How the Pharisees Blew It and We Might Too: The Mark Series pt 23 (7:1-23)

okay so here we are we're in mark chapter 7 mark chapter 7 we're gonna take a big chunk of scripture today mark 7 verses 1 through 23 and let me preface it by saying this here in mark 7 here in in the first century and Jesus encountering these religious leaders they were doing it all wrong they thought they were following God but some of their religious practices were not only not following God or not pleasing God they were actually offensive to God they're the things they thought that God was pleased with were actually somehow a disguise for them to be rebelling against God and I want to say as we're looking at the things going on in the gospel we're seeing the same issues that we face today they look different we have a different window dressing on our issues but they're the same issues because people are people are people right throughout time we just keep recycling the same life experiences with different window dressing on it so this should apply in our lives very directly we're gonna learn a lot today about following God's heart along with other theological and apologetic things as we do this is part 23 of the mark series and we're in mark chapter 7 verse 1 through 21 through 23 and I'm just gonna read straight through the passage because this is a Bible study right this is we want to understand you want to walk out going this section of Scripture I understand it and I can apply it into my life both of those elements we want to have in place so let's read it just load it into your mind soak in the ideas load questions as we're reading it what about this why is it say that how does the top connect to the bottom how is this one cohesive section what's Jesus trying to get across gonna be asking all that so here we are mark 7 verse 1 the Pharisees and some of the scribes gathered around him when they had come from Jerusalem and had seen that some of his disciples were eating their bread with impure hands that is unwashed for the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they carefully wash their hands thus observing the traditions of the elders and when they come from the marketplace they do not eat unless they cleanse themselves and there are many other things which they have received in order to observe such as the washing of cups and pitchers and copper pots the Pharisees and the scribes asked him why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders but eat their bread with impure hands and he said to them rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites as it is written this people honors me with their lips but their heart is far away from me but in vain do they worship Me teaching as doctrines the precepts of men neglecting the commandment of God you hold to the tradition of men he was also saying to them you are experts at setting aside the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition for Moses said honor your father and mother and your mother and he who speaks evil of father or mother is to be put to death but you say if a man says to his father or his mother whatever I had but whatever I have that would help you is Corbin that is to say given to God you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or his mother thus invalidating the Word of God by your tradition which you've handed down and you do many such things as this after he called the crowd to him again he began saying to them listen to me all of you and understand there is nothing outside the man which can defile him if it goes into him but the things which proceed out of the man are what defile the man if anyone has ears to hear let him hear when he had left the crowd and entered the house his disciples questioned him about the parable and he said to them are you so lacking in understanding also do you not understand that whatever goes into the man from outside cannot defile him because it doesn't go into his heart but into his stomach and is eliminated thus he declared all foods clean and he was saying that which proceeds out of the man that is what defiles the man for from within out of the heart of men proceed evil thoughts fornications thefts murders adulteries deeds of coveting and wickedness as well as deceit sensuality Envy slander pride and foolishness all these evil things proceed from within and defile the man so what is this what is this about this kind of this is one scene it's one big section that's why we need to take it all in at once in our study tonight I see one of the major themes here is this tradition versus Scripture tradition versus Scripture and how we can use our traditions that our religious practices that aren't they don't draw themselves right from the text of the Bible right but they're sort of drawn from the habits of those who are older in the Lord than we are right the religious are religious elders and we can take their habits and we can use these habits to find ways around doing what God clearly tells us to do that's the idea and I'll explain this in more detail but I think that's the big picture that Christ is trying to get past he wants to draw people back to the heart of God which is in the Word of God which results in us obeying God from the heart and not just outward religious practices to make us feel like we're better people when we're actually ignoring our actual sin issues so here we are verse 1 let's read 1 through 4 again now you're gonna hear it seemd notice more you're gonna see it more clearly and we'll talk about it in detail the Pharisees and some of the scribes gathered around him when they had come from Jerusalem I just want you to notice that came from Jerusalem is the second time a Jerusalem group shows up to pick on Jesus and had seen that some of his disciples were eating their bread with impure hands that is unwashed that means their hands were impure this is now this is mark helping that the Gentile audience the Gentile readers to go what do you mean impure hands well they means unwashed hand their hands weren't ceremonially washed this is not a sanitary issue it's a ceremony issue obviously you want to wash your hands for sanitary reasons this is about ceremonial cleanliness verse 3 mark and there's a parenthesis here in verse 3 this is because mark is gonna explain to us the whole situation in case you're that non-jewish reader who doesn't know what's going on for the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they carefully wash their hands thus observing the traditions of the elders whose traditions the elders not not Scripture and when they come from the marketplace they do not eat unless they cleanse themselves and there are many other things which they have received and that's an understatement there's quite a lot that are additions these the kosher laws or the laws that are in addition to the initial lies are we losing our microphone it sounded like it was dipping down for some reason I don't know maybe it was me maybe I got quiet I'm just kidding I didn't get quite anyway okay so the the the kosher laws and all of these sort of extra traditions are seen by many Jews as like a safety net like like here's where what God says in the law that you shouldn't shouldn't do and then they just want to say let's just build a big wall around that so you won't get anywhere near violating that so they add a lot of extra precautions and safety measures all to keep you from sin but in fact it's a lot of artificial stuff and so they have many other such things that they do such as the washing of cups and pitchers and copper pots and then verse five the Pharisees and the scribes asked him why do you turd acai bowls not walk according to the tradition of the elders but eat their bread with impure hands that's that's the question is why Jesus explained why these guys aren't aren't doing the things that we say they're supposed to do that's what you need to explain the accusation isn't that what they're doing is unbiblical unscriptural they're not in violation of God's laws it's not the direct accusation it's that they are violating traditions Jesus seems to have no problem with this actually notice this though that these pharisees the sadducees than ones who come from jerusalem they literally show up to disagree with Jesus and something I notice about them they show up to disagree in it it's as though the agenda and it's kind of I'm I'm just observing this from the text it seems like their purpose is define something wrong with Jesus now they look at Jesus and they don't see anything wrong but they see his disciples and they see something that'll like so they're gonna challenge Jesus with that they want to disagree and of course they find what they want and this we see over and over again if people want to find a reason to complain about Christianity they're gonna find one we do have to guard our hearts in this regard and recognize that if even though we're trying to set out on a genuine sincere you know discovery of is Christianity true is Jesus for real is God like actually calling me to come to Christ we have to understand that there's part of us that may not want the answer to be yes and we may sour our own ability to receive the truth because I don't want to have to submit to this and we may find ourselves resisting it in verse one we find out there the Jerusalem leaders their leaders from Jerusalem this is significant because in the Jewish mindset you've got you know Jerusalem is the center this is where God causes his name to dwell the temples in Jerusalem if you're a Pharisee that's great your affairs from Jerusalem whoa you're a Jerusalem Pharisee if you're a sad you see that's great but if you're a Jerusalem sad you see that's even better so there's like weight behind them so when you live in Galilee and you see the Sadducees from Jerusalem show up and they're disagreeing with Jesus this could actually cause you to be like what's going on now we see this happen in the book of Acts to in acts there's Pharisees from Jerusalem who go to Antioch and they're like we're from Jerusalem with the authority of the Jerusalem church now they didn't really have that authority but they pretended to and it kind of gives extra weight to their accusations in verse 1 it says they gathered around him did you notice that they gathered around him so it's it really feels like they're here for the purpose of trying to challenge Christ not to learn from him why do they want to challenge him there could be a few reasons there what some people refer to as the old guard the old guard in church politics we sometimes talk about the old guard the old guard are those who they started when they were young and they started doing ministry and they got all excited about what God was doing in their lives and ministry in church 20-30 years later they now think whatever they did is the only way to do it and it's the only possible way to do it and new people aren't exciting they're suspicious young people coming up to be teaching they're suspicious I don't know about that guy and they forget what knuckleheads they were when they were serving the Lord just starting out right and and they forget what kind of chances people took letting them serve but they're not want me to take those chances on others and this is what we call the old guard and we're talking about issues and sometimes churches not handing the baton off to new leaders and and young people to step slow not novices being lifted up too early but just really developing and disciple in people for leadership that could be one of the issues there they think their way is God's way why because it's their way and they've been doing it for so long it's just obvious that that's God's Way and this is something that can affect us as well we stop self reflecting I remember at a younger age when I hadn't been exposed to as many churches and different environments and I kind of thought that not only was our church serving the Lord well but the order of service that we had was probably of the Lord too you know and I was like a teenager right but now I'm like thinking yeah I think that was just me thinking because we were doing it that way and I enjoyed it I was so blessed by it that it must be from the Lord you know that that like yeah we should have like this much worship and there should be this much time for a Bible study and things like that and it's like you know come on this is this is where I take my traditions and I project them onto the mind of God and that can be a dangerous thing so they may be doing that and Jesus he is not spreading their message you know here he is getting a lot of attention getting a lot of followers and people are listening to him and he's not echoing everything they're saying instead he's restoring people back to the purity of what God originally gave gave the Jewish people in the Old Testament he's giving him right back to that restoring them instead of adding all those extra things I said this was the second time that they've done this to Jesus the first time it was when his disciples were taking grain in the field and they'd rub it to get the chaff off of it and then they'd eat it and they were like Jesus why do your disciples do this it's not lawful to work on the Sabbath and this of course was them twisting it and all and I dealt with that in the past this is the second time the problem this time is they have a tradition that's treated as though it's a rule from God and they're upset that they're not obeying this tradition on a sidenote there's one scholar who thinks that this passage in mark 7 gives us a good reason to think that mark has a very early dating of authorship the the time that it was written and his reason is that mark presents this this thing that they're doing this practice of this hand washing thing as though it's a very current ongoing thing he speaks in the present tense the Jews are doing this right now there's that little parenthetical Marquette starts in verse three and it's in parentheses and that's Mark's commentary for the for the they have many things that they do like this they wash the pots they do this they wash their hands they wash when they leave the marketplace and when it describes that it kind of gives you a glimpse of what was an ongoing practice and there was an ongoing practice really in relation to the Jews and how they related to the church it's kind of a complicated argument but I'll just say this the scholars name is James crossly and he thinks that this helps support the idea it's one of the many reasons why he says that he thinks the Gospel of Mark was written before 45 ad of Christ was crucified you're talking 30-ish depends on what kind of date you take there and I don't really have a solid date on that but then we've got 45 80 which makes makes mark extremely early actually really really early so it's just interesting thought I'd share it with you guys you could check out his stuff and I also know Jim Crowe James cross Lee's not a Christian and so people can't accuse him of being some sort of because the thing is okay not necessarily in the scholarly world maybe scholars are a little more sober minded they don't just dismiss other scholars because they're Christians some of them probably do but some of them don't but online in the online world especially atheists and skeptics tend to have such a bias against Christians in scholarship that their scholarship almost doesn't matter it's just enough to say they're a Christian to ignore everything they say and all their hard work doesn't matter instead of weighing the things they're saying so there's a guy who's not a Christian who puts mark at a very early date now notice this when the Pharisees come against and the Sadducees here come against Jesus it's not Jesus they come against it's the disciples now this the second time they did that they accuse the disciples of doing that with the week now the disciples of not washing their hands does that mean Jesus wasn't doing that with the wheat Jesus wasn't failing to wash his hands there's not what that means or maybe it means that they just didn't know whether Jesus did it or not you know they didn't weren't observing Christ carefully enough I don't know I mean did Jesus eat with unwashed hands in this case did you roll the chaff off the wheat I don't know don't don't think we do know this he did heal on the Sabbath this was one specific thing he did that they actually came again and they said you're breaking the lock as you healed on the Sabbath and he was like you're being stupid I'm paraphrasing the passage here you could go back and watch that study we already did that one so we don't have any record of Jesus ever washing ceremonially or not washing ceremonially we just don't have record of this kind of thing happening or not we don't know except for the baptism he did which was for us the baptism he did was on our behalf ultimately he's living the perfect life for us and then goes and dies in our place on the cross the whole thing he's doing his whole life is redemptive for us right from from the from the moment of his birth all the way to the cross all the way to the resurrection but then there's other things where Jesus goes in he heals a leper and he seems to not be made unclean by the leper where he touches Peters mother-in-law who's sick and he's not unclean in fact she's not even unclean she starts serving food doesn't have to wait til sundown or none of the normal procedures she's just not unclean when he is touched by the one with a flow of blood there would have been an uncleanness there but no he doesn't have it in fact she's not even in clean the message here I think is that Jesus is clean and he's the clean one who makes us clean that's the message of Christ he's the source of true purification and that does weigh in on this passage ultimately when you zoom out see Christ is the source of true purification alright verse six let's move on and he said to them rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites and now he's gonna use the Old Testament to rebuke them they're using tradition to rebuke him and he's using scripture to rebuke them rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites as it is written this people honors me with their lips but their heart is far away from me but in vain do they worship me or it's purposeless their worship to me is pointless teaching as doctrines the precepts of men neglecting the commandment of God you hold the tradition of men the Isaiah passages from Isaiah 29 verse 13 and what I think is really interesting is how Jesus introduces it did you notice it rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you now in Isaiah when you read Isaiah it's not a future prophecy in the context devised Isaiah's talking about the Jews of his time but Jesus says that Isaiah was not only speaking of the Jews of his time but he was speaking as a prophet and here's not just not just means it doesn't just means a future prediction but he's speaking as a the mouthpiece of God about not only the Jews of that time but any Jews who would be like that as well because we live in patterns we live in patterns so you find that in Scripture there's someone like you whatever you're going through in your situations in your life you frequently find there's someone just like you right there and you're like but Isaiah is prophesying about them but he's talking about me because that's how I am right now - we go through the same issues the same struggles the same rebellions and there's many who care very much about what's called hermeneutics that's like proper Bible study techniques hermeneutics is a fancy word hermeneutics is the art and science of biblical interpretation that's the fleece that was a fancy term they taught me I thought it was pretty clever the art inside because it's an art and a science it's very careful it's also flexible in literary in anyway it's it's a neat thing to study but some people are very rigid in their hermeneutic in order to keep themselves from abusing Scripture and that's good like I don't want to abuse Scripture but don't forget the scriptures also talking to you and I mean one one person puts it this way they say scriptures not written you know about you or to you directly but it is written for you it's and you know this as you just read the word you're like oh this is yes it's for me man when you read Psalm 23 you were like I know David said this about him in the Lord but it's about me in the Lord too and you see that it does connect to you and it's not just like a pure scholarly I'm just researching data I'm just data mining the Bible here but I realize it applies into my life and that's really important that we realize that Jesus thought so too that's my point here if Jesus thought Isaiah could be speaking about Jews hundreds of years later then maybe he could be talking about you too depending on your situation let me give another example in the scripture of how the Bible gives us the ability to interpret it not seeing me in that in the text like it's directly about me but but applying it into my life saying principles from shirring applying it into my life its first corinthians chapter 10 first corinthians 10 verses 1 through 11 and we're going to read this to you and have you consider when paul read the old testament did he see it as directly applicable into our lives today so here's what he says in first Corinthians 10:1 for I do not want you to be unaware brethren that our fathers were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea this is talking about the exodus we were under the cloud that passed through the sea and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea and all ate the same spiritual food and all drank the same spiritual drink for they were drinking from this from a spiritual rock which followed them and the rock was Christ now I'm gonna say he is giving us not only the history of it but that it has typological fulfillment in Jesus like it that's there's a heavy stuff that's all right there he's the typology that Paul is seeing spiritual rock well Christ is the rock that was struck spiritual drink that the drink that came the light living water that comes from Jesus is like the water that came out of that rock they were baptized into Moses it's though the Red Sea's like a baptism picturing our baptism into Christ and so we're getting this typology and so he goes on verse 5 nevertheless with most of them God was not well pleased for they were laid low in the wilderness now these things happened as examples for us examples for us I'm supposed to be learning from these things this should apply to my life so that we would not crave evil things as they also craved now here's what I want to say modern preachers a lot of times they only see the Old Testament as examples for prosperity verses and examples for you to give you victory and yet Paul's like and what is what's the lesson that you wouldn't crave sick sinful things like they did and so the actual lesson it has to do with putting off the flesh putting off sin and trusting God and living it holy lives is actually the lesson we're getting in this situation verse 7 do not be idolaters as some of them were as it is written the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play nor let us act immorally as some of them did in 23,000 fell in one day nor let us try the law that's like testing god tempting God as some of them did and were destroyed by the serpents nor grumble as some of them did and were destroyed by the destroyer now these things happen to them as an example and they were written for our instruction upon whom the ends of the ages have come in other words Israel stands as the constant bad example for us to learn from that's what we're getting so we have two things in Paul's understanding the old testement he gives us typology that these things all represent Christ and life lessons that from the errors and failures of those in the scripture we can learn not to fall into the same traps because you are the same as them I remember years ago reading the Old Testament and getting frustrated with Israel why won't you just honor God why won't you to serve Him and follow him and obey Him oh my goodness they went back to the a shuras again they went back and built the high places again what are they thinking they want to go back to Egypt do they not remember I remember thinking these things and at some point it hit me like it's hit up all you guys probably at this point right I realized I'm the same way with my sin issues oh my goodness that's me and all of a sudden all of my like arrogant judgmental attitude just I realized thank you God that you didn't forsake him after all that because maybe that means you're not gonna forsake me you know and especially as a younger believer I was not secure in the security that had in Christ and so I had to grow in theology before I could really rest in the finished work of the cross but yeah he hasn't forsaken them and that's encouraging to me but I learn from their mistakes so um yeah I do care what the original author says in the Old Testament I care what the original audience says but I also realized there is an inspiration from the Holy Spirit and these things are written for my benefit as well and we should look to grow in those things so back to Mark 7 and Jesus and these guys I think this gives us the danger of tradition the danger of tradition and we all have traditions you have traditions what do you think you do or not it doesn't mean they're all bad that doesn't mean they're all wrong but you should at least be aware that there's things that you have in your Christian life that are extra-biblical traditions you know like I remember at one point realizing that Calvary chapel's we kind of as a group we kind of have like a like a sort of we want to make sure our buildings don't look like churches it's just like a thing right it's not bad it's not good it's just it's just like the way it was Calvary chapel's I don't know what it is it's like you kind of want to make sure your building doesn't look like a church it's like if you're meeting in a warehouse that feels more spiritual for a Calvary Chapel which is funny cuz for most of the other world the rest of the world they're like yeah that's the opposite of how it feels to us but there's something about that and this is pure tradition this doesn't need to stay with us this is just kind of like something that was inherited because when the Lord was moving they happen to be meeting oftentimes in these like random locations where houses living rooms God was really blessing the Holy Spirit's working and then some people started to associate the work of the Holy Spirit with the warehouse they were meeting in that was the mistake right that's not necessary these things aren't necessarily together we want the work of the Spirit we don't think it has to be in a warehouse I want the work of the Spirit I don't think it has to have stained glass but either one of those is fine because I don't really care because I can see that tradition and not actually the work of the Spirit so there is a danger in tradition it can lead us actually to connect the commandments of God and becomes an excuse for disobedience and that's where Jesus actually rails on them he's not mad that they're doing the traditions he's mad that they're using them to get away from what God's actually commanding them to do in their lives notice that he accuses them of neglecting the command of God because of their traditions he doesn't say rejecting the command of God which is very different so they're not consciously saying ah we're gonna rebel against you know they're just focused on thinking I'm okay because I'm doing ABC in my life and then they just forget about the greater more important things that God wants them to do in their lives so the question I have is there something on neglecting with my tradition you have a tradition right you you go to church at certain days at certain times maybe you open the word and you read it at certain times maybe you pray over your meals that that's a yeah I think that's a healthy tradition these are these are healthy in my opinion but are they causing you to neglect the high calling of love towards your fellow man and the high calling of holiness in your own character because you've seen it and I've seen it people who have obvious serious unchristian flaws in their character but they think they're good because their theology seems really sound I just want to make sure I'm not doing that to like I'm not here to necessarily point a finger but I want to make sure I'm not doing that and that's my job it's your job is to reflect and make sure that this isn't happening to you because what happens to them can happen to you let them serve as a bad example in this situation I remember talking to a young person years ago college-age guy and he was one of those guys where you just you think it seems really obvious that he's not a believer the only time he would ever bring up Christ is to affirm that he is a Christian that was it so otherwise otherwise in his life he seemed very worldly seemed no like no love for Jesus and no concern for serving God in any way and so you wonder you don't know I don't know his heart you know but I wonder I wonder if he's genuine or not and certainly you can't help but wonder even if you don't know the answer and I was talking to him and I asked him I said like are you are you a Christian are you like really a Christian and he was absolutely I am and he said I go to church and they said I try to read my Bible I don't know when people started calling him my Bible by the way I'm just when that happened my Bible try to read my Bible you have your own but I know what they mean I just think it's kind of interesting that we do that but they said sure I try to read the Bible which is interesting when you say you try to do something you're sort of implicitly saying that you don't do it so he may still say I don't read my Bible but he's I go to church I try to read read the Bible and I've been baptized and I thought everybody always says that right are you a Christian here's the things I do and so I thought how do I get past the defenses because maybe he thinks his traditions make him a Christian just like the Pharisee I wash my hands I do this I tie this I do that I do that so I'm good with God and yet there was some serious holes in in their relationship with God and Jesus is trying to point those out but they can't see it because they think they've got their of lives figured out so instead I asked a different question I said how's your walk with God and I don't usually ask I think it's a good question to ask yourself I don't usually ask other people that because I feel like it's deeply personal and makes them feel uncomfortable even if their walk with God is great I think it's just a deeply personal question it makes people feel uncomfortable but I did in this situation I asked it was like how's your walk with God how's your relationship with God and it was the first time I've ever seen this particular student stutter and stop talking for a moment because they always had something to say and I thought oh good I just want them to self-reflect that's all I just wanted to self-reflect the question is is my heart near God or far from him there's a good question it's not about how often I go to church do I read to read the Bible those are good symptoms of possible things but how's my walk with God really so Jesus is trying to kind of be the reformer here if we notice this in first century Judaism he's trying to bring them back to the to the God of Israel he's a reformer in that sense and I think he gives us a clue as to the job of a real reformer we think about the Reformation in the 1500s you know the job of like a real reformer what's the proper job of someone because the idea behind reforming is that you're not starting something new you're going back to something old you're restoring you know attention and focus on the old pure thing of the past not starting something brand spankin new that's the idea well Jesus as a reformer he brings people back to two things the Word of God and the heart of God we see it right here he's upset with him because they're ignoring the commandments of God because they have the traditions of man instead and he's also upset because they're not worshiping God in genuineness but it's in vain so there's relational issues and scripture issues those two things your walk with God and your obedience to His Word now there's modern guys a lot of modern people everybody thinks they're a reformer now everybody's trying to reform the church everybody it seems and many of the reformers the modern reformers we call them and you probably want to be familiar with this term progressive Christians now there's a group of I'll call them liberal I'm talking about not politics but theology right there's different use of the word but liberal theology people people who sort of abandon basic Christian principles and truth and then they tried to say they represent like the real authentic Christianity when really they're just ripping it to pieces and cutting out the heart of Christianity um but these people always change their names they don't like labels these are people who hate labels so 15 20 years ago they were called the emergent church and not everybody who is part of the emergent church was a heretic that's not what I'm saying but many were and many of the prominent voices became more and more heretical over time they don't call themselves the emergent church anymore maybe progressive Christians is like a nice title but as soon as they get they find they've been labeled with something they'll change labels because that's just what they seem to always do so just be aware of this if there's those who say they're reforming the church and they say they're bringing you to the heart of God but they're taking you away from the Word of God they're not doing it Jesus style and that's one thing that everybody can observe because there are people out there who are very much laughing and mocking at the idea that the Bible is God's inspired Word and I mean like that when the Bible says for instance God did this they think that didn't really happen God didn't really do that God thinks this God commands this no that's not really the case God doesn't command it I'm just into Jesus man in the Heart of Jesus and following Jesus cuz I love them with all my heart but they're rejecting scripture so that's like not a reformer Jesus style of reform being suspected not only the heart of God but the word of God so then Jesus turns to these guys in his act of true Reformation and he says something that most people would say you shouldn't say nowadays and he calls him hypocrites and here I want to take a moment to talk about this and it's gonna sound like I'm defending myself but that's not my goal here I have online videos where I take on public teachers and the content they teach and I say this is a problem this is and sometimes I even say this is heresy I try to do graciously I try to carefully thoughtfully but I confront this stuff pretty head-on and I will see in the comments section these videos something that comes up in people's my and they say Mike why aren't you doing that 218 Jesus in Matthew 18 told us that if our brother sins against us we should go to him privately and seek to resolve the issue just between us and them alone and then if they won't hear then you go with two or three others from the church and if you won't hear them finally you can you can tell it to the church and you can deal with it publicly publicly is the very last option I would say they would say the same thing to Jesus Jesus these scribes they came to you and they they challenged you publicly but why didn't you take him aside Jesus why don't you pull them aside say hey scribes let's talk hey buddies you know I love you right you know I love you right like like I know instead he goes hypocrites in public in front of a whole bunch of people why did Jesus in Matthew 18 tell me to pull someone aside and talk to him privately and here he is in mark 7 calling a publicly hypocrites and he does it in Matthew as well by the way right over and over again he does this I think that this is the reason here's why I do it the way I do it when people privately sin against me I need to take them aside privately when people have public false teachings Matthew 18 does not apply they need to be publicly refuted because the damage they're doing is public when the damage is relational between you and them keep it private when the damages is a public teaching well then we need to publicly undo the damage by getting refutations of that false teaching out into the into the open so I don't need to call up a false teacher and have a private chat with him about how I'm hurt by his teaching whether or not that happens I still have to make a public video or someone does somebody in the body needs to do it who puts content out there to say look here's what's wrong with this false teaching and so that's why we do that and public teaching is publicly rebuked as opposed to a private wounds personal wounds which we try to handle as quietly as possible if possible so I think I'm following Scripture and Jesus's example and those things the next thing that happens after after Jesus calls him hypocrites is he gives them specific examples of what they're doing that's wrong so we can learn more about like sort of rubbery meets the road what is it they're doing that Jesus is really upset about and that starts in verse 9 he was also saying to them you are experts keep in mind he calls him experts here right you are like pros at this at setting aside the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition for Moses said honor your father and your mother and here is his example and he who speaks evil of his father or mother is to be put to death now okay that's the commandments of God honor them and if you speak evil of them you put to death now there's more to the detail of the commandment there was it wasn't just a passing phrase of speaking evil there was more to it than that but the point is that God's heart towards children honoring their parents is a really big deal a really really big deal then then going on verse 11 but you say if a man says to his father or his mother whatever I have that would help you is Corbin that is to say given to God and these were marks helping us out Corbin is a phrase in the Greek it literally means a gift to God so let's say I say well my my home is a gift to God my home is Corbin and then your parents are like ring ring ring hey we're coming into town next Tuesday can we stay at your place and you go I'm sorry mom and dad my home is korvac it's a gift to God I cannot use it for you I can only use apricot you'll have to find a hotel that would be an example and so he says you say if a man has said to his mother or his father or mother whatever I have that would help you as Corbin that is to say given to God you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or his mother thus invalidating the Word of God by your tradition which you've handed down and you do many such things as that there's all kinds of weird little things that they would do to get around just being obedient to God and they would have it technically tradition wise right in the Mishnah in the Jewish Misha Mishnah you could look this up it's in nedarim 5-6 nedarim in e dar IM 5 6 it records a situation where a man made a vow that he meant that that resulted in or meant he wouldn't use any of his stuff to help his father a mission is coming much later than Jesus like you know century later you know sometime in there it's hard to get the dating as some of the stuff in the mission but it's coming a while after right this may not have been as big of an issue a century later as it was at the time but there was a situation where it's actually they're discussing a situation just like this he made a vow and that meant he wouldn't help his parents with his stuff Philo who's actually a contemporary of Jesus Philo of Alexandria he records in his book hypothetic 7-3 and I'll read it to you he says if a man has devoted his wife's sustenance to a sacred purpose he must refrain from giving her that sustenance so with the father's gift to his son or a ruler's to his subjects honey you don't get dinner tonight I devoted it to the Lord my key and gods like yeah I really want that that's what I really want he's like how about you give your wife her sustenance and but Philo actually said no you don't in this particular situation so this was an example Jesus pulls out of their real lives that's going on at the time in the first century they would find ways of getting around obeying God the modern application of this I think isn't too hard to find for instance Christmas Christmas is one of the most divisive issues on the internet for Christians I get the most hate comments from believers in my videos related to Christmas where I try to argue that Christmas is not inherently pagan although it can very easily become materialistic and ungodly I'm not saying it's just not inherently pagan and we go through history to find out is it really is really a pagan roots does it come is every element of Christmas really paganism when you put an ornament on your tree are you bowing down to some ash or a thing and I go through all that and try to demonstrate that thank god that's not the case I'm very happy to say that's not the case but there are some who have received a tradition that is not in the Bible that celebrating holidays Christmas whatever is evil and they use this tradition to be completely and utterly unloving to other Christians they have a tradition that allows them to get right past God's heart for how we would hold together in unity in love and I would say even if you think celebrating Christmas is Eve go read Romans 14 and then hold hands and don't judge and have bitterness towards your brother or sister over these to dispute disputing or doubtful issues it just isn't worth division tattoos are like this on the issues of like tattoos there's some who have received traditions on the topic of tattoos it's it's bad or it's good it's whatever my point is it shouldn't be divisive this is actually not an issue Christians need to be dividing over this is a tradition this is not oh but I have scripture in Leviticus I'll be like well you don't know how to read the Old Testament very well it seems to me then I have a video on tattoos if anyone's interested I'll put all of my Christmas videos and the tattoo video in the description for anybody who needs help on this I don't have I don't have tattoos either by the way no so accepted as a giant one on my back of Santa Claus I actually can't stay in Santa Claus but that's my personal issue and I don't cause division over it and that's the important thing so drinking drinking is another issue where some have received the tradition that all alcohol alcohol is sinful this is kind of something I always lean towards when I was younger and I have what I've seen the part that breaks my heart is that God's desires for church to have unity right but I have seen people break fellowship between drinkers and non drinkers who will no longer fellowship with each other outside of church they don't see each other right because we're gonna go get lunch but I'm gonna have a beer so I'm not inviting Joe Joe Schmoe or James main or whatever you say for the girl version so I'm not gonna invite them because I don't I would rather have my beer that have fellowship with them or on the other side I'm not gonna invite so-and-so because I think they're a compromiser because even though they never get drunk they occasionally like to drink and it and my conscience is bothered by that and I have a video on drinking output in the video description as well because now I'm really just causing a lot of problems that I'm not trying to cause I'm trying to fix actually and and I don't drink so there you go but the point is that Christians can't divide on these issues this is tradition causing us to create division which breaks the heart of God he's like loved one another the way I've loved you and you're like well I don't know I mean technically you do the thing that I think you worship on Saturday not Sunday oh I don't think I could fellowship with you come on man hug you know we need that we need to get past that we can argue about order of service and preaching styles we can think that our good theology or our proper practice of how we follow the Lord in different ways can be an excuse for shrinking our duty to forgive one another to bless those who curse us to pray for our enemies to have a loving attitude towards family which is what Jesus targets here right because it was family they were allowing themselves people get bitter towards parents it's okay it's like a thing that happens in life partially because parents make mistakes and partially because people are sinful you go through like a season where you can choose to continue to demonize and make your parents the worst people they possibly could be and my thought is well even if they are aren't you supposed to pray for your enemies blessing like Jesus is seeing broken families and people are using religion as a way to break their family up but it's not even Scripture it's not even sin issues it's just tradition and so we can have brokenness and our families over things that like it's just breaking the heart of God you can't make your family have great relationships but what you can do is you can be one who always in constantly extends the love of Christ and doesn't use make excuses for disobeying God's heart that you would have towards those people and so not easy but man it sure is nice when your side is clean of bitterness and clean of baggage and you're there going I'm ready for relationship when they are I'm ready for love when they are I've dealt with my issues I've forgiven sins I'm ready when they are it doesn't mean I submit to ongoing abusive relationships that's not what I'm saying it means that I'm no longer having my sin issues be covered up by peripheral things that don't really matter in the eyes of God so hopefully we can see how this applies adding into our lives very directly very directly Ephesians chapter 4 verses 31 and 32 says this just as a reminder to us here's the heart of God for us let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you with all malice all it be kind to one another tender-hearted forgiving each other just as God in Christ also has forgiven you and so here's the heart of God for me is to be walking in love walking in grace having that godly character not just proper practice you know those things matter but we don't want to use those like what Jesus accuse them of you're invalidating the Word of God with your traditions God called you to honor your parents you're not doing that instead you have like well I have this like orbit you know I have a policy that allows me to get out of obeying God in this area so this is not like progressive Christianity may I mention it again the progressive Christians who would invalidate the Word of God as a way of getting to the quote heart of God they're actually abandoning the scripture the plain teaching of Scripture as a way of and they'll say scripture supports them but when you pokèmon it you realize they actually reject a lot of the Bible and I'm talking about guys like Brian Zahn and Greg Boyd and even other guys that it seems to be going on and on where they try to say but Jesus supports me I'm just going with the Jesus hermeneutic I'm following Jesus and really though Jesus says what go back to the scripture of even the Old Testament so that's not a valid thing be where anyone who leads you to devalue scripture we don't find God's heart by invalidating God's Word we find God's heart in God's Word alright verse 14 it says after he called the crowd to him again he began to say to them listen to me all of you and understand there's nothing outside the man which can defile him if it goes into a man into him but the things which proceed out of the man are what defile the man if anyone has ears to hear let him hear now this is a scene change verse 14 because it's he gathers the crowd so he's had a conversation with them and now he gathers the rest of the people in why does he get the crowd because he's using this controversy to give them like a right understanding of God and this is I think advice to those who do social media ministry you can do this you can take whatever controversy whatever issues of the day are going on and you can use those as teaching moments it's even advice for parents for parents to just be aware or your disciple in somebody to be aware like okay here's the thing that's in the news what's the right way to handle this as a believer in Christ and then just use that thing this is like a I think a thoughtful way of helping people to take the Christian worldview and put it into practice Jesus seems to give us an example of doing this so I keep it in mind Jesus is using the teachable moment because he's not just interested in telling people where they're wrong he's interested in making them right there's a good example of Jesus now don't get me wrong he tells you where you're wrong like he's straight up in their face he's like you're hypocrites and he doesn't even pull punches he's like you're invalidating the Word of God but he doesn't leave them there he also tells them what to do to make it right and so that's why he's teaching them verse 14 through 16 how to make it right and it's a good thing to think of when you're when you're correcting people when you feel like you have to correct somebody and you do step into that zone is ask yourself am I just telling him more than where they're wrong or am I also trying to help them get right and try to help them with that verse 17 when he had let the left the crowd and entered the house his disciples questioned him about the parable interesting that mark calls it a parable even though it didn't seem like a typical parable what we think of as a parable but it was obviously something they didn't fully understand it's not the stuff that comes in that defiles me as the stuff that comes out and he said to them are you so lacking and understanding also do you not understand that whatever goes into the man from outside cannot defile him and he's speaking here of spiritual defilement because it does not go into his heart but into his stomach and is eliminated thus he declared all foods clean and he was saying that which proceeds out of the man that is what defiles the man for from within out of the heart of men proceed evil thoughts fornications thefts murders adulteries deeds of coveting and wickedness as well as deceit sensuality Envy slander pride and foolishness and I tend to think he gives us a list because he could just say sin but he gives us a list of sins here because I think he wants us to have them pop out to us when there are issues you know oh yeah that's my issue Oh highlight that deal with that in your life don't ignore it don't invalidate it because of other issues all of these evil things proceed from within and defile the man from within so here's Jesus's lesson the real issue is sin not outward stuff the real issue is the sin not the outward stuff it's not the food it's the sin some say God knows my heart but usually people say it without thinking about it God knows my heart there's two ways to say it right God knows my heart and he knows that I am pure as the driven snow why don't we call it driven snow I don't even know why we call it that but anyway if I Drive over snow it's not usually pure after the house I feel like tire marks huh but mean something anyway pure is freshly fallen snow and other people say God knows my heart and they realize I'm in great danger right because you don't know my heart for God sure knows it he knows about the temptations and the struggles and the things that are coming from within me that I have to deal with the thoughts the impurities and all that stuff that I still ongoing we have to deal with and God knows my heart evil thoughts come from within so there's a sin problem in mankind and you might think does that mean every time I think an evil thought I've already sinned like if a thought just occurs to me as they do have I already sinned because that came from my evil nature I don't think so I think though that it can be sin while it's still a thought it can become sin and I think the point at which it does is when it joins with the will so the thought is like a an opportunity for your will to respond when I yield my will to that thought as opposed to rejecting it now it becomes a sin now it becomes a sin and that's like a good thing to deal with those who are dealing with you name the temptation whether if bitterness you feel oh I want to be better but I reject that I want to I see that I feel it but I reject that ok good you're not you're not actually walking in bitterness you're not you're letting it sit in you even though it's not a physical outward action it can still be a sin so it's when it's joined to the will then it comes the new American commentary says this about the issues of the heart here what's Jesus talking about it says the heart in the Bible is a symbol of the rational intellectual decision-making elements in human beings and not the emotional affectionate element so it's from when it from my heart when it becomes part of my will I yield my will to sinful desires at that point it's sin so he gives a list of different sins he says evil thoughts that's a pretty broad evil thoughts themselves okay that's pretty broad that's I mean during spiritual warfare the moment you you have an evil thought okay now as a spiritual battle that's going on fornication is a word that Jesus uses here it's a catch-all phrase for just all sexual sin it's not just adultery cuz he lists adultery separately doesn't they so this is like a catch-all phrase for all kind of sexual sin and our culture it's like we have to actually tell people this that outside of male one man one woman marriage everything else is actually sin then there's thefts murders adulteries and then in he goes on and says deeds of coveting and I think that's really interesting he mentions deeds of coveting and now there's some cultures at different times we see certain things as just not such a big deal like there are cultures of cannibals where they're actually eating other human beings and they don't feel so bad about it I mean there's think about that like that that's like a moral depravity in that culture in our culture we have moral depravity in the area of abortion in particular it's like it's like the radars not even going off we're not freaking out about it like we ought to this is a big deal this is a big deal every flag should be it at half-staff until abortion is stopped right this is like a huge huge crisis that's going on and we're not freaking out about it properly and we're not responding morally like we ought to but there's other areas too and deeds of coveting I think is one of those I think that we consider coveting as almost like a like a non-issue like it's not a big deal to be coveting I just want I want I want I want I want and we live in a very materialistic society we're constantly confronted with to want and it's even enjoyable to just go around wanting things right it's like window shopping I'm not saying window shopping is coveting but I do think some of it is right at least for some people maybe you're just wandering around who's enjoy looking around and there's no coveting going on but there is a kind that's just coveting I want I want I want I want I want and this can be a very unhealthy thing Romans 7:7 says this what shall we say is the law sin may it never be on the contrary I would not have come to know sin except through the law now Paul saying how he became self aware of how sinful he was that's interesting right this is something every Christian needs you need to become self aware of how sinful you are it's a healthy thing it's not a condemned nation thing it leads you to Jesus man and freedom but he goes on and talks about one example of a law that really blew his mind when you realize how sinful he was he says for I would not have known about coveting if the law had not said you shall not covet and of all the laws that's the one Paul picks he's like man you know what really got me what really showed me what a messed up person I am is when I read in the law that I wasn't even allowed to cut it he's like okay I didn't steal I didn't commit murder III didn't I didn't do those things outwardly but when I read that I can't even just desire like I can't just yield to desires I'm like man I'm I'm toast I'm in such bad shape like this is this is Paul's version of every man's battle right there and he's like oh I'm in trouble but coveting is ingrained in our culture and yet our culture then goes God knows my heart I'm like you're not seeing it like you're not seeing it this is a problem God knows us so Jesus is raising the bar or rather he's showing us where the bar has always been for following God it's radical personal sanctification radical yielding to the work of the Holy Spirit radical obedience to Jesus Christ where even my thoughts matter the things I yield my mind to are even supremely important because I won't have a heart after God this has two impacts on me one it makes me very desperate because I realized that if out of the heart of man if if my sinful temptations are coming from me what does that say about Who I am and I become very desperate I need to be saved from myself because I'm not good I'm not I'm not good like that not in the quality that I need to be and to once you come to Christ once you put your hope and trust in Christ you experience the forgiveness and the grace and the justification the peace you have in Jesus and you're no longer condemned over your sin then you realize that this raises the bar for sanctification so now it's not about getting saved through obedience it's rather because he's washed me I want real sanctification I want to go for the heart of God that Jesus is revealing I don't be like a Pharisee who lowers the bar ignores commands like don't covet right and said I want to follow God in all ways in my life he goes on to mentions other sins he talked about sensuality sensuality this is what in I think that King James probably puts this lasciviousness he didn't treat reading lasciviousness in the King James Version when years ago I was using the King James Version and I every time I came across lasciviousness I had to look it up again in the dictionary because I could never remember what that meant so then I'd look it up and it would say wantonness it's a wanton this okay that like on like the Chinese menu it's like an appetizer no that's not right no what it is is it's or unbridled lust would be about other commentaries would we call it unbridled lust here's translated sensuality the idea is this though doing whatever you want without constraining yourself it's just the attitude of I'll just do what I feel like doing without realising that I do need to constantly die to self in my life that would be the idea then he says Envy pride and prides another one of those issues where we're just blind to it in our culture right we celebrate pride prides like we have parades and I don't care and even a race-based pride like white pride black pride Korean pride what like as a Christian as a follower of Jesus like what place is there for pride in that sense now I understand likes to have a problem with it but now I understand when someone just goes like man I'm so proud of you I realized they don't mean pride not in that not in the sense in which scriptures refuting it not not at like their not like I am so taking full credit for everything you're doing and puffing myself up is though I'm better than you like that's not what anybody means they're just trying to say really good job like I wouldn't encourage you I want to live so I don't have a problem with the phrase I'm proud of you I don't think we need have a problem with that used in proper context but we do have to have a problem with pride itself a real problem as Christians pride is like the root of so much sin and it's it's it's forgive the phrase but I think it's the silent but deadly sin because you don't realize it's there but it can ruin your whole life it can kill your marriage it can kill your relationships with family friends it can undermine your whole ministry your service to the Lord it can affect so many things you lose your job lose your house lose all sorts of things because of just pride so pride is a real self issue we all have to process and work through and just become aware of and how to rule for myself and maybe maybe it would be helping help you guys if you're at all like me if I think to myself I wonder if I have pride right now like if it even occurs to me am I being proud then I probably am because I'm just that unaware of my own pride issues everybody else knows alright everybody else sees it a mile away but I don't so it's kind of like if you're if you're ever in a dream you're having a dream and you're thinking wait am I dreaming right now now I noticed something that when I'm not dreaming I never think that like I'm never just driving down the street you know halfway through the day I'm out to get lunch and I think am I dreaming right now like okay maybe you think I never think that as never once happened so I have a rule if I think to myself am I dreaming right now the answer is yes right even though I can't really tell the answer is definitely a yes well if I think to myself am I being proud right now if that just occurs to me then for me I just know it the answer is almost certainly gonna be yes and you become a little more self aware and then help you in your sanctification hopefully because pride is a pretty serious issue then Jesus at the end of it he just mentions foolishness you just cost foolishness like he includes foolishness on on a list of sins like murder and adultery we in our culture think foolishness is entertaining foolishness is a joke it's entertainment the Bible does not treat foolishness like it's a joke it's not a game and it doesn't treat it like it's a common expected thing we actually do this with students with with our with our kids right we just say well they're just being a teenager well proverbs says foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child right but it's gonna be that rod of Correction that drives it from him meaning that it it kids need discipline we're not talking about abusive beatings here we're talking about discipline so that they might learn not to engage in that foolishness because it's actually very dangerous for their lives but we often in our culture we just think you know if you know 30 years ago it's like yeah well your teenage years you're just rebellious you know 14 15 16 okay then it got a little bigger it's like 13 to 18 then it's the real rebellious time it's just natural we should just expect them to be rebellious don't worry about it they'll get over it now it's like 7 to 35 oh this is getting bigger and bigger the time of like rebellious nests and foolishness is getting bigger and bigger and I realized we do it's true we have a natural human tendency to these things but what we have to understand if we're gonna follow Christ is God asked us to put off all that stuff put off all that stuff it's not just a joke in our foolishness we learn habits of behavior and patterns of behavior that affect us the rest of our lives it doesn't just disappear after you stopped being a teenager and so it is a big deal to learn and grow in those areas so let me ask you this if you're bored in your walk with Christ if you're like thinking like man oh I just got everything pretty much sorted out I'm bored in my walk with Jesus you know I'm kind of like oh no was it due next I would just say do you see the radical sanctification and high calling Christ is reminding us of here about going after the heart of God and living a pure and godly and loving life towards the world and towards believers maybe you've forgotten this and that's why you're bored because you've you've kind of hits the stall button in your own actual sanctification so it should be an active daily process so the disciples they're totally confused about all this says they're lacking an understanding verse 18 I think the disciples example a problem that we might experience they knew they were free from traditions but they didn't understand what they were freed for right because they weren't they were rubbing this and they were not washing their hands they understood that they didn't have to do those things but they didn't seem to understand what they were supposed to do they didn't know what they were all about this is something I think youth are especially prone to having done years and years as a youth pastor youth are often the first ones to notice winning their leaders and in their parents they have mere tradition as opposed to clear Scripture like they can see it more clearly than we can and so they look at it and they're like that's tradition that's not even in the Bible man like and and and everybody's debating all day long a youth they just click get it they get it because they weren't raised in it as thickly as we were is that a word thickly that's a word objectivity organization and what I noticed though is this is that once the youth realize hey wait a minute alcohol is not really forbidden by the Bible like hold on tattoos is like a personal liberty decision and then they just go like hog wild with those things like they realize they have a Liberty but they don't think about engaging in holiness and love they're just like Liberty like they have a license but they don't realize there's a speed limit you know there isn't that wisdom and this is just a natural thing we experience when we're young I think so one of my concerns with youth was always like I want to affirm the true liberties you have in Christ but their liberties that you might submit yourself to the holiness and love of God and that's the part where the disconnect often happens and I think that that's the disciples I think they're experiencing something like that um excuse me so in in this passage I think we also get a really interesting point related to Sola scriptura Sola scriptura is the doctrine that the Bible alone is our final authority on the things that we believe as Christians the Bible alone is that final authority as opposed to say tradition having a separate group or list of teachings or beliefs that come from tradition and they're like to Scripture and Jesus seems to affirm this here because he's like hey you got your traditions I'm telling you stop it do scripture that that needs to be the focus so scripture is not equal to tradition its above it and there's parallels here between Jerusalem's leaders and and the the Pope and the papacy and the Roman teachings that we have in Catholicism let me give you some parallels from first century Judaism Jesus's encounters in this passage in mark 7 and the stuff that say the reformers were dealing with with Rome the people who came to Jesus to refute him they came from where Jerusalem right there the Jerusalem leaders that is the official hub of Judaism and yet Rome says we have more weight in the things we say because we are Rome and we see this is the center and the the you know the official City of the central locality of Christianity in their opinion so we have Jerusalem leaders versus Rome's leaders didn't matter to Jesus I don't think it should matter to us they had official tradition the Jerusalem leaders and in later times they would actually claim that this tradition came from Moses did you know that they called it the oral tradition in fact they had a different term for it that the Jews would say in later years that they had the written Torah the five books of Moses right and then they had the oral torah the oral torah was considered they said it came from moses and was carried on orally passed down person to person through the generations and then was preserved it was finally written down years later and they have it in the talmud some of the writings that I sometimes quote there's Jewish writings but that's tradition they consider that authoritative tradition so you have the written tour in the oral torah modern-day Catholicism has Sacred Scripture and sacred tradition and they hold them both up much in the same way the Pharisees would have eventually held up the two that they had Jesus totally rejects this because the Bible ultimately beats their authority and he's like this thing is being used at rehmat yeah God's words has spoken and he just kind of rejects the tradition as simply editions another parallel is that Jesus actually respects their position he in fact says the Pharisees are sitting in the seat of Moses and he gives a lot of respect to the position they have he doesn't respect their teachings of mind you he respects their position and their position makes them have a lot of accountability you better teach the truth because you're in this high position but he doesn't respect it as if they're authoritative because of it and that's interesting I think we can treat Rome in a similar fashion so the point is the exact same reasons that I see Rome giving us to take their tradition as authoritative seem to be rejected by Jesus when when Pharisees were Sadducees can give those very same reasons and I think that that in that means in principle that doctrine of Scripture being equal or tradition being equal to Scripture that that is a flawed and Jesus seems to refute it so the authority of God's Word Trump's seemingly authoritative elders and their traditions and this applies to Jehovah's Witnesses who have their own additions that they want to add the LDS Church the Mormon Church that has their own additions that they want to add and their traditions they want to try to shove down people's throats as though it's God's Word and many many other groups anybody who's gonna say yeah from the Bible but I have this thing that's equal to it I'm like nah yeah I'm not interested a couple other things I'll mention real quick before we I actually have a few things to share okay so some skeptics like to say in this passage that Jesus is actually telling us not to wash our hands before we eat and that that's the point of this passage I've heard this a few times from skeptics now I know in the comments people like skeptics never say all this and of course I'm just making things out because I like making skeptics look bad because I just lie all the time but but no I've heard multiple times so I just want to mention Jesus is talking about purification in a ritual sense and symbolically it's like if someone had like stuck their hand in sewage you wash your hands like that you don't you don't ever wash your hands he's just talking about tradition issues in purification ritual E is Jesus saying here though that kosher laws no longer matter here's a whole other debate and this is actually a pretty big debate and there's commentators on both sides because there's that comment in mark where he says in verse 19 thus he declared all foods clean and you notice it's in parentheses probably in your in your Bible that's because it's it's it's not a quote from Jesus it's very likely something marks saying about what Jesus said like helping us interpret it correctly and he's saying thus he declared all foods clean Jesus is saying all foods are clean does that mean Jesus is getting rid of all kosher laws entirely that's the debate and there's some pros and cons here I'm gonna give you two sides of it Kay the con the the side that would say no Jesus is not undoing the Torah laws would be a few things one Jesus says hey don't teach people not to obey what's in the law of Moses be Jesus it was it was only later in the early church that the revelation about how when you're in Christ those things are already fulfilled in Christ you're obeying it but through Jesus not through obedience to the letter of the law that came as a later revelation and in the context the debate is about Jews who were eating kosher food already and they're just not washing their hands when they eat kosher food so those people would say Jesus is really just saying when you're eating kosher foods I use the word kosher here loosely modern usage is a little different than ancient right but when you're eating kosher foods or proper foods you don't need to wash your hands as another act of purity just go ahead and eat it you're fine so Jesus is saying all clean foods are clean and that's one interpretation another interpretation would be that Jesus is just saying food laws don't matter anymore at all that would be the plain sense of the verse where Jesus it just says he declared all foods clean I mean that would be the plain sense of just that without verse so you have the plaintiff to the verse versus the overall context and they seem to be a little different and it makes a little bit of a struggle understanding which ones they're the application of it would make sense in that case the continued work of the holy spirit in the book of Acts and in the New Testament teaching clearly tells us that we do not have to follow as followers of Jesus today the Old Testament laws regarding the food food laws kosher laws that kind of stuff and so let me let me share with you here's my general opinion having said all that I go a little bit back and forth on this one verse whatever this verse means I already know I don't have to obey the food laws of the Old Testament but I wonder what that verse means though I still want to know understanding it rightly I think in one sense I want to affirm it's just Jesus saying if the food's clean it's already clean don't add more laws I think that that that sounds right but I think in hindsight when you look at it with the rest of the revelation of the New Testament you see Jesus laying out principles that were that would easily be brought into the full revelation of the New Covenant I hope that makes sense I hope every big tell what I was saying Romans 14 14 Paul puts it this way I know and I'm convinced in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself but to him who thinks anything to be unclean to him it is unclean now it's possible that Paul sees Jesus's statement and mark as affirming both that clean foods are clean by themselves and all foods if you're in Christ are clean because I'm in him and he declared all things clean so there may be like a double sort of meaning that's there but let me talk a little bit about New Testament teaching that does weigh in on this it's Hebrews 9 verses 9 and 10 it talks about the food laws of the Old Testament it says which is a symbol for the present time accordingly both gifts and sacrifices are offered at the temple which cannot make the worshipper perfect in conscience since they relate only to food and drink and various washings regulations for the body imposed until the time of reformation so there was it there were temporary and the reformation has come in Christ is what Hebrews is telling us they would show the constant issue of sin why do you need to always worry about purity purity purity you're unclean get clean get clean get clean because we're dealing with sin issues in human kind it's symbolic it's representative in Christ it's resolved Colossians 2 verses 16 through 23 shows us what our heart should be as New Covenant believers in Christ Colossians 2:16 says therefore no one is to act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day okay no one can come and say you can't eat that because it's pork or you can't eat that because it's whatever or you have to eat it you tell me some have tried be a Christian eat pork to prove you're really free I'm like yeah that's not in the Bible like that's not something you do to people you know stop the point is let no one judge you in these things this is not an issue to judge people in we have Liberty to abstain or eat either way verse 17 things which are a mere shadow of what is to come but the substance belongs to Christ all those foolish and stuff they're a shadow of Christ now you're in Christ you're you're literally walking in the fulfillment of the kosher laws by just being in Jesus that's the point let no one keep defraud you of your prized by delighting and self-abasement in the worship of angels taking his stand on visions he's seen inflated without caused by his fleshly mind and not holding fast to the head from whom the entire body being supplied and held together by the joints and ligaments grows with a growth which is from God if you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world why as if you were living in the world do you submit yourself to decrees such as do not handle do not taste do not touch which all refer to things destined to perish with use notice the connection of what Jesus said he's like when you eat it the stomach destroys it it perishes with the use and now they're kind of connecting this principle to Jesus's statement and Mark don't let people tell you what you can't touch what you can't eat it just perishes when you use it these things are just physical things in accordance with the commandments and teachings of men these are that these are matters which have to be sure the appearance of wisdom in self-made religion and self abasement and severe treatment of the body and here's the big problem in the final point I wanna make tonight the big problem but are of no value against fleshly indulgence Jesus is hoping with the Pharisees as you're obsessing over things that aren't actually helping you live a sinless life right you're obsessing over things that aren't making you you more pure in your walk with me these things get us distracted from walking in love and sanctification when we focus on them instead of the fullness of what we have in Christ which means that your your sanctification your focus right now should be making no indulgence of the flesh no yielding to carnal sinful fleshly desires this is all on you no one can make you do this it's in your relationship with God as part of your sanctification no room for the flesh that's the call for Christians most often though what we see is well you know you can make a little room for the flesh there's not too much well the flesh is like a programmer you know you go against a programmer and you're like well I'll just give him my toe I'll just give him my toe I'll be fine in three seconds he's got your whole body because that's what they're good at it you know and if someone I'm in repeat when I was a little kid now visit my dad and if you wanted to wrestle which I never did because he's six foot four big strong guy and I was six pounds you know four feet tall until I was like 16 and it was like I don't want her and whatever part of my body he gets ahold of I lose that's just how it works and that's how it is with the flesh any yielding of my heart over to sin it just messes me up man I'm yielding myself to the control of this enemy that's in me so the question isn't am i following all the right rules that's kind of the wrong question nor is the statement I don't have any rules because I have Liberty in Christ the idea is that I want to walk in the spirit and not fulfill the lust of the flesh and that should be kind of the obsessive thoughts of my day am i walking in the spirit or am i fulfilling the lust of the flesh right now how do I just serve God walk in the spirit I want to be doing this on a daily regular basis and not confuse myself by thinking if I check certain boxes I'm now being a good Christian and then forget that it's a heart issue following him moment to moment day to day honoring him like when in Ephesus the letter to Ephesus came in the book of Revelation and he complains to them that they'd left their first love I really feel fairly strongly that they were shocked to read that letter and then it probably took him a while to realize how true it was because they were going about a lot of the same practices but the heart relationship with God that thing was missing something was just along there so he tells him solution repent do the first things go back to those first works the first thing in your walk with me remember those days you know when it was just so pure and so simple I'm I belong to God I'm gonna live for him in his story that's it let's pray father we thank you for your Holy Word we thank you Jesus that we see in the scripture these amazing pictures of people going through lives that are different than ours but it's the same the issues are the same so help us see how to apply it how to live it out how to take the Word of God and get it into our lives so that we would be honoring the heart of God we pray Lord that we would live for you and we would know how to do so you remind us Lord to love our enemies to honor our parents to be good employees to let love be sincere to put off bitterness to realize that pride is is is a terrible sin that we don't want anything to do with to deal with coveting and to cut those things off right right at the root right at the source Lord to deal with those thoughts as they arise and yield to the spirit and walk in the spirit and walk in your love we pray in Jesus name Amen [Music]

Channel: Mike Winger

Views: 39,686

Rating: 4.8897777 out of 5

Keywords: farisees, pharisees, pharasees, tradition vs scripture, sola scriptura vs tradition, Mark 7, Gospel of Mark 7, the mark series part 23

Id: WCKrLlH-v4A

Length: 79min 25sec (4765 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 16 2019