THE AUDIENCE WAS A CHRISTIAN DRUG & ALOHOL PROGRAM.
IT HELPS TO USE POWER POINT WITH THIS INTRODUCTION (PICTURES OF THE SHIP ARE ON GOOGLE IMAGES).
Commissioned in 1936, the RMS Queen Mary was the most awe-inspiring ocean-going vessel in the world. She was over 1,000 feet long, and weighted over 81,000 tons, which was twice the weight of the Titanic. The ship carried about 2,000 passengers and housed a crew of about 1,200. Transformed from a luxury liner to a troop transport in World War II she carried almost 800,000 members of the military to and from the European war zones. The Queen Mary was retired from regular passenger service in 1967 after making 1,001 Atlantic Ocean crossings, and is presently harbored in the port of Long Beach, California. Even today the ship’s magnificence is like none other. But when the Queen Mary was retired from active passenger service, it was discovered that part of her gleaming exterior was hiding something far less attractive.
The Queen Mary’s three oval shaped smoke stacks, which were 36 feel long, 23 feet wide, and ranging from 70 down to 62 feet in height, were made of sheets of steel over an inch thick. During her decades of service, at least 30 coats of paint had been applied to the massive smokestacks, forming a shell around the steel interior. But when the smokestacks were removed for maintenance after her decommissioning, it was discovered that they were nothing but shells. When lifted off the liner and placed on the docks, they crumbled! Over the years, the thick steel of which they had been made had turned to rust from long exposure to heat and moisture. The beautiful exteriors of the smokestacks revealed a rusty, crumbly interior that spoke not of beauty and elegance but of deterioration and decay. The ships beautiful external appearance was hiding the internal reality that it had deteriorated to nothing.
It’s funny how people can appear one way, but in reality, they are not really the person you perceive them to be. Like the Queen Mary, people can seem like they have it altogether on the outside, but on the inside, they are falling apart.
At times Jesus encountered similar situations when He would come face to face with the Pharisees. The Pharisees lived life is such away that they became like the Queen Mary’s smokestacks, which were gleaming on the outside, but rusty and dirty on the inside.
Jesus called the Pharisees, hypocrites. They were like bowls that were polished until they shined on the outside, but on the inside, they were as dirty as the dishes in my sink and that can be pretty dirty at times. They were like the tombs outside the city wall that camouflaged the resting places of dead people’s bones with coats of bright whitewash, which was gleaming on the outside, but gruesome on the inside.
The Pharisees had built a fence around God’s Word where for them to keep their external appearances was more important for them then to obey the teachings of Christ. This became a huge problem during Jesus ministry. One scholar, noted that one of the most controversial sayings Jesus ever said is found in today’s text, which is Matthew 15:10-11: “Jesus called the crowd to him and said, Listen and understand. What goes into a man’s mouth does not make him ’unclean,’ but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him unclean.”
Jesus flipped the script and raised the bar, to answer the question. What makes a man clean? In the context of my passage, Jesus said it is not ceremonial cleansing, but moral purity. To give you an example of the importance of ceremonial cleansing, in those days, washing your hands before you ate was more important then obeying Jesus’ teachings. They washed there hands because they believed that if they did this before they ate, this act would make their food clean, but if they did not wash there hands before they ate, then they would be eating unclean food, which would make their whole body unclean. Jesus said this is not what makes a man unclean, but what makes a man unclean is what comes out of a man’s heart. We all know that drugs are not the problem, but are the symptoms of the problem because the real problem is that we have an unclean heart. Brothers, if you want to get your heart under control and moved from a state of defilement to purity, I want to ask you to listen carefully to this teaching. Just as this teaching was revolutionary over 2,000 years ago and in great need, so it is the same, today. With the world on a steady pace of becoming more de-moralized by the hour, Christians are called to raise the bar.
Here’s my purpose statement. Committing to a Godly standard of moral purity calls believers to live life from the perspective that purity is gained by protecting one’s internal appearance, and not by living through an external mask.
Jesus’ ministry was at a time when religious movements, such as the Pharisees did not necessarily hold the bible as the highest authority. The oral traditions began to get so extensive that they could not rely on the power of memory to keep them alive so they began to write them down. The Mishnah was birth from the need to record the oral traditions. The Mishnah is a book compiled of different sets of different Rabbis interpretations of the Law (First five books of the Bible). The Mishnah teaches that, “Greater stringency applies to the words of the Scribes than to the words of the Law.”
The Pharisees and the scribes taught and expected people to obey the oral traditions, before God’s word and Jesus’ teachings. The Pharisees and scribes approached Jesus for His disobedience to the oral traditions, but in reality this just gave Jesus the opportunity to introduce His teaching on the process of moral purity. Now that I set the scene, let me walk you through the process of purity that I believe, if lived out, has the power to bring morals back into our society.
1. Moral Purity is Not Experienced From the Outside In!
In the last few days, I’ve been going crazy trying to think of an illustration and I thought the best illustration would be our past lives. Remember, in the beginning of our addictions, we began to live double lives and we tried so hard to make it last. Because at those times people still trusted us. When people trust you, they trust who you are on the inside, but choosing to live the lifestyle we lived, we began to change who we were on the inside. Remembering trying so hard to keep people from our little secret that grew and grew into a huge catastrophe. In reality we were dying on the inside and still keeping up our appearance on the outside. The longer and harder we tried to keep the external illusion, the worse we became addicted, which led us to a life of criminal activity, but thank God it did not end there, but God in his sufficient grace saw fit, that we needed help and made a way for us to get to Teen Challenge (Teen Challenge is a Christians Drug & Alcohol Program).
The Pharisees and the scribes were so caught up in the external cleansing process and the authority of their teachings that they missed the Messiah who was right in front of their faces. In this verse, Jesus flips the script, on all Jews. He says, it is not what goes into a man’s mouth that makes him unclean. This meant that just becaue you ate food with unclean hands, that did not make you unclean. When Jesus said this, all Jews, including the discples where dumbfounded. They had to ask Jesus to expalin this over and over to the point that Jesus had to say, you of little faith. The history behind this was that in those days, the Rabbis adopted the “Eighteen Measures.” This was a practice that declared all Jews in a state of ritual uncleanliness. Every Jew would then have to undergo, what they called, Tebilah, which was a full body immersion. This was unpractical. The Rabbis then declared that to partake in this full body immersion was not necessary, but at the least it was mandatory to wash your hands. The disciples then are seen eating without washing their hands To a first century Pharisee this was a denial of their traditions and their law of not washing one’s hands, but it was more than just eating unclean food with unclean hands, but the fact that they were disobeying the oral traditions. The Pharisees for fun kept rules and rituals, so that their outward appearance would perceive to be clean, in order for men to praise them, but in reality they were filthy inside, where true defilement was occurring.
I want to tell you a story of my cousin, Jenna. She is 14 going on 24. She is a beautiful girl. She was selected to be a candidate for homecoming; she has tons of friends, and has everything she wants. Recently, she went to a counselor after getting in trouble multiple times where she expressed the fact that her self esteem was so low, she has contemplated suicide. How can that be? Her external appearance is up to par with the best of them. She is only 14, and already she is living life from disguising her pains in her outward appearance, when on the inside she is hurting. The world for so long has adopted the principle that if you can just look good enough have the right physical appearance and just have all the material things, and then you will be happy. That is wrong! The process of moral purity is not lived by keeping up appearance on the outside and neglecting the inside, but setting godly morals and values and living by them, which will give you the right inward appearance and then that will shine through your outward appearance.
The first six months I was here in the program, that was me, I was trying to hide behind a happy face when I was miserable inside. Brothers, that is bondage with a capital B. We come to TC for freedom, but I choose bondage. You know I was stressed out when; I was thinking if jail would be better then this place. One of the reasons I was miserable was because I lacked morals in life. I was unclean on the inside; by the standards I lived in my past and those that I was going to live by after I graduated. There was no question that I was not going to graduate because I was court mandated. I was just going through the program, instead of letting the program go through me. The change in my life came when I decided to surrender to God all my motives for the reasons why I was going to graduate TC and go drink, go to the bars and hook up with girls and all that mess that follows. I had to place Biblical principles in my life to bring order and peace in my heart and that is where true purity is experienced.
Your heart is a sea of emotions, and your will, is a boat on that sea, which you steer by the principles you choose to live by, you can either live by God’s standards, such as a life drug-free and alcohol free, which will sail your ship into the sunset or you can live by the worlds standards such as sex before marriage and “You can drink, its legal,” which will sail your ship into the storms where you will sink and hopefully by the grace of God make it to shore.
In essence, Jesus wants to convey the fact to us that maintaining the external appearance in itself is defilement because it does not focus on the heart. Because the heart is the true gauge, which will show us, if we have morals in our lives or not. Your heart will direct your life. So what are you feeding your hard? Is it the things of God or the things of this world?
2. Moral Purity is Experienced From the Inside Out!
In this passage, the primary truth that emerges is the principle that Christians are to switch gears from obtaining purity by external outward acts of the flesh to internal inward acts of the heart. Jesus was raising the bar, and going to new heights with His teaching of moral cleansing. He said, what can defile a person is what comes out of their mouth. This statement was just as foreign to his audience as it is to the world today.
The process to living morally pure can be experienced when you care for your heart as first priority. There are two ways into the heart and that is through the eye gate and the ear gate. Now when you come into any situation, such as watching TV, movies, useless conversation, waste of time hobbies, whatever it may be, you have the choice, to leave and protect your heart from getting infected with various different things such greed and sexual immorality, which can become our center focus in life and this mentality will become your treasure. Jesus says, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Your heart will follow what means most to you. Your heart is along for the ride, it has the capability to love God and reject God. The choice is up to you.
Also, we react from our hearts. Everything that you observe in life and take part in is filtered through your heart. Our hearts can become like spiritual garbage disposals, the more garbage you let in, and the more of a chance you have, of clogging your heart. Most of us heard the saying Garbage in and Garbage out. That is so true. If you surround your self with garbage you will produce garbage in your life. Life is made up of a serious of reactions. Now when you react, your heart is the brain of how you will respond to certain situations.
For instance, this summer, my girlfriend’s dad owns a transmission shop where one of the mechanics was hitting on my girl friend, now I could have acted out of a heart of flesh and beat him down. What would that have solved? The thing is that since I have been surrounded by positive situations, going to church, reading my word, godly people, I did not respond out of rage, I have to admit I was angry, the Bible does not say you cannot be angry, it says do not sin when you are angry, so I called him and we had a talk, and are still friends to this day. I hope you guys are hearing me because I have seen person after person, get held back here in TC, because when a certain situation went down, they responded out of a dirty heart and ended up getting held back. Keep your heart pure and your responses will be positive.
Living from the inside out can be difficult at times. This process goes against everything we ever learned in life. Life taught us to take care of the external and the outside before it taught us how to love and treat people from the inside. Think about it, we needed food to keep our bodies healthy before we ever felt the love of our mothers or whoever raised you. Especially, in divorced homes, as I was from, it was like we had to live in survival mode. I remember, my dad gave us the bare necessities, like food, clothes, etc, but where was the emotional side of growing up it was not there. My grandparents raised my brother and I, and they tried there hardest, but there is something about a mother’s love that cannot be replaced.
I want to use the relationship of a marriage to show you about this process of purity. Probably for the most of us, we are from divorced homes or know multiple people who are divorced. Now, lets think about his for a second. Did you ever ask yourself why is that? From what I have learned so far about this is that in life, we only know to how behave from what we are taught in life. Also, the majority of life is caught, not taught. Generations after generations go by, and divorce is gaining ground instead of losing ground. You know what the crazy part is that those marriages in the church are more likely to get divorced then the world. Thinks about it, if you grow up and all you see is your Dad neglecting your mom, beating her, working 80 hours a week, talking down to her, getting drunk and abusive, how are we suppose to respond, if that is what we have learned. If that is the only seed that was sown into you about how a marriage is suppose to function, then we are in trouble.
I am sure that everybody knows Jessica Simpson and that she got married to Nick Lachey. Well they are in the process of getting divorced. How can that be? They have all the money in the world, but they could not work it out. Did you know that her dad is a pastor? A marriage relationship is not solely built on love, but on a commitment. They both kept up their external appearances with the best of everything. Money, cars, houses, careers, but they could not make it work. A marriage can only last if it is maintained by working from the inside out. There are a lot of different components that go into a successful marriage, but almost all of the most important ones, the aspects that will make it last deal with the internal parts, such as love, respect, submission, honesty, trust, and not looks, money and diamonds. More time and effort needs to be put into heart of the marriage then anything else. This is the same with our lives; we need to be heart minded because the matter of the heart is the heart of the matter. Just as it takes a keen awareness of each spouse in marriage to make it successful, so it is the same with protecting your heart, we have to be aware of our surroundings because almost everything you do in life will either have a positive or negative impact on you.
The word, Paradigm, might be a new for some of you so I am going to define it first. A paradigm is a set pattern of thinking or a standard that somebody lives by. For instance, the Pharisees understood purity one-way, when Jesus was teaching a different way, so that is why we have conflict between them both. Jesus wanted them to change their mode of thinking from to be declared clean one must not be ceremonial clean, but morally clean.
In order to experience moral purity, we must also make a paradigm shift from living to please yourself by obeying what man says, to living to please God by obeying what His Word says. The world is only concerned with what you have to offer, when God is concerned with how you are doing? That in itself tells me that living by God’s standards will help me experience moral purity. Living out the paradigm shift cannot be done by only protecting the mouth gate, but can be achieved by the protection of the heart gate as well.
Living a life from the perspective of moral purity is foreign to the world, but customary to God. This passage reveals to us that we need to safeguard every area, both the eye gate and the ear gate, which will prevent the mouth gate from responding from the heart gate in defilement. Here Jesus teaches us the blueprint for the process of purity. It is not necessarily keeping the outward appearance, by looking good in the face of the public, as much as it is living life from a pure heart. The process of purity can only be experienced when you place your heart in God’s hands and let him be your filter. Before you watch a movie, think, WWJD, before you go out with those friends, you know the one’s I am talking about, think WWJD, before you start a relationship with that girl, thinks Would Jesus approve of this, before you respond in any kind type of situation, think WWJ SAY. Make Christ your treasure and your heart will follow His lead. Jesus will take you places in life that you have never dreamed you can get to, all you have to do is be obedient.
Remember, Abraham and Isaac, Abraham put him self out there, He was obedient and God provided the lamb, When God guides he will provide and that does not have to be financially, but can be spiritually as well.
The fact is that the Pharisees and scribes missed Christ for a tradition that blinded them from seeing the Savior of the world. Now if we are to live in such a way that we cannot see Christ in our traditions and morals, a re-evaluation must take place, in order to check our motives and make sure they line up with what God says, because God sees the heart. Now when He sees your heart what does He see?
In conclusion, one of the most famous ideas the philosopher Plato thought of is the cave analogy. Basically, it is based an idea that from birth, humans lived in a cave. Where, they were chained to the wall and only can see directly in front of them. Because of a fire that was behind them, they saw the shadows of the men passing by doing various different things. Now if this person were to be released into the world, Plato said, the shadows he saw in the cave would be more of a reality to him then the people he began to see outside the cave. His reality would be based on a false perception that he had developed of the world because all he knew was the cave. The man in the cave does not know what true reality is; he is like today’s world, which does not know what moral purity is. What if the reason the world lacks morals is because they do not know any better due to the fact that they do not see enough people living life by godly morals?
Future graduates of Teen Challenge, we need to raise the bar in our lives. A lot of us have heard this verse before, but how many of us are living it out? Remember, the world is watching our every move. Jesus was saying that in order to be declared clean, we must be morally clean. The process of purity is not experienced from the outside in, but from the inside out. We can get so caught up in the outward appearance that we lose sight of our inward appearance. Just think, how much time it takes to get ready in the morning, imagine if we spent half that time making our hearts ready for the day. I am not saying that over night the world will be affected, but sooner or later it would become contagious. We must both set the standard and also make a conscience effort to live by it, so that our lives do not just be make lip service to God, but do Him a heart service in return for all He did for us. Just look at the cross and tell me that we do not owe Him that. And you know what that is just our reasonable service of worship to Him. Today is the day to make the paradigm shift in your life from living life from ritual to ritual to moral to purity.
