You
have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of man.
Mark 7:8
Almighty
and merciful God, defend Your church from all false teaching and error that
Your faithful people may confess you to be the only true God and rejoice in
Your good gifts of life and salvation.
Do not use religion to avoid
the demands of faith. Leadership of Jesus day built for themselves a religion
of traditions and proceeded to use tradition to escape the demands of faith.
Jesus has a word for this – hypocrisy. Whose voice will you listen, the voice
of God or the voice of the church? That was the issue of the 16th
Century. Certain reformers repudiated those traditions that they found contrary
to the word of Scripture. Is the church today in need of another overhaul? Some
believe that a reformation is long overdue. If so, who is to be the arbitrator?
At all costs, we need to avoid making religion our religion.
- There is a religion
centered in man’s traditions.
A.
Traditions
can become a substitute for true religion.
1.
The
leadership of Jesus’ day – they were godly, they had it right, they fulfilled
the very letter of the law, including the traditions. They were convinced that
the external cleanliness of their lives, as was exhibited by their ritually
clean hands, pots and pans made them clean before God.
2.
When
tragedy strikes our lives, do we not sometimes wonder why God seems to take no
notice of our godly and clean living? After all, we are faithful in our church
and communion attendance. We are regular in our witness and generous with our
offerings. We work hard at our jobs and try to raise our children rightly.
We’re upright and moral people. When such thinking occurs, we make self the
object of our worship, making tradition our religion, and fall into the trap
believing external living in compliance with God’s law somehow makes us clean
and godly before Him.
B.
When we
live for tradition – customs and ceremonies can soon lose their significance and
meaning.
1
We may
wake up finding ourselves following practices and ceremonies not even knowing
why we are following them.
2
This
happens when we follow blindly never questioning why we practice such rites,
rituals and ceremonies.
3
Cleanliness
before God must flow from the inside out. From the heart out. It is the
condition of the heart, not the position of the body that concerns our Savior.
It is the state of your heart that determines whether you are clean before God.
We dare not let tradition
become like barnacles that gradually grow on a ship and impedes its progress.
- We need a religion based
on the clear word of the Lord
A.
His Word
will not fail. What does His Word teach us? It teaches us that mere ritual,
washing, or clean living will never do. However, His washing will always make
us clean. St. Paul reminds us, “When we
were baptized into Christ Jesus, we were baptized into His death. We were
buried with Him by our baptism into death that as Christ was raised from the
dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of
life. For if we were united with Him in a death like His we will certainly be
united with Him in a resurrection like His.”[1]
In Baptism you were
incorporated into the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Christ is
the only one who has ever live a perfectly good, clean life before God. He
alone is the spotless Lam of God. He never soiled Himself with the stain of
sin, even though He was tempted as you are.
B.
His Word
gives salvation and life. Jesus chose to cover Himself with the entire dirt and
filth of your sin. The Father chose to give Him your punishment for that sin
and to give you His cleanliness. Now in
the waters of Baptism the Father give you Jesus’ clean, holy life as your own
and washes away the stain and dirt of your sin.
This is the Father’s idea of
godliness. Not what we can do to look impressive before God rather it is what
He has done for you. The power of forgiveness in Baptism we are able to really
do what the leaders of Jesus’ day and our own hypocritical nature can only
mimic – offer a life to God that is also externally clean and godly.
In Jesus Christ all our actions
as God’s people – from the rituals of our worship to the duties of our daily
lives are now clean in God’s sight. No wonder the Scriptures call Baptism a “washing of regeneration” and “a renewing of the Holy Spirit.”
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