Lips and hearts

Then the Pharisees and scribes asked Him, "Why do Your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat bread with unwashed hands?"  He answered and said to them, "Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written: This people honours Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me.  And in vain they worship Me  teaching as doctrine the traditions of men.' – Mark 7-5-7

The scribes and Pharisees were really hung up with getting religion right. The disciples had missed some aspect of ritual hand washing before they ate. The Pharisees asked Jesus why they did not follow the right procedures.

His answer was short and clear as He quoted Isaiah when he was dealing with the hypocrites – ‘These people honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me.’

The Pharisees knew how to do all the right things and say the right things. They did know how to play the religious game. Everyone would have thought they really were godly examples. They knew all of the ‘praise the Lords’ and ‘amens’ and ‘hallelujahs.’ Anyone who worshipped with them would have tried to follow their example.

But there was as a problem.

Their problem was that their lips did not match up with their hearts.

That is not a problem unique to the Pharisees. There come times when we all have an issue with our lips matching our hearts. We go to church and take part in the worship. Depending on our church we sing, shout, dance, amen, praise the Lord, hallelujah, close our eyes, nod our heads, raise our hands, or any number of things that we do in our church. That is probably the easiest time to go along with the crowd. Sometimes we can sing things and say things and do things that are not really from our heart. It is much easier to look and sound spiritual than it is to be spiritual.

Let’s just be sure that the our hearts match up with the words we speak.