Mark 7:1-13
Introduction - It's 1903. Russian czar Nicholas II notices a sentry posted on the Kremlin grounds for no apparent reason. After some hunting around he finds why. 127 years earlier, In 1776, Catherine the Great had discovered the first flower of spring on that spot. She gave an order: "Post a sentry here so that no one tramples that flower under foot!" So for 127 years, there had been a sentry posted there.
Ill –There was a small town Catholic church in upstate New York. They'd had a rector in that church for over 35 yrs. He was loved by the church and the community. After he retired, he was replaced by a young priest. It was his first church; he had a great desire to do well. He’d been at the church several weeks when he began to feel like the people were upset at him. He was troubled.
He called aside one of the leaders of the church and said, "I don't know what's wrong, but I have a feeling that there's something wrong."
He said, "Well, Father that's true. I hate to say it, but it's the way you do the Communion service."
"The way I do the Communion service? What do you mean?"
"Well, it's not so much what you do as what you leave out."
"I don't think I leave out anything from the Communion service."
"Oh yes, you do. Just before our previous rector administered the chalice and wine to the people, he'd always go over and touch the radiator. And, then, he would "
"Touch the radiator? I never heard of that liturgical tradition."
So the priest called the former rector. He said, "I haven't even been here a month, and I'm in trouble."
"In trouble? Why?"
"Well, it's something to do with touching the radiator. Could that be possible? Did you do that?"
"Oh yes, I did. Always before I administered the chalice to the people, I touched the radiator to discharge the static electricity so I wouldn't shock them."
For over 35 years, the untutored people of his congregation had thought that was a part of some holy tradition. That church has now gained the name, "The Church of the Holy Radiator."
We're looking at a concept, and a word, that means "to hand something down." Being the youngest of 6 kids, I can tell you all about hand-me-downs. Mom thought they were great – most parents do. Sometimes, as a kid getting them, I thought they were great too. Other times I wasn’t so thrilled. Hand-me-downs have their value, and they have their downside too. What should we do with them?
In this text of Scripture (MK 7) Jesus gives us some instruction concerning hand-me-downs.
I want us to leave this morning understanding 3 imperatives:
I. Value What Has Been Handed Down To Us
Ill – I’ll never forget the batman suit. My sister had sewn it for my brother Ken’s birthday. For sometime, my brother had worn the venerated costume. He had the edge when it came to fighting imaginary bad guys. In fact, as I recall, he always had special privileges and powers when we were playing just because he was Batman and I wasn’t! Finally, Kenny John outgrew the gray sweatshirt, the blue hood with the ears and eyeholes, and the cape. I was the logical recipient. That was one hand-me-down I valued.
Hand-me-downs can be valuable! In fact, there are several places in the NT where the value of something handed down is immeasurable!
(Lk 1:1-2) "Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word.
(1 Co 11:2) "I praise you for remembering me in everything and for holding to the teachings, just as I passed them on to you"
(v23) "I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you"
(15:3) For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance : that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,
(2 Thes 2:15) "stand firm and hold to the teachings we passed on to you,"
(2 Tim 2:2) "And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others."
In one sense, we should be very thankful for what has been handed down to us. I praise the Lord for the people who faithfully wrote and then copied down the Scriptures so that we have them today. That's something that has been handed down to us, unlike anything else, because it's authoritative and came directly from the hand of God. But I'm thankful for the way it has been handed down.
Valuable things have been given to us through the years, and we must learn to appreciate those. Some of those we might even call "traditions" because they are things that we've known or done for a long time.
In the purest sense of the word, anything that gets passed down from one generation to another is a "tradition." We need to value those things that have been handed to us.
I want to show you a clip from a famous musical that deals with the place of traditions in our lives. It’s the beginning of the story called “Fiddler on the Roof.” Tevya is explaining what life is like in the little Russian Jewish village of Anatevka. Listen closely as he talks about the way they value and use traditions. (play video clip 2.5 minutes – ends with, “…I don’t know.”)
(II. Distinguish Between Good Tradition and Traditionalism)
Tevya understood and valued traditions, as did most of the village he lived in. They realized that life is challenging, and that having some structure and solidness in place makes it easier not to fall off. But what Tevya didn’t do was distinguish between good tradition and traditionalism.
Traditions are things that are passed down to us. They may be good or bad. I like having some “pegs” in life where I can hang truth – pegs like the traditions we have around our house. Like reading the Christmas story from the Bible before we do much else on Christmas morning, or like getting breakfast in bed when it’s your birthday. I miss it when things that we’ve done before get changed. But we have to learn to distinguish between nostalgia and authority – between being traditionalists or simply people who practice traditions. That’s especially true in this growing Kingdom we call the Lord’s Church.
quote - Jaroslav Pelikan in an interview in U.S. News & World Report: "Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. Tradition lives in conversation with the past, while remembering we are where and when we are, and that it is we who have to decide. Traditionalism supposes that nothing should ever be done for the first time, so all that is needed to solve any problem is to arrive at the supposedly unanimous testimony of this homogenized tradition."
We must learn to tell the difference between tradition and traditionalism.
Jesus made this distinction in
Mark 7:1-4 The Pharisees and some of the teachers of the law who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus and saw some of his disciples eating food with hands that were "unclean," that is, unwashed.
(Mark is writing his gospel for non-Jewish readers, so he gives an explanation:)
(The Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial washing, holding to the tradition of the elders. When they come from the marketplace they do not eat unless they wash. And they observe many other traditions, such as the washing of cups, pitchers and kettles.) (since we’re all even less Jewish, let’s explain even more…)
Ill - Edersheim in The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah:
"Water jars were kept ready to be used before a meal. The minimum amount of water to be used was enough to fill 1½ eggshells. The water was first poured on both hands, held with the fingers pointed upwards, and must run up the arm as far as the wrist. It must drop off from the wrist, for the water was now itself unclean, having touched the unclean hands, and, if it ran down the fingers again, it would again render them unclean. The process was repeated with the hands held in the opposite direction, with the fingers pointing down; and then finally each hand was cleansed by being rubbed with the fist of the other. A really strict Jew would do all this, not only before a meal, but also between each of the courses."
So, there’s this tradition of handwashing that the Pharisees had established. OK. Nothing wrong with washing your hands before a meal, right? But, remember, if it’s not done according to specs, it doesn’t count.
(Let’s continue…)
Mark 7:5-8 So the Pharisees and teachers of the law asked Jesus, "Why don't your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with 'unclean' hands?" 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. They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.' You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men."
story - A devout Christian who had a cat used to spend several minutes each day at prayer and meditation in his bedroom. He read a portion of Scripture and a devotional book, followed by a period of silent meditation and prayer. As time went on his prayers became longer and more intense.
He came to cherish this quiet time in his bedroom, but his cat came to like it, too. She would cozy up to him, purr loudly, and rub against him. This interrupted the man's prayer time, so he put a collar around the cat's neck and tied her to the bedpost whenever he wanted to be undisturbed while at prayer. This didn't seem to upset the cat, and it meant that the man could meditate without interruption.
Over the years, the daughter of this devout Christian had noted how much his devotional time had meant to him. When she began to establish some routines and patterns with her own family, she decided she should do as her father had done. Dutifully she, too, tied her cat to the bedpost and then proceeded to her devotions. But time moved faster in her generation. She couldn't spend as much time at prayer as did her father.
The day came when her son grew up and wanted to make sure that he preserved some of the family traditions which had meant so much to his mother and his grandfather. But the pace of life had quickened even more, and there simply wasn't time for such involved devotions. So he dropped the time for meditation, Bible reading, and prayer. But in order to carry on the family tradition, each day while he was dressing he tied the family cat to the bedpost.
I’ll be honest with you, it’s a whole let less work, a whole lot less risk, to work on planning a church calendar by saying, “What did we do last year?” rather than saying, “What does God want us to do this year?” It’s a whole lot easier to ask, “How did I teach this before?” rather than asking, “What can I do to teach this better?”
Let's look around and consider: do we do this because Scripture commands it? Is there a pattern of the church doing this in the NT? Is there a biblical precedent for this practice? Is it a command of God, or a tradition of man? Am I being a keeper of good traditions because they're good, or am I a traditionalist because it's easier? We’ve got to distinguish between the 2.
The 3rd imperative in this text is to
III. Devalue Traditions That Have Become Too Important In Our Thinking
Mark 7:9-13 And he said to them: "You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions! For Moses said, 'Honor your father and your mother,' and, 'Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.' But you say that if a man says to his father or mother: 'Whatever help you might otherwise have received from me is Corban' (that is, a gift devoted to God), then you no longer let him do anything for his father or mother. Thus you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And you do many things like that."
In the Pharisees' minds, the teachings of the rabbis, along with all of their loopholes, had become more important than the Scriptures. For instance, a Jewish son of elderly parents could pronounce his possessions as “Corban” – in other words, they were devoted to the temple. That meant that he could still keep and use them all, but it allowed him to say that they couldn’t be used for someone else – like his parents who needed him to take care of them. It would be like signing everything you have over to the church, but never giving it to the church. You could tell people, including your parents, “Sorry, I’ve given everything in my name to the Church,” but you really would never actually hand it over. Jesus said this tradition, established by the Jewish rabbis, was a way of throwing out what God had commanded.
Ill - Let me give you an example of a tradition that we have commonly taken up in our congregations, and in our society: The word “church” or “churches” occurs 114X in the Bible. But never once does it refer to a building or a place. The NT knows nothing of a “church building.” Paul refers to churches that meet in peoples’ houses, but never to a church building. We invented that. Never once does the Bible refer to “having church” or “going to church.” We made up that phrase.
The phrases “house of God” or “house of the Lord” or “The Lord’s House” occur 112X. Every time, it refers to the temple or tabernacle, except for Heb 10:21, and that’s a reference to the people of the Church as the House of God. Not once does the Bible call the place where the Church gathered “the Lord’s House.”
Now, why even mention this? Because I see where those traditions have hindered some peoples’ growth. When the church is a place, when the church is a building, we begin to equate being in a church building with being a Christian. “Of course I’m a Christian! Why, every Sunday I go to ______.” We begin to think that when we’re here we should live or think differently than when we’re not here. “Of course I wouldn’t lie! I’m here in the ____!” That means that when we’re not here, we don’t feel so obligated; that there are some things we do all week long that we just wouldn’t dream of doing when we’re “in the church.”
Friend, if the HS of God lives inside of you, you are the church building, wherever you go, and you ought to live and think like it, wherever you go! You are the house of God, not some place, and God goes wherever you go, whether you want Him to know about it or not. The only reason you can call being here “going to church” is because this morning the church walked in those doors, and when we leave today, the Church will be walking out the doors.
Let me go back to the difference between tradition and traditionalism. Traditionalism is a dangerous thing because devotion to man's values goes hand-in-hand with hypocrisy. It's a shortcut to godly appearances while it skips the substance of real godliness.
-quote - Karl Rahner -- "The number one cause of atheism is Christians. Those who proclaim God with their mouths and deny Him with their lifestyles is what an unbelieving world finds simply unbelievable."
Is there anything wrong with washing? No! But making it what matters in life is a problem!
Anything wrong with dressing up? No! But if we do that and are ugly on the inside we're substituting tradition for real godliness -- then we judge others by whether or not they adhere to our traditions, instead of what truly matters!
Anything wrong with good writing by Christian authors? Certainly not! But if we elevate that to the same level as God's word, there's a problem.
Anything wrong with one worship hour at 8:15, followed by what we call Sunday School, followed by a 2nd worship hour at 10:45? Maybe not, but if we put a schedule on the same level as Scripture, something's wrong!
(Col 2:8) See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.
There are all kinds of practices and "church things" we need to mentally devalue so that they don't become more important in our thinking than God's direct commands:
• the songs we sing/instruments we use
• what translation of the Bible you read
• Church buildings, and everything in them
• what time we meet on Sunday morning
• the order of the services
• where you sit in the building
Every one of them a matter of opinion, culture, or taste, every one of them not addressed in the Bible, and yet every one of them issues over which congregations have been split. It shouldn't be. We must not set aside the commands of God for the sake of the traditions of men.
Now let’s leave here with 3 simple applications of these imperatives:
1. Hang onto truth tightly
Let's make sure that when we're stubborn about something, it's something worth being stubborn about. When it comes to "Church things," that means we need to stand on and insist on the truth of God's word. As long as I have a say in it, Central Christian Church is going to be a body of believers where God’s word is upheld to be true in all that it asserts, and we are simply not going to back down from teaching it. Where the Bible speaks, speak. And where it is silent, try some selfless humility.
2. Hang onto traditions loosely
Let's make sure that when we're stubborn about something, it's something worth being stubborn about. When it comes to "Church things," that means we need to allow for changes and other opinions concerning things that the Bible doesn't address. In matters of faith, unity; in matters of opinion, liberty; in all things, love.
3. Work hard to create traditions that uphold truth
We’re going to establish traditions. It takes doing something once for someone to say, "Well, that's what we've done before!" The very newest of ideas becomes a tradition if it gets repeated.
So why not concentrate on establishing traditions that are worth being stubborn over?...
Let's be stubborn over our determination to reach the lost! Let's be stubborn over our stance on the Bible and its place of authority! Let's make loving people a repeated practice we're not going to give up! Let's be stubborn about being people of outstanding morals and convictions!
Those are some great traditions! Let's work hard to create them in the church and in our homes.
Conclusion:
A rural congregation was working on improving its worship services. For as long as anyone could remember, they had always placed a large white cloth over the Lord's Table until it was time for that part of the services. It was just the way they did it.
Then, someone asked the question: "What if we were to quit putting that cloth over the table? That would save a little time, and, besides, it has to be cleaned so often and everything.” Well, that would be different. They’d been doing it for years, but no one could remember why.
Finally, some investigation revealed the origin of what had been an age-old tradition in that congregation. Years previous, before there was air conditioning, on hot summer days, the church windows were left open to ventilate building. The in-coming flies were a problem, so the bread and juice of the Lord's Supper had to be covered with -- a large white cloth.
If you’re outside of Jesus Christ this morning, there’s something I want you to leave here realizing:
Our relationship with Jesus is so much more than old, empty traditions!
It's a daily adventure of growth and life.
It's devotion to a living Savior, and life that's lived above the level of formality and ritual.
It's life with purpose in the world we're in today.
We want to value that life and live it to its fullest, and we want that for you .
