Mark 7:1-23
What does a good fence, or a good wall or a good gate do? It serves its purpose.
Keeps in what you want kept in. Keeps out what you want kept out.
Prison gang hq. etc.
What is the potential tragedy of a fence, or a wall, or a gate?
If somehow you kept someone out who was wanting to get in and had every right to get in.
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The Pharisees are good at building fences. They were effective to. They kept out everyone who didn't measure up
Their walls didn't look like this (POINT UP)
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, but they did look like this. Any ideas what this is? Get to it in a second.
If the Gospel of Mark was made into a movie whenever you read the word Jerusalem the ominous sounding music would kick in. Jerusalem was the place of foreboding. It was where the religious leaders were who conspired together to get rid of this nuisance from Galilee were based.
So when you look at verse one the warning bells start ringing. These teachers of the law weren't on holiday. They were Spiritual hitmen checking Jesus out, making sure that he was doing the things that good Pharisees do. They'd heard that He was doing miracles... the lame were taking up their mats and walking, people with leprosy were healed the blind received their sight, guys with evil spirits in them were claiming to be delivered. That is great. But what matters most is is this man doing things the right way.
And there is nothing wrong with making sure that things are done biblically. In fact we are told to check things out.
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Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. Acts 17:11
I was talking to Stephan about why it is that Christians are more gullible than non-Christians. People who don't have the spirit of God in them can see Sharlatan's who are out to fleece the flock so why is it that Christians can't see. Or sometimes refuse to see?
So why couldn't the Teachers of the law see that everything Jesus was doing was Scriptural? In fact all these things that Jesus was doing, the healing of the sick, the blind seeing, the lame getting up and walking was fulfilling prophecies about what the coming Messiah would do. And yet they didn't recognise the Messiah when He stood before them.
This where things had got a bit haywire. They made two mistakes when they went to Jesus.
1/ They were checking Jesus out, but what they were weighing Him up by POWERPOINT-
(Look at powerpoint) wasn't the Scriptures.
2/ They aren't on a fact finding mission. They're more on a fault finding mission. And they find something to pick at when they see Jesus disciples doing the unthinkable. Right here right now their minds are made up. If Jesus was any sort of teacher who was serious about God he wouldn't allow this disgusting behaviour.
They see Jesus disciples eating food without washing their hands. It's not that the Pharisees were hygiene experts or anything like that.
There were times when we have been out the runoff working with the stock and it comes to lunch time. And you're in a place where there is no water around whatsoever... this sounds a bit gross, but you've got cowmuck on your hands, you do your best to try to wipe it off, but your sandwhich is still a bit more flavoursome than it was when it was made.
The Pharisees were looking at the disciples with absolute disgust because as far as they were concerned the disciples were eating with spiritual excrement on their hands. They were unclean.
This doesn't sound much to you, but what you're reading is setting the stage for one of the most countercultural statements that Jesus ever made.
And the debate isn't over Scripture. What is it over? (V 3,4,5) The tradition of the elders.
SCROLL- Mishnah it wasn't compiled into a nice neat list at the time of Jesus, but still all the teachings were floating around in Judaism.
Mishnah had a saying in it ‘Tradition is a fence around the law'.
Most if not all religious traditions start off with good intentions. Even though Jesus hated it, the Mishnah was no exception.
People wanted to know exactly what you could and couldn't do in certain situations so they didn't break the commandments of God. So these wise men of Judaism about 4-500 years before Jesus slowly developed this fence of man made laws around Gods law a bit like trip wires. So long before you broke one of Gods commands you ran into one of these man made commands.
Every time we tinker with God's laws we turn them into something incredibly complex. With the Sabbath you could wear a handkerchief, but you couldn't carry one coz' that would be classified as work.
They debated long and hard over this one..... If the home of a man with a wooden leg caught on fire could he carry his wooden leg out of the house if it was the Sabbath? It was against the law to fight the fire obviously, he had to let his house burn to the ground, but could he carry his leg out?
But by far the biggest concern of the Jewish people was being ceremonially clean before God.
Now according to Scripture the only people who had to ceremonially was their hands was the priests when they came before God.
But by the time of Jesus everyone was washing their hands because that was what Tradition said you had to do in order to be a good Jew.
And washing your hands in this religious way became such a big part of life because it was so easy for you to become externally impure If you went to the market and even the shadow of a person who was unclean touched you it made you unclean, so if you were a devout Jew you'd go home and immerse yourself in water. If an unclean shadow went across a pot you were carrying...... the pot was unclean and often it meant you had to break the pot and throw it out so your house resembled a Greek wedding.
Mishnah- 30 chapters on ins and outs of cleansing vessels.
But always, always before a meal if you were any sort of Jew your hands got washed. It was as much a sign of devotion to God as prayer.
Some Rabbi's taught that you should be prepared to walk four miles to get some water so that you could become ceremonially clean.
One Pharisee was caught by the Romans and given just enough food and just enough water to keep him alive. Instead of eating with defiled hands he used the water to clean his hands.
And that sort of story circulated amongst the Jews and the Pharisee was portrayed as a hero. He was an example of what a child of God is supposed to be because he was prepared to die for the sake of his relationship with God.
And here Jesus disciples are spitting in the faces of these heroes by not washing their hands by choice.
Now we all have traditions.
Who here has gone to a Muslim nation? POWERPOINT-
Arrived in Cairo walking down the street the first day, and saw all these guys holding each others hands.
If you see a couple of guys walking down the street holding hands your instant reaction is... ‘Oh OK'. But there it was part of the culture.
If Puku was bought up in Egypt he'd happily walk down the street holding Derek's hand.
But potentially what could that cultural difference do? POWERPOINT-
Create a fence (a fence that causes offence).
Was there anything biblically wrong with what these guys were doing? No.
What made you think there was something not quite right?
Your culture... what you'd been bought up to believe---- your tradition.
So what do you think the big challenge of the passage so far is?
Is there something that is an accepted part of my tradition that is stopping me from being effective for the Gospel of Jesus Christ?
And it applies to us all. We all have traditions whether we acknowledge them or bury our heads in the sand and deny it. But what you normally find is the Christians who are most like the Pharisees in the story are the ones who deny they have traditions.
We all are influenced by Western Christianity, and we all have traditions that are shaped by Western Christianity.
And some of them are helpful. The Church of the Nazarene has a manual that sort of clarifies the doctrine of the Church. I find it so helpful that I refer to it at least once a year before an AGM to find out what the difference is between a steward and a trustee. But there is a big difference between This manual and this Bible.
Talked to Neville about this, and I praise God that he agrees with me... I have a manual that is soft cover do you know why?
It's bendable.
I have a Bible that is hardcover. Do you know why? What the bible says is non- negotiable.
This Bible won't change, but over time this manual does.
This manual has to be flexible- because what works in China, may not work in Papua New Guinea, and what works in downtown Los Angeles may not work in Dargaville.
So tradition has to be flexible.
So like I said tradition in many ways has to be flexible because in the inflexible book Jesus gave us a command
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"go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
Mt 28:20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."
So this manual and any other tradition we as a church or we as individuals have is useful to the degree that it helps us fulfil that.
Point to POWerPoint
What do you think the danger is?
We see it in our passage today....
When our traditions become inflexible, and the
Bible becomes malleable.
The Jews of Jesus day had a saying
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"The Scriptures are water, the Mishnah is wine; the Gemara spiced wine.
It does beg the question as to whether there might be some tradition some belief that I have in my life that has become my Mishnah.
There have been times when Church tradition stated-
1/ Fine church buildings equate fine Christians.
2/ Fine clothes equate to fine Christians.
I read where a lady had just finished her shift at work and rushed straight to church... where she was met by an elder who berated her for wearing her work clothes into the sanctuary. I don't know what the elder would have done when David parked his silage baler outside and come into the Church.
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I could think of nothing worse than some traditional bias I have that would build a fence keep someone from knowing Christ.
Just because a tradition has said it has to be done this way... we need to be constantly asking ‘well is it biblical?'
If it's not biblical, but traditional we need to ask ‘is it actually helping or hindering us in fulfilling God's call to the church to make Christlike disciples?'
But do you understand that when Jesus challenged tradition he was seen as a radical because tradition in many peoples eyes had become Gods way even when it contradicted Gods word.
So in verse six we see Jesus with a great deal of tenderness pointing out the potential danger of all tradition. V6.
"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.
Mk 7:7 They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.'
Isaiah lived in a time when people were going through the religious motions... it was a bit like the time of John Wesley in many ways... they did what they needed to do in order to be seen as good people, they went to church, sung a few songs, and if you just mixed with the upper rust of society on a superficial level you might have even been fooled into thinking that they were godly people... but Isaiah said their hearts are far from me.....
That's the danger of all tradition. Tradition is external. Rules and regulations are just external. Anyone can turn up to a church and tick a few boxes so that a few obligations to church tradition are fulfilled.
But what is the Gospel all about? It's about a relationship with God that transforms the heart that converts the hands. Tradition is only going to change what the hands are doing, what the actions are... but they won't change the heart.
Talking about being in Egypt earlier. Staying in hostel get the call to prayer blaring through the speakers ‘Allah Akhbar'
A devout Muslim prays 5 times a day. Wherever he is, pretty much no matter what he is doing, when the time to pray comes he'll turn towards Mecca, drop to his knees and pray then go on his day. There was one Muslim guy who was chasing after another bloke with a knife, so he could murder him. Then the call to prayer rang out. So he stopped, turned towards Mecca, got on his knees prayed his prayers, then got up picked up his knife and continued the chase.
So prayer time was over, the boxes were ticked, the heart was unaffected.
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The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart." 1 samuel 16:7
I don't have a lot of time left... but very briefly Jesus gave an example of this....
The fifth commandment is ‘Honour your Father and Mother.'
You ever hear of the saying SKI? Spending the kids inheritance...
This is pretty much the opposite of that.
In biblical days there was no pension, you relied on your kids to support you. Often you'd hand over pretty much all your finances to the oldest son and he'd make sure there was a roof over your head and food on the table.
But for whatever reason the son could dedicate all that he had to God by saying ‘Korban'. He still had that money in his possession, but he could stare his parents in the eye and say ‘Sorry I know that you are starving to death, but in a rash moment of religious zeal I dedicated everything I have to God. So don't get me wrong I'd love to help you, but my arms are tied, I just can't.'
But as soon as he wanted to use the money for himself all he had to do was say Korban over them again, and he could do what he liked with it.
So a selfish person could hide behind a tradition of the elders in order to break a command of God and still have everyone going aren't they a wonderful person.
So Jesus gathers everyone to him.
Why do you think he had to do that? You know when you're visiting your friends place and the husband says something really offensive to the wife like "That meal was disgusting, and by the way you look fat in your dress.'
You're like ‘Okay I think it's time to leave.'
I imagine something similar happening here.
When the crowd hears Jesus say ‘You're a bunch of hypocrites...they probably thought ‘time to step back a bit.' She's getting a bit to intense here. ‘
Jesus gathers them to Him and says v14 "Listen to me, everyone, and understand this.
Mk 7:15 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.'
It sort of shows how hard it is to see the pitfalls in your traditions isn't it because what is the disciples reaction?
They think that Jesus must have been telling them a parable. All this talk must be cryptic- because there is no way that being ceremonially clean can have no effect on our relationship with God.
Even after Jesus says this they still struggled with the full implications of what Jesus was saying. You look at the early church and they still had heated debates over the place of the traditions of the elders. That's why you have to admire Paul. He was a man who grew up living and breathing the traditions of the elders. If he was standing around that day he would have been spitting with rage at Jesus... but after his conversion he spent a lot of time understanding what the Gospel really meant to the average Christian Joe the plumber.
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He said this in Galatians 5:1
It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.
Tradition really is like that. I was talking to Puku yesterday about how hard it is to give up smoking. And for a religious person tradition is just as hard to give up, because it becomes part of who you are, it becomes a part of your religious makeup. So it takes a lot of strength, a lot of transparency and honesty before God to pray a prayer like David's when he prayed....
Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.
Ps 139:24 See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
But this is one of the things that this passage is challenging us to do..... to make sure that our hearts are right before God.
To be open and transparent before God and ask the questions that perhaps we haven't dared ask, or thought that we didn't need to ask.
What is the outcome?
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"go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
Mt 28:20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."
It is being as effective as possible in fulfilling this...... as individuals and as a Church.