Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Church. Join me in prayer before we jump into this. Lord, we want to thank you so much for the gift of this morning. We thank you for the gift of church family. Lord, we thank you for our brother and his.
[00:00:12] Just an amazing report of the work that you are doing in this world. But we also, Lord, we thank you for the challenge from our brother to remind us of the truth of the kingdom need in our midst. God, I pray that for each and every one of us in this room, you would break our hearts for the kingdom meet around us, that we would have eyes to see the effects of the curse, the reality of lostness, and the way that it affects our own families, our own church, our own community, our own neighborhoods, our places of business, our social circles. Lord, we want to be men and women who give you our yes.
[00:00:48] Not just to show up to church on Sundays, not just to give to important things, but to actually be on mission for your kingdom. Lord, do this in us. We love you, Lord. We pray these things in your name. Amen.
[00:01:02] Good morning, church.
[00:01:05] What a joy to be together today. We are jumping back into the gospel of Matthew today. We've been off on a little break from Matthew for a while. I know, it's been too long. Listen, I promise you we will finish this before the presidential election is over. The next one, mind you, not the current one.
[00:01:28] We will get through Matthew, guys, I promise. We're going to be in Matthew 15 today. If you want to open your bibles and turn over to Matthew 15, if you don't have a physical bible with you today, we have house bibles around the room just looking at the chairs in front of you. We really believe in the importance of access to God's word here at Emmanuel. And so if you're here visiting today and you don't own a Bible, I'd strongly encourage you to snag one of those or tell one of the pastors, and we'll get you a little bit of a nicer one. But anyway, okay, so we've been on break from Matthew for a couple months, so let me catch us up a little bit on kind of the structure and story of Matthew and where we're picking up in the story, and then we're going to jump right into it. So Matthew, one of the four gospels, tells the story of the earthly ministry of Jesus, and it's structured around these series of narrative chunks and discourse chunks, and so it kind of goes back and forth between series of stories and then chunks of Jesus most famous teaching. When we were last in Matthew we were in a chunk of narratives that were contrasting the supernatural and miraculous authority of Jesus shown through his miracles, with the rising tension, confrontation and rejection that he was receiving from those who should have accepted him. Right? So if you go back and read Matthew 14, you get these series of narratives, some of the most famous miracle stories, right? You get Jesus walking on the sea of Galilee, Jesus feeding the 5000, but you also see Jesus neighbors who we grew up with, his own family, rejecting him and pushing him away. As we pick up today in Matthew 15, we're going to jump into the first part of an extended little scene that will bring this growing confrontation to the very center of jewish religious life in our text today, religious leaders from Jerusalem itself are going to come and question Jesus. And essentially, as we're going to see over the next couple weeks, Jesus just kind of sends them packing. So as we jump into this first part of this scene today, guys, I think we're going to be struck with this really important question that resounds all the way from this text to our lives right now, today. And that's this, guys, does your heart belong to Christ or this world? That's what we're getting at today. It's an important question and you may be wondering why we would focus a whole sermon on a question like this. I mean, like if you're sitting here and you're like, pastor, I'm a believer. Of course Christ has my heart. Yeah, and guys, there's like truth to that. But I think it's still an important question for us to consider in large part because in our text we're going to get to that question today by talking about legalism and the role of traditions in faith. See, the reality is all of us have preferences and traditions built into how we practice our faith. And these often hear that church, these traditions and preferences often birth legalism in our hearts. And legalism in faith really does raise this exact question. Beloved, who has your heart?
[00:04:48] So we're going to dig in pretty deep. We're going to go a little heady today on some cultural, historical, theological issues that were in Jesus day. And we really do have to go there to kind of wrap ourselves around this text. I don't want us to get lost in the weeds of that. And so for that reason, I'm gonna give you a little bit of an outline before we jump into the text. What we're gonna see as we dig through this text and this challenge from these religious leaders to Jesus is that legalistic religious tradition. It does have the ability to leave you with a sense of accomplishment, right? But it also leads to judgment and pride and separation. The only freedom from this when you're in the world of faith and religious practice and tradition is grounding our traditions and our practice in the word of God.
[00:05:41] When we do this, when we do that work of grounding our faith, our practice, our traditions, our preferences in the word we find out that a heart fully given to Christ is one that lives in gratitude and hope. And because of the amazing, the amazing gospel hope that this word speaks to us if that heart doesn't live in judgmentalism, doesn't live in pride or separation, but in gratitude and hope. So pray with me, church, and we're going to jump into this. Jesus, we need you this morning to be our teacher, to be our discipler. Lord, as we take a few minutes to dig into this text, God, I ask that you would be our teacher.
[00:06:18] Give us fresh, clear eyes to hear from you this morning exactly what our hearts need. Lord, you know, you know what has brought every heart into this room. You know those of us who are doing well and those of us who are struggling. Those of us who are very close to you and those of us who have fallen and lapsed into sin patterns and laziness and apathy. God, for every single one of us this morning I pray that you would speak to our hearts. What we need to hear from you.
[00:06:46] Let us hear from you, spirit. Let us be convicted and challenged, encouraged by you. Let us leave here today having met with you, Lord. We pray these things in your name, Jesus. Amen. Okay, so start with me. In verse one of chapter 15 we read this. Then Jesus was approached by pharisees and scribes from Jerusalem who asked, why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders for they don't wash their hands when they eat. Now, I'm gonna stop there really quick because here's the thing, guys. You should wash your hands before you eat. Can we just say that? Can we just say that? That's not the point of this text. But as a parent of children, you absolutely should wash your hands. That's a good thing. Okay, let me set up this scene. Jesus followers, right? They're coming off the high of these amazing miracles that we've seen in chapter 14. Jesus has walked on the stormy sea. He's fed the 5000. He's been traveling around the region of Galilee, kind of in the north kind of west coast of the Sea of Galilee. And everywhere he goes he's miraculously healing every physical ailment people bring to him. This ministry of Jesus at this point is raising a fuss.
[00:07:59] And by the way, really quick, our text this morning, it kind of reminds us of some of the geographical and cultural bias of Jesus's day in first century Palestine. So I'm gonna put up real quick a map of this region. Go a little geography on this for a second. By the way, most of your bibles probably have this in the very last page, but you can see on there at the bottom, the Dead Sea. And that's kind of the region where Jerusalem is up north. That little bitty jelly bean up there, that's the Sea of Galilee. And on the northwest coast of the Sea of Galilee, that's where the vast majority of Jesus life and ministry happens, is right in that little region. And the thing you need to know about the geography and the biases of this day is that Jerusalem, right? It's pretty far south of there. It's on the other side of Samaria from where Galilee is. And there arose this kind of snobbery in Jesus day, where they looked at Jerusalem and the temple as the real seat of their faith. This is where the real theology, the real thinking, the real authority happens. But even though there was actually a really large population of just like, passionate, live, real, genuine Judaism in the north, in Galilee, those religious leaders were kind of looked down upon. They were kind of considered like the country bumpkins, right? And so it actually makes a ton of sense that these leaders would come to check out Jesus from Jerusalem. This fuss is being risen, and they're hearing word about miracles and a possible messiah. But the reality is it's happening in Galilee. It's not like it's happening where the real rabbis are, right? And so they're coming to check it out and set him straight. Jesus has been raising a lot of attention, and we see that when these religious leaders come to meet him, they're not just coming to meet him. They're coming with their decision already made, because they just come out guns blazing with a pretty, just intense challenge against Jesus's religious and theological authority. We can miss this in the English, but it actually is a very bold challenge. Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? Now we're going to talk for a second about this phrase, what it means, the tradition of the elders. But we first have to note how they say this. See, they're not calling out Jesus for him breaking or not breaking some tradition. No, no, no. See, this is their way of making a question into an accusation by referencing Jesus followers and their practice. The implication here is that Jesus as a rabbi, his teaching is deficient to teach his disciples how to actually engage in these important spiritual practices. And what is his deficiency?
[00:10:55] They don't wash their hands before they eat.
[00:10:59] Now, again, I do know somewhere in this room was a middle school boy going, say, mom, I told you.
[00:11:11] But you have to understand, right? This is not talking about sanitation. This is not. This is before we knew what germs were, right? This is talking about ritual purity. This is something that had existed in jewish culture for a long time. Guys, think old Testament. Think of the laws and sacrifices around what makes something clean and unclean, right? Like, you remember those from the last time you read the Bible in a year, plan stalled out in Leviticus. You remember that part, right? Like, don't touch this. Do touch that. We're talking about the don't touch dead animals. Don't let your house get moldy. But here's the thing.
[00:11:49] If you go back and read Leviticus and deuteronomy and Exodus and, heck, even numbers, just for fun, what you'll find is that they're like, for fun, what you'll find is that there is no law in the Torah commanding God's people to wash their hands for ritual purity before they eat.
[00:12:15] That's not a thing. This actually isn't a biblical law for the ancient Jews. This law comes from the tradition of the Elders. So let's talk about that for a second. If you're familiar with modern Judaism, you probably know they use a couple books besides what we call the Old Testament Jews also look to the Talmud and the Mishnah to help them practice their faith. I'm going to give an example of a page of this. This is actually. We're actually going to be talking about a Mishnah rule today, but this is a picture of one of the ancient babylonian Talmuds. But they essentially function in the same. They essentially function the same purpose for the jewish faith. They just come from different points in their history. So here's the deal. These two books that we think are series of books, really, the Mishnah and the Talmud, they weren't actually codified into their modern forms until several centuries after Jesus death and resurrection. But the volumes that became the Mishnah, as these were actively being formed and collected and used in Jesus's day, even. Even though they weren't done yet. This library of books essentially sits as generations of commentary on the book of the law. And you have to understand, guys, this book arose from a very real need within the jewish community. It's very easy for us as christians to kind of miss this because we practice our faith with a degree of separation from the Old Testament laws. But the next time you actually read through the Pentateuch, the Torah, the first five in your Bible reading, I want you to take note of something. Almost all of the laws laid out in the first five books of the Bible are really specifically for the context of the ancient nation of Israel.
[00:14:02] You go back and you read the laws again. We kind of blaze over this, but think about it for a minute. God gave laws for how property would be handed down from generation to generation in the promised land. He gave laws for how priests would operate in a local community to judge disputes. He gave laws for how sacrifices would be offered in the tabernacle and eventually the temple. So many of these laws were really culturally and historically contextualized, specifically to the ancient nation of Israel. We say, okay, well, why does that matter? Well, fast forward to the last chapter of two kings.
[00:14:40] What were they supposed to do when Babylon showed up and the ancient nation of Israel ceased to exist?
[00:14:46] All of a sudden, there were no ancestral, promised allotments of land to hand down. There were no consecrated priests living in the community. There was no temple, an altar to offer sacrifices. How could Judaism continue to mean anything if they could not actually follow the commands of God? So, beginning in this time of the exile and continuing up until the fifth century, leaders in the jewish community studied, debated, prayed, and wrote out their thoughts on how God's people could continue to be God's people without Israel, the nation. These generations of study and debate turned into what is really this marvelous text, the Mishnah. It's volumes upon volumes. And the thing you have to understand about this book, if you ever read it, I doubt you will. But if you ever do, thing you have to understand about it is it's really built off of a fundamental, literal and legalistic take on the texts. Now, some of you guys are like, those sound like negative descriptors. I don't mean those in a negative sense. That's simply a description. This is how they were written. These ancient leaders were very fundamental because they sought to go back to the Torah, the first five books themselves, and to take every single command of God as seriously as they could. They worked their way through the Torah and identified every single statement. That was a command that God gave to his people. And the conclusion they came to was if God gave a command to his chosen people, it still applies, period. So they began to ask how these could possibly still apply. And they took a very literal and a very legalistic approach. They started with, how could a law be obeyed as literally to the t as possible? And then they took this legal mindset, and they went through every minutiae of possibilities of how this law might come into being in different scenarios and how you would apply it and how you would understand it with every possibility. So when you open a Mishnah, you'll find a big text or word in the middle of the page, and this represents some command in scripture. And then you will find varying sizes of fonts of text spiraling out from the page with varying sizes of text spiraling out from the spirals. And each of these represent case studies, arguments, and debates done by rabbis for generations going back to hundreds of years before the birth of Christ.
[00:17:14] And they collect these. Rabbi, this said this. But then 200 years later, Rabbi, this said, what about this? And then 100 years later, Rabbi, this said, well, yeah, but what about this? And they build out this case law for how they can apply God's word in every facet of life. So what are these religious leaders holding Jesus to? What's the specific law? Well, in Exodus 30, there's a law that says priests must wash their hands before they offer a sacrifice so the sacrifice will not become defiled. The way we see this law evolving through the thoughts of the elders from exile to the day of Jesus is because, well, okay, there were no more priests and there were no more priestly sacrifices, but really, God's chosen people. They're a nation of priests. And so their life of obeying the law, that's a sacrifice of prayers, praise. So remaining ceremonial clean became incredibly important, especially when touching and consuming food, because if one were to accidentally impurify some food and make it unclean before they eat it, that uncleanliness would enter into their body. And now their whole person is defiled, and the worship they offer afterwards is then defiled. And so you must wash your hands before you eat a.
[00:18:21] That's where we get. And by the way, it doesn't end there. If you read the Mishnah on hand washing, the debate continues. Exactly how much water is required to constitute hand washing versus wetting your hands? Could the water be poured over the hand, or was dipping your hands in a bowl sufficient? What sort of vessels might be used to gather this water and make it suitable for ceremonial washing? Who was allowed to hold the vessel and pour it out over the hands? It actually goes on and on beyond that.
[00:18:50] And what you can see in this, guys, is a passion for specificity and clarity in this school of thought. These religious leaders were deeply concerned with Israel maintaining her holiness. Like, I hope you don't hear me making fun of this text, right? These are holy men and women leaders of God's people, doing their absolute best to help people honor God with their lives when their whole system of thought and life and faith has been turned upside down.
[00:19:24] And so what we see in Jesus response is that in spite of what heart might have birthed this legalistic view of scripture, its practical outpouring is always going to be flawed. And, guys, this is just as true for these religious leaders in Jesus day as it is for us. The mindset of legalism is inherently flawed. It's inherently flawed. It's a broken way to look at God's word. And this is because the legalist is always going to become increasingly invested in gatekeeping.
[00:20:03] The deeper you go down the road of legalistic understanding of God's word, the more you're going to be concerned with who is in, who is out, who is right, who is wrong. And the legalist becomes the expert judge, and all of a sudden, they're the one who's best able to determine the worthiness of another. Why are they doing this? Why are they not doing this? Why are they not doing this the way I believe they should be doing this?
[00:20:29] It's a poisonous way to look at God's word, and it flaws God's community. Now, I'm going to say something that I think is going to get me in more trouble than anything I say theologically today. And that's this.
[00:20:44] I think the Star wars sequel trilogy is just as good as all the other Star wars movies.
[00:20:52] I think they're equal. Now, listen, before you move your membership to another church, let me explain what I mean.
[00:20:59] Because the reality is this, whether you like it or not, whether you like it or not, Star wars is a series of children's science fiction action movies where space wizards fight with laser swords while swashbuckling adventurers go pew, pew with lasers at Space Nazis. And you need to hear me right now. This is not me making fun of the franchise. It's not me making fun of the franchise. I'm deeply invested. I love everything I just described.
[00:21:27] What I'm saying here is, because of that, I'm pretty convinced that your favorite Star wars movie is whichever one you watched first. Or probably, or even maybe more than that, whichever one you watched on repeat when you were like nine or ten. Right, like that one is going to be your favorite. And if you had toys involved in that movie over the edge, that one is your favorite, right? The reason I say this is because, let's be honest, they're all actually pretty terrible, right? They're pretty poorly written. They're inconsistently produced, but it doesn't matter because they're full of fun space adventures, and people go, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew. Right? Like, it's. You don't care that they're not great because they're so much fun. Right? Why do I say all this? Because people my age telling people my daughter's age that the new movies are terrible, but the old ones are great. You know what? When I was her age, the prequels came out, and all the old people told me those ones were terrible and the old ones were better. And now all of a sudden, people like those ones because it really is just. Which one did you watch when you were nine? That's one. That was your favorite? Guys, here's the thing. At the end of the day, gatekeeping isn't fun when it comes to Star wars, it's dangerous when it comes to theological traditions.
[00:22:48] Right? It's actually destructively dangerous. In Mark 938, Jesus makes a statement that will be uncomfortable for many church folk. He says, whoever is not against us is for us.
[00:23:00] Now, he says this in reference to a jewish exorcist who had started casting out demons in the name of Christ, even though he wasn't actively following Christ. It's a weird passage that can make us kind of nervous, right? I mean, isn't some gatekeeping necessary? Right? Like, isn't some of it necessary? Absolutely. Some beliefs, some groups are christian and some are not. Right. Some theologies and beliefs are heretical, encounter the gospel message, and some are not. If you're looking at movements like, oh, outside of Christianity and acknowledging that they're not christian, like, that's not legalistic. That's not gate. It is gatekeeping, but it's not legalistic. It's just truth telling. When it comes to things like mormonism or the Jehovah's Witness or new age, like, it's telling the truth. Say those things are outside of the christian faith. To use our example earlier, I think of it this way. It's not fun or helpful to gatekeep kids about their favorite Star wars movie being worse than your favorite Star wars movie. That's not helpful. But if you were to try and tell that same child that Star wars is better than Star Trek, you're speaking falsehoods, and you need to be correct. Right? Like, that's. It's just objective facts, and you can't do anything about that.
[00:24:13] Sorry, had to get it in.
[00:24:16] For the sake of our text today.
[00:24:18] For the sake of our text today. What Jesus is addressing is a mindset where followers of God look at other followers of God and stand in judgment about who's better than who and who's in and who's outd. And they do so with the false measure of their traditions.
[00:24:38] Beloved this kind of legalism fundamentally breaks the gospel message. The gospel says, all who come to Christ and receive mercy and forgiveness, regardless of how good they are at the traditions.
[00:24:54] All can come to Christ, confess their sins, and receive mercy and forgiveness regardless of how holy or not holy they are. The mercy of Jesus, not their holiness. And adherence to tradition is what brings them to life. Let's let Jesus break this down for us further. Step into verse three with me. He, he being Jesus, answered them, well, why do you break God's commandment because of your tradition? For God said, honor your father and your mother. And whoever speaks evil of Father or mother must be put to death. But you say, whoever tells his father or mother, whatever benefit you might have received from me is a gift committed to the temple. He does not have to honor his father in this way. You have nullified the word of God because of your tradition.
[00:25:39] Jesus response to this self righteous challenge of these religious leaders, it really clarifies the issue if we know what he's talking about, because Jesus shows exactly how legalism and tradition break down and become counter to the gospel. Remember, the accusation wasn't that Jesus followers were breaking the commandment of scripture, but violating the traditions of the elders. So Jesus here helps us frame exactly where religious traditions should sit in the life of faith. And he does this by giving an example of how the traditions of the elders, with all their increasing spiraling complexity, can actually end up plainly violating a direct commandment of God in scripture and their legalistic attempt to obey another one. The example here was this debate that existed about what do you do when someone makes a foolish vow they shouldn't have made? It's found out later the vow was foolish or unwise. What do you do with it? And the decision the elders landed on was, if you made a vow, you need to stick to it regardless of the consequences. So if someone vowed a large amount of land or money, a grant to the temple for worship, and it later became evident that this vow hindered them from being able to care for their parents or their in laws in their old age. And the parents were expected to suck it up to the glory of God and just deal with it in Jesus day. By the way, it's documented this led to some abuse of this system where essentially folk would get mad at their parents or their in laws, and they would commit certain amounts of their estate to be donated to the church upon their death.
[00:27:20] So they still had it while they were alive, but used that vow as their excuse for why they didn't have to care for their parents or their in laws in their time of need. Jesus here points out that this tradition's application of a law about vows has led them to flagrantly break a direct scriptural commandment from God about honoring one's parents.
[00:27:43] Jesus makes it very clear here that theological traditions must be in submission to the word of God. That's where they live now. It would be so easy for us, and many of us do, to just say, oh, what I think is going on here is that human theological traditions are unhelpful and even sinful. We should just boot them all. Here's the problem, guys. First off, scripture doesn't actually teach us that. But second off, it misses a really important point. That's impossible.
[00:28:14] You can't boot all your religious and theological traditions. And even if you could, you shouldn't, because they're incredibly important, as we saw with the cultural moment that led to the creation of the Mishnah itself. Our religious and theological traditions, guys, they represent the efforts of godly brothers and sisters in the faith to contextualize the teaching of scripture, scripture to a specific cultural moment. And let's be honest, we need that.
[00:28:45] We don't live in the Middle east in the first century under roman rule, so a lot of the New Testament, if we're honest, is strange and confusing, right? Like, there are parts that we read them from up front, like while the worship song is playing in the background, you're like, that's beautiful. But sometimes, like, you, you open up that passage later and you read, like, the paragraph right after it and you go, what the heck is he talking about? This makes no sense to me. The New Testament can be very confusing. It can seem very strange and foreign. Well, yeah, it's a 2000 year old document written in a different language to a different culture in a different cultural moment.
[00:29:22] It's hard to understand.
[00:29:24] And guys, you have to understand that our theological and our religious traditions were designed by brothers and sisters, most of whom did so in good faith, to help us contextualize important truths in the scripture. We need them. So it leaves us with an important question. What actually makes traditions helpful and what makes them hurtful? Well, luckily, Jesus gives us the basic framework here. And the scripture really, like it, really clarifies this for us. The basic framework he gives us is that we are free to engage in human traditions with regards to our faith, religious practice. But they must be in service to the word of God, not in opposition to it. In other words, do these man made traditions help point us to biblical fidelity, or do they hinder it? You see, we're so blind to this because it's just the air we breathe. But you have to understand, your practice of faith right here at Emmanuel Fellowship church today in 2024, is full of traditions that are man made, because man made traditions in our faith experience, ones that most of us like, we never think about them. Most of the time, they're helpful. I mean, think about this meeting in dedicated church buildings, the building we're in. Guys, that's not a biblical commandment. We first met. Look, in acts. We first met in the temple, then we met in synagogues, then we met in homes. It wasn't until after the legalization, an explosive growth of Christianity, that we began to meet in dedicated worship spaces. And yet, there are all sorts of ways in our cultural moment that this is actually a really helpful tradition. Really helpful. What about song lyrics put up on the walls?
[00:31:11] Christians don't always used to do that.
[00:31:14] We used to just sing the psalms. Well, then christians began to write hymns to codify and teach christian theology. And after the invention of the printing press, all of a sudden, churches could expand their library of songs beyond the number of songs the congregation could all have memorized at the same time. And in the modern age, most of us can no longer sight read music. And so simple projected lyrics help remove distractions that could be created by singing songs you don't know or looking at a hymnal you don't know how to read. It's tradition, one that's contextualized to be helpful and one that is not necessary.
[00:31:49] Just a thing that we see is helpful. What about church membership?
[00:31:53] In the early church, we were committed to whatever church existed in the community where we became a believer, because, big surprise, guys, you had one option. You lived in Corinth. Guess which church you went to. The corinthian church. And you get there and you go, hey, this place is wackadoo. Sorry, move to Rome or go to that church. Like that's your option, right? Well, we don't live in that moment. We live in a moment where almost all of you, past multiple faithful gospel preaching churches in your drive, on your way to this dedicated worship space where we project lyrics on the wall, right?
[00:32:25] That's the thing that exists in our time. And so membership allows us to express our covenantal commitment to a community and our submission to the specific leaders and pastors God has put over us for our discipleship and our benefit. Right? It's tradition. It's not a biblical command, but I think it's a very helpful one. I could keep going, but I really think you get the point.
[00:32:46] Many Protestants, and especially those of us who come from non denominational, independent and baptist churches, we love to pretend that we reject all traditions. No, we just believe the Bible and do what the Bible says. And I think many of us do this because of problems we see in some of the high church movements, like the Roman Catholic Church, where man made tradition is given equal weight to scripture and we see ways that can be really destructive. And you end up with doctrines like papal infallibility and limbo. And those things exist in stark, plain contrast to the clear teaching of scripture. But it's important to remember, guys, it's important to remember that just because we don't do their traditions doesn't mean we don't have traditions and it doesn't mean the traditions are bad.
[00:33:30] We have man made traditions built into our practice of faith. And guys, these have a really important role to play in our practice of faith. The challenge here for believers is for us to regularly put our eyes on those traditions.
[00:33:47] Can you hold them with open hands? Continually asking not only if they're still helpful at pointing you to the word of God, but if they're drawing you into a legalistic mindset in an area of christian freedom, because that's the other way these traditions go. Most of our traditions rise and out of meeting a need.
[00:34:07] But guys, sometimes, sometimes we have to hold them in tension because of our christian freedom and the needs of a brother and sister. You know, if you go back and look like in the 19th century after the temperance movement, many american faith traditions began the tradition of abstaining from alcohol. And that only goes back about that far, right? Like late 18 hundreds is when that began, became a relatively normal thing and pretty much exclusively the american church. And by the way, there were some really good reasons for this, not the least of which is to help protect people in our midst who struggle with overconsumption and the companion sins that go with that, right? There are still some traditions that hold to that, although it's becoming less and less. That was something that birthed out of a specific cultural need. And there are still brothers and sisters who hold to it, and they have good reasons for holding to it. And yet. But how easy is it?
[00:35:02] How easy is it for a tradition like teetotaling to turn into a judgmental legalism that puts down brothers and sisters who practice or believe differently on that issue?
[00:35:14] Right?
[00:35:16] It is so important to take our traditions and hold them with this open hand that keeps them in tension and examines them. Is this still pointing me to Christ? Or is it hindering me from the word of and is this pointing me toward legalism where I put down brothers and sisters? I could give any number of examples here, guys, but at the end of the day, it just comes down to this, our practice of faith. We have to live our practice of faith with our traditions in very purposeful tension.
[00:35:42] To keep them in tension. You must hold your preferences for how people dress in church, for the style of music we play, for the length of sermons, for certain annual events that are really important to you guys. You have to hold them with open hands because they may be helpful to point folk toward Jesus today and then stop being helpful tomorrow, they may cease to be beneficial.
[00:36:11] You must keep watch on yourself to see if these traditions, do they push you toward the word of God, or are they pushing you toward a place of legalistic judgmentalism? Your traditions cause you to look down on believers who simply, at the end of the day, just aren't matching your preference for traditions.
[00:36:31] Look how Jesus continues. This is as far as we're gonna go. In the text today, verse seven, Jesus says, hypocrites.
[00:36:39] Isaiah prophesied correctly about you when he said, this, people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. They worship me in vain. I teaching as doctrines, human commands.
[00:36:52] Jesus brings us here to the true heart of the matter. These legalistic leaders are hypocrites. They are standing in judgment of Jesus for not living up to their tradition. And that very same tradition is causing people to violate the commands of God and move farther away from him. This quote from Isaiah is so bold, but it's so good for us today. This kind of legalism has the appearance of holiness because it's dressed up in religious language and it's dressed up in religious practice. And yet we see it is far from the heart of God.
[00:37:28] And so now we land out. We arrive back at the question we began with, beloved, do you worship God or human tradition?
[00:37:40] Does God have your heart or does the world have your heart? And how can you possibly know?
[00:37:47] How do you actually do the work of being aware of your traditions and holding them in tension and not using them to harm a brother or sister. Like, this seems like just a lot of work when the whole point of the traditions is that we can, like, just kind of move on, right? We can practice them, and it helps our faith, and we don't have to think about it. Well, guys, there's actually a really simple solution, and this is where we're going to land today.
[00:38:10] It all comes back to the primacy of the word of God.
[00:38:14] If you want to live a life with a heart bent toward God and not the traditions of man with genuine worship and not what Isaiah calls lip service, then you must actually know God, and you can't know him apart from his word.
[00:38:32] If you're a student of the word, if you're a student of the word, you will grow in your knowledge of and intimacy with the God of the Bible, period.
[00:38:44] And, beloved, the more you know him, the more you'll be able to naturally hold your traditions with open hands, the more you will naturally reject legalism in favor of the amazing grace of the gospel of Jesus. Beloved, give your heart to God. Don't offer him lip service.
[00:39:03] Seek out a life of genuine faith. Genuine faith, beloved. And I'm here to tell you, there's no shortcut to this. There isn't. This will only happen if your very life is formed and driven by the word of God.
[00:39:21] You can't get it otherwise. There's no tradition, no pastor, no program, no social media follow, no small group, no church service. There's nothing man can put together that will be a substitute for you. Connecting with God through his word, supernaturally revealed and preserved and delivered to you and interpreted by his spirit to you. There is no substitute for it. There's all sorts of tools and traditions that can help, but they cannot do the work for you. They cannot. Look, I get it. We live in a cultural moment that basically rejects the concept of reading, right? Like, that's much less deeply reading and studying ancient texts while also doing self reflection. Right? Like, these are not things that our culture encourages us to do. Most of us are terribly embarrassed to admit this, but the reality is most of us don't read our bibles. Or at least we don't read them often.
[00:40:17] And we don't read them often because if we're honest, it's boring and hard and confusing. And we have access to Netflix, so why would we?
[00:40:27] And here's the thing, guys.
[00:40:29] Like, I'm just here to tell you. Like, we can be embarrassed about that, and we can pretend that's not true, because we're in church and here's all the holy people, and I'm sure everyone else reads their bible every single morning. It is way better being a Christian than I am. But we all know that's just not true.
[00:40:44] All of us struggle with that. We live in an information overload and an entertainment overload. You have distraction and fun and mental equivalent of cotton candy in your pocket all day long, every day. And this is a thousands of year old text that's been translated and cuts to the very core of your person. That takes intellectual and emotional and spiritual prowess to engage to the fullest.
[00:41:09] And life's hard and stressful. And I just got my kids to bed, and it's already 930, and I gotta be up at 530. I would much rather just watch Netflix. Right? That's life. That's real. There's no shame in that, guys.
[00:41:24] But I want to challenge you on it.
[00:41:26] I want to challenge you on it because there is no substitute for the word of God.
[00:41:32] There is no shortcut cut. If you're sitting here and you're going, I don't know, like, I love my church, like, I love my family here, but my faith, it really is, like, it's just stagnant. I'm here to tell you, beloved, your faith won't grow without the word, period.
[00:41:46] You will not take next steps of growth in holiness, of growth and engagement in mission, of growth in your relationships around you. It will not happen without the word of God.
[00:41:57] There's no tradition. There's no shortcut that will get you there. And yes, it is hard, and it takes work, and it's a skill set. You have to learn. But you can. I promise you can. I promise you can. Because, look, I don't. I hope you don't take this as a Jesus juke. I just think it's a rebuke, like a challenge. We need that. I need. My question is this. Are you the kind of person who's willing to do a deep dive of reviews on a product before you purchase one? You know what I'm saying? Like, you're sitting there and you're like, oh, man, we need new air conditioning. And so you, like, you spend three days reading about every single air conditioning unit that's for sale. And, like, all the different goods and bads and all, and you call different people, you're willing to do all this research for that. And, like, by the way, I said air conditioning, but let's get way Pettier. I'm like, hmm, I can upgrade my phone this month. I wonder which phone I should get. Is my phone broken? I don't know. It works fine, but I have access to a new one. And so I spent three days reading every single review and watching YouTube videos and taking deep dives and calling people who have the phone and go. So you have that? You like the upgraded camera? You like the camera, huh? Like, right? It's a really normal thing. In our world, when something's important to us, we do the hard work of researching it and learning about it and investing ourselves in it. We do.
[00:43:14] It's true, guys. We can pretend it's nothing, but it's true.
[00:43:18] I'm here to tell you your faith will not continue to grow without investment in the word of God. This is how, the primary way that God has revealed himself to you. This is the primary way that God makes his heart known to you. This is the primary way you grow an intimacy with him, that you get to know his heart for you, that you get to know his calling on your life, that you get to hear his voice helping you discern how to live. If you want your faith to grow, you must be a student of the word.
[00:43:49] It won't happen without this. There is no shortcut, beloved. The word of God is our application if you want to know, like, what do I do? How do I do this work? How do I not live a judgmental life? How do I process through the jump into the word of God?
[00:44:08] And I'm here to tell you, whatever your current relationship is with the word of God, taking one step deeper into it is going to bear fruit in your life.
[00:44:17] Like, I'm not saying that you need to sign up for 13 precepts classes this afternoon. Like, some of you are like, I actually could handle 13. I'm already at eleven. Like, and that's fine, but some of you guys are like, you just need to read your Bible this week. Well, I don't know what to read. I'm here to tell. It really doesn't matter. Like, some of you, your step this week is find the Bible in your house and open it up and read a verse.
[00:44:43] Well, how do I know which verse to find? Hey, listen, it's all the word of God and you may get a couple weird ones in there, but you spend about ten minutes, I'm pretty sure you'll find one you need because there is a next step for you. And it can be a teeny tiny step.
[00:44:57] It can be downloading the bible app onto your phone. It could be texting your GC and saying, hey, could we like read through ephesians together. I heard James is really practical. Would you read James with me?
[00:45:10] Hey, we're going through Matthew. I think we're taking ten years to get there. I might actually be able to read it, the whole thing before they preach another sermon in Matthew.
[00:45:20] There is a next step you can take, beloved, and here's what I'll tell you. Here's where I'll land. Chris, if you want to come back up, because if you, if you make this commitment to take a step, a step deeper into your engagement with Christ through his word, what you're going to find is this.
[00:45:37] Beloved, the word of God always comes back to one thing.
[00:45:42] It's faith in the love of God for dreadful sinners like you and me.
[00:45:47] That is the message of this book. And wherever you pick up and whatever you dig into, it's going to draw you back to this.
[00:45:55] God loves dreadful sinners like you and me terribly. And you can trust him and have faith in him.
[00:46:00] That is the message.
[00:46:02] As that is worth your investment, that will change you, it will affect you, change your life. So here's what I'm gonna invite us to do. Here's how we're gonna land. We do this pretty much every week and I think it's helpful. We're gonna take a few minutes and I just wanna invite you to sit in prayer. If God is speaking something in your heart today and you need to process it, man, you can grab one of our pastors right now. We'd love to sit with you and pray or chat. You can grab one of the blue connect cards in the back and schedule a time to meet with one of our pastors to process what God's telling you. Can just write down a prayer request. I was really convicted by this and I want to read my bible more. Please pray for me. You can drop it in the box and our pastor and our prayer too.
[00:46:40] I want you to take a minute, I want you to engage whatever God is doing and if you can do that, just sit in your seat in prayer. That's awesome. If you want to get on your knees, if you want to fill out the car, whatever you need to do. I want to encourage you to take a couple minutes to meet with Christ and talk to him about what he's telling you this morning.
[00:46:57] Beloved, are you willing to take your preferences, your traditions and hold them with an opening to the Lord?
[00:47:06] Are you willing to look at your brothers and sisters and your faith family with the grace that says we've got your traditions and I've got mine. But we've both got Jesus.
[00:47:16] Are you willing to let the word of God have primacy in your life today to be what drives your practice?
[00:47:25] Take a few minutes to meet with him. Once we've sat in that for a minute, we're going to take communion. Continue our time of response.
