#30 The Problem Is the Heart
Series: Mark
Chuck Sligh
October 13, 2020
The Pharisees and scribes were all wrapped up in rules and externals. In Mark 7:1-23, Jesus taught that what pleases Him most is worship from the HEART.
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TEXT: Mark 7-1-23 – "Then came together unto him the Pharisees, and certain of the scribes, which came from Jerusalem. 2 And when they saw some of his disciples eat bread with defiled, that is to say, with unwashen, hands, they found fault. 3 For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, except they wash their hands oft, eat not, holding the tradition of the elders. 4 And when they come from the market, except they wash, they eat not. And many other things there be, which they have received to hold, as the washing of cups, and pots, brasen vessels, and of tables. 5 Then the Pharisees and scribes asked him, Why walk not thy disciples according to the tradition of the elders, but eat bread with unwashen hands? 6 He answered and said unto them, Well hath Esaias prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. 7 Howbeit in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. 8 For laying aside the commandment of God, ye hold the tradition of men, as the washing of pots and cups: and many other such like things ye do. 9 And he said unto them, Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition. 10 For Moses said, Honour thy father and thy mother; and, Whoso curseth father or mother, let him die the death: 11 But ye say, If a man shall say to his father or mother, It is Corban, that is to say, a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me; he shall be free. 12 And ye suffer him no more to do ought for his father or his mother; 13 Making the word of God of none effect through your tradition, which ye have delivered: and many such like things do ye. 14 And when he had called all the people unto him, he said unto them, Hearken unto me every one of you, and understand: 15 There is nothing from without a man, that entering into him can defile him: but the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man. 16 If any man have ears to hear, let him hear. 17 And when he was entered into the house from the people, his disciples asked him concerning the parable. 18 And he saith unto them, Are ye so without understanding also? Do ye not perceive, that whatsoever thing from without entereth into the man, it cannot defile him; 19 Because it entereth not into his heart, but into the belly, and goeth out into the draught, purging all meats? 20 And he said, That which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man. 21 For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, 22 Thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: 23 All these evil things come from within, and defile the man. "
INTRODUCTION
Illus. – One day a teenage girl noticed that her mother was cutting off the ends of a pot roast she was putting in the oven to cook for dinner. This seemed odd to her because there was more than enough room in the pot for the whole roast, so she asked her mom why she cut off the ends.
Her mother replied, “I don’t know. It’s just what my mom always did.”
Determined to find the answer to this mystery, she asked her grandmother who said, “I don’t know either. My mother just always did it that way, so I did too.”
So she went to her great-grandmother to ask the reason she cut the ends off and she said, “Well, we had very small ovens in those days and the pot roast didn’t fit in the oven unless I cut the ends off.”
Sometimes we do simply things because, well, that’s the way it’s always been done.
Today’s message is about traditions. Now traditions in and of themselves are not wrong. Sometimes they can be as harmless as cutting off the ends of a pot roast. But in the religious realm, they can cause us to end up defending a tradition at the expense of what following God is really all about.
In Mark 7:1-23 Jesus was confronted by a group of Jewish legalists because His disciples didn’t follow Jewish extra-biblical rules, and in His reply, Jesus laid down one of the most important markers of the Christian faith that was to reverberate throughout history.
Let’s look at it.
I. IN VERSES 1-5, JESUS IS ATTACKED BY LEGALISTS – “Then the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem came together to him. 2 And when they saw some of his disciples eat bread with defiled hand, that is to say, with unwashed, hands, they found fault. 3 (For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands carefully, holding the tradition of the elders. 4 And when they come from the market, unless they wash, they do not eat. And there are many other traditions…they have received…, such as the washing of cups and pitchers, copper vessels, and tables.) 5 Then the Pharisees and scribes asked him, ‘Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat bread with unwashed hands?’”
The Pharisees and scribes were what are called “legalists”—people who meticulously kept man-made rules in order to keep them from breaking God’s Law given to Moses. This isn’t the first time Jesus was accosted by the legalists. They reared their ugly heads over the disciples picking grain on the Sabbath in Mark 2 and again over Jesus healing on the Sabbath in Mark 3.
This all seems strange to us 2,000 years later, but this was a big deal in Jesus’ day. What was all the hullabaloo about? The legalists were fence makers. The Mishnah, a collection of Jewish oral laws says, “Tradition is a fence around the Law.” They built up fences around behavior to make sure people kept God’s laws. The original idea made sense: It’s wise for us to set some limits on our behavior on things not clear in Scripture to help keep us from sinning and disobeying God. But over time, the rules became burdensome to the point of absurdity.
In his commentary on Mark, R. Kent Hughes gives some examples of some of the Mishnah rules regulating behavior on the Sabbath:
“For example, looking in the mirror was forbidden, because if you looked into the mirror on the Sabbath day and saw a gray hair, you might be tempted to pull it out and thus perform work on the Sabbath. You also could not wear your false teeth; if they fell out, you would have to pick them up and you would be working. In regard to carrying a burden, you could not carry a handkerchief on the Sabbath, but you could wear a handkerchief. That meant if you were upstairs and wanted to take the handkerchief downstairs, you would have to tie it around your neck, walk downstairs, and untie it. Then you could blow your nose downstairs!
“The rabbis debated about a man with a wooden leg: if his home caught on fire, could he carry his wooden leg out of the house on the Sabbath? One could spit on the Sabbath, but you had to be careful where. If it landed on the dirt and you scuffed it with your sandal, you would be cultivating the soil and thus performing work.”
The Sabbath rules were just one issue to the legalists who wanted to fence the Law. The biggest issue in the Mishnah had to do with cleanness. It involved a lot of rules around washing hands and other articles. God’s Law only stipulated that the PRIESTS had to wash their hands, but the legalists made it mandatory for all Jews, just to make sure they didn’t slip up and transgress the Law, and they extended it to washing of all sorts of utensils, something the Law of God said nothing about.
Now, handwashing is a good practice, but with the Jews it was not just a good medical practice; handwashing and washing dishes and cups and pots and pans and other vessels was a matter of MORAL purity. To not do these things made these articles unclean in a religious sense in their eyes.
For example, washing after going to the marketplace was of special importance because at the market they might come into contact with Gentiles whom they deemed to be unclean, another thing the never stated or even implied in the Law of Moses. By the time of Jesus, so many aspects of everyday life were fenced and double-fenced, that the idea of inner purity of the heart had boiled down to a system of external washings. And what was so egregious was that the religious legalists placed these various and sundry rules as equal to, and even at times ABOVE, the Law of God. So the legalists asked Jesus in verse 5 why His disciples did not follow these rules.
II. IN VERSES 6-13 JESUS ANSWERS THEIR ATTACK.
In verses 6-7 Jesus replied by quoting Isaiah 29:13– “He answered and said to them, ‘Well has Isaiah prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘These people honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. 7 … in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.’”
This was a slap in the face of the religious legalists. First, He calls them hypocrites, not exactly the best way to win friends. Second, His quote from Isaiah was a condemnation from God of God’s people in Isaiah’s day, and Jesus applies it to these Pharisees. Then Jesus stated that their rules were merely man-made and no matter how well intentioned, they simply had no biblical authority.
Then in verses 9-13 Jesus gave them an example of what He was talking about—the tradition of “Corban.” – “And he said to them, ‘All too well you reject the commandment of God, that you may keep your own tradition. 10 For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother;’ and, ‘Whoever curses his father or mother, let him be put to death.’ 11 But you say, ‘If a man says to his father or mother, “whatever I have that would help you is Corban”’ (that is to say, given to God)… 12 then you no longer let him do anything for his father or his mother 13 making the word of God of no effect through your tradition, which you have handed down: and you do many things like that.’”
In the Ten Commandments and several other places in the Law of Moses, God clearly taught that a person was to honor his father and mother. This included the responsibility to provide adequate financial support and proper care for their parents in their old age. But the legalists invented a loophole called Corban in which someone could make a vow that all his possessions were given to God, meaning he could use all his funds for his own use, but everything would be donated to the Temple at his death. Thus, a person could directly break a commandment of God by not supporting his parents and feel he was doing good in the process by giving his wealth to the Temple!
This was a gross twisting of God’s view of His Law. It caused people who supposedly venerated God’s Law to actually transgress it! He says that twisting God’s truth like a pretzel this way made the Word of God of no effect—that is, nullifying or making void God’s Word with man’s rules.
III. AFTER ADDRESSING THE LEGALISTS, IN VERSES 14-16 JESUS BREAKS THE HOLD OF LEGALISM ONCE AND FOR ALL. – “And when he had called all the people to him, he said to them, ‘Hear me everyone…, and understand: 15 There is nothing that enters a man from outside which can defile him: but the things that come out of him, those are the things that defile the man. 16 If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.’”
William Barclay said that this one statement was “well-nigh the most revolutionary passage in the New Testament.” How radical this was to the Jews of that day is hard to understand for us today who have the lens of the New Testament to enlighten us. But this was absolutely mind-blowing to the Jews in Jesus’ day.
Peter was there that day when Jesus taught these truths, but it took him and the early church leaders years to grapple with its impact. Peter was dumbfounded when he fell into a trance in the book of Acts and God commanded him to eat unclean animals from a great sheet that was being let down, and true to form, he told God, “Not so, Lord.” When he woke up from the trance, there was a knock on the door and some servants of a Gentile man whose heart God had been preparing named Cornelius asked for Peter to come to him. Peter reluctantly went to his house and was shocked to see that God’s grace and Spirit fell on the Gentile Cornelius just as with the Jews on Pentecost.
Before this was finally hashed out in the New Testament church, it took two church councils to sort out the outworking of this principle, and later a confrontation between Peter and Paul over Peter lapsing back into his old legalistic ways.
IV. IN VERSES 17-23, JESUS EXPLAINS TO HIS DISCIPLES THE MEANING OF HIS TEACHINGS MORE FULLY.
As clear as Jesus was, His disciples couldn’t wrap their heads around what Jesus was teaching any more than the legalistic Pharisees and scribes could.
Verses 17-18a say, “And when he had entered into the house away from the people, his disciples asked him concerning the parable. 18 And he said to them, ‘Are you so lacking in understanding also?...”
They entered into a house away from the people and they asked Jesus for clarification of what He had taught.
Jesus chides them because of their spiritual dullness, as He often had to do.
Then beginning in the second part of verse 18, Jesus explained His teaching more fully.
First, He addressed what GOES INTO a person in verse 18b-19 – “Do you not understand that whatever enters a man from outside cannot defile him; 19 because it does not enter into his heart, but into his stomach, and then is eliminated, thus purifying all foods?”
Whatever goes into a person has no intrinsic moral quality to it. It doesn’t enter into a person’s heart (metaphorically the center of one’s innermost being) it only enters his stomach—and is eliminated. In other words, what goes INTO us does not affect us spiritually.
Then Jesus addressed what COMES FROM INSIDE a person in verses 20-23 – “And he said, ‘That which comes out of a man, is what defiles a man. 21 For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, 22 Thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, envy, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: 23 All these evil things come from within, and defile a man.’”
These sins are a virtual hornet’s nest of evil and tell us how Jesus viewed the heart of mankind apart from the grace of God in his life. Many believe that people are innately good at heart, but the Bible teaches that that we are inherently evil and were it not for controls erected by family and society, we would tend more towards evil than good. It is the evil in our hearts which defiles us, not unwashed foods, or unclean animals or a drink poured from an unwashed vessel, or a Gentile.
Jesus took the focus away from external rituals and objects or even people, like Gentiles, and placed it on the need for God to cleanse our evil hearts.
CONCLUSION
My commentaries point out that this is the longest “conflict speech” found in Mark’s Gospel.
The reason it is so long is that God, speaking by inspiration through Mark, wants to drive home that the main purpose of God’s Law is a matter of obedience from the heart not of external compliance to rituals and customs, and certainly not laws made by men.
In other words, uncleanness is not to be associated with external objects, but our inner attitudes towards God—with the condition of our hearts.
What does God want us to take away from this passage of Scripture?
First, you must realize your true sinfulness before you can claim God’s forgiveness. None of us are good people at heart. We’re not “breaking bad”; we’re born “bad to the bone.”
Illus. – Put a three-year-old toddler on the floor with a bag of candy and then let two or three other toddlers approach him and see what happens. Is he going to say, “Here, let me share my candy with you?” Nope, he’s going to grab it and say, “Mine!”
Illus. – You’ll never see a class in any school entitled “Lying 101.” Nobody has to teach us to lie. We lie naturally; we have to be TAUGHT to tell the truth. We’re sinful and because of our sin we are under God’s divine judgment unless we have availed ourselves of God’s grace provided by Jesus Christ.
Paul says in Romans 3:23 – “For all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God” – Even at our best, we ALL fall short of God’s glory and holiness.
A radical change of the human heart is what is needed. Doing good works, starting to obey God’s commandments, doing religious rituals, improving yourself and getting an education, being a better person—NONE of these things will wipe the stain of sin away from our hearts. There’s only one answer: You must be born again; you must be transformed from the inside out.
Jesus said, “Truly, truly I say to you, except a man is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” (John 3:3)
A person is born again, that is, born from above into God’s family, when he recognizes his sinful condition and comes to Jesus Christ in faith to save him. I invite you—no, I URGE you—to come to Jesus today.
There’s also an application for those of you who are already in Christ’s family today, and that is to be careful not to confuse man-made rules with God’s commands.
The Pharisees and the scribes are not the only ones who were followers of tradition. Legalistic adherence to man-made rules has plagued Christianity in every generation. Even our Bible-believing communities today are not immune from it. It’s at the root of many of the battles between believers and churches.
In many fundamentalist and evangelical churches when I was growing up, and still are in some circles today, there were rules requiring men to wear suits, rules against men wearing colored shirts, rules on the width of ties in church, rules forbidding listening to rock or country music, rules against women wearing pants or make-up or modern hairdos.
Those who set out to erect fences for the Jews did not originally mean to bind followers into practices that contradicted the Word of God. They were well-intentioned. They wanted people to follow them to enhance their worship of God.
But in the end, external rules always take precedence over an emphasis on the inner heart of a believer because you cannot see the heart of a person, but you can see if they comply with external rules. It leads people to focus on the externals at the expense of our inner heart condition.
Illus. – It reminds me of the story of a priest who was returning to his rectory after dark one evening. He was attacked by a robber who pulled a gun on him and demanded, “Give me your money or your life!”
As the priest reached his hand into his coat pocket, the robber saw his clergy collar and said: “I see you’re a priest. Never mind, you can go.”
The priest was relieved and surprised by the robber’s courtesy, so he offered the robber a candy bar that he remembered was in his pocket.
The robber replied, “No thank you, Father. I don’t eat candy during Lent.”
Such is the absurdity of legalism and traditionalism.
Jesus’ stand against man-made rules does not mean we can do anything we want. The fact is that we OUGHT to have some personal guardrails in our lives to help us avoid sinning, even if some of these things are not specifically forbidden in Scripture. There’s no command in God’s Word not to go by the rack of pornography in the store, but that would be a good guardrail in your life to protect yourself from the temptation to take a peek and lust. These are wise personal practices, but always remember what God says in 1 Samuel 16:7: “the LORD sees not as man sees; for man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.”
There are also battles within the church over church traditions.
Did you know that a lot of our practices, like Sunday School, Sunday evening services, Wednesday prayer meetings, music styles, song leaders leading a congregation in worship, worship teams, choirs, passing the plate for the offering—all of these things are ways to help us to fulfill the Great Commission and disciple people, but there’s not a one of them that is in the Bible. They were added to the church by good people to meet the needs of their times. They are, in their own way, traditions. But all of them are man-made practices and are not mandatory.
If something else comes along to better help us “do church,” there’s no reason to keep doing old traditions just because, “That’s the way it’s always been done.”
Years ago, a man who had been visiting our church for a few weeks with his wife sent me an email after we discontinued our Wednesday night services to start meeting in homegroups. We were sold that homegroups met all the needs of a Wednesday night service, plus added fellowship and community. But this guy wasn’t buying it. He wrote me this:
“With all due respect Brother Sligh, we are looking for a church/pastor that holds Wednesday night services at their church, has song services that include specials before the sermon. A traditional church is what we are looking for. To me there is nothing like a Wednesday night service where everyone is together for fellowship and prayer time.…”
Then he went on to say this: We want to “hold fast to the traditions” as stated in 2 Thessalonians 2:15 – “brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle.”
What he failed to realize is that none of the things he mentioned in his letter were traditions in Paul’s day when he wrote that verse. All the practices and methods of ministry I mentioned before and all the things he mentioned in his email are modern contrivances to meet the address the culture of their day in a point of time. As culture changes, we are called to reach our culture in new and creative ways so long as we do not compromise the message of the Gospel or the essential teachings of the Word of God.
This is what happened with our homegroups. We had gotten down to about 5 faithful souls on Wednesday nights. Participation in our small groups skyrocketed to 70-80 ever since! Different times demand different solutions. And not only did attendances rise over 12-fold, each of those homegroups required teachers, which multiplied the number of teachers who got valuable experience teaching and leading.
And that leads me to the other problem with his critique: the “traditions” Paul told the Thessalonians to hold on to were not practices and methods of ministry, but specifically referred to apostolic doctrine which had been passed down to Paul, and eventually became our New Testament. See, the key is not how we DO certain things to reach our culture, but what we place as the authority in our lives. And that was the essence of what Jesus was teaching in this passage. He was saying to them, “Man’s traditions can never trump God’s Word. Focus on MY WORD with an emphasis on having a true heart-love towards God. And most of all, focus on ME.”
