CHAPTER 7
THEY JUST DIDN’T GET IT!
1 The Pharisees and some of the teachers of the law who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus 2 and saw some of his disciples eating food with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed. 3 (The Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial washing, holding to the tradition of the elders. 4 When they come from the marketplace they do not eat unless they wash. And they observe many other traditions, such as the washing of cups, pitchers and kettles.)
5 So the Pharisees and teachers of the law asked Jesus, “Why don’t your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with defiled hands?”
6 He replied, “Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written:
“‘These people honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
7 They worship me in vain;
their teachings are merely human rules.’
8 You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions.” Mark 7:1-8
What would life have been like for Jesus without the Pharisees? He said that we’d always have the poor with us. We’ll always have the Pharisees with us too! There’ll always be religious people around us who will pick holes in kindness, generosity and love because these show up the heart of the fraud. If it was not Jesus who was the target of their criticism, then it was the disciples because they did not measure up to the Pharisees’ standard of “holiness”.
Unfortunately the internet has become the platform for “religious predators” to hold Christian leaders up to scrutiny before the world. They prowl the pulpits and platforms of God’s people to sniff out anyone who doesn’t line up with what they believe to be the truth according to their specific “religious” spectacles. We call it “religious” because it’s mostly about externals or about stuff that they misread, misunderstand or misinterpret.
Jesus had a lot to say to people who attacked others because they didn’t understand their heart. Instead of exposing someone else’s heart, they were exposing their own. What is the core of the problem? In a quote from Isaiah, Jesus uncovered the heart of the issue. Firstly, they were focussing on behaviour, not on motive or intention. It is easy to judge someone’s behaviour if one has no idea what lies behind it.
Secondly, they bent the rules to suit themselves so that they could either make themselves look good or try to evade their own guilt. Jesus stated that what they were doing exposed their own evil hearts. It’s never about externals which are only an indication of what’s going on inside. God is not concerned about externals because they cannot change the inside. It’s the other way around. It’s the inside that produces change on the outside but the Pharisees didn’t get it.