Tradition vs. Truth

Last week we introduced a new sermon series at Cleary that I have called "Secrets of the Kingdom: Parables in Luke's Gospel. (You can listen at cleary.tv) This week we are going to look at the first parable recorded in Luke. It is found in Luke 5:33-39.

And they said to him, "The disciples of John fast often and offer prayers, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours eat and drink." 34 And Jesus said to them, "Can you make wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? 35 The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days." 36 He also told them a parable: "No one tears a piece from a new garment and puts it on an old garment. If he does, he will tear the new, and the piece from the new will not match the old. 37 And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed. 38 But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins. 39 And no one after drinking old wine desires new, for he says, 'The old is good.'" (ESV)

Jesus is accused of breaking, not the law of God, but the tradition (the religion) of man. He is questioned about his disciples failing to follow the fasts and prayer rituals of the Jews and he responds with this parable. It is a clear warning about the danger of clinging to the past, to old traditions and to dead religion over the inspired Word of God.
Traditions are not necessarily bad in themselves. Some traditions are good and beneficial to our walk with God. The problem with traditions is they quickly become more important than God's commands. They quickly become more binding on the people than God's law. They, rather than the Word of God, become the standards of righteousness. They become nothing but ruts that we fall facedown into. From that vantage point we see only the rut, not the Word of God.
We see this happen in verse 33 of this passage. Jesus' accusers say, "The disciples of John the Baptist are doing it. The Pharisees are doing it. It must be the thing to do! Jesus, why aren't you and your followers doing it?" Where did the Word of God come in? God's law was never mentioned. The only thing they had to point at was the religious crowd. Jesus and his followers were not following the rituals of their religion because they didn't have to? The only fast prescribed in the law of God was on the Day of Atonement. Over time however fasts began to multiply: you know, if it is good once a year, then it must be good twice a year and so on. The climax was the observance of a fast twice a week. The Pharisee prayed in Luke 18, "I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get." After it became common for religious people to fast twice a week, it just became the unwritten rule. You were not really righteous unless you followed the fasts and prayers of the religious elite. It was not wrong to fast twice a week, but it was not required either. So, Jesus and His followers did not do it.
Not only did God not require so many fasts, but the kind of fasts they were offering were not the kind of fasts God desired. Zechariah 7 records, "When you fasted and mourned in the fifth month and in the seventh, for these seventy years, was it for me that you fasted. . . And the word of the Lord came to Zechariah, saying, 'Thus says the Lord of hosts, Render true judgments, show kindness and mercy to one another, do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, or the poor, and let none of you devise evil against another in your heart.'" The prophet Isaiah wrote, "Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?"
Jesus and his followers committed no sin against God. The problem was they committed the cardinal sin against the religious crowd….they ignored their traditions. They stepped out of line according to their religion. Traditions and religion can become a rut if we are not careful. We must be on guard that we do not become more protective of our traditions than we are of the actual principles of the Word of God. We must be careful that we do not judge a person's righteousness by our man-made standards, but rather by their fruits. We must be careful that we do not get so caught up in days, places, times, and people that we miss the voice of God through His Word. The fact of the matter is, Jesus came to reform religion. He came to reform the traditions of the religious crowd. He came to lead us into a personal ongoing relationship with him in which we speak to him through prayer, he speaks to us through his Word, and in which he leads us by His Spirit. That is a far cry from religion and a great deal more rewarding than dead traditions.
Jesus came to reform the traditions of the religious. Jesus shook up the tradition of the Jews on more than just this occasion. In Matthew 15:1-3 we read, "Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, "Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat." He answered them, "And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?" Jesus intentionally broke their traditions. He also pointed out that they were willing to break the commandment of God for the sake of their traditions. He came to repair and reform what they had broken. He came to reform their religion. He came to bring the new covenant in His blood! In fact, in this passage of Scripture alone, the word new appears 7 times. The emphasis falls clearly on the new, not the old. The worn out, faded Judaism, so beloved by the rabbis, was beyond repair. Jesus came to reform it and when He died, Old Testament Judaism died with Him. Jesus did away with the law, as they knew it. He did away with the sacrificial system with His final and complete sacrifice. He tore the curtain in the temple giving everyone complete access to the Father through Him. "And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split." Matthew 27:51-52. Jesus took out the old and brought in the new. Their traditions, religion, and rituals had been reformed! Those traditions were quite resistant however, as ours are today. Next time we will think about how resistant our traditions can be to the Word of God and the work of the Holy Spirit. We'll also talk about how we can strive to approach God's Word without subjecting it to our traditions and "religion" first. Until next time….