Hello and welcome to Bible Stories.

We are your hosts, Matthew.

Hello.

And hey, I'm Todrick.

Actually, it's just Matt and Todd.

We're not too fancy for you or anything.

But hey, we are two buds who love telling the stories of the Bible.

And today we cannot wait to share another one with you. Matt, we're going to jump

into the book of Matthew chapter 15. I can hear a little bit about what Jesus has to say to us,

what was going on during that time. So Matthew, aka Matt, take it away.

Today we're going to examine the significance of traditions.

We've all got them, whether it's watching Rudolph on Christmas Eve or eating black-eyed peas on New Year's Day.

Perhaps it's something like counting every tile on the ceiling of any new room that we enter to estimate the

square footage and then compare that square footage to the current occupancy. You know, our little

traditions. Well, the Jewish religious community in Jesus' day had some traditions as well.

In Matthew chapter 15, one of these traditions comes to the forefront. Some Pharisees and scribes, they approach Jesus

with what they believe to be a really big problem. Namely, Jesus' disciples are not washing

their hands before they eat. Now, for most of us, that may seem super gross, and we might even

side with the Pharisees and the religious

leaders. But these folks aren't coming to Jesus because they're worried about the disciples' health.

Instead, hand washing had a different purpose in this context. It wasn't about germs. It was about

ceremony. The religious leaders had developed a tradition of washing one's hands

...