If you will, turn with me in your Bibles to Mark chapter 7, beginning at verse 1 and continuing
to verse 23 as we read God's word together.
As human beings, we have a tendency to deceive ourselves.
We may think that we are greater than what we are, or more holy than what we are.
Do you realize Jesus had to deal with that when He walked this world?
And He's going to tell us about what truly constitutes holiness and what really constitutes
sin.
So let's give our attention to the teachings of Jesus this morning.
The Pharisees and some of the teachers of the law who had come from Jerusalem gathered
around Jesus and saw some of His disciples eating food with hands that were defiled,
that is unwashed.
These and all the Jews do not eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial washing holding
to the traditions of the elders.
And when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash, and they observe
many other traditions such as the washing of cups, pictures, and cups.
So the Pharisees and teachers of the law asked Jesus, why don't your disciples live according
to the traditions of the elders instead of eating their food with defiled hands?
He replied, Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites as it is written.
These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.
They worship me in vain.
Their teachings are mere human rules.
You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions.
And he continued, you have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe
your own traditions.
For Moses said honor your father and your mother, and anyone who curses their father
or mother is to be put to death.
But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father
or mother is Coraban, that is devoted to God, then you no longer let them do anything for
their father or mother.
Thus, you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down and you
do not do many things like that.
Again, Jesus called the crowds to him and said, listen to me everyone and understand
this, nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them.
Rather it is what comes out of the person that defiles them.
And after he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about his
fareable.
Are you so dull?
He asked, don't you see that nothing that enters a person from the outside can defile
them for it doesn't go into their heart but into their stomach and then out of the body.
And saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean.
He went on, what comes out of a person is what defiles them.
For it is from within out of the person's heart that evil thoughts come, sexual immorality,
theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly.
All these evils come from inside and defile a person.
Let's pray and ask God to bless what we have read this morning.
Our Heavenly Father, may we be a people who understand sin and also help us to overcome
our own inclination toward hypocrisy.
May we be a people who truly are holy by what you are doing within our souls.
Let's pray and ask God to bless us.
Back when I was in Virginia, there was a church incident which I will never forget.
It was a Christmas party at the church and all the church was there and one of the elders
was playing Santa Claus giving out gifts to the children.
And one of the women got very, very upset.
Why was she upset?
Because in a Christian church we have Santa Claus and presents are being given out.
What about Jesus?
What are we teaching children?
A little while later that same woman who railed against Santa Claus committed adultery and
left the church.
Now why am I telling you that?
It's because at times in the church world we have this tendency to put on a false front,
to show other people that we are really holy but in reality not so.
And that's not the only example I can think of back when we were in Alabama.
I remember in the headlines one time about a church was having a Bible memorization contest.
Somebody got mad.
One guy shot another who was in the Bible memorization contest.
So much for memorizing.
You should love your neighbor.
I guess they didn't pay attention to that.
But when we think about the implications of this and how people view the church, I mean
think about it.
It's like bad fruit.
It may look good on the outside but people realize once you peel into that apple it's
rotten and full of worms.
Or it's like milk in the refrigerator that's been there too long.
It may look like milk.
But the first sip you want to spit it out because it is rotten.
As Christians we are to be the type of people who are truly holy.
But there is this temptation I'm afraid that we want to put on a false front.
We want to appear to be more holy and upright and righteous than what we are.
And I think as we look out of the church today there are several problems.
One is people just don't take the church very seriously at all or Christianity or even religion
seriously at all.
It's like the party I went to in South Carolina one time where the host was serving ham and
wine with the meal.
Well there was a Muslim woman there and she didn't eat that.
And the host went up and apologized.
Oh I didn't know you were Muslim.
She said oh I don't take that stuff very seriously.
It's part of the teachings of your religion.
You should take it seriously.
If you believe it well that's one track.
Not taking things very seriously that you are to believe.
But there is this other track as well where you do the religious duties.
That you are not performing them for the right reasons or it is merely to impress or think
that if I do certain things God's going to accept me more.
Well today what this message is about.
It's about the failure of external religion and the problems of external religion.
Problem number one if you believe only in external religion it's man centered.
Problem number two it's dehumanizing and problem number three it's just mistaken.
So let's dive into this passage here.
Let's see what Jesus is telling us about the problems of a faith that is really not a
faith at all.
It is merely external religion not a religion of the heart.
Now problem number one it's man centered.
Now if you have ever watched Saturday Night Live you remember the church lady that cracks
me up.
I love those skits of the church lady.
And you know it's about a very uptight elderly woman who has got to have everything in the
church just so all the rules have to be followed.
She is one of the biggest turn offs to those who run into her and by the way in those skits
she turns out to be just as sinful as normal people.
But she gives us impression.
I've got it all together.
I'm following all the rules.
Most of those rules are man centered.
She's got it decently in order but she's missing out on something.
A lot of those rules that she follows have nothing to do with the Bible.
And here's what Jesus is getting into by man centered.
They're based off of human traditions not the word of God.
And notice what Jesus is focusing in on here.
Human traditions you see it in verses 3, 4 and 5 where he repeats over and over again.
You Pharisees you are following a man centered tradition.
Now that word tradition that gets a lot of bad press today.
It comes from a Latin word.
It just means to hand down.
And in the Bible it's not necessarily against tradition.
In fact it says in 1 Corinthians 11, 2 I praise you for remembering me in everything and for
the household to holding to the traditions just as I pass them on to you.
You see what it's saying?
The Gospel was being passed on.
The traditions of the Gospel which were good in Bible centered were being passed on.
And in 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 verse 15 listen to what Scripture says.
So then brothers and sisters stand firm and hold fast the teachings we passed on to you.
Whether by word of mouth or by letter.
So let's don't think those traditions are necessarily wrong.
Now there are some ways though that we can take traditions in the wrong way.
It's sort of like the seven last words of the church.
We've never done it that way before.
Or as one bishop said, nothing ought ever to be done for the first time.
There is a negative way that traditions can be used in a positive way.
Your faith and the Bible teachings which you believe have in a sense been handed down to
you.
But there's also a negative way.
And that's the real problem.
And I want you to look at verses 8 and 9.
Notice what it says is the problem.
It says in verse 8, you have let go of the commandments of God and holding to human traditions.
That's the problem.
That's what they are doing.
And you have a fine way of setting aside the commandments of God in order to observe your
own traditions.
It was not tradition in itself.
But what they were doing by their traditions was making a separation.
They were disregarding what God actually wanted in favor of something that man came up with.
That's the problem.
And here, more specifically, it deals with hand washing.
And do you see this passage here?
Hand washing is not in the Bible.
It was for the priests, but not for everybody else.
But what the tradition list said, if you are going to be a holy person before all meals,
you have got to wash your hands.
And that tradition becomes equated with true morality, which it is not.
Oh, and they had it worked out.
You had to use at least one and a half eggshells of water.
And you had to scrub your hands like this with your fists.
And they're saying, if you don't do that, you're not a good person.
Now, it's not as if the disciples came to eat with dirty hands.
No.
But they are saying to Jesus in his disciples, why didn't you do the ceremony?
Do you realize that there was a rabbi who was excommunicated because he did not follow
this ceremony?
And that's the problem.
It doesn't have anything to do with the real law of God.
But they're making it equivalent to that.
And at heart, it's all very hypocritical because it is not true.
Their hearts are not close to God, which is exactly what verse 6 says.
And listen to the futility of it all from the apostle Paul in Colossians chapter 2.
Do not handle.
Do not taste.
Do not touch.
These are destined to perish because they are based on human commandments, all those
commandments that they had about you can touch this food, can't touch that food, can't
drink this, can't drink that.
All human traditions, he says.
They're not helping you to become closer to God.
It doesn't promote true piety.
In fact, it makes things worse.
But there is a sense where the external seems to be the most important.
Back in the 1980s, there was a man named Robert Ford from West Virginia.
His wife, second wife, married him thinking he was Joe Montana the quarterback.
Well, this makes the news.
Local woman, Marys Joe Montana.
But there was another woman, his first wife, who saw that.
And she goes, that was my husband.
I thought he was Hank Williams.
And she goes, it's all my fault.
I should have never given him that 49ers warmup jacket.
But do you see the problem?
It's the externals, but it's all a lie.
It's a charade.
And what is most important for Christianity is that we truly follow God, not some manmade
rules that we have made up to make ourselves feel better and to look good.
Those manmade rules often substitute for God's commandments.
And we need a church we can do that, can't we?
I am all for Sunday school.
But does Sunday school in itself make you holy?
No.
There is no commandment to do that.
The amount of time you pray, this was a big deal.
Oh, you need to pray hours and hours and hours.
There is no biblical commandment exactly how long you should pray.
Should you pray?
Yes.
But a lot of this gets to be too much.
And remember back when you had the Bill Gothart crusade?
Oh, he could come up with all sorts of rules on what you should do, what you should wear,
how you should live.
And basically a lot of it didn't have anything to do with the law of God.
It was a form of control.
Little Christians are a lot like Mrs. C. from the television series on PBS, Grandchester.
She works at the local parish.
She's got her hands into everything.
She is very morally upright, you would think.
But yet she is also harsh, demeaning, and angry.
She has the facade of religion, but her heart is not where it often should be.
Problem number one, a lot of the rules that people who call themselves Christians follow
are based on the traditions of man, not on the word of God.
Here's the second problem.
It can be dehumanizing.
External religion can be dehumanizing.
And look at what it's talking about here in verses 9 through 13.
It's talking about Corabin.
This morning for our responsive reading we read the commandment, you should honor your
mother and your father.
That can mean several things, but one of it is when your parents get older, they may need
financial help, you need to help them.
Well, what the religious teachers came up with was a way to get out of that.
And it was called Corabin.
If you wanted to dedicate something to God, you simply said Corabin.
And that gift, that money you would say, well, that's going to God, I don't have to now give
it to my parents.
And then you can hold on to the money.
You didn't have to do anything about it.
So much for that commandment, honor your mother and your father, you took a quote, vow to
get you out of that, of doing your primary duty.
And Jesus says this is wrong because it is dehumanizing.
Part of the fulfillment of the law was to love God, but also congregation, who else
are you to love?
Your neighbor.
And that includes your parents, your brothers, your sisters, all these things.
But they took a vow so they didn't have to help.
Dehumanizing.
Now this takes place all throughout the world, not just the church world.
For example, one time Japan had a major earthquake.
Do you know what one of the complaints of Japanese citizens was?
The government cares more about rebuilding bridges than they do us.
In other words, they were more interested in infrastructure and helping get that in place
than the people who had suffered.
It happens all the time with governmental rules for education which seem to multiply
over and over again.
And after a while you're saying, who's this designed to help?
A lot of it is not designed to help students.
The world does that.
But we also do it too.
We come up with all these rules which really don't help other people.
Or we follow secondary rules and violate the primary.
So for example, in what used to be called Zaire, it is now the Democratic Republic of
Congo, there was a leader.
And what did this leader do?
Well, he went to church, knelt down, took communion.
He traded the people under him like dirt and many of the people in what was then called
Zaire suffered.
Oh, he was doing those outward religious commandments.
But it was dehumanizing.
Think about this.
The name Robert Rakes may not be familiar to you.
He is the one who started the Sunday school movement.
Why?
Because he looked at the slums of London and there were all these kids who couldn't read,
didn't know anything about God.
So he said we've got to do something about this.
So he came up with the Sunday school movement.
Now I would say that is an implication of the gospel, but do you know what a lot of churches
said?
No.
We can't have those kids in our church.
They're dirty.
They'll make too much noise.
We don't want them in there.
So what were they thinking?
Did they care about those kids?
No.
But once again, they were coming up with rules to keep those who needed the help most out
of the church.
Now, good news was Sunday school movement caught on.
But there are others as well.
Think about Wesleyan Whitfield preaching out in the fields.
They were up people back then and said, oh, you can't do that.
But he was meeting the spiritual needs of work who came to hear the gospel.
We can come up with all sorts of rules which are not necessary and at times those very
rules hurt people.
So that's why these rules that the Pharisees had were wrong.
They were unbiblical and they were dehumanizing.
And one other problem here, they're just mistaken because we often think that the way to control
sin is by following rules.
You're not going to control sin by necessarily following rules because sin is not external.
Sin begins with something that is inside of you.
And hypocrisy is where you're trying to control the externals but you're not interested in
the internals.
Sin is a problem of the heart.
It comes from within us.
And if you look here at what Jesus says at the end of this passage in verses 14 through
21, he tells us plainly what the problem is.
Nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them.
Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them.
Think of what Paul said.
You obey from your heart.
That's what Christ wants.
In Proverbs it says above all else guard your hearts for it is the wellspring of life.
That is what you desire.
Not just outward conformity.
Not just proving to other people that you are good and holy.
Not even trying to prove to God that you're good and holy.
If you have a desire in your heart to fight sin and to truly love God and truly to love
me.
The story is told about one Muslim who was chasing another Muslim with a knife in hand
about ready to kill him.
Well there run the law.
The man with the knife is about ready to catch up.
It was a time of day where all Muslims have prayer.
So what does he do?
He drops to his knees.
He has his prayer.
And when prayer time is over, guess what he does?
Picks up his knife, continues the chase.
What about the heart?
It's not there.
And what the real problem with a lot of what goes on in Christianity, it's a problem of
the heart.
It needs to be broken so that desires to follow God.
That's the problem.
Desires.
We can give you all the commandments you need.
But if you have no desire, it's not going to mean a thing.
Now I got to tell you, recently various state legislatures have said we want to put the 10
commandments in schools.
I'm all for it.
There needs to be some sort of moral code.
I'm all for Christianity and the 10 commandments.
But I also got to tell you, if there is no desire of the heart, kids aren't going to listen.
There needs to be something else like a work of the Holy Spirit to make them have a desire
to truly follow the will of God.
As we think about this passage, what's the problem that we Americans have?
We like to look at the externals appearance.
It's got to look good.
Think about the fashion model.
What do we care the most about?
She looks good.
Never mind.
Think about personality like a wrapped snake.
But she looks good.
Think about some of those glamorous stars from those movies in the 40s and 50s who made
pinup girls.
Look at their personal lives.
You would think they're so good and wholesome and beautiful, but inside, oof.
Stay away.
Well, it's the same with us as well in Christianity.
We need to look inside, not always to the outside, because external religion only is
a huge problem.
And it may be why so many people get turned off to Christianity.
Let's pray.
All right, Heavenly Father.
There's so many problems that we face.
And often we forget that we are to be a people who have hearts that are drawn to you.
It's not just about putting on airs.
It's about the love of God, the love of Jesus.
So be with us now, Holy Spirit, and give us hearts that truly love you.
Amen.