This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Hi, I want to welcome you to Daily Drive Time Devotions and Day 2 of our look
together through Mark chapter 7. We're talking the beginning of this week about
three indications that your spiritual life is sinking. Three indications from
this conversation that Jesus had with the Pharisees and the scribes in his day.

Yesterday, we talked about the fact that when your words and your heart don't
match, that's a great sign of your being in a spiritually dangerous place. And
today, Jesus gives a second indication of spiritual danger in our lives in
verses 8 to 13. Let me read those verses for you.

Jesus said, "You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the
traditions of men. " And he said to them, "You have a fine way of setting aside
the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions. For Moses said,
'Honor your father and mother.

' And anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death. But you say
that if a man says to his father or mother, 'Whatever help you might otherwise
have received from me is korban, that is a gift devoted to God,' then you no
longer let him do anything for his father or mother. Thus, you nullify the word
of God by your tradition that you have handed down.

And you do many things like that. " What's a second way that I know my heart is
in spiritual danger? Well, Jesus talks about it here.

He says it's when your traditions replace God's directions. And he says to those
who he's speaking to in this day, "You've gotten really good at this, letting
your traditions replace God's directions. In fact, let's just be honest, it's
easy to get really good at this.

" The way Jesus expresses it to them, these Pharisees and scribes, is, "You have
a fine way of doing this. " Other translations say, "How well you do this," or,
"You nicely do this," or, "You beautifully do this," or, "Full well you do this.
" It's easy to turn this trick into a fine art.

It's like we're doing this spiritual sleight of hand, and you make your ace turn
up every time. "Oh look, the way I serve God is going to be what best serves me.
Oh look, the way I serve God is going to be what best gives me the most money or
the most pride or the most prestige.

" Well, isn't that amazing how it always works out that way? Now what was their
trick? That may have been confusing as I read through it particularly.

Their trick was a word. It was a word korban, which meant a gift devoted to God.
It was a sort of a spiritual abracadabra word for them.

It worked the magic of taking something that should have been committed to
someone else, and all of a sudden, because it's committed to God, I don't have
to give it to that other person. Now I still hold on to it, and I can still use
it for things in my life that I feel like are godly things, which if you really
think it through well enough, everything in your life could be a godly thing
because God's a part of every part of your life. And Jesus takes them to task on
this because he says, "What you've done is you have a mom or a dad over here
who's in deep need.

They're hungry or their housing is not adequate. " And the Bible says you're to
take care of them. You're to honor them by meeting their need.

And everyone in the community, in that Jewish community in that day, knew that
the commitment of a son was to take care of the need of their parents as they
got older. But instead of taking their money and using it to take care of these
aging parents, they just waved the word korban over the money and were able to
hold on to it themselves and maybe give a small, small gift to their parents.
Jesus says, "What you've done is you've nullified the word of God by your
tradition.

" The Jews had a tradition of what they called building a fence around the law.
We've talked about this before, where they didn't just try to keep the law of
the Old Testament but they put picket posts of a fence all around that law of
littler laws, smaller laws that helped them to make sure they didn't break the
big law. But they'd become so concerned with the condition of the fence, of the
smaller laws, they forgot about the law they were trying to keep.

God's commands result in love, not legalism. And they were neglecting a dying
parent's need to keep a man's tradition because it better served their need. Now
before we go on here and talk more about our traditions replacing God's
directions, we can't walk through this passage without noticing what Jesus is
talking about here.

He's talking about taking care of a father or a mother. How do you honor a
father and mother? How do you honor them, especially maybe when they have hurt
you or they have disappointed you?

Well, you don't honor them by letting them hurt you again, obviously not. But
you can honor, even if you never meet, never know your father and mother, or
even if you were abused by a father or a mother, you can honor the fact that God
used them to bring you into the world. You can honor the fact that somehow that
unique set of genes that's in them has come into you and that makes you the
unique person that God has made you to be.

For many of us, it's not the case that we were abused by a parent or had that
kind of pain. It's just that it's easy to ignore a parent as we get busy and
their lives get busy. One of the ways you honor a parent as they get older is by
looking at the needs in their life.

There comes a day when you have to meet many of those needs in your life, and it
can be wearying for many people. If you're going through that now, as much as
you love your parents, it is wearying. But God honors you for doing that because
you're living out God's command in your life.

Even 2,000 years ago, they were trying to get out of doing this. But
unselfishly, as you make this choice, God honors that. Don't miss that.

Do not miss that. Now, back to what Jesus was talking about with these leaders
in that day, replacing God's directions with our traditions. He says when you do
that, you nullify the Word of God.

Now we don't use the word korban. We don't do what they were talking about here.
So my question to you and I is, how do we do this?

And just thinking through the five purposes of the church, worship and
fellowship, discipleship, ministry and mission that we talk about a lot here at
Saddleback, how can my traditions replace God's directions in those five areas?
Well, let me give you an example. Take worship.

When worship becomes just one hour a week, from 11 o'clock to 12 o'clock or from
4. 30 to 5. 30 or 6 o'clock, when it becomes just that hour that I come to sit
with other believers, and I believe that is my total experience of worship.

I worship God because I've done that for this week. I've allowed a tradition, a
time that we worship together, to replace God's direction, which is that worship
needs to be a part of every part of my life, that I'm supposed to submit my body
to him as an act of worship in a daily way. If you reduce worship to just one
time, one place, one hour, that means that my tradition has replaced God's
direction.

This can happen with fellowship too. Fellowship is meant to be a depth of love
of believers one for the other, a willingness even to sacrifice one for the
other. A lot of churches have a place they call the fellowship hall, and they
have this building that you go into and you drink bad coffee out of little
styrofoam cups and you have some really bad cookies, and you're supposed to be
fellowshipping there.

And if fellowship is reduced to just what happens in the fellowship hall, then
our tradition has replaced God's direction. It can happen not only with worship
and fellowship, it can happen with discipleship. Discipleship is my growth in
Jesus Christ, becoming more and more like Jesus.

And if discipleship just becomes a check-off list, check I had my quiet time
today, check I memorized a verse this week, check I went to a Bible study class
this week, I am now a disciple, if that's all it is, then my tradition has
replaced God's direction. It is a habit in many churches to measure people's
level of discipleship by how many church meetings they attend. If I come to
Sunday morning, I'm not that deep a disciple.

If I come to Sunday morning and Sunday night, wow, I'm sort of becoming a
disciple, real disciple of Jesus. If I show up for a Bible study in the middle
of the week at the church also, boy, I am a great disciple of Jesus Christ. It's
not a matter of how many meetings you attend, that's tradition replacing
direction.

It can happen in the area of missions, too. A fourth purpose where we replace
sometimes God's directions in our lives with our traditions is in the area of
ministry. When ministry becomes what the church does, not what I do, but what
the church does like those paid people at the church or maybe a few volunteers
that have more time than I do, and I feel real good about that the church is
doing ministry, I miss the fact that we are to be the body of Christ and Jesus
has a ministry for every one of us in the body of Christ.

My tradition of how I see ministry has replaced God's direction that he wants me
involved in ministry. It can happen in missions, too, in the area of missions,
reaching out to other people. There's the feeling amongst many that missions
should be left to the professionals.

They're the ones that should go overseas, that we're supposed to pay and pray
and get out of the way and let them do the work, but that's not what the New
Testament says. That's not God's direction. God's direction is that every
believer is to go into all the world and tell the good news.

We're all to go in some way. Do not let human traditions, the way we've always
done it, replace God's directions, the way that Jesus wants to do it in your
life. Let's talk to him for just a few minutes about this, and you might just
pray this prayer today.

Lord Jesus, I want to be a man, I want to be a woman with a heart for God. I
never want to be someone who lives solely for the rules, the traditions of men
and churches and the way we've done it before. Yet Jesus, I realize that it is
easy to replace one with the other.

These rules of men can be easier to do. It's easier to come to church once a
week than to make worship the entire attitude of my life. But Lord, let me not
settle for a tradition.

Help me to look the rest of my life for how you want to grow me, what you want
to do in my life. I don't want to be left with empty tradition in the end. I
want to be living the fullness of my relationship with you, now all the way into
eternity.

That's what I ask for, Jesus. I ask it in your name, amen. Make sure to join us
tomorrow, we're going to be talking together about how to not be confused about
purity in your daily life.