<p>15:8&nbsp;<em>This people honours me with their lips but their heart is far from me</em>- The prophecy quoted from Is. 29 is a criticism of the common people of Judah at Hezekiah&rsquo;s time; there was Godly leadership, but Isaiah laments that the ordinary people were far from Yahweh. But the Lord quotes this as relevant to the Jewish religious leadership, who prided themselves on their separation from the mass &lsquo;people of the land&rsquo; whom they considered as apostate. Yet again we see His radical turning upside down of the Jewish worldview and creation of a new order, where secular people like His disciples were to be the new Sanhedrin leadership (see on 15:2&nbsp;<em>elders</em>). Note that He was at this stage specifically addressing the Jewish elders, because only in :10 does He call the crowd to Him to listen.</p>
<p>They honoured with their lips, but their heart was far from God; they externally kept His commandments, but they frustrated their intention by not letting them influence their essential selves (Mk. 7:6-9). They fiercely guarded the pronunciation of His Covenant Name; but in reality, they forgot that Name (Jer. 23:27). The Lord perceived that &ldquo;your tradition&hellip; the commandments of men&hellip; your doctrines&rdquo; resulted in the hearts of Israel being &ldquo;far from [God]&rdquo;. Doctrine was intended to affect the heart; and false doctrine resulted in the heart being far from God. True doctrine, on the other hand, was and is intended to bring the heart close to God. Doctrine / teaching is therefore to affect the heart; it is not just the intellectual basis for unity in a community of believers. And the Lord goes on in this very context to talk of how &ldquo;every plant which My heavenly Father has not planted shall be rooted up&rdquo; (Mt. 15:13). The Greek for &ldquo;planted&rdquo; is interpreted by James Strong as meaning &ldquo;Figuratively, to instil doctrine&rdquo;. The planting of the believer is through the instillation of Godly doctrine, rather than the doctrines of men. Note how the Lord speaks of doctrine as a command in Mt. 15:6,9: &quot;Thus have you made the&nbsp;<em>commandment</em>&nbsp;of God of none effect by your tradition... in vain they do worship Me, teaching for&nbsp;<em>doctrines</em>&nbsp;the commandments of men&quot;. And He taught earlier that the doctrine of one God was in fact a command to action. Doctrine,&nbsp;<em>didache</em>, is teaching, not just theory; it is commandment towards action. For doctrine and practice are linked. In this we are helped to assess whether any idea or interpretation is indeed a 'first principle doctrine' or not. What does it inspire in practice? Or is it merely the academic interpretation of the human brain cells?</p>