Mark 2-3 010823

Have you ever been blindsided by rules that you didn't know? I think we have all experienced this whether it was "don't put your elbows on the table when eating", "don't eat your food with your hands" or my personal favorite that no ones seems to know "don't camp out in the left lane on the highway--it is for passing only".

Now we all may shake our heads in agreement, but how would we react if someone tried to enforce rules that were never really rules. Imagine a police officer pulling you over and giving you a ticket for not punching the passenger in your car when you clearly passed a Volkswagen Beetle...the old "punch bug" law. 

In our text this morning, Jesus is going to address some religious leaders that are trying to put Him down and accuse Him of not following the Mosaic Law. The problem is that the laws they were observing, and accusing Jesus of breaking, were made up; they were not found in the Torah at all. These were man made interpretations and translations of the law.

This legalistic interpretation of the rules can be a real danger in the churches today. The infamous phrase "we have never done it that way so we can't do it that way" has caused lots of damage to churches.

There are folks that have been told that they are not dressed right, or they don't worship right, or they don't speak churchese fluently enough. These legalistic adherences to man-made laws and rules not found anywhere in the bible, has led some to just simply walk away from the faith.  

This morning in our text, Jesus will try to educate these religious leaders-Pharisees about adhering to the heart of the Law, but their hearts will remain hardened. They were stuck in tradition and placed their own man made interpretations above the heart and meaning of the Laws.