Mark 7:6-8

Passage

In these verses Jesus begins a fairly long dialogue about what defiles a person.  He begins with the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and scribes.  Jesus warns them that they speak righteously as though everything is right with them and God yet their heart is in truth nowhere near God.  Their worship is in vain as they teach the commandments of men as though they were commandments from God.  In fact, they abandon what God has said for what mankind has made up.

Thoughts for Today

First Thought:

Hypocrisy is a strong word.  What I love about the word is that it comes from the ancient Greek word for an actor.  Literally, an actor in ancient Greece was called a “hupokrites” (pronounced who-poh-krih-tays.)  It means “one who pretends or puts on a false face.”  If you think about what an actor does, that fits the bill!  An actor takes on a different persona for the length of the scene, play, show, or movie.  That is also exactly what a hypocrite does.  They put on a face that looks right from the outside but it isn’t anything more than skin deep.  We need to be careful about taking this approach to our relationship with God.  A relationship with God that is only skin deep is no real relationship at all.

In what areas of your life are you true with God all the way to the core of your being?  In what areas of your life are you true with God only as it pertains to how you appear to other people?  What can you do about these areas?

Second Thought:

Jesus also criticizes the way that they speak.  Hypocrisy is not just an action, but a form of communication.  When we speak about ourselves, we can either give a true impression of the person we really are or we can give a fake impression of what we say is happening in our life.  To use today’s vernacular, we can be real or we can be a show.  We can talk about our successes and our failures or we can talk as though everything in our life is absolutely perfect.  One of those paths leads to a true relationship with God and others.  The other path leads to hypocrisy.

Why is what we say to other people important?  How can our being authentic and transparent in our own lives lead to others feeling as though they genuinely know us as people?

Third Thought:

Then Jesus speaks to them about their teaching.  They are teaching human understanding as though it was doctrine.  They are teaching what they want life to be like rather than what God wants life to be like.  We see people in the world do something bad and the next thing we’ve made up a rule to prevent it from happening.  Yet, the rule we make up may not be God’s will.  In fact, the rule we make up might actually interfere with someone else’s ability to accomplish God’s will.  The problem is when we begin to think of our own rules as being equal to God’s rules.

What are some things that you can think of that are rules we have made up and treat as God’s rules when they really aren’t?  Why do we as human beings like to make up rules for ourselves rather than simply trusting in the order that God has provided?

Passage for Tomorrow: Mark 7:9-13