How Bad Is It, Jesus?

9.1.24 Mark 7:15, 21-23

15 There is nothing outside of a man that can make him unclean by going into him. But the things that come out of a man are what make a man unclean. . . . 21 In fact, from within, out of people’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual sins, theft, murder, 22 adultery, greed, wickedness, deceit, unrestrained immorality, envy, slander, arrogance, and foolishness. 23 All these evil things proceed from within and make a person unclean.”

How Bad is It, Jesus?

Years ago one of our members had a pain in the back. His doctor didn’t really check into it, had him do some exercises, and let it be. Come to find out, it was cancer. If they had found out sooner, they maybe could have stopped it. But they waited too long. The doctor didn’t take it seriously enough.

The same applies to looking at ourselves in a spiritual way, trying to figure out what is really wrong with us. If you think that sin is nothing more than breaking a bad habit, nothing but a flesh wound, well then that’s different than treating it like a disease. Think about alcoholism. How do you treat it? Just stop drinking alcohol? Hide the liquor. Stay away from bars. It sounds good in theory, but that doesn’t usually work too well, because the desire goes deeper than that.

Look at the difference in the way that Jesus looked at sin in comparison to the way the Pharisees and the teachers of the law looked at sin. It was as if they looked at sin like a grease or a grass stain that you needed to wash off from your clothes. Make sure you wash your hands before you eat in a specific way. You HAVE TO do this in order to be clean. Make sure you don’t associate with non-Jews and don’t eat their unclean foods. Stay out of the dirt and you won’t get dirty. They turned the Moral Law and the Ceremonial Law into a system on how to stay clean and how to be holy.

That’s the way we like to think, to turn God’s law into bite sized chunks, to turn our religion into ritual. I missed church for a while. The pastor or elder has been calling on me. I’ll come back for a week and we’ll be good for a few months. I’ve been watching some things I shouldn’t watch. I’ve been drinking too much. I’ll come to church and confess my sins, and I’ll be good to go. I’ll say a few extra prayers, express some extra remorse, and maybe give a little extra in the offering plate. There’s some truth in there, of course, some real remedy. But there’s a danger of turning it into a mere ritual.

There’s also the Pharisaic idea that the dirt is out there, but we’re clean in here. If I just keep my children or myself from watching TV, maybe keep them from having unbelieving friends, wear conservative clothing, send my child to a Christian school, always listen to Christian radio, then I’ll keep myself clean from the dirty world out there. Make a promise to myself. Put on a chastity ring, then I’ll be good. As a pastor I think, “Maybe I just need to lay it out in black and white.” For instance, I’ve heard that Game of Thrones has a good story line, but that there’s pornography littered throughout. So maybe we should just tell people, “Don’t watch it.” Maybe if people had a list, then they would keep themselves from looking at things they shouldn’t be looking at. Maybe if we had a list of approved clothing, that would help.

It sounds good in theory, and it may have some practical aspects to it. But in the end, it really doesn’t go deep enough. It tends to make people feel good about themselves, like they are doing better than the rest of the unbelieving world. And it builds up pride in those who are good at following the rules. But it also makes people want to rebel. If the church tells them NOT to do it, well then they want to do it all the more. They look for hypocrisy in the rules, in what they can do and can’t do. There’s not always consistency in the rules.

It’s good to have a disciplined life, don’t get me wrong. You should have rules to live by. But trying to live by a set of rules tends to ignore the fact that no matter how clean I may try to keep myself, I’ve got a deeper problem to deal with. This isn’t like the Garden of Eden. We are no longer dealing with clean and holy people on the inside, who can be corrupted by eating a piece of fruit. Just look at what happened to Adam and Eve AFTER they ate from the fruit. Adam had the gall to blame not only Eve but also GOD Himself, right to His face! “The woman YOU GAVE me.” The woman pointed the finger at Satan, with a simple point of fact. Not seemingly any remorse. “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” So the history of the Bible as Cain killing Abel, David committing adultery with Bathsheba and murdering her husband, King Manasseh sacrificing his children to Molech in the fire, Judas betraying Jesus, and Peter denying Jesus. Time after time after time, even those who should have been better than that proved themselves to be worse, even though many of them were believers. Why? Because they’re born sinners through and through, corrupted from the inside out.