To Jeffrey as go to k f I com You're going to use the keyword pathway and as I mentioned just for entering receive a copy of that free booklet from Dr Jeffress nextstep truth for life with Allister begun 7 10 am the word where faith comes by hearing. The live your church traditions can be a real comfort to us especially when it seems like there is little stability elsewhere in our lives but the Bible warns us about the dangers of elevating tradition above God's word. Today untruth for life Alister big describes the danger of legalism with a message titled scripture and tradition word Mark tripped or so. As I say we're focusing on the section that begins various 9 and runs through to verse 13 and will save 14 and following for next time I don't always read the New English Bible I turn to it every so often but I did see evening just because I was interested to read another translation of this passage from the Greek and I found verse 9 to be pretty good the any b. Translates force 9 and Jesus said to them you have a clever way of rejecting God's law in order to up hold your own teaching and it is this issue of then elevating tradition to the place of biblical authority that Jesus comes to 3 times 1st of all and our state he puts is as follows You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men and then verse 9 as we've just quoted it you can find we have Setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions and then in verse 13 thus you nullify the Word of God by your tradition that you have handed down and he's using a specific illustration and he says and actually this isn't the only way you do this you do all kinds of things like this so what was it they were doing well they were essentially forcing upon others that which God had neither prescribed nor commanded they were telling other people that these were things that they had to do despite the fact that God had not said they had to do that this was the tradition that had build up over time. Now if you think about it in relationship to this 1st instance the matter of washing hands from one perspective it was no big issue after all the the Washington's in this way were not countermanded in the Bible specific instructions had been given these were not the instructions but certainly for people to be involved in washing their hands was something pretty nice to do is hygiene it for one thing and it doesn't harm anybody at all so from one perspective for them to be concerned in this way and to wish the cycles were doing the same is perfectly understandable but the rub is in this but that these things were not in the Bible they were not commanded by God and because they were not commanded by God The Pharisees had absolutely no right to seek to make these things an obligation now there is a fundamental principle that is at work here and I'll try and state it for you and it goes like this that customs or preferences or traditions that are not commanded in scripture and which aren't in conflict with Scripture may be permissible provided they're not enforced upon people as being essential and particularly essential to acceptance with God no matter how much we may be interested in this and committed to it ourselves and have benefited from it in the past either the doing of something or the failing to do something we have no basis upon which to make that an obligation to our brothers and sisters in Christ. And that was the essential issue with these characters and Jesus will have no time for it when we see things in this light then we must recognize that given that it is permissible it is optional and the problem was that they were unprepared for that as far as they were concerned it was an obligation and anyone who turned it into an option was violating not simply the tradition of the elders but was going against the very command of God himself now less in the 1st instance concerning these washings We come now to the 2nd instance where we have this particular issue where Jesus envisages a situation where I young man has determined either in a moment of devotion or it may actually have been in a moment of rebellion and we can tell from the context he has decided in a moment to make a vowel and in this vile he's going to pronounce all of his possessions as Corba In other words he is going to declare that all of his possessions are from this point on now devoted solely to God They may only be used in this particular way in the service of God as a result his parents will not be able to benefit from his possessions now may well be that in a moment of devotion a man like that has decided that it is the right thing for him he's been the beneficiary of things all of his life he has more than enough his parents are well set and so on and therefore he feels himself is perfectly rational and sensible to be able to do this they're not the illegitimate in that at all the Bible has a lot to say about. It But what if circumstances change what of his mother got horribly sick. What if the stock market collapse whatever they hit the fan and he realized that the value that he'd made in the past which he made very sincerely was now actually making it impossible for him to do what he felt he ought to do namely to honor his father and mother and so he wants to do is what he wants to do is to reverse essentially the irrevocable trust he wants to go back into it and get it out in order that he can help his mom and dad was wrong with that absolutely nothing and fight everything is right about it and you will notice that Jesus is addressing the issue in verse 12 whatever help you might have received from me the man says is Corban In other words I'm no longer able to do that is a gift devoted to God Now here's the key phrase The issue is not the man in relationship to his parents the issue is the control of the Pharisees over the man verus 12 Then you that is you Pharisees then you Pharisees no longer let him do anything for his father and mother you are a holding him to your traditions in such a way that you are causing him to violate the command of God and Jesus says you can do that. Because your traditions are subservient to God's commands hence you notice what he actually says most is said on earth your father and your mother anyone who curses his father or his mother must be put to death in the Old Testament dispensation if you cursed your father or your mother it was it was a capital punishment offense that is how good that is how much incidentally God cares about the family unit that's how much he cares about the way in which he's put the nuclear family together that's for another time but what has happened is that these characters these Pharisees determine that it isn't possible for this young man to change his mind and consequently he is unable to help his parents now what were they doing they were setting themselves up as the arbiters of human conduct they were setting themselves up as the ones who could determine what could happen and what could happen they had no authority to do so the scriptures were very clear you must honor your father and your mother the fellow had taken a vow the vows are in the Bible it is important to uphold those the Pharisees had that on their side but it was not legitimate for them to do what they did and as a result they turned things on their heads. The young man could no longer do what he wanted to do and they had no right to enforce it as an essential. If you think about this from one perspective these Pharisees must of loot particularly devout highly scrupulous in enforcing the law causing people to say well I suppose as what it means to be really really religious Not only do they love to pray in the public not only do they love to dress in such a way as to draw attention to themselves but they love also to be able to pronounce on these things and they are very very quick to tell everybody what they can and what they can do. And it was a look quite good from the outside but they were actually guilty of calling for an individual to set aside the clear command of God in order that tradition might be upheld why because they had elevated their tradition to be on a par with the command of God. And I say to you again that this is not a 1st century problem this is a recurring problem throughout all of church history what is the basis of authority does it lie soley in scripture or does it lie in Scripture and a little bit of tradition and how much tradition and what is the interaction between the tradition and the scripture Jesus you will notice distinguishes very very clearly verse 10 and I pointed out before for most is said on your father and your mother verse 11 but you say in the Matthew account it doesn't read but Moses it reads but God said God said it through Moses and these are synonyms in the Bible Moses said God said Scripture says because this is divine this is supreme This is authoritative and this is sufficient what man says does not possess any of the prior qualities and stands in distinct contrast to that which God has commanded and so what is actually at stake in this little section is the issue of the authority of scripture and indeed the sufficiency of scripture and as I thought along these lines during the week I have been realigning some books and I came across an ancient copy of the 39 Articles of the Church of England. I can't really open too many of his pages you can tell that I haven't been reading it a lot with my cornflakes it's a somewhat dusty tome but I'm very happy to have it and so I thought well just as a matter of interest why don't I look at what the 39 Articles of the Church of England have to say about the authority of Scripture and so I found it in Article Number 6 and article number 6 which is of the sufficiency of holy scriptures for salvation reads as follows Incidentally all the S's in here are RAF's So if I don't get this immediately right that's the problem Holy Scripture container with all things necessary to salvation so that whatsoever is not read there in nor may be proved there by is not to be required of any man that it should be believed as an article of faith or to be thought requisite or necessary to salvation and then goes on to outline the canon of scripture in the old and the new testaments to set aside the Apocrypha as being non-canonical and therefore totally interesting but absolutely non-binding and I'm going to give you just a brief quote from this because I think it is worthwhile after the main foundations of religion in general in the belief of God or more especially of the Christian religion in the doctrine of the Trinity and of the death resurrection and ascension of Christ are laid down the next point to be settled is what is the rule of this faith where is it to be found and with whom is it launched. The Church of Rome and we do both agree that the scriptures are of divine inspiration those of that communion acknowledge that everything which is contained in Scripture is true and comes from God but they add to this that the books of the New Testament were occasionally written and not with the design of making them the Fool Rule of faith but many things were delivered orally by the Apostles which if they are faithfully transmitted to us are to be received by us with the same submission and respect that we paid to their writings. And they do also believe that these traditions are conveyed down infallibly to us and that to distinguish between true and false doctrines and traditions there must be an infallible authority large by Christ with his church we on the contrary affirm that the scriptures are a complete rule of faith and that the whole Christian religion is contained in them and nowhere else and although we may make great use of tradition especially that which is most ancient and nearest the source to help us to a clear understanding of the Scriptures yet as to matters of faith we reject all oral tradition as an incompetent means of conveying down doctrines to us and we refuse to receive any doctrine that is not either expressly contained in scripture or clearly proved from it that is an Orthodox article of faith in relationship. To the sole authority of Scripture and when you think in terms of the Reformation you think in those terms that the reformers were standing up to all that is mentioned here and saying no as thankful as we may be for this and for this and for this and as helpful as it may be in point it is in this direction when it comes to the issue tradition must bow before the authority of the Scriptures and the church bows to the authority of the Scriptures the Scriptures do not bow to the authority of the church and here in this little section of Mark Chapter 7 Jesus is tackling this very issue because these characters are saying yeah we want to be real clear about the law of God but we want to be even more clear about the law of God So we've added some more stuff to it just to make sure that everybody is really paying attention to it and in fight what they were doing was undermining the very law of God contravening it in all kinds of ways. By means of their oral traditions they were attempting to manipulate and to control the Divine Law Now as I say to you and we need to be clear concerning this it was obvious that the Pharisees could point to vows in the Bible they could point to the fight the votes were commanded and that the keeping of those was commanded in the Old Testament but Cranfield writes very helpfully when he says it was their interpretation their tradition which was at fault for it clung to the letter of the particular passage in such a way as to miss the meaning of scripture as a whole. And that is often a feature of legalism that is often a feature of people who say No you absolutely can't do this and they say well we're holding this because we're saying exactly what the Scriptures say. Well our time is almost gone so let me just finish in this way what do you think our takeaway should be from this let me let me just say 3 things by way of conclusion are are we simply then to dispense with tradition after all we are not a very traditional kind of congregation we don't have much by way of background and so on and so should we become the champions of no we don't really believe in a tradition it's all we don't like tradition we're not tradition no no tradition no no we shouldn't do that why because traditions actually helpful. I mean I just I just read from a 39 Articles So what we need to do with tradition is accept the benefits that it brings and recognise what it is tradition so number one we should extend the benefits of tradition to we must learn to distinguish between scripture and tradition so we have to constantly be saying to ourselves monitoring ourselves our own approaches our own attitudes and the attitude of our church is this biblical or is or is this traditional Is this something that we can actually mandate is this something that we must do or is this something that we would like to do is this a preference how much of this can I really substantiate by going to the Scriptures or is this a violation of scripture is permissible for me to do or choose not to do but it is not permissible for me to lay it down on somebody else and tell them they must do it or they mustn't do it why because I can prove it from the Bible or is not written in the Bible so one we recognise the benefits of tradition to distinguish between scripture and tradition and 3 and finally we have to learn all with us to subordinate tradition to Scripture. Why don't your disciples wash their hands the Pharisees asked to his cousins optional they didn't like that because they were going to decide what was optional and what wasn't and they decided that it was an obligation therefore they were guilty of a violation but they were wrong and Jesus was right and Jesus had to ask them the question why do you prevent this man from a being God's law when it's an obligation you can't he says to the various he's turned it into an option by making your ruling mandatory which is exactly what they were doing. There saying no you cannot honor your father and mother I know it says it in the Bible and noises in the Law of Moses and the reason you can is because you did the carbon thing and the carbon thing is inviolable they were wrong what they have done was they've taken tradition and the of it to the point of Scripture and it became a mechanism for them to turn their backs on Scripture itself. One final quote from you thin Yes I'm sure you are always happy have a quote from him. He writes on verse 13 of Chapter 7 all human handling of the Word of God is continually be said by the temptation to try to turn the Word of God into a business of conventional piety and morals something manageable and complementary to human self complacency. I want to be able to take this Bible and manipulate it like a piece of plasticine so that it will allow me to do exactly what I would choose to do. And it will allow me leverage over those under my care so that I may make rules for then. That they must obey Instead what we need to do is allow the law of God to show 'd as continually and always that we are sinners sinners who can only live with God's law on the basis of justification I justification which is alien to those outside of us and imputed to us on Christ we have. So that our except and all day and every day. Will never be on the strength of what we are doing or not doing but on the strength of what he has once and for all done. So the most helpful aspect of this is that it continually turns us to the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. Is. Calling us to depend completely on Jesus listing to Alister beg on truth for life if you'd like to listen again or if you need to catch up on previous messages in this series visit us on line at truth for Life dot org as Allister reminded us today we need to avoid falling into a situation where good Biblical habits become a routine that is motivated more by legalism then by heartfelt worship when we think about our prayer life this is an area where we truly want our meditations and heart to be guided by God's word. The intimate dialogue during prayer that forms our personal relationships with God is a vital part of our faith and a practice we want to pass on to our children today I want to invite you to request a wonderful resource titled what every child should know about prayer this is a book that comes from bestselling author and Bible teacher Nancy Guthrie It's a brand new book and Nancy uses a child friendly language to teach children how to express praise concerns fears and requests of the Lord through prayer. The book is part of a popular what every child should know series it's a delightfully engaging resource that teaches young children that God wants us to talk to him he hears our prayers and he answers us in fact Nancy provides many examples that are easy for children to learn and recite will send you a copy today when you make a donation and request the book Ask for what every child should know about prayer by Nancy Guthrie when you donate by calling 888-588-7884 or give online at truth for Life dot org. I'm Bob Latina inviting you to join us Tuesday as we continue our study in the Gospel of Mark the Bible teaching of Alister bag is furnished by truth for life. Where the learning is for living. Sacramento 7 10 am the word Alister day is sponsored by truth for life support the ministry by becoming a truth partner find out how and true for Life dot org inside for a living is next with Pastor Chuck Swindoll. From the big mountain heating air and solar and frozen or traffic from the word northbound 99 of Highway 50 watch out for maintenance trues working until 2 this afternoon northbound 99 at the Crystal way off. We have a multiple vehicle accident the beagles the senator by an old cab anyone Hazel We have a 3 vehicle crash i