WWUTT 2172 This People Honors Me With Their Lips (Mark 7:5-8)

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Jesus rebuked the Pharisees and said that you have left the commandment of God and you hold to the tradition of men.

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This isn't something that was going on just in Jesus' time. We see it pretty often, even in our world today, when we understand the text.

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Many of the Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When we understand the text is committed to teaching sound doctrine and rebuking those who contradict it.

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Visit our website at www .utt .com. Here once again is Pastor Gabe.

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Thank you, Becky. In our study of the Gospel of Mark, we're in chapter 7 this week and I'm going to pick up where we left off yesterday with Jesus' confrontation of the

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Pharisees, who have been placing their man -made traditions over the

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Word of God. Let's read our section once again, verses 1 through 13 out of the

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Legacy Standard Bible. Hear the word of the Lord. And the Pharisees and some of the scribes gathered around him when they had come from Jerusalem and had seen that some of his disciples were eating their bread with defiled hands, that is, unwashed.

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For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they carefully wash their hands, thus observing the traditions of the elders.

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And when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash themselves. And there are many other things which they have received in order to observe, such as the washing of cups and pitchers and copper pots.

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And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but they eat their bread with defiled hands?

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And he said to them, Rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites. As it is written,

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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.

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Leaving the commandment of God, you hold to the tradition of men. And he was also saying to them,

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You are good at setting aside the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition. For Moses said,

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Honor your father and your mother, and he who speaks evil of father or mother is to be put to death. But you say,

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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.

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So we want to consider again the teaching of the Pharisees, the rebuke that Jesus is making here, and then we're going to consider some other ways in which this very thing plays out even in our world around us.

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Other religions, traditions, even within the true church or what we would identify as being an evangelical or gospel church.

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You may find even among those churches, something that is reflective of what the

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Pharisees are doing here, placing their traditions over the authority of the word of God.

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So back to verse five, we covered the first four verses yesterday here in verse five, the Pharisees and the scribes asked him,

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Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but they eat their bread with defiled hands?

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So yesterday we considered the problem versus one through four, all the traditions that they had.

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They don't eat unless they wash their hands. If they come from the marketplace, they wash themselves. If they have bought cups or pitchers or copper pots, they've brought them from the marketplace where they're going to wash all of those.

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They have some metal utensil of some kind. They're going to put it through fire so that it would be purified.

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And this is not just the Pharisees. Of course, the Pharisees are teaching this. But notice that it said in verse three, the

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Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they carefully wash their hands.

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Now, sometimes I will hear it said that Jews is just in reference to Pharisees.

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And I guess I would have to go back and hear those particular teaching lessons. Maybe they were thinking of a certain context or something like that.

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But whenever we see Jews, it's not just limited to Pharisees. It's all the people that follow along with the pharisaical teaching.

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And even though the Pharisees are leading people astray, and yes, they will be judged with greater strictness, as said in James 3 .1,

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not many of you should aspire to become teachers, my brethren, for you know that teachers will be judged with greater strictness.

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So though that is going to be the case for the Pharisees, the people that follow the Pharisees false teaching are doing so because they like it.

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Yeah, they tie heavy burdens on people as Jesus rebuked them in Matthew chapter 11. But the people still do it because they think that they can be good enough by my deeds.

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By what I do, I can earn the favor of God. And there's people that go after teaching like that because they feel like they're in control of their own righteousness.

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I don't really need God's righteousness. I can be righteous on my own. And that's self -righteousness.

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People by their nature want to proclaim their own self -righteousness. So the Jews are gladly going along with what it is that the

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Pharisees are teaching, maybe not gladly there. They probably are miserable, but they are willing to go along with what it is that the

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Pharisees are teaching. So in verse five, the Pharisees ask Jesus this question.

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Why do your disciples, they ignore our traditions and they eat their bread with defiled hands?

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Now, over the last several weeks, I've been making comments on social media about Roman Catholicism.

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I didn't just one day decide that I was going to do this. There are various verses, theological thoughts, things like that I've been posting on Twitter slash

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X and Roman Catholics on their own will come to those comments and be telling me things like, well, that can't be true because you don't have the true apostolic revelation that's in the

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Roman Catholic Church or you don't have the Eucharist or who gave you authority to interpret the

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Bible this way, something like that. I kept getting comments like that. So finally, I decided I'm going to start pushing back.

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So I was highlighting certain Roman Catholic doctrines and calling them out, namely, and especially,

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I guess I should say, the worship of Mary. Now, they call it veneration, but praying to Mary, bowing before her statues, that's worship, as God said in Exodus 20, verses four and five, you shall not make a graven image of anything that is in heaven above or that is in the earth below or that is in the water under the earth.

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You shall not bow down to them or serve them. So it's not just don't make a graven image, but don't make an image that you would bow down to and serve.

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And that is exactly what Roman Catholics do with their Mary statues. They don't just bow down to her and pray to her.

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Their version of Mary, I guess I should say, is really not the biblical Mary, but they also serve these statues and their version of Mary, building her temples, building her relics, shrines, so on and so forth, gathering money in her name, committing deeds in her name, singing her songs, so on and so forth.

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Now, the Roman Catholic Church will try to dismiss this as they have like different levels of worship. So this isn't really true worship, but it is worship according to how

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God defines worship in his word. So I'll call these things out and then the Roman Catholics will push back on me and say, because you are making fun of Jesus, mom, that he's going to pour out his wrath on you.

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And of course, I don't hate Jesus, mom. I read her correctly, according to what the scripture says about her, not what the

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Roman Catholics do to her. I don't have to bow down to and pray to Mary in order to show my appreciation for a godly woman whom

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God specifically chose to fulfill this incredible thing. I think it's remarkable what

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Mary did and what scripture says about her. But that doesn't mean I'm going to bow down to her and pray to her.

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That would actually be disrespectful to her since she is in heaven glorifying

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Christ. And that's what she would expect Christ followers to do, not pray anything to her because she's not listening.

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She can't hear you anyway. So making comments like this has generated a lot of pushback.

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But one of the things that I've noticed in studying a lot of this, looking at a lot of Roman Catholic doctrines, if you've been watching the what videos, then you know that I've kind of been doing a series lately on Mary worship and then the different Our Ladies that they honor, like Our Lady of Fatima and Our Lady of Guadalupe.

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And the more that I study into those stories, the more that I the more that I recognize the gospel is not there.

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They don't preach the gospel in hardly any of those legends. It's all about Mary.

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It's all about her honor, her elevating, and because they they put her up on this pedestal, the gospel gets diminished and even hidden.

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You won't even hear it in a lot of these legends, especially in Our Lady of Guadalupe. I watched dozens of videos or pod or listened to a lot of podcasts on that.

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I never heard anybody share the gospel a single time. And so for the sake of their traditions, they diminish the life saving message of the gospel.

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Praying to Mary is not going to save anybody, even though Our Lady of Guadalupe had said to Juan Diego, I want a temple built to me right here so that I can pour out all my love and blessings on people and relieve them of their miseries.

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She can't do that. If Juan Diego actually did see a vision of a woman, it was most definitely not

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Mary. And considering that she doesn't even point to her son, that's all the more reason to believe it was some sort of demonic apparition.

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It could not have possibly been Mary, the mother of Jesus, specifically because the dead are not going to come back to communicate with us anyway.

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But especially just looking at her words, you can recognize this is not Mary, the mother of Jesus.

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And so because of this great tradition, and by the way, you're probably familiar with Our Lady of Guadalupe and what an icon she is in Latin American culture.

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But because she's been elevated to this iconic status, you won't find the gospel there.

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It's not the gospel that Latin America believes in or greater than 80 percent of Latin America who claims to be

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Roman Catholic. It's not because of the gospel. It's because of Our Lady of Guadalupe and praying to Mary is not going to save any of them.

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It is only by faith in the gospel of Christ. He who died for our sins, lived a perfect life, died the death we were supposed to die, rose again from the dead for our justification.

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Romans 4, 25. So that all who believe in him will not perish under the judgment of God, but we will have everlasting life by faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ, the son of God.

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Not in any of these other things, the works that I can do to to gain righteousness, these things that I must do for penance, this money that I must pay for indulgences to knock years off of my purgatory sentence, participating in the

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Eucharist, all these other things will not save you. The only thing that saves is faith in Jesus Christ.

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And that message is diminished in the traditions of Roman Catholicism. Roman Catholicism is the most pharisaical religion in the world.

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The Pharisees could not have dreamed of or imagined the level of legalism that Roman Catholicism has ascended to, or I guess descended to, whichever way you want to look at it.

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So here they push their traditions upon people and saying, you must do these things in order to be saved.

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The Roman Catholic Church is full of all of that. You have to be part of the Roman Catholic Church to be saved. You have to acknowledge the primacy of the pope in order to be saved.

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You must be baptized in a Catholic church in order to be saved. And all of these things damn people.

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They don't save people promising them things that God has not said according to his word.

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It's very scary thing to fall into that teaching and believe that what you are hearing is biblical, godly truth, only to come and find that the true gospel had been buried under all of these man -made traditions.

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And that's what's going on here. The command of God has been concealed by these man -made traditions the

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Pharisees have elevated over God's word. Jesus responds to the

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Pharisees in verse six, 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.

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But in vain do they worship me teaching as doctrines the commands of men.

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Now, we've been in Isaiah in our Thursday study in our Old Testament study.

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And of course, we're coming to the close. We just have a few more weeks left in Isaiah, just the last few chapters we have left to cover.

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And then we'll finish that book after being in it for a couple of years. Can't remember how long we've been in Isaiah now, but it has been for some time.

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So so as we near the close of Isaiah, we're reflecting back on those words that we had heard, where God was rebuking

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Israel and saying to them, yeah, you claim to be religious. You claim to be the people of Yahweh.

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You say that Yahweh is your God, but your heart is really far away from me and the people will even go through the rituals and the practices, those things that had been written down in the law of Moses.

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Yet from their heart, they are not truly repentant over their sin, they don't truly love

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God, they're dabbling in all these other pagan things on the side, practicing after the traditions of the gods that the

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Canaanites worshipped. They had this syncretism going on, trying to mesh all of these things together.

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And so God's favor was not upon Israel, though they claimed the name of Yahweh, they did not live as Yahweh had instructed them to live.

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We go all the way back to the very beginning of Isaiah, Isaiah 1 10. Hear the word of Yahweh, you rulers of Sodom, give ear to the law of God, you people of Gomorrah.

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This is Israel he's talking to. But they are behaving as the Sodomites and Gomorrah.

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That's pretty fitting for the month that we're in right now, isn't it? Month of June, Pride Month in the

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United States of America, all kinds of celebrating Sodomite culture that is going on within our own culture and even professing evangelical

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Christians, even even some Roman Catholics. Don't think that the Roman Catholics and the Greek Orthodox are immune from this either.

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There are many of them, too, that would celebrate and honor Pride Month. But of course, when a church does this.

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They are going against the word of God that they should know, and they themselves are even elevating the traditions of men over the commands of God.

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We go on in Isaiah 1 11, what what are your multiplied sacrifices to me, says

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Yahweh? I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed cattle and in the blood of bulls, lambs or goats,

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I take no pleasure. When you come to appear before me, who requires of you this trampling of my courts?

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Bring your worthless offerings no longer. Incense is an abomination to me.

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New Moon and Sabbath, the calling of convocation. I cannot endure wickedness and the solemn assembly.

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That's what's going on in these churches that are flying LGBTQ flags. They might stand at the pulpit and pretend like they're proclaiming something

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Christian, but they actually look much more like the world. I love that statement there that God makes in verse 12.

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Who requires of you this trampling of my courts? In other words, when you come in here to the sanctuary to worship me, you're just tromping on the ground.

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I don't care what it is you're here for, because it is not to honor me. It is for your own sake.

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You are sodomites wearing choir robes, but you are not my children. Nothing about your behavior exemplifies the children of God.

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And that's a warning that we need to be very aware of because it's very easy, even among evangelical churches, to fall into the traditions of man and ignore the commands of God, the clear gospel of Jesus Christ and everything that is supposed to flow from that.

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The Apostle Paul warned Timothy in 1 Timothy 6 that if anyone teaches any different doctrine and does not adhere to the sound words of our

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Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness. So the word of Christ, the gospel and that teaching which produces godliness,

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Paul says that they are puffed up with conceit and they understand nothing. And there are many people that will go beyond the word of God into something else, preaching messages that they think will be appealing to the most number of people.

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Social justice is a really popular thing. So all of these social justice causes, they'll start harping on that and then they and then the word of God is eventually gone or the word of God gets twisted and interpreted according to or through this social justice lens, this cultural

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Marxism. And then they will read liberation theology and even even prosperity theology, poverty theology.

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They might read that into the text as well. They impose those things onto the text instead of rightly drawing those things out of the text, placing above the text, the traditions and the interests and the fancies of men.

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And so it could be said to this generation as well. This people honors me with their lips.

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They claim to be Christians. We still got in God we trust on our currency, despite how sorted and depraved this generation has become.

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They honor me with their lips, but their heart is far away from me. But in vain do they worship me.

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Empty worship, in other words, teaching as doctrines the commands of men.

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I had somebody in my messages earlier this week. It was on Sunday, as a matter of fact, telling me that I'm going to hell.

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They didn't say why. They just said, you're going to hell. So I bit and I responded to him and I said,

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OK, why? Why am I going to hell? Actually took him a while to get to the point. I really

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I really don't know why I gave him that much time, but eventually got to the point to say, because you condemn

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LGBTQ behavior is being ungodly. You're going to hell for that instead of loving them and recognizing that this is the way that God made them and so on and so forth.

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And I responded to the individual and I said to him, I'm not the one that's condemning them. You are because you are encouraging them in sin that God has promised that he will judge.

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And not only will he bring them into judgment, but more so you, if you are their teacher and you are confirming of these, you are affirming of these behaviors that God is going to judge and you're just handing them a comfortable seat on their way to hell.

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First Corinthians six, nine and 10, do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?

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Do not be deceived. Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor homosexuals nor effeminate nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor revilers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

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Now, Paul is, of course, addressing a church and says, and such were some of you, but you were washed.

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You were sanctified. You were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the spirit of our

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God. In other words, you used to be that. But now in Christ Jesus, you have been changed.

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And when we start elevating the doctrines of men, the traditions of men over the word of God, that message gets concealed.

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That Christ will forgive you of your sin. He will cleanse you of all unrighteousness.

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First John one nine, he will give you a new heart and a new mind that instead of being rebellious against God, desires

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God and wants to walk according to his ways. Now, notice here that the

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Pharisees said, going back to verse five. Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, that expression walk, it was a common

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Jewish expression for the way that you live your life. We use it a lot too, but that's where we draw it from, from the scriptures, the way a person walks, it was metaphorical for the way that they live their life.

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The Pharisees were expecting Jesus and his disciples to walk, to live their lives according to the instructions of the

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Pharisees. And these people in our world today that are elevating the doctrines of men over the doctrines of God expect the same thing, that you would live your life according to the way that they say that you're supposed to live your life, not according to what

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God says. But may we walk according to his ways, as said in first John two six, let us walk as Jesus walked.

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He has told you, oh man, what is good and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness or love mercy, maybe the translation that you're familiar with and to walk humbly, to walk humbly with your

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God. And how do we do that? By living according to his word. My friends, don't let the messages of the world and the traditions of men conceal for you the sound teaching of our

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Lord Jesus Christ, which we have in the Bible, know this word. Teach this word, live by this word.

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Let's finish there, we'll come back to this teaching again tomorrow, Heavenly Father, I thank you for what we have read here in Mark seven between yesterday and today, how we have considered some of the things even that are going on in our world and in our culture.

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And may we be mindful of this, how easy it is for us to slip away from following the sound teaching of our

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Lord God. What a privilege and a treasure it is that we can have the Bible the way that we have it today, printed for us in a language that we can understand.

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We can have multiple Bibles in our house, we can open it, we can read it, we can study it. May we apply these words to our lives and live according to these things.

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It's not just a religious practice for us, it's a desire for God and to live in a way that is pleasing to you.

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Forgive us our sins, O God, and may we walk in the paths of righteousness that you set before us.

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For your name's sake, it's in Jesus' name we pray, Amen. Pastor Gabe keeps a regular blog, sharing personal thoughts, alerting readers to false teachers and offering commentary on the church and social issues.

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You can find a link to the blog through our website, www .utt .com. Thank you for listening and join us again tomorrow as we continue our study in God's Word when we understand the text.