Sunday Sermon - Mark 7:1-23 What Defiles a Man.

 As we have noted before, our Roman reader has learned a lot about Jesus, and the remarkable things that He has done. Anyone who is drawing large crowds will at some point get the attention of the local leaders. Our Roman reader knows that the Empire only cares about two things, taxes and peace and they are connected. See if there is no peace, then the Empire is spending money on soldiers to get peace, and if there is no peace, most like that area where there is no peace, well there are no taxes. So, to ensure the money keeps coming in the Romans want to make sure that everything stays as peaceful as possible. This is why the Romans did not get involved too much in local affairs, especially ones that have to do with religion. The Romans pretty much allowed people to practice their religion as they saw fit.

However, the Jews were a different bunch, not only did they have this singular God, but they would also have these sects that would rise up and attempt to get the people to follow them in revolt against the Roman authorities. So, to try to curtail some of this behavior the Romans allowed the Jewish religious leaders have a lot of power that they did not grant other religious groups under the guise of keeping the peace and keeping the taxes flowing.

But since this Jesus was drawing such large crowds teaching things in the synagogues healing people casting out demons, the Jewish leadership started to take notice, and because Jesus was attracting these crowds, they wanted to make sure this Jesus knew his place.

Mark 7:1 Now when the Pharisees gathered to him, with some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem,

Mark 7:2 they saw that some of his disciples ate with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed.

Mark 7:3 (For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands properly, holding to the tradition of the elders,

Mark 7:4 and when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash. And there are many other traditions that they observe, such as the washing of cups and pots and copper vessels and dining couches.)

This is not about being clean, these folks had no concept of germs as we do, this was in fact about control. See what top down organizations do is to highlight the minimum requirements, making them seem major, and if we can convince you that the minimum requirements are as important as the major, well then you are much easier to control. It goes like this…

I see you have not been washing your hands before you eat, why is that?

Well I was in a hurry and I forgot.

Well if you are this forgetful about this, how can God trust that you will obey His other commandments? You want God to trust you do you not?

Well of course I do.

Good, then make sure that you wash those hands next time.

And this was all this way. The ceremonial washing of hands and other items was a man-made tradition that was given authority by the Jewish leadership.

Mark 7:5 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?”

They ask Jesus why “do His followers not the rules that the leadership of the people have established and eat with defiled hands. They are using that term defiled why? Because they want to establish their authority by defining the behavior of the disciples as wrong, and that they are right. Pay attention to words and how people use certain words, it matters a lot. They also make sure that Jesus understand they are in the position of power and authority, your people need to following the rules we establish, we are the leadership you should do as we say and follow our lead. This is the behavior of the bully leader, one who will bully you into doing things there way, real leaders lead by example and give reasons for why they are doing what they doing. Notice that this is not done the Pharisees they just question Jesus as to why His disciples are not conforming to the standards established by the Pharisees.

Mark 7:6 And he said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written,

“‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me;

Mark 7:7 in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’

Mark 7:8 You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.”

While our Roman reader may not know who Isaiah is, he understands what Isaiah is saying, you talk a good game but when it comes time to put that into action, well you are a nothing burger. You are a split bun and nothing else.

These people looked religious, they looked the part, they said religious things, they used the right words, God, obedience, sin, and they do stuff that can be see as being religious but that is all superficial it is all for the show.

See what Jesus says in verse 7 in vain do they worship me. In other words, worship that is not lovingly directed towards God is vain and worthless, it is check box Christianity. If I do not come to church to commune with God, why are you here? And frankly if you are truly worshipping God then you are coming in one of two states, Praise God I can come to the Lord’s House today to praise Him for His goodness and Love. Or, Lord I am broken, I desperately need you today, come to me and please heal my broken soul. But if you come through the doors and you are just going through the motions, if this is just something you think you need to be doing on a Sunday, because well this is just what Christians do, forsake not the assembly blah, blah blah, if that is you, either get right with God, or just stay home. You are here to be in the presence of the Creator of the Universe, the one who gave you life, and sustains this world, and that same God, came to this earth as a man, born of a virgin, lead a sinless life, and then died on a cross for your sins, and the best you got is Meh. Really? In Vain do they worship me.

A couple of years ago I wrote a Facebook post, which I caught some heat for, and it was about CEO’s, you know Christmas, Easter Only Christians, and I remarked about a guy who came with his family at Christmas and he looked like he was being held hostage by ISIS, and then he came back on Palm Sunday, and he was still be held hostage, the dude clearly did not want to be there, and you know what I wrote, if your attitude is like this guy, stay home, do not come into the house of the Lord with your negativity and your grumpy attitude, stay home. And people were like, oh but that man needed to be under the preaching of the Word, guess what, Paul said that the Gospel is what to those types of people? Folly, Foolishness, we can be the best speaking Gospel message of all time, it could be like Peter standing at Pentecost and unless God breaks that heart of stone in their chest, nothing is getting through. That man did not need to be preached to, that man needed the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit to break Him, and the Spirit only calls but so many times, and then, He is done with you.

So, the Pharisees worship is in vain, but why is it in vain, Jesus tells us why, because they are teaching the doctrines and the traditions of men.

There are churches today, filled with good men and women, lead by good people and instead of teaching and preaching the Word of God, they are teaching and defending their traditions,

Well you should be only using this Bible translation, well you should not come to church unless you are dressed a certain way, well if your butt is not in the pew Sunday morning, Sunday evening and Wednesday night you need to get right with God, well if you are not tithing as you should you need to get right with God, if the church service is more about their preferred methods of doing church, then they are vain in their worship and are teaching the doctrines and the traditions of men. This service is for the worship of God and the proclamation of His Word, not my defending my preference and making them seem as it is God who declared them. And Oh yes, they will twist some scripture to make it seem that what they are teaching is from God, but if you have to take the Word of God out of context to justify your man-made traditions, then you are no different than any other group of heretics who do the same.

See verse 8 tells us that, you leave the commandments of God and hold to the tradition of men, what men have to say is more important that what God, what men do or say is more important than what God says.

Ask yourself an honest question Do I care more about what people have to say, or to what God Word has to say? If I am all caught up in worrying about what Johnny and Billy have said, rather than what God’s Word says then I need to check myself. Stop holding onto the tradition of men and clinch to the Word of God.

Mark 7:9 And he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition!

Mark 7:10 For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’

Mark 7:11 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)

Mark 7:12 then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother,

Mark 7:13 thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And many such things you do.”

So, the Jewish leaders have come up with this what has to be is an ingenious plan to hold onto their money. Jesus gives them the law of Moses which is to honor your mother and father, and seeing that they took care of you when you need them to, you have an obligation to take care of them when they need it, but the Pharisees and Scribes they have said well I have dedicated my money to God, so I cannot give to you my parents what I have promised to give to God.

So an example of this is that you have decided to tithe a certain amount monthly, but you decide that you are not going to give it until the next month and put it into savings so that you can collect a months’ worth of interest on that money, and you repeat this monthly, you keeping the money you made off the interest in the account and only giving that money you put into the account for a tithe. The Pharisees are doing this same trick. So long comes mom and dad, or anyone in need of assistance, they ask you if you can help them out, and you say, well I really would like to, but I have promised my money to God, and I cannot take God’s money and give it to you.

Really? You have been banking that tithing money for months, if not years now, getting that interest paid to you but because it is in the savings account that you have designated for tithing well see that’s God’s money and I cannot touch that. Can you see how they are being dishonest.

Lots of churches do this. They take their tithing money, they put it into a savings account, draw interest on that money, use the rest of the tithing money to pay their bills, but they keep rolling over that interest until it becomes a nice fat sum of money and all the while when people come for help from the church, the church goes, well we don’t have enough money to help them, we can barely pay our bills each month, all the while you have that fat nest egg sitting over there. There is nothing wrong with making some extra money off the interest, but there is something very wrong with hoarding it.

And what was worse for the Pharisees is that while they would tell their parents and others that they money was designated for God, they had no problem using it for themselves, why, well because we work for God, we are doing the Lord’s Work, hence what we use that money for is God’s will.

Mark 7:14 And he called the people to him again and said to them, “Hear me, all of you, and understand:

Mark 7:15 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.”

Do you get that? Does our Roman reader get that?

It is not about things. The problem is not the things in your life, the problem is you and how you use the things that God has given you in the wrong way. The things cannot defile you, it is just an object, and you are the one that gives the object status and authority, so when people want to blame money, it is not money that is the problem, it is the person who hoards or misuses his money. This is “a you” problem, and not “a it” problem.

Mark 7:17 And when he had entered the house and left the people, his disciples asked him about the parable.

Mark 7:18 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,

Mark 7:19 since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.)

This has two parts that we need to deal with, and in kind help our Roman reader to understand. Of course in the context of foods being unclean, Jesus is not talking about food covered in dirt, or anything else, Jesus is referring to types of foods that the Jews had in the past forbidden to consume. This is Jesus telling the disciples that eating the food was not a restriction from God because by eating that restricted food they became sinful people, the food did not make them sinful, it did not defile them, they were already defiled they were already sinful, the food did not change that status. Jesus is saying look the food is not the problem, you eat it and your body process it and then it expels what was not necessary, that is all that the food does, so the problem is not with food, the problem is with the person.

And for us this teaching extends past just food, but to other things that we like to proclaim are our problems. Our phones, the internet, social media, money these are just things, they do not defile us, it is what we do with those things, it is the intentions of our hearts that corrupt them. Everything has a proper and useful purpose for which God made them, but it is man and his sinful heart that makes them evil and yet we want to blames the things, rather than ourselves, and you do not realize that when you blames the thing, who are you blaming? God. Because it is God who allowed it to be created, it is God who had a purpose for it, and His purpose was holy and righteous, but you used it to corrupt His purpose, and now you want to blame the thing, rather than yourself, hence you are blaming God for your behavior.

Mark 7:20 And he said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him.

Mark 7:21 For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery,

Mark 7:22 coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness.

Mark 7:23 All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

The problem is not food, or phones or money, the problem is us. We are the problem, nothing defiles us, but our own sinful hearts.

It was not the porn site that caused you to look it was the lust in your heart.

It was not someone had something, it was because you wanted it without earning it, that came from your heart.

It was not the gun or the knife, or any other weapon that caused you to kill someone else, it was the evil in your heart.

It was not that woman or man from the office flirting with you it was because you wanted to give in to the sexual wants and desires of your heart, physical pleasure. You covet what others have, and so you steal and murder to get what they have, you work hours after hour to get what they have all the while you ignore your family so that you can get what they have, and from that covetness comes the wickedness, the deceit, envy, slander, and when you get it you are so full of pride, look at me, look at what I have achieved are not impressed, you are a fool.

And the saddest of all of this is that our secular humanist society thinks they can solve these problems if you just make them smart enough. Well now even they realize that you cannot make them smart enough to eliminate the evil, so what so they do, well they allow them to eliminate themselves, if uneducated black kids kill other uneducated black kids, oh well. In congress the other day, the interim head of Southern Poverty Law Center was before Congress, and he was asked about why Pro-life groups had been labeled hate groups, when the congressman pointed out to the gentleman, who was black that 40% of all abortions are done to black children who make up only 13% of the population, he simply shrugged his shoulders. He did not care that over 14 million black babies had been aborted since 1973, that in 2015 more black babies were aborted in New York city than were born, these people do not care how many people die, so long as it is not them, everyone else, they do not care, so the slaughter in our streets, the chaos that is in our homes continues, and we as Christians want to blames everything, but what it actually is, the human heart and that is the same human heart that dwells within you.

The Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians about their lack of caring for their own brother because they were suing each other, an in chapter 6, verse 9-11 Paul says this.

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

Instead of turning a blind eye to the behavior of others, we need to realize that before God saved us, we were no different than they were, oh you might want to think you were not like them, but you were, and if your heart is not broken for these people, then we need to examine ourselves, and rid ourselves of our doctrine and traditions of men and embrace the Gospel of Christ.

Darin Bracy is the pastor at Yorktown Baptist Church in Yorktown Virginia. He is a graduate of Veritas Baptist College with a BA in Ministry and a minor in History. He has a wife Stacy, two daughters, Ashlynne and her husband Justin, their daughter Harper Darin's other daughter Aftyn, and her two dogs, Eddie and Lulubelle.

You can reach Darin at his email address, Darinbracy@gmail.com and you can see his video content on YouTube – Basic Baptist Guy