Welcome to a year in the Bible with daily grace. My name is Kristen and my name is Katie and we want to spend a few minutes a day with you walking through the New Testament one chapter at a time.

This year we will fix our gaze upon Christ so that we may know

him, not only with our minds but with our hearts. Together we will learn that

who Jesus is changes everything. Hello this is Katie welcome to a year in the Bible with daily grace.

Today we are studying Mark 7.

Throughout Mark's Gospel so far we have seen Mark focus on three groups of people who have been

orbiting around Jesus, the crowds, the disciples, and the opposition.

Typically the Pharisees, but this has even included his family and people in his hometown.

And we will see these three groups today as we look at Mark 7, starting with the opposition. Once again, controversy surrounds

something Jesus does, or in this case, something he doesn't do. Wash his hands before he eats. Great thing to do if we were talking

about hygiene, but there's something different going on here. The Pharisees

ask him, why don't your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating

bread with ceremonially unclean hands?

That wording is important because the law didn't require this.

The only hand washing the law requires was for the priests when making a sacrifice.

But probably meaning well, they went beyond what the law required and started having all of the Jews do a ceremonial cleansing so that the food they would eat wouldn't defile them. They knew this wasn't in law, but they added it as a

tradition. They had done the same thing with the Sabbath, where they had added so

many safeguards around it that would in their minds violate

the Sabbath to do good to people.

We saw this in Mark 2 and in Mark 3.

Jesus calls them on this here. Their traditions are having the opposite effect.

Just as their extra traditions around the Sabbath cause them to miss the whole point of the Sabbath,

...