Traditions versus Commandments
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2013 · 15 September 2013
This evening, let us look at Matthew 14 and 15. It is important to understand that God wants to cleanse your hearts, and to wash you on the inside; He will not tolerate your empty external worship. God says in Isaiah 66:2 that He has made everything, but He still looks for one thing: "I look for one who is poor and of a humble spirit who trembles at My words.”
God wants genuine worshipers. The prophet Amos, in chapter 5: 21-27 says, "I don't want any more feasts, festivals, sacrifices, and I want you to stop your singing until you get your hearts right." Malachi 1 and 2 say the very same thing, "Don't offer any more polluted offerings, lame and blind animals, don't desecrate your marriage relationships and deal treacherously with the wives of your youth and then come into My temple and purport to worship Me.”
Isaiah said it, and Jesus, our Lord, said it as well in this text and we also need to say it today. Let's look at Matthew 14:34-36, "When they had crossed over, they came to the land of Gennesaret. 35 And when the men of that place recognized Him, they sent out into all that surrounding region, brought to Him all who were sick, 36 and begged Him that they might only touch the hem of His garment. And as many as touched it were made perfectly well.”
Matthew 15:1-9, “Then the scribes and Pharisees who were from Jerusalem came to Jesus, saying, 2 “Why do Your disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat bread.” 3 He answered and said to them, “Why do you also transgress the commandment of God because of your tradition? 4 For God commanded, saying, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘He who curses father or mother, let him be put to death.’”
“5 But you say, ‘Whoever says to his father or mother, “Whatever profit you might have received from me is a gift to God”— 6 then he need not honor his father or mother.’ Thus you have made the commandment of God of no effect by your tradition. 7 Hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy about you, saying, 8 ‘These people draw near to Me with their mouth, and honor Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me.9 And in vain they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’ ”
That is an important passage; it defines the religious battle between Jesus and the religion of His time. As we look at this text, we need to see Jesus in His many character traits. First of all, in verses 34-36, we see Him as the compassionate healer. Then right after that in Matthew 15:1-9, He becomes the condemning judge.
Next week, in Matius 15:10-20, we will see Him as the correcting teacher. In each case, He is setting right something that is wrong. He cured their diseases; their hypocrisy, He unmasked their religion and explained what a true relationship with God means; and in verses 10-20, He corrected the wrong doctrines.
We start in verse 34, "When they had crossed over," that is, the disciples and our Lord had gone over the Sea of Galilee. Remember that they had spent the day before feeding the multitude and healing and preaching the Kingdom, and at night, Jesus had come, walking on the water. They finally arrived at the shore, and sometime after that, they had come into the land of Gennesaret. So it may be later in the next day.
Remember when they came to the other shore early in the morning, Jesus taught that important spiritual lesson that He is the bread of life. The same crowd that had been on the eastern shore had come across; they had a free dinner and they were back for a free breakfast. But instead of Jesus feeding them physically, He fed them spiritually, speaking about the bread of life. Later in the day that they retreated to the land of Gennesaret.
Gennesaret is a land area about 3.5 miles long and maybe up to 2 miles wide at its widest point. It borders the northwestern coast of the Sea of Galilee. It is close to Bethsaida and Capernaum. According to Josephus that land was lush with unrivaled beauty, marvelous crops and a variety of products. It was a beautiful area that had four springs and magnificent wheat fields. All kinds of vegetation grew along the edge of the lake which was inhabited by many kinds of birds.
Jesus wanted to spend time with His disciples, but is interrupted again. Matthew 14:35-36, "When the men of that place recognized Him, they sent out into all that surrounding region, and brought to Him all who were sick and begged Him that they might only touch the hem of His garment. And as many as touched it were made perfectly well.”
They may have remembered the woman in Matthew 9, who grabbed His robe and was healed. All they felt they needed to do was to touch Him, they are saying, "We need so desperately what you have to give, but we don't want to be an extra burden. You don't have to get around to all of us; we'll just touch You, and that way we'll be as little a problem to You as we can be." So there is sensitivity in their approach and great faith.
But this also is an example of people who only came to Jesus to get what they wanted. Then, having gotten what they wanted, they left. Even today in our contemporary Christianity, Jesus is often times seen as a genie who responds to our wishes, and having received our wishes, we abandon any meaningful relationship. So in spite of their self-centeredness, He still healed them. That shows the compassion of God.
Now we come to the condemning judge phase. As compassionate as He is on the one hand, so condemning is He on the other hand. God is compassionate, but is also a God of great judgment and justice. Let's look at Matthew 15:1, "Then the scribes and Pharisees who were of Jerusalem came to Jesus." This delegation is sent after the Passover at the request of the Galilean Pharisees who were also upset at Jesus.
So this was an important delegation of high ranking scribes and Pharisees who were sent from Jerusalem. They are representatives of the legalistic, self-righteous, external religious establishment. They are of Satan, not God; they hate Jesus Christ. They despise the truth that is in Christ. They are the enemies of our Lord.
They want to attack Him publicly to make Him look bad in front of everyone. They want to discredit Him and since they were more prestigious than the local leaders, so Jesus handled them with more severity. What Jesus taught was the exact opposite, and they were on a head-on collision course. They believed that worship was ceremonial and external, and Jesus taught that it was from the heart.
And this is the same battle we face today with hypocrisy in the church, and people all over the world who call themselves Christians but who are not, but go only through external motions. The first blow is thrown in Matthew 15:2 by the scribes and Pharisees, "Why do Your disciples transgress the traditions of the elders?” They had thought a long time about that question, and it sums up the battle instantly.
Let us study this so you'll understand what the tradition of the elders was. Tradition is that which is handed down from one generation to the next. This is not coming from God who gave us Scripture. Anytime you have a religion that is Scripture plus tradition, you have a problem. That is the case now with Roman Catholicism and the case with Judaism. People no longer can distinguish what is from God and what is from men.
The Talmud, which is the Jewish law, says that God gave the oral law to Moses, and then told Moses to pass it on to other men of the synagogue who were to do three things with the law of God. First, they had to properly apply God's law. Two, they were to teach that to many disciples so they too could apply the law correctly. Three, they were to protect the law; don't let it be attacked, but wall it in.
Since obedience was not spontaneous from the heart, the only other way to get people to do things is to force them to do it. So they started adding more and more laws and they became the spiritual enforcers of the laws. The ultimate result was that it totally obscured the law of God. What the people saw was the wall fortification, but they couldn't see the law of God.
And that wall is what we call the tradition of the elders. When Israel and Judah went into captivity, it was a shock to the land of Israel and the Jewish people. It was as if God had abandoned them. The God-fearing Jews among them realized that they had departed from Jehovah God, and they were getting what Isaiah and Jeremiah said they would get; which is the judgment of God because they departed from God.
So the only hope of reconciliation was to turn back to God. As a result of that, a movement started to reacquaint the people with the law and all the traditions of the elders, to get them back to the right kind of behavior. Ezra fathered a whole group of people known as scribes, who were to collect, collate, interpret this tradition of old. It kept getting bigger, every rabbi commented on it. So much so they lost the distinction between the law of God and the tradition of men.
Over the years, this thing became very difficult to handle, so in 200 A.D., Rabbi Yehuda committed it to wiring and it is called the Mishnah, which is from the Hebrew verb 'to repeat.' Beyond that, there were commentaries on the Mishnah, because it needed to be explained. So they then had the Gemara, which are a series of commentaries on the Mishnah filled with all kinds of things.
And in Jerusalem they put the Gemara and the Mishnah together, and it became known as the Talmud. In Babylon, they did the same thing, only they made it four times as big by collecting four times as much material, so the Babylonian Talmud is now considered the most accepted among the Jews. By the way, there are at least 20 volumes in Hebrew; a massive amount of material.
So here are these guys with all their tradition, and they had come to be so committed to it that the Talmud says, "The words of the scribes are more lovely than the words of the law.” It is a greater crime to transgress the words of the school of rabbi Hillel than the words of Scripture.” “My son, attend to the words of the scribes more than the words of the law." So they loved ceremony and tradition more than truth and righteousness.
Matthew 15:2, "Why do Your disciples transgress the traditions of the elders?” That is a general statement, but then they give an illustration. "For they do not wash their hands when they eat bread." They're not talking about cleanliness and anyone knows you want to have clean hands before you put food in your mouth; that is not the issue. They are accusing the disciples of violating a religious tradition.
They believed that every Jew had to go through ceremonial washings of your hands for two reasons. Reason number one was that if you had touched a Gentile that day, you were defiled and there was a prescribed ceremony to detoxify your Gentile touch. Secondly, there was a demon by the name of Shibtah, which dwelt on people's hands while they slept. So if they did not eliminate him, they would allow him to enter into their bodies.
Do not think this is unique to the Jewish people, throughout history, even also in Christianity, people have been attached to all kinds of meaningless ceremonies that have obscured the truth. Many people believe that dancing is forbidden or that casual clothes or shorts are unacceptable in church or that certain tribal traditions have to be part of their church. There are all kinds of specific human traditions that are not from God.
Watch how Jesus responds to this. Now we go from confrontation to condemnation in Matthew 15:3, "But He answered them, 'Why do you also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition?'" Notice the word 'also,' that is an admission of guilt. Jesus is saying, "Yes, we do break your tradition.” Then He dismisses it; He doesn't even bother to deal with it, because it's so meaningless.
Jesus said to them, we're not violating any commandment of God, but you with your traditions think that that is more important than Scripture. They said, "Why do you break the traditions?" and give Him an illustration, and Jesus answers, "Why do you break the commands of God by your traditions," and gives them an illustration too. Verse 4, “For God commanded, saying, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘He who curses father or mother, let him be put to death.’”
That is a clear command from Exodus 20:12, and the understanding of honor is respect, love, concern and also financial support; we are supposed to take care of our parents and give them the money they need to live on. On the other hand, He quotes Exodus 21:17, which says that if you don't honor but revile or remove the dignity of your father or mother, then you should be put to death.
Verse 5-6, “But you say, ‘Whoever says to his father or mother, “Whatever profit you might have received from me is a gift to God”— 6 then he need not honor his father or mother.’ Thus you have made the commandment of God of no effect by your tradition.” They had developed a tradition that if you said, this is for God, I'm giving my money to Him, you wouldn't have to give it to your parents. But the Bible doesn't ever say that, that is just a human tradition.
They were so selfish that they didn't want to meet the needs of their own parents, so to justify that, they developed this tradition of “corban” or “this is a gift to God”, and in that way they were exempted from having to give it to the people who were in need. Jesus said, “You are using your tradition to cause people to disobey God in honoring their parents."
We think of tradition as something wonderful, because there are traditions that are warm, that bring to us good memories of past days and help us to keep culturally alive and sensitive, but the tradition of the elders is instead selfish, debilitating and godless. Jesus said, “You break the commandments of God. True religion is based on obeying the commandments of God from the heart.”
Jesus in verses 7-9 offers a commentary on them right out of Isaiah 29:13, "You hypocrites." He was calling them spiritual phonies, frauds. "Well did Isaiah prophesy of you." In other words, when Isaiah said this in chapter 29, it was not only true of his own people but he was speaking right to you! We know that Satan invariably corrupts the truth with hypocrites.
Then, Jesus quotes Isaiah in verse 8, "This people draws near to Me with their mouths, and honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me." God is not interested in ceremonial, ritualistic, traditional religion. You hear people say today, "Our family goes to such-and-such a religion, and it's a tradition with us." If it is just tradition and not a personal relationship with God, it is meaningless
In verse 9, He quotes again from that same text, this time from the Septuagint, or the Greek version, "In vain they worship Me, because they are teaching for doctrine the commandments of men." They are putting human wisdom on the level of divine wisdom. That's why Ezekiel 36 says that God is going to take away the stony heart and put a heart of flesh in because only then can we accept God’s wisdom.
May our worship be true and what God wants it to be. Let us examine our heart, and look whether we love Jesus Christ with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. Do you long to be in His presence, to be like Him, to obey Him from the heart? Let us pray.