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LIFE CHANGE GOD'S WAY : WHAT'S INSIDE ALWAYS COMES OUTMark 7:14-23INTRODUCTION Chris Lundgaard begins his book, “The Enemy Within”, with this story. “All I wanted to do was surprise my wife. Since we had moved into our new house almost a year ago, the refrigerator door handle had been on the wrong side. I had put off moving it because of my clumsiness with mechanical things. But on Thursday afternoon while my wife was at work, I was set to redeem myself and right the wrong. I was halfway through the job. I had the refrigerator and freezer doors off and wanted to get them back on soon so nothing would spoil. I was at the pivotal step of swapping the hinges from the right side of the refrigerator to the left, when I realized that each hinge was fastened by two torx screws. Two lousy torx screws. There is only one tool in the universe that can safely remove a torx screw: a torx socket. I didn’t have a torx socket. Right then my three boys decided to move their Traveling Sibling Rivalry Show into the middle of my angst. I lost it. I let them have it, though they didn’t deserve it. They stared at me as if I were a monster from Alpha Centauri, while I ranted in an unknown tongue. In mid-fit I had an out-of-body experience. I saw my contorted red face screaming at my charming boys and knew at once I was doing something evil. So I stopped and asked their forgiveness, right? Wrong. Something had control of me—it was as if an alien had invaded my body and was forcing me to do his bidding. It was long after they had fled from my wrath before I recovered my sanity and my conscience and humbled myself before them in groveling apologies.” Does that sound at all familiar to you? I could have written that story—dozens of times—only changing the work I was trying to get done. If you were Chris’s friend and he came to you, told you this story and then asked you, “Why am I like this? How can I change?”—What would you tell him? We live in a culture that is full of explanations as to why a man might behave like this and what can be done to fix him. Some might locate the problem in an imbalance in the chemistry of the brain and prescribe psychotherapeutic drugs. Others would examine the relationship of Chris with his own father and have him acknowledge and weep over his boyhood pain and thus, freed from that pain, not make his boys pay for the pain his father caused him. Others might label the problem sin and tell him to read the Bible and pray more and get into an accountability group for “Mad Dads.” I am convinced that there is only one reliable and therefore adequate answer to why we behave as we do and how we change. The Bible gives us the only sufficient explanation for human behavior and the only helpful prescription for real life change. This Sunday and the next two we are going to do a more topical study examining these two questions and a third that is closely related. This Sunday we are going to look at Mark 7 to answer the question: why do I do what I do? Next week, Derek Perdue will be considering Romans 6:11-14 to answer the question, “how do I change?” Then the last Sunday in September I will examine Colossians 3:12-17 to find out how we can help each other to change. These are not new issues for us to be considering. We have been wrestling with these issues during the past several weeks as we studied our way through the last two chapters of Paul’s letter to the Galatians, so we will not be breaking entirely new ground during these next three Sundays. Why are we doing this series? The Elder Board wants us, as a congregation to consider these issues now in light of a twenty-week study that all of our Discovery Groups will embark on sometime in October. We are prayerfully hopeful that considering these vital questions in these sermons will “wet your appetite” for a more detailed and interactive discussion of them in a small group context. We will have 11 Discovery Groups meeting throughout the week for twenty weeks, with the hope that all of us will have the opportunity to interact together over material published by the “Changing Hearts, Changing Lives” ministry. MAIN POINT Human beings by nature cannot change themselves because…I. What is outside of me, cannot affect what is inside of me (vv. 14-19) As we begin to look at this passage we are immediately confronted with the problem of trying to study a passage without understanding its broader context. Mark 7:14-23 is really part of a larger unit, Mark 7:1-23, which is part of the entire book of Mark. Mark placed these historical events and words of Jesus together in the way he did in order to communicate theological truth in story form, not simply tell a story. We need to at least have a basic idea of the immediately preceding context if we are to grasp the significance of what Jesus says in vv. 14-23. Notice that this section begins in 7:1 with a group of Jewish Pharisees and teachers of the law coming to Jesus and upon observing that his disciples eat their food with unclean hands, demand to know why it is that his disciples, under his direction, do not follow the tradition of the elders. The tradition of the elders refers to a large body of teaching handed down from one generation of Jewish teachers to another that sought to instruct the people of Israel on how to obey God’s law. The idea of being unclean is a thoroughly OT concept. To be unclean was to be unacceptable to God and thus unable to enter God’s temple or be in the presence of God’s people. There were many ways to become unclean. You became unclean if you ate unclean food, if you touched a dead body, if you had an open sore on your body, if you had a baby, etc. In addition, objects, such as eating utensils, could become unclean through contact with many of these same unclean conditions. The law commanded that anyone or anything that became unclean was to go through a “cleansing” ritual, which in every case included washing the body or the utensil with water. In addition to all these cleansings the priests were commanded to wash their hands and feet every time they entered the temple. Over time, Jewish teachers instituted a series of preventative cleanliness rituals. They taught, as you could never be sure if you had come into contact with unclean people or objects that every good Jewish person was to wash their hands before eating just in case they had come into contact with something unclean. In this way, so they reasoned, they could always be sure to be clean and thus not make the food they ate unclean by touching it with unclean hands. Now Jesus is not very friendly in response to their challenging question. He calls them hypocrites and quotes Isaiah 29:13 and says that Isaiah wrote this about them. He calls their religious observances mere lip service and declares that their hearts are not in any way engaged in the worship of God. Because of their fastidious obedience to these man-made rules they do not obey God’s word. Their religious performance, which they do in the name of serving God, actually prevents them from obeying God's law. Then, in vv. 9-13, he gives them a specific example of how their man made traditions by which they claim to be obeying God do in fact keep people from obeying God. There are two things to notice in Jesus’ rebuke of the Jewish religious leaders. First, religious rituals and actions have no necessary correlation to the condition of a person’s heart. This is stated everywhere in the OT and the NT. Going to church, praying, reading your Bible, serving in some religious job or ministry, like pastor or elder or bible study leader can be done without any faith in Christ and no love for God. True lovers of God do pray, go to church, read the Bible, etc. but doing these things is not the primary evidence that you belong to Christ. Second, often when humans appear the most religious and concerned for God their religious performance actually keeps them from obeying God. Humans are great at making God’s law manageable and friendly to human self-interest. We do this by adding to God’s word in the name of seeking to help people keep God’s word. That is what the Jewish religious teachers were doing. They appear to be very committed to God’s law when in fact they are changing it by adding to his law. They have made it doable and have made it serve their self-interest. A word to parents at this point: Make sure if you tell your children that the reason your family has a certain rule is because this is God's eternal will for all human beings, that it actually is God's eternal will for all human beings. You will do your children much harm if you attach divine command to merely human rules. That does not mean you cannot have rules that are not divine command, just make sure your children know the difference. After Jesus rebukes the religious leaders he calls the crowd together and he gives them a universal principle that he urges them to understand. He seeks to correct the false teaching of the religious teachers by speaking directly to the crowd of Israelites. The statement he makes is, as the disciples call it later, a parable. It is a sort of riddle that requires some thinking. I can guarantee you that everyone who heard this statement from Jesus was shocked. The reason this is shocking is because Jesus says that nothing going into a man makes him unclean. This is a shocking thing to say because there are dozens of statements in the OT that appear to say exactly the opposite. Consider this one example: Lev. 11:40, “Anyone who eats some of the carcass must wash his clothes, and he will be unclean till evening.” Lev. 11:43, “Do not defile yourselves by any of these creatures. Do not make yourselves unclean by means of them or be made unclean by them.” Jesus is not simply attacking the tradition of the elders that has been added to the law but he is also attacking a way of approaching the entire law. There is a way of viewing and using the good law of God that is bad. While the specific example he is dealing with is eating unclean food, whether made unclean by contact with something unclean or whether unclean in itself, the broader point has to do with how the Jewish people viewed and used the OT law. They acted as though external conformity to the law was all that the law required and that this external conformity made you either acceptable of unacceptable to God. They believed they had the power to keep it and thus make themselves clean in God’s sight. They did not believe that the purpose of the law was to show them the true condition of their heart and therefore the hopeless condition they were in. They did not view the law as the revelation of the glory of the Messiah and of his salvation. We can see this willful misunderstanding and misuse of the law in the disciple’s question of Jesus. They ask him to explain the riddle to them. Jesus’ response to them is demanding. He asks them, “Are you also so dull?” That word translated dull is used throughout the rest of the NT to describe the dull hearts of unbelieving non-Christians. As in Romans 1:21, “Although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their dull hearts were hardened.” Jesus is surprised that these men who know that he is the Messiah, do not yet understand the spiritual nature of the law. He attributes their lack of understanding, not to the fact the OT is unclear, but rather to their willful, spiritual blindness. They are at fault for not understanding what he has just said. Jesus expects them to get it in the same way he expected the Jewish religious leaders to get it. In John 3 when Jesus was talking to Nicodemus, the Pharisee and teacher of Israel, he told him that the only way to enter the kingdom of heaven was to be born again. When Nicodemus began to argue with him, Jesus said, "You are Israel's teacher and you don't understand these things?" Another time, when in yet another debate with the religious leaders, who claimed to be followers of Moses, Jesus said, "If you believed Moses you would believe me because he wrote about me. But since you don't believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?" Jesus as the one who fulfills and is the fulfillment of the entire OT gives the real meaning of the OT laws. Here he tells the disciples that the reason that eating unclean food cannot make a person unclean is because the food does not affect the heart. It is a merely physical thing that happens. The food goes into the stomach and then, literally, he says, it goes out of the body into the latrine. Mark, the author of the gospel, adds an editorial comment at this point. He says that in saying this Jesus declares all foods clean. The reason all foods are clean now, and they weren’t before, is because Christ has come. These laws were given as physical and external symbols of the spiritual and internal salvation that Christ would accomplish. The main point that Jesus makes here is that external conformity to external law cannot save me or change me. Eating only clean food will not make you clean in God's eyes and eating unclean food will not make you unclean in God's eyes. The problem with human beings is not merely behavioral. What we need is not just better instruction and more determined moral effort. External conformity to external law cannot affect what is really wrong with me. There is no power in the law to change me. It can only condemn me. It can tell me what I should and should not do but it cannot give me the power to do it or forgive my failure to keep it. I do not eat lima beans. Why, you may ask, do you not eat lima beans, John? I do not eat them because I hate lima beans. I push them to the edge of my plate whenever they are set before me. It is one food that I have always permitted my children to not eat. They may also push them to the side of their plate. My mother used to make me eat lima beans. How, you may ask did she make me eat what I hate? She promised me dessert if I would eat them and threatened to make me sit at the table until I finished them if I would not eat them. I gave external conformity to her requirement of eating lima beans because I feared her punishment and I wanted dessert. However, I have never eaten lima beans because I loved them. I have only ever eaten lima beans to get something else, not because I love lima beans. Eating lima beans in order to get something else never changed my heart and so today I do not eat lima beans because I continue to hate them. Jesus tells the disciples and us that external conformity to external laws cannot affect what is really wrong with us because what is wrong with us is our heart. My problem is that I love the wrong things and hate the right things. Therefore, while I can offer an external conformity to law, I cannot trust and love the law and the lawgiver. My heart is unclean. Unclean hearts make unclean people. The only way to make a clean person is to make a clean heart. Human beings are helpless to change themselves because…
II. What is inside of me will come out of me (vv. 21-22) This word, "heart" is used some 750 times in the OT and over 150 times in the NT. It is the normal biblical word for the interior part of man that is the real me. It does not primarily refer to our emotions though the heart has a profound effect upon our emotions. The heart is our interior faculty that understands or perceives the external world and then either affirms what it perceives or disapproves what is perceived. The heart believes or disbelieves, it loves or hates what is perceived. It determines the entire course of our lives. Whatever our heart perceives as valuable and trustworthy will determine how we feel, how we act, how we decide. It's important to emphasize that my heart is who I am. It is not something separate from the real me but is the real me. The sad and sober reality of being a human being is that our hearts are evil and therefore, we do evil. Doing evil is not what makes us evil. Rather, we are evil and thus we do evil. Whatever is in the human heart is what comes out of the human heart and what is in the human heart is evil. This is the universal witness of the entire Bible. Ecc. 9:3 says, "The hearts of men, moreover, are full of evil and there is madness in their hearts while they live…" Jeremiah 11:7-8 says, "From the time I brought your forefathers up from Egypt until today, I warned them again and again, saying, 'Obey me.' But they did not listen or pay attention; instead , they followed the stubbornness of their evil hearts." Romans 1:21, "Although they knew God they neither glorified him as God or gave thanks to him but their thinking became futile and their dull hearts were darkened." Ephesians 4:18, "They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is them due to the hardening of their hearts." Jesus lists 12 things that come out men's hearts. We're not going to look at each in detail but to notice a few things about the list. First, this is not an exhaustive list of all the evil that comes out of us but is meant to be representative. Matthew, in his report of this speech only lists 7 evil things. This is exactly the same as what Paul did in Galatians 5:19-21 when he listed 15 "works of the flesh." At the end of that list he added, "and things like these." Second, notice that the first thing he says comes out of our heart is "evil thoughts". You don't have to do anything wrong to be guilty before God. All you have to do is think an evil thought. Most of us think that our thoughts come to us unbidden, that we are not responsible for those strange and wicked thoughts that go floating through our heads. Jesus says that the reason we have evil thoughts is because we are evil. Our evil thoughts are the result of what we love, trust and value. One of our children, as a baby was particularly difficult. He or she would often cry throughout the night. Many nights Jane and I would take turns, in the middle of the night, pacing the floor rocking this baby in our arms to keep her or him from screaming. On more than one occasion I had vivid thoughts of throwing him or her against the wall. Where did such vile and wicked thoughts come from? That thought came from me, from my heart. I did not have that thought because I was tired. I had that thought because I believed that I had a right not to have to take care of this child. I valued my sleep infinitely more than I valued loving my baby. Third, notice that not all human hearts produce the same evil fruit. Just because I am not a drunk doesn't mean I don't have an evil heart. Every heart loves, trusts and values different things and this is why there is such variety among us as to the sins we prefer and the variety of responses we have to life. This gives the reason as to why different people can experience the same trauma and yet respond to it in vastly different ways. Some children of alcoholics become alcoholics, some become self-righteous teetotalers, some become sexually promiscuous, some pursue a perfect life of academic, social and career excellence. The variety of sins we commit all have their origin in the same place, hearts that delight in something or someone other than God. A fourth thing to notice in this list is that it includes actions, like theft, attitudes, like greed and pride and emotions, like malice. Evil actions, evil attitudes and dispositions and evil emotions all arise within our hearts. These actions, emotions and attitudes do not come out of us because of external circumstances but by an internal affection. I do not get impatient with my child because she dawdles when getting ready for bed. I get impatient with her because my heart believes I have better and more important things to do than to patiently help her learn to obey me. I have more satisfying things to do than spend time with her. I am not full of worry and fear because I don’t have enough money to pay the bills this month. I am full of worry and fear because I believe having enough money is more necessary to life than being loved by God in Christ. My heart is not full of anger and bitterness towards another person because they made a rude comment to me. My heart is full of anger and bitterness because I believe that I have a right to be treated with respect and love by others. I believe that having a person love me is far superior to being loved by Christ. I do not steal from my employer because I don't get paid enough but because I love getting things for free more than I love being a righteous person who trusts God to give me what I need. Many of you have seen this illustration before but it is very helpful in understanding the point of what Jesus says here. I have here a glass of water. If I shake the glass, water comes out of it. Why does water come out of the glass? It is not because I shake it. Water comes out because there is water in the glass. If I shake this empty glass, does water come out of it? No. Shaking the glass only reveals what is in the glass, it does not put anything in the glass. In the same way, the external realities of our lives do not cause us to act and feel as we do but rather our heart, what we value, trust and love, determines what comes out of us. If you've never thought about this before, it sounds very harsh. But you see, to say that my insensitive spouse does not cause my anger is not to say that my spouse is not wrong. To say that my paralyzing fear is not caused by being sexually abused as a child is not to say that the one who abused me was not guilty of horrible evil. What Jesus' statement tells us is that we are not slaves to our circumstances or our genes or the people around us. We are slaves to whatever rules our hearts, which is incredibly good news. If you do the things you do because of what happened to you or because of what is happening to you, then you have no way out. You are in a hopeless condition if an insensitive husband causes your anger. You are stuck if an alcoholic father and/or a chemically imbalanced brain cause your drunkenness. But if the reason you do what you do is because of what rules your heart, then there is a solution, a Savior who can redeem you, who can give you a new heart that loves and trusts and values what is good and therefore enable you to do good. The good news is that you can change by dying to what once bound you and by trusting Christ. This is what Derek will talk about in greater detail next week. But before I end I want to point out one thing in this text that is hopeful. Human beings are helpless to change themselves because…
III. What comes out of me is what condemns me (vv. 15b, 20, 23) Jesus says three times that what comes out of me is what makes me unclean. By this he means, the evil I do, that comes out of my evil heart, is what makes me guilty before God and the object of his anger. I am condemned because I do not do what he commands from a heart that trusts and loves him. I am unclean in his sight. The question that hangs over this entire text is this: If I have an evil heart, that is, if I love and trust and value everything except for God, and if this evil heart yields evil actions that make me guilty before God, then how will I ever be clean in God's sight? How will I ever be cleansed of evil? Jesus has made it more than clear that it won't happen by seeking to obey the law. How does it happen? I want you to notice the story that follows the text we have been examining. Jesus leaves Israel behind and goes into the region of Tyre and Sidon, which is a Gentile, non-Jewish area. From the point of view of the religious leaders he was walking into a place of defilement. One of the reasons they washed their hands before eating was because the wind blew over Gentile lands and brought their uncleanness into contact with their skin. Here is Jesus actually going into the heart of uncleanness. When he gets there a non-Jewish, Gentile woman comes and falls at his feet. An evil spirit, we are told, possesses her daughter. Now, in the original it does not say an evil spirit possesses the daughter but an unclean spirit. It is not the same word used for unclean in the earlier part of the chapter but it is the word used about 150 times in the OT for unclean food, skin, etc. In the NT, these two words are used as synonyms in Acts 10:14 where God commands Peter to eat unclean meat in a vision. This Gentile, unclean woman, pleads with Jesus to cast out the unclean spirit from her daughter. Notice that Jesus does not simply do what she asks. He says that only the children of God have a right to the benefits that the Son of God has brought to this earth. Only those who belong to God by grace can receive the benefits of salvation. It's not right to throw the children's bread to the dogs. Jesus calls the woman and her child dogs. If you were called a dog, what would you do? We would storm out and say something like, "I'm no dog. I deserve more respect than that." But look at what the woman says. She agrees that she is a dog. And on the basis of being a dog she asks Jesus to heal her unclean daughter of the unclean spirit. A dog was the epitome of uncleanness in Jewish law. The woman simply agrees with Jesus that his assessment of her condition is absolutely correct. She is unclean but yet she asks that he would help her. She knows that Jesus is gracious and only he can deal with an unclean spirit. Therefore she depends upon him to do what only he can do. Jesus cleanses her daughter of her uncleanness in response to her faith in him. Being unclean and unacceptable to God is not a reason to stay away from Christ; it is the reason to go to Christ. Here is how you get a clean heart that yields acceptable worship to God, you acknowledge always that you are unclean and unfit for God’s presence and you trust Christ to make you clean and thus fit for God’s presence. Christ alone is able to give you a clean heart that delights in God’s ways and thus produces the good fruit of a progressively obedient life. This is not something you do one time but this is the way you live your life at all times, confessing, mourning over sin and trusting in Christ as the one who bore God’s wrath for sin and who gives me his very righteousness. He cleanses me of evil. I do not make myself clean. Human beings are helpless to change themselves because…
© Copyright
2005 John Swanson.
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