Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23 Just Keep It Clean
Last week just read it today just keep it clean, or is Jesus trying to get our attention. This people honors me with their lips but their hearts are far from me;7 in vain do they worship me,? teaching human precepts as doctrines.’8 “You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.”
1. We must wash our hands. Have You Washed Your Hands? Keep it clean
• Wash your hands Gerald after been outside coming in to eat
• Wash your hands after visitation in hospitals, nursing homes.
• William Osler, was one of the founders of Johns Hopkins Hospital who is sometimes called the “Father of Modern Medicine,” said, “Soap and water and common sense are the best disinfectants.”Soap kills germs, dirt, grime, oil, Soap keeps our skin healthy, Soap avoids food born illnesses, and prevents infection
2. It’s important to keep it clean. Its is common sense, We need to keep it clean. but do the Pharisees have it right? And Jesus have it wrong?
• At first thought it would seem the Pharisees have it right and Jesus has it wrong.
• First, Did the Pharisees have it right: The Pharisees “noticed that some of his [Jesus’] disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them.” They understood the importance of washing one’s hands.
• Who were the Pharisees anyway? They strongly believed in Torah or law, there were 6000 of them in Jesus day. Josephus (c.?37 – c.?100 CE).[3] He claimed that the Pharisees' influence over the common people was so great that anything they said against the king or the high priest was believed,
• What Jesus had wrong — or so it would seem: “There is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.”
3. Is Jesus clueless about cleanliness, the most effective way to avoid colds and flu is to rigorously wash one’s hands?
• Notice signs in public restrooms, particularly in restaurants, reminding that employees are required by state law to wash their hands after using the bathroom.
• Remember that before eating supper, your mother always asked you if you had washed your hands. You say yes. Then she would say With soap?
4. Pharisees want to keep it outwardly clean
• The Pharisees thought that if their hands were clean, they were clean.
• if they did everything that tradition and the Mosiac law required, God would consider them righteous.
• If we wear the right garb we’re good The Pharisees were motivated by self-righteousness and they strapped a scripture-containing case to their left arm and, at times, bound one to their forehead. In addition, the Pharisees not only wore fringes on their garments, as directed in the Law, but also lengthened the fringes so that they were more visible. —Nu 15:38; Mt 23:5
• If we pray the right way we’re fine
• If we do the right things like the Pharisee compared to the publican Jesus said that man went down justified 11 The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’
• 13 “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’
• 14 “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
• Jesus idea is to keep it clean, on the inside, keep the heart clean Jesus said, its “Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man.”
• Jesus says it isn’t a question of the hand but of the heart.
• If one’s heart is pure, then one’s hands will be pure also. David prayed: Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me.
• What defiles is that which comes from within us, from our hearts, from our very essence and nature.
5. Jesus wants us to keep it clean
• He said people honor me with their lips but their heart is far from me
• It’s not what goes in that defiles a man but what cometh out
• What comes out should be goodness, kindness, encouragement, non-judgement mentality,
6. We can keep it clean by taking a Spiritual Bath. Bath me in the blood and wash me
• If we have dabbling in sin then we’re dirty and need cleansed in the blood.
• We think we’re flawed and that’s okay; and we make excuses for our behavior. We need to just keep it clean
• How will we Keep it clean? do the right thing — the moral thing,
• Here is some soap that will keep us Clean
• Bath me in Joy, Soak in Peace, saturate yourself in Longsuffering, flood yourself in kindness, Be washed in Faithfulness, like calgon take me away in gentleness, wash me in self-control, and Bath me in love of God over and over again.
