Daily Dose of Hope
April 17, 2025
Day 4 of Week 3
Scripture – Mark 7:1-23
Prayer: Almighty God, We come before you with awe and humility. As we continue through this Holy Week, help us remember all you have done for us. We are nothing without you. We need you desperately, Lord. Help us gather our scattered thoughts today as we focus on you. In these next few moments of silence, help us remember that we belong to you. Help us lay our worries and cares on the throne of your grace...We pray this in the powerful name of Jesus, Amen.
Welcome back to the Daily Dose of Hope, a Deep Dive into the Gospels and Acts. Today, we begin Mark 7 and read about another run-in Jesus has with the Pharisees. But before we move into our devotional, I do want to mention that today is Maundy Thursday. The word “maundy” comes from a Latin word meaning command and it refers to the command that Jesus gives his disciples in the Upper Room “to love one another as I have loved you.” This is often a day when we wash each other’s feet and receive communion together as Jesus did before he was crucified. Today, we will have the New Hope sanctuary open for prayer, communion, and hand washing from 12noon to 1pm and then again from 6:30 to 7:30pm. There won’t be a service but this will be your time for prayer, reflection, and communing with God.
Let’s talk a little bit about 1st century Jewish life. Certain groups of Jews, such as the Pharisees and the scribes, affirmed two types of law. There was the written law, the first five books of the Bible, and the oral law, or the traditions of the elders/rabbis. The written law didn’t have all the detail so the rabbis over the years had filled in those details with oral traditions. For instance, there is a lot in the written law about things being clean and unclean but not a lot of detail, so the oral tradition filled in the detail.
Who exactly were the Pharisees? They were a strict sect of Judaism that believed in following the law in the fullest sense. There were different standards for following the law for different groups of people (day laborer would not be able to follow the law in the same way that a scribe could do so.) But certainly, it would have been expected that a rabbi and his followers would follow both the oral and written law.
In today’s Scripture, Jesus and his disciples had been out and about doing ministry and it is time to eat; they gather together to eat dinner. But they were being watched. Some of the Jewish teachers of the law, the Pharisees, had come to watch Jesus and his followers. They were suspicious of Jesus. They had heard about the healings. They had heard about his teaching. And they were feeling a bit threatened. They travel from Jerusalem, which was 80 miles away, to come keep an eye on him.
And they find Jesus and his disciples eating without washing their hands and they are appalled. Now, let’s be clear. Part of the oral laws that the Jews followed included ritual hand washing, in which they would pour water over their hands before they ate. It wasn’t to clean germs off their hands. (They didn’t know about germs yet – germ theory isn’t discovered for another 1800 years). Thus, this pouring of water on the hands didn’t really make their hands clean. It was a man-made rule that the rabbis tried to enforce.
And Jesus didn’t have his disciples do it. The Pharisees are shocked and they ask him, “Why do you allow your disciples to eat with unclean hands?” And then Jesus says interesting. He quotes Scripture from the prophet Isaiah, which basically says, “ ‘These people honor me by what they say. But their hearts are far away from me. Their worship doesn’t mean anything to me. They teach nothing but human rules.’
On the surface, there wasn’t anything wrong with what the Pharisees were trying to do. They had laws which they thought were very important in following God. But you see, Jesus could see past their words, past their rules, and into their hearts. He saw insincerity, hollowness, hypocrisy, all a bit of a facade. And thus, he sees this as a fulfillment of Biblical prophecy. Just as in the times of Isaiah, the Pharisees were giving lip service to following God but their hearts were far from him. They were concerned about the Sabbath being followed to the tee but they would cheat people in the marketplace. They were concerned about following specifics of the hand washing but they weren’t at all concerned about the widow and the orphan. Something was truly skewed here. They were all about piety but they had neglected compassion, justice, and love.
This whole issue of being unclean, of being defiled, was a big deal in 1st century Judaism. If you couldn’t be clean (and a lot of regular people worked jobs or had lives that meant they couldn’t meet all the various regulations to stay clean), but if you were unclean for whatever reason (your work or an illness), then you were kind of ostracized from the Temple. You were basically shunned from religious life. Jesus is making a huge point here. He is saying that becoming defiled goes so much deeper than what you touch or what rituals you may or may not attend to.
Jesus is basically saying, You are shunning people, you are telling them they are unclean, you are ostracizing them from the community, based on the rituals they have done or haven’t done to be clean. But what you are missing is this: the things that really matter, the things that pose the greatest danger, are not external. They aren’t hand-washing. They aren’t meticulously keeping Sabbath. The things that matter most to God are internal.
You see, what Jesus is saying to them is that God cares most about the heart. I can’t help but think back to God’s choice of David for king of Israel. All his brothers seemed like a better choice–older, stronger, more educated, better marksmen. I Samuel 16:7, But the LORD said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.”
Friends, the Lord looks on the heart. God cares about what’s in our hearts. He doesn’t care if you’ve got Scripture memorized or you pray big fancy prayers out loud for your Sunday School class. He doesn’t care if you “look” like a good Christian. Rather---He cares about how you treat the people who live next door to you. He cares about if you are really kind to people. He cares about whether or not you are saying nasty things about other people behind their back. He cares about whether you are generous with your resources. He cares about whether you really make him Lord of your life. If we are honest, I think we will all admit that the church has looked a lot like these Pharisees. We’ve been all about religious activity and less about trying to be like Jesus. We’ve been about the external and not the internal. We’ve cared about appearances. We put up this great religious front but then we are horribly judgmental or angry or bitter or you get the idea.
Friends, God could care less about your religious busyness. He wants your heart. He doesn’t care about our ceremonial handwashing---he cares about if we are treating others with the love of Christ. And if we aren’t, then all the ceremony, all the church stuff, all of this, it’s kind of a farce. Why? Because God looks on our hearts. We aren’t fooling God.
Some questions to think about:
Am I growing in my walk with Jesus?
What evidence do I have of this?
Do I make excuses for my failure to be obedient and faithful to God’s commands?
Am I growing in faithfulness or stagnating by being too comfortable in my spiritual life?
Am I frequently sharing my faith with people outside the church?
Am I the same person at church as I am at home, at work, and everywhere else in my life? Do I speak and behave in the same way? Why or why not?
Do I hide things from my church friends that I’m ashamed of?
Do I ever thank God that I am not as sinful as other people?
Do I ever say unhelpful things about my brothers and sisters in Christ?
Do I have a critical or negative spirit?
What things have I allowed to seep into my heart that I know should be released to God?
How am I measuring up compared to Jesus?
Blessings,
Pastor Vicki
