Heart Over Ritual: True Worship and Legalism

Then the Pharisees and some of the scribes came together to Him, having come from Jerusalem. Now when they saw some of His disciples eat bread with defiled, that is, with unwashed hands, they found fault. For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands in a special way, holding the tradition of the elders. [00:00:36]

He answered and said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written: This people honors Me with their lips, But their heart is far from Me. And in vain they worship Me, Teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. For laying aside the commandment of God, you hold the tradition of men—the washing of pitchers and cups, and many other such things you do.” [00:01:44]

There are principles of ritual cleanliness set forth by God in the Old Testament, but they are few, and they are easy to follow. But what the Pharisees and the scribes did over the centuries, the rabbis who interpreted the law of God kept adding to those ritual requirements, kept adding one prohibition after another, so that their regulations far exceeded the regulations that the law of God imposed upon the people. [00:09:26]

This, my dear friends, is the worst form of legalism. There are many ways in which legalism raises its ugly head in the life of the people of God, but to bind people’s consciences where God has left them free, to add human regulations to the law of God is the worst and most devastating form of legalism. [00:10:24]

And you will never, ever in the New Testament find the Lord Jesus Christ criticizing or disobeying the written law of God. But it seems like everyday, everywhere He went, He was violating the oral tradition, the “Mishnah” that was finally compiled in the third century AD and comprised the bulk of the Jewish Talmud at that time. [00:13:20]

You see, the Pharisees believed that salvation came from ethnic separation, that they were to be saved by how clean they kept themselves by any contamination from unbelievers, or from sinners. And so they had all of these rites that they imposed. One commentator calls their practice “regulation madness.” [00:14:19]

The Pharisees began to major in minors. The Pharisees turned the supreme law of God into petty regulations, which obscured the majesty of the law of God. Beloved, I have no right or authority to bind your conscience, anybody’s conscience in this room absolutely. But God has the power and the authority to bind your conscience absolutely. [00:22:03]

Ladies and gentlemen, what’s so bad about legalism is that it is a subtle form of idolatry, because we begin to elevate what is human above what is divine. And we substitute the human traditions, the human policies, the human regulations for the very Word of God. Whenever you serve the creature rather than the Creator, you are involved in idolatry. [00:25:58]

Jesus quoting Isaiah calls attention to two parts of the human body—the lips and the heart. The lips are on the surface. The heart, if you’ll excuse the pun, is at the very core of our being. Jesus said, “Your mouths are going. You’re singing praises. You say your prayers. You say that you love God, but it’s no deeper than your lips. [00:26:44]

And my Father wants people to worship Him in spirit and in truth, not just with their lips, because lip service is the very essence of play acting, of hypocrisy. That’s what the hypocrite does. He’s playing a part, and he’s deceiving everybody who watches him. The Pharisees are saying, “Look at me, how righteous I am. You won’t see me eating bread without first washing my hands.” [00:27:46]

If you really want to know what your doctrine of God is, look at your worship. Because more than what you confess with your lips will show what you really believe is the character of God by how you worship Him, because if you worship the God of the Bible, you will never worship Him in a cavalier manner. [00:30:07]

They teach as doctrines the commandments of men. And for laying aside the commandment of God, you hold the tradition of men, the washing of pitchers and cups, and many other such things that you do. Jesus said, “Get rid of that stuff.” It’s clutter that simply hides the beauty of authentic holiness. [00:32:14]