Jesus Picking a Fight - Mark: The Messy Gospel

How many of you have ever picked a fight?

Okay, I knew Jay would raise his hand.

Okay.

Some of you guys have picked a fight.

Any of you women ever picked a fight?

All right, good.

You know, picking a fight for the right purpose is not a bad thing.

Matter of fact, I would say to some of us that we probably need to pick more fights than we do.

Because there's a lot happening around us where we're very passive.

And it would, and it would be honoring to God sometimes if we took a stand on unrighteous things.

So Jesus is about to pick a fight in our passage tonight.

So turn in your Bibles to Mark chapter six, where we concluded last week.

And then we're going to move into chapter seven and watch Jesus pick a fight with the most popular and the most powerful religious leaders of his time.

So Jesus, we all have views maybe of the Pharisees and the scribes, like they're just kind of this stuck in the mud, religious crowd that just doesn't get it.

You got to understand, folks, these guys were so powerful and so significant in Israel and in Jerusalem at that time that the other large religious order, which was the Sadducees, actually, and listen to this, they actually had to change their religious practices to look like Pharisees or they wouldn't be accepted.

Because all of Israel followed the policies and the religion of the Pharisees.

So these guys are, these guys are the Nazis, you know, of Germany.

Jesus is about to pick a fight with them.

They control the religious order, ceremonial worship in the temple and even in the synagogues in the surrounding areas.

So I want you to look what Jesus is up to in Mark chapter 6.

Mark 6 · chapter mention

It's really important to understand the context.

Look at verse 56.

Wherever he entered, wherever he entered into villages, cities, or the country, they laid the sick in the marketplaces and begged him that they might just touch the hem of his garment, and as many as touched him were made well.

That's our context.

Jesus came to stir up and upset the status quo.

Wherever Christianity goes in its true biblical sense, it's revolutionary.

That the work of the Spirit of God always brings revolution.

Philosopher and Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart has written this stated in its most elementary and buoyantly positive form, my argument is that among all the many great transitions that have marked the evolution of Western civilization, only one, the triumph of Christianity, can be truly called a revolution.

A truly massive and epical revision of humanity's prevailing vision of reality.

Now, without going into a huge context of what Dr.

Hart is speaking of, he's saying this: that if you look at all of pagan culture, if you look at all of pagan religion before Christianity, the view of humankind, the view of politics, the view of slavery, the view of ethnic diversity, the view of women in particular is so revolutionized by Christianity.

That truly we could say of all the political, philosophical views throughout history, they truly weren't really revolutions.

They were just transitions from what we already believed.

But Christianity came and in a mercurial way just rocked the belief systems of the world at that time.

And so when Christianity comes into a pagan culture, when Christianity comes into a sinful culture, when Christianity comes into a place where it has not existed before, it revolutionizes that village, it revolutionizes that nation, it revolutionizes the culture.

And it revolutionizes a life.

When a person truly is born again, when a person truly gives their heart to Christ, it revolutionizes your heart.

That's the context.

So wherever Jesus is going, there's revolution in the air.

To the extent that people are bringing the sick and the demonized and prostitutes and tax collectors and people full of sin and they're getting, their world's getting rocked, they're getting healed, and their world is being turned right side up.

Now, part two.

Chapter seven.

Well, we gotta speak a little bit about the Pharisees and the scribes.

Josephus, the great Jewish historian, said this: the Pharisees were the most accurate exegetes of the law.

They were the conservative evangelicals of the time.

The root for Pharisee means separate.

They considered themselves the separate ones.

They separated themselves from others because they believed so strongly in purity, Sabbath observance, prayer, and tithing.

Essential to the Pharisees was the fact that they tried by obedience to the law to represent the purest of community, the true people of God, preparing for the coming of the Messiah.

So the Pharisees were preparing themselves to observance of purity laws, Sabbath observance, tithes, obedience, to be ready and pure, that they would be the ones that would first recognize and be with the Messiah.

The scribes and the Pharisees believed basically the same thing.

The difference was that the Pharisees were laymen.

They had not been to the scribal schooling and training that the scribes had been to, but they believed essentially the same.

The scribes were those who had studied under and graduated from the rabbinic law.

The scribes and the Pharisees perpetuated, and this is really important for our next verse, an oral tradition of laws handed down from the former teachers in history.

It was called the Halakha, the oral tradition.

How many of you come out of Roman Catholic backgrounds?

Okay.

You have in Roman Catholicism, much is said about tradition.

Well, for the Pharisees and the scribes, this is oral tradition.

It had not been written down for hundreds of years.

But we have this dialogue in our history of the Pharisees and the oral law of Shemai.

Shemmai is asked this question: how many Torah or how many Torahs, plural, do we have, meaning the Jewish people?

And he says, two, the written Torah and the Oral Torah.

By strictly following the Halakhah, this oral tradition, they believed they were following closely Leviticus 11:44.

Leviticus 11:44

Leviticus 11:44.

Leviticus 11:44

For I am the Lord your God, you shall therefore consecrate yourselves, and you shall be holy, for I am holy.

Neither shall you defile yourselves with any creeping thing, for that creeps upon the earth.

And so Josephus says that the Pharisees were the most influential religious and political leaders of the time.

You don't mess with the Pharisees without risk to your life.

You are committing political suicide.

You are committing religious suicide if you mess with the Pharisees.

They carried the day.

So this group of Jews, this group of leaders, holding closely to the written Torah, but even closer, some would say even more so the oral Torah, the Halakhah, follow what it says next.

Now, when they saw some of his disciples eat bread with defiled, that is, with unwashed hands.

Now every young person in this room is going, yes, this is the passage I've been waiting for.

Maybe my mom will quit bugging me about washing my hands.

They found fault, just like your mother.

For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands in a special way, holding the tradition of the elders, that's the halakha.

When they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash.

And there are many other things which they have received and hold, like the washing of cups, pitchers, copper vessels, and couches.

Then the Pharisees and the scribes ask him, Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat bread with unwashed hands?

The key word here is the last verse.

They do not walk, they do not walk according to the tradition of the elders.

The halak, halakhah, halak in the Hebrew there means to walk.

It means walking in the tradition of the elders.

So they're directly quoting from the halakhah.

You're not following the traditions of the church.

So he wasn't talking about not washing their hands before they ate.

He's speaking of how they washed their hands.

And so the tradition of the elders in the way of washing of hands was that you poured the, you poured the pitcher of water with fingers up.

So you first had to have your fingers up and the listen, and the water had to drop off at the wrist.

Okay?

All right.

So, kids, you hear that, all you that are in here, this is the way they used to do it.

You can practice when you get home.

But you go like this, and see, this is what's great about this for all of you guys is you can realize how easy you have it.

See how blessed you are.

It's grace, grace, grace, because all you have to do is just wash your hands any way you want.

But this is the way they had to do it.

So they did it here with fingers up like this.

It had to drip off, and then they turned them over like this, and then it was poured over them again.

And then the wet hands you scrubbed with the balled-up fist of the other.

It had to be done ceremonially, and obviously the disciples aren't doing it.

Jesus doesn't give a rip.

He couldn't care less about the Holocaust.

You know what makes this amazing to me is the context of verse 56 in the earlier chapter.

Look what is happening, folks.

Look what is happening.

We do the same thing today.

There are movements happening in our country today.

There's movements happening all over the world.

I mean, lives are being changed.

Lives are being transformed, and we nitpick that they do it this way or they believe slightly that way.

And we lose all perspective, don't we, on what God is doing in the kingdom.

So Jesus is about to pick a fight.

Now, Jesus, I think here, when you look at his circumstance, Jesus could have avoided this.

He could have asked a question back.

Typically, actually, when Jesus was dealing with the Pharisees, if they asked him a question, he asked a question back.

And he kind of put them on the spot.

He actually comes out with a statement here.

This is not good.

You do not want to say this to some Pharisees who come all the way from Jerusalem.

I mean, they're staying at the Marriott, they're away from their families, they've come all the way from Jerusalem, and this is what Jesus says to them.

He answered and he said to them, Well, did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites?

As it is written, this people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.

Oh my goodness.

This is not, this is not good for Jesus.

This is not good for his reputation.

This is very, very bad.

This is William Wallace coming out at Sterling, and all the nobles are gonna go out and get a little more land and a few more titles, and they go, so you know, his little ragtag group of warriors go, what are you gonna say?

I'm going to peek a fight.

And then I think I won't repeat what he says to the English out there in the battlefield.

He's quoting Isaiah 29, 13.

Jesus quotes scripture and he calls them hypocrites.

He couldn't have chosen a more demeaning word.

I mean, he you know what he basically did?

He kind of cussed them out.

I mean, that's really what he did.

Because a hypocrite was from the Greek theater.

And the Greek theater would already be seen as completely unclean to be calling them an actor in a Greek theater who wears a mask, who isn't what he pretends to be in acting in the theater?

If the Greek theater's not bad enough, he calls them a hypocrite, a mask wearing actor, actors in the Greek theater.

And he says, You're a faker.

You're a poser.

Let me give you three key words here: poser, pretender, and phony.

That's what he's saying.

You're a poser, you're a pretender, and you're a religious phony.

That's what you are.

You say all these things, but your heart is missing the whole point of why we're here and a relationship with God.

And the fact that we're having, I mean, he probably said, for the fact that we're having this discussion, when we look all around us at what God is doing, there's a revolution of lives being changed and bodies being healed and demons being cast out.

And you're talking to me about washing hands?

Are you kidding?

And in vain they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.

Verse 8, for laying aside the commandment of God, you hold the tradition of men, the washing of pitchers and cups and many other such things, you do.

He said to them, All too well you reject the commandments of God that you may keep your tradition.

And so he's saying here that this, that the religion of outward conformity is more important than the power of intimacy with God from our heart.

And they were missing it.

In church, we miss it all the time, don't we?

Even in our own lives.

We become caught up in our moral fabric of our own lives, and we start to judge everything by the externals instead of looking at the depth of a man's heart and what God might be doing in his heart.

And so here at the road, we talk about building whole-hearted disciples.

And what we mean by that is that we would worship, that we would follow, that we would go after God with all of our heart, and that that all of our heart means even the dark places of our heart, even those parts of our heart that are broken, even those places in our heart where we're full of shame.

You think that Peter didn't come with shame?

That Mary Magdalene and her lifestyle that she came out of didn't come with shame?

That Zacchaeus and all that he had done didn't come with shame?

And Matthew is a tax collector, basically a traitor to the Jews, him being a Jew himself didn't come with shame.

We all have shame.

And that shame is in the heart.

And if our faith doesn't begin to penetrate our heart, we never deal with our shame.

But we start dealing with our shame, and instead of running from it, actually run into it.

And by the way, when we start to worship God, you're gonna run smack dab face to face with shame.

And don't run from it.

I welcome it, invite it into your life so that the light of the gospel and the love and the grace of Jesus Christ can shine on that shame and begin to burn it up.

Begin to burn it up in our lives.

And so the the Pharisees are full of religion, but their hearts are distant.

I've I've given this illustration before, some of you have seen it, but let's just imagine, we'll use this mic as an example and just make it like a cross.

And then if you were to put dots all around this this cross, and this represents Christ and a relationship with Christ, if we were to look at the lifestyle of Christ, and we were to make proximity to the cross, the conformity of those around Christ, closest by virtue of the lifestyle they're living, the Pharisees, believe me, would have been the closest.

They're right here.

They are holy.

These guys, I mean, they would they would get the cover of every evangelical magazine if we're going to judge it according to how holy you are on the externals.

Mary Magdalene, Matthew, Zacchaeus, they're like over here.

They're not even on the map.

But when we look at who Jesus actually went to, he bypassed this group and he went to this group.

Why?

Because there was a difference.

If you can imagine these this constellation around the cross, Jesus was never interested in the moral context.

As it was seen on the externals, he was always interested in the direction of the heart.

So you could actually be morally this close to God, but your heart is that way, and you can be morally this distant from God in a moral tradition, behavioral way, but your heart is toward God.

That's where Christ goes.

So men and women, don't miss this.

This is important.

God looks at the direction of your heart, not your behavior.

You say, well, doesn't behavior matter?

Yes, it matters.

It does matter.

But not until the direction of our heart is going toward Christ.

I know people that have been in the church all their life and they are bored to tears with God.

They're bored to tears with Jesus.

And I know even tonight, there's some of you here, right here in this room, that you've done stuff, you've been a part of stuff that you're ashamed of, but you're going after God.

And Jesus is right there, waiting at the doorstep, knocking at your door and wanting to come in.

And so Jesus is ticked off at these Pharisees and he is invited into the life of the sinners.

For Moses said, Honor your father and your mother, and he who cursed his father or mother, let him be put to death.

But you say, if a man says to his father or mother, whatever prophets you might have received from me is Corbin.

Interesting word.

That is a gift to God, then you no longer let him do anything for his father or his mother, making the word of God of no effect through your tradition, which you have handed down, and many such things you do.

So what he's doing is Jesus is actually taking an example of their hypocrisy using the word Korbin, which means given over to God or dedicated to God.

What the moral tradition had developed was this idea that you could take anything that was yours and you could say Corbin over it.

And by saying Corbin, it meant it was dedicated to God and you couldn't change anything about it.

It was yours, it was dedicated to God and no one else.

So here's how it would work.

Pretty nifty little Jewish strategy.

Is they would say, let's say you've got property and you've got land, and the expectation would be that you would bless your parents or you would bless your older brother with that land because of your generosity.

But you didn't really want to, so you'd say, Corbin.

That means it's dedicated to God.

They can't take you to court, they can't do anything about it.

You have no obligations whatsoever of moral responsibility or generosity to your family because it's Corbin.

It's just Corbin.

It'd be like, you know, you're out here at our box and you're getting ready to write a tithe check to the road or something, and then you go, oh, this is Corbin.

This is dedicated to God.

I'm not going to give it to the road.

And then it's like you're off the hook, you know, you don't have to do anything.

Pretty cool, huh?

Don't get any ideas.

Do not get any ideas.

And so, and so you could have a young man who's angry at his father, or you could have a father who's angry at his firstborn son because of something that happened.

He can say, Corbin, as it relates to his inheritance.

And then the idea behind that is from Numbers 32.

Numbers 32 was that any vow made to God is binding.

So here is what you mean it's really, it's a pretty cute little strategy that.

You took oral tradition, then you mixed it with written Torah from Moses, and then you came up with a way to get out of doing anything and helping and loving others.

And so Jesus sees that and he recognizes that.

When he had all called the multitude to himself, he said to them, Hear me, everyone, and understand.

Verse 15, there's nothing that enters a man from outside which can defile him.

But the things which come out of him, those are the things that defile a man.

If anyone has ears, let him hear.

So spiritual defilement, you guys, comes from within, not food and drink going in.

When he had entered a house away from the crowd, his disciples asked him concerning the parable.

So he said to them, Are you thus without understanding also?

I mean, you gotta admit, it's really hard to be a disciple of Jesus.

If you ask him certain questions, he really nails you.

By the way, has anybody figured out by going through Mark, Jesus is not really a nice guy?

He's not nice.

He's really fierce.

He's really fierce.

I mean he really I mean, really, is he more of a William Wallace?

Or a Captain Kangaroo.

But yet in our Sunday school classes, and I think the way we've described Jesus, almost like he's more of Captain Kangaroo than William Wallace.

He's a freedom fighter, you guys.

He's a revolutionary outlaw.

And you men at the road, we are not here at the road to disciple you to be nice guys.

We're here to make you fierce warriors.

Warriors for your wives, warriors for your girlfriends, warriors for the gospel, warriors for goodness, warriors for righteousness, warriors in your heart that you don't fear man, you fear God.

This is the Jesus I'm reading about.

If any of you understand what I'm saying, go like this.

Good.

Some of you are so far in the dark, I feel like I'm speaking in a cave.

And when he entered a house from the crowd, his disciples asked him concerning the parable, so he said to them, Are you not without understanding also?

Do you not perceive that whatever enters a man from outside cannot defile him?

Because it does not enter his heart.

This is a heart issue.

It just enters his stomach and is eliminated.

And by the way, if you are consuming things on a basis that causes you to throw up, that might not be good for you.

Okay, it may not have to do with your heart necessarily, but I would just say if you're getting sick a lot with whatever it is you are putting in, just be somewhat smart and realize that's probably not good for you.

Okay.

What comes out of a man?

That defiles the man.

For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, an evil eye.

Another translation, some of your translations may see this covetousness, an evil eye, coveting, or jealousies is another way of thinking of an evil eye.

It's looking at what other people have and wanting it for yourself.

Blasphemy, pride, foolishness.

All these evil things come from within and they defile the man.

The heart is the issue.

So you look at that and you go, wow, Steve, those are a lot of behaviors being mentioned.

Yes, they are.

But you see, what Jesus is concerned with isn't primarily the behavior, it's where it's coming from and why we have the behavior.

Men and women, this is so important.

This is Christianity 101.

We have to continually ask ourselves, why are we so angry?

Not that we are so angry, but why are we so angry?

Why are we coveting?

Why are we frustrated?

Why?

Something in our heart needs to be dealt with.

Some of us here, you've been so shamed by religion that you have no idea about a personal, intimate relationship with Jesus Christ.

And so when you, when I read this, you're going straight to the behavior, right?

Jesus saying, no, the issue is not that.

The issue's not the stomach, the issue's the heart, and it's at the heart level that I change lives.

Ten months ago, I was awakened in the middle of the night with the Lord in the room.

He was in the room, his presence was in the room.

I can't explain it to you except the presence of God was in the room.

You that have had this experience, you know what I'm talking about.

It's sort of something you can't totally explain, but you just know God's there.

And God was there, and he was, and he said heart.

All he said was heart.

Heart.

And suddenly my mind began to just uh go through and spin around verses about the heart of God, seeking God with all of my heart, loving God with my whole heart, having a loyal heart.

And he spoke to me and then he showed me in a vision a book that he wanted me to read, and I went to that book.

It's called Waking the Dead by John Eldridge.

And I went into my office and I pulled that thing down and I devoured it.

I didn't know it.

See, it had been on my shelf for, I don't know, seven or eight years and never looked at it.

But as soon as I saw the vision of it, I knew exactly where it was in my library, went in there, pulled it down, and devoured it's all about waking a dead heart.

And my heart was dead at the time.

You see, it's possible, church, to be going through all the motions and be dead.

Kind of a Christian zombie.

You know, we can be the walking dead.

God wants our hearts to come alive.

He longs for our hearts.

He wants to awaken our hearts.

It all boils down, really, to 32 words.

It all boils down to 32 words.

All of the law, all of the law in all the Bible is summed up in 32 words.

All of the law in the Old and New Testament summed up in 32 words.

All of the Torah summed up in 32 words.

All that the prophets prophesied.

Look it up.

Mark 12, 30 and 31.

Mark 12, 30 and 31.

32 words fulfill all of the law.

This is what Jesus is saying.

This is what he's baiting the Pharisees and the scribes with.

Love.

Love from the heart.

Jesus wants your heart more than he wants anything else.

You may have grown up in a church tradition with candles.

You may have grown up in a church tradition with no candles.

You may have been in a church tradition where they had a pipe organ.

You may have had a church tradition where you were baptized and confirmed.

Baptized an infant, confirmed at 16.

You may have had no religious background.

Jesus doesn't care.

He looks at our hearts today.

Our hearts today.

What's the direction of your heart?

If it's even if there's all these things in our lives that are like, oh, Steve, if you only knew the kind of stuff I'm into.

But I want Jesus.

I want to know him.

I'm going to go after him.

The Lord lifts out his long arm of grace and he invites you in.

So the scriptures say, from there you will seek the Lord your God, and you will find him if you seek him with all of your heart and with all of your soul.

The Bible says when David was speaking to Solomon, becoming king, he said, Know the God of your father and serve him with a loyal heart and with a willing mind.

For the Lord searches all hearts and understands all the intents of the thoughts.

If you seek him, you will be found by him.

The scriptures say, for the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth to show himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is loyal to him.

Proverbs 423, keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life.

Genesis 1 says that we were created male and female.

But the feminine mystique, as we men call it, of how we go after God is different than the masculine spirit.

Both are anointed by God.

And so you men have been called by God to seek Him with that masculine heart, that fiery worshiper and warrior heart.

You women are called to seek the Lord with the beauty of your feminine heart.

Go after God.

In this coming year, go after God.

Be all there.

Because here's what's happening.

We are dying.

So many of us are dying.

The enemy has come and he has ripped away your heart.

And because there's no sense of a warrior heart for us men toward Jesus and with Jesus, guess what's stealing our hearts?

Pornography.

Our jobs.

And all the stuff that grabs and steals us away from the fiery heart that God created us for in a relationship with Him.

My favorite part in Braveheart is it's actually at the very beginning.

And that is Malcolm Wallace.

William Wallace's father has been killed in battle, and William is in a vision, in a dream.

And he sees Malcolm, his father, there laid out on that slab.

And in the vision, Malcolm looks over at his son.

He says, Your heart is free.

Have the courage to follow it.

Men and women, your heart is free.

Have the courage to follow it.

It was for freedom that Christ set us free.

Therefore, no longer be under a yoke of religious bondage.

Come away, my beloved.

Come away, church, into the freedom that God has for you.

Because there is a freedom that comes from within the heart that you are created to embrace.

And it's a freedom that everybody's longing for.

That's what Jesus came to do, to heal the brokenhearted and to set the captives free.

Let's stand.

You resonate with this and you know that your heart isn't free.

And you want it to be free.

You want to walk in this kind of freedom, Jesus freedom, the freedom of the spirit.

But all of you just bow your heads right now, just close your eyes right now, right where you are.

And if you would say before God, I want that freedom.

I long for that freedom.

I know that I'm not free.

I know I'm not walking in that freedom.

Would you just slip up your hand?

I want to pray for you.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

So many, so many.

So, Father, right now, in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, those here whose hearts are longing for a fresh touch of freedom, would you go to them right now and do a work beginning tonight?

A fresh work of your spirit, of freedom.

God, would you give these men and women fierce hearts to be worshippers and warriors who would not settle for religion, but would go after a passionate, bold, aggressive, assertive relationship with you that sets their hearts free.

Come, Holy Spirit, do your work in your name.

We pray.

Amen.

All right.

I want to do something really weird tonight.

I would like all of the young people, and I'll let you define what a young person is.

But if you're a young person, I want you guys, I want a group of you right here and a group of you right there.

Come on up.

Young people in the room, I want you to come up.

Awesome.

Come on up.

And you guys know you have youth tonight.

You that are in the youth group, that's tonight at the is it the Borchard's house?

I think it's the Borchard's house.

Okay.

Wow.

Ton of you guys.

Great.

All right, I want you guys to face the screens.

And could we pick up just a little bit, Paul?

Greg, pick up her her piano and the guitar a little bit more here tonight and her and her voice.

Just a tad.

I want you guys to worship.

And I want you guys to show us how to worship.

I want you guys to dial in here with worship.

I want you to take your mind off the fact that you're standing here.

I know it seems weird and everything, but I just want you to worship the Lord.

I want you to look at the words.

I want you to follow Amanda and the team here.

But I want you to raise your hands.

You guys, I want you to, everybody raise their hands.

Just like that.

I want you to raise your hands.

And I want you to take your mind off your mom and dad.

I want to take your, can you believe I said that?

I want you to take your mind off your mom and dad.

I want to take your mind off your school, take your mind off sports.

And I want you to just think of Jesus standing right in front of you.

Just close your eyes.

I want you to see Jesus right in front of you.

He loves you.

He thinks you're the coolest kid.

He thinks you're his favorite.

He really loves you.

And his heart is Longing for you.

Now give your heart to Him in worship.

Follow the words as best you can and just follow Him.

Be lost in His love.