Read Mark 7:1–23
Questions from the Scripture text: Who come to Jesus in Mark 7:1? Where did they come from? With what do they find fault (Mark 7:2)? In what manner did they wash their hands (Mark 7:3)? What else did they baptize (Mark 7:4)? What did they ask (Mark 7:5)? Does Jesus answer their question? Whom does Jesus say prophesied about them (Mark 7:6)? What did Isaiah say they did with their lips? What did Isaiah say about their hearts? What did Jesus say about their worship (Mark 7:7)? Where did their worship come from, that made it vain (verse 7, Mark 7:8, Mark 7:9)? What does Mark 7:10 say God commanded? What do Mark 7:11-12 say got in the way of obeying God’s command? What did Jesus say defiles a man (makes him unclean, Mark 7:15)? When He explains this to His disciples in Mark 7:20-23, what does He describe as the manner in which what comes out of us shows us to be unclean? What does Jesus say about all foods in Mark 7:19? With whom are people disagreeing, when they try to keep the Old Testament food laws?
What are the dangers in religious traditions? Mark 7:1–23 prepares us for the hearing of God’s Word, publicly read, in the holy assembly on the coming Lord’s Day. In these twenty-three verses of Holy Scripture, the Holy Spirit teaches us that religious traditions that don’t come from Scripture make God’s own commandments small by comparison, and keep us from paying attention to the true realities involved in our drawing near to Him.
The religious leaders are indignant that the disciples of Jesus don’t wash hands before eating (Mark 7:2).
“These backwards Galileans!” they must have thought—don’t they know that up in Jerusalem we have a well-established tradition that all Bible-believing Jews have followed for hundreds of years (Mark 7:3-5)?!
Of course, the disciples are more interested in listening to whatever Jesus says—even if they don’t always understand it well. Jesus had to explain to them that with His coming, all foods are now declared clean (Mark 7:19). Jesus had to explain to them that the point of the food laws was to impress us with how easily we become unclean (Mark 7:20).
Jesus had to point out that our uncleanness is far worse than the food laws ever even pictured. Every sin that comes out of us does so precisely because our hearts are cesspools of filthiness (Mark 7:21-23). As a famous late preacher summarized, “We aren’t sinners because we sin; we sin because we’re sinners!”
Well, it’s one thing to struggle to grasp what Jesus is saying because we are dull-minded. The Pharisees and Scribes had a worse problem. Their struggle was because man-made religious ideas were so big to them that the commandments of God were small by comparison (Mark 7:6-9).
So Jesus puts them on notice: Isaiah 29:13 (cf. Colossians 2:22-23) was written about you! No worship or righteousness can ever be defined by the traditions of man. Only God can define what is true worship. Only God can define what is true righteousness.
Isaiah’s words are quite sharp. All worship that comes from the ideas of man instead of the command of God is “vain.” That means it is empty, invalid, and worthless. Following such practices shows that our “hearts are far from God.”
Would you like for God to call your worship to Him worthless? Would you like for His assessment of you to be that your heart is far from Him? Then, simply take something that man made up, and treat it as if it is spiritually meaningful!
Worse, it will be a distraction from following what Jesus says to think and do. And we already have enough difficulty with that, don’t we?
What “Christian” ideas or practices were invented by men and not God? How can we squash the idea or feeling that such ideas or practices are spiritually meaningful? What religious traditions have you had to give up, in order to worship God only in the way that He has said? What religious traditions might you still need to let go of in your heart? How are you clinging to God Himself instead?
Sample prayer: Lord, please forgive us, and help us, for there are so many ways in which we have treated the ideas and traditions of men as if they are spiritually meaningful. We are tempted to take spiritual comfort, or even spiritual pride, in things that are actually offensive to You. We have neglected how from out of our hearts proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, and foolishness. All these evil things come from within and defile us. So, forgive us by Christ’s blood, we ask, and make us alive unto You for righteousness by His ressurection power, we ask in His Name, AMEN!
Suggested songs: ARP119M “O How I Love Your Law” or TPH101A “Of Steadfast Love and Justice, LORD”
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