SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 7/6/2022 7:38 AM
My Worship Time
Focus: PT-4 “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."
I believe that I will repeat the last paragraph from
the sermon that we are looking at from John MacArthur to help us better
understand these two verses.
“Now,
he’s not talking about cleanliness. He’s not saying, “These guys haven’t washed
their hands before they eat, and anybody knows you want to be clean before you
put food in your mouth.” That is not the issue. They’re not accusing them of
being uncouth; they’re accusing them of violating religious tradition. They
believed, because this is what it taught in all of this material, that you had
to go through ceremonial washings of your hands for two reasons. Reason number
one was that if you had touched a Gentile that day, you’d been defiled, and
there was a prescribed ceremony to detoxify your Gentile touch. See?
“Secondly,
the rabbis taught that there was a demon by the name of Shibtah. And Shibtah
dwelt on people’s hands while they slept. And if they did not go through the
ceremonial washings that eliminated him, they would pass him therefore to their
food and into their bodies. Now, this became so important to them that Rabbi
Ta’anith taught, quoting, “Whosoever has his abode in the land of Israel and
eats his common food with rinsed hands may rest assured that he shall obtain
eternal life.” They believed that you received eternal life by going through
the ceremonial rinsing of your hands.
“Now,
granted, in the Old Testament, there were washings that God instituted in
Exodus 19, before the people came before God. He had them wash all their
garments. The priests in Leviticus 15, 16, and 17 had to wash themselves before;
of course, they could carry out any rites of the priesthood. But those were
outward symbols of an inward reality. They had long ago slain the reality, and
now they had magnified the symbols and invented their own. Nowhere in any part
of holy Scripture does God ever say to go through this kind of stuff, to rinse
your hands in a ceremonial way to get rid of any Gentile influence or to drown
or whatever the demon Shibtah so he won’t get in your body.
“Edersheim,
the great Jewish scholar, writes this, “Water jars were kept ready to be used
before every meal. The minimum amount of water to be used was a quarter of a
log” - which, by the way, is defined as enough to fill one-and-a-half
eggshells. “The water was first poured on both hands, held with the fingers
pointed upward. And it must run down the arm as far as the wrist and drop off
from the wrist, for the water was now itself unclean, having touched the
unclean hands. And if it ran down the fingers again, it would render them
unclean. The process was repeated with the hands held in the downward
direction, the fingers pointing down. And finally, each hand was cleansed with
being rubbed with the fist of the other. And a strict Jew would do this before
every meal and between every course in every meal.”
“And
Rabbi Ta’anith said, “If you do that, you’ll obtain eternal life.” And so, they
did it. So, the Word of God was utterly submerged under their tradition. In
fact, the story is told of the very famous Rabbi Akiba, who was put into
prison. And his water ration was reduced, and he took what little water he was
given to wash his hands before eating rather than to drink it, saying he would
rather die than transgress the tradition of the elders. Another rabbi said,
“It’s better to go four miles to get water than to incur guilt by neglecting
hand rinsing before you eat.
“Well,
lest you think it’s unique to the Jewish people, I submit to you that it isn’t
necessarily unique to them, although it’s rather unique to them in this
instance. But throughout history, even in Christianity, people have attached
all kinds of meaningless ceremonies that have obscured the truth.
“It’s
like Spurgeon said one time, “If there were no Sunday morning service at 11:00,
he thought many people would not be Christians. You can have all kinds of
ceremonies/traditions. So, we go then from the confrontation to the
condemnation in verse 3, and watch how Jesus responds to this. They are
defending ceremonial religion. They are defending the religion of the external.”
Well
that is the end of the part of the sermon that I wanted to quote that goes
along with these two verses, and I hope that all who has read it have learned
something from it that will help you in your daily walk with the Lord.
Spiritual meaning for my life today: I do not want to ever have any traditions
take the place of Scripture. I know that
having some traditions are very good, but they cannot ever conflict with the
Word of God.
My Steps of Faith for Today: I desire to continue to stay in the Word of
God each and every day, and to memorize and meditate on it in order to help me
have a better walk with the Lord each day.
This is needed in my life in order to win the battles that I fight each
and every day.
7/6/2022 7:52 AM
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