Tradition vs. Truth

I've got your Bibles with you. Turn with me if you would to Mark chapter 7. We're going to be starting out with verses 1 through 6.

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 Dining couches and the Pharisees and the scribes ask him Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands? 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 him Bow with me as we go to our Lord in prayer Heavenly Father I pray for Sarah Alligood Karen Simpson Judy Swigard, for Rita Haynes, for Karen Starcher. They all need the touch of our great physician, you. We pray Father for their healing. I thank you for the birth of Adrian Lewis. We continue to pray for complete healing for Kiva.

We pray for a complete healing for Nicole Lowes. Father we are looking at a powerful passage of Scripture today. This passage should make us tremble.

We see a group of religious zealots who are so caught up in their traditions and rituals That they deceive themselves into believing that they're in a right relationship with God. Lord help us to see both the value of tradition, but also the danger in tradition. Give us understanding that our traditions must line up with the Word of God, and if they don't they must be rejected. Help us to realize that being loving does not mean compromising. Help us to care enough for the souls of the ungodly that we will give them the truth without compromise. For it is in the precious and the holy name of Jesus that we pray. Amen.

You may be seated. In the musical Fiddler on the Roof, the Russian Jewish father Tevye watches as all of these changes are taking place all around him, and he thinks that they are just challenging his very life. He has a statement that he believes and that is that tradition gives stability. So in the musical he shouts out in song and he says this, How do we keep our balance?

Answer! Tradition. A lot of things that we do in the church are because of tradition.

The times that we meet are tradition. The structure of our church building, tradition. The way that we do ministry and the way that we do services, tradition. The style of music.

The structure of the service itself. The instruments that we use. All that is just tradition. It's just tradition.

Did you realize that the pipe organ was not used in the church in America until 1704 and the Puritans fought it like crazy? Most of us would agree with Tevye, the Russian Jewish father, who cried out and said this, Without our tradition, our lives would be as shaky as a fiddler on the roof. Now before I go on, it needs to be said that all our traditions are not bad. In fact, a thing becomes a tradition because it worked.

Or it was light or it was just the right thing to do. I love the statement that Jeremiah said back in Jeremiah 6 verse 16 when he said, Ask for the old past, where the good way is, and walk in it, that you might find rest into your souls. What was Jeremiah talking about? He's looking back to the reign of David and Hezekiah, Josiah, who were good godly kings, who worshiped the Lord in spirit and in truth.

Jeremiah was just hungering for those good old days. I do that myself with the Puritans, with the traditions that they had. I love their Puritan work ethic.

I love the fact that they had such a strong, powerful commitment spiritually and emotionally and even physically. I love their traditions, but I have to be careful not to put the word of the traditions over and above the Word of God. For it's the Word of God and only the Word of God that we can completely trust. It's the Word of God that has power.

It's the Word of God that has authority. Before we look at the era of the tradition of the Pharisees, let's look at what's right with traditions. And I guess primarily what we might say is this, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Sometimes you don't need to reinvent the wheel. And we can certainly benefit from that which is tried and true. So very quickly, let me share with you three benefits of good traditions. Number one, traditions exert enormous pull on our emotions. Traditions connect us in profound ways to our past.

And they help us with nostalgia and bring security into our life sometimes. About three years ago, I got a telephone call from the interim pastor at Purcell Church in in Charlotte, North Carolina. And he called me, and that was the church that I used to go to when I was a kid. And he called me and said, Doug, he said, the church is closing its doors. And he said, we're going to have one final church service. We're going to invite all the former members of Purcell Church. And we want you to come and we would like for you to preach that service.

Would you do it? And I said, yes, I would. That's the church that I was raised up in. It's also the church that Cindy was raised up in. Cindy was born while her mom and dad were at that church. And I've often told Cindy when her mom brought her in for that first day, I was six years old. And I walked over to her.

I looked down in that bassinet, and I said, wow, she's going to be good looking. I said, man, I'm going to marry that girl. Now, I didn't really know at that point in time that I was going to marry Cindy.

But you know what? God knew, and God brought us together, and I praise God for that. So I have known Cindy all her life. But when I arrived at that church building, Cindy and I got there that morning, it was just amazing how all these memories just came rushing back in. There was a smell in that church. It was a very good smell. There was the pews. They were wooden and hard as a brick. And there was stained glass windows that I remember looking at as a kid and just being amazed at how beautiful they were.

All those things just came rushing back on me, and I remember what I thought as a kid. This place is different. It's not like at home. It's not like at a school.

It's not like in a grocery store. This is the place that I come to worship God. I would have been upset if all that stuff was gone, because it connected me to good things from my past. And the reason we act so strongly to those who violate our traditions is because traditions attach themselves more to our emotions than they do to our intellect. Good traditions make us feel good. Try planning a wedding service without tradition and see how that goes for you.

It will not work out very well. All right, number two. Traditions define our comfort zone, and they give us a sense of belonging. If you don't believe that, it's true, then go to a Clemson football game. And you get there. Everybody gets there about the same time. You park your car.

First thing you do is you go downtown, about four or five stores, and you go downtown, and you have to buy a Clemson t-shirt and the newest bumper sticker. And then you come back to the car to tailgate. And what's that? That's eating your lunch. And so you get it all out.

Everybody eats the same thing, fried chicken, baked beans, and deviled eggs. And then you've got to go over to the stadium, and you've got to get there at least a half hour before the game, because you can't miss the team running down the hill and touching the rock. And everybody's just going absolutely crazy. And what if you got a guy that's right there beside you, and he's never been to a Clemson football game? He doesn't care anything about Clemson. And he says, what a stupid tradition. This is a dumb thing to do. You need to come up with some other gimmick.

It just doesn't work. You might get tarred and feathered if you're there with a bunch of Clemson people. Folks, church traditions can be just as entrenched. I got saved my last year at Clemson, and after graduation, came back to Charlotte. And on the recommendation of Chip Sloan, we went to Calvary Baptist Church and joined that church. The music minister at that time was named Carol Dellinger. He's about 70 years old, and Carol and I became very close friends very quickly.

Loved this man to death. Well, after a couple years, I went on to seminary, and I finished seminary when I was in seminary. I pastored Olive Grove Baptist Church for two years, and then I moved on to Southside Baptist Church in Charlotte.

And when I got back to Southside, Southside was without a music minister. And so Carol had resigned, retired, from Calvary Baptist Church as their music minister, and I called him up. I said, Carol, you got to help me out. I need you to come and be our music minister.

He said, I'd be glad to. And he came, and man, what a wonderful, glorious job he did. And not only that, but I would preach revivals about twice a year, and when I'd go off to revivals, he'd go with me, and he would lead the music. When we went to Canada, I went five times up to Canada to preach revivals there, and a couple times, Carol went with me. And every time he'd go to a new place with me, Carol would sing a solo.

He would sing, The King is Coming. I've never heard anybody sing it like him. I mean, it just blessed everybody's socks off when he sang that song. A few years ago, Carol died. I preached his funeral service, and after I finished preaching, they did a recording of Carol Dellinger singing the song, The King is Coming. There was not a dry eye there. Every time I see a member of Carol's family today, or to see a friend of Carol's, will always say the same thing.

Nobody could sing, The King is Coming, like Carol Dellinger. That's a tradition, brothers and sisters, and it's a good tradition. It makes us feel good. Thirdly, tradition may be helpful in doing ministry. Most of our church traditions were started by good, godly people who were zealously trying to live out their Christian life. We have precedent for this in Scripture. In Joshua chapter 4, verses 4 through 7, where the Scripture says this, So Joshua called together the twelve men he had appointed from the Israelites, one from each tribe, and said to them, Go over before the ark of the Lord your God into the middle of the Jordan. Each of you is to take up a stone on his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites, to serve as a sign among you. In the future, when your children ask you, What do these stones mean? Tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord, when it crossed the Jordan.

The waters of the Jordan were cut off. These stones are to be a memorial to the people of Israel forever. Why did they erect those stones there as a reminder to them to bring something to their remembrance, to help them to remember that it was God who brought them out of Egypt, that it was God who brought them into the promised land, that it was God who opened up the Jordan River.

And not only would they remember it, but then they could pass it down from one generation to the next, to the next, to the next, to their children, their grandchildren, their great-grandchildren, so it could continue to be passed down. Hebrews chapter 13 verse 8 says Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Folks, God's people need to be connected to our past. In Harry Reader's book on revitalization called From Embers to Flames, Harry had a section in there where he was sharing the importance of a church being connected to its past.

Listen to what Harry said. The way that a church worships, for example, can either connect it to the past or effectively sever it from history. We join ourselves with saints through the ages when we recite historic confessions of faith like the ancient Apostles Creed or the Westminster Catechism from Puritan England. And there are many great old hymns that God's people have sung for generation after generation. These should not be jettisoned from our worship just because people may be unfamiliar with their music style or lyrical depth. Nothing good comes easy, and with a little time and work, people can learn to enjoy older music.

We don't want to go to the other extreme and imply that no good music has been written since the 19th century, of course, but we should maintain some kind of balance between the past and the present. God is the God of today. He is the God of the ages, and those aspects of his nature should be reflected in our worship. Good worship does not engage in the arrogance of modernity, which disconnects from the past, nor does it participate in the idolatry of traditionalism, which lives in the past. Rather, we should begin with a great classical worship that at one time was contemporary and has now become tried and true, and then build on it, being ready to absorb that which is excellent in the present. Good worship is offered in spirit and in truth, honors Christ, and facilitates the praise of God's people and the communication of the gospel to the lost.

It is connected to the past without living in the past, contextualized in the present without accommodating the present, and setting a pattern to shape the future instead of becoming dated in the future. Thus, it becomes an example of our overall philosophy of ministry. All right, with that said, I got three points that I want to share with you today.

Point one is the interrogation. Look with me at verses one through five. Now, when the Pharisees gathered him, some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem, they saw that some of the disciples ate with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed. 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. 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? Now, where are we in this point of the ministry of Jesus? Jesus is 32 years old. He has been in the public ministry now for two years. He has preached to thousands of people. He has preached the Word. He has healed the sick. He has cast out demons. He has raised the dead.

He has fed 5,000 men with five loaves and two fish. His popularity is out the roof. It has skyrocketed, and the people have tried to make him become their political king, and Jesus rejected that. Well, as his popularity was skyrocketing, there were the Jewish religious leaders back in Jerusalem who were very concerned about this.

They didn't like it because they thought it was really going to have an effect on them, and it was. And so they decided to send the contingent of Jewish scribes and scholars back down from Jerusalem to Galilee in order that they might try to find something that Jesus was doing wrong so they could major on that, and they could try to destroy the ministry of Christ. And Jesus had never sinned, so they couldn't accuse him of sexual misconduct or laundering money or just doing anything that was wrong because Jesus had never done anything that was wrong. Jesus had never sinned, so they couldn't accuse him of that.

They didn't even go there. So they went instead to their oral tradition. What was the oral tradition? The oral tradition started way back during the Babylonian captivity where they started making these little rules and regulations, and they kept up with them. And they did that for a number of centuries until it got down to the second century BC, and they put all those rules and the regulations into a book they called the Mishnah. And then for two more hundred years, they kept making more of these little rules and regulations, and they put that in another little book called the Gemara. And then about zero at that point in time in history, they took the Gemara and the Mishnah, and they put them together, and they formed it to a book that is called the Jewish Talmud. Now the Jewish Talmud is called the fence around the law.

What does that mean? That means inside the fence there's the Ten Commandments. And all these rules and all these regulations that were given in this Talmud, which is huge, huge book, all of that were little rules and regulations that if you would keep them, they said, then that would keep you from keeping the big laws that were inside the fence. So it was all these pages broken up into six sections or six subjects, and those subjects were agriculture, festivals, women, civil and criminal law, sacred things, and ritual purity. This was called the tradition of the elders. The Pharisees measured everyone by their adherence and observance and obedience to the tradition of the elders. So this formal delegation of Pharisees and scribes got down into Galilee.

They started checking out what Jesus and the disciples were doing, and they said, this is where we'll get him. They are not ceremonially washing their hands. Now this had nothing to do with hygiene. They didn't say you'll wash your hands to keep the germs off so you won't get sick and get diseased. It didn't have anything to do with it. This had to do, hand washing had to do with a means to obtain favor with God.

That's what it was all about. Now listen to the reasoning from the Mishnah. The Mishnah said that when you went to sleep at night, there was a certain demon whose name was Shiptah, and Shiptah, when you went to sleep, would go over in your bed and sit on your hands. And because of that, when you get up the next morning, if you were going to breakfast and you didn't ceremonially wash your hands, then Shiptah would still be sitting on their hand, and when you took your fork, brought it up to your mouth, that demon could jump in your mouth, and you'd be demon-possessed.

Wow! But even more important, hand washing, ceremonial hand washing, was looked on as being salvific. This is what the Talmud said. Whoever is firmly implanted in the land of Israel, who speaks the holy language, who eats its food in purity as required by hand washing rituals, and recites the Shema, morning and evening, is assured of life in the world to come. The Pharisees were saying, a person can't be saved without ceremonial hand washing.

How sad. So the Pharisees interrogated Jesus. Listen to what they said to him. Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders? But they eat their bread with impure hands. That question was not asked out of curiosity. It was asked out of outrage. They were furious that these disciples, these followers of Jesus, took something that they thought was so important, and the disciples didn't think it was important at all.

They wouldn't even do it. All right, that takes us to point to the indictment, verses 6 through 9. 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 you hold to the traditions of men. And he said to them, you have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition. Folks, this is the Son of God speaking, and he doesn't hold anything back. He said, rightly did Isaiah say about you, you're nothing but hypocrites. It's not a way to win friends and influence people, is it? But Jesus knew that what was going on here, what they were doing, was wrong, and that they had to be dealt with, they needed to be corrected.

How important is that? Folks, there are those in the church today who believe that Christians need to keep their mouth shut about subjects like sexual perversion and transgenderism and same-sex marriage and abortion. They say just keep your mouth shut about this, because if you don't, you're being judgmental, and you're being unloving. I want you to know that it is not unloving and being judgmental to tell somebody the truth. You need to say it in love, but it needs to be absolute truth.

Let me give you an example. What if you knew that on this particular road there was a big curve and that the bridge had just gone out right around the curve, and you knew that if you went around there, because there are no signs telling you about it, if you went around that curve and you were going too fast, you'd go right off into the river and you could be drowned. Would it be wrong for you to tell somebody that's on that road, be very careful there, because you might get killed if you go around that curve too fast, because you might not be able to stop.

Folks, we need to be very careful. We need to understand that to be silent about truth is oftentimes to be sinful. This is the very first time that Jesus used the word hypocrite in the Gospels.

The very first time. What is hypocrisy? It's play-acting. It is pretending.

It's putting on a show. Tom Hovestal said this, traditions have an unseen downside. Traditions stick because they work, because people can keep them. Often traditions are followed mechanically and mindlessly. Over time the distinction between the truth of God and our traditions becomes blurred, and we tend to cling more tenaciously to our human traditions than we do to the Holy Scripture.

That's true. Let me give you an example, quoting the Apostles Creed. Is that a good thing? Yeah, it is a good thing, because it's a good thing because it's right theology. It is a declaration of what we believe as the people of God, of what the Scripture says about how to live, about who we are, about who we belong to, all these good things, and it's correct theology, and it's a very good thing. But I'm gonna be honest with you, for years after my conversion that took place when I was 21 years old, for years I had no use at all for the quoting of the Apostles Creed. I don't have anything to do with it.

Let me tell you why. Because before my conversion, I went to a church where I never heard the gospel. I went to a church where I never heard about my need to repent of sin. I went to a church where I never heard that God commands His people to walk holy before them, and they quoted the Apostles Creed every Sunday, and I knew when I got saved, they're just going through the motions.

They're just saying the words. This doesn't mean anything to the heart in that church. Then I went to a Baptist church after I came to know Christ. Heard the gospel every week. I was called to repentance.

I was called to a holy walk with the Lord, and that church never quoted or recited the Apostles Creed. So I said, well, if they don't do it, I don't need to do it either. And what did I do? I threw the baby out with the bathwater. I said to myself, I don't want anything to do with this dead, formal, lifeless, boring ritual.

I was wrong as I could be. Because, folks, the Apostles Creed is filled with the greatest theology in the world. It tells us who we are as children of God. It tells us who Jesus is. It tells us who the Holy Spirit is. It tells us who God the Father is.

What a glorious thing. When true children of God corporately and publicly, with zest and zeal, proclaim their faith with boldness, that's a good thing. And it stays good until it becomes just kind of a rote, going through the motions thing.

And if it's that, it ceases to be powerful. Folks, traditions are easier to obey than God's truth. Traditions can be accomplished by gut power, but following God's Holy Word can only be accomplished through Spirit power. When traditions become automatic, it's easy to lose your intimacy with the Lord.

R.C. Sproul said the following, and all I can say about this is Amen. He said, if you really want to get a feel for your doctrine of God, look at your worship. Far more than what we confess with our lips, how we worship God shows what we really believe about His character. If we worship the God of the Bible, we can never worship Him in a cavalier manner. Worship can never be an exercise in entertainment. When we walk through the sanctuary doors, we understand that we are coming into the presence of the God of the universe, who is searching for people to worship Him in Spirit and in truth. If that's how we understand God, our worship will have an element of gravitas, of holiness, of reverence, of adoration.

The fun and games will end in the parking lot. So what's wrong with the Pharisees? They had never been transformed on the inside. Their relationship with God was surface and superficial. They believed that God would save them according to their works and their attempts at pleasing God. On the outside, they were religious, but on the inside they were barren and empty and deceived and wicked.

So what's the message for us? I think Paul had it in 2 Corinthians chapter 13 verse 5. When Paul is speaking to professing Christians, and he says, examine yourself to see if you're in the faith.

Paul knew that when he gave that command to examine yourself to see if you're in the faith, he'd be talking to a lot of people who claimed to be Christians, but really weren't. They knew the rituals. They knew the traditions. They knew the songs. They knew the creeds, but they didn't know Christ.

They did not know Christ. Folks, it was Jesus who said, Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven. You say, Doug, how can I know? How can I know down in my heart that when I die that I'm gonna go be with the Lord and I will be with the Lord forever and ever? How can I really, really, really know that? How can I know it?

Here's how you could know it. Is there been true faith in what Jesus did on the cross and through his resurrection? Have you repented of your sins and trusted Christ as your Lord and Savior? Have you turned from your sin? Have you surrendered your life to the lordship of Jesus Christ? Have you said to yourself, I'm not going to save myself by my attempts at trying to be good and my attempts at trying to please the Lord. The only way that I'm going to be saved is to trust in what Jesus Christ did for me on the cross of Calvary and through the power of his resurrection.

If you're here this morning, and you can't say that, then I'm going to say this with all my heart. Stop an elder. Stop a pastor on the way out and say, please counsel me. Please give me the scripture. I've got to know that I belong to Jesus and that Jesus belongs to me.

Am I being overdramatic? I am not. This is not a ballgame that we saw yesterday.

This is not a novel that we read sometime. Folks, this is the most important thing in your life. Do you belong to the Lord? Do you know what's going to happen to you when you die?

Point three, the illustration. Look at verses 10 through 13. For Moses said, honor your father and your mother. Whoever reviles father and mother must surely die. But you say, if a man tells his father and mother, whatever you would have gained from me is Corban that is given to God, and you no longer permit him to do anything for his father and mother.

Thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down and many such things you do. The Pharisees started a tradition that stated that if a person would commit his inheritance, that money that he had when he died, if he'd commit it to the Lord's work, then he was free to do what he wanted with his money here, but he didn't have to help anybody else, specifically his aged parents. So if his parents were dying, he just let them go and get out on the street and die out there.

That way, that would be okay, and everybody would look on that as being fine because all my money is going to the Lord's work. I don't have to worry about my aged mom and dad. Man, how heartless. I remember several years ago when Amelia Turner was caring for her aged parents, Ray and Letha Flowers, and Ray and Letha Flowers in their last months of their life had progressive dementia, and Amelia put them in a nursing home. It's a wonderful nursing home. They got three good meals a day, they got snacks during the day, they had fellowship with other friends that were there, and Amelia was there every single day. In the last days of both Ray and Letha's life, they were not cognizant enough that they would even know whether Amelia had come to be with them or not, and Amelia went anyway. Amelia was there every single day, ministering to her mom and dad, loving on them, not because she had to, but because she wanted to, because she belonged to Jesus, and she knew that this was the right thing to do. I thought, what a difference between that kind of Christian love and the stinking selfishness of the Pharisees. The Pharisees would say, Corban, which means all my money that I've got when I die is going right to the Lord's work. It'll be used to take care of the priest and to refurbish the synagogue and to buy books and ink and all that stuff, and that gives me the right not to have to worry about my aged parents.

They can go out in the street and they can die. It really doesn't matter. Folks, we must determine what is Scripture and what is tradition. One tradition in modern day evangelical churches that is almost sacrosanct is the altar call. I've had people tell me, Doug, this church doesn't do an altar call, so how do people get saved in your church?

And I thought, well, that's interesting. How did people get saved for the first 1800 years of the Christian faith? Because the altar call didn't come about till a little bit after 1800. And the altar call came about, it was formulated by a man, a preacher, his name was Charles Finney.

He was a stark Arminian. He believed totally in the free will of man. He believed that the way you got saved, that God didn't even have to be in it. All that you had to do was you had to be persuaded that this was right, and then you make the decision based on the persuasion of what was taught by the preacher that was doing it. So the preachers just needed to be good persuaders.

That was it. They gave an altar call, and the altar call was primarily manipulation. Let me read you what Charles Finney said on his deathbed. He said, I fear that one of the reasons that people feel so strongly about the altar call is because they're not doing personal evangelism. In the early church, they did personal evangelism, but it was in the marketplace. They did it when they were at work. They did it when they were at school.

They did it when they were at the grocery store. They did it just out in the world sharing the gospel with people. Then they'd bring them back, but their church services were primarily for the believers. The church services were a place that you could go, that you could worship God, and that you would be taught how to live the Christian life, and you would be taught what the Bible has to say about God, about you, and about how you are to live. So what does the Scripture teach us? It teaches us that our outward appearance can be phony and deceptive, but God looks at the heart.

God looks at the heart. Folks, be careful to follow the Word and not follow just tradition. Amen? Amen.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, today we have seen two extremes. We have seen the value of tradition and the danger of tradition. There are those in our society who believe that if it's not new, modern, or novel, it should be thrown in the scrap heap.

That's not true. Jeremiah said, ask for the old past where the good way is. We should love the traditions that line up with God's Word and keep us on the right road, but help us not to be so closed-minded that we do things just for tradition's sake. Father, forgive us when we just go through the motions of religious ritual. May what we do in this church fill our heart with joy as we seek to glorify you. For it's in the precious and the holy name of Jesus that we pray. Amen.