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SCRIPTURE OR TRADITION?
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 4
Mark 7:1-23

Jeremiah 6:16

 

“Making the word of God of none

effect through your tradition…”

 

SCRIPTURE OR TRADITION?
 
“Tradition, tradition!” so sings the fiddler on the roof. The Jews run their lives according to tradition—how to sleep, eat, work and wear their clothes. How did all these traditions start? The father of the house replies, “I don’t know but without tradition our lives would be as shaky as a fiddler on a roof.”
 
Tradition is not necessarily bad. It can be quite good if the tradition is based on God’s Word. However, it is bad if it is based on the whims and fancies of men. Jesus here was against the traditions of the scribes and Pharisees. Why? It was because their traditions were not according to God, but according to them—“the tradition of the elders,” “the commandments of men,” “the tradition of men,” “your own tradition” (Mark 7:3,7-9). God has given many commands in the Hebrew Scriptures which are good for them, but the scribes and Pharisees added to those commands unnecessary and arbitrary rules. These many extra-biblical rules and regulations made the commands of God overly burdensome and practically impossible to keep: “For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers” (Matt 23:4). Jesus called them hypocrites: “This people honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me…. Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition…. Making the word of God of none effect through your tradition, which ye have delivered: and many such like things do ye” (Mark 7:6,9,13). It must be said that spirituality is not measured by tradition, but by Scripture. Let us seek to pass down good, biblical traditions, “And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also” (2 Tim 2:2).
 
THOUGHT: Holiness comes not by carrying the Bible but by obeying the Bible.

PRAYER: [Thank God for good, biblical traditions (Jer 6:16).]

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