All This Over Their Dirty Hands

“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?” 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.”  Mark 7:5-8 (ESV)

 So the story start’s like this…”The Pharisees, along with some religion scholars who had come from Jerusalem, gathered around Him. They noticed that some of His disciples weren’t being careful with ritual washings before meals. The Pharisees—Jews in general, in fact—would never eat a meal without going through the motions of a ritual hand-washing, with an especially vigorous scrubbing if they had just come from the market (to say nothing of the scouring’s they’d give jugs and pots and pans).”(Mark 7:1-4 MSG)

My question would have been, “What do you have against the jugs, pots and pans?” But that is not what happened next. The Pharisees go up to Jesus and in a roundabout way ask why His disciples eat with dirty hands. And Jesus replies to them in the words of Isaiah the prophet by repeating what was written in 29:13 of Isaiah’s book…“And the Lord said: “Because this people draw near with their mouth and honor Me with their lips, while their hearts are far from Me, and their fear of Me is a commandment taught by men” If we take a look at this from the perspective of Isaiah 29:9-14 we can see why this was easy for Jesus to say.

“Astonish yourselves and be astonished; blind yourselves and be blind! Be drunk, but not with wine; stagger, but not with strong drink! “The first thing to note here is the kingship the people are under (at the time Isaiah wrote this) which would be Hezekiah. Unlike the king before him, Ahaz, who allowed the people of Judah to fall into apostasy, Hezekiah himself sought The Lord. But because the high places still existed the people under his reign only honored God in an outward sense, there was no true repentance among them. And in an ironic fashion Isaiah commands them to continue on in this way.

They, because of their spiritual drunkenness, are put into a spiritual deep sleep (vv10) and because of this they can’t hear the words of a real prophet. To continue with Isaiah’s irony he says those who are educated and are leaders can’t open the sealed Book (vv11) and for those who can’t read, the Book is opened but they can’t read it (vv12). We know that God will not be mocked and in verse 13 His Word calls this one right down the middle. King Hezekiah may, himself, have been devoted and wanted to bring about reform for these people but their idolatry had not been totally abolished and it made it easy for the heart of the people to lean towards old habits.

Because of their wisdom was being taught by the divine inspiration of themselves God says in verse 14, “behold, I will again do wonderful things with this people, with wonder upon wonder; and the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the discernment of their discerning men shall be hidden.” This brings us back to the Pharisees with Jesus…over His disciple’s dirty hands. Isn’t it the cleansing of the heart that was important to Him? But yet the men of tradition couldn’t get past the obstacle of “ritual hand-washing” to see what Jesus came to do. And what was that? To open the Book, pronounce it and to awaken the people from their spiritual deep sleep. What was so hard about that? – Chris Hughes is a graduate of the Colony of Mercy and is a weekly Freedom Fighter blogger

Daily Bible Reading: 2 Samuel 1-2; 1 Timothy 5

Quote of the day: “Ah, let us beware of allowing the blessings of God gives us in our work to deceive us and lead us to think that, because He has blessed us, we are certainly spiritual men. God may give us gifts that we use, yet our lives may not be wholly in the power of the Holy Spirit.”—Andrew Murray

Verse to Memorize:  The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade on your right hand. The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night. Psalm 121:5-6