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All right, so we are in the ninth week of this year, I believe, and we are in the eighth

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installment of our series called The First Gospel.

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We're going through the Book of Mark.

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It was the first of the gospels to be written.

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And if you haven't heard those other ones, if you want to check them out, they are all

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on the podcast on AppleMute, anywhere you can get a podcast.

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They're on YouTube.

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They're on Facebook.

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And so they are readily available for you to check out any of the ones that you may

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have missed.

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Today we're going to be in Mark chapter seven.

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So let's actually just go ahead and jump right into the scriptures.

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And I have that effect on some people.

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That's my fault.

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That's my bad.

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Open up the scriptures to the Book of Mark.

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It goes Matthew, Mark, Luke, John.

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There are the gospels there at the beginning of what's called the New Testament.

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And if you don't have a physical Bible, you can grab one of the blue ones from the shelf

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on the way out or download one from any of the digital app stores.

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All right.

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Mark seven.

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We have a tradition of giving the scriptures our full attention.

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One of the ways we can do that is by standing together as you are able or as you desire.

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You don't have to.

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It's just if you're able, we'd like to.

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Mark seven.

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It's going to be long one, one through 23.

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Mark seven, beginning verse one says this.

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The Pharisees and some of the teachers of the law who had come from Jerusalem gathered

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around Jesus and saw some of his disciples eating food with hands that were defiled,

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that is unwashed.

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The Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial

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washing holding to the tradition of the elders.

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When they came, when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash and they

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observe many other traditions such as the washing of cups, pitchers and kettles.

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So the Pharisees and teachers of the law asked you this, why don't your disciples live according

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to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with file hands?

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You replied, Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites.

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As it was written, these people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from

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me.

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They worship me in vain.

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Their teachings are merely human rules.

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You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions.

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And to continue, you have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe

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your own traditions.

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For Moses said, honor your father and mother and anyone who curses their father or mother

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is to be put to death.

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But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father

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or mother is Corbin, that is devoted to God, then you no longer let them do anything for

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their father or mother.

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Thus, you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down.

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And you do many things like that.

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Again, Jesus called the crowd to him and said, listen to me, everyone and understand this,

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nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them.

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Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them.

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After he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about this

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parable.

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Are you so dull?

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He asked.

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Don't you see that nothing that enters a person from the outside can defile them for it doesn't

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go into their heart, but into their stomach and then out of the body.

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In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean and he went on, what comes out of a person

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is what defiles them.

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For it is from within, out of a person's heart, that evil thoughts come, sexual immorality,

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theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly.

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All these evils come from inside and defile a person.

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Let us pray.

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God of every tribe, every tongue, every color, every nation, we thank you that you are here

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with us, that you love us, that you've given us the scriptures.

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I pray that we would hear whatever it is that you have for us to learn today.

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I pray that it would stick, that it would become a part of the framework of our faith,

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that our faith would become stronger as we become more like your son, Jesus.

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Amen.

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Thanks to all.

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I can have a seat.

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So there's a few things that I want to point out about this passage today.

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So first, doesn't it seem like there's just always new rules?

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It's like it's in our nature to create new rules, even when we already have hundreds.

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Why not more?

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For instance, right now, here in America, it is what's known as tax season.

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Has anyone ever filled out your own taxes by hand?

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Yeah?

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Without the help of TurboTax or a website?

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The American tax code is notoriously difficult.

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There are 6,781 pages in the United States tax code.

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And then, if you include the official explanations of the federal tax regulations and all the

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printed guidelines for those 6,781 pages, any guesses on how many pages you have then?

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20,000.

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Twenty thousand.

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75,000 pages.

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There are more than 11 pages of explanation and guidance for every one page of tax code.

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It would take the average reader 14 weeks to read all of it.

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I'm no average reader, so it would take me one year.

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It would take forever, absolutely forever.

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I can read a chapter of a book and come back to it a month later and go, did I read that

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chapter?

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So it can start to feel impossible to feel confident that you did your taxes correctly,

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which leads me to the meme, which I won't put up, but I'll just tell the joke, where

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you've probably seen it.

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It's kind of funny.

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It says, IRS, you owe us money.

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Me, how much?

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IRS, guess.

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Me, this much?

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IRS, no, now you owe us more.

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Without the help of professionals, it feels impossible because there's just too many rules.

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The rules have rules.

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And I think that the same thing happens with religion, with our spirituality.

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We take an opportunity to know God, to be in a relationship with the creator of the

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universe, and then we complicate it.

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These Pharisees, these teachers of the law, they literally went out of their way to come

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from Jerusalem, from the center of their religious world, just to try and catch Jesus breaking

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made up religious rules.

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What do I mean by made up?

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When they asked why Jesus' disciples didn't wash their hands, what did they say?

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The words that they said, they said, why aren't they following the tradition of the elders?

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There's a key word there, tradition, yeah?

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They didn't say law of Moses, not command of God.

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They said tradition of the elders.

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That rule that they were bothered about, it was an add on.

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There were already 613 religious laws from the actual scriptures, but that wasn't enough.

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They needed more rules for the rules, like the tax law for our tax laws.

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Most people didn't even know who or why that rule had been added.

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It reminds me of a story from an old church.

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This particular church was very traditional.

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Their communion elements were covered in a very specific way.

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The bread had its own sacred dish.

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The wine had its own special chalice.

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The chalice had this very special thick square that would be perfectly centered and placed

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on top of the chalice.

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Then there would be a cloth that had been ironed that would be placed over the square,

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perfectly centered.

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For years they did it this way, perfectly centering the square on the chalice, carefully

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covering the wine, ironing the cloth, washing the cloth, starching it for effect.

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This was handed down from generation to generation.

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This is how you prepare the elements.

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This is how you present the elements.

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If it wasn't perfect, people sure would fill up that comment card.

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They felt their experience had been diminished.

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If the cloth was wrinkled, if anything looked just a little off center.

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People complained until someone finally did it.

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Why do we do it this way?

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The truth was that they didn't know.

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They didn't know why they did it that way.

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After some digging, someone finally found the story of the first time that they had

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covered the wine with a square and a cloth.

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It turns out, and this is true, that any church that you walk into today that covers their

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chalice in that way, the origin goes all the way back to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds

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of years ago when a priest noticed that a fly had fallen in the wine.

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And so they covered the chalice.

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That's it.

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It was just to keep bugs out of the elements.

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But that practical action didn't need to become a spiritual necessity.

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That is exactly the kind of thing that the Pharisees are talking about here.

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Having to wash your hands before eating was a rule on top of the rules.

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Just one more way to judge.

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Wasn't original.

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Wasn't add-on.

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So now they've challenged Jesus, and so he turns it around on them.

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And he brings up another one of the add-ons.

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It was called Corbin.

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Corbin is a word that means a sacrifice or an offering to God, something that is set

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apart for God.

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It is a beautiful word.

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It is a beautiful concept.

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And we know at least one beautiful little boy that has this name, Corbin.

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But Jesus was bringing it up because back then, Corbin wasn't a name.

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It was a word for an oath.

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To say Corbin about something was to say, I'm going to set this thing aside for God

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specifically.

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Wasn't one of the original rules about giving.

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It was an add-on.

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The top rules meant to be, it was meant to be something beautiful.

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And what happened is that people started abusing the concept.

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They had a way of using this oath as a way to quickly end a dispute.

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So what do I mean by that?

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Instead of legitimately wanting to give something to God as an offering, what started happening

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is that it started meaning that I'd rather give this to God than give it to you.

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One commentary said it basically became shorthand for God forbid.

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It's kind of like in the South.

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I lived in the South for three years.

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Someone says to you, bless your heart.

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They don't mean that.

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They don't mean that.

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It meant God forbid you might get this, so I'm going to dedicate it to God.

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Examples.

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There's one last muffin and your enemy wants it.

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Nah, that muffin is Corbin.

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Someone asks you to help move their couch.

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Pivot.

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Nah, I've declared even my legs are Corbin.

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In the Big Daddy version in this story, Jesus mentions a son that has dedicated his wealth

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as Corbin to the temple instead of to his families.

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My dad, who I don't get along with, wants my money.

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No, it's Corbin.

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So the implication is that the son didn't do this to honor God.

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The son did this to avoid honoring his parents.

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The first rule, the original rule was honor your mother and your father, but the oath

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gave people a way around the law of God.

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Jesus wants to know why.

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Why are we wasting our time creating new rules that do nothing for the heart?

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Why are the Pharisees on one hand upset the disciples are breaking with tradition, but

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on the other hand, their traditions have allowed people to break with God and with each other.

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So Jesus goes even deeper beneath the add-ons, beneath the original rules to the heart of

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the matter.

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And if you were a first century Jew, what Jesus says next about the rules would have

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absolutely rocked you to the core because Jesus saying that what you put in your body

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isn't what defiles you would have been completely mind blowing.

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Because that is one of the most basic rules that had been taught to them, that they had

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learned for the better part of a thousand years that if I eat this, I'm unclean.

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If I touch that, I'm unclean.

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If I avoid that, I stay clean.

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But Jesus flips it.

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Jesus says it isn't the food that goes in.

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It's the heart that comes out.

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Jesus is saying that it isn't the rules that make you good.

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It's not the outside guidelines that keep your insides clean.

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Years later, the apostle Paul, the missionary and church planner would say the same thing

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to Titus, but he would say it like this.

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To the pure, all things are pure.

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But to those who are corrupted and do not believe, nothing is pure.

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Jesus is saying that holiness is a matter of the heart.

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You can try to follow all the rules, but what something looks like on the outside doesn't

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always tell the truth.

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I'm sure some of us have felt that way.

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I have felt that way.

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Man, I've been doing, I've just been managing to do just enough of the things that I know

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people expect me to do to make it look like I'm okay.

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To make it look like I'm good.

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I think it was Tozer that said the great trouble of the world today is the desire to look good

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without being good.

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I think we all know it's true that just because something looks right on the outside doesn't

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mean that it is inside.

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I think that if we were reading this and if we were listening like a first century Jew

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that we might start thinking, where else have I heard something like this before?

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Where else have I heard a lesson like this before that Jesus is talking about?

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And then you might think about all the way back in 1 Samuel.

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God had given the people what they wanted so that they could look on the outside like

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everybody else.

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They'd asked for a king.

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We want a king like everyone else.

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In 1 Samuel, we find out that that king, though he looked great, he was tall, he was handsome,

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he was strong, but he was a disaster.

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Saul was on the outside everything that they wanted, but his heart had turned away from

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God.

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And so God sends the prophet to the house of Jesse to meet all of Jesse's sons and

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Jesse has them all lined up by age.

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One after another, Samuel gets to the next one and he thinks, this must be the one.

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God, this kid, look at, this kid's impressive.

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All state, 4.0 GPA.

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This kid right here is impressive.

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This must be the king, but one after another, God said, no.

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Just as the prophet Samuel reaches the end of the line, the last kid of Jesse, the last

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son is standing there, he was sure this must be the one because there's no one else here.

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What does God say?

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He says, do not look on his appearance or at his height or his stature because I have

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rejected him for the Lord sees not as man sees.

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Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.

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Samuel standing there, he's got no sons left to anoint as king and he turns to Jesse and

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he says, do you have any more sons?

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There was one more, the youngest, the smallest, the musician, the shepherd that would become

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the most famous, most important king of Israel's history.

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A king described as a man after God's own heart.

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His name was David.

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Jesus is telling them, he's telling us no amount of rules, no amount of appearances

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will get us any closer to God.

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No amount of external appearances will solve our internal problems.

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No rule, no tradition will give us the heart that we so desperately need.

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But the good news is that Jesus can because Jesus can change everything.

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Jesus said, I have not come to abolish the law, all these rules, I've not come to abolish

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it but to fulfill these laws.

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These laws that you couldn't possibly follow perfectly, I'm the piece that you click in.

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He said, come to me all who are weak and weary, all who are burdened, overcome with rules

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and tradition, come to me and I will give you rest.

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There is no what that can solve the problem of our hearts but there is a who.

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Yeshua, Jesus, the son of God.

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And if you believe that he is who he says he is, then Jesus lives in you, in your heart.

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He makes his home in that place.

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And if what comes from our hearts is what defiles us, how beautiful is it, how perfect

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is it that Jesus chooses to dwell in that place.

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To get to the seat of all of our sin, to go to the source of our sexual immorality, to

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the source of our theft and murder, our adultery, greed, malice and deceit, the home of our

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lewdness and envy and slander, our arrogance and folly, he goes there and he lays his head

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in the home of our heart so that he can change everything.

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Amen.

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Let's pray.

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Father God, I thank you for the work of your son that your son lives where sin wants to

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dwell.

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You make your home in us, each of us, piece by piece with us you build a home for everyone.

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I pray that we would not become overburdened with the rules, but we would be filled with

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your presence.

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Amen.