Jesus & The Traditions Of The Elders

JESUS & THE TRADITIONS OF THE ELDERS

Mark 7:1-23

INTRODUCTION

A. HUMOR: GETTING IT WRONG

1. Back in the cowboy days, a westbound wagon train was lost and low on food. At last they saw an old Jewish Rabbi, sitting beneath a tree.

2. The leader rushed to him and said, "We're lost and running out of food. Is there someplace ahead where we can get food?" "Vell, I tink so," the old Rabbi said, "but I vouldn't go up dat hill over ‘der. Somevun tole me you'd run into a big bacon tree."

3. "A bacon tree?" asked the wagon train leader."Yah, ah bacon tree. Vould I lie? ..... Trust me, I vouldn't go dere.” The leader went back and told his people what the Rabbi said. "Of course he would say that" some pioneers said, “You know that Jewish people don't eat bacon."

4. So the wagon train went up & over the hill. Suddenly, Indians attacked from everywhere and they massacred all except the leader who manages to escape back to the old Jewish Rabbi.

5. "Oh Rabbi! There was no bacon tree, just hundreds of Indians, who killed everyone but me." The old Jewish man holds up his hand and says, "Oy..... vait a minute." He then got out an English-Yiddish dictionary, and looked through it.

6. "O, I made ah big mishtake! It vuzn't a bacon tree. It vuz a ham bush."

B. TEXT

1 The Pharisees and some of the teachers of the law who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus 2 and saw some of his disciples eating food with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed. 5 So the Pharisees and teachers of the law asked Jesus, “Why [do] your disciples...eat their food with defiled hands?” 6 He replied, “Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written: “‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. 7 They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules.’ 8 You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions.” 14...Jesus called the crowd to him and said, “Listen to me, everyone, and understand this. 15 Nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them.” 19 (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean.) 21 “For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, 22 adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. 23 All these evils come from inside and defile a person.” Mk. 7:1-2,5-8,14-15,19-23.

C. THESIS

1. Jesus regularly received criticism from the religious authorities who were seeking to discredit Him before the common people, so that they might maintain their own following and prestige.

2. The Lord countered these attacks by pointing out how they were “straining at a gnat, but swallowing a camel;” that is, picking on insignificant things He or His followers were doing while they were encouraging large areas of moral failure with their teachings.

3. In Matt. 23 Jesus condemned them for:

a. not practicing what they preached (23:3);

b. loading people down with excessive regulations (23:4);

c. of pride, loving positions of honor & titles (23:6-7);

d. of discouraging people from seeking God (23:13);

e. treating dedicated wealth as more important than spiritual sacrifices (23:16);

f. and for emphasizing tithing yet neglecting simple justice, mercy, & faithfulness (23:23).

4. So today we’re going to look at how the Pharisees got it wrong – how they totally missed the true message God was conveying about being clean and unclean.

5. The title of this message is “Jesus & the Traditions of the Elders.”

I. EPICENTER OF THE CONFLICT

A. DIFFERENT TYPES OF UNCLEANNESS

1. The Pharisees were far more worked up about sanitation than about the moral state of their hearts. The Jewish Law was all about what you physically did; most of its laws were like the health and civil laws of our country.

2. DIFFERENT MEANINGS OF “UNCLEAN:”

a. Sometimes it meant “contaminated by germs.” If people were contaminated (by body fluids, sickness, touching something dead, etc.) they had to isolate themselves and couldn’t go into public places or come to the Temple to worship God.

b. “Unclean” also referred to animals that were off-limits for eating because they had unhealthy characteristics or they represented spiritual defilement.

c. It could refer to spiritual contamination, from which all persons needed to be purified. Holiness is separation from all that is sinful, impure, or morally imperfect. There are holy persons, places, and things – that have been purified. To this end God gave the sacrifices and the different methods of purification (Lev. 12-15; Deut. 23:1-14).