Answers Bible Curriculum: Lesson 6 - Have You Not Read?

We're gonna go ahead and jump into things. Hope you guys had a great week and the Lord. Raise your hand if you're not getting my Sunday school emails. You don't see any emails coming from me.

All right, so everybody's getting them. All right. Technology is working. That's awesome.

So, this morning, we're gonna be asking this main question and, and, and dealing with questions surrounding this topic. What traditions do people hold that could unwittingly trump scripture? We're gonna be talking about traditions, and particularly how our traditions can go beyond scripture. We can place them on the level with or even above scripture, but let's go ahead and pray and then we'll jump into things.

Our Father, we thank you so much for this day that you have set aside for us to gather together as your people, the Lord's day. we thank You, Lord, for your wisdom and giving us a day where we can rest from our secular labors and, and give ourselves totally, to, the feeding of our souls, to ministering of our gifts to one another, to hearing from you. We ask that you'd fill us with your Spirit now as we hear from your word. We pray that you'd be with those that are teaching our children and ministering to them.

And Lord, this, this entire day, Lord, would just be a a glory and honor to you. we are very needy. we ask that you would feed us. We ask, Lord, that you would be with us through your Holy Spirit.

as we hear your word preached this morning, as we sing, as we offer prayers and give of our offerings, as we meet with our small groups for fellowship this afternoon or later this week, we just thank you, Lord, for, a day that we can just set aside, for eternal spiritual things. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. All right.

So let's think about this question for a second and feel free to yell out your answers or actually, maybe raise your hand and then yell it out. Are there any traditions? that of that could unwittingly trump scripture. Things that aren't specifically mentioned in the Bible, but we might give pretty high weight to.

either in our church or certain denominations or Maybe in your family? What do you guys think? There's some really good coffee back there if you guys need some coffee. Yeah, Lillian.

Years ago when we had Sunday. Sunday testimony. That's Yeah. You Honestly thought, well, maybe this is Yeah.

It was so part of my tradition. That's a great example. to, I almost felt like it was. I couldn't, finger on what it would be.

That's great. Yeah, so Lilian's, if you can't hear back there, she's mentioning, Sunday evening church, and Cornerstone went through a similar transition. We, we, Sunday evening church was a great part of our tradition, and at a certain point in our life, we decided we wanted to put some emphasis on our small groups. Didn't feel like everybody could do everything, and so we ended up, foregoing our Sunday evening, and that was a tough transition for a lot of us, for, for me too.

We used to have a tradition at Cornerstone where like in the morning service, Pastor Milton would wear coat and tie. But in the evening service, he would let the coat off and just wear the tie. And, and then it became where in the morning service, he would have tie, no coat, but in the evening service, no tie. And that was a struggle for some people that Pastor Milton wasn't wearing a tie.

on, on Sunday evening. So that, that's a tradition. Oh, also, a lot of our churches, most of our churches, and would have, hymn books in the pew. And I still think that's a great tradition, but some churches have decided to go more with the, projecting the lyrics up on the screen and And, that's, is that in the Bible?

Does the Bible tell us we should have hymn books or not have hymn books? Nothing in the Bible about that. Is it bad to have hymn books? Is it wicked to have lyrics projected upon the screen?

I don't think so. It's true, yeah, it does depend on what it's saying. That's a good point. but those are issues that sometimes we can raise to the level of scripture, and we can begin to, to judge the quality of a ministry based upon things that aren't necessarily in scripture.

So, we're gonna, we're gonna try to figure out this issue this morning by looking at the text of scripture and where Jesus is dealing with traditions that were going on during his day. and, but we're, we wanna like investigate, not just look at the Pharisees and Sadducees this morning and just kinda say, hey, hey, how bad those guys are, but to look at our own hearts and say, what exactly are traditions? Are there things, traditions that are actually OK? How does the Bible use the word tradition, and, when is it risen to a level where we need to be careful.

So, so the, the title of this morning's, lesson is, have you not read? Several times Christ uses that phrase when he's interacting with different people. and so in the past, we've looked at, in this, this year so far, we've looked at the power of, of Jesus displayed over nature, disease, and death. we've also considered the purpose behind these demonstrations of power.

And last week, we saw how Jesus fed the 5000 and pointed people to, to the true bread and we're very thankful for Dan doing a great job the last couple of weeks. It's nice to be able to go off fishing and have capable hands. Dan's done a great job and my wife, I know this because my wife has been here the last 2 weeks and she's come back and said, Dan has done a great job. And I've, I've, I've asked her, so, how, how did he compare to me?

No, I didn't ask that, so. no, Dan's done great. By the way, last week we went fishing up in Mammoth. I do have to say that my son caught the biggest fish while we're in Mammoth.

It was 6 pounds. I didn't, I should have brought the picture, but he went out to watch his buddies catch a big fish. He was excited to see them cause they were doing the proper, whatever you call it, jigging is how you're supposed to catch the big ones. He just threw out power bait and all of a sudden, boom, he was reeling for 10 minutes.

Got the biggest fish I've ever seen in my life. So, I just wanted to share that with you during Sunday school on the, on the Lord's Day. Anyway, it's pretty excited. so here's what we're gonna do today.

we're going to examine how Jesus used the written word of God to counter the traditions of men. In doing so, we want to not just chide the religious leaders of Jesus' day, but we want to allow God's word to uncover how we ourselves may unwittingly be clinging to our own traditions, traditions that go beyond scripture. So, let's go ahead and open up to Mark chapter 12. We'll start here.

And we're gonna look at two different types of religious leaders that were around in Jesus' day. And here, Jesus counters the traditions of what we're gonna call the religious left. The religious left, the Sadducees, as we're going to see in our text. They use naturalistic logic against the supernatural.

these guys would be equivalent to some of our denominations today that where they still go to church, they consider themselves maybe the intellectual elite. but they don't bother themselves with the miracles and some of the, the things that everybody gets, all the other religious people get riled up about like the resurrection or spirits or souls or angels. Today, people would be like, what's the big deal about Jesus being born of a virgin? It's not a big deal, or so on.

And so, these would be the, the religious liberals of the day, so to speak. So, let's start in In verse 18. And we'll run through and, and, and make some, some comments as we, as we run through the text here. then some sad you sees.

who say there is no resurrection, came to him and they asked him, saying, Teacher Moses wrote to us that if a man's brother dies and leaves his wife, Behind and leaves no children, his brother should take his wife and raise up offspring for his brother. This may seem odd to us, but it was part of the mosaic law, part of the Jewish custom. It's called leveret marriage, and I think you see it in Deuteronomy 25 if I'm correct, and, basically, it was very important in the Old Testament to be able to pass on your name, first of all, that you have the 12 tribes, you need these tribes to persist, but also it has to do with land rights and whatnot.

And so if a brother, died without leaving an heir, it was the responsibility of one of his brothers to, to sire a child for him and he would carry on his name.

So we call it Leverett. marriage. It has nothing to do with Levi. it's more of the idea of coming together and, and doing the brotherly duty, as it were.

So they go on in verse 20. Now, there were 7 brothers. The first took a wife and, and dying, he left no offspring. The second took her and he died, nor did he leave any offspring, and the third likewise, so the 7 had her and left no offspring.

Last of all, all, the woman, the woman died also. Therefore, in the resurrection, when they rise, whose, wife will she be, for all seven had her as wife. So this is the question that's being put forward by the Sadducees. Remember the, it says right in the text, the Sadducees didn't believe in the resurrection.

So that means they don't, they don't believe that there's a resurrection from the dead, you die and you basically stay in the grave. there's no resurrection to afterlife. There's no bodily resurrection. They also don't believe, it doesn't say this in the text, but we know they didn't believe in angels, they didn't believe in the soul.

So, these are basically Jewish people who just believe that their Judaism is just a, there's something valuable about just being a good Jew, just being a good moral person, even if you're gonna die and go to the grave. This sounds like, some of the atheists and agnostics that you hear speaking today that will say something to the effect of, I don't need religion, I don't need a God just to be a good person. If you think that you need God in order to, to go out and do good things, then that's too bad for you.

I can be a good person without a God making me be a good person.

That's one of the atheistic arguments that we hear out there. these guys are just good people, good Jewish people, and they don't need some resurrection on life with some reward system to make them do the right thing, would be part of their argument. The way they set up this particular story, obviously, this is hypothetical. It sounds like an argument that they probably would have made many times before to other people.

And it sounds a little bit like the adage, can God make a rock so big that he can't lift it, right? It doesn't sound like a legitimate argument. It's just, it's what we would call sophistry. You're trying to basically with words, paint somebody into a corner that, it's hard for them to get out of because of the way you've constructed the words.

And so you guys know, can God make a rock so big that he can't lift it? If you say no, then are you saying that God's not that powerful? If you say yes, you're saying that God can't lift something, right? All that is, is just a word game.

It has nothing to do with reality. it's just a word game and so we're playing this little word game. So, how does Jesus respond? Verse 24?

Now, Jesus answered and said to them, are you therefore, are, are you therefore not mistaken? Because you do not know the scriptures nor the power of God. And I just wanna, before we look at the full response that Christ gives us, notice that he says, you are mistaken. It's put into a question here in the New King James.

I don't know that all of your translations have it listed as a question. Do some of you guys have a translation where it's not a question, it's more of a statement? Does anybody have a statement? OK, good.

I, in the, in our Greek, and even our Hebrew translations, there's no such thing as a question mark, right? So sometimes you're trying to figure out whether it's a question or statement. clearly, Jesus is basically saying, you are mistaken. And you're mistaken because you don't know the scriptures, first of all.

But secondly, you don't know the power of God. And many times you'll notice when people are mistaken about their The interpretation of God and his works, or if they're asking you a question when you're witnessing, many, many times it's because they don't know the Bible very well. And they just don't know God's power or they refuse to believe in God's power. I got this over and over and over again when I was at UCR a few weeks ago witnessing with, with y'all, as we're out there sharing the gospel.

It's very typical to be talking to somebody. The average person I talked to that day is somebody that used to go to church, that doesn't go to church anymore. When you ask them why don't they go to church anymore, they would say this, Science. What do you mean by that?

Well, obviously, science has disproven the Bible. Oh, can you give me a for instance? I didn't have anybody that could tell me any, for instance, any particular in the Bible that had been disproven by science. They didn't know the scriptures.

But they could basically say that, well, we just know that Darwin has proven that everything that's in the Bible is false. That God could not have created the world in 7 days was basically their argument. So, what are they denying there? The power of God.

They don't know the Bible. They know that they've heard this general critique of, they know that the, what they've heard taught to them in science has been a critique of what they grew up with in the church. They know that it dispels the Bible, but they can't give me any particulars, and they know that whatever science has taught them means that God cannot do what it's claimed that he has done in the Bible. They know this enough to stop going to church and rejecting God.

And so Jesus is telling the Sadducees, you don't know the scriptures and you don't know the power of God. So, let's look at his response verse 25. For when they rise from the dead, notice Jesus didn't say if, he's not making a, he's not buying into their naturalistic presuppositions. He's saying, when this happens, he's presuming it will happen.

When they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. But concerning the dead, well, let's first talk about that first argument. When they rise from the dead, so he's presuming the power of God. Not only that, He's telling us something that we would not have known otherwise.

In other words, Jesus is speaking authoritatively as the word of God himself. He's witnessing in a way that you or I could never witness. He is the Son of God, right? And so he can say things that may not necessarily be revealed in scripture previously because he is the word of God.

He says they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like the angels in heaven. This doesn't mean that, that we will be sex, sexless in the future. It just means that the institution of marriage will no longer be an institution, we'll be married to Christ. So, there's nobody getting married in heaven, there's no giving of marriage in heaven.

There does seem to be some indications in scripture of a distinguishing between male and female, at least for humans that have been glorified. but there's no giving in marriage. In that sense, we're like the angels because they neither are the angels marrying one another. but then he goes and he begins to make a scriptural argument, verse 26, but concerning the dead that they rise, so he's already made a power argument.

And a presumptive argument. Now he says, concerning the dead that they rise, have you not read, here's the scripture argument, in the Book of Moses, their favorite guy, in the burning bush passage, he doesn't get, why doesn't he give them chapter and verse? Yeah, there's no chapter and verses till the 1600s, right? 1500s, 16, 16th century.

So he says, that burning bush passages that we all know that's in that scroll that, where Moses, in, in the, in the book of Exodus, the scroll of Exodus. In the burning bush passage, how God spoke to him saying, I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living. You are therefore, Polly, greatly mistaken.

Polly is the idea of multitudes of mistakes you are making. You are making a power mistake, you are making presuppositional mistakes, you are making scriptural mistakes. You think that something from Moses, but you do not. It's interesting, so, Jesus is appealing to scripture, and he's appealing to grammar, Hebrew, and actually the Hebrew grammar also gets carried forward into the Greek grammar here, which is interesting because in our English translations, It says, I am the God of Abraham.

Now, if you guys look at the, the, the verb am, in most of your translations, that should be italicized. Raise your hand if you see it italicized, like it's squiggly compared to the rest of the ones. That means that that doesn't exist in the actual Greek. By the way, it doesn't exist in the Hebrew either.

There is no verb in the Hebrew or the Greek. This is a presumed verb. But what Jesus is doing is he is, he understands that the presumed verb is present tense. In this case, the idea would be, I, God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, whenever you have a construction like that, the presumed verb is a present tense verb.

So Jesus is making a very, actually, complicated or, argument from the grammar that, the God, that God is not just the God of dead people, but these are people that live, which presumes that they will, what, rise. God is their God now and God will be their God in the future, and they will rise from the dead. And so it's actually a fairly developed argument that he's putting in shorthand. And he argues that they are greatly or Polly mistaken.

so this is how Jesus responds to these, the religious left. Now, by the way, what Jesus is arguing is also established in other passages of scripture. We see it in In Deuteronomy, Daniel 12, we see indications of the resurrection of, of the dead, and so it's not like it's something that's just hidden there in the grammar of, of Exodus. It's also spoken of in other portions of the Old Testament.

And so what the Sadducees had done. is they had taken their favorite guy, Moses, and because they couldn't find anything in Moses's writings that, that pointed towards the resurrection, they use that to, to argue for their anti-resurrection doctrine. it seems like the Sadducees would have been very much influenced by Greek thought, which would have a low view of the body, a low view of anything physical in some ways. And then they had also adapted that into a pessimistic view that basically says that this is all there is when you die, you're done.

And so they ignore Daniel and they go to their main guy, Moses and think that they have a clutch argument. It, it, it's almost like people today who try to make certain arguments from one passage and ignore other passages. Like for instance, people try to argue against the doctrine of hell by appealing to the Old Testament and ignoring the New Testament. You see that in Seventh Day Adventism.

There's a lot of cults that will build their favorite doctrines by looking at Old Testament scripture and not understanding that Old Testament that not all doctrine is fully developed in the Old Testament, and they'll ignore New Testament passages or explain away the New Testament passages. You see the same concept going on today with arguments about sexuality. When people are trying to argue that homosexuality is a perfectly acceptable lifestyle, one of the things they'll do is they'll go to Jesus and say, Jesus never talked about homosexuality.

It was such a big deal, why didn't Jesus bring it up?

Well, Jesus is the word of God. He happened to inspire Paul. He happened to inspire Moses, who wrote Leviticus, and so there's lots of specific data on that issue. and Jesus did talk about marriage.

He goes back and talks about Adam and Eve as being, the establishment of marriage. And so, there's several different, these are poly multiple errors that these guys are making. And Jesus points, basically draws attention to their errors by appealing one. To the power of God, to the certainty of the resurrection, not if, but when he reveals things with his own authority by appealing to the lack of marriage in the future, which comes from the Son of God Himself, then he goes back and appeals to their favorite prophet, Moses, and undercuts their argumentation.

This all has to do with the idea that they have this tradition, they have this idea that basically says, no one can be raised from the dead. It does, it's not developed in scripture. It's in their particular traditional theology. Jesus goes after their traditional theology, appealing to scripture particularly, but also appealing to the power of God.

Any questions that you guys have about that? All right, that's a mouthful. Let's ask this question. What are some rationalistic, naturalistic objections people raise against God today?

The Sadducees, they were not new in their era. It's not like they disappeared. You still have the same, even very religious people today will reject key components of scripture based on naturalistic assumptions. What, what have you guys run into?

I'm gonna raise a few of my own, but Yeah, Natalie Yeah, really good. So, the problem of evil, if God really exists, why is there so much evil? So, if God is all powerful and he's all good, then certainly evil would not exist. And so that would be an objection that gets raised.

Will be some other objections. Yeah, yeah, I think similar to what you were saying about. would say that the only things that we others That's excellent, yeah. Yeah, so people will, they'll limit, they'll try to draw this circle around what can be discovered is ultimately true, and they'll say, only using the scientific method can we arrive at truth.

So, it's got to be observable, measurable, repeatable. But then they'll go out and make certain assumptions that go completely outside of the scientific method, like matter, basically just came to be out of nothing or matters eternal. Those cannot be observed, measured, and repeated. They're just assumed.

when I was at UCR a few weeks ago, this one of the ladies I was talking to, very sweet lady, I asked her why she doesn't believe in God anymore because of science. I asked her why, what is it about science? She couldn't really specify. I asked her where matter came from.

She's, an employee at UCR. Where did matter come from? She says, I've never thought of that before. I'm not saying that that everybody's in her category, but here's someone who's making eternal decisions of rejecting Christ based upon science, who's never even thought about where did matter come from.

That's, that's a very basic, very important question. Let me suggest a few things here. Science has disproven in the Bible, we talked about that. the Bible is immoral.

This is a big one today. It, based upon the morality that people have today, they'll read the Bible and they'll say the Bible is immoral. so this is trying to lift our, our morality or our standards for ethics above the scripture. sometimes this happens because people have a misunderstanding of just, scripture.

Like, for instance, We're gonna look at a passage today. Pastor Milton's gonna be preaching at a passage where the sons of Jacob are gonna make this covenant with, I think it's Shechem so that they can go slaughter them. And this is gonna be reported to us and we could unwittingly assume that God places his approval upon the slaughter. That's like watching a movie, in the middle of the movie, the bad guys are killing everybody and saying, hey, this movie is approving of, of bad guys murdering people.

No, this is part of the plot. Watch the rest of the movie, right? What happens to the bad guys at the end? Clint Eastwood gets them all, right?

So, so you have to watch, you have to read the whole narrative to determine what is, what's meant to be the import of that particular section of scripture. But legitimately, there are times where God does command things that from our perspective look very immoral. but we also have to look at the, at the whole swath and scope. When God is using Israel to go in and destroy the Canaanites, for instance, does God say to Israel, I'm using you because you are so holy and you are so righteous and you are so wonderful?

No, he tells the Israelites, you are wicked, but I've had grace on you, and, but I'm gonna use you to go in and punish these peoples that are burning their children. you're gonna go in and punish these peoples, their cup of wrath. I've been patient with them for over 400 years now, and their wrath is, is, is over boiling over the brim, and now I'm going to punish them. this is something that's hard for us to understand if we don't buy into the creator-c creature distinction.

That God can use Israel to punish Canaan, God can use Babylon to punish Israel, God can use Assyria to punish Babylon, and God can use Persia to punish Assyria. Persia to punish Babylon, and then he brings the Greeks in to take care of the Persians. You're like, what? How do you do, how do you handle this?

this is God's, you have to obviously buy into a Christian worldview. for that to make sense, creator-c creature distinction. Where did God come from? there's lots of people have written a lot of good stuff on this.

This is one of the main questions that I ask people when they give me the whole science is disproven the Bible thing. I ask them where did matter come from. the very popular answer today is people don't wanna say if they're really thinking through things properly. They don't wanna say matter is eternal, because if you say matter is eternal, the sun should have burned out by now, right?

matter, matter is eternal. It's a philosophical statement. you can't prove that matter is eternal. So a lot of people try to go that matter has just come out of nothing and they try to describe this difference between nothing and nothingness, which is pure nonsense and poppycock.

They try to, it's bait and switch where they're trying to make you think that they're making scientific statements when they're still talking in philosophy. And so you have to kinda point that out. You cannot prove that something came from nothing using the scientific method. So then I just try to say, OK, we're basically in the same place then, right?

The Bible says that God has always existed, you're saying either matter has always existed or matter came from nothing, which makes most sense, which really explains an orderly universe. Both of our systems can explain chaos, but only one of our systems can, can, can explain order. Which one is it? And if they're not suppressing the truth and unrighteousness, which obviously they are, they'll admit that only the, the theological system can explain order.

You don't even have to do any of that, by the way. The gospel is the power of God unto salvation. We know that people are suppressing the truth and the righteousness, they've been taken captive by the devil to do his will, but if you and love and patience and gentleness will just share the gospel with them, God could release them from their captivity. So, even if you don't understand anything I just said, it really doesn't matter cause if you give them the gospel, that's what's really gonna change them.

I don't know if you guys, any of you guys have seen a recent, Ray Comfort has a newer film that came out recently called Crazy Bible. Has anybody seen it? It's about a half-hour movie called Crazy Bible. It's actually pretty good.

he basically in that movie argues that God has purposely put things in history that have been recorded in the scriptures that are very difficult to believe and God wants it that way because he wants to turn the world on its head. He wants the simple to come to him. People have to come to him as a child to believe by faith, and he goes, you, you can't prove to someone the miracles of the Bible. They accept the gospel first, then they'll believe the miracles.

The miracles are actually there on purpose as a stumbling block to make people bow the knee first. And so rather than bending over backwards trying to naturalistically explain all the miracles in the Bible, we need to understand the purpose of some of these miracles, which is really to stumble people and to get them to bow the knee to Christ first, then their eyes will be opened and then they'll understand the miraculous elements of scripture. Does that make sense? anyway, you could check it out on your own and I, I, it's a, I, I think it's a very good argument.

let's go to the next passage. Let's open up to Matthew 15. Jesus counters the traditions of the religious right, legalistic ritual. So, just like, in our day, You can have a religious right, religious left.

In Jesus' day, you had a religious right, religious left. The religious right would be largely represented by The Pharisees. Now, these guys did believe in the resurrection. They did believe in angels and the soul.

These guys had the majority, so to speak, in the Sanhedrin. The majority of the, the Jews that during this day would have followed the Pharisees' doctrine. They would have viewed their doctrine as the right doctrine. Is the orthodox doctrine.

But let's, let's take a look. At verses 1 to 20. And, we will start, yeah, right at the, right at the top there. Then the scribes and the Pharisees who are from Jerusalem came to Jesus saying, Why do your disciples transgress the tradition of the elders, for they do not wash their hands when they eat bread.

OK, so here's the word tradition that gets used. It's gonna get used several times in this text. The idea, the Greek word behind tradition just basically means handed down, things that have been handed down. And in, in Pharisee thought, you have the written words of Moses, that would be the scriptures.

But then you also have this oral tradition that Moses spoke that never got written down in the scriptures. But that's been handed down. And, and it was eventually written down in other parchments called particularly the Mishnah. And so you have two co-equal sources of authority and Pharisee thought.

You have the law and you have the traditions, the things that have been handed down. So, this hand washing stuff isn't in the law of Moses, it's in The oral traditions. Does that make sense? So, one was to wash their hands before they eat.

This is not because they were concerned about spreading West Nile virus or not West Nile, but will be something like H1N1 or they're not worried about people getting sick or keeping an A on your restaurant. Make sure all your employees wash their hands. This is ceremonial cleanliness, right? So the idea would be If you're out, you're out in the market and you're touching dead meat, right?

That makes you unclean, and then you come back, you should wash your hands, otherwise, that uncleanness is gonna be passed on to the food that you're eating and you're gonna bring this uncleanness into your body. and then God would then distance Himself from you or you would, you would bring, it'd be bad for your, your worship, bad for your sacrifice, so on and so forth. Yeah, and even as we see in other context, washing of bowls and so on and so forth. So, look at verse 3, here's Jesus' response.

He answered and said to them, why do you transgress the commandment of God because of your tradition? Why are you transgressing the written commandments of the Lord with your oral traditions that have been passed down? For God commanded saying, honor your father and mother. What in the world does that have to do with ceremonial cleanliness?

Jesus is doing a big switcheroo here. They're talking about washing hands and being pure before you eat. All of a sudden, he brings up some completely different issue. This is Jesus' real Famous for doing this, and he who curses father and mother, let him be put to death.

But you say whoever says to his father and mother, what profit you might have received from me is a gift to God. Then he need not honor his father or mother. Thus, you have made the commandment of God of no effect by your what tradition. Hypocrites.

Well, did Isaiah prophesy about you saying these people draw near to me with their mouths and honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from me and in vain, they worship me, teaching as doctrines, the commandments of men. so we'll stop right there for a second. So, so the Pharisees are asking about this tradition of hand washing. He does this complete switcheroo and starts talking about this practice that in another context is called Corbin.

The idea is, is, yeah, the scripture technically says that we should honor our mother and father, meaning we should support them financially in their old age. That's, that's what the, the particular argument is, is being made here is, is, on your mother and father wasn't just, hey, give them a pat on the back, give them a high five, send them a card at Father's Day. The real import of honoring your mother and father is when they get old, you take care of them. They raised you, they took care of you.

When they get old, you honor them by financially taking care of them. And so, but there had been this oral tradition that had been passed down that basically said, hey, if you and your parents are on the outs, instead of giving your money to your parents to help them, just donate it to the offering, and that's Corbin. That's a gift. So God would be fine with you not taking care of your parents as long as the money went to the church, so to speak, or, into the temple.

and so Jesus, they're talking about hand washing. Jesus, as his custom often is, he goes to something that's a bigger deal. They wanna strain at gnats, he's gonna go for the camel, right? He's gonna be like, let's talk about something of a bigger issue.

Your parents are over here rotting, right? You've done your job of Corbin putting money in the offering to the church. You should be honoring your mother and father by taking care of them. OK.

Let's, let's get real here. You can hear Jesus saying, also, you said it's OK basically to curse mother or father, as long as you give to the church. So he said, he's going after these traditions that are not in the scripture. And then he cuts to the chase and, and quoting Isaiah, these guys, the Sadducees weren't big on Isaiah.

The Pharisees are very big on Isaiah. He goes to Isaiah and basically says, Isaiah's prophesying of you guys. You guys are hypocrites. You're honoring me with your lips.

You're going through all, all the motions of being very religious, dropping your offerings in the church basket. Meanwhile, you're not taking care of your own family. You're teaching his doctrines, the commandments of men. So what's the follow up verse 10?

When he had called the multitudes to himself, he said to them, hear and understand, not what goes into the mouth defiles a man, but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man. When his disciples came and said to him, do that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying? if somebody came to me and said, yeah, when you were up there preaching, Pastor Mike, so and so was offended, my response would be like, oh no, what did I do? But Jesus is perfect, not like me, right?

maybe I really did offend somebody because I did something wrong, but Jesus is perfect. What is, how, what's Jesus' response? Verse 13, he answered, said, every plant which my father has not planted will be uprooted. Wow, that's pretty harsh.

He's talking about those that are planted by the Father, those are not planted by the Father, those that aren't planted by the Father, they're gonna be uprooted anyway. Let them alone. They are blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind leads the blind, both will fall into a dish.

Let me just suggest to you that Jesus has the authority to make statements like that. I don't think you're gonna hear Pastor Milton or me or Carlos saying anything quite like this cause I don't know that we'd be able to have that insight into who's been planted and who hasn't been planted, right? But Jesus knew, he knew exactly where these Pharisees were. Then Peter answered and said to them, explain this parable to us.

Jesus says, are you still without understanding? Do you not understand that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and is eliminated? But those things which proceed out of the mouth come from the heart and they defile a man. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adultery, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies.

These are the things which defile a man. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile a man. Now when I was a kid, I thought this gave me permission not to wash my hands for supper, right? I read, hey, come on.

I didn't grow up in a Christian family, but my live-in babysitter, she'd always tell us, you gotta go wash your hands, Michael. Michael, go wash your hands. But Ma'am, it says right here, I don't have to wash my hands. No, that's not what I was talking about.

This is talking about, right? It's talking about ceremonial cleanness. So kids, if you're listening, wash your hands when your parents tell you to wash up for supper. But Jesus is talking about what is it that really defiles, it's really this heart issue, and he's pointing back to the Pharisees.

They've got this defilement in their hearts. They're wanting to uphold their traditions above the clear teaching of the Bible. And actually allowing people, what's so insidious from Christ's perspective about this, and he says this in other places, it's not just that the Pharisees are doing this for themselves, they're teaching others to do it. Yeah, it's OK to despise your father and mother, just as long as you give money to the church.

How terrible to teach people to do that. And so Jesus is after them. So let's ask a few questions as we, as we try to wrap this up. Why do Christians fall into the trap of legalism, making additional rules that appear to promote holiness?

So these guys are, on the one hand, they're trying to show themselves to be very, very holy, right? With their tradition. In reality, they've, they've actually sinned in pretty significant ways and teaching other people to sin. Why do you guys think that we, we kinda like to establish extra rules?

Yeah, Lily. trap of being self ourselves Yeah Especially Yeah That's good. Yeah, there's something in us that really, where we want, we, we want to participate in our own salvation, right? We wanna put something on the plate.

And it, it seems like, I don't know about you, but the way the New Testament has set things up, there's so many general principles that are laid out for us without a whole lot of specifics. We're left to work out the specifics and the wisdom of the spirit and in community, and that can get very messy, right? It'll almost be a lot easier. I remember going to a Roman Catholic Church to vote a couple of years ago and before I walked into the auditorium there, they had a picture.

Of a silhouette of a girl that just showed, here's exactly what your dress should look like. Here's where it should be here. Here's where it should be here. And it, the clear indication was, you do not come in here unless your dress looks like this.

And I'll tell you what, when I looked at that, I was like, man, I wish we had that at Cornerstone. I was like, that would be awesome because honestly, it's pretty, sometimes it's very messy how we talk about modesty at a church, right? We talk about the principles of modesty, you wanna do it with your heart, we don't want to judge other people, but it's clear that there's things that are less stimulating, so on and so forth. We give all these principles.

I remember one time preaching a whole sermon on modesty, and then I went to a wedding the very next day and I had to look at the ground the whole wedding. and I was like, nobody heard a thing. I was just saying. but that's part, that's the way the New Testament has left us, left it.

It's, it's for us to figure out in wisdom and to learn how to love each other, and, and abide by the basic principles, but talk to each other within our culture and ultimately trying to honor the Lord, right? Follow the Spirit. And so that gets very messy and so there's always the temptation to wanna Up the ante a little bit and say, OK, well, let's, let's make this particular rule for everybody. let's, let's clarify, however, because, no, go ahead, yeah, question.

Oh yeah. So the prosperity gospel, yeah, it'll take little things, almost like the Sadducees did, and then it'll try to blow it up and make that the main thing. And like, like we should ask in faith, and then they'll take that to another level and saying, so if you should ask for a Cadillac in faith, you should get it. And if you don't get it, then there's something wrong.

There's some, something wrong with your faith. Yeah, it's very imbalanced. It's a good point. Yeah, Dan.

I think another thing That question to how do we fall in the trap is that it might start off. Yeah. Well for myself, I'm never gonna go into. Yeah, that's not a bad thing.

a rule from God's word, but it's something to help me. But then we extrapolate that to other people and say, well, you're sinning if you go into a. Yeah, totally. I'll lose my salvation if I go to, we start making it a bigger thing.

Yeah, it's It's crazy. Yeah, it's interesting how. How inclined our hearts are towards legalism. There's always this, this swinging of legalism and license, right?

and it, it happens in any church, it happens in our own hearts. and what's weird, even with spiritual disciplines, how we can be prone to legalism. Like the Lord might start doing the work and my, the Lord's really been hitting me on prayer lately, right? So the Lord can start really working in me on prayer and, but if I'm not careful, something that the Lord's calling me to do in my prayer life, I can then start looking at other people and be like, why aren't other people praying?

Nobody's really praying. We need to pray, or the Lord starts really hitting you about evangelism, and so you go out and you start sharing the gospel, you're handing out tracks, you're starting to see some fruit. Before it, you start looking out and you're like, why is anybody sharing the gospel? Man, I'm the only one sharing the gospel.

It's like there's this, this insidious legalist inside of all of us. And so we have to constantly be on guard for that. Yeah, Steve. The thing is, for me that I've challenged.

Right Oh yeah. Yeah that could be that Totally. Totally. Yeah, so Steve's mentioning like knowledge or like a cause that you can jump into and just wondering why everybody else isn't on your cause.

I know, I was reading recently this, seminary, president, one of the speeches he makes to all of the freshmen after their first semester of seminary, he basically warns them, he's like, if you go home after this first semester of seminary and begin to look down upon the grandmothers in your church as far as their Bible knowledge, don't come back. Cause it happens all the time. These guys go get one semester of seminary, then they come back to their church. They're looking at the 75-year-old, gal that's been in the church for 40 years who's sitting with her King James Bible and all of a sudden he feels like, I know a lot more than her.

And yeah, one semester, a little bit of Greek now. You're so smart. so it's just, yeah, it's something we always have to watch out for. Let's, let's kinda be careful about how we talk about tradition.

However, I wanna quickly close this up with a, a, a real, a survey of the word tradition, what we mean, what we don't mean by it. So, in scripture, tradition actually can be used positively, but it, it can also be used negatively. So those, these are several different passages where you see scripture use, it literally means handing down, over of a tradition. the top section of scriptures, that's where tradition would be used negatively as like something that's being placed above scripture.

But like 1 Corinthians 11, 2 Thessalonians, those two different passages, those are actually synonyms for the gospel. Paul says in a couple of different places, I've, I've given you over the tradition. I've handed over to you the gospel. And so, just the word tradition itself is not always a bad term.

You have to look at the context. So I just wanna just kinda warn you of that. The other thing is, is, are all traditions wrong? We're not saying that, and I don't think Christ is saying all traditions are wrong.

Traditions are wrong if we place them at the level or above scripture, and they become a way in which we judge other people or they become a standard for justification or sanctification. So, for instance, if we make them equal the commandments of God, hold them as requirements for justification or to judge someone's sanctification, now they become a problem. Let me give you a silly example. so all churches, in fact, all organizations are going to have traditions or policies for the organization like the Yankees, is this still true?

I, if you join the Yankees, you can't have facial hair. I don't know if that's still true. It used to be. Everybody, so you'll see like someone who's the guy from the Pirates who came over to the Yankees, the center fielder, I forget his name.

Anyway, he had long hair and stuff like that. All of a sudden he goes to the Yankees, doesn't look like the same guy anymore. And that's just their policy. There's nothing necessarily wrong with that.

If you're gonna be a Yankee, this is the way you have to look. so what if Eric Cornerstone, the worship, we say the worship leader is not allowed to wear 1980s Lakers basketball shorts while leading worship? Right? I think that's a good policy, right?

I don't think you're ever gonna see me leading worship wearing 1980s, basketball shorts, if you guys know what that looks like. Just go look it up on YouTube, right? And so there's nothing wrong with that. Theoretically, if Cornerstone decided, let's say at some point, there's a policy came down from our personnel committee, our staff.

They said, we want all of our, anybody that, any guy that's on the platform, we want them to wear slacks and a button-down shirt. Would that be bad or evil? Nope. That's just the policy.

If they said any gal that's on the platform, this is the way we want our gals on the platform to look. This is the, the type of dress that you will have. That's just our policy at Cornerstone. If Cornerstone, however, said something like this, any worship leader who wears 1980s Lakers basketball shorts while leading worship may not be saved and is clearly not growing in Christ.

Now, that enters into legalism, right? If now you're saying, and I, I, as a, I remember as a young pastor, the very first baptism I was going to do, I was doing an internship up north. I didn't know how I was supposed to dress for my baptism. I showed up with sweats on and a t-shirt.

I just thought, I don't know. I just, and the pastor drove up in his big hemmy and he looked at me and he's all, nope. And he says, go home and change. I was like, oh, OK.

So I went home, put some slacks on and a shirt. He didn't want me baptizing somebody in sweats and a t-shirt. That's OK. That's OK.

but if, if he, if he comes over to my house and I'm wearing sweats and a t-shirt and he's like, dude, are you even saved? That's a different deal, right? and so we just wanna be careful about stuff like that. OK, so a couple of final questions here.

Have you ever taken, been taken in by a tradition of men and later come to find out that it was actually contrary to scripture? Anybody? Have anything on that? Or maybe even not contrary to scripture, like it's not something that's established by scripture, like this is the way it must be.

Yeah. 3 Face,. Legalistic Politically correct. Oh, OK, right.

And, and sometimes I, I found myself Maybe the opposite. You're being legalistic, but in the I was being legal by calling them. Oh, that's good, yeah, so we can be legalistic by calling other people legalists. Yeah, that's good.

Yeah, Dan struggling Love it or not, but when we moved into the neighborhood where we're in now. One of the neighbors said, Hey, you should join us Saturday night. We have A volleyball game with all the They said we used to do it a Sunday night, but we'd get so drunk that it drinking, Yeah This is a great way to get to know our neighbors. Right.

tradition that as other people were saying really could be contrary to. Avoiding getting to know people Yeah, that's great. Yeah, so even decisions on how we associate with unbelievers could be different based on your background, right? We had a, when I was in college, I had a buddy that was part of a, a fraternity, and he was having a lot of trouble cause in his apartment they were having parties all the time and And a bunch of us in Cramp's Crusade, we said, invite us to your party.

And so we did, and we came and hung out with this party and we just put a big bummer on the party cause we were just hanging around. We weren't drinking, we're just like being friendly and talking to people and talk about the Lord and after a while, everybody left. So, we help, we helped this guy out. Yeah, that's good., it's always an issue.

You, you guys can be just, I'm gonna throw out a couple of things here and then we'll have to close in prayer, but, even like this Halloween thing that's coming up, right? We got this festival of treats for years and years and years at Cornerstone, we never did anything for Halloween because we really had a lot of people had trouble just even thinking about the holiday. I've gone through my own little journey on that. We used to do like just a prayer night, praying against Satan when I was younger and, and then we would go out and during the trick or treating, we'd just give out tracts to people, And, but for me personally, like over the years, I've realized, this is just for me personally, that Halloween is like one of the last holidays where the neighbors actually get out and start interacting with each other.

And I was just like, why, why do I wanna stay in my house when this is one of the last place times during the year where, where our neighbors actually get out and interact. So, so our kids won't go wear like blood and all that stuff. Although my, I allowed my youth groups when they were younger to have biblical blood. We did a lot of biblical blood.

So if, if you want to be like, David carrying around a head of Goliath, that was OK. And And so we just started using it as an opportunity to share the gospel and have to encourage, the kids not to get all riled up about, the demons and the ghosts and stuff that they would see, but just get out and use it as an opportunity for Christ. But what, people are gonna be at different places on that. Even here at Cornerstone for the festival of Treats, we're, we have some people that just, they feel so strongly about it, they're not gonna be there.

And what? I have to respect their conscience on that. And, but our elders feel strongly enough about the outreach opportunities that we are making use of it and so we're encouraging our people, even if they're conscientious objectors to pray for us while they're at home, right? So this, it's a perfect example of how it's not really clearly spelled out in scripture, I don't think, and yet we've got to love each other through it.

Yeah, Bill. All kinds Yeah. Yeah. Yeah That's just the way we are as human beings Yeah, Yeah Totally.

That's a great examples of Bill's bringing up the passages like I think in Romans, what, like 15, 1 Corinthians, some of the passages that just talk about how we love each other through things that are disputable, so to speak, right? We don't wanna cause a brother to stumble, right? You shouldn't purposely go out there and just like do something just to shove it in their face. At the same time, we need to respect each other's different viewpoints on stuff, right?

I guess last thing is, if you wanna really get a fun conversation going sometime, just enter into a group of people and start talking about the food you eat or shouldn't eat, right? you're gonna get a world of different opinions, right? Just walk in and say, yeah, those vegans, I really don't like that. Man, it's, it's on.

Yeah. And, and that's an issue that the Bible specifically talks about not judging one another about, specific applications about not judging each other about food or drink. In fact, we're warned, in fact, in the Bible to be careful in the last days that people will come and start trying to encroach upon us, saying, do not eat, do not touch, do not handle. And so we know that food is, is an issue.

That the devil and the antichrist himself will use to try to bind people. And so we have to be very careful about trying to enforce our particular viewpoint on eating on other people and just allow for a lot of freedom when it comes to that. Does that make sense? So, our, we, you can have your family, I'm not saying you can't have family viewpoints on stuff.

The berries have certain viewpoints on things. And, and, but I have to be very careful when I'm talking to my kids about certain issues, I have to say, this is what the Bible say, we're doing this because the Bible says it. Or we're doing this because this is the way the berries do it. This isn't the Bible, but as long as you're in this household, as long as I'm paying the bills, right?

This is the way we're gonna do it. When you get out of this household, you wanna go do it your way, that's totally up to you. But, and so I want my kids to see the difference between the two cause I don't want them going out to Cornerstone or even out to some non-believer and start judging a non-believer. For something that you would never expect an unbeliever to do, right, this is the way the Barry's do it.

This is scripture. This is kinda, yeah, Larry had one other thing. Yeah, goes in the body, yeah. I, I greatly struggle with, what, what does that passage mean to me as far as food, and, and, the one thing that me Yeah.

Don't tell me. I don't wanna hear anything cause I love pork. Don't say anything. The one specific thing that I, I struggle with as a meat inspector is blood sausage because, the, the passage in Acts specifically, the church says don't eat blood.

And, and so, again, it's just a, a, a matter of, well, I won't eat blood, but I do eat pork, what's, what's the difference there? Yeah, it's good. Yeah, just don't say anything against bacon or I'll, I'll really be. You're gonna get me riled up.

I'm joking. Well, if you guys have any other questions, feel free to come on up. I, I will say, Paris and Cottonwood in Moreno Valley, a place called Portillo's Tacos. Portillo's 2.

Oh man. If you wanna meet me there, I'll meet you there. Their carnitas are insane. Very good.

Anyway, let's pray. Lord, thank you so much just for this time, this the wisdom of yourself expressed in the word and we thank you, Lord. Fear grace in our lives. We so often just go back and forth between Sadduceism, Phariseeism, legalism, license, but we thank you, Lord, for your grace upon us when we're swinging between one or the other, and how you always draw us back to yourself.

Help us just to continue to walk graciously before one another. Lord, that we would be careful not to hold our traditions over the heads of our brothers and sisters. But that, at the same time, we'd lovingly call each other to the, to the word when we see one another out of whack when it comes to scripture that we would be an instrument for good in each other's life. and that you give us wisdom in how to lead our own families, we definitely need to make decisions for our families that, are wisdom issues that go beyond, chapter and verse, but help us to do so graciously.

And we just thank you for the, the atmosphere that we do have here at Cornerstone to be able to, to be focused on the gospel and allow for freedom in so many areas of our lives. We just pray that you would guide us in that way. In Christ's name, we pray. Amen.