Creator, Father, King #195

These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship is a farce.

WHAT’S THE ONE INSTRUCTION your parents always gave you (and maybe still do!) before you sat down to eat?

WASH YOUR HANDS!

Every child has probably heard this instruction ad nauseam. But perhaps no one in history has washed their hands more than pious Jews in ancient Palestine.

In Matthew 15, the Pharisees and scribes confronted Jesus because his disciples had disobeyed their “age-old tradition . . . of ceremonial hand washing before they eat” (verse 2).

Jesus had no time for these hypocrites. These were the same religious leaders who tithed the smallest garden herbs yet neglected to show mercy to others (Matthew 23:23), fastidiously scrubbed all their eating utensils to remain outwardly clean yet were inwardly filled with wickedness (Matthew 23:25), and adorned the tombs of famous prophets (Matthew 23:29) yet conspired to kill Christ.

No wonder Jesus condemned their surface-level religion and worthless adherence to manmade traditions by quoting Isaiah 29:13 in today’s verse.

What’s It Mean?

The Pharisees and scribes thought the more sacred laws they observed, the more righteous they would be before God. Nothing could be further from the truth. Worshiping God isn’t a matter of rule-keeping or ceremony. It’s a matter of the heart.

This is where Christianity differs from religion. Religion is man’s way of trying to please God. But no amount of literal or symbolic handwashing can atone for our sins. Only God’s Son can do that. Jesus’ finished work on the cross was fully sufficient for propitiation—appeasing God’s just wrath toward our sins and turning it to favor.

This is the message of the gospel and true Christianity: Jesus came to accomplish for us what no laws, rules, observances, rituals, ceremonies, liturgies, or any other earthly systems ever could. The Pharisees tried everything they could think of to impress God. But it was all in vain. “Their worship is a farce,” Jesus said in today’s passage.

What are you basing your relationship with God on? Good works? Church attendance? Your parents’ faith? Something else?

If it’s not solely on Jesus’ atoning work, it’s all in vain. Avoid pharisaical religion, and trust in Christ today!

Now What?

For more on Jesus’ condemnation of the hypocritical scribes and Pharisees, read Matthew 23:1-36.

Did You Know?

In Exodus 30:17-21, God commanded the priests to wash their hands and feet before serving in the Tabernacle/Temple. But by the first century AD, the Pharisees had unnecessarily extended this rule to all Israelites to (in their minds) maintain strict ritual purity.