"True Purity: Inside Out" | Mark 7:1-30 | The Gospel of Mark Series | Hillside Baptist Church

You've heard it said that cleanliness is next to godliness.

Anybody remember hearing that growing up?

John Wesley, founder of the Methodist Church, once wrote a sermon back in 1791 where he stated, cleanliness is indeed next to godliness.

Some scholars claim that this phrase can be traced back to the Talmud, which is a central text for rabbinic Judaism.

We even see this principle emphasized in Islam, which requires ritual washing before prayer.

Even Francis Bacon, the father of empiricism, who helped give us the scientific method, said cleanness of body was ever deemed to proceed from a due reverence to God.

There's no doubt about it.

This is a popular phrase and concept, but is it biblical?

In other words, does the Bible actually teach this?

We often hear phrases that sound biblical.

God helps those who help themselves.

God will never give you more than you can handle.

Money is the root of all evil.

This too shall pass.

To thine own self be true.

While they may sound biblical, they aren't found anywhere in Scripture.

And so we return to this concept of cleanliness is next to godliness.

Our passage today has a lot to say about cleanliness and godliness, but let's make sure we don't jump to conclusions.

So if you have your Bibles with you this morning, we will continue our study in the Gospel of Mark, picking up in chapter seven.

Let's go before the Lord in prayer.

Oh Father in heaven, we thank you for your word.

We thank you that you have made yourself known to us through creation, through your son Jesus, and through your word.

We ask for your help this morning that we would seek after you through this passage today, that you would give us eyes to see and ears to hear and hearts that respond in faith.

Pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Last week we looked at Jesus feeding the five thousand plus, walking on water, and continuing to heal people, revealing himself to be Yahweh, the same God of the Old Testament, who fed the Israelites in the wilderness and walked by Moses in glory.

We left off with Jesus healing many people in the marketplace, a place where people gathered for various business and social purposes.

And so we continue with chapter seven, verse one.

And the Pharisees and some of the scribes gathered around him when they had come from Jerusalem, and had seen that some of his disciples were eating their bread with defiled hands, that is, unwashed.

For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they carefully wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders.

And when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash themselves, and there are many other things which they have received in order to observe, such as the washing of cups and pitchers and copper pots.

And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat their bread with defiled hands?

And he said to them, Rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you, hypocrites, as it is written, This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far away from me.

But in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commands of men, leaving the commandment of God, you hold to the tradition of men.

And he was also saying to them, You are good at setting aside the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition.

For Moses said, Honor your father and your mother, and he who speaks evil of father or mother is to be put to death.

But you say, If a man says to his father or his mother, Whatever you might benefit from me is Corbin, that is to say, given to God.

You no longer leave him to do anything for his father or his mother, thus invalidating the word of God by your tradition, which you have handed down, and you do many things such as that.

Anytime the religious leaders of Jesus' day are introduced in the passage, we can already anticipate a conflict.

Jesus is with his disciples, and they're being questioned by the Pharisees and the scribes as to why he wasn't enforcing the traditions of the elders that had to do with washing their hands and cookware before eating.

And to be clear, this is not really about germs or personal hygiene, rather, this had to do with ceremonial cleansing, going back to God's commandment to Aaron and his sons as Levitical priests.

Context is key, especially for biblical interpretation.

So let's look at where the Pharisees were getting this from in Scripture.

Exodus thirty, seventeen through twenty-one.

And Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying, You shall also make a labor of bronze, with its stand of bronze, for washing, and you shall put it between the tent of meeting and the altar, and you shall put water in it.

And Aaron and his sons shall wash their hands and their feet from it.

When they come into the tent of meeting, they shall wash with water, so that they will not die.

Or when they approach the altar to minister by offering up in smoke a fire sacrifice to Yahweh.

So they shall wash their hands and their feet, so that they will not die, and it shall be a perpetual statute for them for Aaron and his seed throughout their generations.

The Pharisees had developed a tradition based on this command that was given to Aaron and his sons to obey as Levitical priests, making sacrifices at the altar, and they were enforcing this upon all Jews for everyday eating.

This tradition was developed over the course of many years by religious leaders to extend this command beyond its original context and purposes.

It was believed that in addition to the written words of the law, Moses received instructions for its interpretation and application.

And so the Pharisees and the scribes were operating based on what they believed to be special knowledge.

The tradition of the elders became just as authoritative as the original command itself, which is why the Pharisees and the scribes were accusing Jesus and his disciples for not following this tradition.

And since they were in the marketplace, it would be easy to come into contact with what was considered profane and unclean.

And to the Pharisees and scribes, Jesus and his disciples were eating with hands that were ceremonial unclean, and it was treated as sin, which was why they were offended.

And just so you can have a better understanding of this particular tradition of the elders that we're talking about, it required someone pouring water out of a jar onto another's hands whose fingers must be pointing up.

And as long as the water dripped off at the wrist, the person could then proceed to the next step.

He then had water poured over both hands with his fingers pointing down, then each hand had to be rubbed with the fist of the other hand to get any remaining water off.

Seems like a lot, right?

Imagine having to do that every single time that you had to eat.

And if you didn't do it, or you didn't do it just right, you'd be treated as a heathen.

And how does Jesus respond?

He accuses them back.

He says that Isaiah rightly prophesied about them, that they were hypocrites.

This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far away from me.

But in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commands of men.

This comes straight from Isaiah 29, 13.

Jesus goes from defendant to prosecutor in the blink of an eye.

And as we see in verses eight and nine, leaving the commandment of God, you hold to the tradition of men.

And he was also saying to them, You are good at setting aside the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition.

This is a harsh indictment.

And we aren't finished.

But you say, if a man says to his father or his mother, whatever you might benefit from me is Corbin, that is to say, given to God, you no longer leave him to do anything for his father or his mother.

At the center of this, you're probably wondering what this whole Corbin thing is all about.

Once again, our author Mark explains it to us, Gentiles, who don't understand the meaning of the Hebrew term.

As Mark states, that is to say, given to God, Corbin is a gift or sacrifice of money or goods that a person vows to dedicate specifically to God.

That means any money or goods that would normally be used to support the welfare of parents can only be used for sacred purposes.

And so if a son became angry with his parents, he could just declare his money and his property to be Corbin.

And since Scripture teaches that any vow made to God can't be violated, his possessions can't be used to support his parents.

God warns us not to make such oaths.

And yet we see the Pharisees and scribes use an oath as justification for their invalidation of God's command to honor your father and your mother, which would include supporting them with money and goods.

Do you see how twisted this is?

Rather than care for their parents in obedience to God, they think that they can just cheat the system by declaring Corbin to get around it.

They deny their own parents and try to appear holy and righteous by making gifts to God.

But make no mistake, God is not fooled, and he sees right through this, and such gifts are detestable in his sight.

They aren't truly for him, because if that was the case, and the intention was to please him, they would have obeyed his commands in the first place.

And let's remember what the Apostle Paul says in Ephesians 6, 1 through 3.

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.

Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with a promise, so that it may be well with you, and that you may live long in the land.

This is God's design for how children are to relate to their parents.

It's even the first of the Ten Commandments that has to do with governing human relationships.

This command is foundational for society and human flourishing.

And honoring your father and mother involves action and attitude, reflecting both outwardly and inwardly.

And don't get me wrong, sometimes parents are awful, abusive, dangerous to children's welfare.

And while God calls us to love our enemies, he is compassionate to those who are afflicted and brokenhearted.

Honoring your father and mother in those cases looks different.

But that's a stark contrast to what the Pharisees and scribes were seeking to do through their Corbin tradition.

What they were doing was a reflection of their heart posture.

They had no desire to honor their father and mother.

They only cared about outward appearances, and their hearts were filled with all kinds of evil.

And Jesus calls them out for their hypocrisy, and he condemns this practice of Corbin.

He rightly asserts that they were guilty of canceling out God's word through their man-made tradition.

And this Corbin thing is just the tip of the iceberg.

Jesus goes on to say in verse 13, and you do many things such as that.

The Pharisees and scribes had a whole catalog of man-made traditions that they enforced above and beyond God's commands.

And they were blind to even see their own disobedience to God.

They truly believed that what they were doing was righteous and good.

And let that be a sobering reminder to us all.

Empty ritualism doesn't bring us any closer to God.

Living in New England, many of us come from a Roman Catholic background.

I remember having lots of friends who made their confirmation, but to them, it was more of a formality, just something that their families did, a tradition.

It didn't require any real heart change, just a willingness to take some classes and perform a rite.

And then I learned that Roman Catholics pray to Mary and other saints.

If prayer is an act of worship and only God can receive our prayers, how is this not idolatry?

Why do they insist upon going through any other mediator than Jesus Christ Himself?

I had lots of questions and never any satisfactory answers.

But what I learned after becoming a Christian in college was that much of my childhood experience with Roman Catholicism wasn't based on what the Bible says, but based on man-made traditions that developed over the course of many years.

And there are a lot of Catholics who do these things because they truly believe that they're supposed to do them in order to be acceptable to God.

They make sure to go to Mass and receive the Eucharist because they believe that their salvation depends upon it, amongst other things.

It's often well-meaning, but unfortunately, it's not much different than the traditions of the elders that we see from the Pharisees and the scribes in our passage today.

And for some people in the Roman Catholic Church, they look down upon those who do not partake in their traditions.

They are viewed as less spiritual or not really part of the church.

There is this sense of self-righteousness that develops for keeping these sacraments.

And this isn't just in the Roman Catholic Church.

We have our own versions of it in the Protestant churches as well.

So let it be a reminder to us all that our hearts are deceptive.

We often do things that we think are good, but hidden in the depths of our hearts are sinful motives.

We like to pick and choose which commands of God that will follow and insert our own traditions to try and fill in the gaps.

But the problem is that God requires obedience to all of his commands and has no regard for our man-made traditions.

Let's continue with verses 14 through 23.

And after he called the crowd to him again, he began saying to them, Listen to me, all of you, and understand, there is nothing outside the man which can defile him if it goes into him, but the things which proceed out of the man are what defile the man.

And if any one has ears to hear, let him hear.

And when he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples were asking him about the parable.

And he said to them, Are you lacking understanding in this way as well?

Do you not understand that whatever goes into the man from outside cannot defile him, because it does not go into his heart, but into his stomach, and goes to the sewer?

Thus he declared all foods clean.

And he was saying, That which proceeds out of the man, that is what defiles the man.

For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed the evil thoughts, sexual immoralities, thefts, murders, adulteries, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness.

All these evil things proceed from within and defile the man.

Jesus redirects his attention to the crowd to make a point.

He talked to a Jewish audience that is well aware of God's commands for them to be a holy people who are set apart from the other nations.

They ate differently, they dressed differently, they worship differently, and that was the point.

Jews were supposed to look and act differently than non-Jews, and yet Jesus has to clarify what is most important when it comes to purity in the eyes of God.

Even his own disciples are confused and need further explanation.

They still don't understand.

And so Jesus explains that moral purity and impurity are matters of the heart.

He not only declares all foods clean, something that was radical to the disciples who, as Jews, kept kosher, but also declares that God cares more about matters of the heart than outward actions made to look like holiness.

They are to set apart their hearts for the Lord, not worry about washed hands and food.

You can be squeaky clean on the outside, but nastier than sewage on the inside.

The Pharisees and scribes went beyond the commands of God to cleanse themselves from outward threats of defilement, but they neglected the purity of their own hearts.

They became inwardly a rotten landfill.

And Jesus reveals that it's not what goes into a person that defiles them in the eyes of God, but rather the sin that comes from the inside, the heart.

And by heart, that is to say, the essence of the person.

So you can wash your hands, you can wash your feet, you can wash everything that you own, but what can wash away the stains of sin.

As Christians, we already know the answer to that, and we sang it earlier this morning.

Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

Apart from the intervening grace of God, we would be no better than these Pharisees and scribes.

We'd be even worse.

They were at least outwardly attentive to their actions in regards to God's commands.

But for many of us, apart from the work of the Holy Spirit, we would remain dead in our sin, and the works of the flesh would be evident in our lives.

And Jesus describes this in verses twenty-one through twenty-three.

For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed the evil thoughts, sexual immoralities, thefts, murders, adulteries, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness.

All these evil things proceed from within and defile the man.

This describes the human condition, whether we like to admit it or not.

We're all guilty of these sins.

And if you had to raise a finger for each of these listed sins that you've committed, you'd probably have to start counting on your toes as well.

And if you've committed even one of these sins, it's as if you've committed them all in the eyes of a holy.

And righteous God, who demands full obedience to his commands.

And if you think that's unfair, think again.

God made us, and therefore he gets to decide what's right and wrong, good from evil.

God is just, and he will have justice for the crimes that we've committed against him and against each other.

We'll either serve the punishment ourselves or trust in God's provision for us, the blood of his Son Jesus.

When Jesus was crucified on the cross, he was being offered as the perfect sacrifice for our sins.

Being fully God and fully man, there was nothing more precious than his blood.

He truly was a spotless lamb who was slain.

And the Apostle Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5 21, he made him, talking about Jesus, who knew no sin, to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

That's what God did for us, so that his justice would be satisfied and we could have peace with him.

There's no amount of good works or sacrifices that we can do to accomplish that.

Only Jesus makes it possible to have forgiveness of sin and peace with God.

He offers us eternal life through his death and resurrection to those who believe in him.

Jesus is the only one who is righteous.

We can either trust in his righteousness and be forgiven of our sin and granted eternal life, or we can try and trust in our own righteousness, like the Pharisees and the scribes, and be condemned for our sin, facing the eternal wrath of God.

But Romans 117 says, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, but the righteous will live by faith.

This faith comes from the work of the Holy Spirit, who gives us a new heart to replace our sinful, defective one.

As it is written in Ezekiel 36, 26, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you, and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

The only way that we can please God is through faith, which produces obedience and submission to his commands.

And that comes by way of a new heart empowered by the Holy Spirit.

With that new heart comes true obedience, and that true obedience is what pleases God.

And it's for that purpose that we are saved, for God's glory.

As it is written in Ephesians 2, 8 through 10, for by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, so that no one may boast, for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, so that we would walk in them.

As we see here, performing good works doesn't save us.

We're not saved because we made a confirmation, we're not saved because we receive the Eucharist, we're not saved because we confessed our sins to a priest, we're saved by God's grace alone, through faith in Christ alone, as revealed in Scripture alone, to the glory of God alone.

Amen.

We were made for good works, but we are to do them in the context of authentic faith in Jesus Christ alone, not trusting in our own righteousness, but in his, to live in submission to his commands, to demonstrate purity from the inside out.

Let's continue with verses twenty-four through thirty.

Now Jesus stood up and went away from there to the region of Tyre, and when he had entered a house, he was wanting no one to know of it, yet he could not escape notice.

But after hearing of him, a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately came and fell at his feet.

Now the woman was a Greek, of Cyrophoenician descent, and she kept asking him to cast the demon out of her daughter.

And he was saying to her, Let the children be satisfied first, for it is not good to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs.

But she answered and said to him, Yes, Lord, but even the dogs under the table feed on the children's crumbs.

And he said to her, Because of this answer, go, the demon has gone out of your daughter.

And going back to her home, she found the child lying on the bed, the demon having left.

There doesn't seem to be a single place that Jesus can go without somebody knowing about it.

Seems like deja vu, as another person falls to Jesus' feet, asking for his help to save an ailing daughter.

Only this time, it isn't a prominent Jewish man, but a Gentile woman.

Her daughter is possessed by a demon and she continues to plead with Jesus to save her.

And this whole exchange about the children's bread, the dogs, and the crumbs can only be understood in the context of Jews and Gentiles.

As God's chosen people and children, the Jews are represented as the recipients of his divine blessings and provision.

And while hostility existed between Jews and Gentiles, in which dogs was often a derogatory way to address Gentiles, the word used here requires some nuance.

Whereas the more offensive term used against Gentiles described mangy, vicious mongrels, this particular word refers to little dogs or pets.

A lot less derogatory and indicates that the dogs, that is, the Gentiles, had a place in the household of God, just not a prominent one.

And so when Jesus says, Let the children be satisfied first, for it is not good to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs, he's not being rude or derogatory.

Rather, he's simply describing God's plan for salvation.

As the Apostle Paul writes in Romans 1:16, for I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.

Romans 1:16

All along God had a plan for salvation that included both Jews and Gentiles.

But the Jews had first priority, which is why Jesus came with a message to his own people, and the Gentiles were to come in later, as we see through the work of the Apostle Paul.

This woman doesn't deny her status, but won't take no for an answer, no matter how polite Jesus is to her.

She plays into his dinner table metaphor and persists that even the dogs get the crumbs of the children.

As one commentator notes, this woman effectively counters Jesus' claim by asserting that the dogs eat crumbs during the meal for the children.

In other words, she claims to deserve the leftovers even now as the children are still being fed.

She even calls him Lord.

Outside of scripture citations in Jesus' own words, this is the only time that a human being addresses Jesus as Lord in the entire gospel of Mark.

Like the ex-demoniac back in chapter 5, this Gentile woman is an unlikely candidate to become one of Jesus' disciples.

She is a woman, a Gentile, and mother of a daughter who is possessed by an unclean spirit.

And here she is, gently going toe-to-toe with Jesus, not in rebellion, but in bold faith.

She knows and understands who Jesus is, and she goes to him as her only hope.

She demonstrates a level of faith that we have yet to see from any of Jesus' appointed disciples, and she ends up being rewarded for her faith.

Jesus casts the demon out of her daughter.

And what's remarkable is that he doesn't even have to be in the presence of her daughter.

He does it remotely.

And this is the only time that Jesus is said to have healed from a distance without any direct word or action.

It's like telemedicine, but better.

And this gentile woman's response is telling of her faith.

She has no trouble believing the word of Jesus and obeying.

She takes him at his word, unlike most others that we see in Mark's gospel, especially the twelfth.

Though externally she is unclean as a Gentile woman in every respect to the Pharisaical Jew, inwardly, she demonstrates moral purity acceptable to God through her faith in Jesus.

She has the authentic faith of a true disciple, and she represents God's plan for salvation that extends even to the Gentiles as well.

Cleanliness is next to godliness.

Is that biblically true?

I guess that depends on how we define terms.

If by cleanliness we mean personal hygiene or ritual washing, we now know that doesn't actually make us any more righteous or pure in the eyes of God.

It's not what goes into the person from the outside that defiles us, but rather the sin that pervades our hearts and comes out from within us.

God cares a lot more about what's in our hearts.

And if by godliness we mean conformity to man-made traditions and external appearances, we are like a porta potty that's never been cleaned except for a pressure wash on the outside.

It may look good on the outside, but the closer you get to what's inside, the more you realize how much it stinks.

And while we can fool other people, we can't fool God with false piety and hypocrisy.

He rejects those who do not worship him in their hearts.

My hope for our church is that we would be on guard against legalism.

It's not just a problem in the Roman Catholic Church.

We are susceptible to it as well.

It comes to us in the form of cultural expectations that we implicitly enforce as if the Bible itself commanded it.

Anytime that we go beyond what Scripture says, we are at risk of legalism.

The Bible tells us to dress modestly, but it doesn't say how long skirts need to be or that women have to wear dresses.

The Bible tells us that drunkenness is a sin, but it doesn't say that drinking alcohol is a sin.

The same is true about money.

The Bible tells us that the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil, not money itself.

Look, I've even witnessed churches that look down upon other members and treat them as less spiritual because they didn't attend on Sunday evenings in addition to Sunday mornings.

That's not necessarily a reflection on the church itself, but that there are people within the church who give in to legalistic tendencies.

I have to resist it myself as a pastor when I interact with brothers and sisters in Christ from other denominations who believe things that I strongly disagree with as a Reformed Baptist with postmillennial leanings.

It's okay to have strong convictions, but we just need to be careful that we're not enforcing those convictions as sin issues if the Bible doesn't explicitly address them as sin issues.

And that requires the daily work of the Holy Spirit in our lives to sanctify us and make us more like Jesus Christ each day.

Humility and submission to God reflects godliness, not empty ritualism.

True purity and righteousness are matters of the heart where faith leads to obedience.

Let's pray.

Father in heaven, we confess to you that we often believe ourselves to be righteous in our own eyes, or that somehow we have earned your blessings because of any good that we have done.

God, would you break down our self-righteousness, our pride, our self-reliance?

And would you continue to sanctify us and make us more like your son Jesus, who is the perfect model of humility.

God, I pray that you would equip our church to be faithful to your commands.

We know this comes only through the power of your Holy Spirit.

It's in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.