders of the day.
Thus, the Jewish religious leaders had created a man-made law and elevated it as being as equal to the commands of God. And as
these religious leaders observed Jesus disciples not following the traditions
and laws that they had made for the Jewish people to observe, they responded by
questioning and challenging Jesus as to why He would allow His disciples to
disobey their commands, which they viewed as being as equal to God’s commands.
Mark tells us that Jesus responded to the question
by accusing the Pharisees and scribes of being hypocrites. The word hypocrite, when used in Jesus day, referred to one
who was an actor or a pretender. In our culture today, we would refer to such a
person as a poser. A hypocrite creates a public impression that is at odds with
one’s real motivation or purpose. A hypocrite fails to follow the message and
teachings that they impose on others. Jesus point behind His accusation was
that the Pharisees were hypocrites because
they were giving an appearance to the Jewish people about where they were at in
their relationship with God that was at odds with where they were truly at in
their relationship with God.
Jesus backed His accusation by quoting from a
section of a letter that is recorded for us in the Old Testament of the Bible
called the book of Isaiah. Jesus was exposing the reality that the Pharisees
and scribes were focused on forcing others to be obedient to their man-made rules while being disobedient, and leading the Jewish people to be disobedient,
to God’s rules. After quoting from Isaiah, Jesus hammered His accusation home
by proclaiming that the Pharisees and scribes were neglecting, or abandoning,
the commandment of God. Instead the Pharisees and scribes were focused on
holding fast to the tradition of men that they had turned into commandments of
men that held equal weight to God’s commands. After accusing the Pharisees and
scribes of hypocrisy, we see Jesus provide an example of their hypocrisy in Mark
7:9-13:
He was also saying to them,
"You are experts at setting aside the commandment of God in order to keep
your tradition. 10 "For Moses said, 'HONOR YOUR FATHER AND YOUR
MOTHER'; and, 'HE WHO SPEAKS EVIL OF FATHER OR MOTHER, IS TO BE PUT TO DEATH'; 11
but you say, 'If a man says to his father
or his mother, whatever I have
that would help you is Corban (that is to say, given to God),' 12 you no longer permit him to do anything
for his father or his mother; 13 thus invalidating the word of God by
your tradition which you have handed down; and you do many things such as
that."
Jesus provided an example where the Pharisees and
scribes demonstrated that they were experts at setting aside, or rejecting the
commandment of God as being invalid, in order to validate their manmade
religious rules and traditions, by quoting from another section of the book of
Exodus. In Exodus 20:12, as the fifth of the ten commandments, God had
commanded the Jewish people to honor their father and mother. In addition, in
Exodus 21:17, God commanded the Jewish people that anyone who spoke evil of their
father or mother was to be put to death.
However, the Jewish people of Jesus day had made a man-made religious rule that 'If a man says to his father or his mother,
whatever I have that would help you is Corban. Now a natural question that
could arise here is “What does that even mean? Now the word corban refers to an
offering that was made to God. You see, what would happen is that a Jewish
person would make a vow, by using this phrase, that would place a ban on an
object so that it could not be used for anything except a sacred use for God.
This vow would result in the object being vowed being viewed as an offering
dedicated to God and forbidden to be used for anything other than God.
In Jesus day, when a man declared his property as
being corban to his parents, he neither promised it to the temple or prohibited
its use to himself. Instead he would be legally excluding his parents from any
ability to have access or receive any benefit from it. However, if the son
later regretted the vow that he made, under the tradition of the Elders he was
not allowed to change the vow that he had made.
And because of that reality, the Pharisees and
scribes of Jesus day had invalidated God’s clear commands by elevating their man-made rules to the status of being equal to God’s rules. Jesus provided this
example to point to the reality that God did not give humanity the authority to
increase and add to the commands and demands that He has given humanity. Jesus
point is that God is the only one who has the right to make laws about
following Him and demand that we obey those laws about following Him. Jesus
point is that no human being has the right to make laws that they demand
obedience to that is equal to the obedience the God demands when it comes to
His laws.
Jesus then hammed His point by telling a parable.
Now a parable is an earthy story that is designed to reveal a deeper spiritual
truth. So let’s look at this parable together in verse 14-16:
After He called the crowd to
Him again, He began saying to
them, "Listen to Me, all of you, and understand: 15 there is
nothing outside the man which can defile him if it goes into him; but the
things which proceed out of the man are what defile the man. 16 "If anyone has ears to hear, let him
hear."
Now when Jesus used the word defile here, this word,
in the language that this letter was originally written in, literally means to
make common or impure. If Jesus was telling this parable in the language that
we use in our culture today, this parable would have sounded something like
this: “Hey listen up and pay attention because this is important. There is
nothing outside of anyone that can cause someone to be impure spiritually.
Instead, it is what comes out of you that reveals the reality that you are
already impure spiritually.”
Now I want us to take a minute an imagine ourselves
as one of Jesus followers listening to this confrontation. You have grown up
your whole life learning not only the commandments of God, but also the
traditions of the Elders. You have grown up your whole life with a list of
rules that clearly came from God that you needed to follow, along with a list
of rules that came from the religious leaders that you needed to follow in
order to be right with God. You grew up your whole life with an understanding
that the rules that came from the religious leaders needed to be followed
because they helped make sure that you obeyed the rules that came from God.
And now you have just heard Jesus accuse the
religious leaders of your day of creating man-made religious rules that actually
resulted in you breaking the rules of God, not obeying the rules of God. Now
you are one of Jesus followers. What would you be thinking? How would you be feeling?
How would you respond?
Friday, we will look at the disciple’s response...
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