AP

MARK 7:5-8  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?”  He replied, “Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written: ‘These people honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.  They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules.’  You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions.”

The title ‘Pharisee’ comes from an Aramaic word meaning ‘to be set apart’.  After the building of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in the 6^th century BC this sect of well-meaning Jews ‘set themserlves apart’ among the people of God, not only to read the Scriptures carefully, but to live conscientiously in obedience to them.  The term ‘teachers of the law’ translates a Greek word related to the verb ‘to write’ and is translated more literally ‘scribes’ in many English Bibles.  Like the Pharisees, these men were thoroughly committed to understanding, teaching and living by the Scriptures, and many of them belonged to the Pharisee party.

Like many ‘noble’ intentions originating in sinful human hearts, these men, instead of being experts and authorities in the genuine revelation of God to us, became ‘experts’ in telling people how to live, without living that way themselves, and in manipulating the written Word of God to mean what they wanted it to mean to suit their own self-serving lifestyle.  We call this ‘casuistry’.

Sadly, because we all are born with sinful hearts, and an innate sinful disposition, it is all too easy to fall into this trap.  It is no wonder that Jesus spent so much time exposing it as a warning to all of us – he was not afraid to call them out for what they were, ‘hypocrites’ – see Matthew 23 where on seven different counts he uses the phrase, “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites!”.  (I like the old story of the Sunday School teacher who gave a lesson on ‘The Pharisee and the Tax-collector’ from Luke 18:9-14, where the tax-collector’s prayer is, “Lord be merciful to me a sinner” in contrast with the Pharisee’s prayer which consisted of a recitation of all his ‘godly’ attributes and included the phrase, “I thank you that I am not like this tax-collector”.  The teacher then ended the lesson with the prayer: ‘Lord, we thank you that we are not like that Pharisee’)!  I’m glad I’m not like that SS teacher!

Why is it so easy for us to notice “the speck of sawdust in [our] brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in [our] own eye”? (Matthew 7:3) How important it is that we don’t neglect the daily careful reading of God’s Word, allowing it to do what God intends it to do in us: “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work”  (2 Timothy 3:16).

– Bruce Christian