Jesus Today . . .

JESUS AND MAN-MADE RULES

You have a clever way of rejecting God’s law in order to uphold your own teaching.—Mk. 7:9

That stinging rebuke may apply to some of us in the church today as it did to the Pharisees. We may be rejecting God’s law even when we take our material “right out of the Bible,” for, like the Pharisees, we may be guilty of abusing the Scriptures in order to uphold the teaching of our particular group. Jesus recognized that people can be quite clever in this sort of thing. They can “have Bible” for all they say and yet be wrong, not because they are sincerely mistaken in their understanding, but because they use the Scriptures for their own selfish purposes. Jesus labeled this hypocrisy, and none of us is to suppose that he is above a hypocritical use of the Bible.

At the heart of Jesus’ quarrel with the Pharisees is that they made rules for God: It is no use for them to worship me, because they teach man-made rules as though they were my laws (Mk. 7:7). This is the essence of legalism, making laws where God has made none, and this seems to be as much of an insult to the Father as defying a law He has made. In either case it is one’s self or his party that is being worshipped, not God.

The confrontation with the Pharisees about worship raises the question of the nature of worship. It is evident that worship per se is not what is said or done, for “These people honor me with their words,” Jesus said, quoting the prophet Isaiah, “but their heart is really far away from me.” So we can sing, pray, and praise all day and not be worshiping. We can kneel, genuflect, and do all sorts of ritual, including the breaking of bread and putting money in a plate, and still not be worshiping. This is evident from Is. 1:12-14, which may well be the most explosive language in Scripture: “Who asked you to bring me all this when you come to worship me? Who asked you to do all this tramping around in my Temple? It’s useless to bring your offerings. I am disgusted with the smell of the incense you burn. I cannot stand your New Moon Festivals, your Sabbaths, and your religious gatherings; they are all corrupted by your sins. I hate your New Moon Festivals and holy days; they are a burden that I am tired of bearing.”

It is evident that it is our hearts that the Father desires, and He will accept the external things only as they express worshipful hearts.

We must therefore be wrong to suppose that a musical instrument can “corrupt the worship,” unless the instrument somehow affected one’s heart. It may also be amiss to refer to “acts of worship,” as if making a checklist of what God accepts and does not, or to measure a church’s loyalty by whether it follows “the five acts of public worship.” Here we have man-made rules, and in the very area where Jesus points to the danger of such rules separating us from God. Worship is thus an attitude of heart, which mayor may not express itself in such acts as prayer and song. In Rom. 12:1 Paul makes the commitment of the whole of one’s life the real worship: “Offer yourselves as a living sacrifice to God, dedicated to his service and pleasing to him. This is the true worship that you should offer.”

Worship therefore does not begin and end at certain hours, nor is it measured by certain defined acts. To worship “in spirit and in truth,” as Jn. 4:24 urges, is therefore an appeal to reverence God in heart and mind, not by going to the right mountain or checking out the right “worship service.”

Those who claim to have restored “the worship of the New Testament” have come up with a lot of man-made rules, some of them being a bit ludicrous. A visiting brother may be allowed to say something about his youth camp, but we tack it on the end so that it will not be “part of the worship.” And some churches are fussy about announcements being made “part of the worship.” The most amusing rule of all is that the visiting college choir must wait until “after we have dismissed with the worship” before it can sing to the assembly, for that is entertainment and not worship! The truth is that entertainment may be one of the most important expressions of our worship-filled lives, especially frolicking with the kids at the park!

The most revealing rules of all are those that control “the sanctuary,” which is where worship takes place at certain times, giving that place in the building a certain sanctity! The kids are urged to be quiet as they approach that room, and adults know to be worshipful. But is not what we do in the foyer and the halls, greeting and enjoying one another, also worship?

The danger with all such rule-making is that we deceive ourselves into supposing that we worship right, while others who do not follow the same prescriptions and the same acts do not. We learn from the Pharisees that we can be very religious, very proper, and very right, and yet very wrong, even when we have all the externals in proper order. In judging the validity of other people’s worship we may fail to see the truth of Psa. 51:17: “My sacrifice is a humble spirit, O God; you will not reject a humble and repentant heart.” True worship is inward, inspired by the Spirit of God in the spirit of man.

Another evil of man-made rules is that things of lesser importance are given top priority. The story in Mk. 7 begins with some of the Pharisees and lawyers, lately come from Jerusalem (probably to check on Jesus), gathered around the Christ. Their interest was not in the good works he was doing, and they cared little about all the people he had blessed. He was neglecting the rules they had made, which they identified as those “handed down by our ancestors.” Jesus’ disciples were not washing their hands before eating like the Pharisees did. This is all they could see. Their traditions or man-made rules caused them to miss the greatest event in human history, unfolding before their very eyes. What a tragedy!

It can and does happen to us all. When some of us receive reports of a great conversion victory, we think only of whether the converts were baptized according to our practice. We discount the great work of some church because it is not our kind of church. And if one does not teach the Scriptures precisely the way do, we say “He is not of us” and write him off. Even when Jesus did not write folk off so readily.

It is ironic, the Pharisees gathered around Jesus the way they were. They were in the very presence of the Son of God, but they saw only what their traditions allowed them to see. It should give us pause to ask what we would have seen had we been in the company of Jesus. Would we have missed the point by emphasizing the superficial?

It is true that if the worship of God is to be true worship it must be according to knowledge. To worship God we must know Him, and so we must apply our minds to His disclosure of Himself in Scripture. But it is easy for us to make party rules by the way we handle His word, and what we call “going by the Bible” is often only our sectarian interpretation. A knowledge of God is centered in the great truths that He has revealed about Himself—His holiness, His perfection, His philanthropy. When we come into His presence realizing His holiness we are worshiping “in spirit and in truth.” To speak glibly of God and to worship Him as a matter of habit only reveals our ignorance of His true character. We have heart-worship when we understand, only as frail human beings can, His great philanthropy. His mercy is so great that He bends down from heaven to help us as one would a little child. He teaches us how to respond to His love so that we might be forgiven.

That response is worship, and it is reflected in all that we experience and all that we are and all that we ever hope to be.

This prayer by that delightful Anglican, John Baillie, serves to point to the broader parameters of the worship of God.

O Thou who hast so graciously called me to be Thy servant, I would hold myself in readiness today for thy least word of command. Give me the spirit, I pray Thee, to keep myself in continual training for the punctual fulfillment of Thy most holy will.

Let me keep the edges of my mind keen:

Let me keep my thinking straight and true:

Let me keep my passions in control:

Let me keep my will active:

Let me keep my body fit and healthy:

Let me remember Him whose meat it was to do the will of Him who sent Him.

Worship is thus practicing the presence of God in all of life’s ventures.—the Editor