But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.
Worship is vain, useless and empty when God is honored with mouth and lips while the heart is far from Him, for mere outward observance without worship in spirit and truth and holiness is not acceptable. Christ spoke it as a rebuke to the Pharisees, scribes, priests and rulers who accused Him over their traditions, exposing their hypocrisy with calm authority. The human commandments in view were oral rules and ceremonial hand-washings God never commanded, treated as binding as the law given through Moses and even given more force than the Ten Commandments, which made void the law of God, displaced His precepts and exalted the human above the divine. The same vain worship is found in Babylon's false doctrines given to the world, a false sabbath in place of the Sabbath of the fourth commandment and the natural immortality of the soul first told by Satan to Eve, and in exalting Sunday observance originating with Rome over God's Sabbath and teaching that His law is abrogated. Safety now requires trusting nothing but It is written, testing every doctrine by a plain Thus saith the Lord and searching Scripture for oneself, giving up old Pharisaic maxims and customs in the new birth, and worshiping from the heart in righteousness, mercy, love and humility while keeping God's commandments.
Words and Historical Setting
Worship is empty, useless and vain when the heart is far from God while the mouth draws near and the lips give honor, for gathering and outward observance alone do not make worship acceptable unless evil is put away and God is worshiped in spirit and in truth and in holiness. Forms and ceremonies without living service from the heart leave those taught a delusive faith unable to see the difference between mere ritual and genuine service from the heart. Even the round of temple service and sacrifices that pointed to the great Sacrifice and called for the Saviour to come became vain when the One whom all the ceremonies represented stood among them and would not be recognized or received, for truth had been discarded for tradition and buried under endless maxims, fiction, and the rubbish of superstition piled upon it. The Sabbath given at creation is the example of how this happens, having lost its true significance because human maxims and traditions were piled upon it until its glorious character was hidden and understanding was beclouded.
The words were spoken as Christ's rebuke to the Jewish nation and to the scribes and Pharisees, with priests, rulers, Sadducees, and professedly learned and pious teachers included, when they came to Jesus to find accusation against Him over their traditions. With calmness and power He spoke as one having authority and not as the scribes in their hesitating, uncertain manner, teaching pure, unadulterated principles and holy ennobling truths with heart-touching pathos. He met them with the authority of true greatness and with holy wrath yet without sin or guile, fearlessly exposing hypocrisy and with terrible power denouncing all artful intrigue, dishonest practice, avarice and ignorance, so that truth never languished on His lips. He who had instituted the law knew how far these teachers had departed from it, misinterpreting Scripture, treating maxims and sayings passed from rabbi to rabbi as having the sanctity of inspiration, and making commands better suited to carnal hearts, so that when He revealed in the sermon on the mount the same far-reaching principles given in the Old Testament it sounded to them like a new revelation and like heresy.
The human commandments in view were customs, traditions, needless ceremonies and many oral rules that God had not appointed or commanded, including detailed hand-washing ceremonies and ceremonial washings presented as safeguards for God's law. They were forced upon the people and treated as binding as the law given through Moses, dwelt upon as of more value than the words of the living God, made all-essential and regarded as of even more force than the Ten Commandments. When such human precepts conflicted with the commandments given at Sinai, the people gave the traditions greater authority, so that ordinary people could hardly tell them apart and were distracted from the great principles of the law and hindered in spiritual growth and service. Treating unreasonable ceremonial details as more essential than Jehovah's precepts helped lead the religious leaders to condemn Jesus, while their customs and maxims continually kept back His few followers and disciples from advancing, supplying their great lack of knowledge, and becoming efficient workers.
To teach such human precepts as doctrines is to teach error, to make void God's law by tradition, and to empty it of its force by displacing Jehovah's precepts with rabbinic forms, maxims and opinions not found in Scripture. It exalts the human above the divine, removes the sanctity God placed upon His requirements, especially His Sabbath, mixes men's authority and human enactments with God's holy requirements, and fails to recognize God's dignity and holiness. God does not permit selecting which parts of His law to obey, and replacing any of its precepts with human rules or compelling consciences to obey human laws leaves minds confused, turns them from the light of Scripture, stands directly in the way of God's commandments so they are not implicitly obeyed according to His directions, and leaves them condemned as transgressors. Those leaders broke the law themselves and taught those who wanted to investigate and obey the light to break it too, deceiving the people while a shadow was set between Christ as the light of the world and the souls He came to save, and this voiding of the law has produced the sinful and miserable condition now seen in the world and the church.
Jewish Leaders Vain Worship
The worship condemned is empty because human rules were taught as divine doctrine while the heart stayed far from God, and the teachers hid Scripture under endless maxims, fictions, far-fetched explanations, elaborate expositions, unsanctified and confused interpretations, and a mass of rubbish that buried the jewels of truth and the plan of salvation so the essentials were lost, true worship was perverted, and after their explanations the people knew less of Scripture's meaning than before. They carried on the round of temple service and sacrifices that pointed to the great Sacrifice and called for the Saviour to come, yet their repeated maxims and invented explanations, fables, erroneous theories, falsehoods and authoritative dogmas set aside God's holy precepts and disregarded the principles of His law. The same vain worship continues when common people are told they cannot understand Scripture for themselves and that learned expositors must interpret its hidden meaning, putting the words and ideas of men in place of God's Word, and the remedy is to give far less heed to the words and assurances of men and far more to the voice of the Lord from the living oracles, letting Scripture explain Scripture, for the Bible was written by inspiration so common people might understand its precious living vital truths as all light and not darkness.
Religious teachers depart from God when they follow their own understanding, interpret Scripture to fit their conduct, seek human praise, and follow human traditions instead of the Lord's plainly revealed way. Israel's priests and elders performed religious ceremonies to appear devout yet withheld the obedience God required, making the law strict when it served their interests and weakening God's precepts when those precepts confronted them, so their conduct made their teaching a substitute for obedience. Through pride they claimed Abraham's privileges by natural descent while failing to do Abraham's works, and this misinterpretation blinded them and kept them from understanding the truths taught by Christ. Their traditions and interpretations made God's word ineffective even as they claimed to worship Him, perverting Scripture, neglecting God's requirements, placing human rules in their place, obscuring its clear meaning, hiding truths about Christ, and making obedience seem a burdensome set of ceremonies that weakened respect for God and diminished the force of His law.
Their religion became a yoke of bondage in a ceaseless round of meaningless ceremonies that lost sight of the object of worship, though they were bound to teach God's word and practice obedience. They added tradition to tradition with unsanctified and confused interpretations, demanding more rigid and difficult duties than God had specified, measuring holiness by multitude of ceremonies while hearts were filled with hypocrisy, pride and avarice, making trivial forms and ceremonies as important as God's law and turning a law meant for heart obedience into severe demands by outward observances. They held themselves aloof from sympathy with men as God's favored ones with assumed righteousness and dignity, trusting strict keeping of the letter would make them righteous and bring fulfillment of promises, yet this dwarfed minds, narrowed lives, restricted freedom of thought and action, kept continual dread of defilement so they could not attend to essential duties without employing Gentiles for fear of contamination, and brought God's curse even as they professed to be the only righteous nation. Christ cleared away these additions of traditions and minute requirements that made the commandments ineffective and hid their true meaning, revealing the law reaches motives of the heart where self-love is transgression, restoring the commandments to their proper place in the gospel without diminishing any precept.
As a class the Pharisees were bigoted and hypocritical, though some among them were genuinely pious, accepted Christ's teaching and became His disciples. They preserved outward forms and ceremonies — washings, fasting, prayers, almsgiving — while lacking personal piety, using customs to appear devout and gain honor and imposing rules for their own advantage. Traditions and ceremonies not given by God through Moses or anyone else come from human authority, not God, yet leaders imposed them while keeping outward devotion to appear righteous, even exploiting widows and taking offerings for themselves. Their pride in learning and position and attachment to traditions and superstitions contrasted with the teachable fishermen Jesus chose, and their estrangement from pure spirituality gained through obedience left the nation unable to recognize Jesus as Deliverer though Scripture plainly described His character and coming.
Though the whole Jewish system was the veiled gospel and temple services pointed to the great Sacrifice, they missed its central truth because they searched the Scriptures but interpreted what they read to sustain traditions. When Christ Himself, the One all ceremonies represented, stood among them they would not recognize or receive Him, because He differed from their idea of what the Messiah should be, and though divided on most points they united in opposition to Him. Their rejection revealed lack of the spirit of obedience, for their traditions made God's commandment of none effect. Without piety and godliness the people could not recognize Jesus as the Prince of life even though they saw His miracles and work of healing and restoring people to God's image, and they rejected and killed Him.
Like the second son who said I go, sir, and went not, they pledged at Sinai to keep the law and still said they would obey, but they went not, so their religious life had become a pretense. While professing obedience they refused to obey, made void the law by teaching for doctrines the commandments of men, and though convinced by abundant evidence of Christ's authority and divine power they would not receive it because they had not the spirit that leads to obedience, remaining impenitent and self-sufficient. Their refusal to believe John's call to repent and confess sin proved disobedience, in contrast to open transgressors, publicans and harlots, who repented and went and will enter the kingdom before them. God had taught the people His requirements and warned life and prosperity depended on obeying them, but disobedience led Him to withdraw from the nation, and making void the law in this way led the once elect nation to reject the Son of God and to ruin.
Christ's Response and True Worship
Christ came when most needed as God's representative and the Light of the world to set pure truth before a perishing world and dispel moral darkness. The priests, scribes, rabbis, rulers and the Jewish nation had discarded truth for tradition, teaching human inventions, erroneous theories, maxims, falsehoods and authoritative dogmas as divine doctrine, so that their worship was vain and empty while they drew near with the mouth and honored with the lips but their heart was far from God. Their teachings and sayings with customs and traditions lay like a mass of rubbish over the jewels of truth, confusing spiritual understanding, perverting true worship, burying the plan of salvation and almost extinguishing the pure and holy principles of the holy law until its true meaning could not be discerned. With calmness and power He spoke as one having authority and not as the scribes in their hesitating, uncertain manner, firmly and continuously resisting the sayings woven into the framework of truth and exposing Satan's policy and desire to cover truth with superstition and tradition. He rescued those jewels from companionship with error and reset them in order in the framework of truth, removing the mass of human covering from the law, living it out in His own life, and restoring its true meaning and purity without diminishing its sacredness, giving it to the world clothed with more than its original glory and lustre. The rabbis had obscured and nullified the commandments with traditions and minute requirements, making them ineffective and hiding their true meaning, and Christ cleared away these additions and revealed that the law reaches the motives of the heart where self-love is transgression, restoring the commandments to their proper place in the gospel and showing their full significance without diminishing any precept. The very same difficulty from the sayings of men must be met in the present day, requiring training of the heart after His example and practice when He was training His disciples to work with Him in the gospel of His kingdom.
He would not mix human demands with divine precepts, gave them no heed, refused to follow customs or formal rules that lacked foundation in God's word, and separated Jehovah's precepts from human maxims. The Jewish teachers made God's law void by mingling their own traditions with heaven's precepts and presenting sayings invented by human minds as God's word, and His practical obedience contrasted with their transgression. His teaching was direct and certain, unlike theirs, taught plainly and simply only what is essential, so the disciples saw the scribes' and Pharisees' traditions and lifeless formalism as no answer to Christ and would not leave Him to teach human commandments as doctrine. Church institutions, customs and traditions that rest only on human authority cannot replace what God has appointed, for God's word is the source of truth, and those who cling to human authority may oppose people who call attention to God's commandments and the faith of Jesus.
True worship does not consist in outward ceremonies or the observance of man-made creeds, for teaching the commandments of men for doctrine makes worship vain, while true worship must be in spirit and in truth. Those who gather to worship must put away evil and worship God in spirit, truth and holiness from the heart, for mere outward observance with lips honoring Him while the heart is far does not make their gathering acceptable. Forms cannot replace righteousness, mercy, love and a humble heart, and the Pharisees' reliance on human traditions and outward ceremonies instead of true service left them blind to God and unable to recognize Christ. Traditional rites have no spiritual value when they hide the truths they were meant to teach, and such service brings no peace. People who accept human sayings in place of God's truth need to learn to look to God Himself as the Author of all truth, and the contrast between God's commands and the traditions of the scribes and Pharisees shows how teachings become worthless or harmful when they displace Scripture.
The scribes and Pharisees misinterpreted Scripture and treated maxims and sayings passed from rabbi to rabbi as having the sanctity of inspiration, though the commands of men were unlike the divine command and better suited their carnal hearts. They knew so little of the true principles in daily practice that Christ's sermon on the mount, which revealed the same principles given in the Old Testament and the far-reaching principles of God's law, sounded to them like a new revelation and like heresy. Christ, who had instituted the law and spoken it on Mount Sinai and knew the bearing of all its precepts and the glory and majesty of the law of heaven, showed no regard for those human traditions, but in His sermon on the mount defined the law, presented truth in its proper light, and opened the eyes of understanding to behold wondrous things out of the law of God. The Jewish rabbis, scribes and Pharisees had presented the requirements of the law as a wearing round of exactions, a cold, rigid code of commands and traditions, and by superstition buried its light, glory, dignity and far-reaching claims while professing to speak for God in His place, a work Satan continues in the present day. That law is the foundation of His throne from the beginning and remains through ceaseless eternity the great standard of righteousness, holy and just and good. Filled with holy wrath when He saw leaders putting human rules in place of divine truth, He met priests, rulers, Pharisees and Sadducees with the authority of true greatness, fearlessly exposing their hypocrisy and with terrible power denouncing all artful intrigue and dishonest practice. His words revealed pure, unadulterated principles, holy ennobling truths spoken constantly without sin or guile with heart-touching pathos, truth that never languished on His lips. His cleansing of the temple from pollution shows His desire to cleanse hearts and His institutions from everything bearing any resemblance to fraud.
Holding rigidly to such traditions, as the Jews did in His time, prevents people from receiving the Holy Spirit. Accepting the sayings of men as the commandments of God makes worship vain, for human inventions and traditions are not only unreliable but dangerous, because they place men where God should be and place the sayings of men where a Thus saith the Lord should be. Those who will not dig in the mines of truth are like the Jews, with pride and dignity keeping them from grasping His teachings, which are old truths in new settings. The whole Jewish system was the veiled gospel, and Christ as the Light of the world sends His divine rays back to enlighten the entire Jewish economy. He possesses the key that unlocks the treasure house of the Old Testament, explores hidden things, uncovers error and superstition, and separates precious truth from superstition and error and the devisings and imaginings of men, calling minds to look to God Himself as the Author of all truth.
False Doctrines Exposed
The verse exposes Babylon's wine, her false doctrines given to the world far and wide. Those doctrines include a false sabbath put in place of the Sabbath of the fourth commandment, the natural immortality of the soul first told by Satan to Eve in Eden, and many kindred errors. To teach such human teachings as doctrines from God is vain worship, and to teach the commandments of men for doctrine in this way is disobedience and rebellion against God's laws that puts its teachers on Satan's side. As the Jews exulted in their own traditions, so the lawless in her borders exult in their own traditions while the world is taking sides and the nations have drunk of that wine.
Setting aside God's commandments to promote Sunday observance makes human precepts take the place of divine law. Sunday observance is a custom originating with Rome and upheld by human authority rather than Scripture, claimed as a sign of her authority without scriptural evidence, while God's Sabbath and its defenders are opposed. Good causes such as temperance and social reform do not make right a teaching that sets aside God's commandments to avoid the fourth commandment, for joining such causes to error can make the error more persuasive but cannot justify replacing God's commandments with human precepts. Worship gives honor to human authority when people obey such human religious precepts in place of God's commands, and Sunday observance is not counted as disloyalty while people are sincerely mistaken. After the true Sabbath obligation is made clear and Sunday observance is enforced by human law to control consciences, choosing Rome's precept over God's command honors Rome, and rulers who take the spurious sabbath under the care and protection of legislatures to restore the man of sin to lost ascendancy and place divine honors upon a false sabbath do not know what they are doing. When this is fully done the commandment of men will be clothed with sacred garments and pronounced holy, and persecution will break forth upon those who observe the Sabbath God gave in Eden as a memorial of His creative power, even unto persecution and death to Sabbathkeepers.
The same vain worship includes keeping the first day by majority custom with no precept or example from Christ. God's revealed will is obscured by errors and traditions taught with the authority of divine commandments, including the claim that Christ's resurrection changed the Sabbath commandment, and by ministers who interpret Scripture through human philosophy, maxims, and traditions and thereby obscure its plain teaching. It exalts observance of the first day of the week over the Lord's plain word, as Israel's rabbis added human commandments that confused people and set God's requirements at defiance. It replaces the holy Sabbath God set apart, the memorial of creation, with a common working day, sets aside the Sabbath, changes the ordinance and breaks the everlasting covenant, tramples God's law while giving Sunday sacred authority, and teaches that the law is abrogated. Parents have set such precepts before children and ministers before congregations instead of keeping before them the words of God spoken in the mount to treasure and to govern the whole conduct of life, making a false sabbath as a god which all are to reverence, and refusal to reverence it brings punishment by stocks, imprisonment, confiscation of goods, and the chain gang. In the perilous last days, like the days of Noah and Lot when sin brought flood and fire, wickedness prevails in high places and in low and cities become like Sodom because the law of God is made void, while amid greater religious activity than ever before religious teachers lightly regard its claims, set aside the Sabbath, and lose sight of the power and love of God.
The same condemnation applies now to ministers and professed Bible teachers who make Jehovah's law void by declaring it abrogated and no longer binding on the human race, teaching their families and the world to disobey. Their ministers cry there is no law and declare that there is no law, failing to see that where there is no law there is no transgression and that sin is the transgression of the law, so that if there is no law there is no sin in the world. This repeats the forgetfulness of God, backsliding, rebellion, apostasy and formalism of Christ's time, turns away from the Word of God to fables, and repeats Satan's assertion to Eve in Eden, and such disobedience is just as offensive to God now as in the beginning. It includes proclaiming as Bible doctrines falsehoods from the arch-deceiver, especially consciousness after death and communion of the living with spirits of the dead, which has no foundation in Scripture. That teaching opens the way for spirits of devils to deceive by personating the dead and bringing souls into captivity, and as truth is rejected the signs and wonders of Spiritualism become more pronounced. Those rejecting light and truth decide their destiny for eternal death, the Spirit of God gradually withdraws from the earth, the prince of this earth gains more control over his subjects, and through Spiritualism he shows great signs and wonders as credentials of divine claims and works against Christ and His agencies. Against this false teaching God's people must show they have a message from the Lord of no human invention, with workers needed to present the truth in its simplicity as the last message of warning to the world, bringing its truths into daily life so that practical godliness, purity, and holiness are seen.
Human philosophy, explanations, interpretations and tradition presented as divine doctrine make worship vain and empty. It condemns inventing new theories and preaching human suppositions, traditions, suppositions, fables, forms and ceremonies, and fanciful imaginary doctrines instead of preaching the Word, including strange ideas mingled with portions of truth, unsound theories and deceptions proclaimed as advanced light that lie almost imperceptibly close to truth. Efforts to unlock Scripture by human intellect only darken plain truth and bring in false theories and heresies, obscure God's character, subvert prophecy, continue Adam's fall by unbelief, and put men where God should be. As with the Jewish teachers, such teaching confuses minds so people cannot tell whether they are keeping the Word of God or following human imagination and the traditions of men, which pleases Satan. Even in a time of great intellectual, moral, and religious light, those who reject the Word and accept fables fall into delusion and darkness, and human customs and traditions can be enforced by religious and civil powers, leading people to oppress those who refuse them and seek to worship God according to His Word. It requires ministers, especially young men teaching the truth, to search the Scriptures earnestly and sink deep into heavenly truth instead of preaching their own ideas and theories, because teaching for doctrine things not contained in God's Word places them under the warning given in the last chapter of Revelation.
Such human teaching is the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy, the leaven of evil surmising and evil thinking, against which Christ warned His disciples not to receive doctrines which are not from God. As leaven spreads through the meal in which it is hidden, this evil leaven when received perverts the entire being — thoughts, actions, and character. It stands opposite the good leaven of the gospel, the kingdom of heaven, the Word of God, which introduces true goodness, righteousness, and peace and brings the entire affections into conformity to the mind and will of God.
Warnings to Present Church
The same rebuke that fell on the Jewish nation for making void the law of God by tradition and putting human teachings in place of doctrine now rests on teachers and ministers in the churches who do the same. They bewilder youth by urging those who know the truth to join Christian Endeavor Societies and by holding out flattering prospects to make them ambitious to become worldly wise men. They hold the Bible as a whole to be the Word of God while denying that all of it is inspired and letting supposed wise and good men question one book after another, so that infidelity stealthily enters the mind, knowledge of truth weakens, faith is confused, and precious youth are drawn away by deceiving influences and false doctrines to stand with those who make void the law of God. Such teachers repeat the failure of the professedly learned and pious people of Christ's day in teaching the commandments of men as doctrine joined with ignorance of the Scriptures and of the power of God, misrepresenting Scripture, leading people into sin like the Jewish priests and rulers, resisting study of God's messages because of prejudice, and preserving the appearance of true worshipers while setting forth strange ideas mingled with portions of truth that are full of deceptive power. They corrupt Scripture to harmonize truth with human inventions, bring the Bible into criticism, cause ministers to differ widely in interpretation not because the Scriptures are inconsistent but because men corrupt them, declare the law abrogated, repeat Satan's Eden assertion, teach men's theories above a plain Thus saith the Lord, and cannot be depended on by those who would both preach the truth and practice it and unite in saving the world. Therefore schools must be established where students hear the Word of God in its true bearing, those who know the truth must freely receive the precious light shining from sacred history to give to those in darkness of error, and every church member and youth must take a settled, avowed position on the solid Rock Christ Jesus as commandment-keepers who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ rather than commandment-breakers.
Ministers must preach the Word, not human suppositions, fanciful doctrines, forms, ceremonies, maxims and fictitious claims, or unsound theories and distortions that can lead to fanaticism. Such counsel darkens minds and starves people of the bread of life, while Christ directs to what is written in Scripture. Teaching human commands as divine doctrine dishonors God and Scripture, passes down falsehoods as God's Word, obscures truth instead of presenting it simply, confuses minds, pleases Satan, misapplies Scripture, places stumbling blocks, and repeats the Jewish leaders' example. Error must be reproved rather than excused, with patience and care, and teaching must rest on God's Word rather than unsupported human assertions, rejecting every claim that lacks a Thus saith the Lord as its foundation. Humble people, learned or unlearned, can understand Scripture for themselves through open search, and its truth is of greatest value to those who receive and practice it, under the condemnation of Revelation's last chapter upon those who add human invention.
Those entrusted with teaching the Word must not set up their own mind as the standard and compel others to conform to it, for all authority in heaven and earth belongs to Christ and teachers are to teach all nations to observe only what He has commanded. Applied to fellow workers, this condemns criticism, suspicion, working against one another, harsh dictatorial speech, offending souls, claiming authority God has not given, and using human judgments and rules to control fellow believers and their work and impose burdens that restrict others. Men in positions of trust who lack personal piety, connection with God, consecration, vital piety and humility, who take little time to seek God's counsel and do not receive the things of God, handle sacred things without reverence, awe, heart-searching and constant reliance on God, and lose the sense of the preciousness and sanctity of sacred things. Unless the converting power of God is felt upon hearts and characters to make them one with Christ keeping the way of the Lord, the Lord will have no more use for them, and they cannot be laborers together with God while self is exalted, Jesus is not glorified and does not work with them, Satan's insinuations are credited, and God's plain requirement of mercy and tender compassion is ignored. Like the scribes, Pharisees, priests and rulers who added traditions and exalted them above God's word, such teaching leaves men unfit to meet the people's spiritual needs and counters God's work rather than serving it, calling instead for united harmonious labor in which each uses God-given talents to inspire belief in the words of inspiration.
The rebuke exposes religious leaders who take high, flattering titles to themselves, such as reverend and right reverend, titles that belong to God alone and were never given by Christ to any fallible, sinful man. It exposes them as hypocrites who make great pretensions to superior knowledge of the Scriptures while being ignorant of the Scriptures and of the power of God, who will not enter the kingdom of heaven themselves and keep others from entering. Their worship is empty and useless because they teach the commandments of men as doctrines, dishonoring God and the Sent of God by exalting men, whereas true honor is humility learned from Christ who is meek and lowly of heart, seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and obeying God rather than men. The same principle forbids confident human systems treated as God's way, as when confident claims for a medical system in which one was trained and denunciation of other systems reflected educators' influence rather than truth, just as the Pharisees' teaching did not represent the Lord's way.
Education must rest on Scripture as foundation and lesson book, for the rabbis elevated tradition and ceremonies above Scripture so that focus on detailed observances obscured the essential service of God and neglected knowledge of Him. They taught human commands as divine doctrine, dwelling upon tradition, amplifying it and reverencing it far above the Scriptures, until sayings of men and an endless round of ceremonies took up so much of student life that the education that gives knowledge of God was neglected. The great teachers enlarged continually upon little things, specified every detail to be observed in religious ceremony, made its observance a matter of highest obligation, and brought in a mass of rubbish that hid from youth the great essentials of the service of God and failed to give youth a true knowledge of Scripture as the foundation of genuine education. Such traditions make void God's law and hide the plain meaning of Scripture, leaving people confused, neglecting the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy and faith, hindering true spiritual development and reliance on God's word, and connecting human teaching with ignorance of Scripture and God's power. Religious teaching detached from Scripture cannot provide true education or sanctify people, for God's word is truth and the foundation of sound learning, and Adventist schools must not repeat the error by sanctioning popular amusements or patterning after established schools.
Churches become enfeebled when human commands are accepted as doctrine, when unconverted people are received into membership, and when men, women and children take part in baptism without being fully instructed in its meaning and solemnity. Because participation in baptism means much, ministers must carefully give each candidate plain instruction in its meaning and solemnity. The same vain worship appears when members copy differences of opinion among leading men and enter into controversy over disputed subjects, for the unity Christ calls for is not unity on wrong practices. God sets pure, elevating, ennobling truth in sharp contrast with false, misleading teachings, calls sin and impenitence by their right name, and does not cover wrongdoing. When churches depart from strict obedience to God's Word they make ceremonies essential, exalt tradition over God's commandments, bring darkness upon the church, and prepare the way for popery.
Teachings that replace truth with human error are poisonous to the soul, and attending gatherings where such error is taught without necessity encourages the error and can weaken and darken those who have been delivered from it. This describes a form of unbelief that may appear Christian while undermining faith in the Bible as God's revelation, setting aside God's law, replacing fervent devotion and vital piety with hollow formalism, and leading to apostasy and sensualism. Those blessed with great opportunities and privileges, members of churches and workers in God's service, turn aside from the commands of God and act as worldlings instead of children of light and subjects of Christ's kingdom when they bring worldly policy and the principles and spirit of the world into God's work, polluting where God's Spirit should dwell, and then justify their course. Deceived by their own natural hearts, they measure themselves by themselves, profess godliness while much ungodliness remains in life with practice out of harmony with profession, and while claiming to believe the day of the Lord is near their ungodly lives prepare them for destruction and cause the watching world to scorn their pretense. Following customs and traditions instead of taking God's word as unerring guide produces disagreement in faith and practice and prevents harmony with those who appeal to Scripture, and contending for tradition and seeking worldly favor without surrendering principle is not the faithful adaptation Paul practiced, for believers can adjust presentation without compromising and must retain zeal and love even as iniquity increases.
Making God's commandments ineffective through human traditions is working against God, and literature that sows doubt about the truth, including doubt about Christ's incarnation, carries this danger. Printing, handling and circulating literature that sows seeds of doubt about the truth and infidel sentiments about the incarnation puts workers on the side of God's enemy, cheapens their experience, and greatly displeases God. Such work must be cut out of the publishing office and replaced with literature that strengthens the faith of those who know the truth and carries conviction to those who do not yet know it. Teaching and publishing should instead strengthen faith and spread the truth, for precious truths have been buried under human traditions where the commandments of men have taken the place of the commandments of God. In the last remnant of time truth must be sought as hidden treasure and recovered from those traditions, with God's workmen watching, working and praying, showing constantly increasing interest in eternal things, valuing highly the favor of His friendship, refusing to belittle solemn truth or depart from the living God with an evil heart of unbelief, so the press advances truth everywhere in positive tones as a light set on a candlestick to give light to all in the house.
Living Acceptable Worship
Safety lies in trusting nothing but It is written, building faith on no human theory, assertion, saying, tradition, or popular opinion about what the Fathers say, even when it comes from priests, rulers, and teachers of doctrine, unless it harmonizes with the voice of God. Floating with the current of the world brings the same condemnation that came on the Jews, for no human word can meet God's claims or save the soul. The remedy is to give far less heed to the words and assurances of men and far more to the voice of the Lord from the living oracles, letting Scripture explain Scripture and testing every doctrine by a plain Thus saith the Lord. The Bible was written by inspiration so that common people, learned or unlearned, humble receivers who practice it, might understand its precious, living, vital utterances for themselves, and its teachings and prophecies are to be studied as the reliable guide of belief and conduct. This requires seeking earnestly by thoughtful, prayerful study to know for oneself what the law says, how to read it, and what conditions God prescribes for salvation, a warning made decidedly plain in the last days when human commandments taught as doctrines make worship vain and hide Scripture's plain meaning in confusion.
No sincerity in practicing deception turns error into truth or justifies an evil course. Claiming to believe the Scriptures and professing to keep God's commandments while misreading them and putting human commands in place of God's teaching leaves the Christian world under as dense a cloud of deception as unbelieving Jews, refusing to open the eyes to see truth and counting themselves righteous while perishing in sins.
Prejudice that refuses to see and live the truth must be abandoned, for God has a controversy with those who practice it. It studies the Scriptures to prove its own ideas correct, changes the meaning of God's Word to suit opinion, quotes half a sentence while leaving out the other half that would expose its reasoning as false, and wrests the Scriptures to fit preconceived ideas, as those who hated Christ and nullified His plain lessons did because He would not take sides with them.
The old theories of religion, the maxims and customs and teachings of the Pharisees, must be given up to follow Christ, for no one can have spiritual eyesight while holding them. Christ's teachings cannot be put as a new patch on that old garment; all must be made new by being born again, without which no one can understand the simplicity of truth. The character of every disciple must be trained and fashioned entirely anew to correspond with the new principles, which are the doctrines of Scripture requiring self-denial and self-sacrifice and whole-hearted obedience to a higher, holier standard. This emptiness of worship is seen when those blessed with great opportunities, members of churches and workers in God's service, turn aside from God's commands to act as worldlings instead of children of light, bringing worldly policy and spirit into God's work, polluting where His Spirit should dwell, then justifying the course while measuring themselves by themselves. Their practice out of harmony with profession, professing godliness while ungodliness remains and claiming nearness of the day of the Lord while lives prepare for destruction, causes the watching world to scorn their pretense; so too ministers who distort and misapply Scripture place stumbling blocks before members and unbelievers and reveal ignorance of Scripture and God's power. The same warning applies to all who profess obedience yet follow standards of their own invention instead of God's commandments, and to self-righteous professors who bear no fruit, feel no need of repentance, confession, or reformation, and do not seek Christ as healer.
Faithfulness refuses any custom that departs from the will of God, refuses to sit under instruction that exalts the words of men above the word of God, and shuts out of the mind all sentiments, maxims, traditions, ceremonies, and formalities that do not have God for their foundation so they gain no influence. A requirement contrary to God's law does not become right because it is joined to good reforms or presented as a way to improve society, and setting aside God's commandments for human rules is unjustifiable. God has established in His word the regulations governing His worship, and men are not at liberty to add to them or take from them; keeping unscriptural forms is not excused by claiming they are not matters of conscience because neither commanded nor forbidden nor intrinsically evil, or by claiming they narrow the gulf with Rome and help Romanists accept the faith. Such customs bridge the chasm between Rome and the Reformation and are badges of slavery from which believers have been delivered, and seeking to supplement God's authority with church authority is the very beginning of the great apostasy, as Rome proves by beginning with requiring what God had not forbidden and ending by forbidding what He had explicitly enjoined. Those loyal to God will not follow disloyalty or treat as common what God has made holy, but will remember His dealings and walk in His commandments, moving independently of human Thou shalt and Thou shalt not, making no direct attack in youth yet not complying, not becoming a student in such schools, not rehearsing what God condemns, refusing by example to lead others into corruption, avoiding needless conflict that would weaken later influence, and preventing evil from gaining a foothold rather than trying to correct it afterward.
True co-laborers with Christ both preach the truth and practice it instead of repeating the failure of the professedly learned and pious who were ignorant of the Scriptures and of the power of God, and He longs to fill His people with His mission of love so they will unite with Him in saving the world. No laws but God's laws are to be acknowledged in the church, and every theory out of harmony with His Word must be guarded against. Against churches worshiping in vain while ministers cry there is no law and fail to see that where there is no law there is no transgression, God's people must show a message of no human invention, with workers presenting the truth in its simplicity as the last message of warning and bringing it into daily life so that practical godliness, purity, and holiness are seen. Presenting human maxims or falsehoods as testing truths gives false spiritual food while people starve for the bread of life. Therefore schools must be established where students hear the Word in its true bearing, those who know the truth must freely give the precious light from sacred history to those in darkness, and every member and youth must take a settled, avowed position on the solid Rock Christ Jesus as keepers of God's commandments having the testimony of Jesus rather than breakers who bewilder youth with flattering prospects, worldly wisdom, Christian Endeavor Societies, and denial of full inspiration by which infidelity stealthily enters, knowledge weakens, and faith is confused.
Watchmen, ministers, and medical missionaries must take a firm stand for the right, keep careful watch against misleading spirits and devilish teachings, and not look on quietly while men and women are led away from truth into false paths. Parents who live under the spell of tradition give children a sinful example that passes sin on and increases its power, and if they could trace cause to effect they would change and stop believing and spreading human teaching, which quickly finds excuse to stop listening to truth and accept false stories instead. This is done when children discern truth as light is presented and parents use arguments heard in pulpits to prevent them from following righteousness, repeating misinterpretations they have not searched out for themselves and offering the same trivial excuses for neglect as the world offers. Such outward religious care ignores the law's underlying principles of love for God and others, makes void God's law, leads into false paths, and leaves people spiritually ignorant by misinterpreting God's messages to fit human ideas. Instead parents must repent, be converted, comply with the conditions in God's word, and tenderly educate children by precept and example as representatives of the faith that works by love and purifies the soul, especially now when the world is in the church molding it after a worldly standard, while all heed a Thus saith the Lord, know what is truth, and make the change the Jews in Christ's day failed to make.
Worship is vain, useless and empty when God is honored with mouth and lips while the heart is far from Him, for mere outward observance without worship in spirit and truth and holiness is not acceptable.
Christ spoke it as a rebuke to the Pharisees, scribes, priests and rulers who accused Him over their traditions, exposing their hypocrisy with calm authority.
The human commandments in view were oral rules and ceremonial hand-washings God never commanded, treated as binding as the law given through Moses and even given more force than the Ten Commandments, which made void the law of God, displaced His precepts and exalted the human above the divine.
The same vain worship is found in Babylon's false doctrines given to the world, a false sabbath in place of the Sabbath of the fourth commandment and the natural immortality of the soul first told by Satan to Eve, and in exalting Sunday observance originating with Rome over God's Sabbath and teaching that His law is abrogated.
Safety now requires trusting nothing but It is written, testing every doctrine by a plain Thus saith the Lord and searching Scripture for oneself, giving up old Pharisaic maxims and customs in the new birth, and worshiping from the heart in righteousness, mercy, love and humility while keeping God's commandments.
Words and Historical Setting
Worship is empty, useless and vain when the heart is far from God while the mouth draws near and the lips give honor, for gathering and outward observance alone do not make worship acceptable unless evil is put away and God is worshiped in spirit and in truth and in holiness. Forms and ceremonies without living service from the heart leave those taught a delusive faith unable to see the difference between mere ritual and genuine service from the heart. Even the round of temple service and sacrifices that pointed to the great Sacrifice and called for the Saviour to come became vain when the One whom all the ceremonies represented stood among them and would not be recognized or received, for truth had been discarded for tradition and buried under endless maxims, fiction, and the rubbish of superstition piled upon it. The Sabbath given at creation is the example of how this happens, having lost its true significance because human maxims and traditions were piled upon it until its glorious character was hidden and understanding was beclouded.
The words were spoken as Christ's rebuke to the Jewish nation and to the scribes and Pharisees, with priests, rulers, Sadducees, and professedly learned and pious teachers included, when they came to Jesus to find accusation against Him over their traditions. With calmness and power He spoke as one having authority and not as the scribes in their hesitating, uncertain manner, teaching pure, unadulterated principles and holy ennobling truths with heart-touching pathos. He met them with the authority of true greatness and with holy wrath yet without sin or guile, fearlessly exposing hypocrisy and with terrible power denouncing all artful intrigue, dishonest practice, avarice and ignorance, so that truth never languished on His lips. He who had instituted the law knew how far these teachers had departed from it, misinterpreting Scripture, treating maxims and sayings passed from rabbi to rabbi as having the sanctity of inspiration, and making commands better suited to carnal hearts, so that when He revealed in the sermon on the mount the same far-reaching principles given in the Old Testament it sounded to them like a new revelation and like heresy.
The human commandments in view were customs, traditions, needless ceremonies and many oral rules that God had not appointed or commanded, including detailed hand-washing ceremonies and ceremonial washings presented as safeguards for God's law. They were forced upon the people and treated as binding as the law given through Moses, dwelt upon as of more value than the words of the living God, made all-essential and regarded as of even more force than the Ten Commandments. When such human precepts conflicted with the commandments given at Sinai, the people gave the traditions greater authority, so that ordinary people could hardly tell them apart and were distracted from the great principles of the law and hindered in spiritual growth and service. Treating unreasonable ceremonial details as more essential than Jehovah's precepts helped lead the religious leaders to condemn Jesus, while their customs and maxims continually kept back His few followers and disciples from advancing, supplying their great lack of knowledge, and becoming efficient workers.
To teach such human precepts as doctrines is to teach error, to make void God's law by tradition, and to empty it of its force by displacing Jehovah's precepts with rabbinic forms, maxims and opinions not found in Scripture. It exalts the human above the divine, removes the sanctity God placed upon His requirements, especially His Sabbath, mixes men's authority and human enactments with God's holy requirements, and fails to recognize God's dignity and holiness. God does not permit selecting which parts of His law to obey, and replacing any of its precepts with human rules or compelling consciences to obey human laws leaves minds confused, turns them from the light of Scripture, stands directly in the way of God's commandments so they are not implicitly obeyed according to His directions, and leaves them condemned as transgressors. Those leaders broke the law themselves and taught those who wanted to investigate and obey the light to break it too, deceiving the people while a shadow was set between Christ as the light of the world and the souls He came to save, and this voiding of the law has produced the sinful and miserable condition now seen in the world and the church.
Jewish Leaders Vain Worship
The worship condemned is empty because human rules were taught as divine doctrine while the heart stayed far from God, and the teachers hid Scripture under endless maxims, fictions, far-fetched explanations, elaborate expositions, unsanctified and confused interpretations, and a mass of rubbish that buried the jewels of truth and the plan of salvation so the essentials were lost, true worship was perverted, and after their explanations the people knew less of Scripture's meaning than before. They carried on the round of temple service and sacrifices that pointed to the great Sacrifice and called for the Saviour to come, yet their repeated maxims and invented explanations, fables, erroneous theories, falsehoods and authoritative dogmas set aside God's holy precepts and disregarded the principles of His law. The same vain worship continues when common people are told they cannot understand Scripture for themselves and that learned expositors must interpret its hidden meaning, putting the words and ideas of men in place of God's Word, and the remedy is to give far less heed to the words and assurances of men and far more to the voice of the Lord from the living oracles, letting Scripture explain Scripture, for the Bible was written by inspiration so common people might understand its precious living vital truths as all light and not darkness.
Religious teachers depart from God when they follow their own understanding, interpret Scripture to fit their conduct, seek human praise, and follow human traditions instead of the Lord's plainly revealed way. Israel's priests and elders performed religious ceremonies to appear devout yet withheld the obedience God required, making the law strict when it served their interests and weakening God's precepts when those precepts confronted them, so their conduct made their teaching a substitute for obedience. Through pride they claimed Abraham's privileges by natural descent while failing to do Abraham's works, and this misinterpretation blinded them and kept them from understanding the truths taught by Christ. Their traditions and interpretations made God's word ineffective even as they claimed to worship Him, perverting Scripture, neglecting God's requirements, placing human rules in their place, obscuring its clear meaning, hiding truths about Christ, and making obedience seem a burdensome set of ceremonies that weakened respect for God and diminished the force of His law.
Their religion became a yoke of bondage in a ceaseless round of meaningless ceremonies that lost sight of the object of worship, though they were bound to teach God's word and practice obedience. They added tradition to tradition with unsanctified and confused interpretations, demanding more rigid and difficult duties than God had specified, measuring holiness by multitude of ceremonies while hearts were filled with hypocrisy, pride and avarice, making trivial forms and ceremonies as important as God's law and turning a law meant for heart obedience into severe demands by outward observances. They held themselves aloof from sympathy with men as God's favored ones with assumed righteousness and dignity, trusting strict keeping of the letter would make them righteous and bring fulfillment of promises, yet this dwarfed minds, narrowed lives, restricted freedom of thought and action, kept continual dread of defilement so they could not attend to essential duties without employing Gentiles for fear of contamination, and brought God's curse even as they professed to be the only righteous nation. Christ cleared away these additions of traditions and minute requirements that made the commandments ineffective and hid their true meaning, revealing the law reaches motives of the heart where self-love is transgression, restoring the commandments to their proper place in the gospel without diminishing any precept.
As a class the Pharisees were bigoted and hypocritical, though some among them were genuinely pious, accepted Christ's teaching and became His disciples. They preserved outward forms and ceremonies — washings, fasting, prayers, almsgiving — while lacking personal piety, using customs to appear devout and gain honor and imposing rules for their own advantage. Traditions and ceremonies not given by God through Moses or anyone else come from human authority, not God, yet leaders imposed them while keeping outward devotion to appear righteous, even exploiting widows and taking offerings for themselves. Their pride in learning and position and attachment to traditions and superstitions contrasted with the teachable fishermen Jesus chose, and their estrangement from pure spirituality gained through obedience left the nation unable to recognize Jesus as Deliverer though Scripture plainly described His character and coming.
Though the whole Jewish system was the veiled gospel and temple services pointed to the great Sacrifice, they missed its central truth because they searched the Scriptures but interpreted what they read to sustain traditions. When Christ Himself, the One all ceremonies represented, stood among them they would not recognize or receive Him, because He differed from their idea of what the Messiah should be, and though divided on most points they united in opposition to Him. Their rejection revealed lack of the spirit of obedience, for their traditions made God's commandment of none effect. Without piety and godliness the people could not recognize Jesus as the Prince of life even though they saw His miracles and work of healing and restoring people to God's image, and they rejected and killed Him.
Like the second son who said I go, sir, and went not, they pledged at Sinai to keep the law and still said they would obey, but they went not, so their religious life had become a pretense. While professing obedience they refused to obey, made void the law by teaching for doctrines the commandments of men, and though convinced by abundant evidence of Christ's authority and divine power they would not receive it because they had not the spirit that leads to obedience, remaining impenitent and self-sufficient. Their refusal to believe John's call to repent and confess sin proved disobedience, in contrast to open transgressors, publicans and harlots, who repented and went and will enter the kingdom before them. God had taught the people His requirements and warned life and prosperity depended on obeying them, but disobedience led Him to withdraw from the nation, and making void the law in this way led the once elect nation to reject the Son of God and to ruin.
Christ's Response and True Worship
Christ came when most needed as God's representative and the Light of the world to set pure truth before a perishing world and dispel moral darkness. The priests, scribes, rabbis, rulers and the Jewish nation had discarded truth for tradition, teaching human inventions, erroneous theories, maxims, falsehoods and authoritative dogmas as divine doctrine, so that their worship was vain and empty while they drew near with the mouth and honored with the lips but their heart was far from God. Their teachings and sayings with customs and traditions lay like a mass of rubbish over the jewels of truth, confusing spiritual understanding, perverting true worship, burying the plan of salvation and almost extinguishing the pure and holy principles of the holy law until its true meaning could not be discerned. With calmness and power He spoke as one having authority and not as the scribes in their hesitating, uncertain manner, firmly and continuously resisting the sayings woven into the framework of truth and exposing Satan's policy and desire to cover truth with superstition and tradition. He rescued those jewels from companionship with error and reset them in order in the framework of truth, removing the mass of human covering from the law, living it out in His own life, and restoring its true meaning and purity without diminishing its sacredness, giving it to the world clothed with more than its original glory and lustre. The rabbis had obscured and nullified the commandments with traditions and minute requirements, making them ineffective and hiding their true meaning, and Christ cleared away these additions and revealed that the law reaches the motives of the heart where self-love is transgression, restoring the commandments to their proper place in the gospel and showing their full significance without diminishing any precept. The very same difficulty from the sayings of men must be met in the present day, requiring training of the heart after His example and practice when He was training His disciples to work with Him in the gospel of His kingdom.
He would not mix human demands with divine precepts, gave them no heed, refused to follow customs or formal rules that lacked foundation in God's word, and separated Jehovah's precepts from human maxims. The Jewish teachers made God's law void by mingling their own traditions with heaven's precepts and presenting sayings invented by human minds as God's word, and His practical obedience contrasted with their transgression. His teaching was direct and certain, unlike theirs, taught plainly and simply only what is essential, so the disciples saw the scribes' and Pharisees' traditions and lifeless formalism as no answer to Christ and would not leave Him to teach human commandments as doctrine. Church institutions, customs and traditions that rest only on human authority cannot replace what God has appointed, for God's word is the source of truth, and those who cling to human authority may oppose people who call attention to God's commandments and the faith of Jesus.
True worship does not consist in outward ceremonies or the observance of man-made creeds, for teaching the commandments of men for doctrine makes worship vain, while true worship must be in spirit and in truth. Those who gather to worship must put away evil and worship God in spirit, truth and holiness from the heart, for mere outward observance with lips honoring Him while the heart is far does not make their gathering acceptable. Forms cannot replace righteousness, mercy, love and a humble heart, and the Pharisees' reliance on human traditions and outward ceremonies instead of true service left them blind to God and unable to recognize Christ. Traditional rites have no spiritual value when they hide the truths they were meant to teach, and such service brings no peace. People who accept human sayings in place of God's truth need to learn to look to God Himself as the Author of all truth, and the contrast between God's commands and the traditions of the scribes and Pharisees shows how teachings become worthless or harmful when they displace Scripture.
The scribes and Pharisees misinterpreted Scripture and treated maxims and sayings passed from rabbi to rabbi as having the sanctity of inspiration, though the commands of men were unlike the divine command and better suited their carnal hearts. They knew so little of the true principles in daily practice that Christ's sermon on the mount, which revealed the same principles given in the Old Testament and the far-reaching principles of God's law, sounded to them like a new revelation and like heresy. Christ, who had instituted the law and spoken it on Mount Sinai and knew the bearing of all its precepts and the glory and majesty of the law of heaven, showed no regard for those human traditions, but in His sermon on the mount defined the law, presented truth in its proper light, and opened the eyes of understanding to behold wondrous things out of the law of God. The Jewish rabbis, scribes and Pharisees had presented the requirements of the law as a wearing round of exactions, a cold, rigid code of commands and traditions, and by superstition buried its light, glory, dignity and far-reaching claims while professing to speak for God in His place, a work Satan continues in the present day. That law is the foundation of His throne from the beginning and remains through ceaseless eternity the great standard of righteousness, holy and just and good. Filled with holy wrath when He saw leaders putting human rules in place of divine truth, He met priests, rulers, Pharisees and Sadducees with the authority of true greatness, fearlessly exposing their hypocrisy and with terrible power denouncing all artful intrigue and dishonest practice. His words revealed pure, unadulterated principles, holy ennobling truths spoken constantly without sin or guile with heart-touching pathos, truth that never languished on His lips. His cleansing of the temple from pollution shows His desire to cleanse hearts and His institutions from everything bearing any resemblance to fraud.
Holding rigidly to such traditions, as the Jews did in His time, prevents people from receiving the Holy Spirit. Accepting the sayings of men as the commandments of God makes worship vain, for human inventions and traditions are not only unreliable but dangerous, because they place men where God should be and place the sayings of men where a Thus saith the Lord should be. Those who will not dig in the mines of truth are like the Jews, with pride and dignity keeping them from grasping His teachings, which are old truths in new settings. The whole Jewish system was the veiled gospel, and Christ as the Light of the world sends His divine rays back to enlighten the entire Jewish economy. He possesses the key that unlocks the treasure house of the Old Testament, explores hidden things, uncovers error and superstition, and separates precious truth from superstition and error and the devisings and imaginings of men, calling minds to look to God Himself as the Author of all truth.
False Doctrines Exposed
The verse exposes Babylon's wine, her false doctrines given to the world far and wide. Those doctrines include a false sabbath put in place of the Sabbath of the fourth commandment, the natural immortality of the soul first told by Satan to Eve in Eden, and many kindred errors. To teach such human teachings as doctrines from God is vain worship, and to teach the commandments of men for doctrine in this way is disobedience and rebellion against God's laws that puts its teachers on Satan's side. As the Jews exulted in their own traditions, so the lawless in her borders exult in their own traditions while the world is taking sides and the nations have drunk of that wine.
Setting aside God's commandments to promote Sunday observance makes human precepts take the place of divine law. Sunday observance is a custom originating with Rome and upheld by human authority rather than Scripture, claimed as a sign of her authority without scriptural evidence, while God's Sabbath and its defenders are opposed. Good causes such as temperance and social reform do not make right a teaching that sets aside God's commandments to avoid the fourth commandment, for joining such causes to error can make the error more persuasive but cannot justify replacing God's commandments with human precepts. Worship gives honor to human authority when people obey such human religious precepts in place of God's commands, and Sunday observance is not counted as disloyalty while people are sincerely mistaken. After the true Sabbath obligation is made clear and Sunday observance is enforced by human law to control consciences, choosing Rome's precept over God's command honors Rome, and rulers who take the spurious sabbath under the care and protection of legislatures to restore the man of sin to lost ascendancy and place divine honors upon a false sabbath do not know what they are doing. When this is fully done the commandment of men will be clothed with sacred garments and pronounced holy, and persecution will break forth upon those who observe the Sabbath God gave in Eden as a memorial of His creative power, even unto persecution and death to Sabbathkeepers.
The same vain worship includes keeping the first day by majority custom with no precept or example from Christ. God's revealed will is obscured by errors and traditions taught with the authority of divine commandments, including the claim that Christ's resurrection changed the Sabbath commandment, and by ministers who interpret Scripture through human philosophy, maxims, and traditions and thereby obscure its plain teaching. It exalts observance of the first day of the week over the Lord's plain word, as Israel's rabbis added human commandments that confused people and set God's requirements at defiance. It replaces the holy Sabbath God set apart, the memorial of creation, with a common working day, sets aside the Sabbath, changes the ordinance and breaks the everlasting covenant, tramples God's law while giving Sunday sacred authority, and teaches that the law is abrogated. Parents have set such precepts before children and ministers before congregations instead of keeping before them the words of God spoken in the mount to treasure and to govern the whole conduct of life, making a false sabbath as a god which all are to reverence, and refusal to reverence it brings punishment by stocks, imprisonment, confiscation of goods, and the chain gang. In the perilous last days, like the days of Noah and Lot when sin brought flood and fire, wickedness prevails in high places and in low and cities become like Sodom because the law of God is made void, while amid greater religious activity than ever before religious teachers lightly regard its claims, set aside the Sabbath, and lose sight of the power and love of God.
The same condemnation applies now to ministers and professed Bible teachers who make Jehovah's law void by declaring it abrogated and no longer binding on the human race, teaching their families and the world to disobey. Their ministers cry there is no law and declare that there is no law, failing to see that where there is no law there is no transgression and that sin is the transgression of the law, so that if there is no law there is no sin in the world. This repeats the forgetfulness of God, backsliding, rebellion, apostasy and formalism of Christ's time, turns away from the Word of God to fables, and repeats Satan's assertion to Eve in Eden, and such disobedience is just as offensive to God now as in the beginning. It includes proclaiming as Bible doctrines falsehoods from the arch-deceiver, especially consciousness after death and communion of the living with spirits of the dead, which has no foundation in Scripture. That teaching opens the way for spirits of devils to deceive by personating the dead and bringing souls into captivity, and as truth is rejected the signs and wonders of Spiritualism become more pronounced. Those rejecting light and truth decide their destiny for eternal death, the Spirit of God gradually withdraws from the earth, the prince of this earth gains more control over his subjects, and through Spiritualism he shows great signs and wonders as credentials of divine claims and works against Christ and His agencies. Against this false teaching God's people must show they have a message from the Lord of no human invention, with workers needed to present the truth in its simplicity as the last message of warning to the world, bringing its truths into daily life so that practical godliness, purity, and holiness are seen.
Human philosophy, explanations, interpretations and tradition presented as divine doctrine make worship vain and empty. It condemns inventing new theories and preaching human suppositions, traditions, suppositions, fables, forms and ceremonies, and fanciful imaginary doctrines instead of preaching the Word, including strange ideas mingled with portions of truth, unsound theories and deceptions proclaimed as advanced light that lie almost imperceptibly close to truth. Efforts to unlock Scripture by human intellect only darken plain truth and bring in false theories and heresies, obscure God's character, subvert prophecy, continue Adam's fall by unbelief, and put men where God should be. As with the Jewish teachers, such teaching confuses minds so people cannot tell whether they are keeping the Word of God or following human imagination and the traditions of men, which pleases Satan. Even in a time of great intellectual, moral, and religious light, those who reject the Word and accept fables fall into delusion and darkness, and human customs and traditions can be enforced by religious and civil powers, leading people to oppress those who refuse them and seek to worship God according to His Word. It requires ministers, especially young men teaching the truth, to search the Scriptures earnestly and sink deep into heavenly truth instead of preaching their own ideas and theories, because teaching for doctrine things not contained in God's Word places them under the warning given in the last chapter of Revelation.
Such human teaching is the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy, the leaven of evil surmising and evil thinking, against which Christ warned His disciples not to receive doctrines which are not from God. As leaven spreads through the meal in which it is hidden, this evil leaven when received perverts the entire being — thoughts, actions, and character. It stands opposite the good leaven of the gospel, the kingdom of heaven, the Word of God, which introduces true goodness, righteousness, and peace and brings the entire affections into conformity to the mind and will of God.
Warnings to Present Church
The same rebuke that fell on the Jewish nation for making void the law of God by tradition and putting human teachings in place of doctrine now rests on teachers and ministers in the churches who do the same. They bewilder youth by urging those who know the truth to join Christian Endeavor Societies and by holding out flattering prospects to make them ambitious to become worldly wise men. They hold the Bible as a whole to be the Word of God while denying that all of it is inspired and letting supposed wise and good men question one book after another, so that infidelity stealthily enters the mind, knowledge of truth weakens, faith is confused, and precious youth are drawn away by deceiving influences and false doctrines to stand with those who make void the law of God. Such teachers repeat the failure of the professedly learned and pious people of Christ's day in teaching the commandments of men as doctrine joined with ignorance of the Scriptures and of the power of God, misrepresenting Scripture, leading people into sin like the Jewish priests and rulers, resisting study of God's messages because of prejudice, and preserving the appearance of true worshipers while setting forth strange ideas mingled with portions of truth that are full of deceptive power. They corrupt Scripture to harmonize truth with human inventions, bring the Bible into criticism, cause ministers to differ widely in interpretation not because the Scriptures are inconsistent but because men corrupt them, declare the law abrogated, repeat Satan's Eden assertion, teach men's theories above a plain Thus saith the Lord, and cannot be depended on by those who would both preach the truth and practice it and unite in saving the world. Therefore schools must be established where students hear the Word of God in its true bearing, those who know the truth must freely receive the precious light shining from sacred history to give to those in darkness of error, and every church member and youth must take a settled, avowed position on the solid Rock Christ Jesus as commandment-keepers who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ rather than commandment-breakers.
Ministers must preach the Word, not human suppositions, fanciful doctrines, forms, ceremonies, maxims and fictitious claims, or unsound theories and distortions that can lead to fanaticism. Such counsel darkens minds and starves people of the bread of life, while Christ directs to what is written in Scripture. Teaching human commands as divine doctrine dishonors God and Scripture, passes down falsehoods as God's Word, obscures truth instead of presenting it simply, confuses minds, pleases Satan, misapplies Scripture, places stumbling blocks, and repeats the Jewish leaders' example. Error must be reproved rather than excused, with patience and care, and teaching must rest on God's Word rather than unsupported human assertions, rejecting every claim that lacks a Thus saith the Lord as its foundation. Humble people, learned or unlearned, can understand Scripture for themselves through open search, and its truth is of greatest value to those who receive and practice it, under the condemnation of Revelation's last chapter upon those who add human invention.
Those entrusted with teaching the Word must not set up their own mind as the standard and compel others to conform to it, for all authority in heaven and earth belongs to Christ and teachers are to teach all nations to observe only what He has commanded. Applied to fellow workers, this condemns criticism, suspicion, working against one another, harsh dictatorial speech, offending souls, claiming authority God has not given, and using human judgments and rules to control fellow believers and their work and impose burdens that restrict others. Men in positions of trust who lack personal piety, connection with God, consecration, vital piety and humility, who take little time to seek God's counsel and do not receive the things of God, handle sacred things without reverence, awe, heart-searching and constant reliance on God, and lose the sense of the preciousness and sanctity of sacred things. Unless the converting power of God is felt upon hearts and characters to make them one with Christ keeping the way of the Lord, the Lord will have no more use for them, and they cannot be laborers together with God while self is exalted, Jesus is not glorified and does not work with them, Satan's insinuations are credited, and God's plain requirement of mercy and tender compassion is ignored. Like the scribes, Pharisees, priests and rulers who added traditions and exalted them above God's word, such teaching leaves men unfit to meet the people's spiritual needs and counters God's work rather than serving it, calling instead for united harmonious labor in which each uses God-given talents to inspire belief in the words of inspiration.
The rebuke exposes religious leaders who take high, flattering titles to themselves, such as reverend and right reverend, titles that belong to God alone and were never given by Christ to any fallible, sinful man. It exposes them as hypocrites who make great pretensions to superior knowledge of the Scriptures while being ignorant of the Scriptures and of the power of God, who will not enter the kingdom of heaven themselves and keep others from entering. Their worship is empty and useless because they teach the commandments of men as doctrines, dishonoring God and the Sent of God by exalting men, whereas true honor is humility learned from Christ who is meek and lowly of heart, seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and obeying God rather than men. The same principle forbids confident human systems treated as God's way, as when confident claims for a medical system in which one was trained and denunciation of other systems reflected educators' influence rather than truth, just as the Pharisees' teaching did not represent the Lord's way.
Education must rest on Scripture as foundation and lesson book, for the rabbis elevated tradition and ceremonies above Scripture so that focus on detailed observances obscured the essential service of God and neglected knowledge of Him. They taught human commands as divine doctrine, dwelling upon tradition, amplifying it and reverencing it far above the Scriptures, until sayings of men and an endless round of ceremonies took up so much of student life that the education that gives knowledge of God was neglected. The great teachers enlarged continually upon little things, specified every detail to be observed in religious ceremony, made its observance a matter of highest obligation, and brought in a mass of rubbish that hid from youth the great essentials of the service of God and failed to give youth a true knowledge of Scripture as the foundation of genuine education. Such traditions make void God's law and hide the plain meaning of Scripture, leaving people confused, neglecting the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy and faith, hindering true spiritual development and reliance on God's word, and connecting human teaching with ignorance of Scripture and God's power. Religious teaching detached from Scripture cannot provide true education or sanctify people, for God's word is truth and the foundation of sound learning, and Adventist schools must not repeat the error by sanctioning popular amusements or patterning after established schools.
Churches become enfeebled when human commands are accepted as doctrine, when unconverted people are received into membership, and when men, women and children take part in baptism without being fully instructed in its meaning and solemnity. Because participation in baptism means much, ministers must carefully give each candidate plain instruction in its meaning and solemnity. The same vain worship appears when members copy differences of opinion among leading men and enter into controversy over disputed subjects, for the unity Christ calls for is not unity on wrong practices. God sets pure, elevating, ennobling truth in sharp contrast with false, misleading teachings, calls sin and impenitence by their right name, and does not cover wrongdoing. When churches depart from strict obedience to God's Word they make ceremonies essential, exalt tradition over God's commandments, bring darkness upon the church, and prepare the way for popery.
Teachings that replace truth with human error are poisonous to the soul, and attending gatherings where such error is taught without necessity encourages the error and can weaken and darken those who have been delivered from it. This describes a form of unbelief that may appear Christian while undermining faith in the Bible as God's revelation, setting aside God's law, replacing fervent devotion and vital piety with hollow formalism, and leading to apostasy and sensualism. Those blessed with great opportunities and privileges, members of churches and workers in God's service, turn aside from the commands of God and act as worldlings instead of children of light and subjects of Christ's kingdom when they bring worldly policy and the principles and spirit of the world into God's work, polluting where God's Spirit should dwell, and then justify their course. Deceived by their own natural hearts, they measure themselves by themselves, profess godliness while much ungodliness remains in life with practice out of harmony with profession, and while claiming to believe the day of the Lord is near their ungodly lives prepare them for destruction and cause the watching world to scorn their pretense. Following customs and traditions instead of taking God's word as unerring guide produces disagreement in faith and practice and prevents harmony with those who appeal to Scripture, and contending for tradition and seeking worldly favor without surrendering principle is not the faithful adaptation Paul practiced, for believers can adjust presentation without compromising and must retain zeal and love even as iniquity increases.
Making God's commandments ineffective through human traditions is working against God, and literature that sows doubt about the truth, including doubt about Christ's incarnation, carries this danger. Printing, handling and circulating literature that sows seeds of doubt about the truth and infidel sentiments about the incarnation puts workers on the side of God's enemy, cheapens their experience, and greatly displeases God. Such work must be cut out of the publishing office and replaced with literature that strengthens the faith of those who know the truth and carries conviction to those who do not yet know it. Teaching and publishing should instead strengthen faith and spread the truth, for precious truths have been buried under human traditions where the commandments of men have taken the place of the commandments of God. In the last remnant of time truth must be sought as hidden treasure and recovered from those traditions, with God's workmen watching, working and praying, showing constantly increasing interest in eternal things, valuing highly the favor of His friendship, refusing to belittle solemn truth or depart from the living God with an evil heart of unbelief, so the press advances truth everywhere in positive tones as a light set on a candlestick to give light to all in the house.
Living Acceptable Worship
Safety lies in trusting nothing but It is written, building faith on no human theory, assertion, saying, tradition, or popular opinion about what the Fathers say, even when it comes from priests, rulers, and teachers of doctrine, unless it harmonizes with the voice of God. Floating with the current of the world brings the same condemnation that came on the Jews, for no human word can meet God's claims or save the soul. The remedy is to give far less heed to the words and assurances of men and far more to the voice of the Lord from the living oracles, letting Scripture explain Scripture and testing every doctrine by a plain Thus saith the Lord. The Bible was written by inspiration so that common people, learned or unlearned, humble receivers who practice it, might understand its precious, living, vital utterances for themselves, and its teachings and prophecies are to be studied as the reliable guide of belief and conduct. This requires seeking earnestly by thoughtful, prayerful study to know for oneself what the law says, how to read it, and what conditions God prescribes for salvation, a warning made decidedly plain in the last days when human commandments taught as doctrines make worship vain and hide Scripture's plain meaning in confusion.
No sincerity in practicing deception turns error into truth or justifies an evil course. Claiming to believe the Scriptures and professing to keep God's commandments while misreading them and putting human commands in place of God's teaching leaves the Christian world under as dense a cloud of deception as unbelieving Jews, refusing to open the eyes to see truth and counting themselves righteous while perishing in sins.
Prejudice that refuses to see and live the truth must be abandoned, for God has a controversy with those who practice it. It studies the Scriptures to prove its own ideas correct, changes the meaning of God's Word to suit opinion, quotes half a sentence while leaving out the other half that would expose its reasoning as false, and wrests the Scriptures to fit preconceived ideas, as those who hated Christ and nullified His plain lessons did because He would not take sides with them.
The old theories of religion, the maxims and customs and teachings of the Pharisees, must be given up to follow Christ, for no one can have spiritual eyesight while holding them. Christ's teachings cannot be put as a new patch on that old garment; all must be made new by being born again, without which no one can understand the simplicity of truth. The character of every disciple must be trained and fashioned entirely anew to correspond with the new principles, which are the doctrines of Scripture requiring self-denial and self-sacrifice and whole-hearted obedience to a higher, holier standard. This emptiness of worship is seen when those blessed with great opportunities, members of churches and workers in God's service, turn aside from God's commands to act as worldlings instead of children of light, bringing worldly policy and spirit into God's work, polluting where His Spirit should dwell, then justifying the course while measuring themselves by themselves. Their practice out of harmony with profession, professing godliness while ungodliness remains and claiming nearness of the day of the Lord while lives prepare for destruction, causes the watching world to scorn their pretense; so too ministers who distort and misapply Scripture place stumbling blocks before members and unbelievers and reveal ignorance of Scripture and God's power. The same warning applies to all who profess obedience yet follow standards of their own invention instead of God's commandments, and to self-righteous professors who bear no fruit, feel no need of repentance, confession, or reformation, and do not seek Christ as healer.
Faithfulness refuses any custom that departs from the will of God, refuses to sit under instruction that exalts the words of men above the word of God, and shuts out of the mind all sentiments, maxims, traditions, ceremonies, and formalities that do not have God for their foundation so they gain no influence. A requirement contrary to God's law does not become right because it is joined to good reforms or presented as a way to improve society, and setting aside God's commandments for human rules is unjustifiable. God has established in His word the regulations governing His worship, and men are not at liberty to add to them or take from them; keeping unscriptural forms is not excused by claiming they are not matters of conscience because neither commanded nor forbidden nor intrinsically evil, or by claiming they narrow the gulf with Rome and help Romanists accept the faith. Such customs bridge the chasm between Rome and the Reformation and are badges of slavery from which believers have been delivered, and seeking to supplement God's authority with church authority is the very beginning of the great apostasy, as Rome proves by beginning with requiring what God had not forbidden and ending by forbidding what He had explicitly enjoined. Those loyal to God will not follow disloyalty or treat as common what God has made holy, but will remember His dealings and walk in His commandments, moving independently of human Thou shalt and Thou shalt not, making no direct attack in youth yet not complying, not becoming a student in such schools, not rehearsing what God condemns, refusing by example to lead others into corruption, avoiding needless conflict that would weaken later influence, and preventing evil from gaining a foothold rather than trying to correct it afterward.
True co-laborers with Christ both preach the truth and practice it instead of repeating the failure of the professedly learned and pious who were ignorant of the Scriptures and of the power of God, and He longs to fill His people with His mission of love so they will unite with Him in saving the world. No laws but God's laws are to be acknowledged in the church, and every theory out of harmony with His Word must be guarded against. Against churches worshiping in vain while ministers cry there is no law and fail to see that where there is no law there is no transgression, God's people must show a message of no human invention, with workers presenting the truth in its simplicity as the last message of warning and bringing it into daily life so that practical godliness, purity, and holiness are seen. Presenting human maxims or falsehoods as testing truths gives false spiritual food while people starve for the bread of life. Therefore schools must be established where students hear the Word in its true bearing, those who know the truth must freely give the precious light from sacred history to those in darkness, and every member and youth must take a settled, avowed position on the solid Rock Christ Jesus as keepers of God's commandments having the testimony of Jesus rather than breakers who bewilder youth with flattering prospects, worldly wisdom, Christian Endeavor Societies, and denial of full inspiration by which infidelity stealthily enters, knowledge weakens, and faith is confused.
Watchmen, ministers, and medical missionaries must take a firm stand for the right, keep careful watch against misleading spirits and devilish teachings, and not look on quietly while men and women are led away from truth into false paths. Parents who live under the spell of tradition give children a sinful example that passes sin on and increases its power, and if they could trace cause to effect they would change and stop believing and spreading human teaching, which quickly finds excuse to stop listening to truth and accept false stories instead. This is done when children discern truth as light is presented and parents use arguments heard in pulpits to prevent them from following righteousness, repeating misinterpretations they have not searched out for themselves and offering the same trivial excuses for neglect as the world offers. Such outward religious care ignores the law's underlying principles of love for God and others, makes void God's law, leads into false paths, and leaves people spiritually ignorant by misinterpreting God's messages to fit human ideas. Instead parents must repent, be converted, comply with the conditions in God's word, and tenderly educate children by precept and example as representatives of the faith that works by love and purifies the soul, especially now when the world is in the church molding it after a worldly standard, while all heed a Thus saith the Lord, know what is truth, and make the change the Jews in Christ's day failed to make.