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.