So for a brief time this morning, we're going to be looking at the last
passory read in the Bible there from Mark chapter 7. So if you have a Bible with you
and you want to follow along, that was on page 842, but we'll also have some of the
verses up on the screens. I want to just begin this morning by asking us just to think about
a question. I wonder how much time in your week, if you add it up, you spend thinking
or worrying about what other people think about you. I read a study recently online
that shows that the average human being spends an alarming amount of our week worrying and
obsessing over how we're received by other people. We spend our time fretting and just
the opinions of others just know at us. Maybe some people worry about what clothes they're
going to wear in the morning, what people will think of them. Maybe at work we worry
about our boss or our colleagues and what they think of our performance. Or maybe you
worry at church that what other people think about you as a Christian. Well this morning
these verses we read in Mark chapter 7, we see Jesus engaging and interacting with this
group of people called the Pharisees. Now the Pharisees were obsessed with their religious
image that they presented to the people around them. They were obsessed with the way that
other people saw them. And I want to kind of break this chapter down and look at under
two brief points this morning. First of all, I want to think about the way that we are
seen by others and then secondly the way we are seen by God. So first of all, the way
we are seen by others. When you read the Bible and when you read the New Testament you see
something that Jesus does time and time again as he exposes the motives and the desires of
the human heart. And when he's engaging with these Pharisees what often happens is you
see the same heart motive pop up time and time again. And I think if we read for context
that's pretty helpful. Matthew 23 verse 5, he says about these Pharisees, everything
they do is done for people to see. They love the place of honor at the banquets, the most
important seats in the synagogues. They love to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces
and to be called rabbi by others. We see the same thing in chapter 6. He says these are
people who practice their righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. They love
to pray standing in the synagogues and street corners to be seen by others. And then last
one Luke chapter 18 and verse 9, there's some people who are confident in their own
righteousness, they're looking down on everyone else. Jesus tells this parable, two men go
up to a temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stands
by himself and prays, God I thank you that I am not like other people, robbers, evildoers,
adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all
I get. In other words, look how great I am. Look how morally and spiritually together
I've got my life. So the desire that Jesus is exposing in these chapters time and time
again is that everyone else will see how great you are.
So as we come to this engagement in Mark 7 with Jesus and the Pharisees, it's helpful
to have that context in mind. Let's read the first few verses again. These Pharisees have
gathered to him with some of the scribes who've come from Jerusalem. They see that some of
his disciples are eating with hands that aren't washed, that were defiled. And the Pharisees
and the scribes ask him, why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the
elders, but they eat with unwashed hands? So what exactly is going on here in this passage?
What exactly is the problem? Why are the Pharisees making such a big deal about Jesus' disciples
not washing their hands? It makes me think of my childhood growing up would be out playing
in the garden, we get called in for dinner, we sit on the table and one of my brothers
would inevitably yell, ma'am, Calendon, wash his hands. Let's know what's going on here
in Mark 7. This is not about hygiene. The Pharisees are not concerned that Jesus' disciples
are going to get germs. This is about ritual purity. For the Jews, the concept of being
clean, ritually clean, was extremely important because God is so holy and so righteous and
so perfect and so opposed to anything tainted by sin and by evil that for us to come into
His presence, we have to be clean. And in the Old Testament, there was various ways
they did that through the sacrifices and through the priesthood and so on and so forth. But
by the time Jesus is coming, by the time He's interacting with these Pharisees here, all
of this extra tradition had evolved around the Old Testament. The Pharisees had pages
and pages of lists of rules and regulations of things you could do or you couldn't do
things you should wash before you eat. We have in this passage an example in verse 4.
There are many other traditions that the Observer of Jesus says, such as the washing
of cups and pots and copper vessels and dining couches. And it all seems a little bit OCD.
But the point is that the Pharisees want to be clean and they see Jesus' disciples here,
they're just eating with unwashed hands and it's not their tradition. And I wonder what
you think of when you hear the word tradition. Maybe you think of candles and incense and
saints and all that kind of stuff. Or maybe you think of someone who's so stubbornly set
in their ways that they refuse to change because we've always done it this way. But it's important
I think for us to recognize first of all that tradition is not necessarily a bad thing.
Tradition itself can actually be good. Even here at St. Columbus, we have a whole host
of traditions. We tend to stand up to sing. We sing our hymns, accompany to music. We
sing our psalms, a capella. We generally have two services on a Sunday and they tend to
be at the same time.
Tradition itself is fine. The problem is that tradition can be twisted and elevated to the
point that it actually undermines what the Bible says. And religious tradition especially
can be so full of rules and burdens and regulations that it becomes a real problem. This is how
Jesus responds in verse 6. He says to them, Well did Isaiah prophesy, you hypocrites,
as it is written, this people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.
In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrine the commandments of men. So Jesus really doesn't
hold back here in Mark 7. He really says it as it is. He calls them out for what they
are. He calls them hypocrites. These are guys in their time who were looked up to as their
religious greats, the conservatives of their day, the guys who are morally and spiritually
excellent. But Jesus sees through their outward appearance. He sees that they are so focused
on the approval and the recognition and the affirmation of other people that in reality
their hearts are a million miles away from God. Their worship is empty. They're distant.
They're going through the motions of religion, but they lack that personal relationship with
God. And he goes on to continue to expose another flaw in the Pharisees' hearts. He
says, You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men. You have a fine
way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition. For Moses
said honor your father and your mother, and whoever reviles father or mother must surely
die. But you say, if a man tells his father or mother whatever you've gained from me as
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've handed down and
many such things you do. So what's this whole Corban thing about? It maybe sounds like somewhere
you'd go on holiday. This is the only place in the Bible the word appears. But Corban
is really, it is an oath that the Pharisees allowed people to take that meant that anything
that you give is given to God and can only be used for that explicit purpose. But you
see the fifth commandment to honor your father or mother is something that the people of
God were meant to take really seriously. And in those days in particular there's no state
care for the elderly, there's no pension system. So what would happen is you'd be expected
to bear the financial responsibility for your parents who raised you and cared for you.
But the way people, somebody's got around this was with this Corban oath. They would
say this money is set aside for God so it's not going to your parents. And the Pharisees
were really exploiting their tradition to undermine the whole point of the fifth commandment
and the love and the compassion and the mercy which is supposed to underlie it. So what
does all of this mean? What's Jesus really getting at here? Well, he's saying the Pharisees
and their tradition is all show and no substance. He's saying that they have mastered an external
facade, an appearance that other people see but that God sees through. There are people
who honor God with their lips but in reality their heart is far from Him.
You see, the gospel of Jesus Christ is so radically different. It's not about rules
and regulations. It's not about how well you follow a tradition or how well you perform
morally or spiritually. John Calvin, the French theologian from the time of the Reformation,
he put it really well. If you've got a bulletin you'll find a reflection on the inside and
he says this, it's in there. The gospel is not a doctrine of the tongue but of life.
It cannot be grasped by reason and memory only but is fully understood only when it
possesses the whole soul and penetrates to the inner recesses of our hearts.
So the Pharisees were guys who had tremendous amounts of Bible knowledge. They had lots
of knowledge up in their heads. They'd memorized a good chunk of the Scriptures, most of them.
They put on a great show of public piety but it had not grasped their hearts. It had
not penetrated to the inner recesses of their being. And I think as we reflect on this chapter
together and we think about the Pharisees, so often I think they can be a mirror into
our own hearts this morning. Maybe we need to ask ourselves, where is our heart when
we worship God? Is it distant? Are we simply going through the motions and turning up to
the church every Sunday and singing the songs and listening to God's word? Do we then clock
off afterwards and our hearts go back to being a million miles away? Are we maybe a bit like
the Pharisees in the sense that we get so absorbed with what other people think about
us that that's more important than what God sees? Are we someone who worships God with
our lips while our heart is far from Him? I think it's rare in the Christian life that
we find ourselves a million miles away from God all of a sudden. It's often a slow process.
But it's dangerous. A distant heart gradually over time can harden and harden and harden
and we can become almost immune to the call to repent and come back to Jesus. Just as
an example, I've been driving my car on Denver for a few years now and last year I began
to get one of those, you know, the orange lights that come on in your dashboard indicating
that there was a problem. What I did was the natural response. I ignored it and hoped it
would go away because my MOT was in two months. I was driving around with this orange light.
Every time I started the engine, this orange light, I felt a twinge of guilt thinking I
should really go and get that sorted. But it was fine. The car seemed to be no problems.
Then a couple of months later, just before it was due for my MOT, I started the engine
one day and all this black smoke started coming out of the hood and this horrible burning
smell. I was thinking, okay, that's really not good. So I took it into the garage and
what would have initially been quite a cheap and a simple, easy fix ended up being quite
an insidious and dangerous leak in my coolant system. And it certainly taught me a lesson
of looking after my car. But more importantly, I think, and it's an imperfect illustration,
but perhaps a reminder that we can so easily just choose to ignore that spiritual warning
light in our lives. We can be so aware that, you know, we know we're far from God. We know
our hearts are distant, but we think, well, maybe we'll sort ourselves out later. We go
around acting as if everything's totally fine. Maybe we put on a show for the people around
us at church, but in reality, our hearts are far from God. But having said that, that's
not to say that we're a hypocrite simply because we're struggling. Struggling is a natural
part of the Christian life. Kevin DeYoung put it like this. He said that the hypocrite
is not the Christian who struggles against sin, fights against temptation and keeps doing
what is right even on our worst days. The hypocrite is the Christian who uses the veneer
of public virtue to cover the rot of private vice. He's the man living a double life.
She's the woman fooling her friends because she has church clothes. The student who proudly
answers the questions in the student group and then proudly rumps through immorality
throughout the rest of the week. He says, the sin of hypocrisy is not that we're more
messed up than we seem. That's true for all of us. The sin is in using the appearance
of goodness to cloak the deeds of evil. The sin is in thinking that who others think you
are matters a great deal more than whom God knows you to be.
So that leads us to think on to our second point. We've looked to what Mark 7 teaches
us about the way that other people see us. And I think second, it's helpful to think
about the way that God sees us. You see, these Pharisees demonstrate to us so clear that
it's possible to have mastered the outward appearance, the power that everyone else can
see but still be an absolute mess on the inside. In Matthew 23, Jesus went on to say to the
Pharisees, you are like whitewashed tombs. Outwardly, you appear beautiful, but within
you are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanliness. So also, you appear outwardly
righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.
I think the point time and time again that Jesus is making, that you can maybe fool the
people around you, but you can never fool God. God sees through our outward appearance.
So as we go on to read in Mark 7 and from verse 14, it's so clear that it's not about
the external stuff. That's not what determines whether or not we are clean before God, whether
or not our hearts are in the right with God. The things we do or say are performance. He
says, verse 14, 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. And when He entered the house
and left the people, His disciples asked Him about this parable, and He said to them,
are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from
outside cannot defile since it enters the heart, not the heart, but the stomach and
is expelled? And as He declared, all foods clean.
So I'm the key point here. Jesus is not saying you can just eat whatever you like. The key
point really is that you cannot make yourself right with God by following a set of rules
or traditions. In complete contrast with the Pharisees, Jesus is saying that what really
matters is what we are like on the inside. As human beings, we make judgments based
on what we see, what we can observe, what people are like. But God sees our hearts exactly
for what they are. For example, when God chooses David as king in the Old Testament in 1 Samuel,
it says, there the Lord sees not as human beings see. Human beings look at the outward
appearance, but God looks at the heart.
Sam 1-3-9 describes God as a God who knows us, who sees us through and through. He knows
when we sit and when we rise. He knows our thoughts from afar. He discerns my going out
and my lying down. He is familiar with all our ways. Before a word is on our tongue, God
knows it completely. So again, the point is whatever image of ourselves we might try and
present to others, God sees through. He sees all of our thoughts. He sees all of our desires
and our impulses and our heart cravings and our longings. He sees every angry or hateful
outburst. He sees every time our hearts swell with pride or they burn with jealousy.
Now look at the way he describes the human heart here in verse 21. Again, he does not
hold back, for from within, out of the hearts of human beings come evil thoughts, sexual
immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander,
pride and foolishness. All of these evil things come from within and defile a person. You
see, the human heart is capable of astonishing evil. Maybe today we're sitting here and we
don't feel particularly evil. We don't feel like we're genocidal. We don't feel like we
do anything particularly horrific. I've recently been reading a book called Man is Wolf to
Man and it's a story of the Russian Gulags and it's just, it's absolutely mind bending
the things that human beings are capable of doing to one another. Sigmund Freud, a man
maybe not famous for his great theology, but he once said, the phrase man is wolf to man.
Who in the face of all his experience of life and of human history will have the courage
to dispute that ascitation? The human heart is capable of incredible evil. But also in
our own experience, in our lives today, I doubt we have any war criminals or people who've
been involved in the Gulag system here in St. C's, but we all have darkness in our hearts.
Jesus said that anyone who's hated another person is a murderer. Anyone who's gazed
a second too long lustfully at another person is an adulterer. We know we all have our own
struggles with pride or with anger or with jealousy or the specific sins that trouble
our hearts. The question then is when we approach something like Mark 7 and we read this diagnosis
of the human condition, how can we possibly come to God and say we are clean? How can
we possibly come to God and be right with him? How can I come to a God who is so holy
and so perfect and so righteous, who cannot tolerate any sin and call him father? This
is the problem that Mark 7 sets up for us. And the natural response is the response of
the Pharisees, right? It's legalism. It's something that we have to earn, something
that we have to somehow obtain. We have to do stuff. We have to perform. A legalistic
heart focuses in on our performance and what we do or what we fail to do. A legalistic
heart is quick to focus on the shortcomings and the failings of others. The gospel message
that Jesus presents to us is that we can never make ourselves clean. We can never do enough
to bridge that gap between our sinful hearts and a holy and righteous God. If Mark 7 makes
one thing clear, if there's one point to take away from these verses, it's that our hearts
desperately need change. The answer can never be that we just have to try harder. We just
have to roll our sleeves up and somehow make ourselves better. That's moralism. The answer
is found in the cross, in what Jesus would go on to experience. Through the cross, the
Bible tells us we can be given a new heart, a changed heart, a clean heart. So we read
some of these examples from this list, the lust, the pride, the envy, the hate, the
sensuality, the bitterness, all of these things that go through our hearts. Through Christ
and what He's done on the cross are washed away. So when God sees us, He doesn't see
these things. He sees the perfect, innocent righteousness of Christ. So we come before
God today as His children, as those who are clean, as those who don't need to do anything
to earn that. Look at what God promises His people in Ezekiel 36. He says, I will sprinkle
clean water on you and you will be clean. I will cleanse you from all your impurities
and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put in you.
I will move from your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And do you see the key
thing with the verbs here in this passage? Look who's performing the action. It's God.
He will cleanse you. He will give you a clean heart. It's almost unbelievable for us, but
God takes us as we are, as broken and flawed and sinful people. He takes us as we are.
There's no prerequisite. There's no level or moral standard that we somehow first have
to reach. You'll probably know the famous quote from Tim Keller. He says that God sees
us as we are. He accepts us as we are. He even loves us as we are. But by His grace,
He does not leave us as we are. He changes us. He gives us a new heart. I think one of
the problems we have as Christians sometimes though is not that we don't know this. We
know this stuff. But we have this kind of like spiritual amnesia. We sometimes tend to forget
who we are in Christ. We somehow withdraw into ourselves and tell ourselves that we're a
failure or that we're not living up to a standard.
Sinclair Ferguson said that failure to deal with the presence of sin can often be traced
back to this kind of spiritual amnesia, to forgetting our new, true, real identity. As
a believer, I am someone who's been delivered from the dominion of sin and darkness and
who therefore is free and motivated to fight against the remnants of sin in my heart. You
must know, rest, and think through and act upon your new identity if you're a believer
you are in Christ. So we need to remember who we are. We need to remember what God has
done in our hearts and in our lives. I think as we've been thinking about in Mark 7 about
the kind of inward, outward, and appearances, I think integrity is one of the greatest qualities
we can show as a Christian. We want to be people whose insides and outsides match, people
who are consistent in what we say and what we do in public and behind closed doors. You
see, I think in our witness to our world and to our city and to the people around us, I
think nothing is more damaging or off-putting than a hypocrite. To see someone who says one
thing but in reality lives in a totally different way. That's always going to be a huge challenge
to us as Christians. We recognize it is a lifelong struggle and a battle. The Christian
life involves a continual call to repent and to come back to Christ and to confess how
much we need Him. So we have to remember who we are. Jonathan Edwards said that a Christian
who is stuck wallowing in sin is like a butterfly crawling miserably along a branch as if it's
still a caterpillar. You see, a butterfly has gone through an incredible transformation.
It's a new creature. So for it to come out if it's cocoon and to continue to live and
act as if it's still a caterpillar is absurd. And in much the same way as Christians, we
can completely forget the fact that we're new creatures. We're drawn back to the same
old life. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5, 17, if anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation.
The old has passed away, behold, the new has come. Today, if you're a believer in Jesus
Christ, you are a child of God. You have a new heart. He equips you to live a new life.
And we need to remind ourselves what God sees when He looks at us. What God sees is the
perfect spotless innocence of Christ in place of our unrighteousness and failings and faults.
So we want to pray that He will give us a heart and a desire to obey Him and love Him
and live for Him. So we ask ourselves as we close this morning, how is your heart? When
you worship God with God's people, where are you? Are you distant? Are you far away? Maybe
the big question that drives you and motivates you in life is what will they think? What
will the people around me think? Jesus reminds us in Mark 7, the most important question
we have to grapple with is when God looks at you, what does He see? If your trust is
in Christ this morning, He sees a heart that's shaped by grace, grace that's free and undeserved
and unmerited. We pray and trust that He'll enable our hearts to turn to Him, to trust
in Him and to rest in Him and you this morning. Let's pray together.
Oh, Lord God and loving Father, we just want to thank you and praise you for all that you've
done for us through Jesus Christ. We thank you that you are a God who changes hearts.
You take hearts of stone and you give us hearts of flesh. Lord, we thank you for the way that
you have dealt with our darkness. We thank you for the way that you have taken all of
our sin and all of our inconsistency and all of our failings and you have paid the penalty
in full. Father, we pray that you would help us this morning to trust again in the work
of Jesus Christ. Lord, to be reminded of how amazing you are, for a wonderful Savior you
have been. Father, we pray that you would equip our hearts to love you more, to love
each other more and Father, in all we do this week, to do all we do to your glory, we pray
this in Jesus' name. Amen.