16: Highway to Hell?

Highway to Hell? The Dangers of Tradition and Externalism (Mk 7:1-23) Sunday Morning – November 18, 2018 Sleater-Kinney Road Baptist Church, Olympia, WA 1. INTRODUCTION - - God hates fakery; He hates externalism; He hates dead formalism without heart, and He hates actions with wrong motivations o He says this over and over (e.g. Amos 5, Malachi, Isa 1; 58:1-11, etc.) o Jesus hates it, too That’s what our passage is about, this morning 2. TEXT: Now when the Pharisees gathered to him, with some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem, they saw that some of his disciples ate with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed (Mk 7:1-2). - What’s going on here? What’s the problem? o Mark explains: (For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands properly, holding to the tradition of the elders, and when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash. And there are many other traditions that they observe, such as the washing of cups and pots and copper vessels and dining couches) (Mk 7:3-4). - I’m going to make some generalizations here, so we can understand the context of this passage:1 o There are always exceptions to any rule, and there were plenty of faithful Israelites throughout ages who have always loved God, and 1 The majority of what follows, besides the quotations from the Mishnah, are from Emil Schurer, A History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ, 5 vols. (reprint; Peabody: Hendrickson, 2012), §25, 26, 28. I am well aware modern scholarship advocates a more “nuanced” view of the Jewish religious context in the New Testament era. Most of this is influenced by the New Perspective on Paul. I have read and consulted numerous, modern sources on the New Testament era and remain convinced Schurer’s work is excellent, and as trustworthy and reliable as anything you can buy today. 1 Pastor Tyler Robbins Highway to Hell? The Dangers of Tradition and Externalism (Mk 7:1-23) Sunday Morning – November 18, 2018 Sleater-Kinney Road Baptist Church, Olympia, WA - - - - - followed His laws for the right reason (e.g. Simeon, Anna [Lk 2], and The Book of Tobit, etc.) o But, the fact is that our passage takes place in a context where most of the teachers, leaders and people had a religion of legalism and externalism – certainly Peter did, and he had lots of trouble ditching it after his salvation (e.g. Acts 10, Galatians 2)! After the exile, when the Persians allowed Israelites who’d been captured by the Babylonians to return to Israel o some returned in successive waves, over a long period of time o others, like Esther, stayed in the old Babylonian Empire (now Persia) Understandably, the Israelite leaders wanted to guard against idolatry and unfaithfulness going forward o The priests were the defacto leaders of Israel in absence of a political head o They had a renewed emphasis on doing what God said As the Persians were succeeded by Greeks, the entire culture and world of the Mediterranean changed o even when Alexander’s empire split into pieces and were all eventually swallowed up by the rising Roman Empire, the Greek culture pervaded every facet of society Gradually, there came a division between the priests and the scribes who studied the Tanakh, and in the centuries that saw the Greeks, the brief Jewish Maccabean kingdom, and then the Romans, Israelite society was gradually dominated by two groups: o (1) The social elites and aristocrats, centered on the temple and the high priestly families, who often collaborated with the governing power to maintain control, and had less qualms about appropriating secular culture o (2) the scribes and others who taught the people in the synagogues and schools; more legalistic, exclusivist, insular These were two very different directions taken by two very different groups in this Hellenistic culture and atmosphere; two very different responses to an impossible situation o (1) The Pharisees and many of the scribes became the real spiritual leaders; they had the synagogues, the schools and the duty of religious instruction, 2 Pastor Tyler Robbins Highway to Hell? The Dangers of Tradition and Externalism (Mk 7:1-23) Sunday Morning – November 18, 2018 Sleater-Kinney Road Baptist Church, Olympia, WA - - - - - o (2) The priests (i.e. the Sadducean party) busied themselves with the sacrificial system in the temple o (3) This was a total bifurcation of spheres, and the Pharisees had the upper hand The priests, and particularly the scribes as this division took place, were anxious to “fence” the law and protect people from breaking it2 This was good motivation that eventually ossified into dead ritual and formalism; it flipped things upside down and eventually made right behavior the object, rather than right belief and motivation The scribes had three major functions in society in the centuries leading up to and following Jesus’ ministry – especially after 70 A.D. o (1) to develop the law o (2) to teach the law to the people, and o (3) to judge correctly based on disputes about the law Their legalistic tendencies (which is inherent in all men), coupled with their fear of failing God yet again, led them to codify nearly aspect of civil, public and private life – with the Tanakh as the springboard o (1) If you love God, you’ll want to follow His law o (2) If you want to follow His law, you have to know what it says o (3) Everyone can read what it says, but you need someone to tell you what it means in concrete terms, in real life - that’s why you need teachers o (4) But, the Tanakh doesn’t cover every situation, so you need help interpreting what’s there and filling in the blanks for real life The result was an endless probing, studying, and teaching about the Hebrew Bible on virtually every aspect of life – to a level that’s insane from any rational point of view This studying and teaching on the Jewish Scriptures eventually became an avalanche of tradition that functioned almost like an inspired commentary o EX: analogy of case law and 14th Amendment in Obergefell decision o This tradition was oral (until the Mishnah, ca. 200 A.D.) and memorized and passed on by way of elaborate recitation drills3 2 Aboth 1.1; 3.14. “He that forgets one word of his study, the Scripture reckons it to him as though he was guilty against his own soul,” (Aboth 3.9). 3 3 Pastor Tyler Robbins Highway to Hell? The Dangers of Tradition and Externalism (Mk 7:1-23) Sunday Morning – November 18, 2018 Sleater-Kinney Road Baptist Church, Olympia, WA - o They believed you couldn’t understand the law without a guide, and those guides were: ▪ (1) the rabbis and the scribes, and ▪ (2) the tradition (i.e. commentary) they held in their heads o This tradition became more important than the Scriptures themselves: ▪ (1) They believed a person went to hell if he disagreed with oral tradition about some aspect of the Mosaic Law4 ▪ (2) They believed God’s wrath came upon the world if you disagreed with and taught differently than oral tradition5 ▪ (3) They believed violating tradition was more serious than violating the Bible itself6 o They didn’t believe this because they were trying to be evil; they believed it because they thought their tradition was the authentic and right interpretation of the Bible o They weren’t trying to be evil, but the results of their ideology were evil o They thought it made God happy the more they tried to follow the law Why did they think God would be happier the more they tried to follow the law? o Because (1) they didn’t understand God and (2) they didn’t understand grace o “R. Eleazar Hisma said: [The rules about] Bird-offerings and the onset of menstruation—these are essentials of the Halakoth.”7 o They taught that God gave so many laws in the Bible, because that would give the Jews more opportunity to gain favor by following them! 8 o What developed was a religion of pure externalism: ▪ (1) follow the law, ▪ (2) which means follow the tradition, ▪ (3) follow it in every area and aspect of your life, ▪ (4) and God will be happy with you, ▪ (5) and you’ll have a place in the world to come 4 Aboth 3.12. Aboth 5.8. 6 Sanhedrin 11.3. 7 Aboth 3.19. 8 Makkoth 3.16. “R. Hananiah b. Akashya says: The Holy One, blessed is he, was minded to grant merit to Israel; therefore hath he multiplied for them the Law and commandments, as it is written, ‘It pleased the Lord for his righteousness’ sake to magnify the Law and make it honourable.’” 5 4 Pastor Tyler Robbins Highway to Hell? The Dangers of Tradition and Externalism (Mk 7:1-23) Sunday Morning – November 18, 2018 Sleater-Kinney Road Baptist Church, Olympia, WA - - - This is why Jesus had such harsh words for the scribes and Pharisees: o “They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger,” (Mt 23:4). o “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness,” (Mt 23:27-28). This externalism produced a nasty elitism; a holier-than-thou attitude and a major arrogance: o (1) They believed Gentiles defiled you, and made you ritualistically unclean and unfit to stand before God or perform religious duties o (2) They believed Scriptures not written in Hebrew would defile you if you held them9 o (3) They believed people should fear their rabbis just as much as they feared God in heaven10 o (4) They believed people should help rabbis recover lost property before they helped their own parents do the same11 o (5) They believed your rabbi was worth more honor than your own father12 o (6) Jesus: “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes and like greetings in the marketplaces and have the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at feasts, who devour widows' houses and for a pretense make long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation,” (Mk 12:38-40). This is the context for the scribes and Pharisee’s outrage at Jesus in our passage o This isn’t a polite inquiry – they’re enraged o This man has broken the law! o This man has broken with tradition! o This man is a wicked transgressor! 9 Yadaim 4.5. Aboth 4.12. 11 Baba Metzia 2.11. 12 Kerithoth 6.9. 10 5 Pastor Tyler Robbins Highway to Hell? The Dangers of Tradition and Externalism (Mk 7:1-23) Sunday Morning – November 18, 2018 Sleater-Kinney Road Baptist Church, Olympia, WA o This man hates God! And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” (Mk 7:5). - - What’s the deal with the washing? o Here’s where you’ll see how insane this tradition was! These washings of hands, cups, platters (etc.) are about ceremonial purity; about ritual cleanness, not physical dirt o (1) Moral impurity is about relationship; you’re sinful, spiritually dead and rotten to the core in your natural state, so you have no relationship with God – you’re morally unclean o (2) Ceremonial impurity is about access What object lesson did the Biblical ceremonial laws (the real ones, not the one’s developed by tradition!) teach the people? o (1) It taught them that God is holy, and you and I are sinful o (2) It taught them that there are a million different things in this sincursed world which pollute you, defile you, and make you unfit to approach God o (3) The ceremonial laws taught the Israelites that every single thing about this entire world has been ruined by the curse of sin, and that the simplest things make a believer polluted and unfit to approach God ▪ And, no matter how hard you try, the normal course of everyday life makes you polluted over and over again ▪ EX: Like the carpet near your front door in the winter and spring, no matter how hard you try, it always gets dirty all over again! o (4) It taught them that, in order for God to have a new, better and closer relationship with His adopted children, to have better and permanent access, something permanent must be done to fix this problem once and for all ▪ Someone needs to fix the broken relationship, which in turn takes care of the access problem, too o (5) That was one of the things which Jesus Christ did – this is why every single believer can now come boldly to the throne of grace to 6 Pastor Tyler Robbins Highway to Hell? The Dangers of Tradition and Externalism (Mk 7:1-23) Sunday Morning – November 18, 2018 Sleater-Kinney Road Baptist Church, Olympia, WA - - - find mercy and help in time of need So, what’s the point about the washing? o (1) Tradition assumed your hands were always defiled, from deliberate or accidental contact with something that was unclean o (2) So tradition said you should routinely ritualistically wash your hands, to ceremonially cleanse you and anything you touch o (3) If you touch your food with defiled hands, your food is now unclean, and now you’re unclean o (4) A lot of this attitude stems from the tradition that said Gentiles (their houses, their merchandise, their towns, even the very dirt from their villages on your feet, and the very air they breathed) would defile you and make you unclean Where is this in the Bible? Where does it tell you to ritualistically wash your hands before every meal? o It isn’t there! o If you fit one of the categories from Leviticus 11-15 (e.g. contact with unclean animal, skin plagues, childbirth, marital relations, female issues, contact with dead bodies) then just follow the procedure! o But, this isn’t there How did the washing work? o (1) When you ceremonially wash your hands, to purify them before a meal, you must use a little over 2 ounces (2.4 – quarter log)13 – they even thought it was necessary to specify the amount of water used! ▪ (a) You pour the onto your hands ▪ (b) You never pour the water above your wrist ▪ (c) If you pour above the wrists, then you’re wrong, and you’re still unclean o What kind of water could you use? ▪ They had laws that told you o How do you know the water you’re using is ritualistically clean? ▪ They had laws that told you o How do you know when ritualistically clean water becomes unclean, and you have to get more? ▪ They had laws that told you 13 Yadaim 1.1, 2.3 7 Pastor Tyler Robbins Highway to Hell? The Dangers of Tradition and Externalism (Mk 7:1-23) Sunday Morning – November 18, 2018 Sleater-Kinney Road Baptist Church, Olympia, WA - o Excerpt:14 ▪ “The hands are susceptible to uncleanness, and they are rendered clean [by the pouring over them of water] up to the wrist. ▪ Thus if a man had poured the first water up to the wrist and the second water beyond the wrist, and the water flowed back to the hand, the hand becomes clean; but if he poured both the first water and the second beyond the wrist, and the water flowed back to the hand, the hand remains unclean. ▪ If he poured the first water over the one hand alone and then bethought himself and poured the second water over both hands, they remain unclean. ▪ If he poured the first water over both hands and then bethought himself and poured the second water over the one hand, his one hand [alone] is clean. ▪ If he had poured the water over the one hand and rubbed it on the other, it becomes unclean; but if he rubbed it on his head or on the wall [to dry it] it remains clean. ▪ The water may be poured over [the hands of] four or five persons side by side or one above the other, provided that they lie but loosely together so that the water may flow between them.” o This particular section of the Mishnah goes on for seven pages, discussing how to ritualistically purify your hands, in different circumstances o The larger section about uncleanness in general goes on for nearly 200 pages This is the context; this is why the scribes and Pharisees are upset As you consider how divorced this is from real life, and from God’s intention in the Tanakh,you can see why Jesus reacts so angrily: And he said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, “‘This people honors me with their lips, 14 Yadaim 2.3. 8 Pastor Tyler Robbins Highway to Hell? The Dangers of Tradition and Externalism (Mk 7:1-23) Sunday Morning – November 18, 2018 Sleater-Kinney Road Baptist Church, Olympia, WA but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’ (Mark 7:6-7). - - Jesus says: o “You’re hypocrites!” o “You pretend to love me by what you say, but your heart is far from me!” o “Your ‘worship’ is vain, useless, worthless, meaningless, pointless Why is Jesus so angry? You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men,” (Mk 7:8). - - Jesus is angry because they lie to people o They make their own rules, ignore the Scripture, and tell people this is what God wants o They lie o They twist the Scriptures o They pervert the grace of God o They don’t know who God is They think God is pleased with their works, and that they’ll earn a place in eternity o Jesus knows that’s not possible, the OT knows that’s not possible, the sacrificial system tells them it’s not possible, and they should know it’s not possible And he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition!” (Mk 7:9). - What examples does Jesus give? He tells us: For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’ But you say, 9 Pastor Tyler Robbins Highway to Hell? The Dangers of Tradition and Externalism (Mk 7:1-23) Sunday Morning – November 18, 2018 Sleater-Kinney Road Baptist Church, Olympia, WA ‘If a man tells his father or his mother, “Whatever you would have gained from me is Corban”’ (that is, given to God) — then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And many such things you do,” (Mk 7:10-13). - - What does this mean? o The law says to honor your father and mother o But, tradition held that if you made a vow and dedicated any of your possessions to God, it could never be used for anything but that purpose o So, theoretically, a young man could make a rash vow and officially declare a large portion of his wages to God, then later change his mind, but a court wouldn’t let him change his mind - because his vow was binding Following the oral law could force someone to break the 4th Commandment! o This is just one example of how far off the rails this tradition had gone So, who cares? o Jesus cares, and He uses this as a springboard for application for the crowd that’s watching: And he called the people to him again and said to them, “Hear me, all of you, and understand: There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him,” (Mk 7:14-15). - They’re worried about something outside, in the world, making contact with them and making them “unclean” and “unfit” to approach God – this is what’s driving these rules, this tradition o (1) “But,” Jesus explains, “you’re already unclean, because you’re a bad a nasty person!” o (2) “You’re worrying about the wrong thing!” o (3) “You can’t make yourself morally or ritualistically clean, no matter how many times you wash, because you have a sin generator running at max power right inside your heart!” 10 Pastor Tyler Robbins Highway to Hell? The Dangers of Tradition and Externalism (Mk 7:1-23) Sunday Morning – November 18, 2018 Sleater-Kinney Road Baptist Church, Olympia, WA And when he had entered the house and left the people, his disciples asked him about the parable. And he said to them, “Then are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled?” (Thus he declared all foods clean) (Mk 7:17-19). - There are laws about ritual uncleanness in the OT, and there are laws about unclean foods – Jesus isn’t denying any of that What He is doing is shoving it to the side to focus on the bigger issue (EX: you don’t chat with an unbeliever about why he should be a Baptist; you chat with him about why he should be a Christian!) o (1) “You’re worrying about unclean foods and unclean hands …” o (2) “I’m worried about your heart! God’s worried about your heart!” o (3) “That’s why I’m here; to give you a new heart and a new mind, and to put my Spirit within you … if you’ll repent and believe I’m the Messiah! And he said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person,” (Mk 7:2023). - You’re not a good person, I’m not a good person, we’re not good people, we’re not moral people, and we each deserve to be punished by God for our crimes: o What comes out of us, from our hearts is what makes us morally and ceremonially unclean – forget your hands, look at your hearts! o Your own thoughts and actions defile you! 3. CONCLUSION – The Pharisees Live! - Show excerpt from video (27:55 – 30:45) 11 Pastor Tyler Robbins Highway to Hell? The Dangers of Tradition and Externalism (Mk 7:1-23) Sunday Morning – November 18, 2018 Sleater-Kinney Road Baptist Church, Olympia, WA - - This man, Rabbi Immanuel Schochet, was lost – and he rejected Jesus for the same reasons as these scribes and Pharisees did, in our passage There are plenty of people today who make the same mistake, who toss out God’s word and replace it with their own opinions, and think they’re pleasing God by trying to work for their salvation … and all the while, they delude themselves into thinking they’re the ones who are righteous! If that is you, if you’re trying to please God by doing anything but repenting of your sins and believing in who Jesus is and what He’s done, and you think God is pleased with your efforts, then Jesus’ words are for you this morning: And he said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, “‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’ You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men,” (Mk 7:6-8). - - - Dead externalism, a religion about actions instead of right motivations, a religion based on the tradition of the elders instead of God’s word, will lead you straight to hell You’re unclean because of the bad things you think about and do o Jesus came to cleanse you from all unrighteousness o If you come to Him, no matter who you are or what you’ve done, He’ll be a good, merciful and perfect Savior Choose the Gospel, not tradition and externalism 12 Pastor Tyler Robbins