Chapter 7 began with a group of scribes and Pharisees coming from Jerusalem to watch Jesus. Mark tells us that they quickly found fault in Him and questioned Him as to why His disciples didn’t ceremonially wash their hands before eating. A lot of our discussion hinged on the fact that we have a tendency to find what we are looking for. This particular group of men didn’t examine Jesus to find the truth, they came to find fault with Him, their motive was to disprove Him and so everything they found that was different was automatically wrong. They judged Jesus by their understanding rather than allowing Him to teach truth that went beyond what they had previously understood. Jesus answered their
questions and accusations by quoting Isaiah 29:13 and declaring that the prophet had referred to this very people when he proclaimed by the inspiration of God, “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me. And in vain they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.” The key issue at hand was the exultation of the “traditions of men” and at the same time the devaluing of God’s Word. The conclusion we came to is that traditions in and of themselves, our ways of doing things, are not wrong but they must never be held in the same esteem as God’s Word. Our traditions can and should change, they must be flexible but God’s Word is the same, it endures, it does not change. At the same time we must be honest and realize that while the Word doesn’t change our understanding of it and even our application of it does. That is what the Sermon on the Mount revealed, each time Jesus said “You have heard it said” He was revealing the traditions of men, the interpretations of men that were limited and needed to be considered over again, evaluated again by the Word of God and taught only as man’s thoughts, never as God’s.