Two Journeys

In this second part of Acts 21:1–36, Paul goes to Jerusalem, and despite knowing it could cost his life, he chooses to obey the Holy Spirit.

The post Acts Podcast 41: To Jerusalem! Part 2 appeared first on Two Journeys.

Pastor Andy Davis preaches one verse in Mark and explains how a statement from Jesus reaffirmed His majesty and the fact the covenant law was powerless to save.

Turn in your Bibles to Mark 7:19B. I'm going to preach on half a verse today. I did a rough calculation that if I preach the whole Gospel of Mark at that pace, it would take me 30 years or so to preach through the entire Gospel of Mark. This is not my usual pattern to preach on half a verse, and it's certainly not my pattern to preach on a parenthetical verse, one of the most important parenthetical statements in the Bible. I know your outline says the most important parenthetical statement, but I'm not a hundred percent sure that's true, and I am so geeky that I actually searched them all this week. There are 335 parenthetical statements in the NIV and I looked at them. There's some pretty weighty ones, but this is weighty. What is a parenthetical statement?

A parenthetical statement is one that's in parenthesis, a statement of the obvious. In almost every English translation, the verse I'm going to preach on today is in parenthesis, in saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean. Now, a parenthesis is a modern grammatical invention or convention. It's used to add some extra information to a statement, something incidental, something beside the point. Beside the point means it isn't the main point, it's not the main idea. Generally something you can get along without, like a footnote or something for those who are interested, really interested in a lot of extra information. Now, for me as an expository preacher, I've been trained that expository preaching is the main point of the passage, is the main point of the sermon. I agree with that. So for the most part, expository sermons do avoid sidetracks. They avoid burdening the hero with all kinds of extra information. You stick to the main point, a preaching expert would say to a young preacher. 

And what is the main point? The main point of this passage is the darkness of the human heart, the defilement, the spiritual defilement of the human heart. Jesus has been addressing the Pharisees and teachers, the law, the Scribes, the fanatical religious legalists of his day, the hypocrites of his day. They had a whole system, a manmade system of religion in which traditions and regulations are added to the laws of God. They forced these add-ons on people's consciences. They pressed their rules, their traditions, their regulations on people's consciences. And in this case, in this encounter, it was ritualistic hand washing as part of overall system of ritual washings that are nowhere commanded in the laws of God. There are just manmade. There are extra rituals that had been passed on from generation to generation, previous generations of rabbis just like them, and they bound people's consciences with these traditions, these washings.

Look at verses 3-5. The Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial washing, holding to the tradition of the elders. 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, pitchers, and kettles. So the Pharisees and the teachers of the law ask Jesus, “Why don't your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with unclean hands?”

Jesus exposed their fundamental flaw, which is preferring their manmade traditions over the laws of God. Verses 6-8, 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 but rules taught by men. You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men. God's word is the standard, not manmade traditions.” God exposed that pattern as terrible, as corrupting, deadly for their souls actually. But then Jesus unleashed a bombshell on them and He did it for everyone to hear. He called everyone in. This had been perhaps a private conversation He was having with the scribes and Pharisees, just him and his disciples and them. But now He wanted everyone to hear this.

He calls everyone in, verse 14 and 15, and said, “Listen to me everyone and understand this. Nothing outside a person can make him unclean by going into him. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that makes him unclean.” Now, typical of Jesus, He makes this pronouncement to the crowd with no further explanation. That's it. The full implications of this would not be clear for decades actually. The explanation comes a little bit more clear in a moment, but the king of the kingdom of heaven just lays out this timeless principle for everyone to hear, and that is this: Nothing outside you can make you spiritually unclean by coming into you. The spiritual uncleanness comes from inside you. By implication, Jesus will make it clear also, nothing external can cleanse you spiritually either. Nothing outside you can clean you. These ritual washings had no power to do that. Spiritual defilement comes from within. So true cleansing must come from within as well.

But again, Jesus made none of this clear to the crowds. He just said  it, and then goes inside with his apostles and He gives the fuller explanation to them. Look at verse 17 -23, “After he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about this parable. Are you so dull?” This translation has, “Are you without understanding?”  “Don't you see that nothing that enters a man from the outside can make him unclean for it does not go into his heart, but into his stomach and then out of his body? And saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean. He went on, what comes out of a man is what makes him unclean for from within, out of men's hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance, and folly. All these evils come from inside and make a man unclean.” So, that's the main point. The main idea here is all spiritual defilement comes from our hearts. 

Now, that was the main point of last week's sermon. Walked through that last week, the darkness and evil of our hearts is the true problem of the human condition. Therefore, nothing outside a person can spiritually defile them. The human heart is a poisoned fountain, a poisoned fountain. What is the heart? The heart biblically is the part of you that studies and learns and thinks and reasons and plans and loves and hates, feels emotions and makes choices. The Bible says your heart does all of those things. The heart is the center of the entire human experience. Proverb 4:23, “Above all else, guard your heart for it is the wellspring of life.” What does that mean, the wellspring of life? Well, everything to do with the human life comes from the heart. It's like into a spring of water, a well spring that flows up and out into everything we do, and we're told to guard it carefully.

But Jesus says in this text, it's already poisoned. It's already polluted. And no foods cause that defilement, nor the uncleanness of your hands physically. No, this defilement is spiritual, deep. It's at the core and no external regulations can make it better or worse. And oh, by the way, this is where the parenthetical statement comes in. Oh, by the way, gospel writer Mark, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, stuck a significant historical banner in this moment, in saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean. Wow. I believe it's difficult to overstate the significance of this statement, of that moment. Interestingly, Mark is the only gospel writer that sticks that historical banner in it. This is the ultimate “Wait, what moment, what just happened?” I don't even know that they noticed it when at the moment it's like, “Wait a minute now, something huge has just happened. Did you hear that? Did you hear what he just said? Do you realize the significance of that?” I don't think they did.

That's amazing because Jesus had been leveling the Pharisees and the Scribes for preferring their traditions to the clear law of God, laws of Moses. But now here Jesus is specifically ending the jurisdiction of some clear laws of God given through Moses, specifically claiming that those laws are now obsolete. Wow. Hence this sermon. Now I'm going to just pause here and say, why am I doing this? Why am I preaching this sermon? Well, two reasons. First of all, in everything I want to do, always in preaching, but specifically here in the gospel of Mark, my purpose is to magnify and exalt the person of Jesus Christ. I want you to think great thoughts of Christ. And there is potential for that here, that we would see the majesty and the authority and the person of Christ to be able to do this. He has the right, he has the right to do this. So that we have a sense of the greatness of Christ by this that's going to achieve my purpose. 

But I have a second purpose, and it's, I would say apologetics, the defense of the faith. We are in a regular pattern of defending our faith to unbelievers. We're surrounded by an unbelieving world. In our country, our culture is becoming increasingly biblically illiterate and increasingly hostile to biblical Christianity. On some specific test case and themes, we seem very much out of step with what is going on in our culture such as homosexuality, such as the significance of gender and gender based roles and other sexual mores in general. We are going to become increasingly seen to be weird. Our views are coming from the scripture, and many of our detractors or opponents on these issues understand that and they seek to denigrate the Bible as an outmoded, archaic or mythological book.

Some of the people that have read some of the Bible think they know the Bible well and bring up are these dietary laws. They'll say things like this, “You can't eat pork, you can't eat shrimp, and you can't eat lobster according to the Bible. And we're supposed to listen to that. You don't even live up to that, but we're supposed to listen to you on homosexuality, or on gender, why should we?” I felt this was a good teachable moment for our church to say, let's address it so we at least understand in-house the wisdom of God and putting the 66 books of the Bible together and how beautiful and perfect that wisdom is. And the ending of the dietary laws by Jesus is part of that equation. So we're going to look at it today. 

I'm going to give you four words about the dietary laws, the food laws. Four words I want to develop are: food laws established, originally established, then the food laws powerless, food laws fulfilled and food laws obsolete. That's the movement that I want to give you on the dietary regulations. First, establish. The food laws were established by God. God set them up. God did in fact restrict the diet of the Jews.  There are many examples. The first mention I think though I could find in the Bible of dietary restrictions is in Leviticus 10. It says in verse 10, 11, you must distinguish between the holy and the common, between the unclean and the clean. You must teach the Israelites all the decrees the Lord has given them through Moses. Then the very next chapter, Leviticus 11 lays out the whole thing, the dietary laws. Leviticus 11: 1-8, “Lord said to Moses and Aaron say to the Israelites of all the animals that live on land, these are the ones you may eat. You may eat any animal that has a split hoof completely divided and that chews the cud. There are some that only chew the cud or only have a split hoof, but you must not eat them. The camel, though it chews the cud, does not have a split hoof. It is ceremonially unclean for you. The coney, though it chews the cud, does not have a split hoof. It is unclean for you.  The rabbit, though it chews the cud, does not have a split hoof. It is unclean for you. And the pig, though it has a split hoof completely divided, it does not chew the cud. It is unclean for you. You must not eat their meat or touch their carcasses. They are unclean for you.” In addition, the chapter excludes shellfish, as I mentioned. Leviticus 11:9-10, “These you may eat of all that are in the waters. Everything in the waters that has fins and scales, whether in the seas or the rivers you may eat, but anything in the seas or the rivers that has not fins and scales of the swarming creatures in the waters and of the living creatures that are in the waters, it is detestable to you.” So that whole chapter, Leviticus 11, lays out what is holy kosher foods. You probably heard that word “kosher". It means from the Hebrew word for “clean or pure,” these are the clean foods. Leviticus 11:47, “You must distinguish between the unclean and the clean, between living creatures that may be eaten and those that may not.”

The reason given for this distinction was this, to set the Jewish nation apart as holy unto the Lord. That was God's reason for doing it. Leviticus 20: 25-26, “You must therefore make a distinction between clean and unclean animals and between unclean and clean birds, do not defile yourselves by any animal or bird or anything that moves along the ground those which I have set apart as unclean for you. You are to be holy to me because I the Lord am holy, and I've set you apart from the nations to be my own.” I think that's the point, to set the Jews apart from all the nations under God to be his own possession. This is part of a larger set of laws that theologians commonly call the “ceremonial laws". Ceremonial laws are laws that govern the religious life and the social life of the Jews and marked them as a holy, and in the King James version, “peculiar people", I love that word. “You are a peculiar people under me.” The Jews were to be a peculiar people. Exodus 19:5-6, this is KJV.  “Now, therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure under me above all people, for all the earth is mine and ye shall be unto me, a kingdom of priests and an holy nation. These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel.” or again in Deuteronomy 14: 2, “You're a people holy to the Lord your God. Out of all the peoples on the face of the earth, the Lord has chosen you to be his treasure possession.” So that was his reasoning that the Jews would be set apart as a treasure for God. Central to the ceremonial laws, central to it was the animal sacrificial system, including all of the rules for the priests and the Levites.

The law also included circumcision for all boy babies born in Israel, On the eighth day they were to be circumcised and that definitely marked the Jews apart, separate from the Gentile nation, circumcised and uncircumcised people. It was a huge topic of debate for the early church. By these ceremonial laws, the Jews were set apart as sacred, as a sacred people and a barrier. A dividing wall was set up between them and the Gentiles, these ceremonial laws set up that barrier. The food laws were established by God. 

Secondly, though, we want to note the food laws were powerless spiritually. They had no saving power. The book of Hebrews especially makes this plain, but it's not just in the book of Hebrews, the New Testament also makes it plain.  Jesus has said plainly here in our text, nothing that we eat can defile the heart. Look again at our text, Mark 7: 18- 19, “Nothing that enters a man from the outside can make him unclean, for it does not go into his heart, but into his stomach and then out of his body. And saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean.” Paul said the same thing about food. First Corinthians  8:8, “Food does not bring us near to God. We are no worse if we do not eat and no better if we do.” So food doesn't do anything spiritually for you.

Hebrews says that the Jewish ceremonial laws in general, including circumcision and animal sacrifice and food laws were symbolic and powerless. Hebrews 9:9-10 says the gifts and sacrifices being offered, were not able to clear the conscience of the worshiper. They have no power to cleanse your conscience. Feel guilty, this won't solve it. “They are only,” says Hebrews 9:10, “a matter of food and drink and various ceremonial washings, external regulations applying until the time of the new order, until the new covenant comes in.” And then in the next chapter, Hebrews 10:4, “It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sin.” I'm saying none of these ceremonial laws could take away your sin. They're powerless to do that. Paul says the same thing in Colossians though the context is slightly different there, and we'll circle back to Colossians too, I just want to mention it.

The regulations do not handle, do not taste, do not touch, were all destined to perish with use because they're based on human commands and teaching. Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining central indulgence. They have no power to clean up your soul. Strict observance of dietary laws is powerless to restrain lust and it is powerless to cleanse the conscience from guilt, from sin. In fact, the whole law in general was declared powerless to save. Romans 8:3, “What the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own son in the likeness of the flesh to be a sin offering.” So the law couldn't save you from sin. The law had no power to do that. That's why God sent his son, Romans 8:3, and then again in Galatians 2:16, “A person is not justified by works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ.” So, because by works of the law, no one will be justified. So they're powerless to save you. So, that's the second point.  

Third point, the food laws have been fulfilled. They're fulfilled. God's purpose in them has been met now. Why did God institute these laws to begin with? We've addressed that, to mark the Jews as a sacred or separate holy people. Why did He want to do that? There are a number of reasons, but the main reason I think, was to give the Messiah, the Christ, the Savior of the world, an address among all the peoples and tribes and languages and nations on earth, that we know where to look to find the savior of the world. For Jesus himself said to the Samaritan woman, “salvation is from the Jews.” Who are they? Oh, they're that peculiar people marked out by all of these ceremonies. They're a people apart. They don't live like us, Gentiles would notice. They're just a unique apart people. Therefore, when Jesus comes as a son of Abraham, as a son of David born in the midst of that, He has a locating address. Those ceremonial laws located him in history and among the nations of the earth. Once He was born of a woman, born under the law to fulfill the law, the ceremonial laws didn't need to be anymore, they'd been fulfilled, their purpose was met. That's what it says in Galatians 3:19.

What then was the purpose of the law? It was added because of transgressions until the seed to whom the promise referred had come. Jesus said beautifully in Matthew 5:17, “Do not think that I came to abolish the law of the prophets, I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.” He fulfills all of that.

 Now the fourth point is food laws are now obsolete. They're obsolete. That's what our text says in saying this, “Jesus declared all foods clean.” They're obsolete. What that means is that all foods are ceremonially clean for us. He made this plain to Peter in Acts: 10. You remember this whole story where the gospel's spreading out and it's moving out in the book of Acts from Jew only to Jew plus Gentile. That's the big movement in the book of Acts. It's starting in Jerusalem, going through Judea and to Samaria and then to the ends of the earth. By the end of the Book of Acts, it's in Rome, the gospel spread, and it's moving out.  God shows Peter as an apostle, the apostle to the Jews he's called, whereas Paul is the apostle to the Gentiles. But Peter, the apostle of the Jews, was given the privilege of bringing the gospel to a Gentile named Cornelius and to his family and to his friends. You remember that whole story in Acts: 10 where God gives Cornelius a vision and he sends some messengers to go get Peter and Peter's going to preach the gospel to him. Meanwhile, He gets Peter ready. The way He gets Peter ready is, Peter is hungry and wanted lunch. He is going to have a prayer time while lunch is being prepared. He goes up on the roof and has a vision, Acts: 10, Peter became hungry, wanted something to eat, and while the meal is being prepared, he saw heaven open in something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners. It contained all kinds of four footed animals, as well as reptiles of the earth and birds of the air. Anyway, a voice told him, “Get up Peter, kill and eat.”  “Never, Lord,” Peter said. Now that's Peter in a nutshell right there. “Never, Lord,” can I just say something? You should never say never to the Lord. But that's Peter in a nutshell, he did it four times. I'm not going to tell you now , but ask me later the four times he said never to Jesus or to the Lord. That's who Peter was. He's like, “I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.” Then the voice came from heaven a second time,  “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.” Now that's a huge moment in redemptive history. The whole thing happened twice, so he had to get this message.

Then he went, this Orthodox law abiding Jew, to a Gentile home,  and preached the gospel. They believe the Holy Spirit poured out on Cornelius and his household as they all believed the gospel, and they received the gift of the Holy Spirit. Then undoubtedly, and in Acts 11, it's pretty clear, they sat down and had a meal together. They ate together. Paul makes this plain as well in Romans 14: 14, “As one who is in the Lord Jesus, I am fully convinced that no food is unclean in itself.” No food has a spiritual virus on it, no such thing.

Paul specifically warns all legalists that seek to impose new dietary regulations, because there's always Christian legalists who are going to come in and come up with food laws, that they're making up on their own. God didn't tell them to do it, but they're going to make up a strict religion that has to do with eating. So in First Timothy 4: 3-5, these legalists forbid people to marry and they order them to abstain from certain foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For everything God created is good and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving. So we Christians can eat any food we want, anytime we want. There is no spiritual contagion on any food. Those dietary laws are obsolete. They're done. Those are the four words I wanted to give you about the food laws. 

But now I want to just stop and be in awe at the supremacy of Jesus Christ. Let's just stand in awe at the supremacy of Christ to be able to do this. This is Jesus' amazing authority. Over and over in Mark's Gospel, we see Jesus's authority celebrated, his authority celebrated. In Mark 1, the authority of his teaching, just the way he would teach, Mark 1: 22, “The people were amazed at his teaching because he taught them as one who had authority and not as the teachers of the law.” In that same chapter, his authority over demons. He would just speak a word and they'd obey him.  People were amazed, asking, “What is this? A new teaching?”  With authority He even gives orders to evil spirits and they obey him. 

Then in the next chapter, Jesus's authority to forgive sins, it's linked to his authority to heal, “that you may know that the son of man has power on earth to forgive sins.” He said to the paralyzed man, “I tell you, get up and walk.” And he did. Later in that same chapter, Mark 2: 28, Jesus said, “The son of man is Lord of the Sabbath.” Now that's incredible. In other words, “if you have any questions about what you may or may not do on the Sabbath, come and ask me, I'll tell you. I decide. I decide what is right and wrong on the Sabbath,” authority. He's Lord of the Sabbath. Afterwards, Jesus stilled the storm, He just spoke and said, “peace be still”, and in an instant the wind and the waves were quieted. The wind and the waves were silenced and they said to each other, “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him.”  Jesus is Lord of all. And later in Mark's Gospel, when Jesus will cleanse the temple, He will call that holy place, “my house.” “My house will be called a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of robbers.” After his resurrection, He'll make this sweeping statement, “All authority, in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” That's who Jesus is. In this declaration that all foods are clean, Jesus is announcing his intention to fulfill all the mosaic ceremonial laws and bring that era to an end. The old covenant era is over. It's ended. Those laws coming down from on high, coming down from almighty God through Moses, the servant of God, those ceremonial laws are fulfilled and obsolete now, because Jesus said so, and He's the only one that can do it.

Now, of all of this authority that I've been celebrating here, the greatest, the most significant for you personally and for me is his authority to forgive your sins, his authority to declare you clean. You should celebrate that on Thursday, this Thanksgiving. I say you should celebrate it every day, that Jesus can look at a filthy, nasty sinner like you and me who have a corrupt dark heart. You look at that list in verse 21- 23, “Out of men's hearts come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance, folly.” This polluted heart, and if you're honest, you look at those words and you know that you still struggle with those. They're still in me. But Jesus, because of the greatness of his authority and the greatness of our salvation in Christ has the power to look at you, and if you believe in him and you trust in him, He can declare you clean of all your sins. He has that kind of power.

Remember how God said to Peter, do not call anything impure that God has made clean. I want to think about Romans 8, “Who shall bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies.” Who is he that condemns? Satan can bring all the accusations. I could hear him saying that to Satan, “Who are you to call someone unclean that I have made clean?” He has that kind of power to declare you clean, and He does this by the message of the gospel. He has that power. It’s in that whole circumcision controversy in Acts 15 where they have to figure out whether the Gentile converts have to obey the ceremonial laws or not, including circumcision. It wasn't just circumcision, it was a doorway into a whole lifestyle of legalism. It was a yoke that neither we or our fathers have been able to bear, Peter says. But Peter said this, in Acts 15: 7-9, “Brothers, you know that some time ago God made a choice among you that the Gentiles might hear from my lips the message of the gospel and believe. God who knows the heart showed that He accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them just so He did to us. He made no distinction between us and them. Listen now, for He purified their hearts by faith.” How beautiful is that? In an instant, by faith in the gospel, they were made pure. That's justification, that's salvation, instant salvation through faith in Christ, God declaring you clean forever has that kind of power.

Titus 3:5-6 speaks of that washing, “God saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit whom he poured out on his generously through Jesus Christ, our savior.” He has the power to make you clean actually, so you live a clean life, a cleaner and cleaner life. We know that we'll never be perfectly clean in this world while we live, but He has the power to transform us by the renewing of our minds, to transform us. That transformation of the heart is predicted in that beautiful passage in Ezekiel 36:25-27, “I will sprinkle clean water on you and you will be clean. I will cleanse you from all impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you. And I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I'll put my spirit in you and I will move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.”What laws? The moral laws, the permanent laws which are summarized by Jesus beautifully in this, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.” He will move you by his spirit to fulfill those permanent laws which will still be operative in heaven forever, they're permanent and beautiful. Jesus has the power to do that. 

Jesus also frees us from enslavement to sin itself, hand washing the rituals, the traditions that didn't have any power to set you free from wickedness. But Jesus does.  Jesus said in John 8, “I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. So if the son sets you free, you'll be free indeed.” Jesus has the power to make you free from pollution, free from wickedness, free from sin, so you don't sin anymore. Someday you won't. I'm looking forward to that day. No more sin ever for all eternity we’ll be done with it. In the meantime, we can be increasingly living lives of freedom from corruption and lust and wickedness. Jesus has the power to do that. As Roman 6: 18 says ,”You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.” It's not religious rules and regulations and strict dietary laws that set us free from sins defilement, it's faith in Christ. Jesus has the power to set you free from religious legalism. Let's never become a legalistic cult.  Many religions in the world have strict dietary laws. They're part of religion. I think it's because most normal non-religious people, it's said of them, “their God is their stomach.” They live for appetites and they glut themselves on things. So religious people don't and then they become strict about those things. So there's all manners of that kind of strictness in various types of man-made religions. Hindus, for example, are very strict about what they will eat and will not eat. Obviously the eating of all beef is forbidden because of the cow is sacred, but many go beyond it into the principle of non-violence. They're just vegetarians, they won't eat any meat. Hindus and  Buddhist follow similar patterns. Muslims follow essentially the kosher laws of the Old Testament. They don't eat pork and they have a whole month, Ramadan, devoted to fasting in which they will not eat during the daylight hours.  Jews, of course, observant Jews, will only eat kosher foods and there are rabbis that determine what's kosher and what's not. Some Roman Catholics still fast during lent, they won't eat meat on Fridays. I was in a bind growing up as a Catholic because I hated fish, so I was a “grilled cheese” guy on Fridays. That was my go-to. So it was a problem for me. But there's still these dietary laws that many cults follow. The Mormons have dietary laws that they follow. Seventh Day Adventists have them.

As we already said in Colossians 2, Paul addresses Christian legalism there. I think that's what he is addressing more than mosaic legalism or laws of Moses. He says the regulations do not handle, do not taste, do not touch, are destined to perish with use because they're based on human commands and teachings. God didn't tell them to say it, they made it up. Such regulations have an appearance of wisdom with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, that's asceticism, but they lack any value in restraining central indulgence. So strictness in eating is hard to achieve and therefore people can feel spiritually proud of it. It's part of their religion. We Christians are free from all that, it’s not what we do.

Now, I feel like I need to like make a public service announcement now. That doesn't mean that everything we eat is good for our physical health. That's a different matter. I'm talking about spiritual defilement. Some foods can make us fat or have heart trouble. If we are good stewards of the body, we'll be careful of not only what foods we eat, but how much we eat like on Thanksgiving, next Thursday. You need to be a good steward of your body, be careful what you chew and swallow. That's a different matter. But here I'm talking about spiritual defilement. Isn't it beautiful to consider that Jesus will someday complete our perfection? All foods are destined to perish with use, Paul says. First Corinthians 6:13, “Food for the stomach, and the stomach for food, but God will destroy them both.”

Whatever you can chew and swallow, all of it's temporary. It's not what life is about. No matter what we eat, at some point we're going to die and our bodies will be destroyed in the grave. But Christ will raise us up in glorious resurrection bodies, and those bodies will never perish, spoil, or fade. Described in Philippians 3: 21, “Jesus by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.” In heaven we will eat whatever they serve and will enjoy it.

Let's close in prayer. Father, we thank you for the time we've had to study this half a verse. We thank you for the incredible power of the word of God. We thank you for its depth and its richness. Help us to not ever be ashamed of your word. Help us to not wilt when people make mocking comments about it. Help us to be prepared now if they bring up the dietary laws that we know what to say, but bigger, bigger, bigger than all of that, help us to see the greatness of the saving work that Jesus does for sinners like us who are so defiled naturally and who could not save ourselves. But Jesus does have that power to declare us clean and then to make us so, in Jesus name. Amen.

Jesus reaffirms His majesty and declares all foods clean as a sign that He has the power to cleanse us of sin.

The post Jesus Declared All Foods Clean (Mark Sermon 32) appeared first on Two Journeys.

In this episode, Paul goes to Jerusalem, compelled by the Holy Spirit, despite knowing that he would suffer greatly.

The post Acts Podcast 41: To Jerusalem! Part 1 appeared first on Two Journeys.

Pastor Andy Davis preached an expository sermon on Mark 7:14-23 on the issue of human heart defilement and that only through faith in Christ it can be healed.

This is truly a sobering passage. For in it, the great physician of our souls has summoned us individually into his office. Jesus said it's not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.  “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners do repentance.” We are sick with sin and the great physician has called us into his office. You think about going to a well-known doctor, a specialist, and as you come in, often the specialist's credentials are up on the wall, their academic credentials, maybe some other credentialing up there.

We've walked through six chapters of Jesus' credentialing. Six chapters of miracles that only God in the flesh could do. Driving out demons with a word effortlessly. Healing a paralyzed man with a word, proving his power to forgive sins. The ability to still a storm with a word, saying “Peace be still”, and instantly, the wind and the waves are quiet. Healing a woman who had a bleeding problem for 12 years. Raising a 12-year-old girl from the dead. Walking on water. Feeding 5,000 plus women and children. That's who has summoned us into his office and is sitting us down now to tell us what's going on with us.

He sits us down in this text with a grave look on his face and He has the full results of his examination. This is pure internal medicine. He's probing our insides, and we ask him, "Is it serious doctor?" He answers, "It's deadly serious. As a matter of fact, it's fatal, eternally fatal, if it's not treated. This disease has permeated every system within you and it is killing you every day and it will kill you forever if I do not cure it, and I'm the only one who can. But here's the good news, the cure is 100% effective, for as it turns out, I myself am perfectly free from all of these diseases. They have never characterized me, none of them, and they never will. For my heart is perfectly pure and I alone can give you my health. I can impede it to you, I can give it to you directly in an instant. Then along with that, I can clean up all of the filth and manifestations of your internal corruptions that ever has been or ever will be. I can cover up all of that at great cost, which I will pay myself. And then finally, I can give you my own nature, my own perfect heart, and with that heart, you will live forever."

Okay, that sounds very serious. But the ordinary human response is to minimize the disease of sin as though it's somehow something external, some trivial thing that has attached itself to us externally from which we can relatively easily be cleansed. When we come to this passage, we're staring into the very heart of darkness, for our world as defiled by the river of evil that Jesus describes here that flows from our corrupted hearts and it characterizes every single person on planet earth, all eight billion that populate this amazing planet. When most people are asked, "Are you basically a good person?" They will inevitably answer, "I am. I consider myself basically a good person." Even when people who have committed heinous crimes are arraigned in court, there's usually some mitigating circumstances that are brought in to explain why something external to that person did the things that they did, some abuse or poverty or other circumstances. They're really not responsible.

The Bible addresses this very directly and differently. Indeed, this passage in Mark 7, in harmony with the teachings of all of scripture, makes it plain that true evil flows from within out, starts from inside and goes out, not the other way around. It's not the externals. We are not basically good, pure beings that just somehow need to walk through this externally defiling world. If we could just keep ourselves clean from it in a bubble, we would be fine, and if we occasionally bump into something that defiles us, the cleansing from that is relatively easy. That is not the case. We are deeply stained within. Evil bubbles up from the polluted well of our hearts and it defiles everything from the inside out.

Now, lest we think this is the final word of the human heart, I've already given you hope, but I want to speak to it again. We need to understand God's original purpose in creation and then the significance of the fall that came after that and God's purpose in redemption.  God's original creation of the human race, our first parents, Adam and Eve, were created in the image of God, perfectly in His image. At the core of their being was what the Bible calls their “heart”. I don't mean the muscle that pumps blood through you, but the Bible just used that language. The heart, the core of your being, the core of your soul. Given to the heart is the ability to think, to reason, to comprehend, to study, to evaluate, also to love, to be attracted to, to display affections, to be delighted in things, to marvel at them, to choose, to make choices. The heart does all of these things, to plan, to accomplish those plans. That's what the heart does.

All of this was in the original equipment that God gave to Adam and Eve, part of His original design, and it was good, it was very good. The crowning achievement of almighty God, man, male and female, in His image. Two pure hearts, two innocent hearts, Adam's heart and Eve's heart, perfect in every respect, able to know God, able to love God, able to serve God. But sin entered into the hearts of our first parents from outside them through a deeply mysterious corruption that no theologian can ever     explain — why there ever was darkness or evil in God's good universe. But it came in and by their disobedience, they were defiled and corrupted deeply. In the wisdom of God, the entire human race, we are told, theologically, the entire human race fell into sin in Adam.

One of the great mysteries of theology is this doctrine of original sin. But not only did we sin in Adam, but we received a corrupted nature in Adam. At the core of that corrupted nature is the evil human heart that Jesus exposes in today's passage, and that corrupt human heart is universal. Every human being alive today has the same deep defilement, as we shall see. But thanks be to God, He's not left us without a remedy. The good news of the gospel is of a comprehensive salvation from sin in all respects. God has the power to transform our evil thoughts, our evil hearts, and make them pure and perfect in conformity to Christ. Through faith in Christ, our sick hearts will finally be healed, completely healed, totally conformed to Christ, and we will spend eternity loving what Christ loves, hating what Christ hates, thinking what Christ thinks about everything, feeling what Christ feels, choosing what Christ chooses, rejecting what Christ rejects. We're going to spend eternity with a healthy heart. Praise God for that. Through simple faith in Christ, that is where we're heading. But before we get there, we need to hear this devastating truth about our hearts. We need to understand that the evil we do is not some accident, some minor flaw, some aberration, some insignificant trifle in our basically good nature. Know the evil we do truly, truly flows from our core, the core of our being.

The context of this is the Pharisees’ charge of Jesus concerning ritual uncleanness. We talked about this last week. The scribes and Pharisees came to Jesus and they attacked him through his disciples as they stood there watching like a bunch of spiritual police or vultures or whatever, watching them eating, and then noting that they didn't do the ceremonial hand washing that was part of the traditional religion. This tradition did not come from scripture so Jesus deals with it. He addresses them. He addresses their traditionalism, putting their traditions above the word of God, their hypocrisy, presenting themselves as being pure and sinless when they are actually deeply corrupted within. Their legalism, thinking that they could be made right before God by their obedience to the laws of God and that they actually had been doing this. And their fake, false, human, manmade worship. “People honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain. Teachings are just rules taught by men." He deals with all that and exposes their religion as corrupt.

The issue of worship then is the heart. “These people automated their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” True worship comes from the heart, genuinely loving God with all of your heart, expressing that love in the holy ways that are prescribed by scripture. That is true worship. But these men, they're hypocrites, they're whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside and inside, full of dead men's bones and everything unclean [Matthew 23]. This is the description of what that corruption is in this chapter. That's what we're going to address today, the heart as a source of all human uncleanness in the sight of God.

So Jesus proclaims the truth, all defilement comes from the heart. Look at verses 14 and 15. “Again, Jesus called the crowd to him and said, ‘Listen to me, everyone and understand this. Nothing outside a man can make him unclean by going into him. Rather, it is what comes out of a man that makes him unclean.’" Jesus summons the crowd. Last week it was just Jesus and his disciples eating and the Scribes and Pharisees standing there watching. Jesus ups the ante and says, "I want everyone to hear this." He summons the crowd. Who are the crowd? They're the ones that are nearby, never far away from Jesus, probably wanting healing. They're ready at any moment. He's always got a huge crowd. He says, "I want you all to hear this." He summons them. And He wants to deal with this issue of spiritual healing.

Again in Luke 5: 31- 32, “ It is not the healthy who need a doctor but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.” It's a powerful verse for me in understanding the therapeutic or healing nature of our salvation. We are sick with sin, Jesus is the physician. He has the power to heal us, and He does it through repentance. Everyone on earth needs to hear what Jesus stands to proclaim here. He summons everyone to listen. We need to know how sick our true nature is, how evil our hearts are naturally apart from Christ's healing work. Christ's healing work begins when sinners see that true condition, acknowledge that it's true. They're not trying to lie about it anymore. They say it's true. “What you say here in this passage is true of me. And I'm crying out to you, Jesus, heal me, heal me. Save me from this. Save me from myself.” And He will. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved, healed.

If you think sin is something you occasionally do, like bumping into something dirty and then you just need to go wash from it quickly, this passage says that's not the case. Some external hand washing thing has got nothing to do with it. There's nothing from the outside that can defile you. But if you realize that it flows from inside you, it's not like a piece of lint you flick from your sweater or some gum you stepped in that you scrape off the sole of your shoe, it's coming from inside you, it's who you really are apart from the grace of God, then you can come to the physician of your soul, Jesus, who is the only one that can heal it. Look at verse 15, this is Jesus's statement. “Nothing outside a man can make him unclean by going into him. Rather, it is what comes out of a man that makes him unclean.”

That would've been shocking to the Jewish nation. Their basic approach is you have the bad people, the notorious tax collectors and sinners, they call them sinners, meaning everyone else is not a sinner. Those are the serious ones. If you're not in that category, you're fine. If you're a Jewish person, you're fine. You're in the chosen nation and you are generally pure. You're fine as long as you don't do any of these big things, and you just need to make it through the world like you're walking through a minefield without getting defiled. If you could just do that, and you do that just by keeping the commandments, and that's not that hard to do. You just need to keep them from childhood.

Remember the rich young ruler who comes to Jesus and says, "Good teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?" He says, "Why do you ask me about what is good? No one is good except God alone." And then He gives him the commandments, do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, do not defraud, honor your father and mother. "Teacher," he said, "All those I have kept since I was a boy." “Whoa. Really? I'm going to summon your parents and ask how that whole honor your father and mother thing went.” But that's what they thought. It's like, I've done this. That was the norm. Therefore, defilement was something that happened on the outside. It was a trivial matter and just some ritual cleansing, some hand washing, would be symbolic of how easy it is to get clean from that.

You've got all this idea of defilement and you want all of the defiled people staying away from you, the lepers. They just need to call out “Unclean, unclean”, so we don't bump into them. The woman with the bleeding problem, she just needs to stay away so that we don't get defiled by her corruption. We just need to move through. But Jesus is saying, "Look, nothing from the outside can make you unclean in God's sight. Rather, it's what comes from inside you that makes you unclean."

Now, here, we're bumping into the Levitical holiness code. The Jews had a whole bunch of clean and unclean designations. It started with food itself. There were foods that they considered clean, and there were foods that they considered unclean. These were written right into the law of Moses. They didn't make it up, it’s something God said. This is such a huge issue that I've decided to deal with it next week in a whole sermon on verse 19 and saying that Jesus declared all foods clean.

But the distinction between clean and unclean went far beyond food. As I said, it has to do with skin diseases and whole rules about people with leprosy and things like that. If you touch the dead body of an animal, for example, you were unclean until evening, you had to wash yourself with water. If you went into a house where there was a leper or there was mold on the wall, you were unclean until evening, you had to wash yourself. This kind of thing. If you had a bodily discharge, you had to wash yourself, you’re unclean until evening. These are the Levitical holiness codes, the cleanliness codes. They have all these rules. Women that give birth were unclean for one to two weeks.

This whole idea of ceremonial cleanness and uncleanness is established in the law of Moses. Jesus wasn't denying that. It was to give a picture of the pervasiveness of defilement from sin and the call of the Jewish nation from God to be a holy people. Why did God do this? If what Jesus is saying is true, nothing outside can make you unclean, including bumping into a leper or having some blood touch your hands, why do they even do that? I think it was like God's picture book, like picture books you have for little kids, and you're looking at pictures and it's just a simple summary of what's on the page. These were external pictures getting ready for the true salvation that's coming, and Jesus, the author of the Hebrews, tells us they were. [Hebrews 9-10] All of these laws are only a matter of food and drink and various ceremonial washings, external regulations applying until the time of the New Order. That is until the time of the real salvation that's coming, the New Covenant, through the blood of Jesus. That's what the author's saying. God set them up as a picture, but they didn't bring actual cleansing from sin. They were just a picture.

Again, Colossians 2:17, “These are a shadow of the things that were to come.” The reality is in Christ. But even in the Old Covenant, this does not mean God was saying back then that sin was external. It's very clear again and again that God has always looked at the heart. First Samuel 16:7, “Man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart.” Psalm 24:3-4, “ Who may ascend the hill of the Lord? Who may stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart.” Psalm 51:5-6,  “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me. Surely you desire truth in the inner parts.”Later in that same psalm, verse 10, “Create in me a pure heart, oh God.” In Jeremiah 4:14, God cries out through His prophet, "Oh Jerusalem, wash the evil from your heart and be saved." Do you hear that? Wash the evil from your heart and be saved. How long will you harbor wicked thoughts?

It is clear that all along in every era of redemptive history, God has searched our minds and our hearts. It's never been a matter of external washings. He wants us to have a clean and pure heart in order to be in His presence. But friends, that the one thing we do not have. The fundamental problem of the human heart was established in the Old Testament in many places, but probably no more famously than in Jeremiah 17, nine and 10 where the prophet says, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? I, the Lord, search the heart and examine the mind to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve.”

Jesus is not teaching some unheard of doctrine here, some new idea. Not at all. God has always searched the heart and mind of man. But the Lord made it plain in Jeremiah 17 what He found. The heart of man is deceitful above all things, meaning it's a corrupt, lying heart. Deceptive. Not loving the truth, and He says it's beyond cure. It's desperately sick, meaning we can't cure ourselves. We don't have the ability to do this. We can't change our core nature. Jesus is the physician of the soul. It's not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. “I didn't come to call a bunch of righteous people to admire their own purity. That's not why I came into the world. I came because there was no other way for a race of corrupt, heartsick people like us to cure ourselves.” We couldn't do it. There was no other way. “I didn't come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.” Repentance starts with us agreeing that what Jesus says in Mark 7 and what other texts say similarly is true of us. It's who I am. That's where repentance unto salvation starts.  Jeremiah 17:9 says, we do not understand the heart. It's beyond understanding. We don't understand why we do what we do. Is that not true? Sin is essentially irrational, it’s insane, it’s craziness, no explanation. Jesus is saying these things and it must have fallen like a bombshell on these people. But there was all kinds of preparations that they should have listened to. Jesus was saying their righteousness was a sham. All the hand washing in the world could never transform their wicked hearts. 

Now Jesus explains the truth. A river of evils flows from the heart. Look at verse 17, “After he'd left the crowd and entered the house, the disciples asked him about this parable.” The disciples are deeply troubled here. They didn't understand what He was saying. They didn't understand the full ramification. They thought, maybe it's another one of those parables like some kind of a rough play on words. Explain the parable to us.

In Matthew's Gospel, the disciples are very concerned about what the Pharisees are saying. In Matthew 15 they say, "Do you know the Pharisees were very offended at what you said?" So in Matthew 15: 13-14 Jesus has to address them. He says, "Every plant that my heavenly father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots. Leave them. They are blind guides. If a blind leads a blind, they're both going to fall into the pit. So you should stop worrying what those false teachers are teaching. Forget about them. God's going to deal with them. Like in the parable of the wheat and the weeds, He's going to weed them out. They're sons of the devil. Don't follow them anymore. Don't worry about them.”

So the disciples ask for an explanation. Peter, in Matthew's Gospel, speaks up for them, but they're all saying, "Well, explain the parable to us." I don't think any of them expected the answer they're about to get from Jesus. The NIV has this translation: “Are you so dull?” I love that. It's so blunt. ESV is a little sweeter: “Are you without understanding?”Or Let's sharpen it a bit: “Could you really be this stupid? What's wrong with your minds? Do you not see how clear this should be to you?”  So I want to say, “Yes Lord, I really am this dull. I don't get it. Would you just say it in small words and slowly for me because I get confused sometimes.”

To some degree we’re all a bit slow on the uptake spiritually. We have to have things said to us again and again. Sin clouds the mind. It makes perception hard for us. Here's the good news. When you are done being saved, when you're in heaven, that problem will be gone. You'll get everything immediately and you won't forget anything. You'll have a perfect mind and be able to comprehend. But in the meantime, here we are, so you have to listen to me this morning, and we walk through texts like this.  It's hard for us to understand. So yes, we're this dull, we are without understanding. 

So then Jesus then goes into an explanation of food. Verse 18-19, “Don't you see that nothing that enters a man from the outside can make him unclean, for it doesn't go into his heart, but into his stomach and then out of the body.” In other words, food is just food. You put it in your mouth, you chew it, you swallow it, and then you eliminate it. That physical stuff that you've taken in and that you've chewed and swallowed cannot do anything to your soul. It cannot do anything to what the Bible calls your heart, the core of your being. It doesn't touch you. Nothing that you chew and swallow can make you unclean.

At that moment, Mark gives us an editorial comment that's worthy of an entire sermon next week. In saying this, Jesus has declared all foods clean. I don't know that anybody understood that at that moment, but it was true. So we'll get into that next week. But the true lesson here is the true state of the heart, which has been the home base of this entire sermon. Look now at the wickedness that comes from the heart as Jesus describes it. Verse 23:23, “What comes out of a man is what makes him unclean, for from within, out of men's hearts come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and make a man unclean.”  

This is the source of all the trouble on planet Earth. This is it. It's not the only articulation of it, but it's pretty clear. This is why we're having the troubles we're having. Every sin begins within this corrupted human heart all over the world. The water that flows metaphorically from the wellspring of our hearts is deeply polluted. Proverb 4:23 says, above all, guard your heart for it is the wellspring of life. Too late, friends. It's already polluted. It's already corrupted. I'm not saying the verse doesn't have something to say to us, but the fact is, the damage is done. The well has been polluted. It's defiled already. It's beyond cure. [Jeremiah 17]. Nothing of ourselves can cleanse this internal fountain. Jesus is alluding to the filth that comes out when we eat. The true filth of the human being is not physical, however, but spiritual. It is the river of sins that flows from inside out our corrupt and rebellious hearts.

The first word here is “evil thoughts.” The Greek term is for  the word “dialogue.” But it's the inner reasoning, perception, thinking. The word-based conceptions that are evil. Jesus calls these evil, deeply dark, man's inner musings, ponderings, plans, assessments, fantasies, purposes, intentions, schemes, devices. All the tangle of our thoughts are polluted by evil. The heart loves wicked things and causes the body to act wickedly in accordance with what we love first, and it's not some accident. It's the wicked nature of our true selves. Out of that corrupt thinking flows twelve specific corruptions listed by Jesus; six evil actions and six evil attitudes behind them. All of these defile us, making us unclean spiritually in the sight of a holy God.The twelve listed here is not a comprehensive list. There's others beside. There are many other sin lists in the Bible, but this is pretty thorough. 

He starts with six evil actions. What's interesting is these are all plural. Most translations don't bring the plural over because it's weird. So the ESV singularizes it, NIV singularizes it, the NAS has it in plural. But it is plural. What do I mean? Fornications, thefts, murders. What's the significance of the plurals? We do these again and again and again and again and again, and we didn't know we did that many of them. We didn't know that our sins were as numerous as the hairs of our head and worse. We underestimated. We forget the record, how many times we've done these things. But Jesus doesn't forget. Everything's recorded. Plural.

He starts with fornications, from the Greek word “porneia”, from which we get pornography. It’s a general term in the Bible for all sexual sin, it is the king of all corruptions. A staggering percentage of all internet queries are sexual in nature. All sexual sin flows from inside. This of course includes fornication in the standard sense of sex between unmarried persons. It is amazing and tragic how the statistics in evangelical churches like ours aren't much different than the world on fornication. God has never changed His standard. Marital relations is for marriage. Sex is for marriage. It's not for unmarried persons. And it's wickedness. But this is a more general term for all sexual immorality.

Then thefts; taking something that belongs to someone else; a possession that's theirs and you take it. Murders: the wicked act of taking another human life. Now, for me, as I read this list, I understand that God is looking beyond whether you actually murdered somebody to whether you were angry enough to murder them in your heart, but you just restrained for other reasons. Or you had a heart of adultery but you never saw it through, but you committed adultery in your heart. Jesus talks about this as well. So there's no excusing us for any of these things. The nature's in our heart. Adulteries:  sex between people who are married but not to each other, violating the marriage covenant. Then the deeds of covenanting: the desires and behaviors that come from greed.

These would've all been clear to any reader of the Ten Commandments. They're very clearly forbidden in the Ten Commandments. Then there's this word malice, which is wickedness, a general catch-all term for all manner of evil actions, but specifically dark feelings of hatred toward other people. So those six actions. 

Then you've got six evil attitudes that underline these evil deeds. The first six were plural, now these are all singular. Deceit: craftiness, lying, misrepresentation, or treachery. Scripture says all people are liars. Lewdness: the lust that comes from having a dirty mind, just a lewd mind, a sexually corrupt mind. Then envy, the greed that underlines the materialistic life, the endless drive for money and possessions, and then attitudes of jealousy and coveting toward other people's success.

Then there's slander, which is using your mouth to assassinate somebody else's character in somebody else's hearing. You're just laying them low through your harsh reflecting of their sins, slander. Then there's pride. Theologians say the root of many of our sins, not all of them, but many of them comes from pride. That feeling of superiority, feeling of arrogance, of dominance, pushing yourself forward. My agenda is what matters the most. Just self worship that flows out. Then there's foolishness, just stupid stuff that's just a waste of time. Frivolous language and actions and foolish things. All of these things are describing the human heart. Then verse 23, the final statement: all these evils come from inside and this is what makes a person unclean.  So that's the diagnosis. That's what the physician of the soul is saying about all of us. 

The only solution is heart transformation that Christ alone can give. This is a devastating list. None of us can look at that list and not see ourselves exposed. All genuine Christians have known this about ourselves. This is why we came to Christ to begin with. Maybe some of you have never done that. Maybe you've never come to Christ. You didn't realize how bad this problem was and that this man who's saying these things is the judge of all the earth. In Revelation 1, He's portrayed as having “a head and hair white like wool, as white as snow and wearing a white robe with a golden sash around his chest, and his eyes were like blazing fire and his feet like burnished bronze, and a sharp double edged sword comes out of his mouth.”  It's a terrifying image of Jesus as the judge of all the earth. And He sees right through us. 

But this is the savior.  When John, in Revelation 1 saw Jesus, he fell at his feet as one dead, and then Jesus reached out his right hand and touched him and said, "Do not be afraid." Whereas it says in another place, “I have not come into the world to condemn the world, but to save it.” He could have condemned the world from heaven like Sodom and Gomorrah. Instead, He came into the world to live a sinless life and to die in an atoning death, to shed his blood on the cross, that sinners like us might be forgiven. That's what He's offering, so we have to flee to the great physician. We have to flee to the one who understands our deceitful heart and who can cure it, and we have to repent.

The promise of the New Covenant is that He has the power to create in us a clean heart, oh God. He has that power. He has the power, as Ezekiel 36 says, to give us a new heart. “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you. And I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I'll put my spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.” He has the power to transform our hearts, to make us new. He has the power to cleanse us from all of the river of defilement that's come out from us. Not the hand washing ritual of the Pharisees. But as Titus 3 says, “God saved us not because of righteous things we had done, but because of His mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit whom He poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ, our Savior.” The washing that comes through the blood of Christ and the ministry of the Holy Spirit is sufficient to clean us up. That's the cleansing we need.  

Now, if you read that list, you know we have an ongoing problem. Salvation comes to us in stages, justification, sanctification, glorification. Justification: the moment you trust in Christ, you know that this is true, this is your true heart state, you flee to the cross, you flee to Christ, you receive full forgiveness, past, present, and future, and the perfect health of Jesus's heart imputed to you as though that were yours. That's incredible. Almighty God looks on you as though you are as clean as Jesus, positionally, instantly by faith. That's justification. Now we're all set, right? We don't need to read this list again? You know, if you have been walking with the Lord carefully over these years, you know you need to read this list because this is the problem you're having even still. Roman 7,  “The very thing I hate, I do. And the good things I want to do, I do not do.” That's Roman 7. I have the same problem with this river of evils.

Paul cries out in Roman 7: 24-25, “What a wretched man I am. Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord.” So you have to read this list and say these things are still a threat for me now. “I'm threatened by this. I need your help. Would you please cleanse me and heal me and work this in me?" And that crying out against yourself, that fleshly nature, that internal nature, enables you to go to war against the manifestations of these tendencies, these categories. They put out acts of the flesh. Those are the very things Romans 8:13-14 tells us we are to mortify or kill by the spirit,  “If you by the spirit do put to death the deeds of the flesh, you will live.”

You can't finally kill any of these tendencies so that you know that tendency will never bother you again, you'll never be covetous again, or you'll never lie again, or you'll never be lustful again. That cannot be you. You got to be on guard the rest of your life and you got to be in good churches that'll preach the truth like I'm trying to do to you today and get all the help you can get from brothers and sisters.  You need to be in home fellowship and have people in accountability relationship praying for you and all. You need all the help you can get while we walk through this dangerous world. Praise God for brothers and sisters that want a covenant with a church that'll help them do that. We're going to watch over one another in brotherly love and pray for each other because while we live, we're in danger. But thanks be to God, the final act is glorification. Aren't you looking forward to that? Brothers and sisters, glorification. When in an instant these things will never be true of you again, ever, and you'll be conformed to Christ forever and ever. 

Close with me in prayer.  Father, we thank you for the good news of the gospel. We thank you for the truth that Jesus, as the physician of our souls, tells us here in this text. It is a shameful thing to read these dirty words and know that they do characterize us even still. All the years that we have walked with you, we still struggle with these kinds of corruptions. Thank you for telling us the truth. Thank you that you, Lord Jesus, are sufficient, your bloodshed on the cross, sufficient to forgive us the confession of our sins. If we confess our sins, you are faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all new defilements. You have the power to do that. And you have the power through the spirit to cause us to wage war against the deeds of the flesh and to be successful in weakening them and slaughtering them day by day. And then the good news that someday this warfare will end and we'll be free at last. Lord, give us hope. Fill us with the power of the spirit to fight this battle, to fight the good fight, to finish the race and keep the faith. In Jesus' name. Amen.

Jesus diagnoses the human heart as the source of evil things but offers salvation in His name as the Great Physician.

The post The Great Physician Diagnoses the Human Heart (Mark Sermon 31) appeared first on Two Journeys.

In this second part of episode 40, Andy and Wes discuss further Paul's farewell message to the elders of the Ephesian church.

The post Acts Podcast 40: Paul’s Farewell to The Ephesian Elders: Part 2 appeared first on Two Journeys.

Pastor Andy Davis preached on Mark 7:1-13 exploring the genuine purpose of worship and its three enemies: legalism, traditionalism, and hypocrisy.

Turn in your Bibles this morning as we continue our study in the gospel of Mark. We're in chapter 7 now looking at verses 1-13, exposing vain worship and espousing heart worship. One of the greatest issues of the human soul stands in front of us this morning in this text, and that is of genuine worship. Worship from a pure heart, worship that engulfs your soul, worship that is a fragrant offering to your Creator, your God, the lover of your soul—true heartfelt worship. That's what's in front of us here. It's not difficult to make the case that establishing that worship in human hearts is the entire purpose of scripture, of the gospel, of the work of God, and in the original creation and the work of Christ in redemption, the work of the Holy Spirit and regeneration that we human beings created in the image of God, would genuinely worship God from our hearts for all eternity. That's it. And against this precious thing, are three of its greatest enemies, legalism, traditionalism and hypocrisy. Legalism, the belief that God accepts our worship based on how well we keep a set of rules and regulations. In that case, our focus is on ourself and our own performance. Traditionalism, the belief that true worship of God consists in manmade patterns, crafted by human beings generations ago and handed down unchanged from generation to generation. Keeping that tradition, that's the essence of worship. Then there's hypocrisy, putting on a show, a show for God and others when our hearts are actually far from God. The whole thing is false. It's a lie. Hypocrisy. These are the issues in front of us in Mark 7:1-13. 

Now the setting in Mark's gospel -  Jesus has just fed the 5,000 plus women in children. He's walked on water, and then we get a quick summary at the end of chapter 6 of a healing ministry that's comprehensive and mind boggling. But it's just a summary of perhaps as many as thousands of miracles that were done. Miracles mostly of healings, even of people that just touched the hem of his garment who were instantly healed by his power. Jesus, at this moment, it could be argued is at the pinnacle of his temporary popularity. The crowds are swelling with anticipation. In John 6, after the feeding of the 5,000 some of them want to take Him by force and make Him king.  They don't really understand who He is or what His kingdom is, but they want to do that.

Jesus is a threat to the religious establishment, and a delegation of religious police is sent. Self-appointed investigators, scribes and Pharisees come to observe Jesus and not friendly at all, but to try to find fault with him and shut him down if they can. We see right away in this outline, the legalist charge against Jesus, ceremonial defilement. Look at verses 1-5.  The Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem, gathered around Jesus and saw some of his disciples eating food with hands that were unclean, that is "unwashed!" Mark gives his Gentile audience, probably Romans who didn't understand these things, this explanation. The Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial washing, holding to the tradition of the elders.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, pitchers, kettles”.

So the Pharisees and Scribes ask Jesus, "Why don't your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with unclean hands"? They're making a charge against Jesus by means of his disciples breaking tradition through this ceremonial defilement. Who are these Scribes and Pharisees? These were professional legalists. This is a great escalation of conflict with the Jewish authorities. As I said, a delegation is sent from Jerusalem to check Jesus's rising influence and find fault with him if they can to try and find a way to put a stop to Jesus.

The Pharisees were a religious party, a group of religious leaders, who had maneuvered their way in Jewish society to the top pinnacle of esteem in terms of their spirituality in their religion.  They made the meticulous study of the Law of Moses their top priority and then dispensing rulings and judgements based on that. The Scribes were priests from the temple area whose day-to-day work was that of copying the Law of Moses letter by letter. There weren't printing presses back then, it was all done by hand, and these Scribes were entrusted with the task. But beyond that, they were teachers of the laws that they read and they taught their interpretation of scripture to the people. So Scribes and Pharisees are the religious leaders of the Jewish nation. Both of them are legalists who think that their right standing with God is based on how well they keep the laws of God. They generally thought they kept them just fine.  “All these commands I have kept from my youth.”  They would say something like that. Furthermore, they accepted the trappings of honor in Jewish society, whether at banquets or in the marketplace or other places. They love that kind of thing. They love to be honored and to have the most important seats of the banquets. That's who they were. 

What is the origin of their religious legalism? Where did all that come from? We could start with the exile to Babylon. In the exile, the remnant that was exiled was made aware, very plainly, by the ministry of Ezekiel and Jeremiah that it is because they have violated the laws of God for generations that this exile has come. They have broken God's laws and have gone over into idolatry and wickedness. And for this reason, most of them were killed by sword, famine, and plague. A small remnant was exiled to Babylon.  Daniel, a godly man, is very aware of this and prays in Daniel 9:11, this prayer, "All Israel has transgressed your law and turned away refusing to obey you. Therefore, the curses and sworn judgments written in the Law of Moses, the servant of God, have been poured out on us, because we have sinned against you". Well, they got it. They got the message. At least Daniel did. And godly exiled Jews like him, understood.

When in the course of time under the rule of Cyrus the Great of Persia, a small remnant, 42,000 was allowed to come back and repopulate the Promised Land, Jerusalem. They were committed to the law of God. Even if within a short amount of time there were some of them that intermarried. Ezra and Nehemiah pulled out their hair and were zealous that they would not fall into the same patterns of wickedness that their ancestors had fallen into. Ezra 7:10, it says, "Ezra had devoted himself to the study and observance of the Law of the Lord and to teaching its decrees in laws in Israel". That all sounds good, right? Ezra was a godly man studying God's Word.

But in the course of time, patterns of legalism and traditionalism emerged that were very corrupt based on this initial zeal. Schools of religious lawyers developed who spent their full time debating this or that law, trying to nail down exactly what they're supposed to do in every case in life. Scribes and Pharisees were in that heritage. They arose and studied the law more carefully than anyone else and appointed themselves ethical police over to the daily life actions of others. That's a simple answer to the origin of their legalism.

Let's go broader and deeper. There's a deeper answer to the origin of legalism. It's just in the wicked, sinful heart of man.  We, sinners, want to fix our problems ourselves. We want to save ourselves. Most of us aren't denying there's a problem. Vertically with God, horizontally with others, but we want to solve it. We want to make up our own religion that'll solve it. We want to follow our own rules. We want to be the master of our own fate and the captain of our own souls. Spiritually, we want to save ourselves, and this is true all over the world. Every religion except Christianity is codified self -salvation. Self -salvation, that's what we want to do. Look at Mark 7:7, "They worship me in vain. Their teachings are but rules taught by men". It's a manmade religion. That's the origin of legalism. That's where it's coming from.

For Scribes and Pharisees, their highest value is conformity to legal tradition. By the time of Jesus there are well developed schools of rabbis who spent their full time discussing and teaching minutia of the law. A key issue here is that the law of God itself was deemed too complicated for average ordinary people to understand.  There's clear evidence of this that these elitists considered the common group of people to be an untrained rebel who could not just read and hear God's law, and get it right. So they needed the Scribes and Pharisees to interpret it. They began to give additional insights, rules and regulations that were beyond the scripture. And so it went, rabbi so and so commenting on rabbi such and such who made observations saying this and that and therefore the other. And it was all written down, this heritage of rabbi this and rabbi that and all this kind of thing.

These verbal traditions were erected like a safety fence around the law of God, keeping a safe zone around God's law with the idea being if you keep the tradition of the elders, you're certain to be acceptable to God because we're going beyond what God requires and therefore He must accept you if you just follow our traditions. In the second century AD, the second century after Christ, a Rabbi Yehuda organized the rabbinic teachings that have been passed on into a book called the Mishnah. In time there arose more and more traditions and disputations and statements based on the Mishnah itself, course. Those additional disputations and wranglings over the Mishnah were organized into another book called the Gemara. The Mishnah plus the Gemara together is called the Talmud.  Twelve centuries of Jewish rabbis wrangling over originally the Word of God, but mostly over their own traditions. That's the Talmud and it's the authority for most Jews in the world that are religious. They are Talmudic scholars. Now, do you not see behind all of this an astonishingly disparaging attitude toward the Word of God? 

What we see in Mark 7 in Jesus' accusation against them came true concerning the Talmud. The Talmud came to be put above the Word of God, far above it. The traditions of men totally supplanted the laws of God. Listen to these statements from the Talmud itself. "The sacred scriptures is like water. The Mishnah is like wine, but the Gemara is aromatic wine". That's a clear hierarchy.  The lowest level is the Word of God. What you want to get up is to that beautiful level of the Gemara, or again, "My son give heed to the words of the Scribes rather than to the words of the law". And again, this one, "He who transgresses the words of the Scribes sins more gravely than the transgressors of the words of the law". That's from the Talmud. It's astonishing that the opinions of human beings can take the place of the perfect Word of God. The accusation by the Pharisees and Scribes of Christ is ceremonial defilement. They stood around Jesus and watched him and his disciples eating their meal and they accused him. That’s creepy. They're just standing watching them eat.  Verse 5, "Why don't your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with unclean hands"? Mark, as we said, gives us this detailed backstory about these comprehensive traditions. Let's read again, verse 3-4, “The Pharisees and all the Jews. . .”, see that? Everybody's doing this stuff. The Pharisees have won the day. Everybody's following this.  The Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial washing, holding to the tradition of the elders. When they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash, and they observe many other traditions such as the wash and cups, pitchers, kettles, et cetera.  

This is an elaborate, carefully developed system of ritual washings that covered almost every area of life mandated by the elders in their traditions. Notice clearly their accusation is not that Jesus and his disciples are violating the law of God. They're not even thinking about that because it's not stated anywhere in the Law of Moses. You're not going to find it. There are not these washings laid out in the Law of Moses. This is all human tradition. Now don't misunderstand. This has nothing to do with germs. It's not like if only they had that hand cleanser stuff that kills 99.99% of all the germs. If they had that, we wouldn't have this problem. It has nothing to do with germ theory, which didn't come until Louis Pasteur and all that. That's not what we're dealing with here. Not at all. This is about religion.  If you don't wash like this, you're not acceptable vertically to God. That's their charge.

What's Jesus' charge against the legalists? Now it goes back. Arrogance over God's Word. Let's reverse the order that Jesus takes. Let's not walk through it in the order in the text. Let's go later and then work back. Let's address their arrogance over God's Word and then get to the deeper issue of worship. First, their arrogance concerning God's Word. Verse 7, "Their teachings are but rules taught by men, manmade rules concocted from the imaginations and morals and thoughts of men without the Holy Spirit”.   Verse 9, "And he said to them, you have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions". In other words, you make a regular habit of doing this. You are continually doing this. You're setting aside God's Word to observe your own manmade traditions. This is a habit you have. I believe Jesus is being sarcastic here. The Greek word kalos is, "Well, you're really good at this. You're fine at this. You have developed this skill to a high level. There's a level of sarcasm here you're really good at. You do this well. You're experts at this evil thing of setting aside God's Word to favor your traditions.”

Then Jesus gives a case study, a clear example. Look at verses 10-13, "For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and mother and anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death’. But you say that if a man says to his father or mother, ‘Whatever help you might otherwise have received from me is corban,’ that is a gift devoted to God, then you no longer let him do anything for his father or mother. Thus, you nullify the Word of God by your tradition that you have handed down.”

Then He expands it in verse 13, the very end of the phrase of today's reading, "And you do many things like that". In other words, this is just one case. You do this all the time. This is a serious attack on the Word of God. Notice how Jesus clearly contrasts tradition with God's Word. Matthew's account makes it even sharper. Matthew 15:5, "For God said, honor your father and mother and anyone who curses his father and mother must be put to death". But you say . . ..” I mean, that's about as clear as it gets, “ for God said, but you say.”That's the whole system that we're dealing with here. The whole system of legalism and traditionalism was a serious attack in the Word of God. Legalism is fundamentally adding to and subtracting from the Word of God because you think there's something wrong with it. They added requirements that God did not give and thereby they overturned the requirements that God did give. What is this case study about the practice of corban? It has to do with the habit or the practice of corban, a gift devoted to God.  Sometime before Jesus, generation before, the rabbis decided that if any Jewish man, let's say had a sum of money or a possession or even all of his money or all of his possessions, and he put somewhat of a fence around it and called it corban, he still owns it, it’s still his, but he designates it a gift devoted to God. Then it's off limits for anything else, including using it to help aging parents in their old age, caring for them financially. This concept became a nasty loophole through which people drove huge ox carts.It is nowhere found in scripture, but just something they made up. 

The fundamental issue here when it comes to the Word of God is the sufficiency and the clarity of scripture.  The legalist is adding new laws because he feels God's laws are insufficient to get the job done for a good life on earth. “We need some additional help here. God missed some things and furthermore , it’s not clear. So you need us, the expert teachers, to explain stuff to you. You'll never get it because you're an unwashed rebel. You need us.” It's impugning the clarity of God's Word. Either way, do you not see the breathtaking arrogance towards scripture, toward the Word of God? This is exactly why God condemned this very practice before it ever came. Many times  in Deuteronomy 4:2, "Do not add to what I command to you and do not subtract from it, but keep the commands of the Lord your God, that I give you". That couldn't be clearer. Don't do this thing. Don't add to, don't subtract from.

By the way, what does that imply God saying about his Word? It's perfect. You can't make it better by adding or subtracting. Again, Proverbs 35 and 36, it says, "Every word of God is flawless. Do not add to his words or he will rebuke you as a liar". That couldn't be clearer.  The whole Bible ends with a warning to not add to or take away from anything in the Book of Revelation, and by extension the whole 66 books of the Bible. Don't add to it. Don't take away from it. Christ in this case study perfectly upholds the law of God as it is written. 

The example Christ cites is the fifth command of the 10 commandments. 10 commandments came down from on high, came down from the mouth of God, written by the finger of God when God descended in fire on Mount Sinai, and he gave the 10 commandments to the Jewish nation.  They come in two tables, a vertical table, the first four commandments, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength sums it up vertically. Then you got horizontally. Love your neighbors as yourself. The first of the horizontal table, other people, is honor your father and mother. The concept here is a child born into a family must learn to submit gladly to parental authority. Honoring is something you do in your heart. And out of that heart flow is a pattern of obedience, a pattern of delighted obedience from child to parent that is foundational to all the other horizontal relationships they'll live in the rest of their lives. They've got to learn this from the start. The two commandments specifically to children are honor and obey. Honor your father and mother, treat them with respect in your heart, and then obey [Ephesian 6:4]. That's it. 

Now honoring, it goes far beyond lip service and all that. It's just a state of heart. It's giving esteem a high place in your mind and heart to your parents. Christ upholds the authority of parents over their children, and He even goes so far as to cite the death penalty concerning parents.  He said, "Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death”[ Exodus 21:17]. When new parents bring home a little child, an infant from the hospital, being instruments of God that they will at the right time, understand this commandment and live it out, that's central to parenting. It's not because you're so great, I'm a parent, you're not so great. But it's because they need to understand God is behind this and saying it to them and they must. There's so much disrespect from child to parent and God doesn't coddle it at all. Jesus says it's worthy of death. Thanks be to God that Jesus died on the cross to take away the death penalty for us sinners.This is a serious matter. So Christ is extremely distressed with the Scribes and Pharisees, their arrogant handling of the perfect Word of God.

But let's get to the deeper charge. The deeper charge is hypocrisy in worship. You have to go back in the text for that. Look at verse 6-7, "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 but rules taught by men” [ Isaiah 29:13]. These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Isaiah in his day, exposed a problem among his own countrymen that's still with us today, hypocrisy in worship. Seven centuries before Jesus was born, Isaiah begins his prophecy with an expose on the Jewish hypocrisy and formalism in their religious machinery.  It was running like a machine, talking about the animal sacrificial system and the temple and the cycle of three festivals and daily animal sacrifice. It was a big machine going on in Isaiah's day and in Isaiah 1:11-14, this is what God says about it, "The multitude of your sacrifices, what are they me, says the Lord. I have more than enough of burn offerings of rams and of the fat of fated animals. I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats. When you come to appear before me who has asked this of you, this trampling of my courts. Stop bringing meaningless offerings. Your incense is detestable to me. New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations, I cannot bear your evil assemblies. Your New Moon festivals and your appointed feast my soul hates. They become a burden to me. I'm weary of bearing them”.  And yet they're all commanded in the Law of Moses to be done. What's the problem? Hypocrisy. They don't feel it in their hearts. It's just a machine that's running week after week, year after year, as in Isaiah's day, so in Christ's day with the Scribes and Pharisees and may I say, as in Christ's day, so in our day. We're a very religious country. We drive by so many churches to get to this church. Many of them are filled with people, very religious. But here's the question, is it possible that the scathing critique Jesus gave, "These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain" is true of us today.

So what is this issue of hypocrisy? What is hypocrisy? A hypocrite is a person who acts righteous when they're not, let's say, or a person who says one thing and does another. They don't practice what they preach. Claiming to have moral standards to which they don't actually conform. The word “hypocrite” is literally a Greek word brought straight over pretty much letter for letter into the English. It means “an actor”. The Greek word meant an actor. You remember the symbol of dramatic arts? You have the two masks, the smiley mask and the sad mask. That symbol, those masks were things that those Greek actors would hold in front of their faces, happy or sad, that kind of thing. They're actors in a drama. They play this role, but they don't feel any of it. It's just a show which they do for the audience. 

Now in our culture, we give a very high place to actors and actresses. We ask their opinions on the economy.  It's incredible, these people, we can well applaud their talents and skills at acting. It's really quite remarkable. You can watch the same individual in multiple movies and the same person is playing a, I don't know, a homeless street person in one movie and a Nobel Prize winning physicist in another and a president in another, and then a captain of a sailing vessel in another.  You may say,”Wow, how do they do it"? Their range as actors is incredible. I've often wondered what it would be like to be married to a really skillful actor. I mean, in real life. You see all their movies and all the same faces that they're giving you when they're expressing love or whatever they've given to other people in a movie.  Would you ever be secure in that relationship? I mean, do you really love me or is this just like that scene in that movie back then? I don't know what you're doing. Maybe that's why so many of those marriages don't last very long. Is any of it real? The Scribes and Pharisees played at being righteous. They played at it, but their hearts were far from God. God was never their audience. Jesus said it plainly. Matthew 23, "Everything they do is done for others to see". He said in Matthew 23, "You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside, but inside they're full of dead men's bones and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous, but inside you're full of hypocrisy and wickedness”.

What is hypocrisy in worship? It's acting reverent when you're not. So what is it? What is true worship? What are we talking about? Is it not a heart aflame with the glory of God? A mind captivated by God's nature, captivated by God's great actions and history? God's nature, his power, his compassion, his tenderness, his mercies, his holiness, his righteousness? And all of his great achievements in creation and in the Exodus and the history of Israel and then especially in Jesus, his life, his death, his resurrection? Is this not true worship? But a hypocrite doesn't feel any of this. It's not genuine. None of that moves the needle really.

Now along with this issue of hypocrisy comes the problem of traditionalism. Look at verse 3, "The Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they give their hands the ceremonial washing, holding to the tradition of the elders". Again, verse 5, "The Pharisees and teachers of the law ask Jesus, ‘Why don't your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with unclean hands?’” And then again, verse 7, "They worship me in vain, their teaching are but rules taught by men". Three different times it's tradition, tradition, tradition. Traditionalism. What is traditionalism? How is it different than traditions? Are they related? Traditionalism I believe, is elevating a past pattern to a level of religious permanence equal to or even superior to the Word of God. That's traditionalism. It's belief in the traditions, and that they can never be changed.  I think somewhat, it's like trying to recapture a beautiful spiritual moment for all time by the outward trappings that were around it at the time, like some things happened and that was awesome. And from then on, we'll do those some things like it's a scientific experiment and then you'll get the spiritual moment that way.

 I remember hearing a story of a one local church that decades and decades ago had an amazing Sunday. The word of God was preached powerfully.The spirit of God is poured out in power and a revival broke out in that church. Many people were weeping, falling down, crying out and genuine work happened in their lives. The closing hymn that day was “Spirit of God Descend upon my Heart.” It’s a great hymn.  So for the next 50 years, they played that song at the end of every worship service in that church. One day a courageous worship leader changed it and played a different song. It took incredible courage. That's traditionalism. It's like there's this beautiful butterfly and then you capture it in acrylic like a paperweight and just put it down there heavily and it's not going to move. It's not alive. That's traditionalism, imposing that moment as a rule for future generations to follow.

Now, there is an essential place for tradition. Tradition means just that which is handed on.  We need a respect for church history. We need a respect for the past. We need to know we are not the first generation of Christians. Lots of stuff was worked out before us and has been passed on and we're not reinventing the wheel every time. We Americans, we love what's hot and cutting edge and trending and all that sort of stuff. Often that's poured over into our worship over the last 25 years. What's hot and trendy is what we’re looking for, and there isn't a respect for a tradition. 

But there's a difference between tradition and traditionalism.  Doctrines have been handed down to us from the apostolic era. Paul says very plainly in 1 Corinthians 15:1-4, "What I received, I passed onto you as a first importance that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day, according to the scriptures". The word  “I passed on” in the Latin is “traditio”. That's where we get the English for “tradition.” It's handed down. There’s nothing wrong with that.  There's nothing wrong with a lot of things being handed down, but there are manmade rituals and patterns that get encrusted and then are given equal if not greater authority to the Word of God. Now that's traditionalism and that's what's going on here. 

What then is true worship?  Three key observations. Number one, it's not manmade, but it's initiated by God. It's revelation and response. God reveals, we respond. Remember Peter's confession of Jesus. "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God". And Jesus said, "Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my father in heaven". Do you hear that?  Revealed by God, Peter responds. That's all. Worship is that way. It starts with God, He reveals and then we respond. Secondly, it's not based on human rules and regulations, but based on the Word of God. Where is the record of God's revelation? Only one place, here in the Bible. Our job is to study the scriptures and then worship flows from our understanding of God is revealed in the scripture. That's where it comes from. So it's based on the Word of God.  Thirdly, it's not hypocritical, but it's a reflection of a heart that's truly drawn after God. Drawn close to God. Verse 6, "These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me". True worship is a heart drawn close to God based on the Word of God, and it involves awe, reverence, fear, wonder, amazement, tears, shouts of joy, exaltation, surprise, astonishment. It's a rich array of feelings. But before any of them is truth. Truth first, then the feelings and then the outward actions. That's what true worship is. That's not hypocrisy. 

Now, as we close today, I want to just focus on this one statement, this one key issue. Look at verse 6, “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me". I want to ask you, is that true of you today or not? "These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me". Let me turn it around and let's say I hope for a large percentage of you it's not true today.

If it’s not true as you sat here, as you stood here for worship,  then you ought to thank God for your salvation. You ought to thank God for the work done in you by the Holy Spirit of God. He worked in you to take out your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh that is sensitive and responsive to God. No, not perfectly, but you do love him and you do yearn to please him. You can't wait to go to heaven and you're hungry to know more about him. That's who you are. If that's all true of you, praise God. God has saved you through the work of Christ and the cross and by the Holy Spirit.

But let's turn it back. What if it is true? What if it's true that you're honoring God with your lips, with your outward behavior, but your heart is actually far from God? One of two things is true. One is that you may not be a Christian, you’re not born again. Could be that you could say to me, "I'm actually not claiming to be a Christian. I came here today because a friend invited me".  The point is your heart,  is far from God. That's why Jesus came. He came to seek and to save lost people like you and like I was. He came to go get us and bring us to God. To bring us to God. He came to shed his blood on the cross for all of the many transgressions you've committed while your heart was far from God, to pay for it all in his own blood.  And God raised him from the dead to show that that payment was accepted. I'm just crying out to you, and I'm saying don't let it be the case even later today or next week, that your heart is far from God. 

Suppose that this is a true statement of you, but you actually are a Christian. It happens to all of us. What's gone on is you become distracted by earthly circumstances. Could be physical pain on your part or a loved one. It could be a financial difficulty. It could be that the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things is alluring and distracting you and your heart are from God, and maybe even you've been in a habit of playing at your Christianity.  The text is standing over you today to plead with you to repent, to acknowledge that you're not loving Jesus with the same love you used to have, that your heart's been drifting from him, and the Lord is standing in front of you now, pleading with you to repent and to come back to God and to live openly and honestly and passionately for him.

 Close with me in prayer.  Father, we thank you for the time we've had to listen to these words. Thank you for Jesus courage and boldness in telling the truth. Lord, as the psalmist said very plainly in Psalm 1:39, "Search me oh God, and know my heart. Try me and show me if there's any offensive way in me, show it to me and lead me in the way of everlasting". God, we don't want to be hypocrites. We want to be genuine followers of Christ. So please work in us by your redeeming grace. We love you. We praise you. We thank you. In Jesus' name. Amen.

Jesus pushes back on the traditionalism of the Pharisees and their vain worship, instead encouraging healthy tradition and heart worship.

The post Exposing Vain Worship, Espousing Heart Worship (Mark Sermon 30) appeared first on Two Journeys.

In this episode, Paul gives a timeless farewell to the elders of the Ephesian church, holding up his ministry as a pattern for them to follow.

The post Acts Podcast 40: Paul’s Farewell to The Ephesian Elders: Part 1 appeared first on Two Journeys.