When You Can’t Draw Near - Mark 7:1-13 Series

Mark 7:1 The Pharisees and some of the teachers of the law who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus and 2 saw 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. 4 When 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.) 5 So 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?” 6 He 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. 7 They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.’ 8 You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men.” 9 And he said to them: “You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions! 10 For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.’ 11 But 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), 12 then you no longer let him do anything for his father or mother. 13 Thus you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And you do many things like that.”

Introduction

Hearts Far from God

Let me start by asking you the most important two questions you can ever ask yourself at any given moment. What is the proximity of your heart to God right now? Close? Or far? The second question is even more important. How did you come up with your answer to the first question? What kinds of evidences make you think you’re close or far from God? What measure do you use to gauge your closeness to God?

We’re picking up our study of the gospel of Mark and we come tonight to ch.7. The crux of the whole first half of this chapter is right there in v.6, where it says, their hearts are far from me. There are only two directions you can go in life. You can draw near to God or you can wander far from God, and everything you do in life matters only inasmuch as it accomplishes one of those two things. And everything you do in life does accomplish one of those two things. There is no staying still. You are always either drawing nearer or wandering farther.

And the farther you wander from God, the more worthless your life becomes. Look at v.7. …they worship me in vain. Their worship—their efforts to honor God, were a total waste of time. The farther your heart moves from God the more worthless your worship becomes. And if your worship is worthless, your life is worthless. Anything that has no value to God has no value at all.

So there’s nothing worse than being far from God. For those of us who know God, distance between us and him is our greatest fear—whether it be because we moved away from him or because he withdrew from us. The psalmists would cry out, “Do not be far from me, O Lord!” (Psalm 35:22) Why? Because they knew that moving your heart far from God is like moving a plant away from sunlight. It dies.

Psalm 73:28 The nearness of God is my good.

Psalm 65:4 Blessed are those you choose and bring near … We are filled with the good things of your house.

In Psalm 145:18-20 says when the LORD is near to you, he fulfils your desires, he hears your cry and saves you when you’re in trouble, and he watches over you.

So Jesus is giving these scribes and Pharisees the most horrific diagnosis possible. This is worse than your doctor saying, “I’m sorry, you have two weeks to live.” Jesus tells them, “Your hearts are far from God and your worship is a total waste of time.” That is astonishing because no one in Israel was more devoted to worshipping the true God and drawing near to him. Every moment of their day was devoted to that and no one went to greater extremes in that pursuit than they did. And that explains what would otherwise seem very strange in the first paragraph of mark 7. Let’s take it from the top—v.1.