Life of Christ 77
Jesus is back in Galilee
following the feeding of the five thousand, the forced attempt at making Him
king, and Peter's successful and unsuccessful attempt at walking on water. He
is being constantly shadowed by Pharisees from Jerusalem who were almost
certainly charged with sending reports back to headquarters. At the same time
these Pharisees were actively looking for opportunities to embarrass or harass
Him, and when they discovered that He and His Apostles were not strict about
ritually cleansing themselves from Gentile defilement they went on the attack
(Matthew 15.1-9).
The rabbinism of the
Pharisees was not monolithic in belief about many things, but it was in its
attitude toward the Gentiles. Even the rival schools of Hillel and Shammai
agreed on 18 specific things a Jew should do to remain clean, or to cleanse
themselves from defilement with Gentiles. For instance, if you came back from
the public market you ought to take a ritually cleansing bath just in case you
accidentally touched some bread that had been previously touched by a Gentile.
The Sadducees, normally antagonistic toward the Pharisees' theological
hullabaloo, poke relentless fun at them over this issue, saying that 'soon they
would think it necessary to wash the sun' because its rays shone on the
Gentiles also.
The Pharisees had
started centuries before for sincerely good reasons as a reaction against the
growing hellenization of the Jewish people under Grecian influence. To do this
they had erected a fence around the garden of the Torah. They called this the
Oral Torah. They claimed it had been handed down from Moses, the first rabbi,
and then later codified into the Mishnah section of the Talmud. There is, of
course, zero scriptural support that Moses did this, and even if he had it
wasn't scripture. In essence, then, these extra-biblical rules had no more
support than the fact that they were traditional, yet in reality the Pharisees
paid them such respect and obeisance that they had elevated tradition to the
place of equal authority with the actual Torah. Thus, it really bothered the
Pharisees that Jesus and His Apostles ignored these traditional decrees
regarding ritualistic Jewish purity.
'Then came to Jesus
scribes and Pharisees, which were of Jerusalem, saying, Why do thy disciples
transgress the tradition of the elders? for they wash not their hands when they
eat bread' (Matthew 15.1-2). We aren't talking about dirty dirt here. In fact,
your hands had to be clean of physical dirt before you ever started in on
ritualistically cleansing them of defilement. The idea was that you had to
cleanse any imaginary defilement from your hands in case they had touched
something a Gentile had also touched. For this purpose, one and a half
eggshells of water were to be used, and after scrubbing the hands you were
instructed to raise them so the now defiled water would drip off your elbows
rather than off your fingertips for that would defile the hands all over again.
So we see, then, that the Pharisees aren't questioning Jesus and the Apostles'
conformity to the Law; they are questioning their conformity to tradition.
Jesus responds by
illustrating how bankrupt rabbinic tradition actually was. 'But he answered and said unto them, Why do ye also transgress the
commandment of God by your tradition? For God commanded, saying, Honour thy
father and mother: and, He that curseth father or mother, let him die the
death. But ye say, Whosoever shall say to his father or his mother, It is a
gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me; And honour not his father
or his mother, he shall be free. Thus have ye made the commandment of God of
none effect by your tradition' (Matthew 15.3-6).
The Torah required,
under the general instruction of the sixth commandment, that children
financially support their aging parents if such support is needed. This is
absolutely a scriptural interpretation, not a traditionally extra-biblical one.
Yet the Pharisees, for all their talk of obedience to the Torah, had
ingeniously found a way out of it.
If a Pharisee pronounced
the word 'Corban' over his money and property he was essentially saying that he
no longer owned it, and that he was going to give it to the work of God via the
Temple – but it wouldn't go to the Temple until his death. Until then, he
'managed' it or held it in trust for the Temple. Sadly, it just wouldn't be a
wise use of 'the Temple's money' to support his elderly parents. Voila! Said
Pharisee has gotten around the sixth commandment. You can see how such a wicked
system, while following the letter of the Law, completely contradicted the
actual point of the sixth commandment.
The problem wasn't that
Jesus and His Apostles were violating tradition. The problem was that the
Pharisees, with their slavish adherence to extra-biblical tradition, were violating
the Torah. 'Ye hypocrites, well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying, This people
draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips, but
their heart is far from me' (Matthew 15.7-8).
Then, as His custom was,
Jesus used the subject they brought up to deal with a deeper problem. The
Pharisees assumed they were inwardly righteous, as Jews, and that defilement
came from what touched them externally. In that light, their complex system for
avoiding defilement made sense. Jesus' view, however, was exactly the opposite.
Eating bread that had been touched by Gentiles had nothing to do with whether
you were defiled or not. After all, what you ate entered into your stomach and
bypassed your heart entirely (Mark 7.18-19). No, defilement came from inside a
man precisely because his heart was so wicked. 'For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts,
adulteries, fornications, murders, Thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit,
lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: All these evil
things come from within, and defile the man' (Mark 7.21-23).
So with this by way of
explanation let me give you two quick observations from this story. First, we
must keep the heart front and center in our emphasis on holiness. I'm for
externally visible standards. In fact, I'm so old-fashioned and extreme and
legalistic and out of touch (at least if my mail is correct) as to believe that
a lady ought not to wear pants and a man ought to have a short haircut. I'm
also for personal separation from external defilement, and as I understand
scripture that includes things like rock music and the American public school
system. (Go ahead, write me about this. Really. I'm just dying to have another
conversation about it.) But what I am not for is equating the observance of
these separations with holiness or spirituality, nor am I for making them the
point. They are nothing more than a wise use of principle, but they are not, in
and of themselves, holiness. See, the problem of sin is a heart problem, and
the solution, therefore, must be a heart solution. Paul explains, in that section of Romans which contains the greatest passage on holiness in the Scripture,
that holiness is a heart issue. 'But God be thanked, that ye were the servants
of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was
delivered you' (Romans 6.17).
Secondly, religious
tradition may lend us insight, but we must never view it authoritatively. This
is one reason I don't like the label 'traditional'. Yes, our church is
considered a traditional one, and I'm considered a traditional preacher, but we
don't do the things we do because they are traditional. We do them because we
honestly believe them to be scriptural.
The classic attack on a
church like ours, or a ministry like mine, that thinks ladies should still
dress like ladies, and that men should still look like men, and that we should
still use the KJV, and that our music should still flow instead of rock is that
we are trying to survive in a cocoon of the 1950's. Such an attack is laughably
inaccurate. Our Bible is from 1611, or 1769, depending how you count it. Our
music encompasses songs from the 17th to the 21st
centuries. Our emphasis on modesty was the position of the church in every
culture of which I am aware for almost two millennia until American culture
shifted in the sixties. More importantly, though, such an attack is completely
untrue. We aren't trying to mold people into Leave It To Beaver land. We are
trying to be scriptural. If the byproduct is that we happen to still look like
people think churches looked like in the 1950's, fine, but that isn't the goal
by any means, let alone the model.
It isn't critical that
those who attack us, or fire away at me understand this. It is, however, critical
that young people understand this. If we don't teach them the why's behind the
what's we stand for they will throw them overboard when they think that the
only reasons we had were traditional.
By the same token, we
must diligently study to make sure the reasons we have for holding our
positions or structuring our churches and ministries the way we do are more
substantial than mere traditions. As Baptists we profess that the Bible is our
sole authority when the actual truth is that, far too often, tradition plays a
huge role in why we do what we do. If that is, indeed, the case, let us refrain
from attacking the man or church that shifts something that has no more to
support it than mere tradition.
Let us be true to
Scripture rather than tradition. Let us be holy from the heart. In other words,
let us not be Pharisees. Instead, let us be like Jesus.
If you would like to listen to the audio version of this blog you may find it here on our church website. Just press 'launch media player' and choose We Preach Christ 45, 'Transgression and Tradition'.
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