Reasoning Through the Bible
Taking a cue from Paul, Reasoning Through the Bible is an expository style walk through the Scriptures that tells you what the Bible says. Reviewing both Old and New Testament books, as well as topical subjects, we methodically teach verse by verse, even phrase by phrase.
We have completed many books of the Bible and offer free lesson plans for teachers. If you want to browse our entire library by book or topic, see our website www.ReasoningThroughTheBible.com.
We primarily do expository teaching but also include a good bit of theology and apologetics. Just like Paul on Mars Hill, Christianity must address both the ancient truths and the questions of the people today. Join Glenn and Steve every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday as they reason with you through the Bible.
Reasoning Through the Bible
S21 || The Danger of Empty Worship || Mark 7:9-13 || Session 21 || Verse by Verse Bible Study
Jesus delivers a scathing critique of religious hypocrisy that cuts straight to the heart of authentic faith. When the Pharisees criticize his disciples for skipping ritual hand-washing, Jesus exposes something far more serious: these religious leaders had elevated their traditions above God's actual commands.
The conversation reveals a dangerous progression that begins with hearts distant from God and ends with completely invalidating Scripture through man-made rules. This pattern remains alarmingly relevant today. Many still believe performing enough religious activities—whether lighting candles, saying prayers, or even regular church attendance—can somehow earn God's favor. Yet Jesus makes clear that authentic worship flows from a transformed heart, not external performance. Examine your spiritual practices today—are they drawing you closer to God or merely checking boxes? Remember that faith in Christ, not religious activity, is what reconciles us to our Creator.
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May God Bless you!! - Glenn and Steve
Last time on Reasoning Through the Bible, we were discussing this story in Mark, chapter 7, where the scribes and the Pharisees had come all the way from Jerusalem and the only thing they found to criticize for Jesus and his disciples was that there was a ritual hand-washing that the disciples were not doing. We talked about how that was sort of a conceited holier-than-thou sort of attitude, because they'd gone out into where the commoners were, yet they felt they had to cleanse themselves of possible things. Jesus gave a strong condemnation against that, simply because they were elevating their traditions over the Word of God, and he roundly condemned them for this over the Word of God and he roundly condemned them for this. I think there's still some things that we can draw out of this story that would help us today. It talks about their traditions. That's really what he's condemning here. He accused them very specifically of elevating their traditions above the clear commands and written Word of God. It also says in verse 4 that there were many other things that were handed down in their tradition. So it wasn't just this hand washing it talks about. There were many of these traditions that were handed down.
Speaker 1:Steve, this makes me think about some people are drawn to these religious activities, because a religious activity makes me feel like I'm doing something. It makes me feel like I have to do some activity in order to please God. Most people realize that we are far from God as natural people and we have to have some sort of a reconciliation. Well, how do we get back? Well, maybe if I light enough candles or say enough prayers, or maybe if I set up a cleansing ritual where I cleanse everything around me, or maybe if I read enough Word of God or go to enough prayer services or listen to enough sermons, or maybe I can crawl up the steps on my knees or some of these type of religious activities that make people think I'm going to sacrifice enough in order to get to God. Well, what's wrong with that thinking? Can we really do enough religious activities to please a holy and righteous God?
Speaker 2:No, that's why we needed a satisfactory sacrifice in the form of Jesus Christ, who is God manifested here on earth. Jesus calls them hypocrites in verse 6. That's a word that is derived from the theater, where the actors would have two different masks, usually of two emotions that were opposite of each other, and usually, during the emotion and the play that they were putting on, they would hold the mask up and then later hold the other mask up whenever they wanted to depict another emotion. They're actors, and that's what is behind the word hypocrite. Jesus is very clearly saying you are just acting to please men and you're not doing things that are God-pleasing what you've just been talking about, glenn. We can't do anything or enough on our own to please God.
Speaker 1:We need to have the righteousness of Jesus Christ that God sees whenever we become believers in Jesus Christ, to me this little story represents a major and very common misunderstanding about people in the world, about Christianity and how we get right with God. People tend to think if I do something, then that is why we can get right with God again. Maybe if I get baptized, maybe if I go through some ritual, then maybe that'll get me right with God. But the clear message of the balance of Scripture is that there is not enough we can do. Christianity is a love relationship based on faith. That's the message and we went over this in a lot of detail when we went through Galatians. There's no amount of religious activity we can do that'll get us right with God. That's the clear message of Scripture. So we approach Him by faith. We approach Him through faith and love, not through some religious activity. This is why one of the reasons in this passage here in Mark, chapter 7, he soundly condemns them because they had been lifting up these religious activities instead of just trusting the Lord. Now notice, in this passage he has a series of statements that he makes about them, that explains their behavior, that he explains how far they have gotten from God. He starts out in verse 6 saying even though they say the right things, their heart is far away from God. So they start with their heart far away. Then, in verse 7, they teach man's traditions as God's doctrine. Not only do they teach traditions as God's doctrine, the things that are God's doctrine they neglect in verse 8. Verse 9, they set aside the commands of God, and in verse 13, they invalidate the word of God by their traditions.
Speaker 1:The whole sequence starts out with their hearts being far from God, and then they lift up their own teachings to be God's commands. Then they deny and neglect God's commands and end up invalidating the Word of God. It's a very horrible progression and it starts by this idea that we can do religious activities in order to please God. That is someone whose heart is far from God because they've convinced themselves they're righteous. And if they really were to hold themselves up against the Word of God and look in that mirror, they would find that they're really unable and they're really full of wickedness in their hearts, and what they should do is fall at Jesus' feet and beg forgiveness, and then he would regenerate them from the inside out and provide a righteous heart. That's how we get right with God. To me, that is just such a major, major idea in Scripture that is just brought out real clearly in this passage here, wouldn't you think, steve?
Speaker 2:Yes, and we are told that whenever we become a new creation, that we by being in Christ. That part of it is of our faith. That is seen through the good works that we do. But that's a completely different motivation than what you've been talking about, glenn. If we're putting the motivation first of to do good works in order to please God, that's different than being a believer and being a new creation and having the heart of doing good works because of our faith. That's completely different. I don't think we want to get the message across that doing good things is wrong. It's the motivation behind doing those good things. That's really the heart of what you're getting to, glenn, right?
Speaker 1:Yes, I agree 100%. There's also some additional things we could bring out here. If we look at specifically what he accused them of in verse 7, in vain, do they worship me? Is what he says. He's accusing them of worshiping in vain. Now I want to talk about that for just a minute, because I find this very serious, first of all, and very interesting, because here were people that were worshiping, but he says your worship is in vain, it's empty.
Speaker 1:Jesus is quoting an Old Testament passage that God had made that same accusation back in the Old Testament, that people were going through worship activities, but God is saying your heart's not in it, so therefore your worship is empty, it's in vain. It happened in the Old Testament and Jesus is quoting it here in the New Testament. This brings up a kind of a serious situation, because what he's saying is it's very possible for people to be in church honoring God with their lips that's exactly what he's accusing them of but their hearts far away. Therefore, their worship is empty, it's useless, it's in vain.
Speaker 1:Steve, is this possible still today, for people to be in the church saying God words, mouthing the right prayers and saying the right things and actually going through worship activities inside of a church, even as a church member, but their worship is in vain. I'm not trying to cast doubt or be kind of a skeptic here, I'm just saying that's what's in the text. There's been times in my life where I walked out of a church service and I said, you know, my mind was elsewhere, my emotions really weren't in this and I kind of questioned my own motivations. I'm not sitting here on any kind of high horse pointing fingers at people. I'm just saying is it possible that even us could be worshiping in vain, even though we're in a church, saying the right?
Speaker 2:things. It comes back to the motivation. What is motivating you to go to the worship? If you're being motivated out of duty that's another way of synonym for guilt, in a way If you're doing it because you feel that you have to do it but you really don't want to do it, then you can fall into that situation where you're just going because this is what I'm supposed to do. I'm supposed to go to church on Sunday mornings and that's what I'm going to do. And it could also be because you're going because, well, that's what I'm supposed to do. I'm supposed to take my children to church. That's what I'm supposed to do. I'm supposed to take my children to church and I'm really taking them. I'm doing this because they need to hear the Word of God in the Sunday school class that they're in.
Speaker 2:Well, that's not the right motivation for yourself. But I think it all comes down to the heart. What's the motivation behind it? An additional thing might be that if you're doing it to please the leadership, if it's something that the leadership is saying you need to do, and you do it to please the leadership, and it's not tied to what God has said that we should do, or from an act of worship on our part to get close to God and understand him better, then I think that is a trap that we can sometimes fall into. What was it that Jesus said in Revelation to the church at Ephesus? He said you have lost your first love. That was the admonishment that he gave to them, and I think it's something that we should be aware of. He gave to them, and I think it's something that we should be aware of. Let's not lose our first love. That brought us to Jesus Christ in the first place.
Speaker 1:One of the things that happened as we're making this recording. Two days ago I was in a college campus here locally and doing some ministry work with college students. One of the college students coming to our meetings came in and says oh, I need to do my prayers for the day. I really don't believe this stuff anymore. I don't believe the religion, but I was raised in this so I need to do this. He proceeds to face the right direction and do the right prayers, and so to me, that is what comes to mind is people that were doing it because mom and dad told us, or the church father said we're supposed to do it or whatever. But really is your heart in it? It's a love relationship. How do I not fall into that same trap? And I think one of the ways is, first of all, confess to the Lord and say Lord, please forgive me. I think if one of the reasons for getting in that is not really staying in the Word of God, because if we truly stay in the Word of God, it'll convict us, it'll draw us to him. What does it say in the New Testament? Faith comes by hearing the Word of God. That's how we increase our faith and how we stay right with God is being around other Christians and being in the Word of God where he can build our faith. A couple of things here that I think we can draw out of this passage here before we move on In Mark.
Speaker 1:Here he has this passage where he is explaining in the first part of Mark 7. Here he is explaining what the Jews are doing and why they're doing it. He talks about how this is a tradition and they have these other traditions about cleaning the copper pots and things. Well, that is an explanation that Mark puts in because the readers wouldn't know it. If you go over, for example, and you read the book of Matthew, he has a lot of Jewish tradition stuff in there but he never explains it. Matthew assumes the audience understands what you're talking about. Mark is assuming the reader wouldn't know what the Jewish traditions were, so he feels he has to explain it, which tells us a clue as to who the book is written for.
Speaker 1:Mark is written for a Gentile audience. He's writing for a Roman world. He brings in the story, so he has to explain the Jewish background to it. Matthew was writing to a Jewish audience who would already have understood it. That gives us a clue as to who these people were writing to.
Speaker 1:We also notice here in chapter 7, verses 3 and 4, he changes to present tense. He's telling this historical story of Jesus and these Pharisees. In verses 3 and 4, he changes to present tense. Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they do this. This is a present tense thing. So that gives us a clue as to the time when the book was written. The book was written when the Jewish system was still in place. It was written because we can tell that here the Jewish Pharisaical system was still there After the Romans came in and destroyed Jerusalem and destroyed the Jewish culture. All that was gone away. Anybody wouldn't have written it as if it was a present tense thing still going on. Therefore, the Gospel of Mark was not written a couple of 300 years later because of passages like this talking about their traditions. That's still going on at the time of the writing of the book. Little clues like that is how the scholars can date the Gospels as written very early within the lifetime of the apostles.
Speaker 2:There's a term for that too, glenn. In there it's inconsequential incidences, or what's the term that's used for that.
Speaker 1:Consequential incidences, or what's the term that's used for that. You're probably thinking of undesigned coincidences, because there's things between different books that'll relatively minor parts of the story, but they line up both with external books of history and with other books in the Bible. That these things just line up in a way. Now notice here. Lastly, in this story it tells us that Jesus' popularity with the common people is growing tremendously and his popularity with the leaders is diminishing tremendously. The Jewish leaders are having a lower and lower opinion of Jesus and the populace is just growing and growing. Steve, could you read verses 9 through 13 of Mark, chapter 7?
Speaker 2:He was also saying to them you are experts at setting aside the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition, For Moses said Honor your father and your mother, and he who speaks evil of father or mother is to be put to death. But you say If a man says to his father or his mother, whatever I have that would help you is korban, that is to say given to God. You no longer permit him to do anything for his father or his mother, thus invalidating the word of God by your tradition, which you have handed down, and you do many things such as that what he's saying here.
Speaker 1:the main point of that passage is that Jesus is criticizing these Jewish leaders because they haven't made a distinction between more important commands of God and less important commands of God, and even the more important commands of God and the lesser important traditions of men. They weren't making distinctions here. Not only were they holding up their traditions as equal with the Word of God, or even higher possibly, but they were also not realizing even within the commands of God there's more important and less important things. That's what he's saying here. The traditions weren't evil. That's not what he's saying here, steve. He's not saying these were wrong traditions. He was saying that you're not having a compassion on people. For example, you can take these traditions and make them where people can deny honoring their father and mother. That's the issue here is that they didn't realize, hey, things like taking care of my parents were a greater thing than making a pledge of money in the short term to the temple or the church. Am I right?
Speaker 2:You're exactly right, and this is something that the Pharisees would do is that, at any time, a Pharisee could raise his hand and say this word, korban, which means to be dedicated. What that meant was he could do two things. That meant that anything that he had of his material wealth at the time was then dedicated to God. He could either give all or part of it to the temple treasury or he could keep it for his private use, but Pharisees didn't like to give their material things to other non-Pharisee sect people.
Speaker 2:A lot of these Pharisees from the tradition of the rabbis tell us that they were converts to Pharisaism, but their parents weren't. So through this act that they would do, they would then say oh, you're not a Pharisee, you're not of this sect of the Pharisee mom and dad. Therefore, I can't really give you what I have now dedicated through this oath of Korban. I can't take care of you in that. That is what Jesus is saying. The law of Moses says honor your father and your mother, which gives an inference that they're supposed to take care of your parents as they get old, that that's part of the responsibility that we have as children. So, once again, they've taken this rule of tradition of Korban, and it has superseded the law of Moses to where, now, they're not even taking care of their mother and father by taking this tradition of men to the extreme that they have.
Speaker 1:One of the things that I've seen over the years, at least in my lifetime, that are problems in the church is when churches and church leaders and denominations and even us regular Christians, if we fail to grasp the idea that within Christianity and within Christian teachings there's some more important ones and there's some less important ones, when we hold all of them to be equally important, or we pick ones that I'm just very emotional about and lift that up to be of high importance then, because it might be important to me, that's when we end up ultimately resulting in church splits and we end up running people out of the church because of arguments over things. Several times in the scriptures we are commanded, or at least we're taught, that there's levels of importance within Christian teaching. Even when some things are true, we shouldn't necessarily lift them up to be equal with others. For example here there's nothing wrong with this idea of korban. It's a way of dedicating money for a period of time to the Lord's work. That's a good thing. When people would say I'm going to give this money to the church for a couple of months or I'm going to dedicate what comes out of my farm for the next two months to the Lord's work, that's a great thing. But then if my parents come along halfway through that period and say you know, gee, son, we're really in a jam here. We'd like to have some food and a shelter over our head oh sorry, mom and dad like to help you, but the money's given to the Lord. No, that's a wrong thing. What he's saying is it's okay, in fact, to it's preferred. Take care of your parents.
Speaker 1:There's other places that this exact same thing is taught. What was Jesus accused of Healing on the Sabbath? Did he heal on the Sabbath? Yes, what he's saying is that even when a sheep falls in a ditch on the Sabbath, you're going to pull it out, even though that's work, because it's wrong to the sheep to leave it in the ditch and it's wrong to this injured man or the sick man not to do a good work on the Sabbath. What he's saying is that doing a good work on the Sabbath, even though it's work, is better than ignoring this larger concept.
Speaker 1:Romans, chapter 14, specifically talks about the keeping of days, which is Sabbath keeping, and the eating of foods, which is the entire Mosaic dietary laws. There is a New Testament, biblical, true position on those two things, whether or not we are still obligated to keep the Sabbath and whether or not we're still obligated to keep the entire Mosaic dietary laws. There is a true and accurate biblical teaching on those two subjects. Yet Romans chapter 14 says if people disagree about those things in the church, don't fight over it, even though they're wrong. People in churches have at least some in our day have lost this idea that there's more important and less important things. And my Christian brother inside my church, even though he's wrong about minor things, we're not going to split a church over it.
Speaker 1:That's exactly what Romans 14 is saying. That's what the gospel teach about the healings on the Sabbath. It's exactly what he's saying here in Mark chapter 7 about the Korban and the parents. Mark chapter 7 about the Korban and the parents. Honoring the father and mother are much more important than the vows that are made to give money to the church. Am I close to the truth here, steve?
Speaker 2:Oh, I think you're spot on to what was going on In the epistles from Paul James Peter. One recurring theme there is that we are to love our fellow believers. We are all in Christ, we're part of the body of Christ and we are to treat them with love. They are fellow spiritual family members and I think many times we lose sight of that in that we get busy doing things that we want to do, that we deem to be pleasing to God, and yet we'll turn around to fellow believers and treat them in a not-so-nice way. If they're a fellow believer, then we should treat them as such and we're to love them. Paul gives that commandment several times to love other believers.
Speaker 1:Let's take this down into practical shoe leather activities for today. What are some practical things that people should do in their families to honor their parents? Well, obviously, things like financial care, physical care. Sometimes it's just visiting them. Many times we just get so caught up in busyness of life that we neglect our aging parents. To just call them up or go by and say hello, even if it's not specifically your parents, one of the greatest ministries that anybody could do is go down to the local old folks home and just sit around and talk and get to know them, because they're quite lonely. What other things can you think of, steve, that would be honoring to our elders and our parents?
Speaker 2:I think that you've hit the nail right on the head, glenn, with what you've said, and some of the things that we can do with our parents is that just visit them, especially if they're in nursing homes. I have seen personally that there are people in nursing homes and even in hospitals that the family members don't come and visit them at all. They have no idea what type of medical condition they are in. Being lonely is a major detriment to a person's health. Visiting them is a simple thing that you can do and look out for them.
Speaker 2:In their old age, the roles are reversed and as our parents get older, they revert to a time whenever we need to take care of them, just like they took care of us whenever we were children. We need to remember that when you become a parent yourself, you understand the sacrifices that you make to raise your children and to give them things that make them happy. Well, we need to remember that whenever our parents get older and there's also a blessing that comes from that In the commandment back in Exodus it's given. It says honor your father and mother so that you will have a long life there's a blessing that comes along with taking care of our parents in their latter life, in their latter days.
Speaker 1:So it's not just something that's beneficial to them, it's also beneficial to us 1 Timothy, chapter 5, says that families are the primary source of support for each other, not the church and not the government, that families are the first place where people should take care of each other. If we take that into the church, that happens today. What I'm about to say is probably some of the pastors aren't going to like it, but I'll go ahead and say it anyway there's people within the sound of my voice that really need to stop doing some church work and go and take care of their family and take care of their parents, because there are people that are neglecting their parents and neglecting their families because they're down at the church all the time. We need to take Jesus' commands here and follow through with it in our lives, because we are indeed to take care of our own family.
Speaker 1:Lastly, in this section, verse 11, mark translates the word korban and explains what it means. The word is an Aramaic word and he's translating it here to tell us what this means. There's no issue with translating language between things so that we can understand it. For some reason, people think that there's some sort of a translation issue, or translation is some sort of a mysterious process where we can't get meaning from one language to the other, but, as we've seen, mark's doing it all throughout this book. Steve, that's probably a great place to wrap up for today, but next time we'll be back here reasoning through the Gospel of Mark.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for watching and listening. May God bless you.
