Your disciples are not walking according to the tradition
of the elders, but they eat bread with unwashed hands.
Verse six, it says, he answered and said unto them,
well hath the Zias prophesied of you, hypocrites,
as it is written, this people honoreth me with their lips,
but their heart is far from me.
Howbeit in vain they do worship me,
teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.
Those are some very strong words out of the mouth of Jesus.
He's saying, first of all, you're hypocrites.
And he says, second of all, your heart is far from God.
You're just doing lip service
and pretending that you are interested
in what God thinks of you, but you're really not.
Let's keep reading.
It says in verse eight,
for laying aside the commandment of God,
ye hold the tradition of men as the washing of pots
and many other such like things ye do.
Now I wanna point out here
that they had not added extra rules
to the commandment of God,
but rather the Bible says in verse eight
that they laid aside the commandment of God
in order to keep their tradition.
And let me tell you something,
this is true of Judaism today.
And people that are Christians for some reason
have this weird idea that Judaism today
or that the Jews today believe
and follow the Old Testament and it's a lie.
It wasn't even true in Jesus day.
And it's even less true in 2014
to say that the Jews believe and follow the Old Testament.
They don't.
Now, these rules that Jesus is rebuking,
all the many such things, the washing of cups and pots,
today those things are known as the Talmud.
And here's what the Talmud is.
I'm just gonna explain it to you quickly
'cause that's exactly what Jesus is against here.
The Talmud is what the Jews call the oral Torah.
And here's what they say.
Well, the Bible is the written Torah,
but then there's the oral Torah.
So they say that when Moses was on Mount Sinai,
God gave him all the words that would become Genesis,
Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
That's the written law of God, the written Torah.
But the Jews claim that God also just told him
a bunch of oral stuff that just never got written down.
It was just stuff that he told Moses,
and it was like, don't write this down.
Just talk about this.
Just pass this on verbally.
Just only write that as, but you know what?
It's a lie, because everything that God commanded Moses
is in this book right here.
Everything he commanded.
The Bible says he spake all these words,
and he spake no more unto that.
I mean, everything that God commanded Moses
is all right here.
And they were told, read all the words of Moses.
All the words of the law of God unto Moses.
But they claim, no, no, no.
There was this other really nitpicky, really specific stuff
that God told Moses, basically explaining and expanding
upon what's in the Bible.
So for example, the Bible tells you not
to work on the Sabbath day, right?
But that's just way too simple.
So the Talmud just has hundreds and hundreds and hundreds
of pages explaining exactly what you can and can't
do on the Sabbath day.
So they add all these other nitpicky regulations and things.
And so that's what they call the oral Torah.
Now, this didn't used to be written down.
It was just passed on from person to person.
Now, the true story is that this teaching originated
around 200 BC.
It doesn't go all the way back to Moses, of course,
because everything that God told Moses is in the Bible.
But actually, these teachings originated around 200 BC.
And that's why we see Jesus Christ dealing with it,
because it was already on the scene
when he was there in an oral form.
Well, later on, after the Jews were kicked out
of the promised land, and make no mistake about it,
they were kicked out of the promised land for one reason,
because they rejected the Lord Jesus Christ.
Matthew is very clear on that, that that is why
the temple was destroyed, and that's why they were thrown
out of Israel, was because they're rejecting
the Lord Jesus Christ.
Well, when they were thrown out of the promised land,
they were afraid that they were gonna lose
all their precious little traditions
about washing your hands and cups and stuff.
So they didn't wanna lose that, so then they started
to write it down, after they had been scattered abroad,
after rejecting Jesus Christ, and they started
writing it down, and it was fully compiled
and written down around AD 500, the Babylonian Talmud.
So about 500 years after Christ is when it was all
written down, and today it's in written form.
And it's like an encyclopedia, so it's 38 volumes.
It's not just a book, like the Bible is a book,
and hey, these are God's laws.
The laws of the Jews are 38 volumes long.
And we've even talked to elderly rabbis that have said,
"Well, I've never read the whole thing cover to cover."
Because it's just so much.
But I say, is it the word of God?
Yep, it's the word of God.
Never even read it cover to cover.
And let me tell you something.
Judaism today doesn't just add 38 volumes
to the word of God.
No, I'll tell you what it does.
It rejects this book completely
and just worships those 38 volumes.
And according to the Talmud,
it's the rabbis, it's the elders.
Remember the traditions of the elders that matter.
And in fact, God even takes guidance
from the rabbis in the Talmud.
Even God listens to the judgments of the rabbis.
They decide what's right and wrong.
And even God takes orders from them,
according to the Talmud.
And I've read the passages myself and that's what it says.
It's very weird.
And it's a really stupid book.
I mean, if you actually just sit down
and just start reading several pages of the Talmud,
it's one of the stupidest things you'll ever read.
It's boring, it's lame.
You know, God's word has power.
And whenever you try to read any of these other scriptures
from other religions, they're always weak.
You know, you open the Book of Mormon
and read a few pages, it's ridiculous.
You read a few pages of the Koran,
you can tell something's wrong with this.
Read a few pages of the Apocrypha,
and you're scratching your head about, you know,
how anybody could think this is scripture.
But when you read the Bible,
every page of the Bible is wonderful, powerful.
And you say, how do you know the Bible's true?
Because it's the power of God's word.
Because faith come up by hearing,
and hearing by the word of God.
So this teaching of the Talmud
is what Jesus Christ is rebuking here,
and make no mistake about it.
If you talk to modern day Jewish rabbis,
they will say that they're following
the religion of the Pharisees.
They'll even tell you that, we're Pharisees.
Because the Pharisees are the group
that became the predominant rabbis
after the destruction of the temple,
and they were scattered everywhere.
The Phariseical rabbis are the ones who took power.
And in fact, if you remember, the Apostle Paul
was trained by Gamaliel before he got saved.
Remember, he was brought up and taught
at the feet of the Pharisee teacher, Gamaliel.
Gamaliel, same guy, is one of the rabbis of the Talmud.
He's one of the main rabbis in the Talmud,
revered as being one of their greatest rabbis.
But of course, you know, the Apostle Paul
said it was all dung that Gamaliel taught him.
Remember, Gamaliel had taught him nothing,
but he said all those things that were in it
when he excelled in the Jews' religion.
He said, "I excelled in the Jews' religion."
He wasn't talking about Christianity, was he?
And he said, "Above many my equals," he said,
"but what things were gained to me,
those I kind of lost for cry,
I count all things but dung," he said.
And those things were worthless unto him
once he found the Lord Jesus Christ.
So this is what Jesus is rebuking.
And that's why Jesus said, "If you believed Moses,"
he said to the Pharisees,
"You would have believed me, for he spake of me.
But if you believe not his writings,
how should you believe my words?"
So that jives perfectly with Jesus saying here
that you've lain aside the commandment of God
for your tradition.
You've rejected the teaching of the Bible
and you've embraced the teaching of the Talmud.
And you've embraced all of these traditions and things
that we see washing hands, washing cups, washing pots.
And look, if you have a rule that says,
"Hey, I'm gonna wash my hands every time I eat,"
that's fine, but don't say that God commanded that
because he didn't.