Jesus’ View of Scripture

We’ve been looking at the Book of Mark and examining the life of Jesus, and tonight we come to a place where Jesus is talking about His view of Scripture, of the Bible. And you know, it’s kind of strange to imagine that we live in a cultural moment in which this is a major issue. Books dealing with the question of the authority of the Bible are on the bestseller list all the time. People in our culture really struggle with the idea of the authority of the Bible.

I think we have to keep in mind, as we look at this text, that when Jesus in verse 13 talks about the “Word of God,” and when He talks about the “commands of God” in verses 8 and 13, He’s actually referring to the part of the Bible that modern people probably struggle with the most—the Hebrew Scriptures, what we would call the Old Testament. And yet, Jesus says three remarkable things about the Bible. He tells us something about His relationship to it and His view of it. He tells us three things:

1. We must adjust to its authority.
2. We must grasp its purpose.
3. We must love and fall in love with the person at its center.

We have to adjust to its authority, we have to grasp its purpose, and we have to fall in love with the person at its center. Let’s look at these three things.

Adjusting to the Authority of Scripture

First of all, we have to adjust to its authority. Now, Jesus five times in this passage criticizes what He calls the “traditions of the elders.” Jesus is not against tradition altogether. In fact, you can’t be. Tradition, per se, is a great thing. For example, what if we didn’t have the tradition that every Sunday night here we had a service at seven o’clock? What if I said, “You know, from now on, we might have a service some weeks, we might not have a service some weeks, we might have it at eight, we might have it at five. You just have to check to see.” It would be chaos. It’s so nice to have the tradition that we do this every week at seven o’clock. You can’t really have a life without tradition. You can’t have a human community. You can’t have emotional health without traditions.

Jesus is not criticizing tradition per se. It’s a fine thing. But He is criticizing the “traditions of the elders.” The tradition of the elders was a set of rules and regulations that, over the years, had grown up around the Bible. They weren’t in the Bible. Teachers and scholars had developed these traditions, these rules about the Bible, and they had added them to the Scripture as binding, authoritative regulations for life.

For example, in the Bible, you read that we are supposed to rest on the Sabbath. So the teachers asked, “What does it mean to rest on the Sabbath?” The answer of the tradition of the elders was a couple hundred rules: you can do this, and you can’t do that on the Sabbath. That’s what it means to rest on the Sabbath. And there were all these other things in the Bible, like, “What is ritual purity?” “Why do we have to be pure when we go into the temple?” “What does the Passover mean?” “How are we to observe the Passover?” In every case, the tradition of the elders answered, “What this means is…” and gave a bunch of very detailed rules and regulations.

The problem was that the rules and regulations weren’t in the Bible, but they grew up around the Bible and became equal in authority. That’s what Jesus is criticizing—these rules became equal in binding authority on people. And because the rules and regulations were considerably more detailed and concrete than the principles of the Bible, they tended to distract people and sometimes even contradict the actual original biblical principles.

Jesus gives two examples to illustrate what I’m saying. The first is the washing. If you go back to the Bible, where does the Bible talk about ritual washing for purification? This is not hygiene; this has nothing to do with why we wash our hands before eating. The idea here was ritual purity. In the Bible, the only people who are told to wash their hands are the priests. According to the Law of Moses, the priests had to wash their hands before they went in and led worship. This makes perfect sense. It’s a very important part of the liturgy. It was a way for God to say, “I am holy, and if you who have sin are going to approach me, it has to be cleansed, it has to be dealt with.” It’s a very helpful and important part of the worship.

But by the time of Jesus, everybody, according to the tradition of the elders, was required to wash constantly with water—wash before eating, wash clothes, wash furniture. Why? Because you might have touched something unclean. You might have touched a Gentile. You might have touched something that was unclean. And just to be sure, even though it wasn’t in the Bible, there was this obsession with ritual purity. But think about this: one of the principles of the Hebrew Scriptures was that Israel was to be a light to the Gentiles, a light to the nations. And yet, of course, that basic principle is totally lost in all the legalism and separatism that comes from all of these kinds of rules when it came to eating, which utterly separated you from the nations.

Or another example: Jesus points out here at the latter part of the passage this thing about Corban. The Bible says that God’s claims supersede anyone else’s claim. As a result, the tradition of the elders had developed a loophole. You could take a piece of property and declare it Corban, which means “offered” or “offering.” You could say, “I have dedicated this property to God.” What that meant was that if someone in your family, even your own parents, got into financial trouble and came to you for help, you could say, “Oh, I can’t use any of this because it’s all God’s.” Jesus says, “By complying with the tradition of the elders, you’ve actually contradicted the whole spirit of the biblical principle, ‘Honor your father and mother.’”

In the very last line of the passage, Jesus says, “I could give you a hundred more illustrations, but I won’t.”

The Authority of the Bible and Worship

Why is Jesus so angry? You can see when He replies to them in verse 6, He is so angry. Here’s why: He says, “They worship me in vain. Their teachings are but rules taught by men. They have let go of the commandments of God and are holding on to the traditions of men.” This is a remarkable statement. What He says here is that if you fail to honor the unique authority of the Bible, you fail to worship God. If you let human traditions, what the experts say, or what your heart says, have equal authority with the Bible, you fail to worship God. You create your own god. You are your own god.

Jesus is saying that a failure to recognize and honor the unique authority of the Bible is a failure to honor the authority of God. The authority of the Bible and the authority of God stand or fall together. You can’t have one without the other.

This is an astonishingly high view of the Bible, in which Jesus sees the Bible not as a human product but as something divine. This isn’t the only place where Jesus expresses this view. If we’re really going to understand what Jesus is saying here about the Bible, we need to do a little survey of the other things Jesus says about the Bible.

If you look at Jesus’ life and the Gospels, you see that His view of the Bible is astounding. Jesus based all of His thinking, all of His actions, and even His heart on the Bible—mind, will, and emotions, everything.

Jesus’ Relationship with Scripture

For example, mind—thinking. Whenever Jesus had a problem, an issue, or a question, the final word for Him was “Gegraptai”—“It is written.” When He said that, it didn’t matter what the experts said, what the culture said, what the tradition said, or what your heart said. It was settled. In John chapter 10, Jesus says, “The Scripture cannot be broken,” which means it can’t be disobeyed. In Matthew 5, Jesus says, “Not a jot or a tittle,” which means not a letter or a part of a letter, “will pass away from the Word of God until it all comes true.” So He based His thinking on the Bible. It was the supreme authority intellectually.

Secondly, He based His actions on the Bible—His plans, His decisions. One of the most amazing places where you see this is in Matthew 26, in the Garden of Gethsemane. The soldiers arrive to arrest Him, and in the chaos, Peter pulls out his sword. What does Jesus say? “Peter, put down your sword. I could call legions of angels.” But then He says, “How will the Scripture be fulfilled?” At a time like that, He based everything in His life on the Scripture. He did everything according to the Scripture.

But I think the most moving thing is to see that the main fortification for Jesus’ heart was the Scriptures. He did not handle the cosmic challenges of His life with willpower but with the Scripture. For example, when He was assaulted in the desert by the devil, every single time, what does He say? “Gegraptai”—“It is written.” Every time, He takes the Scripture. In fact, one time He says to the devil, “Man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” That’s Jesus’ way of saying, “Every word of the Scripture is my bread, my meat, my strength, my life.”

When He was carrying His own cross to His execution, and His life was literally ebbing out of Him, He falls down at one point. You read this in Luke 22, and He sees some women weeping. What does He say to them? Where do you get the words at a time like that? He quotes Hosea. He’s quoting the Bible. And when He actually gets on the cross, in the greatest possible agony of body and soul, He quotes Psalm 22:1: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” He quotes Psalm 31:5: “Into thy hands I commit my spirit.” He’s quoting the Bible.

You know what this means? If you’re falling off a cliff and you see your death in the rocks below, or if someone comes after you with a knife and you see your death in the eyes of your assailant, what do you cry out? Whatever it is, you don’t think, “What should I say?” No, what comes out is whatever is in you—the real you, the real depths of your heart are revealed at a time like this. And when Jesus Christ is at the absolute limit, you see that His mind, heart, and will are so saturated with the truths, the narratives, the images, the cadences, the promises, and the warnings of Scripture that when He was stabbed, He literally bled Scripture. It just flowed out of Him. He faced everything with Scripture. His identity was based on Scripture. His life was based on Scripture.

The Authority of Jesus and the Bible

Now, do you see the first point? Here’s what the point is: remember how Jesus said that the authority of God and the authority of the Bible stand and fall together? Well, the authority of Jesus and the authority of the Bible stand and fall together too. And here’s the reason why: there are people all over who say, “Oh, I want to follow Jesus. I’m interested in following Jesus.” But they say, “Ah, but the Bible… there are some parts I like, some parts I don’t like.” They say, “There are some jots and tittles that I like, and some jots and tittles that I don’t like. Some parts are regressive, some parts we can’t accept anymore.”

Listen, you can’t follow Jesus and reject the very basis of His whole life. At the very best, that’s just not thinking. At the very worst, that’s hypocritical. It’s like saying, “I want the warm fuzzies of saying, ‘I believe in Jesus,’” but you reject the very basis of His life? Listen, unless you are willing, like Jesus, to conform, to adjust your life to the supreme authority of the Scripture in every detail, even where it hurts, even where you don’t want to do it, unless you’re willing to conform and adjust your life to the authority of the Scripture, especially at the places where it contradicts your heart, your tradition, your culture, the experts, or your friends, there’s no way you can follow Jesus. The authority of the Bible and the authority of God and Jesus Christ stand or fall together.

Grasping the Purpose of Scripture

Now, aren’t we glad that there’s not just one point to this sermon? Aren’t we glad this isn’t the end? Actually, some of you are saying, “Isn’t this the end?” Well, no, it’s not the end. Because if we stop here, you might say, “Oh, so that’s following Jesus. It’s really hard, and you’re going to do a lot of things you don’t want to do, but you have to suck it up and just do it. You have to do your duty.” Is that following Jesus?

Look, you’re not going to be any good at your work, your friendships, your family life, or life in general if you don’t sometimes just suck it up and do what you don’t want to do. You’re not going to be a functional human being if you can’t do that. But fortunately, there’s a whole lot more to being a Christian than that.

Point two: we have to adjust to the Scripture’s authority, and Jesus criticizes people who aren’t willing to see the supreme and unique authority of the Scripture. But the second thing Jesus Christ is saying about the Scripture is that we have to grasp its purpose. We have to see what the Bible is for, what we’re trying to accomplish when we obey the Bible.

Notice it says here, “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain. Their teachings are but rules taught by men.” What’s Jesus saying here? This is a quote from Isaiah 29. He’s saying, “God says the purpose of the Bible is not formal compliance, but I want your heart. I want your heart. You’re far from me. I want to be close to you.” Jesus says, “If you look at obeying the Bible as a way to feel like a righteous person, to say, ‘Oh God, you’ve got to bless me now because I’m living such a good life,’ you’re completely missing the purpose of the Bible.”

The purpose of the Bible is not to get God in a corner, not to manipulate God, not to control Him so He’s got to bless you and answer your prayers, not so you can feel righteous. The purpose of obeying the Bible is an intimate love relationship with God. God says, “I want you to obey the Bible because I want intimacy with you.”

Obedience and Intimacy

The greatest illustration of this principle is found in Exodus chapters 19 and 20. In Exodus 20, we have the Ten Commandments—the ultimate revelation of God’s will for how people should live. But where does God give the Ten Commandments? In Exodus 19, when He brings them to Mount Sinai, He says this, just before He gives them the Ten Commandments:

“You have seen what I did to Egypt and how I carried you on eagle’s wings and brought you to myself. Now, if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, you will be my treasure.”

Notice, this is one of the most important points in the Bible. God did not come to the children of Israel in Egypt and say, “If you obey my law, then I’ll rescue you. I’ll bring you out of slavery on eagle’s wings.” He didn’t say, “If you obey, I’ll save you.” What does He say? “I saved you. I brought you out of slavery. I released you from the bondage to the most powerful nation in the world, and you didn’t have to lift a finger. I saved you. You didn’t do it, and I didn’t do it because you were obedient. I didn’t do it because you obeyed the law. You didn’t even have the law. I did it because I loved you—sheer unmerited grace.”

Okay, if I’m already saved by sheer grace, and God’s already set His love on me, why in the world should I obey? He says, “Because this is how you can become my treasure. This is how you can treasure me, and I can treasure you. This is how we can have an intimate relationship. You have to obey my will if we’re going to have this incredible intimate relationship that I want with you.”

For modern Western people, the idea of obeying the law and having an intimate personal relationship seems antithetical, doesn’t it? We don’t put those two things together. But we’re wrong.

Love and Obedience

If you’re really falling in love with somebody, really falling in love, and you want a love relationship, what do you do? You start to do research. Yes, you do. You want to find out what offends and outrages the person, and you want to avoid those things. Important safety tip: don’t have a love relationship if you’re constantly offending the other person. But you’re not satisfied with just avoiding offense. You also want to know the little things that will delight them and make them happy. Even the little things.

What are you doing? You’re tracing out an arc. What is this arc? It’s the will of your beloved. It’s what your beloved wants in his or her environment. It’s the will of your beloved. And once you’ve done your research, you find out not only the things that outrage and offend but also the things that make the person happy. Without being asked, you begin to conform your life to the arc of your beloved. You begin to obey the will of the beloved.

But why doesn’t it feel like obedience? We don’t even think of it like that. Here’s why: when you fall in love with somebody, you put your happiness into their happiness. You’re only happy if they’re happy. You can’t help it. That’s how love works. And it’s not exploitation if the other person is doing it to you. If the other person has inserted their happiness into your happiness, if the other person is tracing out the arc of your will, and you’re both doing that, that’s a love relationship.

But what’s really bad is if one of you is doing it and the other is not.

A Personal Relationship with God

Would you like a personal relationship with God? There’s only one way. You’ve got to have a God who can contradict the deepest convictions and feelings of your heart. Otherwise, you don’t have a personal relationship with God. If you say, “Oh, I want a personal relationship with God, but there are parts of the Bible I like and parts I don’t like. I’m going to accept the parts I like, but I can’t accept the rest,” then you have no way for God to contradict you. You’ve got a robot god, not the God of Job 42, who says, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?”

Unless you’ve got a God who can contradict you, you can’t even have a conversation. He’s not a person; He’s an object. And here’s what’s really tragic: there are parts of the Bible that you don’t want to believe because they tell you things you don’t want to do. But there are also parts of the Bible that are hard to believe because they’re too good to be true. The Bible says, “When our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts.” There are times when you’re going to feel like such a failure, and the Bible comes and says, “Through the grace of God, in spite of all your failures, no matter what you’ve done, you can be my child.” And you say, “No, no, it’s impossible.” But if you haven’t ceded the Bible the authority to tell you the bad stuff, how can the Bible come and give you hope when your heart is hopeless? How can it argue you into absolute contentment and joy? It can’t.

You can’t have a personal, intimate relationship with God unless you’re willing to submit, to adjust your life to the arc of God’s will and to the authority of the Bible. But if you adjust your life to the authority of the Bible out of love, out of a desire to please and know Him, then you are understanding the purpose of the Word of God.

The Bible as a Joy, Not a Burden

Now, here we have come to the place where some of you, if you’re really listening and thinking, may be saying, “Guess what? I’m still skeptical because I know what’s actually in the Bible.” You hear me talking about submitting to the authority of the Bible, and you hear Jesus saying, “Religiosity says external compliance to the rules, but the gospel is an inner heart filled with love and joy that wants to passionately, wildly love God and love your neighbor.” You hear me saying that the Bible is the way to do that. But you say, “The trouble is, if you actually read the Bible and see the things it demands, it doesn’t make you feel close to God. It makes you feel guilty. It can almost crush you.”

Virginia Stem Owens, a writer and teacher, once assigned her students at Texas A&M to read the Sermon on the Mount and write an essay about it. To her surprise, most of them had never really read it, and when they did, they were appalled. One student wrote, “I do not like the Sermon on the Mount. It made me feel like I had to be perfect, and no one is.” Another wrote, “The things asked for in this sermon are absolutely absurd—not to look at someone with lust, not to scorn or despise anyone. These are the most extreme, stupid, unhuman statements I have ever heard in my life.”

Have you ever really read the Sermon on the Mount? One minister said, “If you actually read the Sermon on the Mount and see the kind of life it requires, you’re going to look up to heaven and say, ‘God, save me from the Sermon on the Mount.’” It’s not going to make you feel close to God. It’s not going to fill you with inner love and joy. So what are we going to do about it?

Jesus as the Ultimate Fulfillment

The main reason the Pharisees were so shocked by Jesus was that He was sweeping away the traditions of the elders and putting Himself in their place. He was saying, “I’ll tell you what the Bible means. I am the ultimate revealer of the Bible.” How could He do that? This is what’s so shocking to the Pharisees. How dare He? Here’s how: when Jesus Christ came back from the dead, He met with His disciples and said, “It’s imperative that you learn to read the Bible rightly.” He explained to them what was said in every part of the Scriptures about Himself.

Jesus says, “The Bible will be an absolute despair to you. It will only crush you unless you learn how to read it.” And what does He say is the secret to reading it? You have to see that there is a center to it. There is a plotline running through it, and it all points to Him. Unless you see that, the Bible will be nothing but a crushing burden.

The True and Better Joseph

Let me give you two quick examples. There’s a wonderful story in the Bible about Joseph. Joseph was sold by his jealous brothers into slavery in Egypt. But instead of dying, he rose to be Prime Minister of Egypt. When his brothers, who betrayed him, came into his power, Joseph forgave them and redeemed them. What are we supposed to get from this? “Be like Joseph. Even if people hurt you, love and forgive them.” Now, run along and be like Joseph. Is that inspiring to you? God save us from the story of Joseph. Who in the world could be like that?

It’s not inspiring; it’s crushing unless Jesus is right. Jesus says, “I am the true and better Joseph.” He was sold not into near death but into real death. He rose not just from slavery but from death itself. And when the true and better Joseph sees us—the people who betrayed Him—He forgives us at infinite cost to Himself. To the degree that you see that, it empowers you to try to be like Joseph.

The True and Better Esther

Or take Esther. Esther had power, money, and status, but she risked losing it all to save her people. Be like Esther, everyone. Be courageous, no matter what it costs. Now, run along and be like that. God save us from the story of Esther unless there’s a true and better Esther—someone who was in the real palace, the ultimate palace. He saw that the only way we could be saved was if He identified with us, not at the risk of His life but at the cost of His life. Unless that thrills you, unless that becomes the basis of your life, you can’t be like Esther.

The Ultimate Fulfillment of Scripture

Don’t you see? Unless you see Jesus as the ultimate Joseph, the ultimate Esther, the ultimate David, the ultimate Abraham, the Bible will just be a crushing thing for you. It won’t be something you read with joy. It won’t be a way of entering into a love relationship with God. It’ll just be a despair.

But now, wait a minute. Some of you may be thinking, “You said that in a love relationship, both parties adjust to each other. So where’s God adjusting to me?” Don’t you see now? In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus said, “Not my will, but thine be done.” He adjusted His life to us in the most radical way possible. He’s not asking you to go to hell for Him. He did that for us. He’s asking you to go to heaven for Him.

Conclusion

Humble yourself under the Word of God. Have the same relationship with it that Jesus had in your mind, your will, and your emotions. And it will be a joy.

Let us pray.

Thank you, Father, for granting us this word about Your Word. We pray that You would help us to receive it as a joy, as a gift, not as a burden, because we see that at the very center of all the stories of the Bible is Jesus Christ, Your Son. It’s in His name that we pray. Amen.