I've titled our sermon this morning The Difference between
Holiness and Tradition. Traditions in and of themselves
are not right or wrong, they just are.
But the purpose for which they're practiced can be right
or wrong. A tradition can be a wonderful
thing to help a person or a people group practice
togetherness and unity and fellowship to practice their
beliefs. But they themselves, the
traditions themselves, they do not make a person right or
wrong. A tradition is only a vessel in
which the essence of the tradition is carried.
If the inner core of the tradition is gone, its meaning
is no longer there. The act of performing that
tradition then becomes hollow, empty, and meaningless.
The purpose of a tradition is to express a value or a truth and
to live out that truth. The truth is carried in the
tradition, but the tradition itself is not the truth.
It only communicates it. But that's where the issue lies.
It's very easy to have a tradition without truth.
A tradition can look very good, attractive, beautiful, but if
the content it advertises or promotes is not there, it's
meaningless and it becomes misleading, and it can lead to
an empty form of expression and even a performance trap.
When it comes to our worship of God, how we worship is the
tradition, but the purpose of it is the value.
We should always do it in holiness and reverence to God
and never for the sake of tradition.
Never go to church for the sake of going to church.
Go to church, yes, but not just so you can check off I went to
church. Holiness is of the greatest
importance. The word holy itself means set
apart for God, and holiness can never be compromised on and in
worshiping God, we do carry our worship in the vessel of
tradition. We worship a certain way.
Go to the Pentecostal church, they worship a certain way.
Go to South America or to Africa, wherever you go, they
all worship a certain way. That's their tradition.
But the content, the truth and the value can be the same.
It should be the same. So how we worship standing,
sitting, how we pray, standing, kneeling, tradition this morning
we want to celebrate communion toward the end of our service.
It's an ordinance that we as a Anabaptist, as believers, we
believe God instructs us to follow.
We do it a certain way. That's our tradition that we do
it. That's the ordinance.
We don't believe it's a sacrament.
That's a different topic altogether.
The ordinance itself is not a tradition.
It's a command that Jesus taught us.
So as Mennonites or Anabaptists, we practice communion and that
the how of the the actual event is our tradition.
When Jesus walked this earth, he sometimes condemned tradition,
but not for the sake of condemning tradition.
There were things that Jesus did that were required by the law
and as a Jew, Jesus did those things.
We can be sure he is a man. Never went to a synagogue.
Yep, was in the synagogue today. He never did it to check it off.
He did it because he wanted to connect with God and with
people. But they have a had a tradition
of Sabbath days. They would gather in the
synagogues. Jesus was not about tradition.
Tradition did not matter to him in so far as it having any
holiness value to it. He didn't condemn tradition as
sinful, and in and of itself he didn't.
There were some traditions he named that were nothing but
rules taught by men. We'll look at one of them today.
What does come out very clear is he condemned the idolization,
the worship of tradition. The Pharisees, on the other
hand, they're focused so heavily on tradition.
To them, it mattered so much. To them, it was all about the
tradition. They define themselves by how
well they were following the traditions.
They had a lot of them that they've constructed.
They had fabricated traditions for everything, it seemed, and
they were simply an outward show.
Before we go into the passage of this morning, I want to say a
few more words about this to get a bit more clarity.
How do they differ and how are they set apart?
See, holiness is about purity, the setting apart.
It's it's about being genuine, being true, being loyal,
sincere, no guile, no falseness, no falsehood, commitment.
Not for self, but for the other, for what we're set apart for
holiness is God focused, never self focused.
It's Jesus focused. It's about looking towards
Jesus, comparing ourself with Jesus, seeking to become like
Jesus, being the image of Jesus, reflecting that in our lives.
And honestly, we can't attain it by ourselves.
It's an it's an unreachable standard, so to speak, for us.
No human being can be perfectly holy on their own.
Every one of us falls short of that goal.
But with Christ as our Savior, His death on the cross, His the
gift of salvation, He when we repent and turn to Him, He
covers us. That grace covers us, and then
we are considered holy in His sight.
Later on when we have communion here, we want to celebrate and
remind ourselves of what it took and what it cost Jesus to bring
this to reality. And it's not easy.
Holy living is hard. It takes self denial.
And for many people, they don't like the self denial part of it.
And so that they can just adopt the tradition, just make it look
as though they are and they're not really, well, you know,
maybe no, it doesn't work. You just don't drift into holy
living. It's an ongoing journey, a
constant battle, and a constant effort to daily strive to seek
Christ. Tradition.
It's about appearance. Content doesn't matter as long
as it's accepted, and often times it's also more historical
focus. Looking back.
Well, how was it the past? I love history, I love history,
but it can never be the objective, it can never be the
goal. It's only a reference point from
where we launched to the future. Tradition is focused on on
making sure things stay the way they are, no matter if it's
relevant or not. Tradition by itself is not sin,
but it should not be held as sacred.
There are many good traditions, a lot of them people create
them. We have a Christmas family.
Traditions. I love them, but not because of
the traditions, but because of what they represent and what we
do. Traditions are only the vehicle
or the means in which the the the value is carried.
When it when a tradition becomes wrong is when it becomes about
the tradition. When the tradition becomes the
object of focus, then it's about the preservation of the
tradition at the cost of what the tradition represents.
And so that which the tradition was to elevate, was to
facilitate, is turned upside down.
And that now gives way to the tradition itself becomes
cancerous. When a tradition becomes more
important than its purpose, it's gone bad.
And what's worse is people based eternal security on tradition.
I'm the right person because I do or because my mom and dad
did. Mom and dad did, that was fine.
What I do is fine. Doesn't give me any hope.
They do nothing for a person. Traditions don't mean holiness.
Holy people will have some, but they're not the life.
Tradition often has an emphasis more on the how than the why,
and it can become a fatal trap. Many people in life based their
eternal security on following a set of traditions.
Check, check, check, check. I don't steal, I don't lie, I
don't whatever, don't commit adultery.
And I go to church, church and the events, OK, I'm a good
person that makes me a good person.
And then often times they're self-made traditions that
they've just kind of chopped out of a list of to do things and
they hope that that will outweigh the the bad they've
done and the end of the scales will tip in their favor and
Jesus will have none of it. So this morning we want to look
into Mark Chapter 7. We're going through the Gospel
of Mark. We're not going to preach.
I'm not going to go through the whole chapter this morning.
There's a lot of content. So we're just going to pick one
story out of Mark Chapter 7 for this morning.
In the Gospel of Mark, one of the points of tension between
Jesus and the religious leaders was the fact that in the eyes of
the Pharisees, Jesus didn't measure up, not to their
standards, not to their traditions.
The religious leaders, they felt threatened by what Jesus was
doing, by his ministry, and Jesus was kind of eroding what
they had built so carefully over a long period of time.
And his disciples were just not measuring up.
And as a result of Jesus not doing things right, he again and
again got into trouble with these guys.
So this morning we will see what happens again between Jesus and
the Pharisees. So let's read Mark Chapter 7,
beginning verse one. We'll read to the end of verse 5
and they will stop. So then the Pharisees and some
of the scribes came together to him, having come from Jerusalem.
Now when this sauce some of his disciples eat bread with
defiled, that is, unwashed hands, they found fault.
For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash
their hands in a special way, holding the tradition of the
elders. When they come from the
marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash.
And there are many other things which they have received and
hold, like the washing of cups, pitchers, copper vessels and
couches. Then the Pharisees and scribes
asked him, why do your disciples not walk according to the
tradition of the elders, but eat bread with unwashed hands?
Let's stop there. You can just hear the biting
accusation in their question. The Pharisees hated Jesus.
They they wanted to silence him in the worst way and nitpicking
it every last little thing that they could find to jab poke.
Timothy Geddert writes in this commentary on Mark and he says
this he says in chapter 6, Mark's portrait of Jesus the
miracle worker reaches a high point.
He has just fed 5000, walked on water and healed many sick
people. He is a famous teacher, a
compassionate helper, a wonder worker.
The mood is upbeat. What a shock then to begin
reading Mark 7. Jesus enemies, the Pharisees and
scribes have arrived. The Pharisees were last seen in
chapter 3, verse 6 responding to a miracle of Jesus by plotting
his death. The scribes from Jerusalem were
last seen in chapter 3, verse 22, accusing Jesus of working
miracles in Satan's power. This time the issue is
ceremonial cleansing. It is as though the Pharisees
and scribes point to Jesus and his disciples and say, Wash your
hands, you sinners, and Jesus looks them straight in the eye
and retorts, Purify your hearts, you double minded.
Niceties aside, the mood is tense and the words are harsh. 1
suspects that Jesus opponents are being caricatured.
Nevertheless, the point Jesus and Mark are making is crucially
important. Human tradition can become the
enemy of God's word. When that happens, the guilty
must be confronted and the cause of the problem must be exposed.
That is what we want to do this morning.
The tradition of washing of hands was something the Jews did
and some of Jesus disciples were seen not doing it.
So the first thing we see this morning in our passage,
tradition can blind people. It can lead people to believe
something that is not real. It can cause people to hold
something as valuable when it's just baggage.
It says here that the Pharisees and some of the scribes came
together having come from Jerusalem.
That was a long way away from where Jesus was serving at this
time. Jesus was up in the north there
between around the Capernaum area on his way up to Tyre.
So that's a long ways away now. On a map, it's on a straight
line. It's about 75 miles, but
counting curves and valleys and and ups and downs, it's more
like 100 mile walk, give or take that.
That's about 160 kilometers. That's roughly give or take from
walking from here to to London. Imagine a group of guys walking
up that far just to check things out and confronting him if
necessary or maybe setting out because we want to confront him.
If you wanted to walk from here to London to have a have a spat
with someone, they're pretty serious about that.
They meant business. And the first thing they see
when they get there, Jesus disciples, they're eating,
they're not washing their hands. Come on.
And they engage instantly right away.
What was so important about their washing of hands?
Let's look at verse 3 as particular for the Pharisees and
all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands in a
special way, holding the tradition of the elders.
I was fascinated by this since I googled this and on YouTube
there's actually Orthodox Jews that still practice this and
they show you how to do it. It's interesting.
God had given instructions in the Old Testament law to the
priests how they're supposed to go into the into the Tabernacle
and this basin of water, how they're supposed to wash their
hands a specific way they're supposed to wash their hands
when they served the Tabernacle. And this had become vague and I
couldn't find in the Old Testament, and maybe I'm missing
something, but I couldn't find a particular case where the
ordinary Jew was supposed to always wash their hands before
they ate or when they went to the market.
I couldn't find that. So, and, and the commentators
suggest this is just something the Pharisees concocted and
added to what God had established years ago.
And so they also had a very particular unique way how to
wash them, pouring water, so much water this way and that
way. It was very, very precise how
they should do it. Well, the disciples are not
doing it and they take offense at that.
And Jesus is not quiet, not this time.
You see, it's very possible to be totally, 100% sincere and
committed and dedicated and absolutely wrong, completely
blind. A person in that place in life
cannot conceive. Could I perhaps be wrong?
No, you've always done it this way.
But why? What's the purpose?
But God in his grace sometimes convicts a person and that
person, if the person is open to respond to truth, will say, you
know what, actually I'm worshipping that tradition.
It's not helpful. It's actually not good.
One speaker I heard put it this way, there'll be many people on
Judgement Day waving their resume of good works and so on.
Jesus say might I never knew you no relationship with you.
You see tradition is not what connects us to God.
A relationship with God is what connects us to God traditions
they will not carry us through what carries us through is Jesus
Christ the Spirit living in US. He was 12/14 says pursue peace
with all people and holiness without which no one will see
the Lord first. Peter one verse 15 to 16.
But as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all
your conduct, because it is written to be holy, for I am
holy. You see, traditions do not equal
holiness. Outward appearance does not mean
inward reality. What something appears to be
from the outside does not mean it is on the inside.
Jesus saw that and he responded. Jesus pointed to the prophet
Isaiah and reminded the Pharisees of words that they no
doubt knew very well and were well familiar with, but would
have never thought that they would be directed at them.
Let's continue reading Mark chapter 6-7 verse 6 to 8.
He answered and said to them, Well did Isaiah prophecy of you
hypocrites as it is written. This people honors me with their
lips, but their heart is far from me, and in vain they
worship me, teaching His doctrines, the commandments of
men for laying aside the commandment of God.
You hold the tradition of men, the washing of pitchers and cups
and many other such things you do.
Let's just pause here for a moment.
Let that sink in. See, Jesus is not content with
with just telling them what Isaiah said.
He has to preface what Isaiah said by calling them hypocrites
first. Yet why?
OK Jesus, you're just you're, you're jabbing and turning.
Well, did Isaiah prophecy of you as it is written?
He could have said that. He's not content to say that.
He says, well, did Isaiah prophecy of you hypocrites?
What's a hypocrite? It's an actor, a pretender,
somebody who's not real. In those days, they would have
also the, the plays and whatnot, the where people would would act
and so on. And that's, that's an actor
pretender. He categorized them.
When tradition blinds people, they take tradition and put it
where God's commands should be. And then people follow the
tradition instead of God's commands.
That's very misleading. It turns into a death spiral.
It's the blind leading the blind.
There's a phenomenon in nature, in the animal world.
It's interesting to watch and I've only watched it on YouTube.
I've never come across a real one.
It's it's the death spiral of an Ant colony.
It looks like that when ants are on a journey to hunt food, they
follow a scent trail. And if by chance that trail
loops and crosses itself over once, sometimes they just go in
a circle and they start going in a circle and they find piles of
dead ants like that because the ants got disoriented.
They follow the scent trail and it goes round and round and
round and round, and they all follow each other and they
exhaust themselves and fall dead.
They're busy running and never going anywhere.
It's a bit of a picture that comes to my mind when a person
gets stuck in a rut of tradition.
It's exhausting, It's hard work. You're not lazy, you're busy
doing what What doesn't help, no benefit?
When tradition becomes the focal point of more than what God says
in His Word, that's a death spiral.
Not just as tradition blind us, it literally replaces God's
commands. Jesus saw right through the
actions of these religious hypocrites.
But if we would have looked at them, if we would have seen
them, if they would come to our church, we would not be able to
see it. They looked devoted and they
were devoted. They're very committed, very
religious. They knew the Torah of the
Bible. What they had the problem was
the what they presented themselves as was not what they
were actually inside. Jesus says they honor me with
their lips. Their hearts are far from me.
They were saying the right things.
They were reading the right scriptures.
They're praying even almost not always the right prayers, not
always the right prayers. Sometimes they're giving money
to the temple. A long list of things they were
doing and checking off, making sure they were doing all these
things because they wanted to earn their relationship with God
and their approval of God. And yet Jesus says the worship
of me is in vain. Here's what happens.
The outward performance was there and often is in our time
as well existent. It does, it's there, it sits
there. The the substance is gone and
it's all hollow and empty and meaningless.
Sometimes in life we get so used to doing something a certain
way, it just becomes an extension of us.
We do it in our sleep. Reminded of a story of a young
couple had twins, of course, their first set of their first
babies and had twins. And so husband and wife, young
couple that they were decided to well, they're going to cry at
night. So one cradle by the by the
mother's side, one cradle by the dad's side.
And so when they fuss at night, just rocked the cradle, just
rocked the cradle. And so the mother's very keen on
doing everything right. And so at night time, her baby
there cries, She rocks the cradle, takes care of it, and
baby on his side cries and he rocks the cradle.
And that's what he does. And eventually he just keeps
rocking the cradle. And then the mother wakes up and
the kids up, he's just rocking the cradle.
The baby fuss, she gets up, walks around, picks up the baby
and holds him and he keeps rocking the cradle.
Just no sleep, just no sleep. Sometimes people mentally,
emotionally, just in their sleep, Yep, I did it.
Yep, checked off, never questioned it.
It's just baggage. Putting tradition above 1's
relationship with God is something that happened subtly,
incrementally, little by little, and we become shallow, lukewarm,
self focused, and then we become proud and what we've
accomplished. All we give to charity we do
church and it's totally self focused and then it expands.
Then we judge those who don't do as we do.
The output form has become the standard.
The inward content never gets questioned.
Jesus spoke up. You know, sometimes it's best
not to speak. Sometimes it's good to speak.
In Ecclesiastes chapter 3 verse seven, that says there's a time
to speak and a time to not speak.
There's a time to be quiet and a time to talk.
Proverbs 26 forces, do not answer a fool according to his
folly, lest he, lest you be like him, answer a fool according to
his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes.
So when do you speak? It's hard to discern, but in
this case, this was time. And sometimes we need to call
out when something has gone dead or gone bad.
Jesus spoke up. He zeroed in on part of God's
commands that they were setting aside.
The Pharisees were big on their laws and traditions.
Well, let's continue reading. Jesus is not done yet.
Turn to Mark Chapter 9, verse 79 to 13.
Now he said to them all too well, you reject the commandment
of God that you may keep your tradition.
For Moses said honor your father and your mother and he who
curses father or mother, let him be put to death.
But you say if a man says to his father or mother, whatever
prophet you might have received from me is Qurban, that is a
gift to God, then you no longer let him do anything for his
father or his mother, making the word of God of no effect through
your tradition which you've handed down and many such things
you do. We see how the religious leaders
over time had become not only being blind, not only replacing
God's commands with tradition. Then they turn and neutralize
God's commands that they may keep the tradition.
That's a very heavy statement that Jesus makes here.
Jesus goes for the very core of what's going on here.
He uses the 10 commandments to illustrate one of the
commandments to illustrate what's actually happening.
And the particular commandment in chapter the commandment #5
says honor your father and your mother, no exceptions given.
That means more than just saying hi dad, hi mom.
That means recognizing and acknowledging our parents as
mother and father and supporting them, helping them when they
come to the point in life where they need it, being sure we're
submissive or respective of them, not abusing them,
disrespecting them. Seen that day and age, there
were no social networks as we have today, Old age security or
pensions and whatnot. When a person became elderly, it
was the family that took looked after the person, and many
cultures and tribes still do that.
It's a good thing. First the parents raise the
children, then the children look after the parents.
In those times, as now, people also gave to the temple for
ministry. But the Pharisees, they were
very greedy. They were corrupt, dishonest
men. So they found a way for people
to give to the temple at the cost of helping their parents.
All a person had to say to his mom and dad was the gift I'm
giving to God is Corban. Nelson's illustrated dictionary
puts it this way. The writer says a word.
The qurban is a word applied to a gift or offering in the temple
that declared that gift dedicated to God in a special
sense. Once a gift was offered under
the special declaration of qurban, it could not be
withdrawn or taken back. It was considered totally
dedicated for the temple's special use.
Jesus condemned the Pharisees for encouraging the people to
make such gifts to the temple while neglecting the
responsibility to care for their parents.
According to Jesus, this was a clear violation of the higher
command. Honor your father and your
mother, making the word of God of no effect through your
tradition, which you've handed down to men and many such things
you do. I don't think the Pharisees had
counted on what Jesus was going to do here.
In their minds, they just knew Jesus wrong.
But Jesus opened the floodgate. This is who you guys are.
He wasn't finished yet. This incident with the Jewish
leaders confronting him and then he pushing back.
This had gotten to him and he couldn't just let it go.
Now he calls the people. Let's continue reading chapter
714. When he had called all the
multitude to himself, he said to them, Hear me, everyone, and
understand There's nothing that enters a man from outside which
can defile him. But the things which come out of
him, those are the things that defile a man.
If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.
When he had entered the house away from the crowd, his
disciples asked him concerning the parable.
So he said to them, Are you thus without understanding also, do
you not perceive that whatever enters a man from outside cannot
defile him because it does not enter his heart but stomach and
is eliminated, thus preifying all foods?
And he said, what comes out of a man that defiles him?
Jesus made a very clear, made it very clear this outward ritual
of hand washing was not important, had nothing to do
with being holy or undefiled as they would call it.
Hand washing was not where it was at.
In fact he took it further. He went from hand washing to
eating. He pointed out the tradition
does not does nothing for defiled heart.
Verse Chapter 7, Verse 21 to 23 For from without, out of the
heart of men proceed evil thoughts, adulteries,
fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness,
deceit, lewdness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride and
foolishness. All these things come within and
defile a man. Tradition does nothing for a
defiled heart. We have to remember, as
important as hand washing was for the Jews, and hand washing
is great guys, don't get me wrong, keep washing your hands
does nothing for the soul, nothing for the heart.
And Jews were particular but hand washing even more
particular. What they ate and still are.
Many of them, they don't want to be defiled.
And here in this case, Jesus demolishes the tradition of the
Pharisees about hand washing completely.
Again, hand washing is not sin. What value do you place in it?
That's the issue, the crowd to the crowd.
He said if a man eats that won't defile him, what comes out of
his heart that will. As meticulously and faithfully
as the Jews washed their hands, the sin in their hearts was no
less real and no less present. And especially the hearts of the
Pharisees. That was what was defiling them.
Faithfully washing didn't matter.
When the Pharisees went about when Jesus went about helping
people and the Pharisees and scribes went about criticizing
Jesus and judging him, Jesus went about calling the people to
holiness. On this occasion, Jesus engaged
the conversation and pointed out to them that they were falling
short today in that in their day.
I'm going to ask us this morning, where do we fit?
How about us? Are we more about tradition or
more about holiness? Are we focused on being in a
relationship with Jesus and walking in holiness with Him?
If we're not careful, we can so easily slip into giving God lip
service Sunday after Sunday, saying the right things, giving
some money. But then from Monday to
Saturday, life goes on. If there is no God, if the heart
is defiled, if the heart is unholy, there's no tradition, no
ritual, no physical practice, no ordinance, no amount of going to
church, no amount of doing good works, anything that will fix
that problem. The only way out is repentance.
Jesus wants that. He wants the heart.
He wants you and he wants me and he wants a relationship.
The question you, we, you and I must ask ourselves, do we want
it or do we just want Jesus to accept us in the mess without
changing us, changing the mess or the cleaning up the mess?
But I want this, I want that. Then we're still wrong.
We all know Jesus not OK with ritual at the expense of
relationship fallout. He gave Himself totally and
completely. When we give Him our hearts, He
has what He wants. This morning we've prepared
communion. We want to again remind
ourselves of what these did on our behalf, how He gave His
body, how He shed His blood, that through that we can walk a
newness of life and we repent and put our trust in Him.
We don't have to manufacture and construct our own holiness.
We receive it as a gift from Him.
He gave his body and shed his blood and opened the door for us
to come in. When we celebrate the Lord's
Supper, we remind ourselves that we're cleansed through His grace
and nothing not by ritual or performance.
So at this time, I want to ask our deacons to come forward.
Our worship team will come up and we will celebrate communion.
The worship team will lead us in a song and the deacons will hand
out the bread and after that one of them will will read a
scripture and pray and then communion will be celebrated.