Mark's Gospel Part 12 - Getting To The Heart

Well, before we read today's passage, let me ask you a question.

Have you ever heard the phrase, we do things by the book?

It means make sure you follow the instructions, the rules, the guidelines.

Some of you know I work in higher education, and universities have lots of regulations and procedures.

I often hear the words in meetings, we do things by the book.

Before we do this, let's check the academic regulations.

And in all sorts of areas of life, problems occur, don't they, when we don't follow the rules or the book, or when we add to them, or when we make up our own rules instead of following the written rules?

Rules are there for a reason and normally for a good reason.

And in my job, when the rules aren't followed, the results can be awful.

A student might not get their degree or they might not be able to graduate with their peers.

Think about have you worked in medicine?

If a doctor decided to add a bit more of the drug than the recommended dose, a patient could die.

The results could be awful.

And the Lord Jesus, in his word today, he wants to teach us today the devastating consequences of not following his book, this book, the Bible, ignoring his word, his commands, or adding to them.

So as we come to God's word, let me pray and then we'll read.

Father, as we come to your word today, would you be pleased to speak to us by your Holy Spirit?

Lord Jesus, give us ears to hear your teaching this morning and hearts to follow and obey.

And Lord God, I pray that my words would not fall short or go beyond Jesus' words.

And I pray that in his name.

Amen.

Well, if you are a guest today, uh you're joining us as we're preaching through Mark's gospel.

And in the first six chapters, uh, Jesus has been teaching us about himself, about the kingdom of God, and people have been astonished about his power over evil nature and sickness.

People have been amazed at his authority, at his teaching.

And as he's been teaching, he's been challenging the Jewish people at the time and the religious leaders about their practices.

And Jesus has been making enemies, particularly the Pharisees and the scribes.

And we've seen in the crowd two different responses to Jesus.

We've seen people falling at their feet in worship and repentance, but we've also seen people rejecting Jesus, refusing his grace, refusing to repent from their love of sin.

And in today's passage, we'll see that Jesus' enemies are actively following him.

They're watching him, seeing what he does.

Well, can I encourage you to turn to Mark chapter 7?

Mark 7 · chapter mention

That's on page 842 of the Church Bibles, and we're going to read Mark chapter 7, verses 1 to 23.

Mark 7:1–23

Children, just stop looking at your learning sheep for a minute.

Listen as I read the Bible to us.

Mark chapter 7.

Mark 7 · chapter mention

Now when the Pharisees gathered to him, that's Jesus, with some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem, they saw that some of his disciples ate with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed.

For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands properly, holding to the tradition of the elders.

And when they came from the marketplace and do not eat unless they wash.

And there and there are many other traditions that they observe, such as the washing of cups and pots and copper vessels and dining couches.

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

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

In vain do they worship me, teaching us doctrines the commandments of men.

You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.

And he said to them, You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition.

For Moses said, Honour your father and your mother, and whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.

But you say, If a man tells his father or his mother, Whatever you would have gained from me is Corban, that is given to God, then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down, and many such things you do.

And he called the people to him again and said to them, Hear me, all of you, and understand.

There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him.

And when he had entered the house and left the people, his disciples asked him about the parable.

And he said to them, Then are you also without understanding?

Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, since it enters not his heart but his stomach and is expelled.

Thus he declared all foods clean.

And he said, What comes out of a person is what defiles him.

For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness.

All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.

Well, thanks be to God for his word today.

In our passage today, Jesus wants to teach us about the danger of leaving and replacing God's word with man-made ritual.

This, he says, leads us to a wrong understanding of sin.

Leaving and replacing God's law with man-made religion leads to a wrong understanding of sin.

And I've put a little outline in your order of service of what I'm going to speak about.

So we're going to look at the first section, verses 1 to 13.

And the encounter that Mark records here on one level is very simple.

The Pharisees see Jesus' disciples eating without first washing their hands.

And they approach him to question why they do not walk according to the tradition of the elders.

They don't wash their hands before they eat.

But let's be clear, what they're really saying to Jesus is, you are not stopping your disciples, so you must approve of what they're doing.

So before we look at Jesus' response, it might be helpful just to remind ourselves who are these Pharisees and the scribes.

Well, they were a religious group, very devout group of men, who the Bible scholars tell us started as a faithful group of Jews, probably 200 years before the Lord Jesus came, and they were urging God's people not to compromise, to follow God's law and to observe it.

But this group over time had become increasingly zealous, overzealous, believing that the law of Moses was binding in every situation of life, but they'd gone further than the law.

Not only were they obsessed with keeping it, they'd added to God's laws.

They'd added additional things to do.

And what Jesus describes here multiple times is traditions, rules and practices added and passed down over time to generations of people.

To summarize a Pharisee's life, it was one of exhaustive and restrictive do's and don'ts.

But what they'd done is they'd effectively forgotten the spirit of the law.

They'd become overly legalistic.

And for those of you taking notes, if you want to think a little bit more about them, I'd urge you to look at Matthew chapter 23.

Matthew 23 · chapter mention

Jesus is very clear about where they'd gone wrong.

And at Jesus' time, the Pharisees had become a very small, narrow group of people.

But we know their teaching had become hugely influential.

If you look down at verse 3, it says that the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat without washing their hands.

And Mark explains to us now that the Pharisees believe that teaching without washing your hands is a problem.

Verse 2, they believe that unwashed hands were defiled.

And therefore food eaten with defiled hands and digested would actually make the individual defiled.

Now, defiled is not a word we use every day, is it?

The Bible says that in the ceremonial law, when we sin, we become defiled.

That is unclean.

That is the opposite to being holy.

And being unclean in the ceremonial law was a big problem.

It meant that you couldn't draw near to God.

In worship, you couldn't draw near to his people.

We thought about it in Mark chapter 5, didn't we?

Mark 5 · chapter mention

Of the lady who'd been losing blood for many years.

She was unclean.

She'd been separate from God's people for a long time.

And the Pharisees had come to believe that everyday dirt was associated with sin, uncleanness, and defilement.

So they advocated a constant cleaning and ritual washing to make sure that they weren't unclean or defiled.

And it wasn't just hands.

If you look down at verse 4, they were washing everything pots, pans, where they used to sit down.

The big problem the Pharisees had got to was they believed that holiness or being righteous was all about outward actions.

They believed that it was your works or your outward religion alone that made you ripe with God.

That holiness was something that could be achieved by ritual alone.

And they thought that their endless ritual and washing was actually pleasing to God.

And perhaps before we look at what Jesus says to them, we should ask ourselves: were they right?

Does eating with unwashed hands make you unclean?

Well, the short answer is no.

It's right that in the ceremonial law there were many things that did make you defiled or unclean: skin diseases, touching dead animals, eating certain foods.

And there was a place in God's law for ceremonial washing.

But the idea of washing everyday items and a constant washing of hands had been added over time.

And if you know your Bibles and you know God's story of salvation, you know that God in his word never teaches that works, that actions can make you right with God.

No, God's people have always been made right with God by his grace.

Righteousness is a gift from God.

If you think about Abraham, God calls Abraham and makes a covenant with him.

It's a covenant of grace.

God's people are never saved by works or rituals.

So let's look at how Jesus responds to the Pharisees.

Look down with me at verse 6.

His response is very direct, it's very pointed, and in one sense, it's a little bit surprising.

It's perhaps not what we expect.

The Pharisees come to Jesus and they want to talk about washing hands, but Jesus wants to talk to them about the heart.

And the word he uses to describe them in verse 6 is hypocrites.

He quotes a text from Isaiah.

He says their devotion is a show, it's a sham.

The Pharisees say the right things, they do many religious things in God's name.

But the Lord Jesus, who knows all things, who sees all things, he says to the Pharisees, Your heart is far from God.

The motivation for their acts, for their desires, their thoughts, was actually far from God.

And the big problem or error that Jesus exposes in them, he tells us in verse 7, and this is the key verse of this section, Jesus says to them, You are teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.

They'd elevated their man-made action and rules like hand washing to be as important as God's law and commands.

One Bible commentator described it as, when ritual comes to matter more than righteousness.

And Jesus says to them, by elevating these actions, these traditions, has led to three big problems, and I've jotted those down on your notes for you.

In verse 7, Jesus says the first problem of this replacement was that their worship had become vain.

That word vain is the same word the writer in Ecclesiastes uses in chapter 1.

It means empty, it means light, hollow.

Jesus explains that their worship was exterior.

It had no depth from their heart.

They said prayers, they read the scriptures, they appeared to be very pious.

But Jesus says their worship was vain because their heart was not in their worship.

Their hearts were actually far from God.

And Jesus says, your desires, your motivation is wrong.

If we read the whole Bible, God consistently tells his people, he desires their heart and obedience that flows from a love for him.

You see, the Pharisees had forgotten and moved on from the most important commandment in the law.

We read it earlier in the service, to love God with all your heart.

Their love for God had been replaced by a works-based religion.

And the second problem, Jesus says, this has led to in verses 8 and 9, is that the Pharisees have left and rejected the commandments of God.

They'd replaced God's commands with tradition, outward action like washing.

And over time they were teaching other people that these traditions were as important as God's law.

What uh Dick Lucas said, making human tradition equal or superior to God's commands.

And sadly, if we look at church history, there is a tendency for man to reject or leave God's commands and place an importance on works.

And the gospels tell us that the Pharisees really thought that they would please God by doing these religious activities.

So they urged others to do also.

And I think that's why Jesus is so direct and forthright in his response.

He knows that their false religion was spreading.

It's like a disease.

In other Gospels, he says their false teaching is like yeast in a batch of dough.

And Jesus knows that leaving God's commands, his word of truth, will never lead people to saving faith.

And we've learned, haven't we, in Mark's gospel?

Mark tells us repeatedly that that is why Jesus came.

Jesus came to teach truth to embody the living words of God.

And in doing so, he exposes the false teaching of the day.

And thirdly, Jesus says their traditions have made void the Word of God.

That's in verse 13.

What he's saying is that because the Pharisees had left God's law and added works to it, the intended outworking of the law, it's good for God's people, was not happening.

We know, don't we, that when God's people obey his law, it's good.

All people benefit, and that wasn't happening.

Rather, abandoning of God's law was detrimental to God's people.

And Jesus gives us an example.

He talks about Corban in verses 10 and 11.

Sometimes God's people took a sacred vow to devote something to God.

And here Jesus uses the example of money.

And this vow was known as Corban.

And that was a good thing to do.

But it seems the Pharisees were using this as an excuse to withhold that gift to be used for something else.

And Jesus uses the example of neglecting to spend the money to look after parents who couldn't support themselves.

In essence, what Jesus is saying to them is you're using the vow of Corban to usurp the authority of the law.

In effect, they were justifying, disobeying the fifth commandment, which as we know is to honour your mother and father.

And Jesus says at the end of this encounter with him in verse 13 that there's many other things that they are doing, many other traditions that the Pharisees were doing.

So Jesus rebukes them harshly.

And then Mark's narrative moves on from there, and that's the second section, verses 14 to 23.

Jesus wants to address the crowd.

And here we see Jesus, the Son of God, the embodied living word of God, who has absolute authority.

He's going to teach the crowd, he's going to teach the disciples and us the true doctrine of sin and defilement.

And from the passage, we get a sense of the importance that Jesus places on what he's about to teach us.

Jesus knows that the Pharisees' false teaching is harmful, that it would not lead people to saving faith.

Rather, it would lead them away from God's grace.

He knows the stakes are high.

So look down at verse 14.

He calls the people to him.

And that's interesting, isn't it?

Mark tells us often that the crowds were following Jesus around.

But here it's different.

Jesus instigates this teaching.

Jesus urges the people to hear and understand.

And friends, when God Himself says hear and understand, all people ought to sit up and listen.

Because in this section, Jesus addresses not only the Pharisees' error of hand washing, but perhaps one of the most profound questions in history.

The question that secular philosophers have spent hundreds of years writing about, thinking about.

That question, what is fundamentally wrong with the human race?

What causes the most heinous acts that we see listed in verses 21 and 22?

And Jesus teaches to us the simple answer down in verse 21.

He teaches with absolute authority.

The biggest problem of the human race is the human heart.

It's not bad company, it's not the circumstances that we grew up in.

It's not temptation.

No, it's the human heart.

It's the human heart that is responsible.

Well, perhaps we should read verse 21 again.

It's very sobering.

For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness.

All these evils come from within, and they defile a person.

That's a pretty grim list, isn't it?

But I guarantee if you switch on the news tonight at nine o'clock, all of those things that I've just read will have been perpetrated in the world today.

And it's not just out there, it's in here too.

Now, if we are honest as Christian people today, we have committed some of these acts.

Even this week, even today, I know I have.

The sinful acts that we see all around us ultimately come from the desires or the inclinations of the human heart.

And what Jesus teaches here is not new.

No, God's people knew the scriptures well.

They knew after the fall in the Garden of Eden in Genesis 6, God saw mankind and he said this every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

And God, through his prophet Jeremiah chapter 17, said this the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick.

Jeremiah 17 · chapter mention

Who can understand it?

And God's word says that we all sin because we are all in Adam.

We are his children.

Sin is in our nature.

The Westminster Confession says, Adam and Eve became dead in sin, wholly defiled in all the parts of faculties of body and soul.

And the confession goes on to say that we inherit that unrighteous state from the moment that we are conceived.

David can say in Psalm 51 in the NIV, surely I was sinful at birth.

And parents of small ones, don't we know this to be true?

The reformers taught the doctrine of total depravity.

Simply, without God, the human state is depraved.

It's dead in sin.

And perhaps worst of all, if we're honest, don't we actually like our sin?

Well, just briefly, sin is rebellion.

Sin is not wanting to obey God as our creator.

Sin is idolatry.

Sin says, I want to worship me and not God.

And sin stops us wanting to know God.

It was helpful, wasn't it?

In Mark 6, we saw that Herod loved his sin more than anything else.

Sin in our heart is powerful.

And I know that some of us this morning are thinking, wow, Mark, this is a bit uncomfortable listening.

We're good, nice Brentwood folk.

Some of us don't like coming to church to be told we're sinful, let alone depraved.

No, uh, we are respectable, nice people.

And my response to you this morning is God's word is true.

And Jesus' warning words here are full of purpose, and they're motivated by his love.

He doesn't want us to die in our sin.

No, Jesus is the doctor who has to tell the patient the bad news.

You are sick, you are dying, and you cannot save yourself.

But I can save you.

There is a cure.

And if you are a Christian today, this was your heart before you believed in the Lord Jesus.

This was my heart back in 1993.

And when we're confronted with the depth of our depravity, our corrupted heart, doesn't the saving love, and work of Jesus become bigger?

Doesn't it become sweeter, more amazing?

We rejoice, don't we, with Romans 5, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Christ took the punishment our sin deserved at the cross.

And as we repent and believe this, Jesus gives us a new heart.

Jesus fulfills that wonderful promise in Ezekiel 36.

And Christian, by the power of the Spirit, with new hearts, we will sin less.

But we must say today that Christians still sin, and the desire to sin still remains in our heart.

On your notes in the Order of Service, I put the battle for holiness is in our heart.

So don't be surprised in a few minutes you get angry with another driver on the way home from church, or you lose patience with one of your family members, or children, you don't want to share your sweets with your brother or your sister.

And by the way, that's why we regularly pray a confession together as we gather on Sunday.

We acknowledge as Christians that we still have sin in our heart.

We thank the Lord again for his forgiveness, and we commit ourselves again to repent, to go God's way.

So back in Mark 7, Jesus teaches here the problem of the human heart.

But that that also exposes the error of the Pharisees.

And it's obvious, isn't it, on one level, that nothing outside a person that going into them can defile them.

Why?

Because verse 19, what we consume ultimately will leave our body.

And Jesus begins the end of the application of the ceremonial laws, but we're not going to go into that today.

Jesus says that in their zeal for works, the Pharisees had forgotten or become dull to the Bible's teaching on sin.

They'd moved away from one of the primary purposes of God's law and God giving us the law, and that was to convict man of his sin in his heart.

And we learned that, didn't we?

When we preached through the Ten Commandments, it convicted us of our sin.

So as we close this morning, let's think about applying Jesus' word today.

Well, firstly, sadly, some churches throughout history and still today have fallen to the Pharisees' error, teaching that religion and ritual can make you right with God.

They've left the truth and commands of the Bible, and they're teaching and it's teaching on salvation through grace.

And some churches have replaced that with a salvation of works.

Maybe they say, attend church, be baptized, take the Lord's Supper, say your prayers, that will make you right with God.

And we know, don't they, they're all good things to do, but they will not save you because they are all down to you.

No, the Lord Jesus, as the living word of God, says, You cannot save yourself.

No, it is new birth in the Spirit, it is receiving a new heart by repenting and trusting in Jesus and his one saving work at Calvary, his perfect obedience that makes us right with God.

And so we pray, don't we, for liberal churches to return to God's word.

We pray for Emmanuel and its elders to stick to this, to do things by the book.

And we also pray that we rightly use this.

This is a little copy of the Westminster Confession.

This is a really useful tool and it guards and informs teaching against error.

It was written 400 years ago, largely to refute error in the church, and it's full of the Bible, it's full of how we apply God's word.

I encourage you all to get a copy of the Westminster Confession.

It's really helpful on sin and salvation.

So our second application today is for the believer.

If you are a Christian, Jesus says to you today, have you become a bit of a Pharisee?

Has ritual and works crept into your spiritual life?

And the preacher's going to be very honest with you today.

I struggle in this area.

I can be very religious.

Ask my wife or my children.

I read the Bible every day, I pray every day, I go to church every week.

But sometimes in my life, all of those good things have become a ritual.

It's a tick box of righteousness.

And sometimes my heart can be far from God.

And if that is you this morning, then I urge you to reflect on the first commandment, to love God.

Pray that you would love God more, that your love for God will be at the heart of what you do.

And a third application for us: the church must preach man's biggest problem is his heart.

Jesus says with authority today, every human heart has a sin problem.

We pray, don't we, that the worldwide church would preach sin in the human heart, and Steve prayed for that earlier.

No teaching on sin means no need for a savior.

And parents, when you pray for your children, pray for a powerful work of the Spirit in their heart, a powerful conviction of sin.

Church family, when we pray for each other, pray for our holiness, our sanctification, pray for each other's hearts.

That in our hearts, by the power of the Spirit, we would love God and obey his good commands more than we love our sin.

Jesus says the battle for holiness is in your heart.

And finally, this morning, let's rejoice.

In why Jesus came.

Mark 2 teaches us that He came for the sick, He came for sinners.

He is the solution to our heart problem.

Friends, Jesus can give you a new heart.

And there may be one or two folk here today who've never asked Jesus to change their heart, to give them a new heart.

Today is a great day to pray that prayer.

If you want to come and speak to me, Andrew or Gavin, we'd love to talk and pray with you.

Well, let's pray now as we close.

Our Lord God, we thank you for Jesus' direct words to us today.

We thank you that his words are always motivated by love, love for his people, not wanting anyone to perish.

Help us to be men and women, boys and girls who live by the Word of God, your good law.

We pray for our hearts this morning.

Lord God, would we we be real about the presence of sin in our hearts?

Help each of us to confess our sins honestly and regularly to you.

Lord, forgive us where some of us have become like Pharisees.

Give us the strength by your Spirit to repent and daily turn from our sin.

And Lord God, we rejoice again in the saving work of the Lord Jesus.

He gave his life for his people while they were still sinners.

And we pray this in his name.

Amen.