Then, the Pharisees and scribes asked him, Why walk not thy disciples according to the
tradition of the elders, but eat bread with unwashed hands?"
Now here, the Bible is talking about all of these rules and all of these little nitpicky
regulations that the Jews and especially the Pharisees kept that were not found in the
Bible.
They weren't found in the Word of God.
These are just the traditions of the elders.
And these rabbis basically are imposing these traditional things that they've received from
the elders.
They're trying to impose that on Jesus' disciples and say, Hey, they're eating with defiled
hands because they didn't wash their hands.
When in reality, there's nothing in the Old Testament scripture that tells you that you
have to wash your hands every time you're going to eat.
Now these people are rejecting the Word of God, Jesus tells them a little later, and
choosing rather to go with these traditions that they received from the Pharisees.
Now the Bible has a lot of rules in it, doesn't it?
I mean, just in the first five books alone, there are many hundreds of commandments, but
let alone all the commandments in the rest of the Old Testament.
The New Testament is filled with commandments.
There are enough commandments in the Bible where we should not add other commandments
and enforce them upon people that are not in the Bible.
And I think a key verse for this, if you're reading a King James Bible, is in Ecclesiastes,
when God says, Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.
What does it mean to be the whole duty?
It means that that's it.
If you fear God and keep his commandments, that's all that God expects of you to do.
He doesn't expect you to do a bunch of other things beyond what he's commanded you in this
book.
Everything that we are commanded to do and commanded not to do is found in the Bible.
Now we might have other rules for ourself that we make up, and there's nothing wrong
with making up rules for yourself.
And there's nothing wrong with making up rules for your family.
As the man of the house, you might have certain rules in your family that have nothing to
do with the Bible, and there's nothing wrong with you making rules, but you should not
teach for commandments the doctrines of men.
There should be a difference between that which is your rule and your preference and
your tradition and the commandment of God, because my rules and my preferences are for
me, but I can't impose that upon you.
But when it comes to the commandments of God, I should preach that for everybody, okay?
But there's a difference between what God has told us to do and between just people
making up their own nitpicky rules that go beyond that.
And there are enough rules in the Bible where we don't need to add more rules.
There's enough here, and we should just worry about keeping these rules.