Mark 7:9 “Then he said, “You skillfully sidestep God’s law in order to hold on to your own tradition.”
This piece of scripture in Mark 7 is in the middle of an encounter that Jesus is having with the Pharisees. In this encounter, Jesus calls the leading religious leaders and thinkers of the day hypocrites. Jesus in essence tells everyone everywhere who follows these teachers that they are living a lie. Jesus exposes how the Pharisees are manipulating God’s law for their own good and uses their minds to make God’s law suit their own agenda. It’s interesting that Jesus acknowledges that these religious leaders are smart. In a funny way it’s kinda of like Jesus is acknowledging that they have eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It is in this knowledge that they then manipulate God’s law to suit their own agenda. Is Jesus the first one to see this? Are the other common jews not smart enough to see the hypocrisy? Are the other jews content with this teaching because it allows them to live a more self centered life? What are the other examples of these hypocrisies? These leaders have made the tradition there most important priority and in doing that they have made the traditions there God.
Wow! I’m so glad our religious leaders today don’t act like these Pharisees; I’m so glad that our churches today do not side step the gospel to preserve their own traditions. Yeah right!!! How immersed are our churches today with empty rituals that seek to completely sidestep the call of the gospel to hold onto our own traditions? What’s even worse, is that we sidestep the gospel in the name of Christ. We act as if Jesus really thinks we should alienate the outsiders, take care of our own first, make sure we are comfortable at all costs, structure worship the way we like it, proclaim that Jesus supports a certain political view, act as if our moral ideas are the ideas of Christ for their justification, or being sure we follow in our fathers and mothers unfaithful footsteps so we don’t dishonor them and then in the process of all this we construct a “Christian” life that has hardly anything to do with Jesus and everything to do with our own agenda and tradition. And then to make matters worse, we denounce anyone who suggests we are wrong……yep, I’m pretty sure much of the “good, church going folks and pastors” today fall into the category of Pharisee. By the way, these are the same folks that Jesus calls “sons of hell” in Matthew. Maybe the best thing that can happen is that as we prepare for Easter, we repent and believe the gospel.
Lord Jesus, I come to you this morning asking for you to show me those places in my life where pharisaic Christianity is trying to show its dirty head. Lord, I confess that I do not have it figured out; I confess that my nature wants to manipulate the gospel to best suit me and my desires. May the Holy Spirit kill that sin in my life and give me the grace to live a more real life. Help me to know that true reality is found in Jesus Christ and any attempt to manipulate the gospel is manipulating reality into a life that is unrealistic. Lord, I desire to live a real life today because I desire to follow in your footsteps. Give me the grace to turn from myself and follow you that I may experience the abundance of life the way you intend me to live. Amen!
Jesus exposes the hypocrisy of my life that I may come closer to living a real, authentic life.
