There are many traditions in the world. One of those traditions is to have a liturgical calendar and today, May 27 happens to be the Day of Pentecost. It is the day of the birth of the church, fifty days after the Passover. And that was the day according to Jewish tradition that Moses received the Ten Commandments from God. The Jewish tradition grew up saying that God spoke to Moses orally too and there is a whole tradition around the teachings that they began to develop in the Talmud. So you have the Babylonian Talmud, the Jerusalem Talmud, which is all part of the oral history or traditions of hundreds of years before that.
The Jews had the law to “keep the Sabbath Day. To remember to keep the Sabbath Day holy.” So how do you keep it and obey the Law? They had a few cubits they could walk. They defined a burden they could carry. There were specific guidelines to set a gate around the Law so that they do not break it.
So what the Jews are talking to Jesus about here are the traditions that grew up around Scriptures, not the Scriptures themselves. When they are talking to Jesus about hand-washing, they are talking about the gate they built around the law so that they do not break it.
In the church we have traditions too and some of them are contrary to the teachings of the Bible.
• In the Pentecostal tradition, people speak in tongues in the church when Paul clearly gave instructions in I Cor.12-14 that in a public setting one rather speak five words that others may be blessed than speak ten thousand words in a tongue. Love should govern how we exercise our gifts.
• The Episcopal churches have services that are the same every week. They have to say particular words and they read all of them from a book. They think they are being heard by God as they repeat the prayers from the book. When actually Jesus said, do not repeat prayers, over and over.
• The Catholic churches have a similar tradition of reading the prayers over and over again. You go for a confession, and the priest says that you can say so many “Hail Marys,” or so many, “Our Fathers,” and you should be fine. You go through the rosary like the Buddhists, to remind you on what you are going to pray. And you recite the prayers over and over and over, without any meaning at all! That’s exactly what Jesus said not to do, yet it has become a tradition within the church.
• The Marthoma churches have a tradition of speaking in languages where nobody in the congregation understands. How is it a blessing to the people that are there?
So these traditions are built this way which are clearly contrary to the teaching of Scriptures. We get into a rut and we think that is religion, that is Christianity and then we begin to look down our nose on anybody that does not follow our traditions.
Matthew 28:19-20 instructs us to go into all the world and make disciples, teaching them to observe all that Jesus has commanded us and one of His commandments is to love one another. But in the churches we are incapable of loving each other because we think, “you are from a tradition that does this thing and my tradition does not do that…Oh, so you are not a believer, you are not a real, faithful, Christian. I cannot really hang out with you because your tradition is different.”
THE FELLOWSHIP IS BROKEN BECAUSE OF TRADITIONS.
On the Day of Pentecost, people were praising God in different languages and we see God pours out His Sprit so that people from different languages can be brought in.
The problem is we break down through our traditions what God established through these beautiful instances - of love, of unity, and of oneness.
TRADITION IS MORE POWERFUL THAN DOCTRINE UNLESS WE CHOOSE TO MAKE DOCTRINE MORE POWERFUL THAN OUR TRADITIONS. By doctrine I mean the teachings of the Bible.
We all tend to do what our parents, relatives and friends do, unless we consciously choose to go against those traditions. We will become like our environment, unless we choose to take God’s Spirit the environment in which our heart swims.
These men came from Jerusalem to Genesaret. They walked over a 100 kms to ask Jesus why His disciples did not wash their hands before they ate. They are so hung up with hand washing – talk about obsessive compulsive disorders!
Why was this so important with them?
In the Jewish tradition, the washing of the hands became associated with spiritual cleansing. So if you do not wash your hands, you are spiritually unclean then. If you are not clean physically, you cannot come into the Presence of God.
Reading the Talmud, I found out it said:
Eating without washing hands was compared to committing adultery (Sotah 4b)
Punishment for not washing was poverty, or is being "uprooted" from the world (ibid) or
excommunication (Berachot 19a)
In contrast, Jesus teaches,
What goes into the mouth is “thrown into the toilet” (that is not the words in Greek, but that is what it means in Greek), and does not make you any less spiritual. In other words, Jesus is saying, it is not food that makes you unclean spiritually. It does not make you unspiritual to eat a particular kind of food.
From Luke 11:37-40, we see that Jesus too did not go through the tradition of hand washing and was accused. It is not that they did not ever wash their hands, but the ceremony of hand washing involved a special way of doing it. There were specific guidelines as to how they washed their hands and until one washed their hand twice a particular way, they were considered to have not washed their hands.
Jesus relates the sins of the Scribes & Pharisees to the annulment of Commandment 5, then the sin resulting from the use of the mouth to commandments 6-9 in order.
In Matthew 12:3, Jesus brings up their tradition of, “it is committed to the Lord,” as being contrary to Scriptures. Since they did not want their parents to control their property, they committed it to the temple, and they could control it as long as they lived, and later it went to the temple. The priests made this law so that they get some percentage from it. Cool deal for the priests!
But Jesus is saying that by your tradition, you are undoing the Law, “Honor your father and mother.” That is commandment 5. Commandment 6 – Thou shalt not murder. So Jesus said, “out of the mouth come anger, and murders.” Commandment 7 – Thou shall not commit adultery. He says, “adultery and fornication. (Matthew 15:19)” Commandment 8 – Thou shall not steal. Jesus says, “Theft comes from your mouth.” “Ooh – I like that car, nice! I think I want to drive it. I wish I can take that somehow to drive it.” Theft comes from your mouth – comes out of your heart, goes through your mouth. Commandment 9 – Thou shall not bear false witness. Obviously, lying, gossip, slander, speaking against other people all come under it.
JESUS IS NOT INTERESTED IN RULES WHICH PEOPLE CAN POINT TO AS THE OUTWARD MANIFESTATION OF SOME ARBITRARY RULE-DRIVEN FORM OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. HE IS INTERESTED IN THE HEART!
James 1 says, a man who can tames his tongue is a perfect man; that out of the same mouth come praises to God and curses toward men. This should not be.
Paul said “let no corrupt communication come out of your mouth, but only that which is edifying to the hearer”. (Ephesians 4:29)
• Let no corrupt communication come out of your thumb – SMS
• Let no corrupt communication come out of your fingertips – typing, email, chat, Facebook
When we are just with friends or family, what do we talk about, what do we joke about, what do we gossip about?
When we are on the Internet, and we have secret conversations with secret friends, what is the content of that communication? Is it above reproach?
Here are some practical suggestions for obeying God’s commandment concerning the tongue – to make sure that what is inside is clean, so that what comes out is also clean:
1. Make a covenant with your tongue that you will not sin against God (like Job said that he
has made a covenant with his eyes)
a. I will not use foul language. Ever.
b. I will speak well, and NEVER negatively of those who are not present, or only criticize
in the same way I criticize them (or more kindly) in person. In other words, I should not
speak negatively behind a person’s back.
c. I will speak the truth in love.
d. I will NEVER tell a dirty joke.
e. I will use my words to draw people to Jesus
2. Establish policies of practical purity
a. Keep any online computer visible for anyone any time.
b. Always share your passwords for social networks (Email/Facebook/Twitter) with parents
and/or spouses. Let your friends know that what they write to you will probably be read
by others in your family.
c. Make it a policy never to have a need to cover your tracks, to delete history.
3. Determine to elevate others through your conversation, and never to allow others to pull you down.
a. People should feel uncomfortable having certain kinds of conversations around you,
because you do not speak badly about others
b. They should know you are not part of the grapevine. You do not gossip. Therefore they
are not going to gossip with you.
The Bible never just says, “do not do this or that” instead, it says, “do not do this, instead, do this.” You ‘put off’ the dirty garments of sin and evil and you ‘put on’ the garments of love for the spirit of heaviness.
If you are going to have a clean heart, it is not a matter of saying, “no, no, no” to impure things, but have to say “yes” to pure things.
So:
c. Sing praises to God throughout the day.
d. Let prayer be your default conversation. Whenever you are not busy doing something
else, pray. Paul said to pray continually – which means, you pray and you are
interrupted for breakfast, then you pray and you are interrupted to teach a class or
something, you pray and you have to slam on the breaks when somebody cuts you in
front of the road. You are always going back to prayer. You make that your default
condition.
e.Invite the LORD into your thoughts and heart moment-to-moment. Stay in constant
communion with the Lord inviting Him in every conversation you have with anyone.
f.Sing to your friends, and speak to them from the Scriptures, words from Hymns and
Worship Songs (Eph.5). This should be the condition of the heart. You have a
conversation with a friend who is depressed, you say, God is good, but not just God is
good, and that too all the time!
4. Replace the evil in your heart with good. We all have dark corners in our hearts. We need to replace those dark corners with the light of Jesus Christ.
a. Watch videos of Scripture, rather than another movie, TV program, or video.
b. Replace your music which embraces evil and the flesh with music which embraces Jesus.
c. Take Scriptures which deal with a particular temptation and post them around the house,
on your desktop, on the mirror where you shave/wash your face/put on makeup
i. If you have a temper, put up Scripture having to do with anger.
ii. If you are tempted by fear, have Scriptures concerning fear.
iii. If you have problems with lust, have Scriptures about purity.
iv. If you are proud, memorize Scripture which exhorts to humility.
The possibilities are endless. Replace ‘flesh’ with Scripture and Spirit. Have ‘good’ in your heart, so that out of the storehouse of your heart, you have treasures to give out to others.
Our tongue is powerful to break down or build up. We could destroy relationships or build them up. Out of the abundance of our hearts, the mouth speaks. Let us purify our hearts and our minds, so that we have good words to say. Let us say good words, so that our hearts are transformed, so that we become pure, people of blessing, people of vision, become people molded into the image of Jesus Christ, our Lord.
