Foundations

On the farm where I grew up, there was a large barn my dad helped his father build. It had stalls on the first floor and a large hayloft on the second. As a kid that barn was one of my favorite places to play with my cousin. We would build tunnels in the hay and swing from the rope attached to the rafters. I would look up with pride at the simple board with the date on it that my dad and grandpa had built the barn. As I got older, the barn changed from a place to play to a place to work. I helped my mom milk the cows there and worked with my dad there feeding cows in the winter, shearing sheep in the spring, and vaccinating and treating sick animals as needed.

All the time when I was playing and working in that old barn, I just assumed that it would keep on standing through the years, as solid as a rock. Then when I was in college, I came home one weekend and was told that I had to work on the barn. The walls were still solid as was the floor and rafters in the hayloft. Nevertheless, the side walls were spreading out, putting the whole barn in danger of falling. This was because the foundations were crumbling. During all the time I had spent in that barn, I had not looked at the foundations. I just took them for granted. I assumed they were solid, but they were not. So, we had to lift the sides up little by little and replace the foundations with something more durable in as many places as possible.

In Mark 7.1-13 Jesus encountered a group of religious people that assumed the foundations of their faith were solid when in fact they were not. This was because they were replacing God's word with human teachings and traditions. Verse 1 tells us these religious people were Pharisees and scribes. The Pharisees gathered to him, with some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem (Mark 7.1 ESV). In the eyes of the common people these were the best of the best. The Pharisees insisted on strict and detailed obedience to the Old Testament law. The scribes were experts in the details of the Old Testament, and some of them worked making copies of its text to preserve its accuracy. However, the text clearly shows that these people, who were very religious people with a good reputation, had started replacing God's word with human teachings and traditions.

The attachment of the scribes and Pharisees to these human teachings and traditions is highlighted in verses 2-5. They saw that some of his disciples ate with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed. (For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands properly, holding to the tradition of the elders, and when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash. And there are many other traditions they observe, such as the washing of cups and pots and copper vessels and dining couches.) And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, "Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?" These scribes and Pharisees noticed that Jesus' disciples were not following the accepted practices concerning hand washing before eating. The question here had nothing to do with cleanliness or hygiene. It was about a set of ceremonial procedures tied to ritual purity.

"Washing the hands removed partial ceremonial impurity picked up in the marketplace; hands were apparently immersed up to the wrist or purified by having water poured over them from a pure vessel. The Pharisees also had rules about immersing vessels to remove impurity (IVP Bible Background Commentary)." While such washings were taught by the Pharisees and scribes as obligatory, they had no basis in the Old Testament. By enforcing them as commandments, the scribes and Pharisees were replacing the word of God with human ideas. The scribes and Pharisees, however, did not see a problem with doing this. They mistakenly held that the traditions of the elders were in practice equal to scripture. So, by not obeying these teachings, Jesus and his disciples were failing to obey God's word.

In verses 6-9, Jesus declares that this was not the case. And he said to them, "Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, 'This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.' You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men." And he said to them, "You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition!" The traditions of the elders and the accepted practices associated with them were not equal to the word of God. By treating them as equal, the scribes and Pharisees had become hypocrites. Like actors on the stage, they played a particular role by holding up one mask and then another, but who they were was hidden behind these masks. They focused on saying all the right words and doing all the right actions in their worship. However, God did not accept their worship, because it was formal and insincere. This had all come about because they left the commandments of God so that they could hold to their human traditions. The whole time they thought they were doing right, but they were rejecting God's word by replacing it with human ideas.

At this point, the scribes and Pharisees may have been ready to dispute Jesus' accusations. So, he gave them a concrete example in verses 10-13. "For Moses said, 'Honor your father and mother,' and 'Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.' But you say, 'If a man tells his father or his mother, whatever you would have gained from me is Corban' (that is, given to God), then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And many such things you do."

This example would have struck right at their hearts because "many Jewish teachers regarded the commandment to honor father and mother as the most important in the law. Jewish interpreters included in this commandment providing for one's parents when they were old.... Jesus attacks here not the Pharisees' religious theory but these Pharisees' inconsistency with that theory in practice: Their love for the law had led them (like some modern Christians) to such attention to its legal details that it created loopholes for them to violate the spirit of the law (IVP Bible Background Commentary)." This was happening not just in a few areas. It was a systemic problem. This all was happening because they were replacing God's word with human teachings and traditions. However, because this practice was so widespread, the scribes and Pharisees had probably not even noticed what they were doing.

People today can slip into the same tendency of replacing God's word with human traditions without even noticing it. Respected, extremely religious people proclaim that Christians should do this or that, think this or that. In time, accepting what they say replaces the reading and studying of God's word. The rules, regulations and opinions of these respected people become the basis of Christian behavior and belief. So, people begin to assume that this is how things should be and stop comparing these ideas and practices with scripture. However, human traditions and teachings can never comprise a solid foundation for the Christian life. They rob Christianity of its authority and power. In replacing the word of God with human teachings and traditions, Christians displease the Lord and rob themselves of his blessing. The forms of Christianity remain, but the heart is destroyed. In the end, the lives of Christians become like the foundations in dad's barn. They begin to crumble and the walls warp and bend.

The only solution is to replace the foundations of human teachings and tradition with the word of God. On what is your life and beliefs founded? On God's word or human teachings and traditions?

DAN UPCHURCH is a native of Bollinger County. He and his wife, Lori, have spent many years as missionaries in Ukraine and currently serve in Poland.