Mark 6:53-7:23 - Human Commands That Disobey God’s Heart

Well, hello. Happy July 3rd to you, and hope that you're having a good day.

That is, if you're listening to this on the day it comes out, which I know many of you, or I should say, some of you do, and some of you mention, you catch up at other times, and thankful for all of you.

We are walking through the Gospel of Mark, looking at the story of Jesus, and what He did while He was on this earth.

Last episode, we saw Jesus' power over bread and fish, that He fed the multitudes, the 5,000 men that were there, and the women and the children.

And then we saw His power, again, over the Sea of Galilee, and the fact that He was even walking on the water, that He, as clearly and emphatically as He could, declared that He was God, that He had authority to forgive sins.

All of the things that should limit us in this world do not limit Jesus. And so, He has been making that very, very clear. But we read something kind of sad in verse 52 yesterday.

And it said that after Jesus got into the boat, stopped the waves, He had been walking on the water. It said the disciples were completely astounded because they had not understood about the loaves. Instead, their hearts were hardened.

They didn't recognize Jesus for who He truly was. Verse number 53 says, When they had crossed over, they came to shore at Gennesaret and anchored there. As they got out of the boat, people immediately recognized Him.

They hurried throughout that region and began to carry the sick on mats to wherever they heard He was.

Wherever He went into villages, towns or the country, they laid the sick in the market places and begged Him that they might touch just the end of His robe. And everyone who touched it was healed.

Man, I think here of the love that people had, even for those that were sick and those that were in need. And I think for us today, do we have a care?

Certainly for those that are actually physically sick, that we are able to be a part in helping to, you know, get the medical care or things like that. But how much more so for those that are spiritually sick, spiritually dead, spiritually in need?

Are we that intent about bringing those people to Jesus? Are we telling them the gospel?

Are we inviting them to church where they can hear about what God wants to do in their life, what Jesus has accomplished for them forever on the cross and with his resurrection?

Are we those that would, you know, perhaps even give like a gospel invite or a tract or something like that to be able to tell people about Jesus?

Here, these people in the countryside, they cared enough about their friends, about their loved ones, that they were intent on bringing them to Jesus. Let's have that same heart for ourselves.

Then we get to chapter 7 in verse number 1, and it says this, The Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him. They observed that some of his disciples were eating bread with unclean, that is, unwashed hands.

For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial washing, keeping the tradition of the elders. When they come back from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they have washed.

And there are many other customs they have received and keep, like the washing of cups, pitchers, kettles and dining couches.

So the Pharisees and scribes asked him, Why don't your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating bread with ceremonially unclean hands?

So here once again, those that were religious leaders wanted to get Jesus in trouble because of the actions of his disciples. But here it was something that they were doing that God had not commanded in his word.

We just went through the Book of Leviticus not too long ago. And in that book, we walked through every single one of the commands that God gave to his people.

And there were times when they were supposed to wash their hands, and it was when unclean things were touched.

And here the Pharisees and the scribes, what had been handed down to them from people over the past about three, four hundred years or so was, okay, if you should wash your hands when you touch something unclean, and perhaps a person that is unclean

might have touched a thing that you touched, but you don't know about it, therefore, instead of it being just like a ceremonially unclean thing or a ritually unclean thing, it actually then becomes a knowledgeably unclean thing. And so therefore, you

have to just wash your hands before every single meal and do this big washing. It's not just in the ways in which God set it up. We don't think God said enough. And so we're going to add this on to what he said.

So now they're chatting Jesus about it. In verse number six, Jesus gets to the actual point. He could say, well, God didn't say that.

The elders said it. And so they don't follow the elders. They follow God.

I think before I get to what Jesus says, I want to mention one thing. Sometimes, and those of you that know me well know that I am convictionally Baptist.

I love the things that have exemplified our denomination, our grouping of beliefs for the past about 400 years or so.

And I think that things like religious liberty, freedom of conscience, that soul competency, that individual soul liberty is so vital, and the belief that each local church is autonomous.

Those are just absolutely vital, vibrant things that bring great joy and life into churches. And I believe that Scripture emphatically reinforces those beliefs.

But if there's ever a time where it's like, okay, well, the Baptists say this, but God's Word says this, well, then I would rather go with God's Word.

I love being a Baptist, but if it's, okay, here this denominational identity says, this is the way we go about it. I'd rather go with the Word.

And we've seen in the course of church history what's happened when it's gone into conflict of, yes, the Bible says this about Mary, but this religious group says this about Mary, and the Bible says this about baptism, but this group says this about

baptism. And we've seen a lot of the difficulties that arise and where it then goes to, okay, when there's perhaps questions, we don't go with what the Bible clearly says. We just go with what we think instead.

Or Pastor so-and-so once told me this, and so I'm going to believe that, even though the Bible says this.

And I want to always be faithful to not encourage people, hey, your denomination says this, or I'm telling you this, I want to say the Bible says this. I don't care what I say. I don't care what a pastor 40 years ago said.

I care about what God's Word says because that's the only important truth.

And we, as with the Pharisees, as with the disciples, not necessarily the apostles, sometimes them as well, as we saw in the Book of Acts, sometimes in other places in the Old Testament, we very naturally add on to God's Word. That is a default mode.

There can be a default mode that says, I'm going to ignore what God has said, certainly, but we got to be careful to, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians, nothing beyond what is written, that we don't add anything on to the Lord's laws.

What he said is sufficient. So, verse 6, Jesus answered them. Isaiah prophesied correctly about you hypocrites, as it is written.

I think we've talked about that word, hypocrites, before. It's an actor. It's someone that puts on a face to play a part in a play, and he says, you guys are just playing a part.

He says, this is what Isaiah said a couple hundred years ago about you guys. It says, this people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. They worship me in vain, emptily, teaching as doctrines human commands.

Here, this is a violation of the third commandment, of taking the name of the Lord your God in vain, misusing God's authority to command actions in people's lives that God did not write.

God did not say you must wash your hands every time before you eat. It might be a good thing to do from a health standpoint, but it wasn't something that was a righteous, a right or wrong thing.

And so here, they were teaching as God said this, and you must do it when all it was, was an extrapolation of what God had said. It wasn't actually what God commanded.

In verse number eight, Jesus says, abandoning the command of God, you hold on to human tradition. He says, you have followed people, and you have followed them so far that you are no longer even following God.

So you thought you were following Rabbi so-and-so who followed Rabbi so-and-so, who followed Rabbi so-and-so, and you assumed that at the end of that line they were following God. He says, but you've been going the completely wrong path.

This was not my design. He says, he also said to them, you have a fine way of invalidating God's command in order to set up your tradition.

He says, for Moses said, honor your father and your mother, and whoever speaks evil of father or mother must be put to death.

But you say, if anyone tells his father or mother, whatever benefit you might have received from me is Corbin, that is an offering devoted to God. You no longer let him do anything for his father or mother.

You nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down, and you do many other similar things.

So, I had no idea when I went through the book of Leviticus how much it would tie into every other portion of scripture that we would look at. But, here we are again.

So, if you'll recall, when at the very end of the book of Leviticus, we looked at when people wanted to give a promised offering commitment to God to say, Lord, this is going to be yours.

And it talked about, hey, if you want to take that back from God, here's the redemption price for it.

And it was always like, eh, you add a fifth to its price, add about 20% of the worth of it, and you would spend that in gold to get back whatever it is.

So, what was happening during this time period was that a person would basically say, oh, yeah, I'm going to donate all of this to the temple or all of this to the Lord's use or this for the priests or the Pharisees or the Levites.

But I have it on the layaway. So, I haven't actually given it to them yet, but I'm going to eventually. So, then they would have aged parents that would say, hey, like we're in need of some finances.

We're in some need of some care and some help. You know, perhaps, do you have 50 denarii or do you have some sheep or a cow that we could use? And he would be like, oh, no, no, sorry.

Like that's set aside for the Lord. Okay, he hasn't actually given it yet. So, it's not benefiting like God's work that would happen, but it's keeping him from actually honoring, taking care of, providing for, loving his parents.

And so, Jesus says, because you guys have made this loophole where you have like lay away for God, you've actually disobeyed God's command to honor your father and mother. That people are using it so that they don't have to do what God has said.

He says, this is messed up. One way in which I've seen this happen is 1 Corinthians 14 makes a very clear statement. And I say statement, I'm going to summarize the type of statement that Paul is making.

As he talks about the gift of tongues, those languages that people really spoke, that were occasionally a gift in the early church, to be able to communicate that God was working in the Gentiles, it was a sign to the Jews, as you would read

throughout several of the books in the New Testament, like that's the sign to Israel that says, hey, the Holy Spirit really has come and he's working. And so there would be someone that would then translate that other language that was spoken into

the language that was there, affirming that yes, this is legitimately the Spirit of God. And he says, if there's no interpreter, you don't speak in tongues. And the underlying thought is edification requires intelligibility.

Edification, building up others, which is the point of everything that happens in church.

As Paul outlines in 1 Corinthians 14, he says, I would rather all of you prophesy, speak what God has said, say the Word of God, than to be able to do this miraculous thing of speaking in tongues.

So he says, building people up requires them being able to understand what is being said. It's why Paul says, I'd rather say like 5 words or 10 words that could actually be understood than to speak 10,000 words in an angelic tongue that no one knows.

He says, it's better to say 10 words and people understand it than to say 10,000 words that are the most beautiful and it not be understood.

There are some sections of Christianity that have in a sense kind of idolized the King James translation of the Bible in such a way that they violate that command of God's word.

That for a love of beautiful language or a love of tradition of perhaps saying, man, it has been around for 400 years and I can understand it, whereas I can't understand something like Beowulf or something.

But I think that everyone ought to and must read this particular translation of scripture and this translation alone.

Man, they are through tradition, through human commands, disobeying God's command that says, I would much rather people understand everything that I have written or at the very least have the option to because it's in their vernacular.

As one of the first English translators in the 1500s put it, as he was speaking to a high up in the particular Roman Catholic Church that still had a lot of sway at that moment, he said, I pray to God that I will help the plow boy, the farm worker to

be able to know and understand more of the Scripture than even you. And that's really God's heart, that he would be clear to those that hear him. So, again, that might rile some people up. It's not intended to.

The point is, human commands and traditions can be used to negate the Word of God even as this illustration shows us.

Verse number 14, Summoning the crowd again, Jesus told them, Listen to me, all of you, and understand, nothing that goes into a person from outside can defile him, but things that come out of a person are what defile him.

So here, as he's again referencing the Levitical stuff, he says, what really matters is not if you accidentally ingest something that touched something, that touched something that touched a chameleon. He says, that's not really the point.

So verse number 17, then his disciples are like, all right, when in the world does he mean by that? That nothing coming in from the outside can defile him.

Like, a lot of our lives are lived specifically saying that you can't have this evil stuff from the outside defiling you. Verse number 17, when he went into the house away from the crowd, his disciples asked him about the parable.

He said to them, are you also as lacking in understanding? Don't you realize that nothing going into a person from the outside can defile him? He says, it doesn't actually make you a sinner having something from the outside go into you.

It says, for it doesn't go into his heart, but into his stomach and is eliminated. He says, it can't affect who you actually are as a person. It just goes into your gut and then it goes away.

And Mark here puts in a little thing. Thus, Jesus declared all foods clean, as he's looking back on this topic. Verse number 20, and Jesus said, what comes out of a person is what defiles him.

For from within, out of people's hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immoralities, thefts, murders, adulteries, greed, evil actions, deceit, self-indulgence, envy, slander, pride and foolishness.

All these evil things come from within and defile a person. Jesus says it's not about the rituals. That's not really where the problem is.

The problem is the heart. And the Pharisees are real concerned about the ritual, and they don't care about the heart.

And I think we'll end here today looking at these sins, because I'm convinced I need to be consistently reminded of not everything that I think or say or do is right before God. And I want to know what God views as something to be rejected.

I want to know what God says sin is so that I will not embrace it in my life. So first he says these evil thoughts. I'm going to pull up the word study here.

It's the, if you will, the inner dialogue is kind of how this is, that your imagination, your plotting, how you talk in your brain, these evil thoughts, that is sin.

He says sexual immoralities, that is any sexual activity outside of marriage, whether it's premarital sex, extramarital, same sex, all of those things are sexual immorality.

Even things like pornography would overlap between evil thoughts and sexual immoralities that we as God's people should reject it.

Our world can view that, or portions of our world, view it as harmless, that they would say, well, it doesn't really hurt anyone, there's not a problem.

And God says, no, no, you're thinking about wrong in your mind, and it's not only just thinking about wrong in your mind, but it does involve other people. And so that would be something that would be against God's commands.

He says, thefts, stealing. And here he doesn't just say robbing a bank. It's not just the big thefts, it's the little things that we would take.

He says murders. Obviously, most of us would understand that murder is wrong. He says adulteries.

He says greed, that desire for money. Here, I'm going to look up this word real quick. This is greediness.

Pardon me. That's all it gives me for that particular one. So here we have greediness, and it's something that even as Paul writes Ephesians chapter 5, he mentions these things together.

Sexual immorality and greed. A love of money, a love of pleasure, a love for the things that God hasn't actually given you. Then it says evil actions.

Not only evil thoughts, but the things that we do that are wrong. It says deceit, tricking people, lying to people, painting yourself in a better light than you really deserve, or tricking others so that perhaps they take a business deal.

That if you were honest with them, they would never have taken. Then he says self-indulgence. Kind of the opposite there of self-control.

This is someone that is just looking for how much they can get out of life. What's often or sometimes been described as the green-eyed monster. The word for it there in the Greek language is literally evil eye.

One that looks at someone else's things and wants it. I've heard it phrased before. Jealousy is wanting what is rightfully yours.

Envy is wanting what is rightfully someone else's. And then the next thing here is slander. That talking down, defaming another person to insult them to other people.

That other people would think worse of a person because of your words. Then pride, obviously the root of many sins. That lifting up in our hearts that says I'm really something.

And then foolishness, just evil, jesting, joking, a non-reliance on the wisdom of God to declare how we ought to behave. Jesus says these are the things that come from inside, and that's what defiles a person. It's not washing your hands.

It's about what's in your heart. Today for you, give your heart to Jesus. He wants to cleanse it.

I go back in my mind again and again and again to 1 John 1.9. If we confess our sins, if we say the same thing that Jesus does about our sin, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Jesus wants to cleanse you, to forgive you, but will you go to him and say, Jesus, I know that I treated this person that way. I wanted to justify. I wanted to say it was deserved.

I wanted to say it was good, but I'm going to say the same thing that you say about my sin, that I was wrong, that that was unkindness or slander or envy or whatever the sin might be. Let's turn to him. Find forgiveness because of the cross.

He can freely forever forgive us for each sin that we commit, and I'm so thankful for that forgiveness that we find in Jesus. Tomorrow, have a really interesting passage. Looking forward to diving into it with you.

Thanks for joining in today. Thanks for Bye.