That Which Defiles

Tonight I will present a devotional thought at prayer meeting. It will be based on Mark 7:1-23, which shows how Jesus rebuked the Pharisees for giving a lot of attention to human religious rituals while at the same time neglecting matters far more important to God.
I was reading Dr. A.T. Robertson’s “Word Pictures in the New Testament,” an in-depth study of the text in the original Greek. Not only was the great scholar an expert in the Biblical language, he was also an able practitioner of English. In his discussion of Jesus’ rebuke of the Pharisees, he says, “It was a home thrust to these pettifogging sticklers for ceremonial punctilios.” I confess I had to look up those words in a dictionary. (Testimony to how language changes in 100 years).
Dr. Robertson chose the exact words for the description of religions leaders who were overburdened by lesser things as they despised the things God cared about. The dictionary told me that a “pettifogger” is “one who quibbles over trivia,” and a “punctilio” is “a petty formality or fine point of etiquette.”
The Pharisees and some of their teachers saw Jesus’ disciples eating without going through the washing ceremonies. The purpose of the washings was to make food ceremonially clean (people knew little if anything about germs in those days). Jesus said to them, ” You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions” (Mark 7:8 NIV). He quoted Isaiah 29:13* as the basis for telling them so.
Simply put, Jesus made it clear that they were not defiled by what they put into their stomachs, but by what came out of their hearts. They needed to get their priorities straight. Do we?