Daily Devotional For Thursday, November 27, 2025
Good morning Southside and Happy Thanksgiving Day. We are making our way through the Gospel of Matthew in these current devotionals. As we will see today, Jesus cannot get a break. It’s either crowds seeking healings, hoping to see Jesus put on a “show” or disciples that have no faith or as in today, religious leaders who seek to trap Him. Why? So they can disqualify Jesus as being a teacher they should listen to in life. Today we come to Matthew 15:1-9:
“Some Pharisees and teachers of religious law now arrived from Jerusalem to see Jesus. They asked Him, (2) ‘Why do Your disciples disobey our age-old tradition? For they ignore our tradition of ceremonial hand washing before they eat.’ (3) Jesus replied, ‘And why do you, by your traditions, violate the direct commandments of God? (4) For instance, God says, ‘Honor your father and mother,’ and ‘Anyone who speaks disrespectfully of father or mother must be put to death.’ (5) But you say it is all right for people to say to their parents, ‘Sorry, I can’t help you. For I have vowed to give to God what I would have given to you.’ (6) In this way, you say they don’t need to honor their parents. And so you cancel the word of God for the sake of your own tradition. (7) You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you, for he wrote, (8) ‘These people honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me. (9) Their worship is a farce, for they teach man-made ideas as commands from God’” (NLT).
We read of a delegation of religious leaders that had come from Jerusalem. Some were Pharisees, who insisted on detailed adherence to the Mosaic Law (Genesis – Deuteronomy) and traditions, as well as teachers of the law, who were professional interpreters of the Mosaic Law. After the Jews were allowed to leave captivity in Persia in 537 BC, when they returned home to Israel, their religious leaders developed more oral traditions for them to follow. The problem was they put these oral traditions and their interpretations on the same level of authority as the Mosaic Law. Meaning equal to Scripture.
These advocates of “obedience to their own interpretations” scrutinized Jesus and His disciples, they noticed something that ticked them off and brought a charge against them. They said the disciples were eating without washing their hands. I mean no disrespect here, but my own mother would not let us come to the table to eat without first washing our hands. But there is something you need to know here. The religious leaders were not referring to washing hands before you eat meals for cleanliness reasons. They were referring to a specific kind of washing that made you ceremonially clean before eating.
This ceremonial washing cleansed a person from any kind of defilement that person may have contracted without knowing it before going into the Tabernacle or Temple. The religious leaders around the 3rd century B.C., collected all these oral traditions and wrote them down and then codified them in a book called the Jewish Talmud. Keep in mind these were their own personal interpretations of God’s law that they said were equal to and sometimes surpassed God’s law in terms of authority and obedience. These were unbreakable and if you did break them, then you would suffer punishment from the Jewish Supreme Court, the Sanhedrin.
This went all the way back to the Mosaic Law in Exodus 30:17-21. This was part of God’s law. But the religious leaders took this law and applied it to the oral law saying Jews were required by God to do this before formal prayers and eventually even before eating. These religious leaders added an additional 613 oral laws to God’s law in the Bible. This may seem strange to us today, but those who are Roman Catholic look to the dogma of the “church” as defined by the Pope and priests as being legalistically equal to Scripture in authority and obedience. As a result, the Roman Catholic Church has developed all kinds of traditions to enforce their dogma.
When I read this passage I can’t help but think of 2 Corinthians 4:3-4, “If the Good News we preach is hidden behind a veil, it is hidden only from people who are perishing. (4) satan, who is the god of this world, has blinded the minds of those who don’t believe. They are unable to see the glorious light of the Good News. They don’t understand this message about the glory of Christ, who is the exact likeness of God” (NLT). All of us can battle spiritual blindness at times. We can see this in our traditions that we insist on legalistic adherence to as if these traditions are equal to or surpass the word of God. As a result, we can legalistically do things without even knowing why we do them.
For example, years ago I read about a wife who when she cooked a ham, she cut off the two ends first. After several years of doing this, her husband kindly asked her why she did this tradition. She said, “I really don’t know. I just know my own mother did this.” Sometime later they were over at her mother’s home and they asked her mother why she did this. Her mother said, “I really don’t know. I just know my own mother did this.” Sometime later they were over at her grandmother’s home and asked her. Her grandmother said, “Honey, that is easy to explain.” She pulled out her cooking pan for ham and said, “The reason I cut the ends off is because if I don’t the ham won’t fit in my pan to bake.”
Mystery solved and the “why” of the tradition revealed. Are we any different at times? We have the same capacity to elevate traditions to the level of God’s word and will. There is nothing wrong with traditions as long as we understand why we do them. Many of our traditions help us celebrate family stories or holidays in a very good way. Tomorrow we look at this again.
Assignment: The next time you are with family, or friends or even at church, notice the traditions. Ask, “What is the role of this tradition that helps our family or friendship or church?” Ask, What rules have developed over time that are no longer questioned that enforce the keeping of this tradition? Who came up with these traditions and why? Who enforces these traditions and why? How do such traditions and rules help us grow spiritually in our relationship to Jesus Christ? How do they hinder that? What safeguards are in place to make sure these rules and traditions are not elevated to the level of Scripture?
Scripture To Meditate On: Ezekiel 33:31, “So My people come pretending to be sincere and sit before you (Ezekiel). They listen to your words, but they have no intention of doing what you say. Their mouths are full of lustful words, and their hearts seek only after money” (NLT).
Prayer To Pray: “Dear Lord, help me to evaluate the traditions I follow and why? I do not want to treat the traditions I adhere to as just as or more important than Your Word. I thank You for giving me Your Word for my life. I want to obey you out of love, not out of legalism. I love You Lord. In Jesus’ name, Amen!”
I love you Southside! – Pastor Kelly