Mark 7:1-13

So be here at six tonight for the beginning of the meeting. If you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn to Mark chapter 7, the seventh chapter of the gospel of Mark that we are working our way through. While you are turning there, you'll see coming up on the screen something you may or may not recognize. First couple times I saw this, I had no idea what this was. This is something you might find along the beach as you're walking, and it is a shell.

It is the shell of a crab, and a crab, you know, whether you know or are interested in this or not, a crab is an invertebrate, which means that it has no spinal column. And because it has no spinal column, instead, it has a rigid exoskeleton, that hard shell. And as a crab matures, in other words, as its body grows, its body size, of course, increases with growth. But that shell is made up of a substance, a hard substance, that doesn't grow, that doesn't expand.

And so, in order for the crab to keep on growing, it must periodically shed its shell in a process called molting. And as it sheds its shell, there's a new shell growing underneath, and the crab has to continually go through that during its lifespan, if it's going to not only live, but grow. Now, what does that have to do with Mark 7?

We'll come back to that, maybe, but keep that image in mind, because it is an illustration from the natural world of, really, something that I think Jesus is teaching us about here in this text today. We'll come back to this illustration at the end. Mark chapter 7, reading the first 13 verses, beginning with verse 1: "And the Pharisees and some of the scribes gathered together around Jesus when they had come from Jerusalem." This takes place in Galilee. He's still here.

This is still the Galilean part of his ministry. And apparently a delegation of leading representatives of Pharisees and scribes has been sent from Jerusalem, probably at the request of the Pharisees in Galilee, because they are concerned with Jesus and his teaching and his effect upon the people. And these Pharisees and scribes, they had seen that some of Jesus's disciples were eating their bread with impure hands. That is, unwashed.

Now at this point, in verse 3, Mark gives a parenthetical explanation. Mark is writing largely for non-Jewish people, and that's most of us, probably. Maybe all of us don't come from a Jewish background. So he adds this explanation for those of us who may not know what that's talking about. The Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they carefully wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders.

And when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they cleanse 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. And now in verse 5, he picks up the account again: "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 impure hands?'" This is not an innocent question. This is an accusation.

This is a challenge. They are meaning to shame and discredit Jesus here. And Jesus responds from quoting the word, the Old Testament, Isaiah 29:13 to be specific: "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 precepts of men."'" And now in verse 8, Jesus begins to apply that scripture from Isaiah to them, to the Pharisees and what they were doing: "Neglecting the commandment of God, you hold to the tradition of men." He was also saying to them, "You nicely set aside the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition."

Now, in verse 10, he gives them a specific example: "For Moses said, 'Honor your father and your mother.'" There's the commandment of God. You may recognize that. That's the Fifth Commandment from Exodus 20, verse 12, and he goes on in Exodus 21: "And he who speaks evil of father or mother, let him be put to death." Now he speaks about the tradition of men.

Verse 11: "But you say, if a man says to his father or his mother, anything of mine, you might have been held by is Corban (that is to say, given to God), you no longer permit 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 such things as that. "This is not an isolated example," Jesus is saying. You know, the Pharisees are easy to pick on. We caricature them.

You know, we have this way of saying, if we find somebody hypocritical, "Well, he or she's acting like a Pharisee," but I want to start in kind of a counterintuitive way today and talk about my sympathy for the Pharisees. You see, the Pharisees, even though they are easy targets to caricature, they were not the power brokers of Jewish society. That was the Sadducees who were the power brokers. The Pharisees began as a sect. It was a group within Judaism that had very noble goals.

The Pharisees began with the goal of simply wanting to honor the law of God, what God had written in what they had, the first five books of the Old Testament. The Pharisees simply wanted to preserve the unique identity of Israel as God's chosen people. They had lofty goals, and so they were motivated, very honestly, by some of the same desires and motivations that I have as a pastor. For example, first of all, they took God's command to pursue holiness seriously.

They read and took seriously what I read and take seriously. Leviticus 19:2, God says, "Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy." And they heard that, and they took that seriously. God wants us to be holy because we are his people. We should live increasingly holy lives. And that's a desire of myself as a pastor, and of other church leaders. And yes, we understand now, on this side of the cross, that it is the holiness of Jesus that saves us, not our holiness.

We understand that what he did on the cross is all-sufficient. I can't, in other words, make myself holy enough to be pleasing to God, but we also understand that, as part of our changed heart, as a response to what Jesus has done on the cross, and with the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, we are called to live increasingly holy lives, that the grace of Jesus Christ does not cancel out God's call to us to be holy. So I can sympathize with them.

Secondly, they wanted to preserve the unique identity of Israel as God's people. I mean, consider what they knew that God had said about Israel. Exodus 19:5-6, God says, "Out of all the nations, you, Israel, will be called my treasured possession. You will be for me a holy nation."

They took that seriously, and their traditions were intended to put some boundaries around that, to preserve and to protect the unique identity that Israel had from being basically washed away, assimilated, by the pagan nations that surrounded them. And again, I can identify with that as a pastor, as I think most church leaders can: we want the church to be in the world, but we want the church to have a unique identity in the world.

We don't want the church to be compromised by the worldliness of our culture around us, so I can sympathize with them. And thirdly, the Pharisees wanted to give people a clear, practical guidance about holy living. You know, they, in striving for holiness, the Pharisees face the very same challenge that we do today, and the challenge is this: how do you apply the specific, but often general in nature, commands of scripture to the unique circumstances of your life?

Obviously there's lots of God's law in the Old Testament and the New Testament, but there's a lot of gaps, and how do you take the law and apply it to the specific, unique circumstances of your life? They felt this, and they wanted to do something about this. And so through their tradition, they wanted to give people a map, so to speak, that charted the way through: what is permitted and what is forbidden, what is clean and what is unclean, impure. And that's what developed as the oral law.

The written law was God's commandments, that, at that time, they had in the first five books of the Old Testament. Now, the written law is what we have in the entire Bible. The oral law is what they developed to apply the written law, to fill in the gaps, to practically apply it. The oral laws are what Jesus calls in our text today "the tradition of the elders". That's the oral law, "the tradition of men", he refers to it as. The tradition, he says, which you have handed down.

It's been developed over the generations. Let me make this concrete for you. I'll give you an example. Here's from the written law, Leviticus chapter 15. That whole chapter is on cleanliness and purity. What do you do if you come in contact with something that makes you unclean? Certain bodily fluids make you unclean. What do you do if you become unclean from touching a corpse? Well, God answered that. God answered that in that verse that you see up on the screen.

Leviticus 15:11: "Rinse your hands with water, and you will be clean." And if you don't, you will be unclean, is what you see on the verse up on the screen. Well, that's very well and good. God has provided a way, but what does that mean? How do you rinse your hands with water? Is there a technique you're supposed to use? How often are you supposed to do this? In what settings are you supposed to do this? You see all the blanks that scripture, even for them, doesn't fill in.

That's what they tried to fill in with their regulations of washing. The oral law, the tradition of the elders, sought to answer those questions: What do you specifically do? And that's what we see in our text today. Mark 7, verse 3: "Carefully wash your hands before eating." That verb "carefully wash", it comes from the root word "fist".

So we don't know exactly what their technique was, but you know, it may have been something that involved rubbing one fist in the hand or immersing your hands so all your fist was covered. We're not sure, but they developed a technique so they could answer the people's questions, "How am I supposed to wash?" Verse 4, the first part, "Cleanse yourself when you come from the marketplace." You're in the marketplace, you come in contact with dead things, dead meat.

You come in contact with Gentiles, unbelievers. You come back from the marketplace impure. What are you supposed to do? They developed a way of cleansing themselves, a more full washing. Again, we don't know the details, but it went beyond washing their hands. The second part of verse 4: washing cups and pitchers and copper pots. What do you do when the things that you use to make your meal and serve your meal become exposed to something that renders them unclean?

Well, they had rituals and explanations, traditions, traditions of the elders, for how to address that. And you may sit here and you may hear all that today, and you may think, "That is ridiculous." And let me remind you, kindly, let me remind you: you have your traditions, you have your ways of filling in the blanks. Let me give you a couple of examples. Consider the New Testament command. This speaks to us now. Hebrews 12:28: "Let us offer to God acceptable worship with reverence and awe."

There's the command. When we come together as a church body, we're to offer worship that is acceptable, worship that is reverent, worship that has awe of God, but what does that mean in terms of how do I dress? Does that mean I'm supposed to wear a tie? Well, they didn't have ties at the time this was written, so that can't be in there. So if I bring my belief that I should wear a tie to make my worship acceptable, that is me filling in the blanks. How about talking?

I grew up in a church, from the time I was saved on, where when you came into (we called it) the sanctuary, all right? It wasn't the worship center; it was the sanctuary. When you came in, you were to be quiet. You were to be quiet, because that's what it meant to be reverent. To be reverent is to be quiet. Well, where is that in scripture? That is something we added to fill in the blanks. Now is that a bad thing? No, it is not a bad thing, but is that a prescribed thing?

Is that something that is clearly in God's law? No, that is something we have added. That as the traditions of men. Singing. How do you sing? Some of you sing; some of you don't sing. I've noticed in the services, some sing some songs; some don't sing other songs. Even your practices of when you sing and what you sing, they come from your traditions, the expectations that you bring. Raising hands. Can you raise hands in worship?

Well, if you came from a tradition where you experienced that, and you were taught that that's actually part of worshiping, you say "yes". If you came from a tradition that "no, that's not reverent, and that's not acceptable", you say "no". However you answer all those questions: what you wear, and whether you speak as you come into the worship service, and how you sing, and whether or not you raise your hands, those are your and my traditions.

Those are you and me, from our cultural experiences and backgrounds, taking our expectations and filling in the blanks, the specifics that scripture does not address.

Let me give you another example, perhaps even more relevant, relevant to even what's going to happen here tonight: the New Testament directions from Paul to people like Titus about "how do you establish a church congregation?" Let me tell you, there's remarkably little information given in scripture about how you would set up a congregation. Here's just one, and there's not many more.

Titus 1:5: Paul tells Titus, "As you are going through Cyprus or Crete, and you are setting up churches, set in order what remains, and appoint elders in every city." Okay, we know elders are to be part of it, but notice how little detail is given. So what is the proper structure of elders. And are we to have membership, and what's membership supposed to look like? And what is the government structure of the church?

Do you notice the big gaps that God, in his providence, does not allow to be filled in? And so again, the way that you interpret and apply this, and the few other verses about church organization and church government, that goes beyond the written law. That is bringing in your interpretations from your experiences and what you have learned: the oral law, the traditions of men.

So as we read this account, let's not be so quick to dismiss and disdain the Pharisees' traditions of washing, of purity rituals. Instead, let's see how their traditions resemble our traditions, and let's hear Jesus's warnings to them about their traditions as warnings to us, as we consider our own traditions.

Here are some key principles that I see coming out of this text, and the first one, I've kind of already made this clear, but I'll state it clearly: We all observe and obey some traditions at one time or another. I mean, Paul, or excuse me, Jesus, makes that point clear to them, that Mark brings out in verse 3: "The Pharisees and all the Jews observed the traditions of the elders." This is widespread.

And the traditions that we observe: we may bring different traditions, but we all observe some traditions. The issue is: do you recognize that what you hold onto, and the expectations you bring, they are traditions? They go beyond what God clearly says in his law. Secondly (this is also kind of implied in what I've already said), but traditions have a powerful effect upon our lives. They have a powerful effect upon our lives together as a congregation.

I love what Ray Stedman says: "Tradition is the power of the past reaching into the present to shape our future." And let me just state the obvious example: The constitution. We have a hundred-year-old constitution that is not the word of God, that was the people who wrote it at the original time, over a hundred years ago, their best attempt to apply the word of God to how to govern the church, but it's still tradition.

It's the tradition of the past, that now, as we consider it in the present, will shape the future. That's why it's important for you to be here tonight. That's why it's important for you to hear the warnings as Jesus goes further in this text today. Third, traditions can be good or bad. Right? There are traditions that, in some degree, are neutral in and of themselves. They can be good or bad, depending on how we observe them.

You know, most traditions begin in the right way and for the right reasons. At least that's my experience. People begin traditions in a way of somehow honoring God. They read something in scripture and they think, "What is the best way for us to try and honor that?" And they develop tradition, or they take the tradition from somebody who has come before them.

But the problem is, over time, that original purpose is forgotten, and if it's forgotten, then what happens over time is all that matters is the tradition itself. You know, all that matters is the tradition itself. And that's what Jesus was talking about in verses 6 and 7, in his use of Isaiah 29: "Those people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain. Their teachings are but the rules taught by men."

The prophet Isaiah, he's not specifically thinking about these Pharisees, but Jesus is taking that, and Jesus is teaching both the Pharisees, and he's teaching you in me, that when we keep practicing our traditions, when we keep going through the motions, but we let our hearts become disengaged by why we even have those traditions when we're no longer focused on the underlying purposes of honoring God, we become like the people that Isaiah condemns. Our traditions go bad.

How do our traditions go bad? How do our traditions become corrupted? Jesus describes this in verses 8 and 9: "Neglecting the commandment of God, you hold to the tradition of men." Two contrasting verbs there: we cling to our traditions, we hold to our traditions. That becomes what's most important, and in doing so, we let go of the underlying purpose, the commandment of God. And that's how traditions get corrupted and go bad.

Traditions, number four, go bad when we lose sight of the underlying law of God. Now, Jesus gives an example here, but it's one of many examples he could give them. Picking it up in verse 10: "Honor your father and your mother." There's the commandment of God. Again, the Fifth Commandment from Exodus chapter 20. What does it mean to honor your father and mother?

It means not only to respect them and love them; it means, when they become aged, and especially in that culture, where there was no Social Security net, to care for them, to make sure their needs are met. But what's the tradition that had developed in that time? The tradition that's called Corban, that you see mentioned here, which simply means "consecrated to God". And again, I know this is, you know, this is so far removed from us, but think about designated giving.

You may or may not be aware of that. That's something you can do. You can, in your will, you can say, "I'm going to leave my house to some charity, and so I'm going to put it in my will now, while I'm still alive, but I am going to do it as a designated gift. I'm going to retain possession of that house. "I'm going to retain use of that house. It's my house," in other words, "til I die, but when I die, it goes to that charity." Well that's kind of the same principle of Corban.

In Corban, a Jewish young man could say, you know, "I know my parents are in need of financial assistance, and I do have some resources, but basically, my parents have, you know-- I don't like my parents"... you know, whatever, whatever. "I'm upset with my parents, and so I'm going to take my resources and I'm going to make a designated gift to the temple. I'm going to say these are consecrated to God. Now, I retain the use of them. I can keep using them. It only goes to the temple when I die.

But then when my father and my mother come to me in need, I can say, 'Sorry, I can't give you anything. "'Everything that I have is already designated to go to God.'" And Jesus says that is using the principle-- that is using a tradition of man, the tradition of the elders, to cancel out, to neglect and cancel out, the commandment of God. How do some of our traditions go bad? If that one doesn't connect with you, consider how we do this, maybe knowingly or unknowingly.

Let me give you, again, a New Testament commandment of God. Ephesians 5:19, he's talking to us when we come together to worship. "Speak to one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord." And I would make the case to you that that is not only a commandment, but that is a command of God that we're to worship God with a variety of musical styles, psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.

I'd even make the argument that that means we are to worship him with songs from a variety of cultures, because the Church of Jesus Christ is not just the Church of North America, but what do we do? We come to church bringing our own musical preferences. Some of those preferences are preferences from the kind of music that I heard in the church that I grew up in, and that's some of us, that's why I like hymns, or whatever it was that you heard from your church background.

Some of us bring our musical preferences from the kind of music that we listened to in other parts of our life, that moves us emotionally, and that's what we want to hear. And when we begin to say, "Well, we're not really worshiping unless we sing hymns or sing contemporary songs or sing country Western, or whatever it may be," that is your taste or your preference. What have we done?

We have begun to raise up our traditions, whether we recognize them as traditions or not, over the commandments of God. Why is it that we hold so tightly, so dearly, to our traditions? How is it that we can get to the point where, like Jesus says, we are even, maybe consciously or unconsciously, setting aside the commandment of God in order to keep our tradition? Very honestly, it's because traditions give us security. Traditions give us comfort.

There's order, there's security in traditions, in doing the things the way I grew up with, or doing things the way that I've become accustomed to, or the way my family did it. There's comfort. It comforts us, maybe, to come hear a certain kind of music or observe a certain kind of liturgy in a church or do other kinds of church practices in familiar ways.

And you know, there's nothing wrong with finding security and comfort in our traditions, unless we take our comfort and our security of our traditions, and we elevate it to a place where it becomes truly more important than the underlying commandments of God. And in doing so, we've made it an idol. We've made it something that we worship more than Jesus Christ himself.

So traditions give us security and comfort, but if those traditions and that security and that comfort become an idol, our traditions become rigid, and they risk quenching the Spirit. Do you know that verse? 1 Thessalonians 5:19? Paul, or God speaking through Paul, to the church body, to us: "Don't quench the Spirit." Don't throw a bucket of water by your preferences and what you want and what you're trying to hold onto on the flame of the Holy Spirit.

Think of the early church, in the first few chapters of the book of Acts. What do we see? We see the Church growing exponentially. We see people coming en masse to Jesus, because the Holy Spirit is moving powerfully. He's moving in new ways. There were very few forms in the early church there, and so the Holy Spirit was free, was unrestricted and could move in new ways and bring in groups of people like the Gentiles that the original believers never even foresaw was possible.

The Church was growing, because while there were traditions, it wasn't restricted by traditions. Here's Jesus's warning to the Pharisees and to you and to me: when we make the traditions, even the good traditions that give us comfort and security, the main thing, we risk quenching the Spirit. We risk restricting the Spirit's ability of our church to make us grow and move and be used by God in the world. So let me come back to the crab. That brings me back to the crabs. Remember?

Shedding their shells? And by the way, this is not my illustration; it came from a commentator named David Garland, but it just connected with me. I hope it connects with you. Think of that crab: to live and to grow, the crab must shed its shell from time to time. Now, it needs a shell. It can't go without a shell.

It's weak and vulnerable and unprotected without a shell, but if it tries to hang onto its shell, or if the shell becomes so rigid and hard that it can't somehow shed its shell, what happens? The crab will cease to grow, and the crab will die. That's like our traditions. Whether it's the traditions of music or the traditions of dress or the traditions, even, of constitutional forms. We need traditions.

We need the ways that we have learned to worship and do life together as a church congregation. They do protect our identity. They do give us comfort and security. But we can easily, if we're not careful, fall into the error of the Pharisees, elevating our traditions above the principles in God's word. And when we do, if we do, our traditions make us hard-shelled. We become like that crab: the body wants to grow, but the shell is too hard, and it can't be molted. It can't be shed.

And so, it kills the crab, and our traditions can keep us from growing and can even kill us, if we become hard-shelled. So again, whatever the Lord is laying on your heart, whether it's your style of music or how you dress or how you do reverence as you come into our worship center or constitutional revision or anything else that is left open in scripture. Let's heed the words of Jesus here, to the Pharisees, to us. Let's heed the warning not to quench the Spirit.

Let's be aware and open to how the Spirit wants to move. Let's extend grace to each other, recognizing there's a variety of different traditions. Let's embrace the best of all of those traditions. Let's do this so Jesus would be glorified. Let's pray.

Jesus, you speak to these men, these Pharisees and scribes, but you speak to us, and Lord, I ask that your spirit would take your words and convict as needed, in all of our hearts, and I think of even where we are as a congregation, Lord, and how important it is to just be very aware of these distinctions between what is actually in your word and what is the expectations, the preferences, the traditions that we sometimes impose upon your word.

Give us great discernment, Lord. We don't want to quench your Spirit. Make us open to what your Spirit wants to do. We pray this, Jesus, that you would be lifted up and glorified. We pray this in your name. Amen.