Well, we are so delighted that you came. Please be seated. This beautiful facility has been provided for us by Friendship Chapel for free for us to use. If you've done a lot of conferences, you know that conferences are so threatening to any organization financially. And when you have a venue that you can use that is as beautiful and as well appointed as this just out of the grace of the people who are administering it.
It really is a blessing. So if you see anyone from Friendship Chapel, in fact I see Enoch Holloway here, the pastor of this church. He's back in the sound room. Hey, so here's the scope on Friendship Chapel. Friendship Chapel, I think this church has been going for about 150 years, something like that.
I'm gonna give round numbers here, Enoch, you can correct me with your nods or you're shaking your heads. But I think, I'm gonna exaggerate a little bit. This church in 150 years has had five pastors, okay? Now It's a little bit more than that, but these pastors stay here, oh, it's six, seven. Seven pastors in 150 years.
So these pastors stay 20 to 40 years in these churches, and Dr. Holloway is on track for that. We pray that he doesn't die and mess up the longevity of these pastors here. Sometimes God takes us home for reasons that we don't understand, but I pray for many years, Dr. Holloway, my friend, we used to, the men of our church, we used to go to promise keepers together and we have many dear brothers and sisters here in this church.
I am so grateful for this family that is here. It is a place that desires to honor the Lord Jesus Christ. So thank you, thank you Enoch for this. This is just such a treat. Well, What I would like to do in this first session is to talk about returning to biblical order in the church and the family.
I also need to say something here. Vody Baucom has been ill, and he's flying in at two o'clock today. The schedule is the same except for we've had to move some of the talks around. One of the unfortunate things for you is that you get to hear me twice in a row this morning, and then you'll get, but the upside is you get to hear Vody twice in a row tomorrow morning. So there's live at the end of the tunnel.
So I'm gonna give two talks. We'll speak for about an hour, we'll take a break, and then we'll come back. I'm gonna be doing two expositions of passages of scripture this morning. But before we do, I really wanna talk about why we are here, and we have gathered here to search the scriptures, to discern the heart of God regarding the complementary roles of church and family. And of course there are two of the great institutions that Almighty God has established, our church and home.
Think about the home for a moment. What is the first institution that God established? Where is the only explicit God-ordained place of education? Where is it that God desires children to hear the gospel when they sit in their house, when they walk by the way, when they lie down, and when they rise up? Where is it that elders are qualified?
Where does the church get her members and her evangelists and her pastors and her servants where they come out of the fountain of the family that all the families of the earth might be blessed. God has has graced the world with families for a purpose. Think about the church, this other great marvelous institution that has been the joy of my heart since I was saved. I have been so helped and cared for in the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. My brothers and my sisters have been of inestimable value to me.
I love the church of Jesus Christ. What is it that causes the angels to stoop and to stare? What is the bride of Christ? What was so treasured that God would send his own son and shed his blood on the cross? It was the church.
What is the sole pillar and support of the truth? It's the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. To Him be glory in the church forever and ever and this conference really is dedicated to the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ in the church and and in the home and our primary objective in this conference and I'm gonna give you I'm gonna give you some of these primary objectives that we have in this conference before we dive in to the exposition of scripture. But the first objective is to declare the glory of God. God is a God of design.
The heavens declare the glory of God, and everything that God has made is designed for one single purpose, and that is to declare the glory of God. And this is true of the church and it's also true of the home. And God's design for the church and the home, of course, is to declare the gospel. Every part of family life particularly is designed by God to declare the gospel. The divine design for the family is specifically for the expression of the Gospel.
Every family relationship, every single family relationship, has as its exclusive purpose to declare the Gospel. This is obvious when you read what the Bible says about the relationships in the family. God's design for husbands is to be a picture of the Gospel in His love for His wife. Husbands, love your wives as in the same way as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her. So God has designed a husband to be a gospel preaching mouth in the world and he does it by his deeds of love toward his wife.
He is a loving head and his role in his family preaches to the world that there is a head, that Christ is the head of man, and man is the head of the woman. Marriage is designed exclusively for the preaching of the Gospel, of course. There are so many other wonderful things about marriage that we could talk about. But this grand purpose is greater than them all. It's greater than the comforts.
It's greater than the companionship. It's greater than the love and the lifelong covenant made. It's greater than that. It's for the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. God's design for wives is also to be a picture of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Bible says wives submit to your own husbands as unto the Lord. So a wife in the same way that a husband is a picture of the Gospel preaching, so is a wife and how does she do it? She does it by submitting to her husband. She submits to her husband as unto the Lord. If you find an un-submissive, rebellious wife against her husband, she is also simultaneously rebellious against her God, against God Almighty.
The head of all things. And so, God's design for wives is that they be a living picture, they be a living picture of trustful submission. A wife carefully having placed herself under authority. And as she does that, she realizes that God is her ultimate protector but she preaches the Gospel to everyone who is looking on and saying yes there is a trustful submissiveness that is appropriate in this world and that I in my submission to my husband am declaring the Gospel that there is a people who should submit to the head of the church. God's design for children is also to be a picture of the gospel.
Children obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. So a child also declares the gospel through obedience. A child can declare the gospel every day of life in their father's and mother's households by honoring their father and mother and by placing themselves under the authority of father and mother. When a child is rebellious, when a child is rolling his eyes, when a child is not obeying the very first time, when a child is sullen, when a child is self-centered and rejecting the counsels of father and mother, they are simultaneously rejecting the counsel of Almighty God. No child rolled their eyes at their earthly father that was not simultaneously rolling their eyes at God Almighty.
Children, obey your parents in the Lord in the same way that you obey the Lord. This is why it's so critical for us to secure honor and obedience in our children and how often it is, isn't it so, that that goes out of control and we lose track of it and things get worse and we wake up and say how did my children get this way? Well, we allowed them to get this way. We did not help them to restore authority and it's really the authority of God in their lives and it's... And brothers and sisters this is why the child raising experience is so critical.
When we help our children to obey us, we are helping them to obey Almighty God and your children will say, well I don't understand why you're doing that. Well this is true, This is the truth of life. We often don't understand what Almighty God is doing, but we still must submit to it and walk, walk in His ways. God's design for families as a whole also is to be a picture of the Gospel. God has designed the family to be fruitful and to multiply and so that the promise of Abraham, the great evangelistic design of the world would be fulfilled that in you all the families of the earth would be blessed through godly seed which would multiply greatly in the earth as the stars of the sky and the sand of the seashore.
Even the organism of the family, its its relationships all together, father and mother and all the children together, the net effect, the net output of their lives is to declare the gospel from one generation to the next, that all the families of the earth would be blessed. One family blessing many families for many generations. That's God's design for the family. So there is a pattern for family life that God has delivered. And our lot in life is simply this, I have no other pattern than that which I learned from God.
Let that be true of us. Now of course, our patterns are so messed up, aren't they? They're constantly reforming. They're things that we don't even understand that are wrong about our patterns and we're so grateful for the grace of Almighty God toward us and He has declared us righteous and that these things don't hinge upon our salvation but at the same time He has given us patterns in Scripture. So our primary objective is the glory of God alone and I just want to say the objective of this conference is not to make your family look like a nice little family.
The objective of this conference is that God Almighty would be glorified through our family life the way He has designed it. The second desired impact is, our ultimate desired impact really is evangelistic. In scripture, the family and the spread of the gospel are inextricably linked. The evangelistic mandates given to Abraham and through the Lord Jesus Christ and the Great Commission include the evangelistic work of fathers in their homes. What is the purpose of the family?
It's a godly seed. It's to produce worshipers before the throne of God for all eternity. Okay, here's the bottom line on this. There is one supreme divine purpose for the family and that is to present to God worshipers before the throne of God at the end of the age. I can't read scripture and think of any other grand purpose of the family than that.
Of course, again, like so many of God's designs, there are many subsidiary and beautiful purposes that are such a blessing but this is the supreme design of the family and so it is, it is God's design that fathers lives would be strategically pointed to that day when there would be there would be worshipers from every tongue, tribe, and nation before the throne of God and as one family in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's why, that's why Peter said in his great sermon in Acts chapter 2 said, for this promise is for you and your children and for all those who are far off as the Lord God will call to himself. Our message is about the successful communication of the promises of God from one generation to the next. And that we would have that kind of a multigenerational mindset that really is the evangelistic part, at least part of the evangelistic agenda of Almighty God. And of course, I believe that we are involved in the greatest untapped evangelistic opportunity before the modern church, the salvation of millions of children under the evangelistic gospel preaching shepherding ministry of fathers in their homes.
This is not the only mission field to be sure, but it is perhaps in our day the most neglected mission field before the church of our time. So our ultimate desired impact is evangelistic. Number three, our message is the centrality of the gospel in all things. For this reason the church in each generation is in need of reformation and renewal on several fronts. Now we are going to address in this conference what we think are some of those key areas to establish the centrality of gospel in all of life particularly in family and church life and our message is for the sake of the spread of the gospel and the need of the hour is to return to biblical order in the church for this one reason that the gospel would be central in all of our language and all of our programs in all the messages that we give to the church of Jesus Christ sent to one another that the spread of the Gospel, the spreading of the Word of God is contained, it's inflamed by a recovery of biblical discipleship methodology.
So are we living out the Gospel in our family life? Are we sharing the Gospel through every aspect of our lives and our work and our home life and our community? And this conference doesn't focus in on every need of the church regarding the Gospel but just this particular area of the centrality of the Gospel in home life. The home is the cradle for the Gospel and it's also a torch for proclaiming it in every relationship. And so the purpose of the church is to defend and stand firm and live out the power of the gospel.
And we should be able to say with the apostle Paul, for I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation. Do you think that when he said that there were any implications for family life? Absolutely there were. Not ashamed of the gospel as a father, the head of the house. Not ashamed of the gospel as a wife, a trustful submissive follower of her husband.
Not ashamed of the gospel, a child who obeys his father and mother regardless of his own passions. No, we cannot be ashamed of the gospel in any area of life and in this area of life that is so viciously attacked today, the family. Family. Our prayer, our prayer is for an increase in our appreciation for God and His Word in the church. This is a great prayer of this conference and I pray that as we dive into texts of Scripture and extract what are there, that our love for these words, every single word of them would grow.
An unfortunate thing has happened in the Church of Jesus Christ. You have many people in the Church of Jesus Christ today who think that only one third of the Bible is divinely inspired. My friend Andy Davis says that a lot of people look at the Bible like an old garrulous woman who babbles on and on and then every once in a while a word of brilliance comes out and then she babbles on and on. And then another word of brilliance, people look at the Bible like that. They take this part and that part, and they do not love every single word.
That is a sin against Almighty God. We cannot live that way in this church, in this generation, but unfortunately, we live among a people in the church today who think exactly that way about the Bible. This must be overcome. The authority of God must be put back into the church, and the only authority that we have for the church is in the Word of God. And so our prayer is to increase appreciation for the Word of God.
Jesus said, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. Jesus said, you are my friends if, if you keep my commandments. And so we find a church today that embraces the inerrancy of scripture but not the sufficiency of scripture. It says that the word of God is authoritative, but it doesn't take those words and actually applies them. You know, we actually live in an era of church life today where if you attempt to apply a statement of scripture in your life, people scream legalist.
Can you imagine what would happen today if people did what the Apostle Paul did, who we read in the book of Acts? The Apostle Paul twice, I believe, takes a Nazarite vow. Can you imagine if I took a Nazarite vow today, what would happen? People would be screaming, legalist! That's what they would be doing.
You cannot apply the word of God in your family life without censure in this day and age. And I think it's tragic. And we need to stand up and say, hey, what has happened to the church? What is up with the church that has become like that? So we really desire to renew appreciation for the word of God.
And then lastly, Our longing is for a reformation of church and home life. And we know that this can only happen when the church has a high view of God. And that means that she simultaneously has a high view of the word of God. Reformation can break out when we take seriously what he has said instead of taking taking it lightly. Brothers and sisters this is one of my great concerns for the church in our era.
We take so lightly the patterns and the commands and the principles that are in Scripture. And we want to do our own thing. And so We have a longing for this reformation. Now, all reformation, I believe, have the same qualities. There's a recovery of the lost book of the law.
There's a desire for the glory of God. There's a passion for spreading the Gospel. These are the things that are characteristic of Reformations of church and home life. There's a repentance of dead works and a desire to be faithful in all things. There's a revival of love in the hearts for the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and there is a turning of hearts in the family.
Malachi said that in that day in that great day of revival in the new in the Reformation the time of reformation of the Lord Jesus Christ, the hearts of the fathers would turn to their children and the hearts of the children would turn to their parents. And so throughout this conference we want to identify elements of God's design for church and family and how they're designed to work in a complementary way so that the gospel is demonstrated in in every area of life in every relationship in the home and how the church can help promote and encourage these things. We really do desire a reformation and Richard Baxter said, you're not likely to see any general reformation until you procure a family reformation. Some little religion here and there may be. But while it is confined to single persons and is not promoted in families, it will not prosper nor promise much future increase.
I really do believe that is true. It is not the only seed of reformation but it is a significant seed that has been ignored and it has been neglected in the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. So these are our great desires for this conference. We pray that God would fulfill all these things in this conference. And these words of introduction I just desired to set forth before us so that we understood what this conference is all about and it really is about the glory of God.
This is the great heading on everything that we do and I trust that as you listen to these, we're going to create 19 CDs out of this conference and I trust that every one of them will declare the glory of God and the prominence of the Gospel in all things. If we don't do that then we have done harm to the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. Okay, now I would like for you to take out your Bibles because we're now going to enter into a time of study, of scripture. I would like you to turn to Mark Chapter 7 and we're going to begin in verse 5. Mark Chapter 7 beginning in verse 5.
I'm going to make four main observations and their application to family life from this text. Our text brings to our attention a common conflict that comes when the Lord Jesus Christ is reforming his church and interestingly enough the story here speaks of God's design for the family and how a particular tradition in Judaism was harming that design and so Mark is explaining how the Jewish church had drifted from the commands of God and replaced them with their own traditions. I would like for us to read this text. Could we please stand in honor of God's holy word as we read it. Mark chapter 7 verses 5 through 13.
Mark 7 5 through 13. Then the Pharisees and the scribes asked him why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition the elders but eat bread with unwashed hands and he answered them well that Isaiah prophesied you hypocrites as it is written this people honor 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 it to the tradition of men, washing of pitchers and cups and many other things you do. He said to them, all too well, you reject the commandment of God that you may keep your tradition. For Moses said, honor your father and your mother.
And he who curses father and mother, let him be put to death. But you say, if a man says to his father and mother, whatever profit you might have received from me as Corban, that is, gift of God, then you no longer let him do anything for his father or mother, making the word of God of no effect through your tradition which you have handed down, and many such things you do." Please be seated. Would you pray with me? Would you pray with me? Almighty God, oh Lord Jesus Christ, oh Holy Spirit, I desire that you would come and instruct us.
I'm aware of my inability in so many ways of explaining these things and we do so need your help to understand and to apply these things. I pray that this hour that we have would be a time of your working and your speaking. I pray that you would help all these people here, these precious people, and I pray that you would help me be careful to listen and to understand. Amen. So here's a common conflict that comes when the Lord Jesus Christ is reforming his people.
It's interesting, J.C. Ryle opens his commentary on Mark 7 by saying that this chapter is a humbling picture of what human nature is capable of doing in religion. He says, it is one of those scriptures that ought to be frequently and diligently studied for all those who desire the prosperity of the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is a humbling passage of Scripture because it does something that's very difficult for us. It brings up the question of our traditions.
Now that's a problem. Here's just a couple of the problems with traditions. Many of, most of our traditions, we came by honestly. We were born into this world and we began to walk in the traditions of this world. We had no defense against it.
It's the way of the world. Secondly, many of those traditions are contrary to the Word of God. Those are two big problems with traditions. First of all, Jesus' disciples were being questioned for ignoring the unscriptural traditions of Judaism. In verse five, we read, the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, why, why are you doing this?
They, the disciples were ignoring the traditions of Judaism and ignoring those traditions got them in trouble with the religious establishment. Now whenever men or women step outside of accepted traditions, they open themselves up to arrows and explosions and centurings and all kinds of things like that. And that's what the disciples were doing. They had stepped outside of the traditions not of Holy Scripture, but they had set, stepped outside of the traditions of men that had worked their way into the practices of faithfulness to Holy Scripture. Now the Jews did have some reasonable laws about cleanliness.
They were washing required for particular situations and they, there's a principle, a godly principle behind each one of those. But the Pharisees took it far beyond the detail and the intent that Old Testament scripture was defining. I was interested to read another thing by J.C. Ryle. He said, once we leave the king's highway of truth, We may end up washing pots and cups like the Pharisees and the scribes.
They left the King's highway. Hey, that's one of the messages of this conference. Brothers and sisters, we the church have left the King's highway regarding family life. That's one of the messages. Now the disciples here had gotten themselves into trouble because they had stepped outside of the traditions that had accumulated around godly practices.
The second thing that we see here is that the people of God were degraded in their practices and all was not well. All was not well with the church and the text here makes it very clear and there was a degraded condition of the Jewish religion. They were like sheep without a shepherd. They had covered themselves up with external observances and ceremonies that ended up actually working against and contradicting the love of God. Contradicting the love of God is not something that you want to do.
God does desire his love to be spread everywhere. And when our traditions stand against it, it's a tragedy. Traditions have replaced the commands of God and the scribes and the Pharisees had fallen in love with things that were not of God. And Jesus was sounding an alarm for the Pharisees and the scribes. And Mark 7 is a beautiful story that shows us the alarm that Jesus was sounding.
They'd left the king's highway, and they had gone on their own, creating their own highway. And I would just like to say, we here in this conference are sounding alarm. We're saying boldly, something has gone wrong in the church. We believe that this at this time which we believe is one of the darkest hours in the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, men must stand up and say, hey something is wrong. That's what the Lord Jesus Christ was doing in this passage of scripture.
Notice the stern language that he uses, he is calling these people names he is sounding a mighty, mighty alarm and something has gone wrong in the Jewish church and we say something has gone wrong in the modern church and we're actually saying, we're saying that it's wrong for us to continue with business as usual in the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ today regarding the home. And there must be a mighty reformation of practices, not just in the home, but in the Church. There are many things that the Church must recover in this time. Many who are looking at the church today say that in two generations the church will be half its size. There are serious problems in the church of the Lord Jesus Christ.
What we're saying is that worldly thinking has crept in to the practices of church and home. And it has affected specific things, specific methods, specific principles of God and have contradicted them and the antithesis between those who follow Christ and those who do not is really becoming more clear. Hey, all is not well in the church. You know, 50 percent of the pastors in America have been divorced. Seventy percent of pastors in America constantly fight depression.
Eighty percent of the pastors in America feel unqualified of their role as pastor and that their seminary training didn't prepare them. 50% of pastors are so discouraged by their role that they would leave the ministry today if they could. How about this? 80% of pastors' wives wish their husbands had chosen another profession. And a majority of pastors' wives said the most destructive thing that ever happened in their lives was the day her husband entered the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Hey, all is not well in the church today. 50 to 75% of pastors are regular users of pornography, depending on what study you want to look at. And of course, we all know that there have been a number of studies in the last five years that have indicated that somewhere between 70 and 90 percent, some even say 94 percent, of the children in the youth groups of our conservative churches will leave the faith by their freshman year of college. Hey, that should be, that one thing enough should cause pastors all over America to stand up and scream, Fire! Fire!
Something is wrong! Something has to be done about this! And honestly, that's one of the things that we're saying here. I bought a book the other day, Josh McAllan has written a book called The Last Christian Generation. He cites a study conducted by the Nehemiah Institute.
They studied 20, 000 Christian students. 85 percent of the youth of Christian homes that attend public schools do not have a Christian worldview. 6% have a Christian worldview. 63% don't believe that Jesus is the son of God. 58% believe that all faiths teach equally valid truths.
51% don't believe that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. 65% don't believe that Satan is a reality. 68% don't believe that the Holy Spirit is a real person. And that no more than 4% difference between the attitudes and actions of professing Christian youth and non-Christian young people. The conclusion of that study was, hey, look, the youth in our conservative evangelical churches have departed the faith past tense.
It's done now. Now what? And of course we're saying we must go back and recover biblical discipleship methodologies in the home. And hey, the preaching of the Gospel from one generation to the next has been compromised because of traditions and practices that have invaded the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that warning that is here in this text, you nicely set aside the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition, is very relevant.
We have traded inventions and pragmatic means that neither fulfill or justify the ends that we're achieving from them. And so we are saying yes, it's time to stand up and say we should not continue to do many of the things that we're doing in the church. The Apostle Paul said beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit according to the tradition of men. Hey that's what the traditions of men can do to us. We're born into these traditions they seem so harmless we rise up within them we raise our families in them and we often don't, it often may even take us a lifetime to realize that the traditions of men have cheated us.
They've stolen from us the things of the glory of God. Peter said that you aren't redeemed with corruptible things like silver or gold from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers. There are things, traditions of our fathers, there are traditions of our dearest pastors who love the Lord Jesus Christ which are contrary to the Word of God well the people of God were degraded in their practices, all was not well. The Lord Jesus Christ was using very crisp language to explain it. You hypocrites, that's what he says.
Now, if we said something like that, we would get in more, actually more trouble than we're in right now. But, the Lord Jesus Christ here is not afraid to use difficult language to explain problems that are in the church and we should have the same kind of boldness. We should be honest about what's going on. All was not well then and all is not well now. We need to understand that.
Jesus identifies five problems in this text that I think we should camp on and make sure that we understand what's happening here. And the first, the first is that outward things became more important than inward faithfulness. This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me." Look at verse 6, do you see that? These words are stunning and really beautiful words and very convicting and there isn't a person in this room including myself who is not terribly convicted by this. This is not a problem of somebody else.
This is my problem every single day. I honor God with my lips but my heart is far from it. This is our struggle as God's people. This is not just the problem of the bad guys who are messing up the church. This is me.
This is all of my children. This is my wife. This is the problem of the church that I am a shepherd at. And it is our problem together in the church. But What was happening here, they were pretending that practices were for the glory of God, but their hearts were actually far from God, and they were governed by ambition, success, covetousness, The desire for success is often one of the great reasons why we continue to promote unbiblical things.
Unfortunately, the traditions of men can cause a certain kind of success. I would just like to say that again. The traditions of men can cause a certain kind, a certain brand, a certain quality of success that we like. And if we stay on those traditions, this success will stroke us and comfort us and make us think everything is beautiful, but everything is not really beautiful. The people of God in Jesus' day were paying lip service and they were very active.
You know, there's no lack of activity. There's no lack of passion. There's no lack of stuff going on. There was no lack of programs and thoughts about the church. The problem was they had begun to love those things.
And their heart was far from him. They were very active in performing their duties but their activity replaced their piety. The second thing that they did is that they taught things that were man-centered, verse 7. They taught things that were man centered. And in vain they worshiped me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.
And this is the identification of a problem that we all have and this had to do with the things that they taught. What is being taught? So when we read this we should say, well what are we teaching in our churches? The Lord Jesus says that they were teaching things that were man-centered. What about us?
This should cause us to think and pray, oh Lord, what man-centered practices are we teaching? You know, this is very difficult because, particularly for those who who preach, because we are men. We are mere men. Every word, every word we have ever spoken has some level of failure and sin in it. Not one movement, not one thing I've ever done is not somehow tainted by sin.
And, But at the same time, there's a responsibility that we have not to teach the doctrines of man. They were teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. And they were saying this worship is vain. You know, God desires that we not worship our own way, but his way. And we fall in love with our own inventions and we make them authoritative doctrine.
We find out something that works and we say everybody in the whole world has to do this. And when at the root of it actually might be a doctrine of man that promotes man. And so not only do they teach the wrong things, they do this third thing, they actually lay aside what is of God and replace it with the inventions of man. Verses 8 and 9, 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. He said to them, all too well, you reject the commandment of God that you may keep your tradition." So the Jewish church had fallen in the trap of replacing the commandments of God with their traditions.
It's interesting, in this text, Jesus repeats this three times. Three times he says it. And it's there for emphasis. It's there for awakening, that this is a problem in the church. It was a problem in the Jewish church, and it's so obviously a problem in the modern church.
You know, how do these traditions of men work in so many winsome ways. They may on the surface seem harmless at the beginning. At the time, the practices might have seemed helpful, and then they became required, and then they became idols, and then they became things that actually eclipsed the other good things that they that the original intent never dreamed would bring about. The Jews did have laws for washing and cleanliness and it did extend to the washing of utensils but they invented new washings and new ideas and they took it far beyond the original meaning that God had in mind. You can turn to Leviticus 11 and you can see where these washings came from.
The ones that the scribes and the Pharisees added had the appearance of wisdom, but in actuality they diminished the true worship of God. They had actually added to the Word of God and at the same time laid aside what was clear. It's the same thing as saying that scripture is not sufficient, that we need something more. How many additions to Scripture can be endured in the church? How many additions to Scripture can be endured in the church?
That's what the Lord Jesus is saying. How many additions can be or should be endured in the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. When we do this, we destroy the authority of God in the church and we exalt our own. We might say, well you know all things are lawful, But if you do not follow that up and continue the sentence, but not all things are profitable, how do you guarantee that something is profitable? You compare it with what's here.
You open up God's holy word and say, Is there profit in this direction or not? Scripture helps us define where the profit and where the loss is. We should always be asking if this lawful tradition has destroyed a lawful obligation. We must ask if our tradition has destroyed an obligation that God has placed upon us. The fourth thing that we see here, not only did they lay aside, but they but they replaced it with the inventions of men.
And so Jesus confronts the Pharisees Because their traditions were affecting family relationships and responsibilities. You see this in verses 12, 10 to 12. For Moses said, honor your father and your mother. And he who curses father or mother, let him be put to death. But you say, if a man curses, if a man says to his father or mother, whatever profit you might have received from me as Corbin, that is the gift of God.
Then you no longer let him do anything for his father and mother. It's always interesting to me when I hear people say, you know, the New Testament doesn't really have anything about the family. That's absolutely not true. The New Testament has much to say about the family and family kinds of relationships. Now, Jesus is identifying a particular treasured tradition.
It was the tradition of Corban, And it was causing, this tradition was causing the sons and daughters of Israel to violate the fifth commandment to honor their fathers and their mothers. So here we have a precedent for the commandments of God regarding family obligations being set aside for the traditions of men. There are many examples of this in Scripture. Here this is just one. And Jesus was constantly confronting the Jews because he created so many creative laws and traditions that had no basis in Holy Scripture and of course on one occasion he wove a whip and he drove the money changers out of the temple because they had violated the principles of the word of God regarding the worship of his people.
The practices had drifted so far away from God's desires that he actually violently drove them out. And Mark has a very interesting take on this he gives us this moment of Jesus weaving the whip he wove it by himself it's very interesting can you imagine what he was thinking about when he was putting this whip together and braiding it together. He had time to think about what this whip was going to do and what it was all about. And you know the Pharisees never openly denied the fifth commandment. Now that would never work.
You would never contradict the fifth commandment in your ministry. You'd never say forget the fifth commandment. No. You would never do that. The Pharisees didn't do that either.
They just replaced the meaning of the fifth commandment with a bunch of other things. You know the reformers of the 16th century faced a very similar situation. You know every, of course everyone in the church has always believed that children should honor their parents. But in the 16th century the Catholics had added that if a child takes a monastic vow, he's released from his duty to his parents. And the reformers came hard against this.
Calvin was very careful to expose this wickedness, this wicked practice of the monastic vow that took children and put them in monasteries and they did not fulfill the commandment of God to take care of their parents. They went off by themselves and contemplated their navels and had no resources to take care of their older parents. It was dishonoring to their father and mother. Reformers had the same situation. But Jesus gives the example of how a man-centered tradition in Judaism compromises an aspect of family life that's required by God.
So, Corbin released children from financial obligations to their parents. And the application of the fifth commandment argues that it's a godly thing to provide for your parents in their old age, and that keeping money in the family for this reason is a good thing. The Pharisee says, no, give it to God, give it to the kingdom, that money's doing no good on this earth. Make it Corbin. And many did, And they set aside the commandment of God to honor your father and mother by taking that money that should have been used to support their parents and giving it to the church.
The ceremonies were in competition with the intentions of God regarding the honoring of father and mother. This tradition of Corbin was diametrically opposed to the doctrine of honoring father and mother. And so the Lord Jesus Christ chastises the Pharisees for this false doctrine because their their traditions which were designed to promote their own selfish desires and build their own kingdom were being called into question. And Jesus here points out how easily human tradition can conflict with the moral purpose of the Word of God and this is, this bears on so many issues here. How may we worship God?
We worship Him His way or our way. Are we free to invent things like Corbin? Jesus condemns them for departing from the King's highway. You know, you've seen this before. You've seen missionaries who claim dedication to God as the reason they abandon their families and they put their children away and they break all the commandments of God regarding the discipleship of their children they nicely set aside the commandment of God for the sake of their tradition they desire something else How can you fulfill the commands of God for your children, which are to bring them up in the training in the admonition of the Lord, to speak the commandments and the judgments of the Lord when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, when you rise up, how can you fulfill those very clear commands when you're off on the mission field and your children are in a Christian orphanage somewhere?
How can you do that? You cannot fulfill the commandments of God doing that. Now, we could, it would be an interesting discussion to really develop this whole idea because there really are many nuances to it. We could turn to a number of passages of scripture which really bear on this whole subject. We could speak about the passages of scripture, for instance, in Matthew 19, where Jesus is dealing with many family problems.
In Matthew 19, in verses one through 10, he deals with divorce. In verses 11 and 12, he deals with problems of singleness. In 13 through 15, he deals with children. In 16 through 26, issues of money and how they affect everything. And then he talks about loyalty to Christ over family.
And in verses 27 through 30 there's a very interesting narrative here that speaks of all these different things and it speaks of the duties of the gospel and the conflicts to the family and someone comes up and says teacher what good thing shall I do to have eternal life and Jesus says well you know the commandments you know do them and he was a rich man and he loved his riches and obviously riches you know can be very distracting for us in this world it can be some of our greatest temptations the bewitching power of wealth was upon this man And Jesus said well it's very hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. He says in fact it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. And so the disciples were astonished and they said well how can we be saved? I mean that's a question I ask every time I read this, Lord how can I be saved? Because I too am a man you know wedded to this world and then he says he says you know with men this is impossible with God all things are possible And then he speaks after speaking about the great tensions that the Gospel brings in our relationship with money because the Gospel always brings tumult.
It'll bring tumult to your pocketbook, the Gospel will bring tumult to your family, it'll bring tumult to everything. And then the Lord Jesus says this and Peter answers and says but Lord we've left all and followed you therefore what shall we have and Jesus said assuredly I say to you that in the regeneration when the Son of Man sits on the throne of glory You who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive a hundredfold and inherit eternal life that many of you who are first will be last." And so he's saying here that there are many things that can distract us from the kingdom of God and your family is one of them. Your family can become an idol and what he is saying here is that the Gospel can bring a division in families. But I, from everything that I know about scripture, I don't believe that Jesus is saying, leave your family, reject the commandments of God to raise your children, reject the commandments of the God to be the head of your wife, reject the commandment of God that says teach your children you sit in your house when you walk by the way when you lie down and rise up.
That's not what Jesus is saying. He's saying when the gospel comes when you fulfill the commandments of God it may mean, It may mean that there is calamity and difficulty in the family and we should not idolize our families. Family idolatry is just as bad as any other kind of idolatry. And Jesus speaks of the same thing in another passage of scripture where he speaks about the realities of the division that happens in families. It's not the division though of the man who says, hey I'm laying aside everything about honoring my father and mother, I'm laying aside everything about loving and being the shepherd of my family.
Jesus is not calling us to set aside the commandments of God. He is calling us not to idolize our family so much that we reject the commandment of God. And we should be willing for division to be in our families but for the gospel. Not because of our tradition. So Jesus is confronting the Pharisees because their traditions were affecting family relationships and responsibilities.
So here's a question for all of us. What traditions are there in your life and my life now? What traditions are there in your church if you're a pastor that are harming family life in the sense that they are causing, they are causing you to neglect a command of God. That's a question that we need to be asking when we read this passage of Scripture. And then, they were making the word of God of no effect through their tradition.
Verse 13, if you look at these words, making the word of God of no effect through your tradition, which you have handed down and many such things do you do. So there are many traditions in the church today that harm family life and there are many things that have been adopted that have in which something else of God has been banished. And so where will men stop once we have made the word of God of no effect? Where will we stop? There are many traditions in our churches which cause fathers to violate the commandments of God.
There are many traditions in our church that cause women to violate the commandments of God regarding their very clearly defined roles. There are many traditions in our churches which cause children to disconnect from and dishonor their parents. And whenever we elevate a man-made obligation that causes us to set aside the commandment of God we've transgressed the law. I want you to notice here Jesus is not throwing out the Old Testament you notice that? He's bringing the heart and the intent and actually the command of the Old Testament into real life in the church and we need to do that same thing.
We seem to live in a Christian culture that believes that the law of God can be violated without consequence and without danger, that we're at liberty to commit sin against the stated will of God because somehow we are free now to ignore the heart of God. You know, for some reason it did not terrify the scribes and the Pharisees to trade the Word of God for tradition. Now, what about us? Are we terrified to trade the Word of God for a tradition? Would we have such a high view of the book that it would terrify us if we would set aside a commandment of God?
And so Jesus exposes the root of the problem. There are two foundational problems. And one was, one is a rejection of critical Bible doctrine, the doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture. It's taking lightly the Word of God instead of taking it heavily without sufficient care and attention, taking it indifferently. The doctrine of the sufficiency of scripture says that scripture is enough, that it's all we need for life and godliness.
Second Timothy 3.16 says all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, reproof, and correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work. This is what the doctrine of the sufficiency of scripture states. But we so lightly take the Word of God in our times. Let me just give you an illustration of this. There are many ways that we lightly, we take so lightly the commands of God.
I'm going to just give you one illustration. Let's take the subject of fertility. There is one single, unmixed, unqualified message from Genesis to Revelation on fertility. And here's what it is. You find it in Genesis to Adam, be fruitful and multiply.
You find it, you find it from God to Noah, be fruitful and multiply. You find, You find Rebecca's brothers rising up and saying, our sister, may you be the mother of thousands of ten thousands. You have it in the Abrahamic covenant that you might be as the stars of the sky and the sand of the seashore. That doesn't mean that we just sin that grace may abound. Absolutely not.
We so lightly set aside the commandment of God because we don't take the commandments of God heavily, seriously, as with mighty weight. We gotta read them carefully and go word to word and say, oh Lord, help me to be a living picture of this. Help me to be a living picture of this fertility that you've defined. Oh Lord, humbly, I take your word upon me. I reject my own word.
I reject my mother's word as it contradicts the word of God. We so lightly set aside the commandment of God for the sake of our tradition. Instead we should take it heavily. Here's another example. What does God say about femininity?
What does God say about the role of a woman? The Bible says that a woman should be a keeper at home. The Bible says that she should be a fruitful bearer of children. The Bible says that she should be a help me. The Bible says that that she should be a living demonstration of unfading beauty.
Well, let's just take one of those. Let's take that a woman should be, a wife should be a keeper at home. Let's just take that one. Why is it? What is up with the church who can read that, those words and go off and work 40 hours a week in a job away from her household and not be a helper to her husband and not be a keeper at home what what happened to us where the women in our churches aren't saying oh Lord help me help me to be a living picture of this.
Help me to be a beautiful expression of these wonderful words that you've given. Help me to be a keeper at home. Help me to safely trust in my husband. Help me to call my husband Lord. Help me to be a fruitful bearer of children.
Oh Lord help me, help me to focus my energies on home. Why is it? What is up with evangelicalism that so lightly sets aside the word of God for the sake of our tradition? Of course we know that feminism has invaded our whole beings. We can't even think without thinking like feminists.
None of us can. I don't think we're even very well aware of how ungodly feminism has just soaked us. And we just can't even think straight about it. What is up with the church that has rejected the commandment of God for the sake of tradition? Paul said, I write to you that you may know how to conduct yourself in the Church of God, the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.
Paul said to Timothy, hold fast to the pattern of sound words which you've heard from me in faith and love. The pattern. Hold fast to the pattern. Guard the deposit. Hold fast to the pattern.
What's the pattern? The word pattern is the word tupos. It means impression. It means to strike or mark with a blow. It's a word that was used for the minting of coins where you have a die, a hard die coming down on a soft coin, a malleable coin, if the, you know, if the coin is harder than the die then it won't work, it'll break, it'll break it.
But God has designed a pattern for the church that it would be impressed upon by the Word of God. Hold fast to the pattern. The pattern! Where's the pattern in the church today? Where's the pattern in my home?
We must constantly be working to the pattern. Not our salvation doesn't depend upon it absolutely, but there is a pattern and the die must be harder than the blank. Paul said to the Philippians, brethren join in following my example and note those who so walk as you have for us a pattern. Oh God does desire His pattern. God is a God of design.
Every relationship in the family is designed for the glory of God. And unfortunately, we have a condition that I'm just going to call creative Christianity. Creative Christianity has created a church that's indistinguishable from the world and many modern Christian leaders that were just free to create the church newly in every generation for every generation And that's not right. Let's find the best way to engage the culture. Let's find a need and meet it.
The only problem with that is it starts with man. It starts with earth and it doesn't start with the pattern. It doesn't start with heaven. It doesn't start with the word which is eternal and will never pass away. The fatal danger in the DNA of creative Christianity is that it's man-centered and it rejects the doctrine of the sufficiency of scripture.
We should say what does the scripture say? What does the scripture say? The second foundational problem it's is that is a rejection of the principle of taking heed to biblical patterns. And so we make a great appeal to the pattern of Scripture for church and family and we say along with the Apostle Paul if anyone is inclined to be contentious we have no other practice we have no other pattern nor do the churches of God. So Paul's statement here should forever affirm the idea that the Lord Jesus Christ presented with the Pharisees and the scribes that there are normative practices in the churches and in the homes and in the cultures in all historical periods and we have to decide whether we will emphasize biblical patterns or pragmatic patterns, because there is a way that you ought to conduct yourself in the household of God.
I trust that this conference will call us back to the King's Highway, that it will bring us back to love the patterns, to say, oh Lord, do you see, I see what you've said about manhood, I see what you've said about womanhood, I realize that the patterns of the world are contrary, that there's a hatred, there's a hatred toward these patterns that are here. Every believer needs to understand that there is a hatred in the world for these things. You know when you were saved, did you say, oh Lord, please don't touch these areas of my life. No, you didn't say that. You said, Lord, where you lead me I will follow.
You said, I have, many of you were saved singing, I have decided to follow Jesus. No turning back. No turning back. The world behind me, the cross before me. That's how we were saved.
But why don't we continue in it? We should continue in it. We need to understand something really important here. We live in a Christian environment today where the doctrine of sanctification has been set aside. The doctrine of sanctification states that there is an upward call, that there's progress, that old patterns are replaced, that we are renewed by God, and our lives and our patterns change.
But you know what we have today in Evangelicalism? If you get saved and you change your patterns of family life, if you change your dress, if you change the things that you look at, if you change the things that you listen to, people rise up and they say, legalist! We've rejected the doctrine of sanctification in the church. And that's the heart of it. And I'm not standing up here claiming to be some holy person.
But I do know this. That it's just as easy for me or you or any other pastor to set aside the commandments of God for the sake of our tradition, how easy it is to get off the king's highway, but oh how blessed it is, how fruitful, how fat, how lovely it is, how refreshing it is to step on the king's highway. For his ways are pleasant ways and all his paths are peace. He is a tree of life to those who embrace him and those who lay hold of Him and His wisdom will be blessed. Would you pray with me?
And so, Lord, you have given us the law to teach us our schoolmaster where we have erred and you have given us your son to take us by the hand. This shepherd, this precious marvelous shepherd full of grace and truth. Oh Lord come and take our hands now and lead us through these times through all these considerations to see how we might declare Your glory for one generation to the next in the church and in the home. May the angels stoop more deeply to see marvelous things that you're working among your people. In Jesus' name, amen.