Most people today will tell you that your biggest problem comes
from outside and the solution comes from inside.
The problem could be political oppression or your family's
repressive rules. It could be trauma from your
past or other people's judge mental attitudes and the
solution people will recommend comes from within and many forms
of therapy. The therapist is not an
authority telling you what to change or fix.
Instead, they're a guide helping you discover and draw out
resources that are within you. Countless movies and shows and
songs tell you that freedom comes from finding and living
out your true self within. Throw off tradition,
expectation, repression and let what is inside come out.
No right, no wrong, no rules for me, I'm free.
Philosopher Charles Taylor calls this ethic expressive
individualism. It's the story that our society
lives by. Authenticity is everything.
Each of us has our own way of realizing his or her true
humanity, and expressing your truth, rather than holding to
some externally imposed model, is the key to meaning and
fulfillment and happiness. That's what our culture says.
Your biggest problem comes from outside.
The solution comes from inside. What does Jesus say?
This morning? We continue our series in Mark's
Gospel with Chapter 7, verses 1 to 23.
If you don't have a Bible, please raise your hand and
someone will bring you one. Feel free right up here in the
front. Keep the hand of Bible on its
way. In our passage, Jesus disputes
with some influential religious leaders of his day, and Jesus's
position in this debate reveals his answer to these fundamental
questions. Where do our biggest problems
come from? Where do their solutions come
from? Please follow along as I read
the whole passage. Mark 7 verses 1 to 23.
Now when the Pharisees gathered to him with some of the scribes
who had come from Jerusalem, they saw that some of his
disciples ate with hands that were defiled.
That is unwashed, for the Pharisees and all the Jews do
not eat unless they wash their hands, properly, holding to the
tradition of the elders. And when they come from the
marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash.
And there are many other traditions that they observe,
such as the washing of cups and pots and copper vessels and
dining couches. And the Pharisees and the
scribes asked him, Why do your disciples not walk according to
the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?
And he said to them, Well did Isaiah prophecy of you
hypocrites, as it is written, This people honors me with their
lips, but their heart is far from me.
In vain do they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the
commandments of men. You leave the commandment of God
and hold to the tradition of men.
And he said to them, you have a fine way of rejecting the
commandment of God in order to establish your tradition.
For Moses said, honor your father and your mother, and
whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.
But you say if a man tells his father or his mother, whatever
you would have gained from me is Corbin that is given to God,
then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or
mother, thus making void the word of God by your tradition
that you have handed down and many such things you do.
And he called the people to him again and said to them, Hear me,
all of you, and understand there's nothing outside a person
that by going into him can defile him.
But the things that come out of a person are what defile him.
And when he had entered the house and left the people, his
disciples asked him about the parable.
And he said to them, then are you also without understanding?
Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside
cannot defile him, since it enters not his heart but his
stomach, and is expelled? Thus he declared all foods
clean, and he said what comes out of a person is what defiles
him. For from within, out of the
heart of man, come evil thoughts.
Sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting,
wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride,
foolishness, all these evil things come from within and they
defile a person. Verses one through 5 set up the
controversy. The Pharisees and scribes notice
Jesus disciples failing to follow a custom that they regard
as binding, so they go straight to the top.
They take Jesus to task for his disciples behavior.
They ask in verse 5, Why do your disciples not walk according to
the tradition of the elders but eat with defiled hands?
Note that the question has two parts.
Why do they not walk according to the tradition of the elders?
Why do they eat with defiled hands?
Now Jesus is going to respond to those two charges in turn.
In verses 6 to 13 he answers the first charge directly addressing
the Pharisees. Then in verses 14 to 23 he
answers the second charge by first teaching the crowd and
then explaining privately to his disciples what he taught the
crowd. So this debate turns on two
issues. One is the relationship of human
tradition to divine revelation, and the other issue is where
impurity comes from. 2 issues, 2 answers.
The sermon will have two points. Where does our biggest problem
and its solution come from .1 versus 1 to 13?
Truth comes from outside. Truth comes from outside .2
versus 14 to 23. Impurity comes from inside.
Impurity comes from inside .1 on verses 1 to 13.
Truth comes from outside. In other words, God's Word is
and must be supreme over all human traditions.
Look again at verses 1:00 to 5:00.
Now when the Pharisees gathered to Him with some of the scribes
who had come from Jerusalem, they saw that some of His
disciples ate with hands that were defiled, That is, unwashed.
For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not.
Even less. They wash their hands properly,
holding to the tradition of the elders.
And when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat
unless they wash. And there are many other
traditions that they observe, such as the washing of cups and
pots and copper vessels and dining couches.
And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, Why do your
disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but
eat with defiled hands? This group of Pharisees and
scribes had come from Jerusalem into Galilee where Jesus was
ministering. They came to see if this upstart
measured up to their standards and played by their rules.
And they noticed that at least some of Jesus disciples ate
without washing their hands first.
Now we have to clarify right away that the Pharisees concern
was not hygiene. They were not operating from the
germ theory of disease or any ancient precursor to it.
Their concern was not health, but holiness.
They were concerned not to prevent the spread of the flu,
but to protect against a ritual impurity.
Throughout the whole passage, we have to remember that purity was
their prime concern. So kids in the congregation,
this passage does not give you a reason to accuse your parents of
being Pharisees when they tell you to wash your hands.
Now this concern for purity is what Mark explains in the
background material he provides in verses 3 and 4.
Mark is a Jew. The original 12 disciples who
are eyewitnesses were Jews. But Mark's writing to an
audience is going to include a lot of Gentiles.
So he explains these Jewish customs that were influenced by
the Pharisees. The Pharisees practices we
learned in verses 3 and four were based on the idea that
someone's hands could transmit impurity to their food and
thereby to their body. If you went to the marketplace,
you might unintentionally or even unknowingly come into
contact with someone who is in a state of ritual impurity, maybe
through a skin disease or blood discharge.
And if you contracted impurity from them, then on the Pharisees
view, you could pass that impurity to your food or
somebody else's food and become ritually defiled that way.
The same would hold for getting food from someone who was
ritually impure. It could make you impure without
knowing it and the consequences for that impurity.
It wasn't viewed as a moral matter or sin, but it could keep
you from participating in temple worship.
It could spread impurity to things that were supposed to be
holy. It was a big deal.
Now it's important to notice that in both Marks comment in
verse 3 and the Pharisees question in verse 5, this
practice is grounded in the tradition of the elders.
What does that mean? It means oral tradition passed
down from 1 teacher to another, one generation to another.
The Pharisees likely viewed this as a kind of oral Torah that
they would have claimed was given alongside the Law,
separate from the law, and then passed down ever since the time
of Moses and Mount Sinai. But note what the Pharisees
don't claim. They do not claim that the
disciples are disobeying Scripture.
They don't claim that the disciples are breaking a command
of God. Instead, they accuse them of
disregarding the tradition of the elders, which the Pharisees
and a whole lot of Jewish people along with them hold to be
authoritative. A practice or teaching can be at
one and the same time an old tradition and a recent
innovation. It can be older than us, but
newer than God's law. The fact that a teaching or
tradition is old doesn't automatically mean it comes from
God. So the Pharisees are accusing
the disciples not of departing from God's law, but of departing
from their tradition. That's the charge.
How does Jesus respond to the charge?
Look at verses 6 and seven. And he said to them, Well did
Isaiah prophecy of you hypocrites as it is written,
this people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far
from me. In vain do they worship me,
teaching his doctrines, the commandments of men.
Here Jesus cites Isaiah chapter 29 verse 13, and he says that
the great prophet Isaiah himself predicted the Pharisees
particular form of disobedience. Jesus calls it hypocrisy.
Now we often use the word hypocrite to describe someone
who's deliberately duplicitous, someone who preaches one thing
and knowingly practices another, someone who crafts a public
image that's different from private reality.
And that's related to what Jesus charges here.
But I don't think it's exactly what he means here in this
verse. I think the point of Jesus
charge is that the Pharisees have a split between their heart
and their actions. They are outwardly right, but
inwardly wrong. They are sincere in all their
practices, but they are sincerely mistaken for all their
outward religious service. They fail to actually devote
themselves to God with all their heart, soul, mind and strength,
which is the whole point of the law.
In the 1st place, how can you detect and diagnose hypocrisy in
your life? One way is by asking questions
that serve to X-ray your heart. Questions that get at your
motives, your loves, your hates, your desires, your cravings.
In his book Seeing with New Eyes, the biblical counselor
David Powerson has a chapter with 35 of these X-ray
questions. Questions like What do you love?
What do you hate? What do you think you need?
What do you think about most often?
What preoccupies or obsesses you?
What does your mind drift to instinctively, when you've got a
free moment, your mind is idle. Where does it go?
What do you crave or wish for? All of those diagnostic
questions get at the direction your heart aims.
Instinctively, intuitively, what God demands of us is that our
hearts are devoted to Him. Our hearts are directed at Him.
Our hearts are oriented to Him. None of us do that perfectly,
but wherever the gap between the direction your heart points and
love of God is, that's where you've got the most work to do
spiritually. Now how did the Pharisees
hypocrisy manifest itself? Specifically the prophecy in
Isaiah tells us, quoted in verse seven.
In vain do they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the
commandments of men. God calls their worship vain.
That means futile, pointless, fruitless.
It does not hit the target it aims at.
Now why is it vain? Because they grant divine
authority to human teachings, of course, the Pharisees would have
believed that their traditions enabled them to fulfill God's
commands. They frequently use the phrase
of building a hedge around the Torah.
They were trying to protect observance to the law.
They would not have claimed to set their traditions above
divine revelation. But according to Jesus, that's
exactly what God himself charges them with doing.
Jesus is teaching by quoting Isaiah that divine revelation
and human tradition can conflict.
He's teaching that even traditions that were developed
in an effort to fulfill God's commands can come to contradict
those commands. And he's saying that whenever
divine revelation and human tradition conflict, divine
revelation must win. Jesus is teaching that we may
never claim divine authority for any practice that is of merely
human origin. We can never claim that God
requires something that humans have invented.
From the debates over the right worship of God that consumed the
Reformation in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries, this
teaching came to be known as the regulative principle of worship.
Meaning, Scripture regulates how we worship God.
Churches must perform only those elements of worship that God has
required in His Word. To do anything else is to give
divine authority to a human custom.
Jesus here teaches the regulative principle of worship.
In contrast, there are Christian traditions that hold to a view
of the relationship between tradition and Scripture that is
remarkably like that of the Pharisees.
Here I'm thinking especially of the Roman Catholic Church.
According to official Roman Catholic teaching, tradition and
Scripture are inseparable sources of revelation.
According to the Roman Catholic Church, you cannot have one
without the other. Scripture and tradition always
go together, must always belong together.
But Jesus himself teaches that tradition and Scripture can
contradict each other, and where they contradict, Scripture must
win. And all that we do is a church.
We have to work to keep a clear distinction between divine
revelation and human tradition, between divine command and human
custom. One way we try to do that is by
privileging expository preaching in our corporate worship,
expository preaching where we work through whole books of the
Bible, text by text, section by section, and try to give the
main point of each of those passages.
What is that doing? It's training all of us to
distinguish between human tradition and divine truth.
Expository preaching systematically exposes all of
our consciences week by week to what God himself teaches in
Scripture. That word, conscience, is
important in an ultimate sense. Only God's Word can bind our
consciences. As we confess in Article 15 of
our church's Statement of faith. We believe that God alone is
Lord of the conscience and has designed it to be free from the
doctrines and commandments of men that are contrary to His
Word or not contained in it. That article in our statement of
faith is paraphrasing Jesus citation of Isaiah right here.
Pastors can only declare what God's Word commands and requires
and promises. We cannot make up rules that you
have to follow. We cannot command what God has
not commanded. And it's important in that light
to question your own conscience, to hold your conscience to
account in light of God's Word. Are there any things your
conscience tells you might be required that God doesn't
actually require? Are there any things your
conscience tells you might be permitted that God's Word
actually forbids? All of our consciences have been
formed not only by Scripture, but by the families we grew up
in, the cultural backgrounds we come from, and the standards of
people around us. If you think something is
required, not just a good idea, not just a personal preference,
but required for you and for all Christians, can you prove that
from Scripture? That's the question.
Parents, there's all kinds of applications for parenting here.
Here's just one as you disciple your kids.
It's important to help them distinguish between what God
requires and what mom and dad require.
Parents should help their kids understand the difference
between 3 categories of things that you will instruct your
children in. Number one, God's commands.
These have absolute authority. You shall not murder.
You shall not commit adultery. And those big negative commands
have tons of necessary implications that affect our
behavior in pervasive ways #2 family rules.
You could call these in house rules, things like lights out,
time, curfew, what kids can and can't eat.
And when parents have the authority to establish rules
like this for the flourishing and order of their families,
they're like many governments in that way.
And kids are required to obey these rules because they're
required to obey their parents. But these rules are not
absolute, infallible commands from God #3 matters of courtesy
and custom, good manners. These vary from place to place,
culture to culture, time to time.
But we should observe them out of love of neighbor.
Now Jesus really turns the tables on the Pharisees and
scribes in verses 6 and seven. Why don't my disciples keep the
tradition of the elders? Because you're a bunch of
hypocrites. That's pretty bold.
That's a pretty severe accusation because he says
you're teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.
OK, Jesus, can you give us an example?
Sure. Verses 8 to 13.
Here's an extended example of how they're teaching as
doctrines the commandments of men.
Jesus says you leave the commandment of God and hold to
the tradition of men. And he said to them, you have a
fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to
establish your tradition. For Moses said, honor your
father and your mother, and whoever reviles father or mother
must surely die. But you say if a man tells his
father or his mother, whatever you would have gained from me is
Corbin that is given to God, then you no longer permit him to
do anything for his father or mother, thus making void the
word of God by your tradition that you have handed down.
And many such things you do. The Pharisees charge the
disciples with forsaking their tradition.
Jesus charges the Pharisees with forsaking God's commands.
Verse 8 you leave the commandment of God.
Verse 9, you have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of
God. A little divine sarcasm there.
Verse 13. Thus making void the word of God
by your tradition. The example Jesus gives is the
5th commandment. Honor your father and your
mother. God spoke that word to Israel
through Moses. And then Jesus also appeals to
Exodus 2117 to show how serious of a punishment the law held out
for those who refuse to honor their father and mother.
Now, part of the background for this debate is that all ancient
Jews rightly understood that the command to honor father and
mother includes the obligation for adult children to provide
for their parents in the case of illness, poverty, or the
infirmity of old age. There's certainly cultural
variation and what it looks like to keep this command, and it can
be difficult to navigate the tension between what aging
parents might want and what seems objectively good for them.
But care for aging parents is included in the meaning of what
God commanded through Moses. So where does the conflict come
in verse 11? But you say, and then Jesus goes
on to describe the practice of Corbin, which is a Hebrew or
Aramaic term meaning given to God.
Corbin was a kind of deferred giving.
It involved designating one's wealth or property as a gift of
God. But that didn't mean you had to
donate it right away. You were earmarking it for
divine use. It was only given it death, but
declaring it to be Corbin rendered it off limits for any
other use, such as supporting your elderly parents.
Sorry, Mom and dad can't spare any cash or property.
It's all been given to God. You can easily see how that
could become a kind of loophole. Now, in verse 12, Jesus says
that when someone invokes Corbin, you no longer permit him
to do anything for his father or mother.
How would this practice actually prohibit someone from caring for
their father or mother? It's because it was a binding
vow. They took vows very, very
seriously. If you declared something
Corbin, it was a vow. It was sworn before the Lord,
and apparently at least some of the Pharisees of Jesus Day held
that that vow was binding even in cases where one's parents
fell into abject need. So they held the obligation to
keep the vow outweighed the obligation to help your parents.
A good modern analogy for this practice would be to say that
these legal experts were like tax accountants who could find a
loophole that enabled somebody to get by without paying any
taxes whatsoever. So you could give the money to
God, but really keep it for yourself.
That makes a mockery of the God you're claiming to honor.
That's hypocrisy. That's vain worship.
True worship of God leads you to love his commands and seek to
obey them fully in all their implications.
True worship does not look for loopholes.
If you're looking for loopholes, you're not trying to serve God,
you're trying to serve yourself. When it comes to how you use
your money, do you look for ways to keep as much as you can
without technically disobeying God?
Or do you look for more and more good ways to give it away?
If you approach God's commands looking for loopholes, to think
that you're trying to get or keep through that loophole is
your functional God. That's what you're serving, not
the true God. A heart that loves God will love
his word. A heart that loves God will love
his commands. The heart that loves God will
discern that God's commands are signposts directing us in how to
love Him and love our neighbor. If you love God, you'll discern
that His commands are guardrails keeping us from veering off the
path of loving God and loving our neighbor.
What are we seeing earlier in Psalm 19?
The precepts of the Lord are right and fill the heart with
great delight. Jesus warns against letting
human tradition contradict God's Word.
How can that happen in churches that mean to obey the Bible?
Here's one example from a little over 100 years ago.
Back before the neighboring towns of Winston and Salem
merged to become the city Winston Salem in 1913, a man
named Sam Morton lived in Salem. He was a Christian, and he
noticed that many of the local children who worked all week in
the nearby mill would just be hanging around outside on
Sunday, kind of like they had nothing to do.
They weren't going to the local church.
One of the reasons he found out why they weren't going to the
local church is that these kids were poor and they had no shoes.
And the church had a rule that you could only attend worship if
you had shoes. So Sam Morton decided to start a
Sunday school as an outreach to these kids.
He brought them in. He started gathering more and
more kids. Eventually some parents started
coming and they decided to found a new church.
It was a sort of Sunday school that led to family outreach.
That led to a church plant. That church was founded in 19 O
9. It's called Salem Baptist
Church. They're still doing good gospel
work today in the city of Winston Salem.
I was talking to their interim pastor a few weeks ago.
By the way, the great, great, great grandson of Sam Morton is
here among us this morning. Any guesses as to who it could
be? It's our very own deep North
Carolina roots. Joe Bird.
What was the human tradition? No shoes, no service.
What was Jesus command? Let the little children come to
me. What are some examples you can
think of where human traditions hinder or even contradict God's
commands? What can we as a church do to
ensure that we don't let any developing traditions of our own
contradict God's commands? Jesus is teaching that in order
to rightly relate to God, we need to give His commands more
weight than our customs. We need to give His revelation
more weight than human tradition.
Now zoom Outback up. Why is that the case?
It's because our minds and hearts are unreliable guides to
the truth. It's because sin has distorted
and infected our minds and hearts.
It's because our minds and hearts are darkened.
Our hearts are idle factories and our minds endlessly churn
out justifications to convince ourselves why it's OK to worship
those idols. Our minds are not the ultimate
source and standard of truth. God's mind is the most important
truth. Truth that can set you right and
set you free comes from outside. If truth comes from outside,
what comes from inside? Point #2 impurity comes from
inside. Impurity comes from inside.
That's the burden of the second-half of Jesus response
from verses 14 to 23. Here's Jesus point in a
nutshell. As Israel's system of ritual
purity teaches, moral impurity arises from within a person.
I'll say that again, one sentence summary of the section.
As Israel's system of ritual purity teaches, moral impurity
arises from within a person. Look with me at verses 14 to 19.
And he called the people to him again and said to them, Hear me,
all of you, and understand there's nothing outside a person
that by going into him can defile him.
But the things that come out of a person are what defile him.
And when he had entered the house and left the people, his
disciples asked him about the parable.
And he said to them, then are you also without understanding?
Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside
cannot defile him, since it enters not his heart but his
stomach, and is expelled? Thus, he declared all foods
clean. Now, I don't think this passage
means exactly what a lot of people take it.
To me, I don't think that in these verses Jesus is
demolishing the foundations of Judaism.
I don't think he's revoking the Mosaic Law.
I don't think he's repealing the entire system of ritual purity.
In other words, I don't think Jesus is changing the purity
laws. I think he's clarifying them.
He's explaining the rationale and the deep significance of the
Old Testament's purity code, and thereby he's proving the
Pharisees wrong. He's demonstrating that their
tradition is not just in addition to Scripture, but their
tradition is actually against Scripture.
What we have here is a conflict between two different systems of
purity. I'll explain the details of the
passage in a minute, but here's an illustration to help us get
the big picture. You could say that tidying and
cleaning are two different systems of household purity.
What is tidying? Tidying is making sure every
object is in its proper place. Shoes, books, mail, coats,
stuffed animals, groceries, you name it.
Tidying is putting stuff away. What is cleaning?
Cleaning is scouring surfaces clear of dirt and dust and grime
and dog hair and whatever else can build up on them.
Now these two systems of household purity, tidying and
cleaning, can coexist in harmony, or they can come into
conflict with one another. For instance, in a marriage,
say, that one spouse might perhaps care more about tidying
and the other spouse might perhaps care more about
cleaning. The spouse that cares more about
tidying might look at a room and just say, oh, this thing's a
mess, What's going on? Where's the other spouse who
cares more about cleaning goes, it's fine.
What do you mean one spouse looks at it and goes, this is a
mess. There's a spouse looks at it and
goes, no, it's not. There's this irreconcilable,
potentially crazy making contradiction between systems of
household purity, something like that.
Competing systems of purity is what's going on in our passage.
Let me explain. Verse 17 calls what Jesus says
in verse 15 a parable. Now all that that word means in
this case is that it's a pithy, proverbial saying.
It doesn't necessarily mean that it's a Riddle or that it has a
deeper meaning hidden beneath the surface.
In this case, I think it's just a short, dense statement.
It's compressed, it's compact. So the disciples asked Jesus to
unpack it for them. What does Jesus say in verse 15?
There is nothing outside a person that by going into him,
can defile him. But the things that come out of
a person are what defile him. Now, we've got to keep a few
things in mind here. The first is that despite their
claims to ancient tradition, the Pharisees were innovators.
Their system of purity wasn't biblical, it was traditional.
And what if their system of purity involve it incorporated a
concern not to let impurity enter from without via food or
hands? You could somehow get the filed
and pass something into yourself.
That's what Jesus is denying. What does he affirm?
But the things that come out of a person are what defile him.
Now, one crucial key to understanding this statement is
actually something we've seen a few times already in different
sermons in Mark, in the Old Testament's teaching on ritual
purity, which chiefly comes from the book of Leviticus.
What causes ritual impurity? There are three main sources.
Skin disease, discharge of blood and other bodily fluids, and
dead bodies. What do each of those cases or
sources of impurity have in common?
The impurity is, as it were, coming from within the body.
It's something inside the body that's coming out.
That's obvious in the case of blood or other bodily fluids,
and I'd argue it's implied in the case of skin disease or
corpses. Jesus is saying that when it
comes to ritual impurity, which is what the debate here with the
Pharisees is about, when it comes to ritual impurity, the
source of that impurity is actually within the body.
So eating food that might have been made ritually impure cannot
make you impure. Jesus is saying that the
Pharisees teaching on ritual purity is not the scriptures
teaching on ritual purity. In fact he's saying that the
Pharisees system of purity systematically distorts the
Levitical system. Leviticus teaches that impurity
comes from within the body and moves out.
It doesn't come from outside the body and move in.
So this is not Jesus versus Leviticus.
Instead this is Jesus explaining Leviticus versus the Pharisees.
And then Jesus illustrates the point first by bringing in the
digestive process as a kind of illustration, verse 18.
Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside
cannot defile him since it enters not his heart but his
stomach and is expelled? Jesus point by way of
illustration is that the digestive process is a kind of
work of purification. For one thing, food doesn't go
into the heart. It doesn't enter the moral
center of a person, but also it goes into the stomach.
Then the body takes whatever it needs from it, and whatever the
body doesn't need it expels and leaves the body.
The body doesn't take in any defilement from food.
Now the end of verse 19 is commonly translated as it is
here. Thus he declared all foods
clean. That would take this phrase as a
comment by Mark about Jesus speech.
But the Greek phrase is literally purifying all foods.
That's how the King James version translated it.
They're they're following William Tyndall who translated
it the same. The King James is purging all
meats. It's a very literal translation,
at least into 1600 English. So in the Greek phrase there's
no verb for declare or say. It's possible this is an
authorial comment by Mark, but I think it's far more likely that
this is actually part of Jesus speech, not a voiceover from
Mark. And if you look at the King
James version, if it has red letters, the King James will
still put this sort of in the red letter portion.
So I think it's more likely part of Jesus speech.
If you read it as simply purifying all foods then it
works as a conclusion to what Jesus is saying the body does.
Now to understand the big issues here we need to distinguish
between 2 categories. 1 is permitted versus forbidden foods
and the other is the issue of being clean or unclean, pure or
impure. All the foods that the Old
Testament told Israelites not to eat were forbidden.
They were prohibited. You weren't supposed to eat them
because God said so. Scripture never teaches that
eating those foods made anyone impure.
Scripture never says that if you eat those foods, they make you
ritually impure. Eating forbidden foods is wrong
because they were prohibited, not because they were defiling.
So prohibited, permitted, clean, unclean are two different
categories, two different concepts.
So even if this comment at the end of verse 19 is an authorial
voice over by Mark. I think it means that Jesus
declared all permitted foods clean, not that he declared
forbidden foods to be permitted. To be sure, I think the rest of
the New Testament eventually does teach that.
I think we see that in Acts chapters 10 and 11.
I think we see that in Paul's position in Romans 14.
But I don't think that's what Jesus is doing here.
Jesus and the Pharisees both kept kosher.
That's just not the fight Jesus is picking with them right now.
In other words, this whole debate, including verse 19, is
as if you overheard a conversation between 2 vegans. 1
scholar uses this illustration. 2 vegans sit down to a meal.
One vegan asks the other Did you wash your hands first?
They might have germs on them. The second vegan responds.
I'm not worried about germs. I eat everything without washing
my hands first. If you heard that, you would not
conclude that the second vegan is now saying that he or she
eats meat products. You know the background, you
know the rules that each of those eaters abides by.
So the everything has an implicit limit or qualification.
One last observation in support of this understanding, which
might be new to some of you. The more widespread
interpretation is that Jesus is teaching in verse 15 is a kind
of momentous history shaping declaration.
On that view, Jesus is uttering a speech act, an effective
declaration that revokes the authority of the Mosaic Law and
creates an entirely new religious situation for all of
God's people. If Jesus is declaring prohibited
foods permitted, then he's saying that now as of this very
sentence. They're permitted, but on God's
own authority. They weren't before.
They weren't like 2 seconds before Jesus started talking.
It's only by speaking right now that Jesus makes it so.
There are several problems with seeing Jesus teaching here as
that kind of momentous world changing declaration.
One problem is that if Jesus really was teaching that, he
could have made it a lot clearer.
Another problem is that we don't have any record of any of Jesus
opponents questioning him or objecting to his teaching on
this point. Hey Jesus, where do you get off
contradicting Moses? I thought you were just telling
us to put divine commands above human teachings.
Where do you get the authority to do away with the entire law?
A third problem is that in verse 18, when Jesus rebuked his
disciples for their lack of understanding, how are how are
they supposed to understand this if Jesus just now announced a
revolutionary change in God's relationship to his people?
But Jesus isn't saying something brand new.
I think he's clarifying what they should have known all
along. And again, here's the point in a
nutshell. Impurity doesn't come from
outside, but inside. Now if you're wondering what on
earth can all of that possibly have to do with us today, we who
don't keep kosher, we who are not talking about ritual,
defilement, purity, all this kind of stuff, the key is where
Jesus takes us in verses 20 to 23.
And he said what comes out of a person is what defiles him.
For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil
thoughts. Sexual immorality, theft,
murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality,
envy, slander, pride, foolishness, all these evil
things come from within and they defile a person.
Jesus is saying that impurity comes from inside.
And there are really close connections to the debate here
that might not be evident at first glance.
One crucial point that helps us get our bearings is that there
are some especially weighty sins that the Old Testament describes
as defiling, making impure those who commit them.
In other words, in the Old Testament, purity is a concept
that has both ritual and moral aspects.
Consider, for instance, Leviticus 1824 to 25.
Just before this, God has given a whole series of commands
regulating sexual activity, rendering all sorts of sexual
acts off limits. Then he says, Do not make
yourselves unclean by any of these things, for by all these
the nations I'm driving out before you have become unclean.
And the land became unclean, so that I punished its iniquity,
and the land vomited out its inhabitants.
Now, one key point to recognize is that Jesus's list of sins
that defile closely matches a number of Old Testament passages
that describe sins that defile. In other words, Jesus doesn't
contrast immorality with impurity.
Instead, he shows that immorality is one kind of
impurity, and the direction that impurity travels is from the
heart outward. Just like ritual impurity
travels from the body outward, so moral impurity travels from
the heart outward. That's what Jesus list has not
only actions, but attitudes. He talks about not only deeds
and words, but desires. Jesus is teaching that the Old
Testament system of ritual purity is itself a parable.
It's a picture, it's a sign. It's teaching that just as what
comes out of the body defiles, So what comes out of the heart
defiles. And that could not be more
relevant to every single one of us.
Jesus often uses the word person or man in this passage.
It's the same Greek word behind both.
The ESV translation is using the word man in an inclusive sense,
not exclusive. This passage is teaching us
fundamental truths about what it means to be a fallen human
being. Jesus is diagnosing our deepest
problems, and he's teaching that our most fundamental problem
comes from inside, not outside. Your deepest problem is that
your heart is a source of moral impurity.
Your deepest problem is that evil things come out of your
heart. Your deepest problem is not
something you can fix yourself. Our passage here only sets up
the problem, but the rest of Mark's gospel shows us a
solution. Why did Jesus come?
He came to give his life as a ransom for many, he tells us.
In Mark 1045, Jesus became Incarnate.
He lived on this earth. He died on the cross to pay the
penalty, the full price for the sins that come out of each of
our hearts. Jesus came to pay the full debt
of sin we'd racked up by all the things that are continually
coming out of our heart, day by day by day by day by day.
Jesus alone could do that because he is both God and man.
Jesus alone is willing to do that because of his infinite
love for us. And he sealed that sacrifice.
He proved that payment by rising from the dead.
He escaped from death the ultimate impurity, and he
triumphed over it. And now He invites and summons
and commands all people everywhere to turn from sin and
trust in Him. Your deepest problem is your
evil, broken heart. Your deepest problem is the
impurity that comes out of your heart continually.
And you can't fix it. You can't pay off that debt.
You can't clean up your own act. Sometimes people get the wrong
idea that in order to get right with God, they have to kind of
go through a moral cleanse first.
Now that moral cleanse might bring some benefits into their
life, but that moral cleanse will not get them right with
God. You can't get down deep enough
to fix it, and you can't pay the penalty for sin.
Only Jesus can. So if you're not a believer in
Jesus, you need to know that your biggest problem is inside.
The solution can only come from outside.
That's what God sent Jesus to do.
For all of us who believe in Jesus, remember that the same
grace that brings forgiveness of sins also brings in Word
renewal, new birth, regeneration.
When God by His grace enables you to receive the Lord Jesus
Christ, He gives you a new heart.
That's what He promised in Ezekiel 3626.
I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within
you, and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and
give you a heart of flesh. The new heart that every
believer has is not perfect, but it is really changed.
This new heart loves God and His people.
This new heart loves God's commands.
If you believe in Jesus, you love his commands, and that is
not a love you had before. So here's a key principle to
help all of us apply Jesus teaching in these final verses.
This is where the passage really comes home for all of us in the
Christian life, change doesn't happen from the outside in, but
from the inside out. Growth doesn't happen from the
outside in, but from the inside out.
As a Christian, the way you grow into greater conformity to the
character of Christ is not by merely adopting outward
practices recommended by seemingly holy people.
Instead, it's by having your heart inwardly renewed so that
you have a greater love for God and a greater desire to fulfill
His commands. Now, how does that kind of heart
change happen? Ultimately, it's by God's power.
Ultimately, it's by God's Spirit.
It's not change we have the power to bring about ourselves,
but God has appointed means by which He promises to work.
What are some of those means? This kind of heart change comes
through regular exposure to God's Word through public
preaching and teaching. It comes through regular
participation in all the means of grace in corporate worship,
in what we pray and sing and read and hear.
Our hearts are freshly exposed to the convicting and renewing
power of God's Word in corporate worship.
We lay our hearts bare before God in prayer, and we lift up
our hearts to God together in song.
This kind of heart change happens through privately
reading God's Word and turning what you read into prayer.
It happens through private prayer in which you examine
yourself in light of God's Word and you tell God what you see.
And it happens through fellowship.
As we speak truth in love, in discipling relationships, like
we're talking about in our Sunday School class for the next
few weeks at 9:00 AM. In discipling relationships, we
aim God's truth at each other's hearts.
In other words, what we should constantly pray for and strive
for as a church is not a culture of external conformity, but a
culture of heart change. We can't see each other's
hearts. We should not judge each other's
hearts. We cannot change each other's
hearts. But we can gently, lovingly,
patiently work with each other to pursue heart deep change.
We can become instruments through which God can work to
change hearts, Lord willing. In our evening service tonight,
I'll be interviewing Brian Lonner, who leads a biblical
counseling ministry here in the region called Hope Counseling.
We'll be talking about some of these dynamics.
How can we be that kind of church where we aim at heart
deep change? How can biblical counseling be a
help in that? Impurity comes from inside, and
by God's grace and the work of His Spirit, that's how far His
renewing work reaches. Our deepest problems come from
within, and God's grace reaches every bit as deep as our deepest
problems, and even deeper because He pulls up our sin by
the roots. That's how far God's
transforming grace reaches. Praise God for His saving work
in Christ. He came from outside to
transform what's inside. He came to pay the price for sin
so you wouldn't be condemned. He came to give you His Spirit
so you wouldn't be trapped in slavery to sin.
He came to free you from sins, condemnation and it's inward
corruption. He came to free you from the
burden of sin and bondage to sin, and He will keep working to
transform you until the day when your whole being is perfectly
conformed to His glory when you see Him face to face.
Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we pray that we
would come to see ourselves in light of Jesus diagnosis, that
what comes out of our hearts defiles us.
Father, we pray for anyone who's not trusted in Christ for the
cleansing from sin that he alone can provide, that they would
repent and believe. And we pray that you would grant
us to be inwardly renewed so that the roots of these evil
thoughts and desires are increasingly uprooted out of our
hearts. We pray you do these things in
us for your glory in Jesus name, Amen.