09 Don’t You Understand? (Mark 7:1-23)

SPEAKER_01: And one of my favorites is Fiddler on the Roof. You guys probably know are familiar with that one. Well, the leading character, Tevia, opens the musical with the song Tradition, right? Everybody's familiar with that. And he says the line, Because of our tradition, every one of us knows who he is and what God expects him to do. And then at the end of the song, he says, Without our tradition, our lives would be as shaky as a fiddler on the roof. And then of course the play goes on to explore how life challenges their traditions because he has to cope as each of his three daughters challenges tradition with the choice of her husband, and each daughter goes farther and farther afield. And the question for Tevy becomes, where do you draw the line? Where what is tradition and what what is to where can you not go? Which traditions are negotiable and which ones are not? That's what I'm trying to say. So that's the issue of our text today. What tradition is negotiable and what tradition is not, and how do we know the difference? And this is the problem that the Jews were facing at the time, and I think it's one that faces us today. Because what had happened is prior to the New Testament age, the Jews had lost their land, they'd lost their temple and the festivals and their king. But the one thing they had to identify them was the law or the Torah, the Old Testament. So to keep their identity, they begin meticulously keeping the law. And of course, this the rabbis begin to put together this whole system of what each law meant and how you kept it. And they had these oral traditions of how you could best apply and understand every little letter of the law. So they begin building a fence around it to say, you know, to make sure we don't overstep our bounds, we'll make it this, this, and this, and this. So they were trying to establish their clear boundaries, so as Tevy says, every one of us knows who he is and what God expects him to do. And what's happening in the passage we're going to look at today is Jesus comes along and he ignores their traditions and they're shocked. They're like, how can he do this? This is, you know, he's a rabbi. He's been teaching with authority, and he's coming along and he's just sweeping away these things that they thought were set in stone. So as you know, we've been going through the gospels looking at the places where Jesus asked a question, and the question today is, Are you so dull? Or some translations say, Don't you understand? Um, but I like, are you so dull? It's just a little more charactery. Um and he there's actually two questions. Don't you see that nothing that enters a man from the outside can make him unclean? And he there's I've always wondered if there was not some impatience in that. He's it's addressed to the disciples, and he's got kind of the attitude, it seems, of haven't you figured this out yet? Don't you get it? Um and the the issue is what makes a person clean? And can tradition do that? So turn to Mark chapter 7, if you're not already there, and we're gonna look at, what are we looking at, verses 1 through 23? I'll go ahead and read that for us. The Pharisees and some of the teachers of the law who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus and saw some of his disciples eating food with hands that were unclean, that is unwashed. The Pharisees and all of the Jews do not eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial washing, holding to the traditions of the elders. When they came from the when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash, and they observed many other traditions, such as the washing of cups, pitchers, and kettles. For the Pharisees and the teachers of the law asked Jesus, Why don't your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders, instead of eating their food with unclean hands? He replied, Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites, as it is written, These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain, their teachings are but rules taught by men. You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men. And he said to them, You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions. For Moses said, Honor your father and mother, and anyone who curse who curses his father and 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 Corbin, 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, and you do many things like that. Again Jesus called the crowd to him and said, Listen to me, everyone, and understand this. Now when Jesus says something like that to the crowd, you want to pay attention. I mean if he says, Listen and understand, you know he's about to say something important. 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. And after he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about this parable, Are you so dull? he asked. 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 his body. In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean. He went on, What comes out of a man is what makes him unclean. For from within and out of men's hearts come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance, and falling. All these evils come from inside and make a man unclean. Okay, there's a lot in that, and we're going to try to unpack it. And it's not really familiar to us. There's a lot of things in here where even Mark has to the things in parentheses, he didn't expect his readers to understand, so he's giving an explanation. So it wasn't even familiar to his readers of the day. Um and so it's even less familiar to us, but the problem is what makes someone clean. What can you do something that makes you ceremonially clean or not clean? And it's kind of an unfamiliar distinction to us because we don't have these rules and regulations, but I think it's got a very profound application. Okay, so let me explain what's going on here. The issue is ritual purity, not hygiene. So when the Pharisees come in the first five verses and they say, your disciples are eating food with unclean hands, they're not concerned about germs, and they're not concerned about some kind of hygiene. What they're concerned about is a ritual kind of ceremonial washing that makes you clean. And it's interesting that Mark, you know, we've seen Jesus challenge earlier issues about the Sabbath and what you can do or not on the Sabbath, and Mark didn't feel the need to explain those. But this one he explains because people didn't a lot of people wouldn't have known what these traditions were. So the word for unclean is um impure or common, and it was used for they had two categories of things, things that were set aside for use in the temple or for use for God, and those were clean and ritually clean. They were set apart, or they often use the word sanctified. And then you had other things that you used for your everyday kind of use, everyday cooking and whatnot. So they might have a pitcher that they used only in their ritual acts and religious acts, that would be set aside. And then they have these common pictures that they could use for anything, and that was one of the ways they maintained the distinction. So they have this practice of ritual hand washing, and it came from rabbinic tradition. It does not come from the law of Moses. And you'll notice Mark tells us that in verse 3. They do not even less they give their hands a ceremonial washing, holding to the tradition of the elders. What's going on is that was something the rabbis developed over time. It wasn't directly in the law, but it was so widely practiced that it was one of the ways Jews were were different and were marked. We're not quite sure how the tradition got started. The earliest record of it is in 160 BC. So by the time of Jesus, this practice has been entrenched in Judaism for about 150, 160 years, at least. It may have been longer. And there were two rival rabbis that lived shortly before the time of Christ. You may have heard their names, Hillel and Shemmai, and they disagreed on just about every interpretation of the law except this one. This one they agreed on. They both thought you had to do this ritual hand washing. So when they're talking about the tradition of the elders, this is what they're talking about. And they were thought they were on pretty solid ground because even these two great rabbis that disagreed on most, they were like liberal and one liberal and one conservative, the way we would think of them today. But this they agreed on. So the practice seems to be have begun as a way to ensure that when you offered things in the temple, you didn't defile them before you offered them. So if you were offering a dove or a pigeon or whatnot, there was this ritual washing to make sure you didn't defile your off your offering. And then it spread to, well, um, things that you would you were going to eat uh whether they were offered or not, and then it became toward every meal, and then it became before and after the meal. And they had all these rules about how exactly it worked. And I got this from um Alfred Adersheim's book, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah. He's great for cultural references. So what they had to do, um, in some cases they had to do what they called full immersion, which was basically how they dip their whole hands into a pitcher of water. And that was like a baptism, interestingly enough. And on very special occasions that would what they would have to do. But before a meal, they had to use at least one and a half eggshells worth of water. That's important. If you had less than one and a half eggshells worth of water, it didn't count. And what they would do is pour water on both hands, and then they'd lift their hands up so the water would run down their wrists. And they couldn't put their hands down because the water was now defiled, and if the defiled water ran back down their arms, then that was no longer clean. So they had to keep their hands up and let the water run down, and if it didn't touch the wrist, it didn't count. So they were very particular it had to touch the wrist. And then they could rub one hand on the other. That was the first waters. There are two. So then there was a second waters, because now they had the problem of the water that is on their hands is down defiled by their hands, so they have to get off the defiled water. So they would pour a second water over their hands, and this time they'd hold their hands down and let it run down off their fingertips, removing the defiled water. Um so you had your first waters and your second waters. And I'm told that modern Jews have a third waters, and I don't know what that is, I couldn't find that out, and a special benediction that goes with it. So you can see if you had to do this before every meal and sometimes after, that this would be very cumbersome. So the Pharisees developed what they called the principle of intention, and that was if you did this in the morning with the intent that it cover everything you ate all day, that was okay. So that was uh that's how they got around it. So if you intended for it in your heart to cover every meal, then that was good enough. There were certain precautions and exceptions, of course, but um that was the idea. So Jesus' disciples are not doing this, and um the impact of this, I was trying to think of an analogy for us. The closest thing I could think of is praying before meals. That is not something that's specifically commanded in the Bible. There are certain verses that we do that we take it from, but it's a practice that has become so entrenched in Christianity when people don't pray before meals, we're like, ooh, you know, they must not be serious. You know, we maybe they're not really a good Christian. And that's kind of what's going on here. This practice was so entrenched in Judaism that for Jesus' disciples to ignore it was a big deal because this was not questioned, this was not optional, this was just expected religious behavior, like going to church on Sunday, or um, we might expect, you know, you have to take communion every so often, or this is just what you do if you're a believer. And now Jesus comes along and they're not doing it. So that's why the Pharisees are upset. So before we look at um Jesus' response, let me look at what Mark tells us about the Pharisees. He tells us twice in verses three and four that they take pride not in what they do, but in what they don't do. We're gonna come back to that, but I just want to point that out to you because that's that's gonna be important in Jesus' response, that they're very uh prideful in what they're not doing, not what they're doing. And then the other thing to realize is their concern is not scriptural, it's tradition. So this is not, all this hand washing is not in the law of Moses. It was something that had become accepted. And then the third thing to know about them is they are very passionate about this. The words that he uses holding to in verse 3 or observing in verse in verse 4 are very strong words. They have the idea of seizing something and hanging on for dear life. It's kind of the like we might say we dig in your heels and you're just gonna plant yourself and stand there and not let go. It's that kind of, has that kind of connotation of something very tenacious and strong. We are sticking to this tradition of the elders. And then notice how widely they apply it. Mark tells us in verse four, they observe many other traditions, such as washing of cups and pitchers and kettles. So they not only make sure their hands are properly, you know, dipped and watered, they literally scour all their other kitchen utensils. And um and when they leave the marketplace, they vigorously clean themselves because they've come in contact with things that are unclean. Now think about what we've seen about Jesus so far. He goes into the crowd, and instead of coming out defiled, the crowd comes out clean. I mean, he teaches them, he forgives them. Notice the woman who was bleeding, she comes into the crowd, touches him, and comes out healed. And then often notice the contrast if you've been reading the intermediate sections with John the Baptist, where he's calling people to repent and be cleansed of their sins. And here the Pharisees are all worried about their hands and their pots and pants. So, how does Jesus respond? Look at 7.6. He says, 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, and note the pronoun shift here, you have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men. So he's quoting Isaiah 29, 13, which reads, The Lord says, These people come near me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is made up only of rules taught by men. Therefore, once more I will astound these people with wonder upon wonder. The wisdom of the wise will perish, the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish. And that section, Isaiah chapters 28 through 31, is a series of pronouncements against the nation's leaders. It predicts the as um the exile because of their blatant dis disobedience. And chapter 29 falls right in the middle of the and it the whole part of chapter 29 is um what makes a person clean. And he um the law that the law is not an ex a series of externals. I cannot get the words out all of a sudden. Let me take a breath. Okay. So the law is not a series of external rules that you put on the outside and that makes you moral on the inside. That's the point of Isaiah, and it's exactly what Jesus is saying here. Now notice he doesn't try to defend his disciples, he goes right on the attack. His words are not, you know, anything to mollify the Pharisees. That was like tick them off even further. He puts them on the stand and he makes a much more serious charge. He says, the Pharisees say, Look, you're not following our traditions, and he says, Yes, well, you're ignoring the commands of God. I mean, he just goes right on the attack with them. And before they can recover from the shock, he goes on and says, in verse 9, you have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions. And he brings up the point about honoring your father and mother. So he just adds fuel to the fire. And what was going on with the honor your father father and mother is um the Pharisees would Corbin was a term that was used for something that was offered to God. So if you set aside a pot that you would only use in this ritual washing, it was no longer available for everyday use. So you didn't actually have to give that pot or kettle to the temple, you just had to stop using it on your for your everyday needs. So what the Pharisees were doing is they would declare all of their money and their possessions set aside for God. So they couldn't use it to help their parents out who might be needy because this is not available for everyday use. So they were rejecting this one of the commandments, which was, you know, honor your father and mother. They are saying, Oh, I I can't, even though they might be rich, they weren't um helping their parents in need because they say that's set aside for God, but of course they lived off of it. Now, the what does it mean to honor your father and mother? You could say, well, they were so respectful and whatnot. The um the way I like to explain that is think about the if you have fine china and you have your everyday dishes, think about the difference in the way you treat them. You know, your your everyday dishes get thrown around in the dishwasher and you pick up four or five at a time with your fingers, you know, and kind of clank them together. But your fine china, you know, you take out one at a time and you set it on the table, and when you store it, you put the little doilies between it, you know. So you treat it with honor and respect. You know, they don't just get stacked and stuffed in the dishwasher. And if one of your fine china gets broken, you know, you remember exactly who broke it, you know. Who was the culprit, you know, and which holiday. That's the idea of honoring. You're giving it weight, you're giving it the value it's it's due. And that's the idea between honoring your father and mother. You are to give them value and respect that they are due. And the primary way children did this was to care for them in their old age. Um, but the idea was to provide the same kind of care for them in their old age that they provided for you when you were a toddler and and uh in need of help. So the Pharisees then, instead of taking care of their parents, were saying, No, no, all my possessions are for God, and I can't use it to support my parents, you're on your own. And Jesus attacks them for that, and he says, and that's not the only example of you abandoning the laws of God for the tradition of men. So the Pharisees, it seems, are speechless. At least they don't respond. We're not told of any response they make. So the core issue here is what makes a person acceptable to God. The Pharisees think if I perform these outside rituals of washing my hands, if I dedicate my possessions to God, then I'm acceptable. I am following the rules and I am doing the right things. And Jesus is saying, you don't get it. This is not going to make you clean. This is not going to make you acceptable to God. And I think all the rules about what you can eat and not eat, and what's clean and not clean in Leviticus ultimately are to teach us something about cleanliness and what makes us worthy before God. And that's the issue Jesus has. Does ritual cleanliness, does dedicating my possessions to God make me worthy to stand before Him, or is there something else that makes me worthy? Now that question is answered a lot of different ways in the New Testament. You may be familiar with some of the other metaphors. Some of them use the language of accounting that we have an enormous debt to pay to God and we cannot pay it. It is beyond our ability to pay however it has been paid by Christ. The other image you'll see is what makes us acceptable is the language of a courtroom, that we were judged and found guilty. And instead of being sentenced to our penalty, Christ intervenes and pays the put takes the punishment for us. And the other primary metaphor is the language of adoption, that we who had no home, no family, no name, no standing, no inheritance are now adopted into God's family and put in a place of honor in becoming a child of God. All those things are making the same point Jesus is is uh asking here, but it's a little less familiar to us. The point is what makes you clean? What makes you acceptable to God? If you're unworthy, if you don't measure up, if you're defiled, how do you become clean again? And what Jesus is saying is all those traditions. Are not gonna do it. They do not work. But the good news is there is a way to become clean, and that is through trusting in Jesus. Now, some of you think, well, that's pretty f few and far between. I mean, what does that mean to me today? But start thinking about how many things we put on believers that that make them prove, you know, whether or not they're really a serious Christian. You know, we have our own rules of what makes people acceptable. They have to wear the right clothes to church, you know, and join the right political party maybe, or give money to the right causes, or maybe it's you have to like this kind of music or that kind of music, or uh, you know, pray in the correct position with a proper frequency and you have to have the right vocabulary. Um, you know, or maybe it's the way you look or dress, you know, nothing purple, no more than three piercings. You know, purple hair, I mean, something like that. Or maybe it's you have to go on the right mission trips, and if you don't go on the right mission trips, then you're not really a believer, or avoid certain types of music, you know, or maybe, maybe the real measure is whether you put your kids in Christian school or whether you homeschool them or whether you keep them in a public school. You know, we all have views on what is the best way to prove your faith and your seriousness. Or maybe it's smoking, drinking, dancing, credit card debt. You know, we have our rules. And that's what Jesus is counseling against. Don't look at all the things that we do that may be a response to God and say, that's what makes me acceptable. Um, don't begin to value your traditions or your performance or um the things you do that you think make you a better believer because they won't in the end. Those things may be evidence of God working in your life, but they are not the thing that make you acceptable. And that to me I think has great relevance because I I think, you know, whatever I um all Christians should look and act like me, right? I mean, that's just seems to be the case. And so I look at other people and say, well, if you don't like that like I do, what's wrong with you? And that's the kind of thing Jesus is counseling again. Don't look at man-made rules and say, this is the measure of being religious, or this is the measure of what makes you acceptable. So I think Jesus knows the Pharisees don't get it, but he's concerned that the disciples don't get it either. Because now we're going to get to the section with our questions. He turns to the disciples then. They they ask him, What were you talking about? When he said to the crowd, you know, uh, nothing outside a man can make him unclean by going into him, whether it is what comes out of him that makes him unclean. And then they come in and ask him, and he says, Are you so dull? Don't you get it? Um He's saying, listen and understand on this, and he's making a very significant point that being good at religious performance is a dangerous thing in some cases, because you can start to trust in it. You can start to think, well, I study the Bible and I go to meetings and and I, you know, don't have any debt or whatever measure we want to measure ourselves with, and then we think, I'm making it. I'm doing a good job here. God must be pleased with me, and that's the step you don't want to take. It's not what we do or don't do that makes us clean, it's what Jesus did for us. So that's the point he's making when he says, nothing outside a man can make him unclean. So it's not, you know, touching some a dead body or eating the wrong kind of meat that will make you unclean. It's what's inside you that makes you unclean. Uh it's nothing that you do or don't do on the outside. It's what's in your heart that counts. And when he turns to the disciples, he says, Don't you get it? Don't you understand these traditions are meaningless in that sense, in the sense of making you clean? And then he declares, Mark has this saying that in saying this, he declared all foods clean. Well, that's kind of an amazing point for him to just kind of slip into the text there. Um and I think he Mark understood this was the force of what he was saying, but just to make sure we get it, he adds it in. And Jesus is not merely then undoing the Pharisees' man-made traditions of, you know, whether you wash your hands and how. He's undoing all the dietary laws of Leviticus and the Old Testament. I mean, that's like 14,000 years worth of laws. And those those kind of dietary laws are what set Israel apart in the exile. It's one of the ways they preserved their identity and their culture was by keeping these dietary laws. So how can he just sweep them all away in one kind of one failed swoop here? I think the answer to that lies in the fact that he didn't come to nullify the law, he came to fulfill it. And what he's saying is there is a better way now, that those laws were shadows of things that you were supposed to learn, and now more has been revealed, and the and the real thing is here. And the Old Testament looks forward to this. In Deuteronomy 30, verse 6, it says, The Lord your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, so that you may love him with all your heart and with all your soul and live. And it goes on to talk about him putting the commandments into our hearts. Then Jeremiah 31, 33, this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time, declares the Lord. I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God and they will be my people. And he goes on in this is still Jeremiah down in 32, 38. They will be my people and I will be the their God. I will give them singleness of heart and action, so that they will always fear me for their own good and the good of their children after them. I will make an everlasting covenant with them, I will never stop doing good to them, I will inspire them to fear me, so that they will never turn away from me. So the all of those things point to a day when there will be a new covenant, when God, instead of writing the law on tablets of stone, will now write them onto our hearts, and all the ceremonial aspects of the law are going to give way to that reality. And I think what Jesus is saying is the purity which all those laws symbolized, we're trying to get at a cleansed heart, and now that's become a reality in a way it wasn't before. Now we've seen what Jesus has come to do, and that what defines the people of God is not how they eat or how they wash, but who they are, who they're where their hearts are, what they love, what they value, the person on the inside. So God isn't as concerned with whether we eat, you know, this vegetable or that vegetable or this kind of meat or that kind of meat or what kind of pots we cooked at cook with. He's saying all those were symbols to teach you that you were unclean and you needed a savior, and now the savior is here. So in that sense, they are giving way to the reality. And I think that's why he can just sweep them away. Ultimately, the man-made rules give way to the values of God, and the rules God gave us to teach us things now that we've learned are uh no longer in place. So it's similar. You probably had rules when your children are little, you know, when they were four and five, things they could and couldn't do that then when they're twelve are perfectly acceptable, and then when they're eighteen, the rules change again. It's that kind of a thing. As we as we mature in Christ and more is revealed to us, the things that were to teach us one uh a shadow now that the reality has come or we are mature, give way. Now notice he is not saying you are okay the way you are. That is not the point. Um He doesn't say, well, you don't have to wash your hands because I love you no matter what, and and you're okay, you're great just the way you are. That is not what he's saying. Notice verse 20, what comes out of a man is what makes him unclean. For from for from within, out of men's 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 clean. He is saying, you are worse than you think. Because all that stuff you're doing doesn't help. All that stuff you do on the outside does not make you clean and acceptable. So the message is you are much worse off than you thought, but God loves you much more than you deserve. And that's something I think in our evangelism and in our teaching today, we gotta be, we have to be careful that we maintain that balance, that we don't hit the God loves you message so much that it becomes, I'm okay, you're okay. Um, because that's not the gospel. The gospel is you are unclean. And uh reading your Bible apart from the grace of God or praying, well, you probably wouldn't pray apart from the grace of God, but attending church does not make you a believer any more than sitting in a garage makes you a car, you know. That you going through the motions is not enough. The external things don't mean anything if there's no inner reality behind it. And so what Jesus is saying is the problem is your heart is wicked, it's filled with all this evil, and that's what makes you unclean, not whether you've washed your hands or not. But the good news is he's inviting us uh to come to him for help. As we've seen through the stories leading up to this, he is the great physician who can heal what is broken within us. And what makes us contaminated and unacceptable, he can deal with. And he is diagnosing our problem, but it comes with the invitation to trust him to solve it. So he tells us the truth about what makes us clean and unclean, but then he invites us to come to him for the answer, to say, I can't make myself clean apart from the blood of Christ or the grace of God and to trust him to do it for us. So I think part of the lesson of this is know what the real problem is and stop trying to solve it with false solutions. So trying harder doesn't work. Mustering up, you know, perfection doesn't work. Our hearts are the real problem and only Jesus can change them. Okay, let me stop there. So we still have some time for questions. Father, we just thank you that you are a God who loved us and that um you didn't leave us in our state of broken hearts and sinful natures and our unclean thoughts and lips, but that you came right down into the midst of us to teach us what's true and right and to pay the penalty for our sins so that we could become who you intended us to be and learn to have a relationship with you, and that you could grow us into the people who are wise and mature and holy and loving. And we confess that we uh that we are unclean, that left to ourselves we can't solve this problem. SPEAKER_00: We just thank you that you have come to solve it for us and it's a very important thing.