Seaford Baptist Church

Instruction Concerning Defilement

May 23rd, 2009

Instruction Concerning Defilement (Matthew 15:1-20; Mark 7:1-23; John 7:1)

Some of the things in Scripture are – admittedly – hard to understand. This is one of those areas for me, not because of the content, but the context. I have a hard time putting myself in a society where many of my movements are tracked to the minutia of what I do. Here is a prime example, and to truly understand what Jesus was getting at one must step back and review the context of the setting – the social environment and society that they all were part of. So let’s explore before we start to examine the text in detail.

Then came to Jesus scribes and Pharisees, which were of, Jerusalem. Mark says they “came from” it; a deputation probably sent from the capital expressly to watch Him. Since He had not come to them at the last Passover, which they had reckoned on, they now come to Him. “And,” says Mark, “when they saw some of His disciples eat bread with defiled, that is to say, with unwashen, hands” – hands not ceremonially cleansed by washing – “they found fault. For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, except they wash their hands oft” – literally, ‘in’ or ‘with the fist;’ that is, probably, washing the one hand by the use of the other-though some understand it, with our version, in the sense of ‘diligently,’ ’sedulously’ – “eat not, holding the tradition of the elders;” acting religiously according to the custom handed down to them. “And when they come from the market” – ‘And after market;’ after any common business, or attending a court of justice, where the Jews, as Webster and Wilkinson remark, after their subjection to the Romans, were especially exposed to conversation and contact with pagans – “except they wash, they eat not. And many other things there be, which they have received to hold, as the washing of cups and pots, brazen vessels and tables” – rather ‘couches,’ such as were used at meals, which probably were merely sprinkled for ceremonial purposes.
(from Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown Commentary, Electronic Database. Copyright © 1997, 2003, 2005, 2006 by Biblesoft, Inc. All rights reserved.)

So we have Jesus, with interest still high in all that He said and did, being followed by religious leaders from Jerusalem. The questions came because the disciples didn’t wash their hands. Not because they were filthy dirty, but the ritual of washing their hands. This was due to the demands of the law to maintain separation from Gentiles and the Jewish sense of the uncleanness of Gentiles. In fact, the more commentators I read on this, the demands of the law were interesting in that they prescribed the way hands would be washed, the way that water must flow, and how far the water needed to flow (the water from the fingertips on the first washing must run down to the wrist, think of the way a surgeon holds his hands in the tilted upright position so water would run down from the tip of the fingers to the wrist).

So Jesus was approached by these religious leaders. They did not question the disciples conformity to the law of Moses, instead they questioned their conformity to the traditions of the elders. Jesus responds to their question with a question of His own and quotes scripture. And not just any scripture, but Isaiah 29:13 pointing out that God would not accept the worship of the nation because they were concerned with external observances (traditions) and were not worshipers from the heart.

You see, that question back from Jesus to these religious leaders went to the heart of the matter. The Pharisees had cleverly used their traditions to find ways of circumventing the stringent requirements of the law. The law of Moses required a son to support an indigent parent. That put the financial responsibility on the son. The Pharisees used their traditions to circumvent the law and absolve themselves of this responsibility. They ceremonially dedicated all they had to God by pronouncing the word Corban over it (see Mark 7:11). Then this was given or set aside for God’s use and the temple’s benefit. The leaders had no qualms with this as it brought them a profit! The parents, however, now were left to fend for themselves. The traditions of the elders absolved the son from responsibility to the father and eased the conscience of the son from the guilt of failure to fulfill the law.

Jesus then turns to speak to the crowd. He used this opportunity to teach them what God saw as unclean. You see, the religious leaders considered themselves clean within and wholly acceptable to God. The way they saw it, only that which came into contact with them from the outside could make them unclean and defiled in the sight of God. Jesus refused this teaching and turned it on its head – it was what was inside, that was what made one unclean.

The religious leaders concept continued to lead them to reject Jesus, the one who offered the a righteousness from God. The sensed no need of such a righteousness and insisted that ceremonial cleansings were sufficient, thinking they were essentially clean within.

And us? Are we like the disciples and just don’t quite get it? We go to church, we pray, we give of our money, we do the ‘right things’ and think that we’re OK with God. Are we? Look inside – are you just window dressing your outside and thinking that is all that matters?

Entry Filed under: Bible Study, Bryan Dunn