the Gospel of Mark: on the road with Jesus (21): “Hands or Heart?”

Mark 7:1-23

kyle’s fine job last week + 1st Friday slots filled – dyc slots + new members + great commission fund & friesens in paris + phil stombaugh here 3/2-5

1. a friend once told me that I had a brain like Einstein's.
I thought--- "Wow what a nice compliment."
Then he said:
"Its been dead since 1956".

This morning my brain feels a litte dead after being sick for the last week. It hurts to think. But Sunday comes around every week & its sermon time!

2. in his little book Living the Cross Centered Life C.J. Mahaney identifies 3 temptations that move us away from the gospel. One of them is legalism – basing our relationship with God on our own performance.

3. I was raised in a Christianity defined by legalism – lots of rules & dos & don’ts. What was a Christian? Someone who didn’t smoke, drink alcohol, swear, go to movies, go to dances, play cards, wear make-up, attend the Catholic church or listen to the Beatles.

4. but it was okay for Christians to overeat (a lot), tell racist jokes, drink a couple of pots of coffee a day, talk behind people’s backs, criticize the preacher, avoid talking to people you didn’t like, and change churches if you got offended.

5. the focus was on external behavior defined by an insider, carefully drawn-up list. This list became the measurement for closeness to God.
6. I remember the delightful shock of discovering in college that C.S. Lewis, who was on everyone’s reading list & was the proven defender of the Christian faith, that C.S. Lewis smoked cigarettes, smoked a pipe, drank alcohol (and lots of it), and hung out in pubs with his friends! I began to question & rethink much of what I had been taught about my faith.

7:1-13: Hands
1. today’s Jesus story highlights the empty legalism that Jesus came to destroy. Jesus was a religious revolutionary. He colored outside the box. He disregarded the status quo. He unearthed the shallow spirituality of the so-called tradition of the elders (7:3).

2. Jesus & his disciples were eating a meal together. The Pharisees & some of the teachers of the law scrutinized their table manners. They nailed Jesus & his disciples for not washing their hands before eating. They were breaking the law according to the tradition of the elders.

3. the scribes & Pharisees had identified 613 laws in the Pentateuch (1st 5 books of OT). They chose 613 because that was how many separate letters were in the text containing the 10 commandments.

The 613 laws were divided into affirmative commands (do this) and negative commands (don’t do this). 248 commands were affirmative, 1 for every part of the human body as they understood it. 365 were negative, 1 for every day of the year.

This list was further divided into binding & nonbinding commands. How do you have a nonbinding command? Isn’t that an oxymoron? They spent their days debating this division & ranking the commands within each.

4. enter Jesus. He’s in trouble, again, for not following the rules: why don’t your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with unclean hands? (7:5). They set Jesus up, perfectly, for his response from Isaiah 29:13.

5. Jesus’ point? You are a bunch of hypocrites! You practice all this outward piety (keeping your manmade rules) but your hearts (your inward devotion) are far from me.

6. in their well-intentioned legalism to keep God’s laws, they actually were guilty of disregarding them:
§ 7:7 – let go
§ 7:9 – setting aside
§ 7:13 – nullify

7. case-in-point. Corban (7:9-13 cf. Numbers 30:1-2) – means a gift or offering given to God. Corban was cited to use 1 biblical teaching to nullify another. A son could dedicate to God his earnings that were to be used to support his parents. However the money didn’t have to be used for religious purposes. The son could do whatever he wanted with the money, and thus, circumvent the responsibility of children toward their parents. The tradition of the elders held to the letter of the law while ignoring its spirit.

8. empty legalism ruled Jesus’ day. Hands (7:1 – his disciples were eating food with hands that were unclean) took precedent over hearts (7:6 – their hearts are far from me).

7:14-23: Hearts
1. the Old Testament Law was given to set up outward markers separating the people of God from their neighbors. Jesus came not to abolish but to fulfill the law. For Jesus love for God & love for neighbor were to be the outward markers setting his followers off from their neighbors:
§ Matthew 22:34-40 – to love God and love our neighbor
§ John 13:34-35 – love one another

2. but what gets in the way of loving God, loving our neighbors? Unwashed hands? Improperly washed cups, pitchers & kettles? No, not at all. The problem is bigger & deeper.

3. calling the crowd to himself, Jesus makes his point. 7:14-15. Impurity comes from within us. Impurity resides in our hearts, not on our hands or in our stomachs. It’s not about our hands being clean or unclean. It’s not about food being kosher or un-kosher. It’s about our hearts being pure.

4. Jesus the revolutionary strikes again. The real challenge posed by Jesus and the gospel is the transformation of the human heart. We are called to be people who live from the inside out. The condition of our hearts determines the purity of our actions.

5. Jesus illustrates his point with a list of attitudes & actions. His list includes some of the 10 commandments but not all. It reads very much like Paul’s list of the deeds of the flesh in Galatians 5.

6. evil thoughts
sexual immorality – general word of all sexual immorality
theft
murder
adultery – specific word for sex outside of marriage
greed
malice -
deceit
lewdness – unbridled shameless living
envy -
slander
arrogance
folly – foolish, senseless
7. what strikes me about Jesus’ list is this – he anchors evil in our human hearts. Jesus will not let us blame society for our evil. He will not even let us blame the devil. We can’t blame the downfalls of our parents or an imperfect educational system or governmental oversights. We can’t blame our spouses or children or bosses or President Bush.

8. listen to Alexandar Solzhenitzyn, Russian novelist & historian, The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes nor between parties either — but right through the human heart.

9. a list of dos & don’ts can’t alter the human heart. Neither can laws or legislation or genetic engineering. Education fails. Money fails. Culture fails. All else fails but the gospel of Jesus Christ.

What do you do with your evil heart?
1. 7:24. in this passage Jesus never tells us what to do about our evil hearts. He teaches & runs. He hits the road again. And then he hides himself in someone’s house. He wanted to keep his presence secret.

2. Jesus creates this deep-seated tension for his followers & then leaves them to stew in it. No solution. Not even 5 simple points of application. As if he wanted them to live with the reality of what kind of evil lurked within each of them.

3. this week, ponder the monster that lives within you, your evil heart. And let God speak to you as you ponder.