WWUTT 2173 You Do Many Such Things as These (Mark 7:9-13)

It is very, very easy for us to elevate our biases and traditions over the Word of God. We must recognize how weak we are in our flesh to keep ourselves subject to God's Word when we understand the text.

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Jesus Confronts the Pharisees' Tradition Over God's Word

Thank you, Becky. In our study of the Gospel of Mark, we've been in chapter 7 this week, right at the beginning of chapter 7, where Jesus is confronting the Pharisees who have elevated their man-made traditions over the Word of God.

Let's finish up the section today. I'm going to pick up this time in verse 5 and go through verse 13 out of the Legacy Standard Bible. Hear the word of the Lord. And the Pharisees and the scribes asked Jesus, why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat their bread with defiled hands?

And he said to them, rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far away from me. But in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commands of men, leaving the commandment of God you hold to the tradition of men.

And he was also saying to them, You are good at setting aside the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition. For Moses said, Honor your father and your mother, and he who speaks evil of father or mother is to be put to death.

But you say, If a man says to his father or his mother, Whatever you might benefit from me is Corban, that is to say, given to God, you no longer leave him to do anything for his father or his mother, thus invalidating the word of God by your tradition, which you have handed down.

And you do many things such as that. And when we get to the close of this section today, we're going to consider some more of those things, examples that we might see even in Christianity around us. I'm going to say Christianity in the broad sense of the term, because even yesterday we were considering how this plays out in Roman Catholicism, which is Pharisee ism on steroids.

The Pharisees could never have imagined reaching the level that that the Roman Catholics have. So so there's that they're not considered evangelicals, but you might consider them, you know, part of the broad sense of Christianity as it pertains to a religion.

We'll consider some other examples as well. We get to the end after verse 13, where Jesus says specifically, you do many things such as that. And what other ways might we see the doctrines and the traditions of men elevated over the word of God as a matter of importance?

But first, let's finish up this exchange between Jesus and the Pharisees. So a reminder once again, and I'm sure if you've been with me the last couple of days or even if you just heard the section read, you've gathered what's going on.

The disciples have not washed their hands before eating. And this has nothing to do with hygiene. It's a matter of ceremonial cleanliness. And these are laws that the Pharisees have added to the law of God.

God says nothing about you have to wash your hands before eating, lest you eat something with defiled hands and make yourself spiritually unclean. That would be the claim by the Pharisees. If you had unclean hands and you ate your food, well, you've made yourself unholy.

And here they're with Jesus and Jesus doesn't hold that interpretation of the law. He's the one who gave the law going all the way back to the time of Moses, 1500 years before this exchange happening with the Pharisees.

So Jesus knows the law better than they do. They have added to the law. They have morphed it and added in their own traditions. And so Jesus is rebuking them for making holiness a matter of behavior and making the ability to achieve righteousness something that you can accomplish by making up your own rules.

They have elevated their traditions over what God has said in his word. And so Jesus points back to Isaiah yesterday, as we considered from Isaiah 29. This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far away from me.

In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commands of men. And so leaving the commandment of God, you hold to the tradition of men. And that's where we finished up yesterday. So when you get to this point where man's traditions have been elevated over the word of God, there's really not any reason to have to read the word of God anymore, is there?

Because you just go by what the tradition says. The tradition interprets God's word for me. So why do I even need to read God's word to know what it says? And this is a criticism that I've made of Roman Catholicism before, or even Greek Orthodoxy, which both claim that their traditions are at least equal to the scripture.

It's tradition and scripture, not sola scriptura, which is what we as Protestants understand from the scriptures. God's word has the supreme authority so that even our tradition must be subject to it.

But that's not the way that the Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholics see it. They will elevate tradition to the level of God's word. They both have equal supremacy or authority. But of course, when you play that out logically, the word of God is only understood as far as the tradition goes.

So the tradition dictates how you're supposed to understand God's word. Then why even bother reading God's word? All I have to do is keep the tradition because the tradition tells me what God's word says and how it is that I'm supposed to live.

So they have elevated their tradition over what God's word says. You know, I'm a Reformed Baptist and we follow the 1689 Second London Baptist Confession of Faith. But how often have you heard me on this podcast reading from the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith?

I've done it a few times, but hardly ever. You probably couldn't even point back to the numbered episode exactly that I did read from the London Baptist Confession of Faith because I'm not on this broadcast to teach you what the Confession of Faith says.

I'm teaching you what the Bible says. We as a church and I as the pastor of that church have adopted the London Baptist Confession of Faith as our confession because we believe it best summarizes what the Bible says and the convictions we have based on what scripture teaches.

But we don't hold that tradition over the scripture. Our confession of faith does not have equal authority with the scriptures. It is subject to the scripture. It summarizes things that scripture says, but we would never put it up there as as equal sola scriptura.

It is the scripture that has all of the instruction, everything that we need for life for the statement of faith doesn't have everything that we need for life. The statement of faith is what, 13 ,000 words or something like that.

Scripture is over 750 ,000 words. So the Bible has everything that we need pointing us to Christ, giving us the gospel, showing us what holy living is supposed to look like. It is the scripture that we that we learn God's word that even brings us to faith.

Romans 10 17 faith comes by hearing and hearing through the word of Christ, not your church's statement of faith. And it is also this word that grows us and sanctifies us. Jesus in John 17 17 father sanctify them in your truth.

Your word is truth. And so it is by this word that we've come to salvation. It's by this word that we are growing in our salvation. So it is the scripture that has the supreme authority. And here we have the Pharisees, not just placing their tradition equal with the authority of scripture.

They're putting it over the authority of scripture. Jesus even points that out, leaving the commandment of God, you hold to the tradition of men. Eventually your tradition gets to that place where it is elevated over the word itself.

And then you're in big, big trouble. And we all have to be careful of that. It is a weakness of the flesh that we could accidentally do that. And it may not be, you know, a confession of faith or the denomination we're a part of or anything like that.

It could just be some sort of bias that you have or a certain thing that you read the scripture to mean. And you've elevated that over what the scripture actually says. There are all kinds of traditions, all kinds of ways that we have read the Bible that we think that this is the way it is to be understood, that we elevate over the scripture.

And so we have to be careful in the way that we do that, that we are committed to remaining under the authority of God's word, not putting our authority over God's word. And so verse nine, and he was also saying to them, Jesus saying to the Pharisees, you are good at setting aside the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition.

It's kind of the same manner in what I, what I said a moment ago. So eventually it gets to the point, we're just going to push God's word off to the side and it keeps getting pushed further and further to the side in favor of our tradition or our biases.

And so Jesus gives them this example. Here's one of the ways that the Pharisees invalidate God's word for the sake of their tradition. We've already seen it with the hand-washing thing, but here Jesus gives another example and this one having more serious consequences like the hand-washing thing.

What, what is that one really hurting? If a person doesn't keep the tradition of the elders, nobody's getting hurt by that or, or if they keep the tradition of the elders, like they wash their hands before eating, there's nothing, there's nothing seriously harmful about that.

It's kind of a victimless crime, except that they'll get to believing that by their actions and by their works, they can do something to the outside of their bodies, which makes the inside of their bodies pure.

And that's simply not true. That is not the way that we come to cleanliness. It is Christ who purifies us. His Holy Spirit washes us with water as said in Ephesians five in Titus three and in other places where the, where we have the washing of the water, John three, that's another one where the spirit washes us clean.

That's the real level of cleanliness that we need. But again, Jesus gives this example to the Pharisees. Here's an example of something that actually causes harm to people where their tradition harms others.

Honoring Parents and the Corban Tradition

Verse 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. Now there are a couple of passages that, uh, that Jesus could be quoting here.

Honor your father and your mother definitely comes out of the 10 commandments. That's in Exodus 20, he who speaks evil of father or mother is to be put to death. That could be the laws concerning a rebellious son in Deuteronomy 21.

It's most likely though Leviticus 20 verse nine, if there is anyone who curses his father or his mother, he shall surely be put to death. He has cursed his father or his mother. His blood guiltiness is upon him.

That might be what Jesus is referring to. So you have the commandment, the fifth command as it's given in Exodus 20 honor your father and your mother. And then you have the Levitical law in Leviticus 20 verse nine.

He who speaks evil of father or mother is to be put to death. Jesus cites these two laws. So this is what Moses has said in the way that you are to regard your parents in the kind of behavior and reverence that an offspring, a child, and when I say child could be an adult, but, but somebody who is descended from their parents, this is the kind of reverence that they should have for their mother and their father.

It is spelled out in the command. And yet what does the Pharisee teach? So Jesus says in verse 11, but you say, if a man says to his father or his mother, whatever you might benefit from me is Corbin.

That is to say given to God. So let's say their parents are getting up there in years and it comes time for the child to take care of his aging father or mother. They can't take care of themselves anymore.

And so it's their duty to take care of their parents or provide for them monetarily, however that plays out. But the child says, well, I'm sorry, mom and dad, I don't have anything to give you the money that I had set aside that would have cared for you.

I've given to God already. I gave it in the, in the temple. And so it's Corbin. In other words, given to God, that's what that word means. So I would be, I'd be going back against God if I were to take that money and give it to you.

And would you be okay with that? I mean, I would bring a curse on us. If I take money I've given to God and give it to you. So sorry, I've got nothing left. There's nothing that I can do to give to you.

I've already given it to the Lord. And so Jesus says, when that's your teaching, that's what you have taught people. Verse 12, you no longer leave him to do anything for his father or his mother. This is the way I've honored my parents.

I've taken this inheritance that I've received and I've given it back to God instead of caring for my mother and my father, whatever you might benefit from me. Hey, look at what's being done with that in service to the Lord.

And so Jesus says in verse 13, thus invalidating the word of God by your tradition, which you have handed down and you do many things such as that. The rebuke that we read yesterday from Isaiah chapter one, where God had said to his people, you're doing injustice.

You say you love me, but you treat one another unjustly. Remember the two greatest commandments in the law. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself.

And these two commandments are the sum of all the law and the prophets. And Jesus even saying that second commandment is like the first one. If you love God, but you don't love others, then you don't love God.

And if you can love others and not love God, that's a problem. But you can't love God and not love others. And so to be in obedience to God and to honor him and worship him, it even requires the way that we love one another, the way that we keep the commandments of God.

Jesus saying in John 14, 15, you will show me that you love me when you obey my commandments. And so the Lord says to Israel, going back to Isaiah one, wash yourselves, purify yourselves, remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes, cease to do evil, learn to do good, seek justice, reprove the ruthless, execute justice for the orphan, plead for the widow.

But when the people are not caring for each other, then they have invalidated God's commands in favor of the traditions of men. And so, like I said, there are many other ways in which we might see this play out.

Even within our Christian circles, there are those who will say those preachers and teachers who will say, God told me to tell you something. And that is a tradition of man that they have elevated over God's word.

They're even trying to take the thing that they're going to say to you and make it scripture. God told me to tell you this. This is of the authority of God. So if you disagree with me, it is the same as if you disagree with God.

That's elevating their tradition over God's word. Beth Moore has done this in her teaching. I've even highlighted clips of hers before where she said, God told me, he spoke to me and he said this. And then she says it to her audience.

I've played clips of Stephen Furtick, who's done the same thing. In fact, most sermons, he will begin with saying, God told me today or told me to tell you or something to that degree. It's very common in charismaticism.

But a lot of this has spread through evangelicalism because of Henry Blackaby's book, Experiencing God. It is there in that book where he talks about ways in which God speaks to us. And this has filtered out into so much evangelicalism, whether or not those teachers are aware that they got this mostly from the influence of Henry Blackaby's book.

Charles Stanley, for example, I had heard him teach about how God will guide your every decision. Even when it comes to the turkey at the grocery store that you select, God is the one that will speak to you and tell you which turkey it is that you're supposed to buy.

You know, little mundane things like that. And this is not the way that God guided the disciples, guided the apostles in the book of Acts. Sometimes the apostles didn't know exactly where God was going to send them.

Sometimes they just went, but they went in obedience to God, spreading the gospel as they went. Sometimes the Holy Spirit would put a blockade in front of them. No, this is not the direction that I want you to go.

And so they would go another way. But we do not see in Acts the Holy Spirit guiding every single decision that the apostles made. Whatever decision they made, they did it in honor of the Lord. But it wasn't God dictating every decision that we're going to make.

That's not the way that God works. He didn't even do it with his own apostles. So he's not doing it with us either. But there are many, many Christians out there that will think every decision that I make, I heard God telling me to do this.

I just felt his presence, and this is what it was that I was supposed to do. So they will try to justify whatever decision they make as being something divine. And that is elevating their tradition, their biases, their interpretation of circumstances.

None of that's in the Bible. But they will interpret their circumstances this way, believing that it must have been God that gave me this or showed me this decision that I was supposed to make, and thus making it something divine.

You can't argue with it. This is of God. He showed me. And we find these very common ways that many people will elevate their own tradition over the Word of God. You know, Scripture tells us, 1 Corinthians 10, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it to the glory of God.

Everything that we do should be done to the praise of his name. But don't think of everything you do as having been guided by God for you to do that, for you to make exactly this decision. And so your every footstep or click of your finger on the mouse or word that comes out of your mouth, all of this was approved of by God.

You might think that you're giving God glory in those things by thinking such. But you're actually elevating your decisions to being decisions of God. It's you who are elevating yourself and bringing God down when you think of things in that way.

So we must be humble and we must be careful. And this goes back to what I said at the beginning, how easy it is for any one of us in our flesh and our weaknesses to elevate our own traditions and our biases over God's Word.

As we say in our statement of faith, yeah, here we go. I'm quoting the statement of faith now, which I rarely do, but here we go. From the from the very first line of the Baptist confession of faith, the Holy Scripture is the only sufficient, certain and infallible rule of all saving knowledge, faith and obedience.

Although the light of nature and the works of creation and providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom and power of God as to leave men inexcusable, yet they are not sufficient to give that knowledge of God and his will, which is necessary unto salvation.

So when it comes to matters of faith and obedience, the Scripture gives us everything it is that we need to know. When it comes to selecting your groceries at the grocery store, God's Word is not guiding you in that decision.

Although you can certainly pray, God, may this food have been prepared well for my family and I. Thank you for giving us the means to be able to purchase it. And may we be healthy as we eat it. That's perfectly acceptable to commit yourself unto God in that way.

But he's not directing every single decision that we make. So let us be careful to distinguish those things between our regular everyday actions and what it is that God says according to his Word. The Bible guides us in faith and obedience.

And so in everything that we do, may we submit our way unto the Lord. Amen. All right, let's finish there. And then next week we come back into this teaching, still this teaching in Mark 7, but what Jesus is going to direct his disciples in following this.

Still got some good stuff to go here in Mark 7. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the goodness that you have given to us in your son, Jesus Christ, because of his sacrifice on the cross for our sins and his resurrection from the grave.

By faith in him, we are forgiven our sins and have everlasting life with God. And I pray that you would guide us today according to your Word, that in the decisions that we make that are moral decisions that have to do with the way that we live our lives.

May we know according to what your Word has said, how we ought to conduct ourselves and do so accordingly, following in the footsteps of the example of Christ, as said in 1 John 2, 6. Forgive us our sins, lead us in paths of righteousness this day, and let us humble ourselves not to elevate our own biases and traditions over God's Word, but keeping ourselves subject to your direction according to your scripture.

It's in Jesus' name we pray, Amen.