Dead Ritualism

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. In the name of Jesus. Amen.

The Place of Traditions in Christian Life

Traditions. Ah, traditions. Fun topic, by the way. Traditions go hand in hand with rituals. Now, by way of definition, a tradition is merely, and I mean this, a practice that is handed down from one generation to the next.

Think of it this way. I'm a huge baseball fan, and everybody knows that I do not root for the Twins. I'm not that self-deprecating. My self-esteem wouldn't be able to survive the experience. But years and years and years ago, when I was a wee little lad, my grandfather taught me the tradition of being a good Dodger fan.

He himself was a fan of the Brooklyn Bums, is the way he used to call them. And whenever they would lose, he would say, Dem Bums. They blew it again. But as a wee little lad, he would visit me in Southern California.

I grew up in Southern California. The Dodgers had moved to Los Angeles. And so as a little boy, I learned that there were traditions and rituals that go along with baseball. For instance, the singing of the National Anthem, everybody standing, taking off their cap and singing the National Anthem.

After 9 -11, there was an additional tradition that was added to baseball, and that was the singing of God Bless America. Ever since George Bush threw out the first pitch after baseball resumed after the 9 -11 attacks, now the tradition has become that we sing God Bless America at our baseball games.

And then, of course, my favorite is the 7th inning stretch. That's where everybody stands up in the middle of the 7th inning, and they sing my favorite baseball song, Take Me Out to the Ball Game. This is good stuff.

These are traditions. And we all recognize that nobody condemns these traditions, but don't forget Thanksgiving itself is a tradition. And it doesn't matter if you like turkey or not. You're going to eat it once a year because that's the tradition.

Now, by the way, traditions are not always uniform. Here in the United States, many of us who are Christians, when we eat our Christmas dinner, it's kind of a choice between is it going to be a ham or is it going to be a turkey?

You can do either one. But if you were to travel to Tokyo today, and this is a little bit, not a well-known fact, if you were to travel to Tokyo today, and you happen to be in Tokyo for Christmas Day, what is the traditional meal of the Japanese on Christmas?

Does anyone know? Kentucky fried chicken. That's absolutely true. Look it up. Google it. Seems kind of strange, right? Now, we need to get some things out on the table. We must biblically understand the proper role of tradition.

There's a misunderstanding that our gospel text is somehow a slap against all traditions, that any church that has traditions is somehow, well, sketchy. I mean, this is not the case, though. But think about kind of our modern parlance.

Somebody asks you, oh, you go to church. Do you go to a, you know, a traditional church? Or do you go to a contemporary church? And this is how they talk, because everybody knows that traditional churches are sticks in the mud.

They are frozen in time, that the traditions that they have followed and pass on and practice, that these are the very things that are keeping the church from growing, and that if you want to be a part of what the Spirit is doing, you need to cast off those traditions and embrace the new things that God is doing.

Yeah, that's actually a false narrative. Now, by way of kind of teasing this out, three quick verses, 1 Corinthians 11 .2, 2 Thessalonians 2 .15, and 2 Thessalonians 3 .6. We're going to note that the Apostle Paul was a fellow who taught the churches that he planted traditions, and he expected them to follow in those traditions.

Listen to what he says in 1 Corinthians 11. Now, I commend you because you remember me in everything, and you maintain the traditions even as I delivered them to you. Then 2 Thessalonians 2 .15 says, so then, brothers, stand firm, hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter.

And then 2 Thessalonians 3 .6 says this, now we commend you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep away from any brother who is walking in idleness and not in accord with the tradition that you received from us.

So here we have three passages that expressly state that the church, Christianity, has traditions. Let me explain what some of those are, and we can prove this from Scripture. Baptism, that is a tradition, something handed down from Jesus to the Apostles, from the Apostles to their disciples, through history and time, all the way to us.

The preaching of the word, the hearing of the absolution, the regular receiving of the body and blood of Christ given and shed for us for the forgiveness of our sins. Singing hymns is listed as a biblical tradition, praying the psalms, and here's an important one, loving and caring for one another.

Every single one of these are traditions, and yet each and every one of them is straight up biblical, yet today they are spoken against vehemently by people who I would say are not actually well versed in what the Bible teaches, and those who are oftentimes, and this is where we're going to have to key in on what Jesus said, those who are hypocritically self-righteous, as if they are somehow evil traditions that the church must shed, as if they somehow stifle the Holy Spirit.

That is not a biblical teaching. Now this is important. It is always a possible danger that traditions, even biblical ones, and this is where we'll kind of spend part of our time today, that even biblical traditions can be abused and misused by impenitent and hypocritical sinners, and that these traditions can then become malignant in the hands of the impenitent and turn from gift to tyranny, and from salutary practice into literally dead legalistic ritualism where people just walk through the motions of the religious tradition and somehow expect or believe that by doing so that they've met their requirement to God that week.

But in reality, their hearts are far, far, far away from God. They have no love for God, and there's zero love for neighbor. People with this type of dead religion, they are, as Paul describes them in Romans, they're gossips and slanderers.

They're haters of God. They're insolent. They're haughty. They're boastful. They're inventors of evil. They're disobedient to their parents. They're foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. And though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them, but they give approval to those who practice them.

Jude warns us of people like this in his epistle when he warns us about false teachers who follow in the way of Cain. Remember, Cain in Genesis chapter four brought an offering to God, but neither he nor his offering were accepted.

And we learn from Hebrews 11 that the reason for that is quite simple. Although he was walking through the religious motions, he had no faith. He was impenitent. He was dead in his sins. So think of it this way.

When traditions go malignant in the hands of the impenitent, and that turns into dead legalistic ritualism, a person who comes to church and makes the sign of the cross on Sunday in remembrance of their baptism no sooner leaves church than spends the rest of the week working hard to achieve their own personal agendas in the church by cultivating a faction who will push and protect that personal agenda at all costs, as long as their personal opponents are the ones who pay those costs.

But Scripture says this in Titus chapter three. Avoid foolish controversies, avoid dissensions and quarrels, for they are unprofitable and they are worthless. As for the person who stirs up division after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him, knowing that such a person is warped and sinful and is self condemned.

James, which is a book that we Lutherans need to spend a little bit more time studying because it helps us out a lot here, says this in James chapter two, if you really fulfill the law, the royal law, according to the Scripture, that you shall love your neighbor as yourself, well then you're doing well.

But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as a transgressor. For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it. For he who said do not commit adultery also said do not murder.

If you do not commit adultery but you murder, you become a transgressor of the law. So speak and so act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty. For judgment is without mercy to the one who has shown no mercy.

Mercy triumphs over judgment. When tradition goes malignant in the hands of legalism and hypocrisy, the same tongue that receives the body and blood of Christ here at the rail, or at any rail in any church because we're talking now about the concept in particular, that that same tongue that received the body and blood of Christ on Sunday morning is Sunday afternoon slandering and gossiping their neighbors on the phone without even the slightest hint of guilt or shame.

And yet James tells us this, if anyone thinks that his religion, that he is religious and does not bridle his tongue, he deceives his heart. And this person's religion is actually worthless. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this, to visit the orphans, the widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.

James also then continues in chapter 3, says to every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, they can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind. But no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.

With it, we bless the Lord, our Father, and with it, we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth comes blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so. Does a spring pour forth from the same opening, both fresh and saltwater?

Can a fig tree, my brothers, bear olives or a grapevine produce figs? Neither can a salt pond yield fresh water. Jesus simply puts it this way in Matthew chapter 9, when he says to the Pharisees, go and learn what this means.

I desire mercy, not sacrifice. I came not to call the righteous, but I came to call sinners. So there are two major biblical warnings then against the misuse of traditions. The first biblical warning is this, walking through and using actual biblical traditions with zero repentance, zero faith, zero bearing fruit and keeping with repentance.

This Jude refers to as the religion of Cain. And we'll look at an example of that from the prophet Isaiah. The second major biblical warning against the misuse of tradition is this, teaching as commandments the traditions of men.

This is like the stage four malignant form of misusing traditions. And so this form of self-righteousness creates its own laws, its own morals, its own expectations. You must obey the man-made laws as if they are from God, and oftentimes you are told they are, or you will be excommunicated from the group.

Under no circumstance will those in power allow their traditions or their authority to enforce those traditions be questioned. At their core, both abuses of tradition are prevalent and pernicious forms of, as Jesus says, hypocrisy, where the abusers of traditions use these traditions to put up the facade of Christian piety, which is designed then to hide their obvious and impenitent sinfulness, self-righteousness and unbelief.

This is the thing that the world bristles against when they see that Christians are hypocrites, where they judge people for doing a sin, yet at the same time, they're doing it as well. This is what the world really just hates about Christianity, and it's something that we must continue to be vigilant against, both abuses.

Dead Ritualism in Isaiah 1

So let's take a look at an example of the first kind. First kind of abuse, walking through and using biblical traditions with zero repentance and faith. A great example of this is found in the prophet Isaiah chapter one.

I'm going to start at verse two and watch how God is describing Israel in the time of Isaiah and listen to how he's disowned them. And we're going to ask the question, what is it that they have done that has made God so angry, so upset that he's talking about disowning Israel?

Well, pay attention to that. So here's what it says. Verse two of chapter one. Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord has spoken. Children I've reared and I've brought up, but they've rebelled against me.

The ox knows its owner, the donkey its master's crib, but Israel does not know. My people do not understand. He's describing unbelievers. He says, ah, sinful nation of people laden with iniquity, offspring of evildoers, children who deal corruptly.

And by the way, if this is how God is talking about you, that's really bad. They have forsaken the Lord. They have despised the holy one of Israel. They are utterly estranged. Why will you still be struck down?

Why will you continue to rebel? The whole head is sick and the whole heart is faint from the sole of the foot, even to the head. There is no soundness in it but bruises and sores and raw wounds, and they are not pressed out or bound up or softened with oil.

Your country lies desolate. Your cities are burned with fire. In your very presence, foreigners devour your land. It is desolate as overthrown by foreigners. And the daughter of Zion is left like a booth in a vineyard, like a lodge in a cucumber field, like a besieged city.

If the Lord of hosts had not left us a few survivors, we should have been like Sodom and become like Gomorrah. Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom. Look at that. God is addressing Israel as if they are Sodomites.

What have they done? Give ear to the teaching of our God, you people of Gomorrah. And then listen to the charge. What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? Said the Lord, I've had enough of burnt offerings of rams and a fat of well-fed beasts.

I do not delight in the blood of bulls or the lambs of lambs or of goats. And when you come and appear before me, who has required of you this trampling of my courts? Bring no more vain offerings, incenses and abomination to me.

New moon and Sabbath and the calling of convocations. And you have to sit there and go, whoa, slow down a second. God in the Mosaic Covenant commanded every single one of those sacrifices. God in the Mosaic Covenant commanded the keeping and the observing of the Sabbath, the new moon, the Passover, the Pentecost, the first the feast of the first fruits, the feast of booths.

God is the one who called these convocations in the Mosaic Covenant. And you're going to note then what's going on. These people who are being described as literally by God as as evil as the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, they are doing the exact thing the Mosaic Covenant requires.

But they have no faith. They are utterly impenitent. They are doing the thing the Bible requires them to do, and they're basically going, you wanted me to sacrifice a bull? Check. What's next, God? Oh, you want me to celebrate a Sabbath?

No problem, God. Check. I celebrated the Sabbath. Nope, no repentance, no faith, no trust. This is the religion of Cain. This is dead ritualism, not because there's something wrong with the tradition or the ritual commanded by God.

The problem is with the impenitent who's just walking through self-righteously being a hypocrite. I'm a religious person. I paid my tithe. I sacrificed my bull. I celebrated the Sabbath. I went to Jerusalem for the Passover.

God, you owe me. But God says of that person, you are a leader like Sodom, and so you can see it. This is the problem. The problem is not the tradition. The God commanded, the problem is the impenitent sinner who is using those religious traditions to hide their hypocrisy.

They're putting on a face of religiosity, but there's no repentance. So God says, I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly, your new moons and your appointed feasts, my soul hates. And you have to notice that he says your new moons and your appointed feasts, were they not God's new moons and his appointed feasts?

But when you walk through these traditions with no faith, they're yours, not God's. They have become a burden to me. I'm weary of burying them. And when you spread out your hands, this is to pray. I'm going to hide my face from you, even though you make many prayers.

I'm not going to listen because your hands are full of blood. That's the first misuse of tradition. Second misuse of tradition is found in Isaiah 29, our Old Testament text. This is the one that Jesus quotes from, and we'll just take a look at a few verses in this text.

Here's what it says. The vision of all of this has become to you like the words of a book that is sealed. Isaiah 29. When men give it to one who can read and say, read this, and he says, I can't, it's sealed.

And when they give the book to the one who cannot read, saying, read this, and he says, I cannot read. The second abuse of tradition is the super malignant stage for a version of the first version. As it goes down the track, it gets worse to the point where you can't even hear God's word anymore.

Somebody preaches the truth to you, calls you to repent, to believe and trust in Christ, and all you hear is Charlie Brown's teacher. The fault is not with the word of God. The fault is with you persist in impenitence and hypocrisy, and this will be your fate where you hear the word of God and you can't even hear it.

And then it says this. The Lord said, because this people draw near with their mouth and they honor me with their lips while their hearts are far from me. This is lip service to God and their fear of me is nothing more than a commandment taught by men.

Think of a couple of examples of it. Any of you familiar with the Amish? You see them from time to time at Walmart. You use a cell phone in the Amish community, you will be excommunicated. But where in God's word does it say that you cannot use technology, that you can't drive a combustion vehicle, a car that has a combustion engine?

They have taken these manmade rules and imposed it on this community. And if you deviate from it, it's not just that you're not in step with their community and their traditions. You're actually sinning against God.

And if they're right, each and every one of you who drove out here to Kongsvinger this morning, you sinned in doing by driving in your vehicles. But see, that's a manmade law, but they teach that manmade law as if it came from God himself, given to Moses on Mount Sinai, and that's the problem.

So their fear of me, Isaiah said, is a commandment taught by men. That is the ultimate misuse of tradition. And this is the second use that Jesus now is addressing in our gospel text. Mark 7, verse 1, when the Pharisees had 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 properly, holding to, and I always point this out, this should be capitalized, the tradition of the elders, which is a second body of work that they claim came from God and was passed down orally from Moses to them.

They were totally lying about that. And Jesus calls them out. And so you're going to note here something that is very fascinating, and this is kind of how this works. When somebody imposes on you, Christians, a tradition and say, this is a commandment of God, and if you break it, you are sinning and you can't find it in your Bible, you actually have an ethical obligation to not obey that commandment.

Notice Jesus's disciples didn't wash their hands. They they chose to go beyond it. And this is a result of Jesus's teaching. So, for instance, we have some traditions here at Kongsvinger that are neither commanded by God nor forbidden by God.

And we practice them with an open hand. For instance, the pastor wears an alb and a stole. Nowhere in scripture are pastors required to wear such a thing. And as soon as somebody tells me you are not a real pastor, unless you wear an alb and a stole, I'm going to go get some Birkenstocks and I'm going to get a Hawaiian shirt and shorts and flip flops.

And I'm just going to relax like you couldn't believe and say there, you say I can't be a true Christian pastor unless I wear this. I refuse to wear it. You're going to know man-made rules when they become a commandment of God must be defied.

And then if somebody says you can't really be a true Christian pastor unless you get rid of all of that man-made tradition stuff and take your alb and stole off, then I must wear it. We do this freely as a gift because it teaches something.

But as soon as somebody institutionalizes and says that it's a command of God, then we must defy it. Absolutely. So Jesus's disciples do not obey this tradition invented by the Pharisees, and Jesus is now called out on the carpet by the Pharisees because their disciples and him, too, they're not obeying the tradition of the elders and they can't because to obey that command says, I agree with you, that tradition came from God when it doesn't.

Because you say it comes from God, I can't I can't practice it. Can't do it. And so there are many other traditions that the Pharisees observed, such as the washing of cups, pots, copper vessels and dining couches and the Pharisees and the scribes.

So they asked Jesus, why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders? But they eat with defiled hands. And now Jesus gets to the nubbins. He said to them, well, did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites?

And there it is. Dead ritualism is literally the cover for real hypocrisy. As it is written, this people honors me with their lips. Their heart, it's far from me, they go through all these religious motions, they have all these rituals, all these ceremonies, all these things they do all in the name of God.

And they don't honor God at all with their hearts. In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. And so he says this, you leave the commandment of God and you hold to the tradition of men.

So he said to them, you have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your own tradition. Moses said, honor your father and your mother. This is the fourth commandment, by the way, in the Ten Commandments.

Whoever reviles father or mother love the way the Greek says it must die the death. And then he says this, but you say. So notice the distinction. God and Moses said, because whatever Moses said comes from God, but you say.

And by saying this, Jesus is making it perfectly clear that whole tradition of the elders thingy, that's not from God. But you say. You say that if a man tells his father or his mother, whatever you would have gained from me, that is Korban, that is a gift given to God.

And let me explain that. So let's say that you and your mom aren't really getting along. That happens from time to time, by the way, families fight. And so you and your mom have the button heads. And now your mom's like kind of inserting herself into your adult life.

And you're saying, I'm just done with her. So what you've decided to do in order to get revenge on your meddling mother, she's getting up in age. You have chosen. Get this, because the Pharisees made this possible that I'm not going to care for her needs as she gets close to death, because I mean, caring for elderly parents is time consuming and can be, well, expensive.

And so I, the Pharisees have come up with this great religious out, forget the fact that God says, honor your father and mother, forget that you can prearrange kind of like an annuity. You could pay in advance the money that you would have spent taking care of your mother and give it to God as a gift in the temple.

We'll even give a really cool name for it. We'll call it Korban. And so then you can go to mom and say, oh, mom, I'm sorry, you know, I've been praying about this and I felt led by the spirit. And so all the money that I would have spent taking care of you as you're getting close to your death, I've given it to God as a gift.

Isn't that great? Aren't you happy? Talk about an evil, wicked thing. But that's how. Dead ritualism that invents commandments works, it cloaks itself in religious piety, makes itself look holy, and all of that is to cover up the obvious sin that it is.

So Jesus says, you no longer then permit him to do anything for his father and mother, and thus you've made void the word of God by your tradition that you've handed down many such things you do. So what's the solution to this?

I think the problem is quite obvious. Good traditions that are biblical can be abused by the hypocritical. The hypocritical can then invent traditions that require everybody else to follow their rules that puts them in control and dethrones Christ.

What's the solution? Funny enough, Isaiah gives us the solution. In Isaiah 29, what we just read, listen to the solution that is given by Isaiah. He says this, because this people draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips while their hearts are far from me and their fear of me is a commandment taught by men.

Listen to the therefore. Therefore, behold, God speaking now, I will again do wonderful things for this people with wonder upon wonder and the wisdom of their wise men shall perish and the discernment of the discerning men shall be hidden.

Well, what kind of solution is that for hypocrisy? It's actually the only solution. Paul picks up on this very same theme in First Corinthians chapter one when he says this. So where is the one who's wise?

Where's the scribe? Where's the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.

For Jews demand signs, Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, which is a tumbling block to Jews and it's folly to Gentiles. But to those who are called both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.

You see, the solution that Isaiah gives, that God gives through the prophet Isaiah in chapter twenty nine is the gospel. The calling of people to, again, recognize their sinfulness. And it makes sense if you think about it, because what is hypocrisy?

Hypocrisy really, I think, is a fear based thing, and I have some experience with hypocrisy, spent a lot of years in a church where hypocrisy was the thing that you had to engage in in order to kind of survive.

And hypocrisy kind of works like this. I can't let anybody know that I'm screwed up. So I'm going to create a facade of words and actions that will make them believe that I've got my act together. Under no circumstance will I ever let my guard down and say, you know what, I'm really struggling, I can't keep God's law.

But see, the solution to hypocrisy is say, knock that off. You don't need to put the facade up, because as we heard in Psalm 14 today, none is righteous, including you. You don't need to convince us you have your act together.

You don't need to convince anybody you got your act together, and there's no way you're going to convince God, because if you had your act together, you wouldn't need a crucified and risen savior. So let's stop pretending, shall we, that we have our acts together.

None of us does. The solution to hypocrisy is the gospel, and the gospel tells us that we are forgiven in Christ through what he has done for us on the cross. Hypocrisy breeds pride and arrogance and divisions and factions, whereas humbly confessing your sins and being forgiven puts us all on the same level playing field.

There's no need, then, for a facade. There's no need to put forward the impression that you've got your act together, because the gospel, everybody who needs that recognizes that none of us have got our acts together.

In fact, in Isaiah chapter one, after that very litany of things that God chastised Israel for and said that they were like Sodom and Gomorrah, verse 16 in chapter one then says this, wash yourselves, make yourselves clean, remove the evil of your deeds from before your eyes.

Cease to do evil. Learn to do good. Seek justice, correct oppression. Bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow's cause. In other words, repent. And then these wonderful words, God speaking and pleading to Israel, who was steeped in religious activity but had no faith, says, calm now, let us reason together, says the Lord.

Though your sins be like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool and see the solution to all of our sins, including the sins of hypocrisy, of dead ritualism, of religious activity designed to make you look great.

The solution is to recognize your sin, see it for the color that it is. Red like scarlet, red like sin, scarlet like the scarlet of a whore. I know that's strong, but that's the point. And God says that though they be like scarlet, your sins be like that, I will make them white as snow.

Though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool, washed clean in the blood of the lamb. The solution to hypocrisy, like every other sin, is to repent, to be forgiven. And then bear fruit in keeping with repentance, with mercy, grace, and love towards one another.

In the name of Jesus, Amen.

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