Several years ago, while I was preaching in KY, a woman came to visit worship. I think it was around Thanksgiving time; it was during the holiday season. She had one question to ask: “Do you all celebrate Christmas?” I responded, “Well, if you mean having plays or pageants or that type of thing during worship, no, we do not have that type of thing. We do not make a big to-do over Christmas as the birth of Christ.” She said, “OK. I want to worship somewhere that celebrates Christmas.” And I never saw or heard from her again.
We all recognize that celebrating Christmas as the birth of Christ is a manmade tradition. Protestants have created quite a few rituals surrounding Christmas and the celebration of the birth of Christ. But here is an example of a woman who decided that she was going to “judge us” as a church unfaithful to Christ simply because we would not practice human, man-made rituals.
THE TRADITIONS OF MEN (7:1-5):
The OT had required priests to wash before they entered the tabernacle (Exo. 30:17-21). The Jews’ tradition broadened that application and said all Israelites should wash their hands before they ate. They did not want to make themselves unclean. The elaborate rituals the elders had developed and required (Mark 7:3-4) shows that their concern was more about appearance than cleanliness.
VAIN WORSHIP (7:6-8):
They honored God with their lips. But the spirituality only went that far; it did not touch the heart. Their hearts were far from God. In a parallel sense, in verse 7, Jesus says that they worshipped God in vain because they were teaching doctrines or teachings that were the “commandments of men.” No man has a right to elevate his own thoughts and / or traditions to the same level as the teachings and commandments of God through Christ.
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To prove His point even further, Jesus quotes the fifth commandment from Exodus 20:12 as well as the commandment from Exodus 21:17. The Pharisees twisted the words of God, as they tended to do. The Pharisees had developed a tradition that if someone had sworn an oath to give to God (the definition of the word “corban”), then they were not obligated to give to their parents. In that way, Jesus says, they were making the word of God void, pointless, worthless, through their tradition.
Jesus wants His disciples to understand that foods going into the mouth and stomach do not make a person unclean in the eyes of God. The reason is because foods do not touch the heart or the mind. They pass through the stomach and are expelled into the latrine, or toilet. Clarifying His teaching, in verse 20, Jesus says the things that come out of a man are what make him unclean in the eyes of God. The reason is because sin originates in man’s heart. In verses 21-22, Jesus gives a list of sins, among many in the NT, which all originate in the heart.
Sin makes a man unclean in the eyes of God, but eating without washing one’s hands has no relationship with sin. Sin starts in the heart. Again, you will notice that neither “gluttony” or any synonym is mentioned in this list.
We have no right to bind our opinions on others. We must respect the laws of Christ and the limitations placed on us to define what is sin.
Paul Holland
