 |
 |
|||||
 ost organizations whether a church, business, club,
or some other group have formal rules and a list of informal rules or expectations. Often the informal rules are more important than the formal ones. When conflicts occur, it
is often over the unstated rules. The Jewish leaders of Jesus’ day had rules that God did not require. The Pharisees and Sadducees believed that God wrote the Torah, even
though they ignored key parts. In addition to those writings, they created their own rules. A document called the Mishnah is a list of written rules that the Jews were supposed
to follow. Jacob Neusner has published a new translation of the Mishnah. The book contains over 1,000 pages of rules. Almost every line on each page is a rule. It is an incredible
number of rules that the Jewish leaders created. In addition, they had a list of oral rules. It must have been very difficult trying to follow the unwritten religious rules
of Jesus’ day. This study explores the question, “How should we respond to the unwritten rules in our churches?” Background. In our last study, Jesus attempted to help the crowd and the religious leaders understand that He had come down out of heaven, did
the Father’s will, and was the Bread of Life - everything that they needed. Jesus explained that if anyone wanted to live forever, they had to come to Him, believe in
Him, and include Him in their lives. As a result, many of Jesus’ so-called disciples struggled with His statements and deserted Him. The response of the religious leaders
of Israel was worse. They wanted to kill Him. It was difficult for some to think of Jesus as a spiritual savior, and the religious leaders viewed him as competition. So Jesus
was careful about where He walked. He remained in the north country - in Galilee.
After these things Jesus was walking in Galilee, for He was unwilling to walk in Judea because the Jews were seeking to kill Him. John 7:1 (NAS95S)
Religious Leaders From Jerusalem. The religious leaders were greatly disturbed over Jesus. Even though they could not kill Him while He remained
in Galilee, they tried to discredit Jesus before the people. So Mark 7:1 tells us that some Pharisees and scribes came up from Jerusalem to investigate Jesus.
The Pharisees and some of the scribes gathered around Him when they had come from Jerusalem, and had seen that some of His disciples were eating their bread with impure hands, that is, unwashed. Mark 7:1-2 (NAS95S) Once the Pharisees and scribes arrived, they soon found fault with some action of Jesus’ disciples. We should not be surprised. That was their goal. When they arrived,
they surrounded Jesus, and asked Him what they thought was a difficult question. They were disturbed that Jesus’ disciples had been eating bread without ceremonially washing
their hands. The gospel of Mark adds this explanation about ceremonial washing,
For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they carefully wash their hands, thus observing the traditions of the elders; and when they come from the market place, they do not eat unless they cleanse themselves; and there are many other things which they have received in order to observe, such as the washing of cups and pitchers and copper pots. Mark 7:3-4 (NAS95S) The process of “carefully washing their hands” involved
washing the hands before and after eating. The process required a person
to take at least half an “egg-shell” of clear water and
pour on both hands. The hands had to be free of gravel, dirt, mortar
or any other contaminant. The hands had to lifted up so that the water
would run down to the wrist in order to ensure that the whole hand was
washed and the “dirty” water did not re-flow across the fingers.
Then the hands were rubbed against one another. If the water did not
flow down to the wrist, the Jewish rabbis said that the hands were not
clean and the process had to be repeated. If the hands had gravel, dirt,
mortar or other contaminants when the washing started, the process was
repeated twice. However, the second time, the water had to flow from
the wrist down over the fingers. There were other variations to the washing
ritual, but we will not discuss them here.[1]
The rabbis adopted this ritual in response to the washing
that God required Aaron and the priests to perform (Exodus 30:19; 40:12).
They assumed that if it was good for the priest to do it, then it would
be great for everyone to do it and to do it every day. The Jews tried
to improve upon God’s laws. They even taught that the
scriptures defiled the hands. Consequently, the hands needed to be washed
after touching the scriptures. They burdened the people with their man
made rules. Rules that God did not require. The religious leaders were
trapped in their own system, having adopted a dishonoring system of supposedly
religious righteousness.
The Elders' Tradition. When Jesus’ disciples
did not perform the ritualistic washing, the Pharisees and the scribes
became unhappy with them. Even though the Pharisees knew that the ceremonial
washing was not required by the Mosaic Law, they did not care. The rules
were now their rules. They wanted them obeyed. Listen,
References:
 1. Alfred Edersheim. The Life And Ties of Jesus The Messiah. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, Michigan. 1973. Book 3, p. 11-12. |
||||||
|
||||||
| Life & Heart of Jesus | ||||||
