Day 275 – Jesus’ Confrontation of the Pharisees

• A church like the one that we go to has many traditions and ways of doing things. We say the Creed. We structure our prayer time. We confess our sins together using familiar words. We do communion with set words and in a particular way. None of these are bad things, particularly. We use the books and the set words because they speak truth. But to an extent, they are also based in tradition. The Bible doesn’t command a certain method of confession, or baptism, or communion – but we have our set ways.
• The Pharisees that Jesus talked to in today’s passages had gone a dangerous step further than simple tradition though. They had created rules that they considered as important as the Law that God gave them. What was the rule that they are concerned about in today’s passages?
• Washing your hands before eating isn’t mentioned in Scripture. It wasn’t a sin either of course. What, therefore, was Jesus’ argument against the Pharisees?
• Can you think of a situation where you have followed the technicalities of a law but ignored the spirit of the law? Jesus pointed out a situation with mothers and fathers. A man could “get out” of supporting his parents (something prescribed in the Law) by officially dedicating all his earnings to God (i.e. the temple) – even if it wasn’t spent on religious activities. That man could argue he was being good, but in his heart he was just trying to get around the responsibilities he had to his parents. What did Jesus think about this?
• How do you think individual church traditions can help or hinder a personal faith in Jesus?
• The Jews would have considered certain food unclean because of some Levitical law. How did Jesus change this? What things really make a man unclean, did Jesus say? Fellowship with God isn’t blocked by unclean hands, or food; it’s our sinful hearts! 
• The story of the Canaanite woman shows the faith in Jesus of a non-Jewish person. It looked, initially, that Jesus was indifferent to her sufferings because she was not Jewish (Matthew 15:24). This isn’t the case though. Jesus was challenging His disciples to show pity to all (they wanted to get rid of her in 15:23). Jesus applauded the persistent faith of the woman and healed her daughter. Jesus did indeed come first to save the Jew… but also the gentile. That’s great news for you and me!

Christians can often be challenged by people who are not religious for being people who “just follow rules to get to Heaven”. That’s not true, of course – or at least it shouldn’t be. We should be following God’s commandments in Scripture because it’s honouring to Him, rather than for what it may or may not achieve for us (which, again, is limited, as it’s grace that saves, not works).

Living a life that puts Christ at the centre does, however, involve doing certain things and not doing others. We are called to resist temptation to sin. We are called to share our faith. None of these are save in themselves, but when we do them they are the outward signs of a strong inward trust in our Saviour.

We need to be careful, however, in the way that we go about living a life of obedience. A temptation can be, for instance, to create laws that come from our traditions and personal preferences about how we honour God. That can become like the Pharisees. We need also to understand that those who struggle to follow God in certain ways aren’t looked down on, because we all fall short of God’s standards in different ways. We can also fall into the trap of living a life of obedience for the wrong reasons – such as to impress others around us.

A tip I’d recommend when trying to live for Christ, and applying His biblical teachings, is to always do so with a humble heart. It’s never about us, or how we look, or what we think we’re missing out on. It’s all about honouring God personally, and giving glory to God publicly.

That’s an almost impossible ideal in practise, of course, but we can aim for it nonetheless!