A Matter of the Heart 2.0

Call to Worship

To all who are weary and in need of rest

To all who are mourning and longing for comfort

To all who fail and desire strength

To all who sin and need a Savior

We, Moraga Valley Presbyterian Church, open wide our arms

With a welcome from Jesus Christ.

He is the ally to the guilty and failing

He is the comfort to those who are mourning

He is the joy of our hearts

And He is the friend of sinners

So Come, worship Him with us.

Scripture Reading & Reader

Mary Bester, Scripture Reader

Mark 7:1–30 NIV

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 defiled, that is, unwashed. (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 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 defiled 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 merely human rules.’ You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions.” And he continued, “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 curses their father or mother is to be put to death.’ But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is Corban (that is, devoted to God)—then you no longer let them do anything for their 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. Nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them.” 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 person from the outside can defile them? For it doesn’t go into their heart but into their stomach, and then out of the body.” (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean.) He went on: “What comes out of a person is what defiles them. For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile a person.” Jesus left that place and went to the vicinity of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know it; yet he could not keep his presence secret. In fact, as soon as she heard about him, a woman whose little daughter was possessed by an impure spirit came and fell at his feet. The woman was a Greek, born in Syrian Phoenicia. She begged Jesus to drive the demon out of her daughter. “First let the children eat all they want,” he told her, “for it is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.” “Lord,” she replied, “even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” Then he told her, “For such a reply, you may go; the demon has left your daughter.” She went home and found her child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.

Post-Scripture Prayer

Pray.

Introduction to Sermon

Good morning, my name is Brandon Morrow and I serve as one of the Pastors here at Moraga Valley! So glad to be with you all on our Fall Fiesta weekend, — if you haven’t already, please go ahead and open your Bible to the Book of Mark and this week and next we’re going to be finishing up a short series over Mark, Chapters 4-8, that we’ve called, “Who is this King?” Where we’ve asked questions about Jesus and His identity, and as we get to Mark 7 this morning, what we’ll find is an invitation that is a King who knows how to handle our hearts...

Jesus invites us to consider the truth about ourselves, that our lives, whether that be our identities, the way we view ourselves, or the way that others perceive us, are not dictated by external measurements, but by the nature of the heart.

And in Mark 7, Jesus corrects three false value judgments that have been put in place of the evaluation of someone’s heart — we put value judgments on people, and effectively label them “less than” — based off of criteria that not even Jesus recognizes. In Mark 7, there’s a chain of thought that goes like this:

You have unclean hands, you eat unclean foods, therefore you are an unclean person.

The same chain of thought happens in our neck of the woods too...

You vote for that kind of person, you watch that tv station, therefore you must be a certain kind of person that is inferior to the kind of person that I am...

You grew up in that city, you had this experience (tattoos, jail time, children out of wedlock, etc…), therefore you’re the kind of person I don’t want to associate with or around my family.

I think you get the chain of thought that’s happened here. But it actually goes one step further, it was common place in the First Century for Jewish people to look at non-Jewish people, or Gentile people, in the most despiteful of ways, even having one scholar putting it like this:

The Jews believed that the shadow of a Gentile falling across a dish or plate made it unclean. (Donald English)

Mark 7 gives us this pattern: we call unclean, what Jesus calls clean. — We’ll explore this idea more fully as we go on, but let’s jump into Mark 7.

As we look to the beginning verses of Mark 7, we see some religious leaders show up and they start attempting to poke holes in what Jesus and His followers have been doing.

Jesus and His followers have been developing quite the following, performing miracles, feeding people; but the religious leaders have come of the opinion that Jesus and His followers they’re not like them — and the reason seems petty, but they’re willing to divide over trivial matters, and it’s all because they don’t wash their hands before they eat.

For the record, I think, just as a general rule of thumb, we should wash our hands before we eat, but they didn’t follow a ritual pattern that Jews were known to follow, and so religious leaders ask Jesus in verse 5:

Mark 7:5 (NIV)

“Why don’t your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with defiled hands?”

We see they’ve already made a value judgment about those who are eating...Mark has already made clear in verses 3-5 that what’s being expected of Jesus and His followers — that they better get in line.

(v3) “tradition of the elders”

(v4) one of many other traditions

(v5) and again, just a tradition of the elders.

And Jesus’ response in verse 6 is a quote from Isaiah, that you can follow all the right rules and regulations — you can look good on the outside, and still have a heart that is far from God.

Jesus is essentially telling them, there’s no such thing as unclean hands, only hearts that need to be cleaned, and we can look at verses 7 & 8 to see Jesus’ opinions about made up rules and regulations…

Mark 7:7–8 NIV

They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules.’ You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions.”

To Jesus, this whole distinction of unclean hands making unclean people is nonsensical, but there is a part of Mark 7 that feels, not nonsensical, but it’s startling for some reason, because there’s something that is defiling us that we can’t just wash off — and so Jesus isn’t worried about the hands of the disciples, He is far more worried about addressing something is more defiling than unclean hands. He says in verse 15, Mark 7:15

Mark 7:15 NIV

Nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them.”

Not even Jesus disciples get what He’s talking about, so they ask Him, thinking that if it isn’t the hands that make us unclean, then it must be the food that we eat that make us unclean, and He responds in verse 18-19, Mark 7:18-19

Mark 7:18–19 NIV

“Are you so dull?” he asked. “Don’t you see that nothing that enters a person from the outside can defile them? For it doesn’t go into their heart but into their stomach, and then out of the body.” (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean.)

The problem with the disciples is they don’t understand the heart… Last week Bart Garrett did a wonderful talking about the spleen, the place of inner desire, and the New Testament’s word for the seat of our desires is the heart — the desire we desperately want to be right is misplaced, we have misplaced affections, misplaced desires, and the issue that Jesus has is giving us new desires, rightly placed affections — another word for this is holiness.

Holiness is about the heart, because holiness is God’s very own work of making us more like Jesus — and becoming more like Jesus is about having a transformed heart.

I love how Spurgeon, the great British preacher, spoke about holiness:

Holiness is better than morality. It goes beyond it. Holiness affects the heart. Holiness respects the motive. Holiness regards the whole nature of man.

Charles Spurgeon

Only Jesus can change the whole nature of a man, he can take the darkest of the desires and He can transform them… If you look with me a verses 20-23, we see a list of what Jesus can transform, a list of defiling qualities:

Mark 7:20–23 NIV

He went on: “What comes out of a person is what defiles them. For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile a person.”

Clean your hands all you want, pick whatever diet you think is helpful, but neither of these are going to make you holy, they’re not going to fix your evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance, or general foolishness.

The funny part in Mark’s gospel, to me, is how plain Jesus makes this! Almost as if He’s poking fun at their argument, as if washed hands were going to be the antidote to rising crime rates in the city of Jerusalem…

The reality is that these solutions can’t fix the root cause, and actually, they can’t even treat a symptom — why? Because they can’t address the core of human defilement.

And you might think that defilement is an antiquated way to think about the human condition, but I love this quote from JI Packer:

A sense of defilement before God is not morbid, neurotic or unhealthy in any way. It is natural, realistic, healthy, and a true perception of our condition.

J. I. Packer

We’ve got to be realistic about what’s really going on with us so we understand the full depth of what Jesus has come to fix!

He’s come to transform the heart — which is mentioned three times, verses 6, 19, and 21.

Jesus is clear on this much: there’s no such thing as unclean hands, or unclean food, and the last thing that Jesus tells us, is that there’s no such thing as someone who can’t be made clean.

Which is gospel truth that is frankly balm for achy human souls, because it’s the announcement that there’s no one outside of the grasp of the grace of God.

There’s nobody whose heart can’t be changed, and Jesus tells us this in verses 24-30.

Jesus comes upon a house in a nearby town about 35 miles away, and a Greek woman comes bearing the weight of her demon-possessed daughter before Jesus.

Notice, the text does not say that she was a God-fearing, hand-washing Jew, that honored all of the traditions of her ancestors.

She is a Gentile woman with a child that is far more defiled that we can imagine. The very fact that this woman’s daughter is demon possessed puts her in another category of defilement in the mind of the Jewish community.

Take for example: at another point in Mark’s gospel a demon possessed man had been naked and dismissed to live in a cave! Mark paints for us how alienating it is to be unclean in the first century…

Jesus has not made a value judgment about this woman and her daughter, He has not come to a damning conclusion about her, and likewise Jesus has not made a value judgment against you, He has not come to a damning conclusion about your life and experiences.

Jesus offers a test to this woman, what some have called a “duel of wits”: He reminds her that He has a very specific mission. He’s not rude. He’s not dismissing her requests.

He’s come to forgive sins, and the point He is making is that only God’s people deserve God’s care, which is why He says in verse 27, “it’s not right to take the children’s bread and give it to dogs.” He’s only come to provide spiritual nourishment, which is for God’s children, and frankly, she doesn’t fit the mold.

Dogs in the first century were viewed as unclean animals — which is how we know it was made up human tradition — and Jews didn’t own dogs… but Gentiles owned dogs, they kept them as pets, and her response to Jesus is one of the sweetest things in all of Mark’s gospel, she says in verse 28, “but even the dogs eat the children’s crumbs,” — can’t we, can’t the Gentiles, can’t me and my daughter, be allowed to share in God’s nourishment.

This is the first time we see this in Mark’s gospel, that the gospel is open and free and accessible to everyone.

But the woman is the only person in Mark 7:1-30 who knows how bad she has it — “even the dogs” she says, she knows she is as unclean as they come, you can’t get anymore defiled than her — the scriptural word for this is contrite — she knows the depth of her own brokenness

So she comes to the only One who can make her clean, who can make her whole, who can take her unholiness and make her holy.

The only application in this passage is not that you would be like the religious leaders, and not even that you would be like the disciples — missing the point entirely, but that you would be like the woman who knows that if she just gets a crumb from Jesus her heart can be changed — and there is no one who is too far gone, too unclean, so far outside His love and grace—

and man, I wish we were doing Communion today, because the invitation of the gospel isn’t to crawl around on our hands and knees searching for crumbs, but rather Jesus says, “take and eat” --

Keep coming to the One who can satisfy the appetite of your heart — and maybe you’re not ready to eat everything all at once, the idea of total transformation sounds scary and you’re not sure what that means, so I’d invite you, if you’re looking for heart change, take what little you have, and turn to Jesus.