Read Mark 6:53-7:23.

Introduction⤒🔗

In the Broadway musical, Fiddler on the Roof, the character, Tevye, speaking about the Jewish community in a rural Russian village, says,

Every one of us is a fiddler on the roof. A fiddler on the roof. Trying to scratch out a pleasant, simple tune without breaking his neck. How do we keep our balance? I can tell you in one word: Tradition!

Because of our traditions we have kept our balance for many, many years. We have traditions for everything: how to sleep, how to eat, how to work, how to wear clothing. How did these traditions get started? I don’t know. But it’s a tradition!

Tradition! Without our traditions, our lives would be as shaky as a fiddler on the roof!

Traditions are what kept that little Jewish community together. But as we discover from the passage of Scripture presently before us, tradition can also have a very negative and devastating effect on one’s relationship with God. Tradition can shut you off from the presence of Christ and it can shut out the demands of God upon your life. Let us carefully consider the Dangers of Tradition.

Do Not Let Tradition Shut You Off from the Dynamic Presence of Christ←⤒🔗

Mark 6:53-56 describes the scene that occurred upon Jesus’ return to Galilee from the far side of the Sea of Galilee. Throngs of people gather around Jesus wherever He goes, laying before Him their sick and diseased. Jesus responds by ministering to them, displaying His divine power and demonstrating His compassion.

In the midst of this scene, chapter seven of Mark introduces us to the encounter between Jesus and the Pharisees on the subject of tradition. The Pharisees had observed that some of Jesus’ disciples ate their bread without having first washed their hands. According to their tradition, such an act was a religious defilement, and they demanded to know why Jesus tolerated it among His disciples.

As you observe the Pharisees’ encounter with Christ as it occurs in this setting, note that the Pharisees have no sensitivity or spiritual awareness of either the Person of Christ or the work of Christ. They do not offer worship to Christ in response to His display of divine power, nor do they offer thanksgiving to Christ in response to His display of divine compassion. Confronted with the dynamic, divine presence of Christ, all they can ask is, “Why do your disciples not observe the tradition of the elders, but eat their food with ‘unclean’ hands?” (Mk. 7:5) Their pre-occupation, even obsession, with their tradition shut them off, indeed, deadened them, to the dynamic presence of Christ; they fail to see who He really is, praise Him for what He is doing, and partake of His saving grace.

We must not allow tradition to shut us off from the divine and dynamic presence of Christ: preventing us from adoring Him and praising Him as the Lord of glory; preventing us from being the recipients of His gracious ministry; preventing us from being more deeply drawn into His righteous fellowship. We must never revere our traditions more that we revere Christ, thereby shutting us out from His presence and limiting His access to our lives. We must never allow our traditions to come between us and Christ Himself; stifling our worship of Christ or our fellowship with Him. We must never allow our relationship with Christ to be dictated by our traditions; we must never substitute adherence to tradition in place of commitment to Christ Himself.

With regard to our standards of worship, or our prohibitions or requirements that define an acceptable Christian lifestyle, we must always ask the questions: “Why do we require, (or prohibit), a particular activity? Or, why do we conduct our worship service in the way we do?” When we subject our requirements for what constitutes acceptable Christian conduct, or acceptable Christian worship, to such questions and find that the answer is anything other than, "We do this particular activity and do it in this particular way because the Word of God expressly instructs us to do so,” we have identified a tradition, (be it good or bad).

Once we have identified a tradition, we need to subject it to these further questions, “Is this particular tradition promoting or hindering our personal and corporate relationship with Christ? Is it shutting us off from the dynamic presence of Christ? Is it limiting His access to our lives?” We must never allow any tradition to hinder us from encountering Christ or hinder us from walking in the freedom and devotion to Christ that He intends for His disciples.

Do Not Let Tradition Limit You to the Superficial←⤒🔗

The particular tradition that is the subject of discussion in Mark chapter seven is the Jewish custom of washing their hands before eating. This was not done for sanitary purposes by the Pharisees; rather it was done out of religious motivation. The Pharisees washed their hands, and even bathed themselves, in an effort to prevent their contact with the “unclean” Gentiles and “sinners” from contaminating their food and, consequently, defiling them in body and soul.

With regard to this particular tradition, note, first, that it was superstitious; it entertained the notion that physical contact can somehow impart spiritual defilement. Secondly, it was superficial in its understanding of evil. As Jesus points out to the crowd, it is not what goes into us that defiles us, but what comes out of us:

Then he called the crowd to himself once again, and said to them, Listen to me, all of you, and understand. ¹⁵Nothing outside a man can make him "unclean" by going into him; on the contrary, the things that come out of the man are the things that defile the man. Mk. 7:15

Later, when His disciples ask Him to explain His parable, our Lord elaborates on His words spoken to the crowd by declaring,

Do you not realize that whatever goes into a man from outside cannot defile him, ¹⁹because it does not go into his heart, but into his stomach, and then it passes out of his body?... ²⁰And he said, What comes out of the man, that [is what] defiles the man. ²¹From within [men], out of the heart of men, come forth evil thoughts, [such as] fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, ²²[all types of] greed and malice, deceit, wantonness, envy, slander, arrogance, folly. ²³All these evil things come from within [the man] and defile [him]. Mk. 7:18-23

Our Lord confronts us with the sobering and shameful fact that we are not defiled by foreign elements; on the contrary, our nature itself is defiled. It is out of the heart that evil proceeds (vs. 21­ 23). Our moral corruption does not merely reside in the extremities of our being; on the contrary, it originates from the very core of our being. Hence, there is the absolute need for the new birth; the need to become a new creation through personal connection with Christ by faith in Him: “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Cor. 5:17)

Being confronted with the moral depravity of our heart also confronts us with the impossibility of personal reformation by our own human efforts. By nature, we stand in need of God’s redeeming and transforming work; the work He figuratively describes in Ezekiel 36:25-27,

...I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. ²⁶I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. ²⁷I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes, and you will keep my ordinances and do them.

It is the work He accomplishes when His Holy Spirit applies the work of Christ to us and brings us into a personal relationship with Christ. The Apostle Paul describes that divine and gracious work in this way: ...according to his mercy he saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit” (Titus 3:5). When a man takes a bath, he emerges from that bath with his flesh washed clean from dirt and grime. When the Holy Spirit causes a man to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, that man is not only bathed in the soul-cleansing blood of the Lord Jesus, he emerges from that “bath” as a new man, regenerated and entering into the righteous life of Christ Himself.

We must not allow tradition to limit us to the superficial. The characteristic of tradition is to substitute man-made ordinances in the place of the Word of God. The characteristic of man-made ordinances is to confine the scope of the moral law; doing so by limiting the moral law as though it only pertained to actions. This is a misconception addressed by the Lord Jesus in such a passage as Matthew 5:21-22 and 27-28,

You have heard that it was said by them of old, ‘You shall not murder, and whoever murders will be in danger of the judgment.’ ²²But I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother shall be in danger of the judgment; and whoever shall say to his brother, ‘Raca!’ shall be in danger of the council; and whoever shall say, ‘You fool!’ shall be in danger of the fire of hell.

You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ ²⁸But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

Our Lord Jesus Christ explains that the moral law of God addresses our thoughts and motives and the intents of our heart. This was in contrast to the teaching of the scribes, which sought to limit the demands of the moral law to merely the actions of a man and the deeds he might commit. They thus sought to avoid condemnation for the thoughts and intents of the heart that give rise to sinful deeds. If one can limit liability to the deeds one commits, he is better able to delude himself into thinking that his life is in compliance with the moral law of God.

Another way in which man-made ordinances seek to confine the scope of the moral law is by limiting the demands of the law to the mere observance of “religious duties;” a misconception the Lord Jesus addresses in His parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector:

The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men: robbers, evildoers, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. ¹²I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’Lk. 18:11-12

In Jesus’ parable, the Pharisee focuses on his “religious duties,” not the moral demands of the law of God. Jesus would sternly rebuke them for doing so,

Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices: mint, dill and cummin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law: justice, mercy and faith. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. Matt. 23:23

The whole intention of any and all such man-made ordinances is to seek to limit the scope of the moral law so that a man may seek to achieve his own salvation and justification before God. But the teaching of the Lord Himself declares such a practice to be altogether unacceptable before our holy God. His truth drives us to take the position of the publican, who cries out to the LORD, “God, be merciful tome, the sinner.” (Lk. 18:13)

Do Not Let Tradition Separate You from the Law of God←⤒🔗

In response to the Pharisees’ objection that He condones departure from the traditions of the Jews, Jesus charges them with forsaking the moral law of God: “You let go the commandment of God, and hold tightly to the tradition of men... ⁹You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God, so that you may keep your tradition” (vs. 8-9). In verses 10-13 Jesus gives an example of how the Pharisees allowed tradition to replace, and even contradict, the commandment of God:

Moses said, 'Honor your father and your mother;' and, 'Whoever curses his father or mother, let him be put to death.' ¹¹But you say, If a man shall say to his father or his mother, That by which you might have received [financial] assistance from me is Corban, (that is to say, Given [to God]), ¹²you no longer allow him to do anything for his father or his mother; ¹³[thereby] making void the word of God by your tradition, which you have handed down [from past generations]. And you do many similar things.

The law of God instructs us to honor our father and mother. A particular tradition instituted by the elders allowed a man to deny his parents the benefit of his possessions and his financial support if the man declared those possessions to be “Corban,” (or, as Mark explains, “Dedicated [to God]”). Note that declaring his possessions to be “Corban” did not deny the man the personal benefit of those possessions. But it did allow him to circumvent his obligation to the law of God, which requires us to honor our parents; part of which is to see that their needs are met. The commentator, E.H. Plumptre, explains the procedure known as “Corban:”

A man who declared his property, (whether that be real estate or personal possessions), to be “Corban,” (that is to say, “Dedicated [to God]”), could no longer give that property to any other person, for technically it now belonged to God. However, the actual time when this vow would be fulfilled, (the time when the man actually turned his property over to the temple), was left to his own discretion. In the meantime, the man had the right to continue using the “dedicated” property for his own personal benefit, although he was forbidden to give it or any of its profits to anyone else, because technically it now belonged to God.¹

Perhaps we could construct a contemporary example of “Corban:” A man might own an orchard. He declares his orchard to be “Corban.” The man’s parents are in financial need. But because their son has declared his orchard to be “Corban,” he cannot sell it and give the proceeds to his needy parents; he cannot even give the profits from the sale of the fruit to his parents, because it now all belongs to God. However, until the time he actually deeds the property over to the church, he is legally permitted to continue to personally profit from the sale of the fruit and the use of the orchard.

Yet another example might be as follows: A son puts money into a bank account designated, “For the LORD.” Now that money can no longer be touched by his parents, but the son himself could still write personal checks for his own benefit, using the money in that special account as a guarantee that his checks would have sufficient funds to back them up.

There is always the temptation to “leave the commandment of God” in favor of the tradition of men. Jesus accuses these people of honoring the LORD with their lips, while in fact their heart was far from Him (vs. 6). Exalting tradition at the expense of the commandments of God is succumbing to the temptation to govern our life by a man-made code that allows us to justify ourselves and serve ourselves, rather than allowing our life to be governed by the demands of God.

We must not allow tradition to separate us from the law of God. Let us faithfully heed the counsel of the LORD given through the prophet Micah: “He has shown you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? [He requires you] to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” (Mic. 6:8).

Conclusion←⤒🔗

As Tevye expressed it in Fiddler on the Roof, tradition can serve to hold a community together, giving definition and identity to its members: “Because of our traditions everyone knows who he is.”

But the danger of tradition, especially within the church of Jesus Christ, is that it always tends toward shutting out the dynamic presence of Christ and the divine demands of His holy law.

By the grace of God, let us adhere to these three guidelines: 1) Do not let tradition shut you off from the dynamic presence of Christ; 2) Do not let tradition limit you to the superficial; and, 3) Do not let tradition separate you from the law of God.

Discussion Questions←⤒🔗

1. What concern do the Pharisees bring to Jesus with regard to His disciples? See Mk. 7:1-2, 5 What tradition did the Pharisees observe? See Mk. 7:3-4 What do you think the Pharisees were seeking to accomplish by means of observing these particular traditions? How will the Lord Jesus correct their false view concerning moral pollution? See Mk. 7:18, 20-23 Do you acknowledge the source and the depths of our moral corruption before God?

Then the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around [Jesus]. ²They had seen that some of his disciples ate their food with 'unclean,' that is, ceremonially unwashed hands... ⁵So the Pharisees and the scribes ask him, Why do your disciples not observe the tradition of the elders, but eat their food with 'unclean' hands? Mk. 7:1-2, 5

Now the Pharisees, and all the Jews, observing the tradition of the elders, do not eat unless they have first performed a ceremonial hand washing. ⁴And [when they come] from the marketplace, they do not eat until they have first bathed themselves. There are also many other [traditions] that they have received and that they observe, [such as] the [ceremonial] washing of cups and pots and brass kettles. Mk. 7:3-4

He said to them, Are you also so lacking in understanding? Do you not realize that whatever goes into a man from outside cannot defile him...²⁰And he said, What comes out of the man, that [is what] defiles the man. ²¹From within [men], out of the heart of men, come forth evil thoughts, [such as] fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, ²²[all types of] greed and malice, deceit, wantonness, envy, slander, arrogance, folly. ²³All these evil things come from within [the man] and defile [him]. Mk. 7:18, 20-23

2. Since our moral corruption originates from within us, and not from the society around us, what do we need? Who alone can meet our need? See Psl. 51:10; Ezek. 36:26-27 What happens when you put your faith in Jesus Christ the Savior? See Titus 3:5-6,

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Psl. 51:10

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. ²⁷I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes, and you will keep my commandments and do them. Ezek. 36:26-27

...according to his mercy he saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, ⁶whom he abundantly poured out upon us through Jesus Christ our Savior. (Tit. 3:5­-6)

3. From whom did the Pharisees receive these traditions? See Mk. 7:3 Based on the type of traditions they observed, was the purpose and result of such traditions the creation of a superficial view of sin, one limited merely to one’s actions? For example, compare the elders’ teaching (cf. Matt. 5:27) with that of the Lord Jesus (cf. Matt. 7:28). What does God require of us? Note Psl. 24:3-4a What can Christ alone do for us? See 1 Jn. 1:9, 7b,

Now the Pharisees, and all the Jews, observing the tradition of the elders, do not eat unless they have first performed a ceremonial hand washing. Mk. 7:3

You have heard that it was said to those of old, 'You shall not commit adultery.' ²⁸But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. Matt. 5:27-28

Who may ascend into the hill of the LORD? Or who may stand in his holy place? ⁴He who has clean hands and a pure heart... Psl. 24:3-4a

He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 1 Jn. 1:9b

...the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin. 1 Jn. 1:7b

4. What does Jesus call the Pharisees? See Mk. 7:6 How do we define a “hypocrite”? But were not the Pharisees sincere? Consider the Apostle Paul prior to his conversion Note Gal. 1:13a, 14 We define a hypocrite as someone who pretends to be something before men that he is not; Jesus defines a hypocrite as someone who thinks he is something before God that he is not; namely, righteous. What is the only way we can become righteous before God? See 2 Cor. 5:21,

And he said to them, Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written 'This nation honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.' Mk. 7:6

You have heard about my former way of life in Judaism... ¹⁴I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries from my own country, being extremely zealous for the traditions of my forefathers. Gal. 1:13a-14

...[God] made [Christ] who knew no sin to be sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him. 2 Cor. 5:21

5. What accusation does the Lord Jesus bring against the Pharisees? See Mk. 7:6 Where is your heart? Do you offer unto God the observance of superficial religious tradition; or, do you put your faith in Christ and offer Him your heart?

And he said to them, Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written, 'This nation honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.' Mk. 7:6