“‘This people honors me with their lips,
but their heart is far from me;
[7] in vain do they worship me,
teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’
[8] You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.”
[9] And he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition! [10] For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’ [11] But you say, ‘If a man tells his father or his mother, “Whatever you would have gained from me is Corban”’ (that is, given to God)—[12] then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, [13] thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And many such things you do.”
(Mark 7:1-13 ESV)
Washing one's hands before eating is a good thing.
The Pharisees had turned it into a "must do" or you are a bad Jew. So they took a desire of man and turned it into a command of God.
Then Jesus goes on to discuss the law of Corban... which is to me a HUH??? But when I stop to think about it, what Jesus is doing is dealing with a heart issue and their own inconsistency.
The law of Corban is this "
In Jewish practice, therefore, the word “corban” had been coined as a sort of “vow” term. According to the prevailing tradition, one could designate his financial resources as “corban,” which, practically speaking, was a way of “tagging” them, suggesting, “this belongs to God,” and thus was not to be used for personal interests." (source)
One of their human traditions is that if one gives to the church, they can't use that item given for any other reason. Therefore if say, their parents need help, they can say "Sorry, can't help you, that money is for the church". THAT law then becomes more important than God's law of "honour your parents". It was a clever way for Jewish folk to get out of caring for their parents or others. Just say all your money or possessions belong to God. Means you get to still enjoy or use it for your own benefit, but you can't use it to benefit others.
This was a heart issue.
And Jesus faced them with it.
He showed them how they fulfilled Isaiah's prophecy
[6] 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;
[7] in vain do they worship me,
teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’
(Mark 7:6-7 ESV)
Hard to hear you know?
When you want to face someone up for their actions (the Pharisees wanted to catch out Jesus and the disciples) and then have those you are attacking, turn around and show you the failing of your own heart.
I wonder how it happened?
Well I guess I don't really I know how it happened. I have things that I do, habits I have that make me feel right with God. God is pretty good at facing me up on them though. Reminding me that I need to REALLY pray just not say words like I was taught. That caring for people is just as important as caring for myself. That there is a certain order of worship or a certain style of music that is of God and that everything else is somehow wrong (bad bad thinking that). God is worshipped in a whole variety of manners and served in the same way. Our people stuff shouldn't become more important than the God stuff. IT SHOULD NOT.
It is deplorable when churches fight over the order of worship or the colour of carpet or whatever the case might be. People should truly focus on the things of God. We should not do this stuff but it's so easy to. It is, isn't it? To get used to a certain way of doing things that when someone does it differently it strikes you as so wrong and then we get entrenched in our decisions because who wants to admit that they might be wrong?!?!?!
Not many.
We really need to be gracious enough to make the first move and say you know what.. this is a heart issue for me. I need to realize that God is more important than this. God calls us to LOVE each other as FAMILY. That's what he calls us too. Shouldn't we heed that call and make him more important than the how-to's of life?