Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble, and I'm your host for the Bible recap.

Today we open with Jesus' dealing again with the complaints of the Pharisees.

They're upset that his disciples don't wash their hands before meals.

If this sounds familiar, it should.

Jesus dealt with this himself back in Luke 11 when he went to dinner at the Pharisees'

house.

At this time, the scribes and Pharisees have apparently traveled from Jerusalem to Galilee,

which is almost 80 miles, to address this situation.

Her usual, Jesus points out that this isn't breaking God's law, it's breaking man's

traditions.

Just because their religion set this up as their law doesn't make it God's law, according

to God's law, only the priests had to wash their hands before meals.

Jesus points out the hypocrisy in their accusation, because he says they break the actual

law in order to keep their man-made traditions which are sometimes in conflict with God's

law.

Then he quotes the words of Isaiah in reference to the people of Jerusalem.

The passage talks about people who do acts of worship and have the appearance of Godliness,

doing and saying all the right things, but who don't actually love God.

They love their religious acts.

They love being right, but they don't know anything about righteousness, because that only

comes through a relationship with God, not through their good deeds.

This whole thing is probably a little unsettling to the disciples.

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