Inside Out
Sermon on Mark 7
Title: Clean or Unclean
Theme: The inner life cleanliness pleases the Lord
Goal: to encourage the congregation to keep a check on their inner life.
Need: we can often fall into trap of paying attention to the outer life since that is what is most evident to everyone.
Outline:
Introduction:
The Problem: Pharisees expect the traditions of the elders to be upheld, but Jesus disciples aren’t holding them up.
The Tradition:
The Response:
The Action:
Sermon
Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ,
What took more of your time today, getting ready for church? You know, all the details of those hours before you get church. In the morning its doing the hair, ironing the clothes, whatever else. Maybe in the evening it means running comb through your hair to take care of any bed head evidence of your afternoon nap.
What took more of your time today, getting ready for church, or getting ready to meet God? I know for me, I have spent more time today getting ready on the outside. The hair, the teeth, the clothes, everything. Maybe you as well. Less time praying that God would prepare me for entering his sanctuary with the rest of the body of Christ.
Could it be the same in the rest of our lives too? Often times we spend much more time, thinking, fretting and preparing ourselves to succeed at the things other people will notice.
We put so much effort to what goes on on the outside, that we don’t realize that it is often just smoke and mirrors to distract people away from what is really going on on the inside. Perhaps, that illusion of what we are doing on the outside has us fooled as well. Could it be that in the midst of all our working on outward presentation of living out our faith that it can even fool us into believing that we are like that on the inside?
In an extreme form, that was probably true of the lifestyle of those Christ talks about that at the judgement, they will come up to Christ saying Lord, Lord. But Christ will say, “I never knew you.”
It would be impossible to make a top ten list of the most important teachings of Christ. But one of the many teachings of Christ of great importance is the teaching that the part of life that matters the most is the inner life. The inner life is key to the relationship with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The inner life is what we are judged on in the last days. The inner life, the state of our souls makes all the difference.
The passage we read has two different parts to it, really. The first part is a confrontation between the Pharisees and Jesus, and the second part is Christ’s wise words in response to the issue that caused the confrontation.
The reason for the confrontation rest completely on the different perspectives on the inner life. Verse 1:
1The Pharisees and some of the teachers of the law who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus and 2saw some of his disciples eating food with hands that were “unclean,” that is, unwashed.
And then the complaint. Hey Jesus… verse 5
5So the Pharisees and 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?”
The Pharisees probably were following the laws like have been found from a couple hundred years after Christ. The Qumran community known for the Dead Sea Scrolls probably followed laws like this as well. This law that was added on to the ritual cleanliness laws said that you should wash your hands before eating and it specified that you should use about 1.5 eggshells volume of water.
“What kind of rabbi lets his disciples disobey the cleanliness traditions set up by the elders?” They are challenging Jesus on his leadership and on his faithfulness to God. These sorts of challenges are what eventually would send Christ to the cross.
Jesus response probably missed the Pharisees completely, but the message hopefully sticks with us and changes the way we approach or lives. He responds to them, Hey Pharisees you guys are only being concerned with the outer life, what sort of extra things do you need to do externally.
Their answer is, at the very least we have to follow the law of God and the traditions of the elders. If we obey the law and the traditions outwardly, we got it set. Salvation comes by law and traditions alone!
To that Jesus uses the words of Isaiah to call them hypocrites. The word hypocrite gets thrown a lot in the days we live in. Anyone who is religious, but not perfect is called a hypocrite and becomes an excuse for people to feel better about denying God.
The word itself is a theatrical term. To put on a mask, or to play a role. Essentially, the inner life and the outer life do not match. Saying one thing and doing another is hypocritical because your words were nothing more than a flashy mask without the deeds to back them up.
Then he points out some of their heresy. It involves the way some young people had been giving at the temple. The young adults obviously had something had to pay back to their parents or had to dedicate to their parents. Instead of living up to paying back the parents, they gave some money to temple. Then they go back to their parents saying, I don’t have the money because I put it in the offering plate. You wouldn’t take God’s money from him would you.” The Pharisees let this fly without any sort of punishment even though it is a blatant disrespect for their parents and a breaking of the fifth command, honor your father and mother.
A phrase that gets tossed around in our world today goes something like this: I am a genuine person because I really try to be true to myself. What exactly does that mean? And doesn’t it seem to be a little bit of a bad idea to try and be true to something like ourselves that is always changing, being nice one minute, stressed the next, crabby the next, in love the next and who knows what else down the line. One way to never be called a hypocrite is to do whatever you feel like and call it “being true to yourself.”
Some may think that that is the way to avoid hypocrisy. But I think we can say that it is more hypocritical than anything else. All it is is a convienient way to ignore your own shortcomings and your own hypocrisy. Much like the Pharisees would do. It’s an easy way to never evaluate you inner life.
Ignoring the inner life and just doing whatever you want to do is hypocrisy. Maybe we lie on the other extreme. Ignoring the inner life because we follow the tradition is the hypocrisy of the Pharisees as well.
Christ’s explanation to the disciples is pretty strong.
15Nothing outside a man can make him ‘unclean’ by going into him. Rather, it is what comes out of a man that makes him ‘unclean.’”
Don’t worry so much about the outside life. Consider the inner life. Like we talked about a couple of Sundays ago when we talked about circumcision being a cutting right down to the heart. Right down to the depths of the soul that some of us are a little hesitant to enter because it feels so different.
The disciples don’t understand Jesus the first time around either. He says are you so dull that you can’t begin to understand this stuff. The real cleanness that God cares about isn’t affected by how many times you have been ceremonially washed before eating or whether you used 500 eggshells worth of water as you washed your hands. He says to them again almost exactly what he had to tell the Pharisees, what goes into the body doesn’t make a person unclean. That goes into the stomach and comes out again later. So eat whatever food. (hmmm, back to preaching about food again.)
Christ really needs to almost reprogram the thinking of the disciples. The traditions that have been preached to you so often aren’t going to do what you think they are going to do for you. Disciples you need to look beyond the traditions and remember what the heart of the ministry of Jesus is all about. It is about transforming the inner life. Transforming the inner life into a pure life.
What makes a person unclean. It’s the blatant sins that come from a sin oriented heart. That’s unclean. That’s the root of hypocrisy.
Once again we are called then as believers in Christ to look at you outward life. Does the state of our hearts, our inner life, match that of our outward life? Are we as cleansed on the inside as we seem to be to the people around us, or do we need to do. Clean. Washed. Cut off from evil. Inwardly transformed by the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit. That’s what it is all about.