At the end of the second century A.D., the
Jews compiled the Mishnah, a collection of their oral laws. They were essentially
traditions put together to protect the Word of God and to help people to keep the
sacred Word. Though the intention was honorable, it eventually ended up being
a whole lot of irrational demands and needless absurdities. One example is
this: a person would be allowed to spit on the Sabbath but he must ensure that
his spittle would fall on the floor where it would not cause the formation of a
little ball of dirt. For when that happened, it would constitute work. However,
preventing work on the Sabbath was only one aspect of the Mishnah, its biggest
concern was on “cleanness.”
The tradition about “cleanness” was derived
from the Biblical command found in Exodus 30:19 where all priests were required
to wash their hands. Pious Jews took
this command to the extreme. And years before Christ came to the scene, the law
concerning washing had become an entrenched tradition for Jews who wanted to be
“clean.” During Jesus’ days on earth, this tradition about cleanness had been
so rehashed that it made a mockery of what true inner purity meant by reducing
it to a mere system of external washing. So we read in Mark 7:3-4 that “...the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they carefully wash
their hands, thus observing the
traditions of the elders; and when they come from the market place, they do not eat unless
they cleanse themselves; and there are many other things which they have
received in order to observe, such as the washing of cups and pitchers and
copper pots.” The needless and absurd demands about washing
became a reason for the Pharisees and scribes to find fault with Jesus. Of
course, it also presented the perfect channel for the Lord to present the nature
of real purity and its source. He actually used it to show that true purity
could only be supplied by His life.
The Pharisees’ rigid observation of the law
of washing made them despicably proud. When the Lord came with His
disciples to Jerusalem, they were spotted eating bread without washing hand.
The Pharisees immediately went on an assault. They Him by asking, “Why do Your disciples not walk according
to the tradition of the elders,
but eat their bread with impure
hands?” That drew a response from the Lord. Quoting Isaiah 29:13, Jesus told
them brutally and frankly and in all honesty that they were hypocrites. In
verses 6-8, He told them that the prophet had rightly referred to them as people
who put on an outward show, but inwardly they did not experience reality. They were not congruent in their lives and their hearts were nowhere near
God, despite all their outward swaggers.
The Lord then
went on to reveal to them that they were experts at setting aside the commands
of God. Although they knew that to support their parents was required by the
law to show honor to their elders. Yet they would pretentiously announced that
the funds they wanted to give to their parents were Corban, meaning that they
had set it apart for God. That would justify why they could not give to their
parents. They were basically twisting the Scriptures to justify their own non-compliance.
This honest truth is that we can be just as
vulnerable to contort God’s Word, so that we could escape from obeying it. We
would try to justify it with less obscure passages to explain away the
necessity to succumb to the authority of the truth that God had clearly
revealed. So be careful that we don’t explain God’s Word away when He has revealed
it to us. Just act in obedience and please Him.
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