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Our Gospel reading today is a reading from the Gospel According to Mark, chapter 7, verses 1 through 23.
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 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 the teachers of the law asked Jesus,
Why don't your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with defiled hands?
He replied,
Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites.
As it is 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 he continued,
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 Corban,
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.
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.
This is the gospel of the Lord.
Good morning, everyone.
My name is Andrew.
I'm one of the pastors here.
And why don't we go before the Lord before we turn to his word.
Father, we pray that you would make much of your son, Jesus Christ,
in the preaching of your word, that we would behold him as our great high priest,
whose name is love.
The spotless, risen Lamb of God,
who in our place bore the punishment that we deserved,
and has given us his righteousness by faith.
We so savor that reality in Christ this morning.
In Jesus' name.
Amen.
All right.
Well, we have been in Mark's gospel.
We've been following Jesus through this gospel,
and he's been doing a lot of incredible things.
Last week, we saw how he fed over 5,000 people.
And so at this point in the narrative, in Mark chapter 7,
Jesus has developed, as you might imagine, quite a following, quite a reputation.
So great is his reputation in this, at this point in the story,
that verse 1 tells us that there are some members from the Jewish religious establishment,
the Pharisees, and even some teachers of the law who came all the way into Galilee in the north,
from the south in Jerusalem,
because Jesus had gotten their attention.
And in particular, they're concerned about the kinds of disciples that Jesus is making.
Because, see, Jesus, his disciples are behaving quite contrary to the kinds of disciples that the Pharisees were making.
And the point of contention that we're looking at today has to do with a matter of cleanliness.
All right?
Cleanliness, and not like hygiene, but spiritual, ritual cleanliness.
In the eyes of the Pharisees, in the eyes of these teachers of the law who came all the way from the temple in Jerusalem,
Jesus' disciples were unclean because, why?
As it says in verse 2, they were eating with unwashed hands.
Oh, no.
All right.
Now, I'm going to talk more about that and what's going on in the minds of the Pharisees
and why this is such a big deal to them.
But before I lose some of you, in case some of you are thinking that this story is just some irrelevant religious dispute
about cleansing rituals between some ancient Jewish teachers 2,000 years ago,
can I just ask you to just lean in and hang on and just have an open mind?
Because I promise this really is more relevant than you might think.
Even if you're here today and you couldn't care less about Jewish ritual cleansings,
can I just ask you again, if you're here today and maybe you couldn't care less about being clean in the eyes of the God of Abraham,
Isaac, and Moses, let me ask you this.
Is it not true that we all still do want to be clean in at least some sense?
Like clean in the eyes of someone or something.
We all do, right?
High schoolers in the room, you're not going to go on a date, all right, without taking a shower, all right?
You're not going to clean up before your first job interview.
And not just in like a physical sense of cleanliness.
We all want to be clean in every sense.
We want a clean conscience.
We want a clean record, a clean reputation, a clean bill of health.
We all want to be clean.
And sure, we all may have, excuse me, different ideas of what it means to be clean versus unclean.
But make no mistake, all of us, all of us operate within this duality, this dichotomy.
This is clean and that is not clean.
This is pure and sacred and right and that is vile and filthy and defiled.
At some point,
excuse me,
at some point, we all recognize this duality, these two categories, clean and unclean.
And however we understand that distinction and wherever we draw those lines,
what is true of each and every one of us is that we're all following what we believe will get us into the clean category, right?
The good category, the pure category, the just category, the category of the good guys.
Whether it's in the eyes of God or whatever divine being we believe in or any other credible court of opinion,
we're all trying to be clean rather than unclean.
And this is because being made in God's image,
we have a sense, we have an inherent affinity toward cleanliness.
It's what we were made to be.
We were made to be clean.
And at the same time, ever since we chose our way over God's way,
every day we see all around us and even in ourselves so much evidence of filth and uncleanness.
Things we know must make our maker gag.
Because of the way that we've wrongly treated this world,
because of the way we've wrongly treated one another, who are made in God's image,
there's so much that seems so soiled around us,
so much that seems so far from what it ought to be.
And so like our maker, as those also made in the image of God, we gag too, don't we?
And then even those of us who don't believe in this maker,
we all, we are all trying and trying and trying and trying to rid this world,
to rid our lands, to rid our society, to rid ourselves of all that we believe to be unclean.
It's a natural thing for humans to do.
We all want and we all seek to be clean and to get rid of what is unclean.
So you see, we're not actually so different than the Pharisees and the teachers of the law here
who are confronting Jesus about the uncleanness of his disciples.
They cared about cleanness as far as they understood it.
And so do we.
So do we.
They wanted to be clean too, and with good reason,
probably better reasons than a lot of us have for the kinds of cleannesses that we pursue.
They were pursuing cleanness before God.
The Pharisees were trying to live and lead the people of Israel into a national and spiritual purity
in the eyes of Yahweh.
In many ways, this was their solemn act of repentance,
an earnest effort to be clean and pleasing to their holy God.
Their pursuit of cleanness,
it came from their acknowledgement that the whole reason God had allowed their nation to go into exile
and the whole reason they were still under occupation under the Roman Empire
was because they had become unclean.
They'd disregarded the law of God and God's will for their lives.
So honestly, the Pharisees had regard for the holiness and the purity of God
that I sometimes dream that we would have as modern Bay Area Christians.
Like, I wish we were as zealous for the Word of God and for studying the Word of God as these Pharisees.
I wish we hated immorality and impiety as much as the Pharisees.
And in so many ways, I wish we were as careful as they were to keep clean,
to observe the holy commands of our holy God.
You see, that's where this big dispute came from.
It's because they had such a high regard for the commands of God.
In the law of Moses, in Exodus chapter 30, verse 17,
when God is giving Israel instructions for how His priests are to approach Him,
God says to Moses,
Make a bronze basin for washing.
Place it between the tent of meeting and the altar,
and then put water in it.
And then He says,
Aaron and his sons, who are the priests,
Aaron and his sons are to wash their hands and feet with water from this basin.
Whenever they enter the tent of meeting, that's where they met God,
they shall wash with water so that they will not die.
And so the message being communicated here is God is so holy
that if you are unclean in His presence, you will die.
Why?
Because He cannot and will not tolerate and abide uncleanness.
So what the Pharisees, and it says in verse 3,
what all the Jews at this point decided to do,
what kind of tradition came up and was handed down for many generations at this point,
happened was they decided not just to make sure that their priests were clean
when they went to the temple,
but they decided let's put a fence even around that
and make sure we're all clean all the time.
Let's wash our hands all the time.
Wherever they're coming from, verse 4, coming from the marketplace,
wherever, they committed to always washing their hands,
and not just their hands, but their cups and their pitchers and their kettles
and who knows what other washing traditions they had.
But again, it was all to be as clean as possible before God,
which to them was the ultimate, most highest, most important kind of cleanliness.
They wanted to uphold this instruction given to Moses and Aaron,
and they put this fence of traditions and rules around it
to make sure they never broke the law and became unclean again.
So you can see, right, you can hopefully appreciate,
you have to have some respect for the intention here that these Pharisees had.
You know, we usually easily write these Pharisees off as self-righteous and narrow-minded
and legalistic, dogmatic, you know, just evil, one-dimensional bad guys.
But no, there's a vigilance here.
There is a reverence even for God and His purity that I wish that I had,
that I wish we as a church had ourselves.
And that's the background we need as we come into this passage,
as we approach verse 5 here,
where the Pharisees and the teachers of the law confront Jesus.
And they ask Him,
why don't your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders
instead of eating their food with defiled hands?
The Pharisees are critiquing Jesus' discipleship.
They're critiquing Jesus' way of making faithful followers of Yahweh.
See, for the Pharisees and the teachers of the law
and for generations of elders who had gone before them,
ever since Israel's return from exile,
they'd devoted their whole lives to pursuing cleanness,
never to have to go into exile again.
They've devoted their whole lives to being clean and to washing their hands.
And in their minds, the very salvation and liberation and restoration of their people
depended on them making disciples who also washed their hands
for the sake of national cleanliness.
And yet here, they found in Jesus a different kind of discipleship,
a different way, a way that they could only perceive to be wrong and defiled.
And yet for reasons that I hope to make explicit,
Jesus, He doesn't see it that way at all.
And so the question is why?
Why not?
Is it because Jesus has a lower regard for the holiness
and the purity of God than the Pharisees?
Is it because Jesus doesn't care about ritual and ceremonial cleanness?
Or is it because Jesus is anti-tradition?
Well, no, no, and no.
No one had a higher view of the holiness of God than Jesus.
Remember what He said on the Sermon on the Mount?
He said,
Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
The same with ritual and ceremonial cleanness.
He had a high regard for that.
He said,
Not one jaw or tittle of the law will be abolished.
And He told the lepers He healed to make sure they went and showed themselves to the priests
according to the law of Moses.
And with regard to tradition, I mean, Jesus was the ultimate Jewish person.
He loved tradition.
He left traditions for us.
He's not anti-tradition.
No, Jesus had no problem with a high view of God's holiness.
He had no problem with the importance of cleanness before God.
And He definitely isn't anti-tradition.
But upon close inspection of what's going on in this encounter between Jesus and the Pharisees,
we find that even if the original intentions behind the Pharisees' traditions were admirably
in pursuit of cleanness before God,
Jesus perceived in these Pharisees three problematic things about their cleansing tradition.
Three things that we all need to watch out for ourselves
as people seeking our own kinds of cleanness.
The first is that they had a presumptuous sense of authority.
The second is that they had a self-serving pietism.
And the third is that they had a heartless, externalized religiosity.
A presumptuous sense of authority, a self-serving pietism,
and a heartless, externalized religion.
Look with me at verses 7 and 8.
The first thing I want you to notice is how Jesus rebukes the Pharisees
for presumptuously elevating their own dogma and doctrine and authority
above God's revealed commands.
Quoting from the prophet Isaiah, Jesus says,
They worship me in vain.
Their teachings are merely human rules.
You have let go of, or this can be translated,
you have abandoned, neglected, forsaken the commands of God,
and you're holding on to human traditions.
Again, Jesus doesn't have a problem with tradition in and of itself,
and neither should we actually.
No human society and culture could function without traditions.
They help bring order and stability and predictability.
They form and shape us in many positive ways.
They bring protection, and they bring consistency.
One tradition I'm aware of is, you know, Mike Francis,
Pastor Mike, Maria's husband in the back.
When he was pastoring out in Florida,
one tradition that he had to maintain his integrity as a pastor
is that on Saturday, in preparation for the Lord's Day,
he would not watch any movies or any shows,
lest his eyes fall upon something that might make him stumble
or distract him from his preaching and pastoral ministry the following day.
You know, I admire him deeply for that commitment,
for that tradition that he took on in his life.
But at the same time, Pastor Mike also knew better
than to say that every pastor had to live in that way
in order to be a clean, righteous, faithful preacher
and pastor in the eyes of God.
Because Pastor Mike knew, right?
He knew the difference between,
thus saith the Lord, and thus saith Pastor Mike, right?
We have to distinguish.
We have to distinguish between what God says and what others say.
We have to understand that there's a vast difference
in the authority between even a pastor and what God says.
What God says is ultimate.
What humans say is not.
And this is such an important thing for us to discern
and remember as we talk about discipleship in this church.
You know, there is a church not far from here.
They're actually quite excellent at discipleship.
I envy their discipleship culture in many ways.
They've led many people into deeper relationships with Christ.
But there are stories of how they've gone overboard
in their approach to follow me as I follow Christ.
For example, there are stories about leaders in this church
saying you can or cannot date this person.
Oh, you're going to buy a new vehicle.
You should buy this minivan and only that one.
And you know, they're not maybe not exactly saying,
thus saith the Lord,
but they're insisting on these things with such pressure
and with such authority
that many of their followers have felt like
to make any other decision would be to sin against God,
to rebel against God,
and to do something that is wicked in God's eyes.
And I'm sure, you know,
these leaders probably had good reasons
why they commended or didn't recommend certain people to date
or why they thought, you know,
a Dodge Caravan is the one to go for.
All right?
Maybe it's good to serve the church,
drive a lot of people to church.
I don't know.
But I think this kind of elevation over,
this elevation of tradition
over the explicit commands of Scripture
is exactly what Jesus is warning against.
And this is actually why we so often plead
with you, our congregation,
to be in your Bibles,
to read your Bibles,
to know your Bibles.
It's so that you can discern
what God says
versus what mere humans say.
This is what Jesus was doing.
Look at how he distinguishes
the different sources of authority
here in verse 6.
Whereas the Pharisees are quoting their elders,
right?
Jesus quotes to them
the divinely inspired prophet Isaiah.
And then in verse 10,
he says,
Moses, right?
He says,
Moses says,
but you say.
He's showing that there's a difference
in who says what
and who has the authority.
And this, again,
is so important
because inside and outside the church,
everyone and everything around us
is constantly trying to make us
its disciple,
trying to convince us
that their way is the way
to become clean and whole.
But just as Jesus submitted himself
only to the Father's will,
only to the revealed authority
of the Scriptures,
so must we submit ourselves
to the Scriptures.
Jesus had an incredibly high view
of the Bible
as the very Word of God
and so must we.
So discipleship under Jesus
demands that we constantly distinguish
between he said,
she said,
we said,
and thus saith the Lord.
What was Jesus always saying?
It is written.
Now, the problem wasn't just
that the Pharisees
didn't have a high enough view
of Scripture
or that they elevated
their tradition too high.
They were also expressing
their piety
in a way that was incredibly
self-serving
rather than God-honoring
and loving
toward their neighbors.
Look with me now
at verses 9 through 13.
For the sake of time,
I'm just going to read verse 9
and then explain
what Jesus is talking about here.
He says,
you have a fine way
of setting aside
the commands of God
in order to observe
your own traditions.
So Jesus gives this example
of how the Pharisees
not only elevated
their tradition
above God's command,
but they also used it
to serve themselves,
all in the name
of being religious
and pious.
So basically,
there was this thing
that they would do
where they would dedicate
something to God.
Let's just imagine.
Maybe they say,
I'm going to dedicate
this cow to God.
And by saying,
this cow is dedicated
to God,
they were also making a vow
not to give that cow
to any other person
or any other cause.
So even if something
might happen,
what they had dedicated
was this cow
and they might continue
to enjoy the milk
for themselves,
but let's say maybe
their parents came
into a financial hardship.
And they might have
been helped by the milk
or even by the sale
of the whole cow.
Well, the Pharisees
would say,
sorry,
I actually cannot
take care of you
with this cow,
mom and dad.
It's dedicated
to the Lord.
I can enjoy its milk,
but I can't share it
with you
because I made
a holy vow.
And thus,
by upholding
this tradition
that wasn't even
in the law of Moses,
other than maybe
Moses commending people
to keep their promises,
they gave themselves
a reason to break
the explicit commandment,
the fifth commandment,
honor your father
and your mother.
And it wasn't just
their parents
who they were failing
to love and honor
in the name of
this pietism.
This tradition of theirs
also gave them
a sense of superiority.
Superiority over all those
who didn't uphold
these traditions
that they insisted upon.
Through the lens
of their made-up tradition,
the Pharisees felt justified
in judging
and condemning
Jesus' disciples
and anyone else
who didn't uphold
their hand-washing rule
gave them
a judgmental rubric
by which to consider
others as defiled
and unclean.
They came to Jesus,
why did they eat
with defiled hands?
They asked Jesus
about his disciples.
See, their tradition,
which began
with good intentions,
it became a tool,
a tool for them
not only to serve themselves
and dishonor
their parents,
but also to condemn
others as inferior
and unclean.
And see,
this is always
what happens
when we elevate
human customs
and traditions
to dogmas
that are higher
and contrary
to Scripture.
We end up
dehumanizing people
because the motivation
always goes rotten.
Jesus saw through
the Pharisees'
fake piety.
This wasn't about
preserving holiness,
it was about preserving
their status
and their supremacy.
Pharisee.
And maybe up to this point
you're thinking to yourself,
well, I don't follow
any religious traditions
so this doesn't apply to me.
I'm no Pharisee.
But don't you see,
you don't have to be religious
to be Pharisaical.
And you don't have to be religious
to use tradition
as a way to try
to clean yourself
and distinguish yourself
from unclean other people.
Every single one of us,
whether we're religious
or not,
we're all trying to be clean
according to some standard
and we all commit ourselves
to various traditions
that we believe
will help us to be clean.
Why do we study
and work so hard
often at the expense
of serving the church
or our relationships
with God
or with other people
in our lives?
Why are we so obsessed
with how we look?
Why do we want to be
so sleek and slim
and young and beautiful
following the tradition
or program of this or that
fitness or nutrition expert?
We're trying to be clean.
We're trying to be clean
and not only that,
we're also trying to clean
the world around us,
aren't we?
Another side of the coin
is we're also trying
to get rid of the uncleanness
in ourselves
and all around us.
Why do we harbor such malice
or disgust
toward those who live differently,
think differently,
vote differently than us?
It's because they're unclean to us.
And maybe we're even trying
to cleanse them.
Maybe we're trying
to make them more like us
or maybe even get rid of them.
I mean, this is what's happening
all over the world
on macro and micro levels.
Individuals and whole people groups
claiming to be clean
because they live
by a certain code
and based on their
deeply ingrained way of life,
based on their tradition,
those who don't live their way
are deemed as unclean.
This is the root
of every person-to-person
malice and disrespect
and it's the same root
that leads to genocide.
People believing they're clean
because they live up
to their own traditions
and hating or even seeking
to cleanse this world
of those who are unclean
according to these same
made-up traditions
that are not of God.
This is what happens
when tradition is elevated
to ultimate authority.
In the name of this
ultimate authority,
people believe
they have the right
to make ultimate declarations
and judgments upon others.
This is what happens
in every instance
of human-constructed discipleship.
This presumptuous sense
of authority
and self-serving pietism
always resulting in war
and conflict
and hatred
and dehumanization
and violence
because all these evils
find justification
from these man-made,
made-up traditions
that people cling to
in order to purify themselves
and convince themselves
that they are better
than others
who need to be cleansed
out of this world.
So don't you see?
Like us all,
the Pharisees
weren't really about
being clean God's way.
They were merely preoccupied
with their own
contrived self-cleansing,
world-cleansing projects.
And when you see it this way,
that they were elevating
their tradition
above God's commands
and weaponizing
their tradition
to keep themselves
in the clean category
and judge others,
you begin to see
that whereas we tend
to think of Pharisees
as these religious extremists
who took God's holiness
and purity
too seriously,
no, the problem,
the problem was actually
that they weren't
taking it seriously enough.
By living according
to their own tradition
above God's law,
excuse me,
by setting their own
standard of cleanness,
one which they could pass
and yet they knew
others could not pass,
they were actually
adjusting the goalposts
and just making it
suit their own strengths
and preferences.
They were making
God's holy standards
achievable.
They were saying
perfection was possible
so long as you change
and copy them externally.
But this leads me
to the last
and most important problem
that Jesus perceives
in the Pharisees,
it's their hearts.
Look with me at verse 6.
He replied,
Isaiah was right
when he prophesied
about you hypocrites.
As it is written,
these people honor me
with their lips
but their hearts
are far from me.
Jesus is saying
that just because
you do this supposedly
pious religious act,
it doesn't mean
your heart
is in the right place.
You can say
and think you're honoring me
but your hearts
can be far,
far,
far from me.
This is a word
for us, Christ Church.
In this season
where we're pursuing
discipleship,
pursuing a particular way
of following Jesus
in this season
where we're promoting
spiritual disciplines
where we have
scripture reading plans
and prayer vigils
and all these things
that we promote.
Worship plus three.
We want you to be here
in corporate worship.
We want you to be serving
in this church.
We want you to have
a touch point
with this community
outside of Sundays
and we want you to be
in some kind of
discipleship relationship
where there's
spiritual responsibility.
Jesus will remind us
that you can do
worship plus three here
but your heart
can still be far
from God.
Your heart
can still be far
from God
and this should be
sobering to all of us.
I've caught my own self
in this in this past
month and a half.
You know,
I love Tim Keller.
He's one of my heroes
and I read on Twitter
that his scripture
reading plan
was the McShane plan
plus the Book
of Common Prayers
Psalms.
So he would read
the Old Testament
once a year,
the New Testament
twice in one year
and he would read
the Psalms
once a month.
So 12 times a year.
So I've been on that.
All right?
And I'm not better for it.
I'll tell you that.
I thought to myself,
maybe if I just
follow this tradition,
maybe if I just
follow this formula,
I'll be the godly,
wise, compelling pastor
that Tim Keller was.
Maybe that's the way
to greatness.
But honestly,
on more days than not,
I'm just flying through this.
No idea what I'm reading.
Just to cross it off,
my spiritual to-do list.
Honoring God
with my spiritual checklist,
with my heart
far from him.
And yes,
it's important.
These holy habits
that we're trying
to instill
in our church.
It's important
to try on
these various traditions.
But at the end
of the day,
how are our hearts?
How are our hearts?
Are they near to
or far
from Jesus?
At the very end
of the day,
that's what Jesus
is after.
He's after our hearts,
not just our hands,
not just our heads,
but our hearts
from which everything
flows, he says.
And maybe to some of you,
this sounds like a relief.
Like, phew, good.
I could never keep up
the demands of Scripture,
but at least I have
a good heart.
If that's what you're
thinking right now,
Jesus has something else
to say to you.
Verse 14,
listen to me, everyone,
and understand this.
Nothing outside a person
can defile them
by going into them.
Not even Tim Keller's
Scripture reading plan.
Rather,
it is what comes
out of a person
that defiles them.
I'm going to skip
to verse 21.
For it is from within,
out of a person's heart,
that evil thoughts come.
And he lists all those
different kinds
that we're all guilty of.
All these evils
come from inside
and defile a person.
Thus saith the Lord Jesus.
When Jesus said this,
it wasn't supposed
to be a relief to us.
What Jesus was saying
was that the Pharisees
and anyone who would
seek to be clean,
anyone who would seek
to clean themselves
by external means,
yo, we're in trouble.
That's our method.
Because the problem
isn't primarily
outside of us
as though we're simply
victims of sin
with uncleanness
coming at us
from the outside
to infect us.
No, evil doesn't just
come at us
from the outside.
More importantly,
Jesus says,
it comes from within us,
from the inside.
And this is why
no external religious tradition
will do to make us clean.
We have an internal problem,
a heart problem,
every single one of us.
And so the question is,
well then how do we fix that?
How do we get clean hearts?
Especially if we can't
clean ourselves
from the outside.
Has anyone here
ever tried to change
their heart,
change their will?
How'd that turn out
for you?
And what's even more
troubling here
is that here in Mark 7,
Jesus just ends,
that's where the passage
ends for us today.
He lets us linger
in this hard news
that the problem
is our hearts.
And he doesn't give us
an answer here
for what to do about it.
But if you think about it,
if you think about it,
this message
that the problem
is our hearts,
this is at the same time
both the bad news
and the good news
of the gospel.
That we cannot
clean ourselves
and yet
that we don't need
to clean ourselves
because there's
a gracious God
who can
and who will
if we trust him.
The Pharisees tried
oh so hard
to cleanse themselves
through tradition
and rule following
because they wanted
to avoid
another exile
and we are all
trying so hard
ourselves, right,
to avoid all kinds
of uncleanness
because we want
to avoid all kinds
of exiles as well.
And the truth is
we're all exhausted,
aren't we?
Trying to live up
to all these
different standards
and it's not
making us live,
it's not making us,
it's not likely
life-giving for us,
it's not making us
compassionate
or even clean people
and we still feel
the threat of exile
every day,
don't we?
But you know
the prophet Ezekiel,
he said something
to unclean Israel
after they'd
gone into exile,
after they'd
made themselves
unclean
by disregarding
the law of God.
The word of God
still came to them
even though
they never deserved it
and it was
a gracious word.
through the prophet
Ezekiel,
God said to these
unclean people
in exile,
he said,
I will sprinkle
clean water on you
and you will be clean.
I will cleanse you
from your impurities.
I will give you
a new heart
and put a new spirit
in you.
I will remove
your heart of stone
and give you
a heart of flesh
and I will put
my spirit in you
and move you
to follow
my decrees
and be careful
to keep my laws.
And you see,
this is the gospel.
This is the gospel
that Jesus
was hinting at
by pointing them
to the problem
of their hearts
that while we could
never clean ourselves,
God can
and will to
and plan to
to clean
his beloved people
who just trust him
by faith
and not in some
quick, easy,
inexpensive,
uncostly way.
No.
At the cost of his son.
The blood of his son
on a cross
for us
with his priceless,
innocent blood
bearing our curse,
bearing our sins,
bearing our uncleanness,
going on a cross,
becoming unclean,
being covered in spit
and hate
and curse
to the place
of unclean death
so that we might be clean,
so that we might become
the righteousness
of God.
And this is the gospel.
This is the gospel
and this gospel
is the inexhaustible fuel
for the discipleship
that we're seeking
here at Christ Church,
the inexhaustible fuel
for the discipleship
that Jesus calls us to.
So different
than any other
kind of discipleship
that anyone else
could offer.
We are invited
to follow a master
who exists
not to forever
command us
do, do, do, do, do, do.
No.
We're inviolate.
We're invited
to follow a king
who said from his cross,
it is done.
That is what
the core of discipleship
is about.
Yes, it's about
following Jesus.
Yes, it's about obedience.
But we love
because he first
loved us.
We deny ourselves
and we take up
our cross
following the Savior
who took up
his cross
first
for us.
Will you pray with me?
Lord, we want
to follow Jesus.
He is a better king
and we thank you
that he has said
it is done.
In his name we pray.
Amen.