1The Pharisees and some of the teachers of the law who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus and 2saw some of his disciples eating food with hands that were "unclean," that is, unwashed. 3(The Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial washing, holding to the tradition of the elders. 4When they come from the marketplace they do not eat unless they wash. And they observe many other traditions, such as the washing of cups, pitchers and kettles.[a])
5So the Pharisees and teachers of the law asked Jesus, "Why don’t your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with ’unclean’ hands?"
6He replied, "Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written:
" ’These people honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
7They worship me in vain;
their teachings are but rules taught by men.’[b] 8You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men."
9And he said to them: "You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe[c] your own traditions! 10For Moses said, ’Honor your father and your mother,’[d] and, ’Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.’[e] 11But you say that if a man says to his father or mother: ’Whatever help you might otherwise have received from me is Corban’ (that is, a gift devoted to God), 12then you no longer let him do anything for his father or mother. 13Thus you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And you do many things like that."
14Again Jesus called the crowd to him and said, "Listen to me, everyone, and understand this. 15Nothing outside a man can make him ’unclean’ by going into him. Rather, it is what comes out of a man that makes him ’unclean.’ "[f]
17After he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about this parable. 18"Are you so dull?" he asked. "Don’t you see that nothing that enters a man from the outside can make him ’unclean’? 19For it doesn’t go into his heart but into his stomach, and then out of his body." (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods "clean.")
20He went on: "What comes out of a man is what makes him ’unclean.’ 21For from within, out of men’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, 22greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. 23All these evils come from inside and make a man ’unclean.’ "
Prayer:
How to clean up your house for Thanksgiving.
Introduction: Turkey day is quickly aproaching and soon we will be all caught up in the holiday rush. In the pre-Thanksgiving rush, we have received an early weather report from our in-house weather reporters. This is one, you should be sure to email your Mom. Turkeys will thaw in the morning, then warm in the oven to an afternoon high near 190F. The kitchen will turn hot and humid, and if you bother the cook, be ready for a severe squall or cold shoulder.
During the late afternoon and evening, the cold front of a knife will slice through the turkey, causing an accumulation of one to two inches on plates. Mashed potatoes will drift across one side while cranberry sauce creates slippery spots on the other. Please pass the gravy.
A weight watch and indigestion warning have been issued for the entire area, with increased stuffiness around the beltway. During the evening, the turkey will diminish and taper off to leftovers, dropping to a low of 34F in the refrigerator.
Looking ahead to Friday and Saturday, high pressure to eat sandwiches will be established. Flurries of leftovers can be expected both days with a 50 percent chance of scattered soup late in the day. We expect a warming trend where soup develops. By early next week, eating pressure will be low as the only wish left will be the bone.
Now that we have the advanced weather report there’s only one thing left to do. Clean the house. Let me ask you a question. What would you do if you were on the Homeowners association in your neighborhood and there was a
House with impeccable exterior but when you were invited inside you found a horrible messsy discustingly dirty interior. If you were the hoa what would you do?
That’s the situation Jesus found himself in in the 7th chapter of Mark vs 1-23
It seems to me that as we prepare to offer thanks to God for the provisions he has made for us in the past year, we should first clean our house.
First we must ask is what do we use to clean our houses?
What do you use to clean your house? Formula 401, windex, mr Clean a vacume cleaner, a dust rag, a swiffer mop;
Divide up your heart into rooms and clean it up
1st room is the living room (where we entertain guests)
This one of the most important rooms because we entertain guests here. What shall we use to clean it up?
1st we will need a carpet shampooer because the carpet is probably looking worn and dirty. The neat thing about cleaning carpet is that you don’t really reealize how dirty it is untill you look at the water that’s left behind in the tub. Most people don’t believe that their carpet is all that dirty. That’s because it gets dirty a little at a time. The truth is, the more guests you entertain, the dirtier it gets. Take my friend Dean for instance. After his divorce he started doing things that single guys do. He went out to bars, met women. Well you know the kind of women you meet in bars. Before long I started to notice that his language was slipping. Just a little at a time but the more he hung around those places, the worse it seems he got. I’m not sure he even realizes how much he swares now. That special place in his heart used to be the place that he entertained Christ but the more others he entertained the dirtier the carpet got. He would be surprised if he looked at the water!
We must always be careful about the entertaining we do in the living room of our heart.
We also must use some end dust to clean the room, this gets rid of the dust that builds up in the living room. We don’t know where it comes from but there it is. So if the living room of your heart has become dusty then you need some end-dust. Revelation 19: 6-10 6Then I heard what sounded like a great multitude, like the roar of rushing waters and like loud peals of thunder, shouting: "Hallelujah! For our Lord God Almighty reigns.
7Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready. 8Fine linen, bright and clean, was given her to wear." (Fine linen stands for the righteous acts of the saints.)
9Then the angel said to me, "Write: ’Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb!’ " And he added, "These are the true words of God."
2nd is the kitchen (where people get nourishment)
Well here we are in the kitchen, this is where people get nourishment. The kitchen can get dirty so fast. We are under the impression that we need to eat so much food to stay healthy. We need an appetizer so we turn on the news which is usually half-baked anyhow and the kitchen gets a little dirty. Then we need roughage so we prepare a salad of greens. Greens are so important! They were to the pharasees too.
Chances are if you get you nourishment from many sources your kitchen is going to get pretty dirty. Most of us get our spiritual nourishment from many sources. We turn on the news and get half baked stories about prayer in school and gay marriage and everything in between. We watch tv preachers who peddle books that are guaranteed to give us the life we always wanted, find our purpose and live happy lives. We listen to music that talks about the stairway to heaven, but tells us nobody wants to go now. We surf the internet and get nurishing adivise about viruses and identity thieves. Don’t know haw we ever lived without that! Before we know it the kitchen of our heart is dirty as it can be. How do we clean up this mess!
We roll up our sleeves and get busy! First, some of the best cleaner. Formula 409.
Phillipians 4:09 “Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me or seen in me – put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.”
1 Thesselonians 4:09 Now about brotherly love we do not need to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other. And in fact, you do love all the brothers throughout Macedonia. Yet we urge you, brothers, to do so more and more.
1 Timothy 4:09 This is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance 10(and for this we labor and strive), that we have put our hope in the living God, who is the Savior of all men, and especially of those who believe.
1 John 4:09 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son[b] into the world that we might live through him.
You see, when the kitchen of your heart gets dirty 409 is the answer. You no longer need to get your nourishment from many sources, but one.
3rd is the closet
The closet is where we stuff everything we don’t want people to see when they come over for Thanksgiving. You probably have seen the commercial where the guy brings his date home and goes to hang her coat in the closet and as he turns the knob the door flys open and the contents of the closet pour out burying him.
Today in the Word, September 5, 1995, p. 32.
While touring Italy, a man visited a cathedral that had been completed on the outside only. Once inside, the traveler found an artist kneeling before an enormous wall upon which he had just begun to create a mosaic. On some tables nearby were thousands of pieces of colored ceramic. Curious, the visitor asked the artist how he would ever finish such a large project. The artist answered that he knew how much he could accomplish in one day. Each morning, he marked off an area to be completed that day and didn’t worry about what remained outside that space. That was the best he could do; and if he faithfully did his best, one day the mosaic would be finished.
Jesus calls us to be people who Live in present-tense. An average person¡¦s anxiety is focused on : 40% -- things that will never happen 30% -- things about the past that can’t be changed 12% -- things about criticism by others, mostly untrue 10% -- about health, which gets worse with stress 8% -- about real problems that will be faced Stop trying to grapple with the what ifs¨ and let God take care of it. You simply make that long term investment in God’s kingdom day by day.
Matthew 6:5 And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.
6But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.
How can we expect to give thanks if we can’t even get into the closet? Most of us have so much stuff crammed into the closet that we don’t want anyone to see, we have no room for prayer. So we’ve got to clean it out. But what do we do with it? We could move it from here to there but then it would just clutter up something else. The better option is to give it away.
Psalm 55:22 Cast your cares on the LORD
and he will sustain you;
he will never let the righteous fall.
Phillipians 4:6,7
“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
4th is the bedroom (where people get rest)
Bedrooms are the places we go to rest. But it’s amazing how dirty a bedroom can get. One thing we all know is that if your dirty laundry isnt taken care of it can quickly pile up on the floor and cause you to trip.
It’s hard to have thanksgiving , hard to get any rest when you have to worry about tripping over dirty laundry. That was the problem with the pharasees. Lots of dirty laundry. Jesus knew that. It reminds me of the time in John 8 where the bible tells us:”
1But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. 2At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. 3The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group 4and said to Jesus, "Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. 5In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?" 6They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.
But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. 7When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her." 8Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.
9At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. 10Jesus straightened up and asked her, "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?"
11"No one, sir," she said.
"Then neither do I condemn you," Jesus declared. "Go now and leave your life of sin."
I believe that Jesus knew about the pharasees dirty laundry and that was what he was writing on the ground. Yep, my mom was right. If you leave your dirty laundry laying around you’ll trip. So we’ve got to clean up that bedroom so we can get some rest.
So how do we do that? We get rid of the clutter; pick up our clothes and separate them. Then we put them in the washing machine with some soap and they will come out white as snow.
The Bible say’s ,”in Isaiah 1:18 "Come now, let us reason together,"
says the LORD.
"Though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red as crimson,
they shall be like wool.
19 If you are willing and obedient,
you will eat the best from the land;
20 but if you resist and rebel,
you will be devoured by the sword."
For the mouth of the LORD has spoken.
Some of you may be sitting there saying” well I don’t have to worry about cleaning my house for thanksgiving because I am not going to be home. I’m going to so and so’s house for thanksgiving. Well let me ask you just how important is it to you that the place you are going for Thanksgiving is clean? What if when you walk into the house it’s filthy. What if when you sit down at the table, cockroaches crawl across it?
Of course that’s rediculas but what is the spiritual condition of the house you will be visiting? Can you give thanks there?
Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to show them how to clean their house as well.
Commercial on tv from publix: thank everyone but God
Before we give thanks this year lets examine our houses and clean them up. Lets see to it that the water in the shampooer comes out clean and clear. Lets use a little elbow grease and some 409, unclutter your prayer life and sort things out and wash them clean. In other words, get your heart right so that you truly have something to be thankful for.
