Journey Through The Bible
     Old Testament Reading: Ester 1-3
     New Testament Reading: Matthew 15

Hypocrites! 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, teaching as doctrines human commands (Matthew 15:7-9).

Although Pharisees were experts in God’s law, they lacked a proper understanding of the purpose of the law. They lacked faith in God. The Pharisees had faith in the religious system. Jesus pointed to God, who was beyond their system.

The scribes and Pharisees were unrelenting in their efforts to trap the Savior. A delegation of them came from Jerusalem, charging His disciples with uncleanness for eating with unwashed hands, therefore violating the tradition of the elders.

To appreciate this incident, we must understand the references to clean and unclean, and must know what the Pharisees meant by washing. The uncleanness with which they charged the disciples was entirely a ceremonial matter. Before a person could approach God, the religious law of the Pharisees required him to go through a cleansing ritual. God’s Word in the law of Moses contains no commandment about washing your hands before eating.

But the elders had added tradition to the cleansing rituals. They insisted that before a Jew ate, he should put his hands through an elaborate cleansing process, washing not just the hands, but also the arms up to the elbows. The Pharisees criticized the disciples for failing to observe the intricacies of the washings prescribed by Jewish tradition and had nothing to do with cleanliness.

Quoting Isaiah 29:13, Jesus clarified that obedience to traditions made a person disobedient to the Word of God, and this proved the traditions false.

Tradition is something external, while God’s truth is internal, in the heart. People obey traditions to please men and gain status (Gal 1:14), but we obey God’s Word to please God. Traditions bring empty words to the lips, but truth penetrates the heart and changes the person’s life.

Unfortunately, there are many evangelical traditions in churches today. Man-made teachings that are often considered just as authoritative as the Word of God. By obeying these traditions, Christians rob themselves of the power of God’s Word.

God wants us to give Him our hearts, and not just our lip service.
We Believe in the heart (Rom 10:9-10)
Love from the heart (Matt 22:37)
Sing from the heart (Col 3:16)
Obey from the heart (Rom 6:17; Eph 6:6)
and Give from the heart (2 Cor 9:7)
No wonder David prayed, create a clean heart for me and renew a steadfast spirit within me (Psalms 51:10).

Jesus boldly declared that sin comes from the heart, not from our diet. It is what comes out of the mouth that defiles us, not what goes in.