Honoring God with Lips and Not Heart

The Tradition of the Elders and Defiled Hands

Welcome to the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church. Kungsvinger is a beacon for the gospel of Jesus Christ and is located on the plains of northwestern Minnesota. We proclaim Christ and Him crucified for our sins and salvation by grace through faith alone.

And now, here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg.

The Holy Gospel according to St. Mark, the 7th chapter. When the Pharisees gathered to Jesus with some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem, they saw that some of His disciples ate with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed.

For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands, holding to the tradition of the elders. 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.

And the Pharisees and the scribes asked Him, Why do Your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but they eat with defiled hands? 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.

In vain do they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. You leave the commandment of God, and you hold to the tradition of men. He said to them, You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition.

For Moses said, Honor your father and your mother. Whoever reviles father and mother must surely die. But you say, if a man tells his father or his mother, Whatever he would have gained from me is korban, that is a gift given to God.

Well then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And many such things you do. This is the gospel of the Lord.

Lip Service, Idolatry, and Taking God’s Name in Vain

In the name of Jesus. These people honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me, Jesus said. Teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. Well, let's be blunt right at the beginning there.

Teaching your ideas as if God has commanded them, your commandments as if God has commanded them. There's a term for that, it's called idolatry. And it's also a breaking of that commandment that says this, You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.

So when you deceive people and tell them, God commands. And whatever you say that comes next, if God hasn't commanded it, you have, maybe your tradition. You see, kind of think of it this way. You know, Norwegians, they say, God commands, you shall not dance.

But see, that's not in the Bible. That's not in the Bible. Okay, I just want to make that very clear. I might have to step on some toes here today, right? But see, when I was growing up in the Nazarene church, they talked about this category, the hypocrites.

They give God lip service, but not heart service. And here's how this generally goes. Lip service to God is saying, oh, I'm a Christian, but I don't tithe. Well, tithing's not required of Christians, by the way.

Or, I'm a Christian, but, well, I listen to Van Halen. You can't be a Christian and listen to Van Halen. I mean, that's lip service to God, not honoring Him with your heart. At least this is how this goes.

But here's the thing. We should pay close attention to both Isaiah and to Jesus in this regard. Because being a hypocrite and offering lip service to God is not put in terms like that. It's put in terms of following the commandments of men.

The Fall, Fig Leaves, and Human Religions

Let me kind of go back to the scene of the crime. I like to do that from time to time. Remember Genesis chapter three, where our first parents, and by the way, I hate to say this, okay. If you think that you come from good genetics, like you come from good stock, I'm gonna tell you a story about some of your family members.

And this shows just how bad your stock is, okay. If you think that your family is brilliant, okay, let me tell you about some of your relatives here. All right, so they're mine too, by the way, okay. Just wanna make that clear.

So your relatives, there they were in the Garden of Eden and the serpent shows up. And by the way, they didn't even have a tough religion. How many commandments did they have? One, and here's the commandment.

Don't eat from that tree, right. Just don't eat from that one, okay. Okay, one commandment, all right. How'd that go? All right, so the serpent comes and he deceives them and they eat, their eyes are opened and then we see the first religion in action.

And what a stupid religion this is, okay. So after they eat of the fruit, the eyes of both were opened and they knew that they were naked so they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths from themselves.

You can almost hear how this conversation's going. What happened? I don't feel like God. Ah, you're naked. Ah, you're naked too. Ah, okay, what are we gonna do about this? So they have shame and guilt and Adam sits there and goes, no problem, I'll fix this right up.

So he grabs some fig leaves, right, quickly sews them together, puts them on in strategic places and see, see, problem solved. You can't cover up your guilt and shame with fig leaves. That's just crazy.

That's nuts, right. And then to make matters worse, when they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the pool of the day, the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees in the garden.

How's that gonna work out? You're gonna hide from God. What kind of religious strategy is this? So the Lord God called out to the man and said, where are you? He said, well, I heard the sound of you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself.

And God said, who told you you were naked? And you can almost see Eve going, I told you this wasn't gonna work, right. This is how this goes, right. And that's the problem. Because of our fall into sin, we are in complete darkness and we are, well, foolish enough to believe that somehow we can sort this all out regarding God.

And so we just make up stuff, right. And it's really not a good thing. It's really bad and we're super stubborn about it. But let me say this. You guys remember those things called maps, okay. I know we have GPSs on our cell phones now, but back when I was a younger lad, when I was skinny, right.

We had these things called maps and some of them were pretty large pieces of paper, but they were intricately folded and they were wonderful. When you get the folding right, they fit perfectly in your glove box.

And before you would travel somewhere, you're not familiar with the terrain, you would, well, you would pull the map out. Really only kind of in an emergency. And here's the thing about guys. I hate to say this.

All of us, all of us men, we're born with Dame Bramage. So there's this thing in us, we don't like to ask for directions. And if at all possible, we don't wanna pull out the map and actually have to look where we're going.

Lost Without the Book: Poughkeepsie, Heaven, and Made-Up Christianity

So family vacations. Now, what I'm about to tell you, this is all theoretical, hypothetical. I mean, it couldn't possibly have actually happened to anybody professing to be a Christian. Imagine if you would, a family vacation, heading off to a place in a different state that you're not exactly familiar with.

We'll just make up a place. Poughkeepsie, New York, right? I don't even know where Poughkeepsie is, but I'm sure if I looked on a map, I'd figure it out. But here's kind of the point. A family going on a family vacation, you got the husband, the wife, the three shiny kids, right?

What could possibly go wrong? And the question at the beginning of the journey goes something like this. Do you know how to get there? All right. Now, and it's always asked with that, just that little bit of a dig that kind of implies you really don't know how to get there, do you?

Okay. I know how to get there. I know where I'm going. It's only gonna take us three hours to get there. It's not a big deal. Uh-huh. And you can just hear the incredulity in the uh-huh, right? Well, five hours later, you're two hours late.

The kids are screaming, crying, Are we there yet? Are we almost there yet? Right? The wife is looking off into outer space, and there is, in the glove box, it looks like a rolled-up newspaper. It's what's left of the map, okay?

Because you have to have, well, calm and peace to put that thing together, right? And you can tell that there's been unhappiness. So let me put it this way. If you can't find Poughkeepsie, what on earth makes you think you're gonna find heaven?

I want you to think about this. We're on a journey, and the goal is to actually get to heaven and not end up in hell. And so you think you can sort this out. Are you out of your mind? Okay. Well, sure, I can sort this out.

I know that I, well, you know, I'm not exactly a bad person. I just need to, you know, be a little bit better, you know? And so we start making up religions. And here's the weird part. We make up religions all the while while attending a place that calls itself a Christian church.

So, all right, so how do you get to heaven? Oh, yeah, I know how to get to heaven. Don't dance, don't drink, don't smoke, don't chew, don't go with any girls that do, and be sure to vote Republican. Oh, boy.

We've got a lot of catechesis going on here. Where'd you get that list? Where did you get that list? Well, I mean, it's just obvious, isn't it? No, no, we need to sort some things out. How are you going to get to heaven?

Well, I'm going to get to heaven by sticking it to the patriarchy, right? I'm going to eat vegan and, you know, make sure to engage in social justice. That's going to get you into heaven? Are you sure?

Yeah, well, of course it is. I mean, that's good, right? Ah, okay. How about you? How are you going to get to heaven? Well, I've been praying to the Virgin Mary for years and making sure to do the rosary religiously and go to Mass at least three times a week.

Ugh! Okay, and you're going to note here, everybody who gives answers like this, what's the big assumption? If I just do good stuff, God's going to sit there and pat me on the head and go, well done, here's heaven, come on in, right?

This is how this works. It don't work that way. It don't work that way. And when you do not listen to God and do not trust his word, Jesus in our gospel text says, you make void the word of God. And here's the thing.

We don't even have to guess how we're saved. And this is good news for us men, okay? Listen, just read the book. God has given us a book and the book kind of spells it out. In no uncertain terms, but here's the deal.

The book sits, well, on your nightstand collecting dust. One of my favorite memes is a photograph of a dusty Bible and somebody has scrawled in the dust, read me, right? And if you're not reading the word of God, you know what you're doing?

More than likely, you're engaging in idolatry and you're blaspheming God and you're foolishly thinking you can sort this all out. You can't. You won't. It's like sewing fig leaves together. Believe me, it's not going to be sufficient.

Pharisees, the Oral Torah, and the Hokey Pokey Baptism

So with that, consider our gospel text. In our gospel text, there's Jesus and his disciples and the religious leaders who are called Pharisees. A little bit of a note. The Pharisees do not represent biblical, orthodox Christianity.

Far from it. They're rank heretics. They have added to the word of God. They arose in the 400 years between Malachi and the gospel of Matthew. No mention of Pharisees anywhere in the Old Testament. And they had a narrative.

And the narrative went something like this. When Moses went up on Mount Sinai all those hundreds of years ago, God didn't give him one Torah or one Bible. He gave him two. Really? Okay. So tell me about this other Torah, this other Bible.

Well, that other Bible isn't written down. That's kind of convenient, right? See, the first Torah was written down and you can find it in the Bible. But the second Torah, it's been passed down secretly via word of mouth from generation to generation.

It's an oral Torah. And in the oral Torah, that's where the command to wash your hands is. You won't find it in the Bible. I pointed this out three years ago. I will reiterate this. If there was a command in the Old Testament that said you need to wash your hands, my mom would have been quoting that verse to me three times a day from the time I was two until the time I was 18.

Necessarily so. Just saying. But since it's not there, I just want to point that out, Mom. It's not there. Okay? Now my wife needs to know this, right? But here's the thing. That command to wash your hands isn't there.

And by the way, it's more than just a mere washing of your hands. In fact, it's not even about bacteria. Because the way the Pharisees thought, they were kind of above sin. They had left that sin thing long ago.

See, God gave 600 and something commandments in the Old Testament. The Pharisees come along and they add another 6 ,000. And they basically have this premise. If you obey our commands, you'll never break God's commands.

And they legitimately thought they were pulling it off. So much so, have you noticed this about people? When they are self-righteous, they are absolutely insufferable to be around. Right? Well, I've got my act together.

I've stopped sinning. Oh, it's been years since I've actually sinned. I might make the occasional mistake. You know, right? This is how they act. And of course, all the while, they're looking down at you like, what's your problem?

Why haven't you gotten your act together? Right? And so, the Pharisees, here's part of their story then. Since they're no longer really sinners, whenever they go out to the grocery store, it's called the agora, the marketplace.

You go out to the grocery store, well, you know, there's a lot of backslidden Jews there and Gentiles and they're sinners and stuff. And their sin, can actually get on you. It's kind of an airborne disease in their way of thinking.

And so, you don't want their sin on you. So, they came up with a baptism ceremony. And by the way, the Greek word here for wash is baptized. All right? I want you to think about it. Now, the ritual, we described it three years ago.

I'll give it in brief. It's like the hokey pokey. Remember? Remember the hokey pokey? You put your left foot in, you put your right foot out. Okay? So, here's how it works. You gotta put your left hand in first, face down, pour some water on it.

Put your right hand in, face down, palm down, pour some water on it. Flip sides again. Left hand in, palm up. Right hand in, palm up. And you're pouring water each time. And then you have to simply say this prayer.

I thank you God, Lord, and maker of heaven and earth that you have given me the command to wash my hands. Super simple, right? But here's the thing. Did God command us to do that little ritual? Does the Bible teach us such a thin concept of sin?

That, you know, it's an airborne disease and that it's above you and that you kind of need to wash it off you when you go out into the marketplace. No, not at all. Sin is not treated that lightly, even close in scripture.

So, does Jesus allow his disciples to pray that prayer? No. Not even close. In fact, Jesus doesn't even want to give the hint of evil because it's evil. It's evil to say that God has commanded us to pray that prayer and to do that hokey pokey thing.

Right? The hokey pokey baptism. Maybe that's what we should call this sermon. The hokey pokey baptism, right? Doesn't do nothing. So Jesus tells his disciples, boys, when you get inside, they're eating at a Pharisee's house, you can just avoid that thing altogether and go right in and start enjoying the food.

And there's the Pharisees doing the hokey pokey. Right? And looking at Jesus' disciples and that's where they've got to draw the line. They've been out investigating Jesus. You see that during the day they had their paper clips out.

They were out there with the pencil and taking notes on Jesus. But this is where they decide they've got to really speak up. So the Pharisees, they came to Jesus and said, why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders?

That's the oral Torah. That's the name for it, by the way, the tradition of the elders. Why don't your disciples walk? Why don't they conduct their lives? Why don't they obey the tradition of the elders?

And they eat with defiled hands. And you can see Jesus just rolling his eyes and going, oy vey. And then he just rips into them. And this is hard stuff. In one of the other Gospels, the disciples came to Jesus after this account and said, you are aware that what you said offended them, right?

And Jesus practically said, good. They need some offending. So here's what he says. Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites? Hypocrites. Somebody who puts on airs. A mask, if you would. This people honors me with their lips.

Their heart far, far from me. In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. And that's the problem, isn't it? Over and again, we invent Christianities. And we don't want to believe Christianity.

We invent gods and we worship them and we call those gods Jesus rather than worshiping the true Jesus. Christ goes on. You leave the commandment of God, you hold to the tradition of men. And you have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition.

And that's the problem. That's the issue. And you'll note that Jesus in our gospel text gives us no gospel. He only gives us law. He only condemns us for our idolatry and for our blasphemies. And so in an odd kind of turn of events here, in order to hear the gospel, we have to go to Isaiah.

The Deaf, the Blind, and the Wonder of Christ

A little odd place to do it. But I want you to consider the fullness of Isaiah's prophecy. In Isaiah 29, verse 11, it says this. The vision of all this has become to you like the words of a book that is sealed.

When men give it to one who can read, saying, read this, he says, I cannot read it. It's sealed. And when they give the book to the one who cannot read, saying, read this, he says, I cannot read. You'll note the beginning of our Old Testament text gets at this interesting thing that is another part of human nature thanks to the fall.

And that is that we have all the time in the world for the things we want to do. We never seem to have any time for things we don't want to do. Again, totally a fictitious hypothetical situation. Imagine if you would, something breaking on your house, right?

And you know that the project is gonna require you to go to Lowe's, and you're gonna have to probably watch a couple of YouTube videos in order to figure out how to fix it. And you're gonna spend money on it.

And the wife asked this question. So when are you gonna fix that thing on the house? I knew she was gonna ask that, right? And so the answer comes back, I'll fix it this weekend. This weekend comes, and oddly enough, the thing doesn't get fixed.

I don't know what happens. I mean, time slips by, you know. It's a complicated world that we live in, right? But then the next weekend comes, and guess what? It doesn't get fixed. And the weekend after that, it doesn't get fixed.

And the weekend after that, it doesn't get fixed. And next thing you know, it's NFL season, and the Vikings are playing, right? I still don't understand why somebody would hurt themselves in this manner, but what do you do?

You start watching the NFL. You're watching the stats. You're watching the reports. You're watching the highlights. You're watching the game. You know everything about everybody, and the wife says to you, how is it that you have all this time to watch a football game, not just one, but all of them, but that thing in our house is still broken.

Is this hitting a little too close to home? Maybe it's just me, right? This gets to that issue. We have all the time in the world for the things we want to do. That's kind of what Isaiah is saying here.

I've got a book. It's written by God. God's actually communicated something to you. It's sealed. I can't read this. Or somebody's saying, I don't even know how to read, but it's from God. Go talk to that guy.

He'll read it to you. I don't got time for that. Okay, right? But isn't that the way of it? And yet, we are very religious people making stuff up, but we don't read the book. We have no time, no effort, and it's not that big of a deal.

Not interested, right? So this is where Isaiah then says, because this people draw near with their mouth, they honor me with their lips, their hearts are far from me, their fear of me is a commandment taught by men.

Now, you would expect that the next word from Isaiah, because their fear of me are commandments or doctrines taught by men, that after the next thing, that it would say, thus the Lord God smiteth them, and what's left of them is nothing but a flaming heap of rubble, something like this.

But that's not what happens here in Isaiah. In fact, it's fascinating. In order to solve this problem, God says this, Behold, therefore, I will do wonderful things to this people with wonder upon wonder, and the wisdom of their wise men will perish, and the discernment of their discerning men shall be hidden.

And so God, his solution to this, I'm going to do wonders, and so what is the wonder that he does? Oh, I would say, start thinking about what we're going to confess in that creed today, that God sends his only begotten Son, born of the Virgin Mary.

That same Son of God grows in stature and wisdom of God, and he obeys God's commandments perfectly, not removing one jot or tittle from them, but keeping God's commandments perfectly in order so that you can be saved.

This same one who was born of the Virgin Mary walks on the water, heals people who are sick with diseases, gives the ability to walk to those who are paralytics, he forgives sins, he cleanses the lepers, gives sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, he casts out demons, and then he goes to the cross.

Bearing your sin in his body, your sin, all of your idolatries, all of your made-up religions, all of the ways in which you've blasphemed God, all of the ways in which you've been attentive to everything else other than his word and his book, and he bleeds and dies in your place, suffering the wrath of God for you.

Oh yeah, God did wonderful things. Wonderful things. And as a result of this, all the wisdom of the wise men of the world starts to just fade into the background. The discernment of all the discerning people of the world just fades into the background.

And then, at the end of this, at the end of this, God says these words. What an interesting phrase. What an interesting verse. And note who's held out for blessing from God. The deaf, the blind, those in darkness, the poor, the meek.

Didn't Jesus start his preaching ministry by proclaiming, blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are the meek? And what is this blindness? What is this deafness? What is this meekness? What is this poorness?

This is for those who, having read the book, the actual commandments of God, and knowing what God commands of us, looks at that and says, uh-oh, I'm in trouble. Scriptures say you will have no other gods, and I've been an idolater.

Scripture says I shouldn't blaspheme, and man, I have been doing nothing but it. Scripture tells me to honor God's Word, and I haven't done that either. Scripture tells me to honor father and mother. Well, we won't even talk about that.

And then, well, the Scriptures also say that we shall not murder, we shall not commit adultery, we shall not steal or bear false witness against our neighbor or covet. And we recognize that the real commandments of God are the very things that we have not done.

Is it any wonder that we make up our own commandments? Because here's the uncomfortable thing that happens when you read the commandments of God. The verdict comes back, you are guilty, and you are a sinner.

Are you saying I'm a sinner? Yes! Right? Always and again, that seems to be the most offensive thing that you can say to somebody, but it is absolutely necessary. Because when you recognize that you haven't kept God's law, you recognize that you have been deaf to God's commandments.

When you hear God's law, and you really understand it, you recognize that you are in the gloom of darkness, that you have been blind, and that worse than that, you're utterly bankrupt, and you have nothing that you can offer God in exchange for salvation.

And so what are you left doing? Meekly, humbly, asking God to forgive you and to pardon you. Which is what each of us need. Because without God's forgiveness, without His pardon, without His mercy, without His grace, we have no hope.

The only thing we could expect is what we deserve. And that's the wrath of God. But Isaiah says, that in that day the deaf shall hear the words of a book, and we're hearing them today. And out of their gloom and darkness, the eyes of the blind shall see, and indeed we do see.

We see the glory of Christ. And the meek will obtain fresh joy in Yahweh. That's the joy that comes from hearing that your sins are forgiven and washed away. You see, remember the hokey pokey baptism that the Pharisees came up with?

Never could wash away any sin, right? But the baptism that Jesus gave us, baptism in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, the Scriptures tell us that baptism is for the forgiveness of our sins.

That in the waters of baptism, that you were united with Christ in His death and His resurrection. Sins washed away, pardoned, and your heart circumcised by Christ Himself. You see, what the Pharisees invented, the hokey pokey baptism, doesn't even compare to the real baptism that we have in Christ.

Baptism, Forgiveness, and the Joy of Hearing the Book

Is it any wonder here then today that we are here to again hear the words of this book? To once again meditate and consider our lives in light of those commandments. But that we come here with joy and comfort.

Comfort that comes from the forgiveness of sins. Comfort from what Christ has done for us in bleeding and dying in our place. Comfort from the fact that although God's law condemns us, and declares us to be sinners, that Christ has proclaimed us to be forgiven.

And indeed, the meek obtain fresh joy in the Lord. And this joy does not come to those who invent their own religions. This joy is far from them. In fact, they're incapable of having this joy. This is the joy that is only attainable, given by God as a gift because of what Christ has done.

So, let us again repent of all of the ways in which we invent our own religions, our own commandments, and thus risk making void the word of God. And let us again hear the words of a book. And stop acting like we know how to get to heaven.

We don't. And don't sit there and say, come on, how hard can it be? 220, 221, whatever it takes. See, when you talk like that, you prove that you don't know what you're talking about. Read the book. Christ has done it for you.

He is the way, the truth, and the life. In the name of Jesus. Amen.

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