The First Gospel - Rules on Rules

All right, so we are in the ninth week of this year, I believe, and we are in the eighth

installment of our series called The First Gospel.

We're going through the Book of Mark.

It was the first of the gospels to be written.

And if you haven't heard those other ones, if you want to check them out, they are all

on the podcast on AppleMute, anywhere you can get a podcast.

They're on YouTube.

They're on Facebook.

And so they are readily available for you to check out any of the ones that you may

have missed.

Today we're going to be in Mark chapter seven.

So let's actually just go ahead and jump right into the scriptures.

And I have that effect on some people.

That's my fault.

That's my bad.

Open up the scriptures to the Book of Mark.

It goes Matthew, Mark, Luke, John.

There are the gospels there at the beginning of what's called the New Testament.

And if you don't have a physical Bible, you can grab one of the blue ones from the shelf

on the way out or download one from any of the digital app stores.

All right.

Mark seven.

We have a tradition of giving the scriptures our full attention.

One of the ways we can do that is by standing together as you are able or as you desire.

You don't have to.

It's just if you're able, we'd like to.

Mark seven.

It's going to be long one, one through 23.

Mark seven, beginning verse one says this.

The Pharisees and some of the teachers of the law who had come from Jerusalem gathered

around Jesus and saw some of his disciples eating food with hands that were defiled,

that is unwashed.

The Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial

washing holding to the tradition of the elders.

When they came, 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.

So the Pharisees and teachers of the law asked you this, why don't your disciples live according

to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with file hands?

You replied, Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites.

As it was written, these people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from

me.

They worship me in vain.

Their teachings are merely human rules.

You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions.

And to continue, you have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe

your own traditions.

For Moses said, honor your father and mother and anyone who curses their father or mother

is to be put to death.

But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father

or mother is Corbin, that is devoted to God, then you no longer let them do anything for

their father or mother.

Thus, you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down.

And you do many things like that.

Again, Jesus called the crowd to him and said, listen to me, everyone and understand this,

nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them.

Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them.

After he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about this

parable.

Are you so dull?

He asked.

Don't you see that nothing that enters a person from the outside can defile them for it doesn't

go into their heart, but into their stomach and then out of the body.

In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean and he went on, what comes out of a person

is what defiles them.

For it is from within, out of a person's heart, that evil thoughts come, sexual immorality,

theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly.

All these evils come from inside and defile a person.

Let us pray.

God of every tribe, every tongue, every color, every nation, we thank you that you are here

with us, that you love us, that you've given us the scriptures.

I pray that we would hear whatever it is that you have for us to learn today.

I pray that it would stick, that it would become a part of the framework of our faith,

that our faith would become stronger as we become more like your son, Jesus.

Amen.

Thanks to all.

I can have a seat.

So there's a few things that I want to point out about this passage today.

So first, doesn't it seem like there's just always new rules?

It's like it's in our nature to create new rules, even when we already have hundreds.

Why not more?

For instance, right now, here in America, it is what's known as tax season.

Has anyone ever filled out your own taxes by hand?

Yeah?

Without the help of TurboTax or a website?

The American tax code is notoriously difficult.

There are 6,781 pages in the United States tax code.

And then, if you include the official explanations of the federal tax regulations and all the

printed guidelines for those 6,781 pages, any guesses on how many pages you have then?

20,000.

Twenty thousand.

75,000 pages.

There are more than 11 pages of explanation and guidance for every one page of tax code.

It would take the average reader 14 weeks to read all of it.

I'm no average reader, so it would take me one year.

It would take forever, absolutely forever.

I can read a chapter of a book and come back to it a month later and go, did I read that

chapter?

So it can start to feel impossible to feel confident that you did your taxes correctly,

which leads me to the meme, which I won't put up, but I'll just tell the joke, where

you've probably seen it.

It's kind of funny.

It says, IRS, you owe us money.

Me, how much?

IRS, guess.

Me, this much?

IRS, no, now you owe us more.

Without the help of professionals, it feels impossible because there's just too many rules.

The rules have rules.

And I think that the same thing happens with religion, with our spirituality.

We take an opportunity to know God, to be in a relationship with the creator of the

universe, and then we complicate it.

These Pharisees, these teachers of the law, they literally went out of their way to come

from Jerusalem, from the center of their religious world, just to try and catch Jesus breaking

made up religious rules.

What do I mean by made up?

When they asked why Jesus' disciples didn't wash their hands, what did they say?

The words that they said, they said, why aren't they following the tradition of the elders?

There's a key word there, tradition, yeah?

They didn't say law of Moses, not command of God.

They said tradition of the elders.

That rule that they were bothered about, it was an add on.

There were already 613 religious laws from the actual scriptures, but that wasn't enough.

They needed more rules for the rules, like the tax law for our tax laws.

Most people didn't even know who or why that rule had been added.

It reminds me of a story from an old church.

This particular church was very traditional.

Their communion elements were covered in a very specific way.

The bread had its own sacred dish.

The wine had its own special chalice.

The chalice had this very special thick square that would be perfectly centered and placed

on top of the chalice.

Then there would be a cloth that had been ironed that would be placed over the square,

perfectly centered.

For years they did it this way, perfectly centering the square on the chalice, carefully

covering the wine, ironing the cloth, washing the cloth, starching it for effect.

This was handed down from generation to generation.

This is how you prepare the elements.

This is how you present the elements.

If it wasn't perfect, people sure would fill up that comment card.

They felt their experience had been diminished.

If the cloth was wrinkled, if anything looked just a little off center.

People complained until someone finally did it.

Why do we do it this way?

The truth was that they didn't know.

They didn't know why they did it that way.

After some digging, someone finally found the story of the first time that they had

covered the wine with a square and a cloth.

It turns out, and this is true, that any church that you walk into today that covers their

chalice in that way, the origin goes all the way back to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds

of years ago when a priest noticed that a fly had fallen in the wine.

And so they covered the chalice.

That's it.

It was just to keep bugs out of the elements.

But that practical action didn't need to become a spiritual necessity.

That is exactly the kind of thing that the Pharisees are talking about here.

Having to wash your hands before eating was a rule on top of the rules.

Just one more way to judge.

Wasn't original.

Wasn't add-on.

So now they've challenged Jesus, and so he turns it around on them.

And he brings up another one of the add-ons.

It was called Corbin.

Corbin is a word that means a sacrifice or an offering to God, something that is set

apart for God.

It is a beautiful word.

It is a beautiful concept.

And we know at least one beautiful little boy that has this name, Corbin.

But Jesus was bringing it up because back then, Corbin wasn't a name.

It was a word for an oath.

To say Corbin about something was to say, I'm going to set this thing aside for God

specifically.

Wasn't one of the original rules about giving.

It was an add-on.

The top rules meant to be, it was meant to be something beautiful.

And what happened is that people started abusing the concept.

They had a way of using this oath as a way to quickly end a dispute.

So what do I mean by that?

Instead of legitimately wanting to give something to God as an offering, what started happening

is that it started meaning that I'd rather give this to God than give it to you.

One commentary said it basically became shorthand for God forbid.

It's kind of like in the South.

I lived in the South for three years.

Someone says to you, bless your heart.

They don't mean that.

They don't mean that.

It meant God forbid you might get this, so I'm going to dedicate it to God.

Examples.

There's one last muffin and your enemy wants it.

Nah, that muffin is Corbin.

Someone asks you to help move their couch.

Pivot.

Nah, I've declared even my legs are Corbin.

In the Big Daddy version in this story, Jesus mentions a son that has dedicated his wealth

as Corbin to the temple instead of to his families.

My dad, who I don't get along with, wants my money.

No, it's Corbin.

So the implication is that the son didn't do this to honor God.

The son did this to avoid honoring his parents.

The first rule, the original rule was honor your mother and your father, but the oath

gave people a way around the law of God.

Jesus wants to know why.

Why are we wasting our time creating new rules that do nothing for the heart?

Why are the Pharisees on one hand upset the disciples are breaking with tradition, but

on the other hand, their traditions have allowed people to break with God and with each other.

So Jesus goes even deeper beneath the add-ons, beneath the original rules to the heart of

the matter.

And if you were a first century Jew, what Jesus says next about the rules would have

absolutely rocked you to the core because Jesus saying that what you put in your body

isn't what defiles you would have been completely mind blowing.

Because that is one of the most basic rules that had been taught to them, that they had

learned for the better part of a thousand years that if I eat this, I'm unclean.

If I touch that, I'm unclean.

If I avoid that, I stay clean.

But Jesus flips it.

Jesus says it isn't the food that goes in.

It's the heart that comes out.

Jesus is saying that it isn't the rules that make you good.

It's not the outside guidelines that keep your insides clean.

Years later, the apostle Paul, the missionary and church planner would say the same thing

to Titus, but he would say it like this.

To the pure, all things are pure.

But to those who are corrupted and do not believe, nothing is pure.

Jesus is saying that holiness is a matter of the heart.

You can try to follow all the rules, but what something looks like on the outside doesn't

always tell the truth.

I'm sure some of us have felt that way.

I have felt that way.

Man, I've been doing, I've just been managing to do just enough of the things that I know

people expect me to do to make it look like I'm okay.

To make it look like I'm good.

I think it was Tozer that said the great trouble of the world today is the desire to look good

without being good.

I think we all know it's true that just because something looks right on the outside doesn't

mean that it is inside.

I think that if we were reading this and if we were listening like a first century Jew

that we might start thinking, where else have I heard something like this before?

Where else have I heard a lesson like this before that Jesus is talking about?

And then you might think about all the way back in 1 Samuel.

God had given the people what they wanted so that they could look on the outside like

everybody else.

They'd asked for a king.

We want a king like everyone else.

In 1 Samuel, we find out that that king, though he looked great, he was tall, he was handsome,

he was strong, but he was a disaster.

Saul was on the outside everything that they wanted, but his heart had turned away from

God.

And so God sends the prophet to the house of Jesse to meet all of Jesse's sons and

Jesse has them all lined up by age.

One after another, Samuel gets to the next one and he thinks, this must be the one.

God, this kid, look at, this kid's impressive.

All state, 4.0 GPA.

This kid right here is impressive.

This must be the king, but one after another, God said, no.

Just as the prophet Samuel reaches the end of the line, the last kid of Jesse, the last

son is standing there, he was sure this must be the one because there's no one else here.

What does God say?

He says, do not look on his appearance or at his height or his stature because I have

rejected him for the Lord sees not as man sees.

Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.

Samuel standing there, he's got no sons left to anoint as king and he turns to Jesse and

he says, do you have any more sons?

There was one more, the youngest, the smallest, the musician, the shepherd that would become

the most famous, most important king of Israel's history.

A king described as a man after God's own heart.

His name was David.

Jesus is telling them, he's telling us no amount of rules, no amount of appearances

will get us any closer to God.

No amount of external appearances will solve our internal problems.

No rule, no tradition will give us the heart that we so desperately need.

But the good news is that Jesus can because Jesus can change everything.

Jesus said, I have not come to abolish the law, all these rules, I've not come to abolish

it but to fulfill these laws.

These laws that you couldn't possibly follow perfectly, I'm the piece that you click in.

He said, come to me all who are weak and weary, all who are burdened, overcome with rules

and tradition, come to me and I will give you rest.

There is no what that can solve the problem of our hearts but there is a who.

Yeshua, Jesus, the son of God.

And if you believe that he is who he says he is, then Jesus lives in you, in your heart.

He makes his home in that place.

And if what comes from our hearts is what defiles us, how beautiful is it, how perfect

is it that Jesus chooses to dwell in that place.

To get to the seat of all of our sin, to go to the source of our sexual immorality, to

the source of our theft and murder, our adultery, greed, malice and deceit, the home of our

lewdness and envy and slander, our arrogance and folly, he goes there and he lays his head

in the home of our heart so that he can change everything.

Amen.

Let's pray.

Father God, I thank you for the work of your son that your son lives where sin wants to

dwell.

You make your home in us, each of us, piece by piece with us you build a home for everyone.

I pray that we would not become overburdened with the rules, but we would be filled with

your presence.

Amen.