Mark 7:8 You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions.”    

    When I was much younger, I played a lot of games. I have always enjoyed Monopoly. That game can have a lot of ups and downs. You might be just about out of money and then land on Free Parking and suddenly you’re back in the game! But I was reading the rules once and came upon a stark realization: Free Parking, according to the rules, is just a ‘nothing’ square. So all the time I’d been paying fees into the middle to hopefully win upon landing on Free Parking was just ‘made up!’ I suppose you’d call that ‘house rules.’

    Jesus encountered house rules also. On one occasion the Pharisees and Scribes saw Jesus’ disciples eating without having done the ceremonial washing, “holding to the tradition of the elders.” They were very concerned at this breach, and approached/accused Jesus about it. As was often the case, all this did was allow Jesus an opportunity to demonstrate where the real problem was. They had begun to adopt ‘house rules.’ These traditions had begun to even supersede the Law. In other words, they were following man’s ideas and found them preferable to God’s ideas. 

    These were not people who didn’t know the Scriptures. That’s what makes it especially troubling! They would have known Psalm 19:7a.

    The Law of the LORD is perfect, refreshing the soul.

    The word perfect there means complete. To look at something that is perfect and think, “You know what would make this even better…” is a non-sequitur. Yet that is exactly what had been done. 

    This practice didn’t end there though. Read the book of Galatians. Paul is deeply concerned that they have believed ‘another Gospel.’ False teachers had come in and begun teaching a ‘house rules’ gospel. Paul said that was ‘no gospel at all!’

    We have such a temptation to want to do this. We are tempted to add man’s ideas to the Bible, or to just ignore or declare some parts no longer relevant because we have loved man’s ideas more. Clearly it doesn’t sound right when it’s described like that! But do we really do that? Sadly, all the time. The Bible says, “In the beginning God…” But man says there was a big bang. “We have to follow the science!” There are countless other examples. 

    When we start to adopt ‘house rules’, we will soon begin to prefer them. When that happens, no matter how we might protest otherwise, we will be no better than the pharisees that Jesus dealt with. If we decide which parts of the Bible we will believe, we don’t believe in the Bible, we believe in ourselves!

Blessings,    

Pastor Russ