SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 7/4/2022 9:36 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-2 “The Confrontation”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
15:1-2
Message of the verses: “1 Then some
Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem, saying, 2 "Why do Your
disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their
hands when they eat bread.’”
As we begin to further look at this passage we can
see that the hatred has begun in full force as these leaders came from
Jerusalem and probably took the time on the way to begin to think up things to
confront Jesus with. In verse two we can
see the results of their think and planning to confront Jesus “"Why do
Your disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their
hands when they eat bread.’” We can see
that they did not try to hide the fact that Jesus’ offense was against the
tradition of the elders rather than God’s law.
It was in their minds that the tradition of the elders was superior to
Scripture, in the sense that it was the only reliable interpretation of God’s
Word. MacArthur writes “Just as Roman
Catholics look to church dogma to discover what Scripture ‘really means,’ most
Jews of Jesus’ day looked to the tradition of the elders. In much the same way, many Protestants give
more authority to the pronouncements of their denomination than to the Bible.” It takes time to study the Bible and in most
cases both the Catholics and Protestants are not truly believers and so they
will not be able to truly understand the Word of God, but can understand the
writings of their church, which in most cases goes against the Word of
God.
At
this time I want to begin to copy from the sermon that John MacArthur preached
on this section and beyond, and the reason is I want everyone to understand
more about tradition, and the Jewish books that led to traditions. We may not get through all of this in this SD
as I don’t want to make it too long, but we will see.
“Now,
let me talk about tradition so you’ll understand what it was. You can’t
understand what He says unless you know what the tradition of the elders means.
Tradition is that which is handed down from one generation to the next. It is
not to be confused with that which comes from God. That is Scripture. And any
time you have a religion that has Scripture plus tradition, you have a problem.
And that is the case with Roman Catholicism, as we shall see tonight. That is
the case with Judaism. And it is even the case with Protestantism in many, many
instances, where tradition has been added to Scripture, and people no longer
know what’s from God and what’s from men.
“Now,
let’s see where their tradition fits in. The Talmud - and let’s talk about them in general
– the Talmud, which is the codification of Jewish law – the Talmud says that
God gave the oral law to Moses. Right? And then God told Moses to pass it on to
great men of the synagogue.
“And
these men of the synagogue were to do three things with the law of God: one, be
deliberate in judgment. In other words, properly apply God’s law. Two, raise up
many disciples so that in the next generation, there would be others to apply
the law. And three – and here’s the key – build a fence around the law. Wall it
in so you would be protecting it. Don’t let it suffer attack. Wall it in.
“So,
one, apply it properly, raise up others to apply it, and protect it. They were
protectors of the law. So, you know how they decided to protect it? Since their
hearts basically were not right, and so many people’s hearts weren’t right, and
the obedience was not spontaneous from the heart, the only other way to get
people to do things is to make them do it. Right? If they’re not going to do it
willingly, then you have to force them to do it.
“And so, they started adding laws
and laws and laws and laws and laws, and they then became the spiritual
enforcers of those laws. And down through history, the slats in the fence kept
going up, and there were more and more and more and more and more and more. And
the ultimate result was it totally obscured the law of God. All the people saw
was all the fence slats; they couldn’t see the law of God.
“Now,
all those fence slats that were to be the thing to protect the law, that
actually obscured the law, are what we call the tradition of the elders. The
wise old sages put these things down and said, “This is what we want you to do.
These are the principles of behavior.”
Ok
we will stop here but I want to continue to look at MacArthur’s sermon on this
subject as when I listened to it there were many new things that I learned from
it and desire to pass them on in these Spiritual Diaries.
Spiritual meaning for my life today: I desire to understand the truth from the
Scriptures so that when a person is either preaching or talking to me that I
will know whether or not that he is telling the whole truth as far as from the
Scriptures.
My
Steps of Faith for Today: Continue to
study the Word of God and to once again memorize it and then once again to
meditate on it so that the Spirit of God can speak to my heart about what is in
what I memorize and meditate on.
7/4/2022 10:31 AM
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