When can traditions become a trap?
Text: Matthew 15:1-20
Hosts:
J. Kent Edwards
Vicki Hitzges
Nathan Norman
Narrator: Brian French
The CrossTalk Podcast is a production of CrossTalk Global, equipping biblical communicators, so every culture hears God’s voice. To find out more, or to support the work of this ministry please visit www.crosstalkglobal.org
Produced by Nathan James Norman/Untold Podcast Production
© 2024 CrossTalk Global
Brian: One of my favorite musicals is the Jewish oriented Fiddler on the Roof. In one scene, Tevye explains to the audience how the Jewish people have maintained their balance throughout the ages. How? He asks. Tradition. Because of our traditions, we have kept our balance for many, many years. We have traditions for everything. How to sleep, how to eat, how to work, how to wear clothes. For instance, we always keep our heads covered and always wear a little prayer shawl. This shows our constant devotion to God. You may ask, how did this tradition get started? I'll tell you, I don't know. But it is a tradition. And because of our traditions, every one of us knows who he is and what God expects him to. And then a choir starts singing the details. Who, day and night, must scramble for a living, feed a wife and children, say his daily prayers, and who has the right as master of the house to have the final word at home? The Papa tradition. Who must know the way to make a proper home, a quiet home, a kosher home. Who must raise the family and run the home so Papa's free to read the holy books. The Mama tradition. The choir continues outlining cultural expectations for sons, daughters and marriage for everyone. However, traditions are not unique to the Jewish people. We all have a way of thinking, behaving, or doing something that has been used for a long time by a particular group, family or society. We rarely think about our traditions. We just repeat them. Traditions are not necessarily bad, but they are not always good either. Sometimes they can be deadly. Join Nathan Norman, Vicki Hitskes and Kent Edwards today as they witness Jesus experience with traditions in Matthew, chapter 15. Welcome to CrossTalk, a Christian podcast whose goal is for us to encourage each other to not only increase our knowledge of the Bible, but to take the next step beyond information into transformation. Our goal is to bring the Bible to life, into all our lives. I'm Brian French. Today, Dr. Kent Edwards, Vicki Hitzkiss and Nathan Norman continue their discussion through the Gospel of Matthew. If you have a Bible handy, turn to Matthew, chapter 15, verses 1 to 20 as we join their discussion.
Kent: Nathan, Vicki, did your family have traditions that they carried out as you were growing up? Do your families now have traditions that they practice?
Vicki: Yeah, we did, and it was great. And it could have turned deadly. Every Tuesday night, we had family night, and Tori and I, my brother, got to pick what we were going to eat, which is, you know, hamburgers, tacos, spaghetti, easy stuff like that. And then we played games. But influenced by my father's upbringing in the slums of New York, we played games that we loved, like hide and go seek in the dark. And we had these dart guns, rubber tip dart guns. So when you found the person, you shot them.
Nathan: This is before Nerf and the safety. Safety errors.
Vicki: Oh, yeah, it was before all that. And I mean, you could have put somebody's eye out, you know, and it was kind of a dangerous game. You couldn't play that today or officials would come investigate. But we thought it was great.
Nathan: The best games are the dangerous ones.
Vicki: Yeah.
Nathan: The family had a ton of traditions, but one that I always loved was we would go to Christmas Eve service. And after Christmas Eve service, my dad would just drive around and he would go to wherever the place had the best Christmas lights.
Vicki: Lights.
Nathan: And we would just drive and drive and drive and drive until we were pretty much tired and then go home and. And go to bed.
Vicki: Oh, Nathan, when you said Christmas Eve, we went to church, I thought, golly gee, you were meant to be a pastor.
Nathan: Yeah. So lots of other traditions like that, but, man, that is one that just sticks out of my mind all the time.
Kent: In my family, summer was full of traditions as far as I could remember. As soon as I was old enough, I was sent to a Christian summer camp and we had great fun canoeing and campfires and skills and sports. It was just fun. It was a two week camp and every summer I was there for two weeks. And we just. It was our tradition. And when that was over, we had another tradition. It was also camping, but we went as a family. We had a little tent trailer, 12 foot aluminum boat with a little motor on the back. I love boating. I'm convinced Jesus was a boater. He was always getting on people's boats. So I think I'm like Jesus with that. It is, yeah. Going camping with the family, going camping with friends at the summer camp, that's a summer tradition that I was part of. And we did a lot of that with our boys as they grew up as well. Do churches have traditions?
Nathan: Yes, they do. Even the quote unquote, low churches, you have high churches like the Catholic Church or the Episcopal, and so they have a lot of liturgy and a lot of traditions. But even the low churches have traditions too. I remember in my previous church when I first got there, one of the guys had said, we don't have any golden calves at this church. There's no traditions. Whatever you want to do, you can try. And so I think I tried to change the seating once, and it was like, what are you doing? This is too radical and too far. I thought you didn't have any golden calves. Right. So we have traditions. We will. You know, you sing two songs, you do announcements, you sing a couple more songs, you do the sermon, you have a closing song. Right. Those are traditions.
Kent: They're always the same. Yep.
Nathan: You take the Lord's Supper the first of the month. Right. That's a tradition.
Kent: I remember in the church I planted, probably second or third year maybe of the church's life, I decided to do something we'd never done before and celebrate Advent so in advance. We started to, you know, talk to people about Christmas to prepare them the standard Advent thing the next year. Well, it was just a one year experiment, so I didn't bother the next year until a woman came to me, very animated, saying, wait, we forgot to do Advent this week. We always do it. We did it once and it's not always.
Nathan: Technically correct.
Kent: It is fine.
Nathan: We've never not done it.
Kent: Traditions are not bad, but they can be. That caught me by surprise as I looked at Matthew chapter 15 and Jesus.
Vicki: Encounter with traditions, it says in chapter 15, verse 1. Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked, why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don't wash their hands before they eat.
Kent: I could just picture this scene in my eyes. The leaders, the Pharisees and teachers of the law, the professors, come down from Jerusalem, but that's, you know, where the heart of Judaism, and they're in charge and they come down and they're upset because his elder, his disciples, are not washing their hands before they eat. I don't know. Nathan, do you ask your kids to wash their hands before they eat?
Nathan: Sometimes we're just trying to survive, but yeah, if I was a good parent, yes, I would.
Kent: There's nothing wrong with washing your hands before you eat, is there?
Nathan: It's preferable, yeah, it's preferable, yeah.
Kent: But this passage does not speak to parents today whether they should tell their children to wash the grime off their hands before sitting down to dinner. This is not hand cleansing. It's ritual rinsing that was done even if people's hands were clean. We see ritual cleansing in the Bible a number of times. In Exodus 19, for example, Israel was to wash their clothes when the Lord was about to descend on Mount Sinai. And in both Leviticus and Numbers, the priests were to bathe before carrying out some of their sacred functions. But nowhere does God prescribe ritual hand rinsing for everybody before every meal. So what these Jewish leaders were saying and insisting upon was not in the Bible, it was never commanded. It was an oral tradition contained in the Jewish Mishnah created after the destruction of the second Temple. In fact, I found it interesting. I went online to myjewishlearning.com to investigate this from a Jewish perspective. And it said there the Mishnah is a document written by Jewish rabbis that describes a life of sanctification in which the rituals of the temple are adapted for communal participation in a world that has no temple. So this is some people's idea of what sanctification should look like in their current day. It's not commanded. It's someone's idea of what people should do. We have people even today who have invented traditions that will help us honor God in our churches today, don't we?
Vicki: I know one because I saw it broken this last Sunday. I used to go to a church and every Sunday I used to get dressed up in a silk suit and heels because it was a dressy church and we would go to worship God and you would go as if you were going to see the president or going to see a really high up executive. It was a big deal. And I hadn't been to that particular church since, oh, way before COVID the preacher, everybody on stage, everybody in the con, everybody was wearing blue jeans. And it just seemed wrong to me. It just seemed wrong. I'm not saying I was right, but it just seemed wrong because it had been a tradition to dress up and in my eyes, they were breaking it.
Kent: Yeah, yeah. As I travel with crosstalk to various cultures, I'm amazed at the various different traditions that people have adopted as if they were in the Bible. In one country that I won't mention, I was told clearly, no tie, no preach. If you didn't have a suit and tie, you had to have the tie as well. You couldn't preach. I literally went over the border to another country and if you had a suit and tie, you were not allowed to preach because you're arrogant. Oh, yeah. Just across the border. I was in yet another country and I'm watching from the sidelines, watching the worship going on and scheduled to preach later. But I was, you know, some of my early years, I was raised in a Presbyterian church and it is very formal. We had pipe organs and everything was very ritualized. And this service was, from that perspective, seemed crazy. We had everyone standing and their hands all up and people in front literally dancing in worship, leading the people with their bodies. And this old woman looked at me and she grabbed my arm and tried to push it up. And she said, raise your hands and worship. And I could only do just a little bit. My Presbyterian arms just didn't go that high.
Vicki: I remember the first time I saw. I was raised in a real strict Southern Baptist church, and I remember the first time I saw my mother with her hands up in the air. And I thought, oh, my golly, this is heresy.
Kent: And none of those actions were necessarily right or wrong, but they were certainly traditions that were not found explicitly written in the Scriptures. And that's why it's interesting how Jesus responds to this accusation that he is spiritually wanting because he is not observing the traditions of the Jewish people.
Nathan: In verse three, it says, Jesus replied, and why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said, honor your father and mother, and anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death. But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is devoted to God, they are not to honor their father or mother with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition.
Kent: Whew.
Vicki: I don't understand that. Were they feeding? Not. I don't understand that.
Kent: So this is a Jewish practice called Korban. And so it was possible, according to Jewish tradition, that you could say, all my money, all my resources are now devoted to God. I will not use them for personal needs. Everything belongs to the Lord. Which sounds really spiritual, right?
Vicki: Yes.
Kent: Yeah. But what they said. And this was a tradition. It wasn't a law. It wasn't commanded. But they did this Korban thing. But then they said to the parents, oops, sorry, I can't look after you in your old age.
Vicki: Oh, they've moved on from the eating thing.
Kent: Yeah, yeah.
Vicki: Okay, okay.
Kent: And they said, yeah, sorry, mom and Dad, I can't look after you because all my money is devoted to the Lord. And Jesus is saying, that's total hypocrisy. The clear command of God is that we to honor our parents and look after them. We have an obligation to look after those who have looked after us. And that is a clear command of God. And you are nullifying a clear command of God with your stupid tradition. You're putting tradition ahead of the clear teaching of God in the Scriptures. And he calls them out on it. He calls them hypocrites.
Vicki: Okay, that makes sense to me because in verse seven, he says, you hypocrites. Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you. These people honor me with their lips, but their Hearts are far from me. They worship in vain. Their teachings are merely human rules.
Kent: Those are strong words, Nathan. What's a hypocrite?
Nathan: A hypocrite is a pretender, an actor. Literally, it's an actor. So it is when you are acting as if you are something you are not. And in this case, they are acting as if they are righteous, but they are not.
Kent: And Jesus is just pointing out that appearing to be holy is not necessarily holy. Your rule about rinsing your hands before you eat and trying to make everyone do that looks super spiritual. But you deny that spirituality when you deny the clear teaching of Scripture. Wow. It's a lot easier to appear holy than it is to be holy, isn't it?
Nathan: Sure is. Sure is. I heard someone say it's the Christian F word. Fine. How you doing? Oh, I'm fine. I'm fine. Everything's fine. It's like, well, okay, but we all have struggles with our families, with our siblings, our parents, our children, our own personal sin issues. Right. And so presenting ourselves as if we have our life together and we are fully devoted followers of Jesus, perfectly following in all ways. It's hypocrisy. We're actors. No, we're broken people who need Jesus. And yes, we have made some progress towards that, hopefully, but we're not there yet. And to pretend that is hypocrisy. We're an actor.
Kent: When we look at people at church, what are some of the signs we tend to look at that would indicate someone is a true follower of Christ? What are some of the external evidences we look for?
Nathan: You looking for the right answer or the churchy answer?
Kent: I'm looking for the churchy answer.
Nathan: Okay. The churchy answer is, okay, they are married. They've got X amount of kids. They got a great marriage so that they could host a marriage enriching seminar.
Vicki: They look happy.
Nathan: They look happy. Yep. Even when their face is at rest. Happy face.
Kent: They show up for church regularly.
Nathan: They're at church more than the pastor.
Kent: Maybe their kids come to Awana.
Nathan: Their kids are perfectly well behaved at every moment. They have the right political viewpoints on everything. And depending on the church, maybe they homeschool their kids, or maybe they send their kids to a private Christian school. They are not poor, but they're middle. Upper middle class. They drive the right car.
Kent: Yeah, yeah. And there's nothing wrong with those things, Right? There's absolutely nothing wrong with those external evidences of walking with the Lord. But there's a danger to them. And Jesus explains the Danger of external, traditional modes of spirituality.
Nathan: Right? And then Jesus shares this parable in chapter 15, verse 10. And he called the people to him and said to them, hear and understand. It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth this defiles a person. Then the disciples came and said to him, do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying? He answered them, every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up. Let them alone. They are blind guides. And if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit.
Kent: In verses 15 and following well in.
Vicki: Verse 15, Peter said, explain the parable to us. And in verse 16.
Nathan: Jesus was blunt.
Vicki: Here Jesus said, are you still so dull? He said, don't you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? But the things that come out of a person's mouth come from the heart. And these defile them. For out of the heart come evil thoughts. Murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what defile a person. But eating with unwashed hands does not defile them.
Kent: What Jesus is saying here is that participating in godly activities does not make a person godly. We can do things like attend prayer meeting, go on a missions trip, put some money in the offering plate, or join the worship team. All good things, but not enough. Jesus says that's just external. But holiness needs to be internal. He says that because, as we heard in verses 19 and 20, out of the heart come evil thoughts. Murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what defile a person. But eating with unwashed hands does not defile them. Well, that certainly refocuses our activities, doesn't it?
Nathan: Sure. Well, this is exactly the reason why when somebody gets, you know, they arrest the serial murderer, everyone goes, oh, but they were so nice and they're so wonderful, Right? Yeah, because they did all the external things.
Vicki: That's true. That's true.
Kent: Focusing on what we do rather than the internal of who we are is kind of like putting a new suit of clothes and makeup on a corpse. The body looks good from a distance, but there's no life. It's dead. That's why Jesus says it's the internal that matters, not just the external. And we are attracted to those spiritual leaders who offer easy external holiness, aren't we?
Nathan: Oh, we sure are. They look the part. We want to have what they have. They seem to figure out the secret to the life that I'VE always wanted to live, to have my best life now. So, yeah, absolutely, we're attracted to them. We want simple, easy answers.
Kent: Yeah, I was going to say it's easy. We can fit in, we can meet their expectations because it's external. But Jesus says, be careful of these leaders. In fact, in verse 14, he says.
Vicki: Quite clearly, he says, leave them. They are blind guides. If the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit.
Kent: Internal holiness, Internal righteousness is not an option according to Jesus. It requires us to put to death, as he said, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. We've got to deal with the source of our sin. Will we ever fully destroy our sinful nature? Can we ever declare full victory?
Nathan: Yes, when we die or when Jesus returns. But not in this life. Not in this life. There will always be some amount of struggle.
Kent: Do you remember even the apostle Paul struggled with the root issues of sin in his own heart. In Romans chapter seven, he said, I.
Nathan: Delight in God's law, but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am. Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death.
Kent: Those words, I don't think mean Paul was being defeated by sin, but he was wrestling with it. This was not an easy task. And he gives us hope because in chapter eight we hear a much more optimistic tongue.
Vicki: He says, thanks be to God who delivers me. Through Christ Jesus our Lord, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Because through Christ Jesus, the law of the Spirit who gives life, has set you free from the law of sin and death. The Spirit gives life.
Kent: So we have a resource as we are ensuring that our righteousness is internal and not just based on traditions. The Holy Spirit. As we wrestle with his strength, we can enjoy victory. Isn't that what Paul is saying in Galatians 5?
Nathan: It says, so I say walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit and the Spirit. What is contrary to the flesh, the fruit of the Spirit, is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control.
Kent: So to me, this passage really warns us not to fall into the tradition trap. Instead of just doing what others have done in the past, repeating good activities over and over without allowing the true significance of those actions to touch our soul, to be content with just doing the right things instead of being the right person. We're on dangerous ground. And we need to be. As Jesus warned his disciples, we need to be very wary of religious leaders who are satisfied with just the external who care about what you do, but not who you are. Because as we read in verse 13.
Vicki: Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots. Leave them. They are blind guides. If the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit.
Brian: When we come upon religious leaders who value religious traditions more than holiness, how should we respond? Recognize their behavior proves their hearts are corrupt, and those who follow them will face a dismal, eternal fate. I trust that today's discussion of God's Word has been helpful and served as an encouragement to not just be hearers of the Word, but doers. Together, let's bring God's Word to life, to our lives. This week, the crosstalk podcast is a production of crosstalk Global, equipping biblical communicators so every culture hears God's voice. To find out more about this educational nonprofit organization, please visit www.crosstalkglobal.org. we just graduated a group of biblical communicators in Panama, and in a few weeks we're headed to Moldova, located right next to Ukraine. Help us train the next generation of biblical communicators. All you have to do is click Donate in the show notes and make a donation of any size. You can also help support this show by rating it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're finding it. Be sure to listen next Friday as we continue our discussion of the Gospel of Matthew. You won't want to miss it.
Nathan: All right. Happy all Saints Day. Everybody's in the pit.
Vicki: Is that talking about hell?
Kent: Yep.
Vicki: Get your attention.
Nathan: Hopefully you're not seeing. You're not. Are you in Clean Feed? You shouldn't be. I can hear you. I can hear you. Go to Chrome, the Chrome browser.
Vicki: I'm there. I think it says Gmail script inbox Post attendee Zoom. Clean feed. Clean feed. Got it. Stop it. Stop it. Just don't even do it. Don't do it. Don't do it.