Holiness & Hypocrisy

Sermon Prep Template:

TOPICAL --- Main Idea/Direction

Jesus calls out the pharisees for caring more about their man-made traditions than the actual commands of God

What truth do students need to hear most?

Don’t elevate your traditions to commandment status

It doesn’t matter how good you sound if your heart is far from God

Holiness is what we’re called to

Three Supporting Ideas within the passage

Following Tradition Doesn’t Make You Holy

Saying the Right Words Doesn’t Make You Holy

Avoiding the Wrong Things Doesn’t Make You Holy

Additional Scriptures for Cross Reference

Leviticus 19:2

1 Samuel 2:2

James 1:13

Hebrews 12:14

Background Info / People / Places

What does it mean that God is Holy?

Perfect

Set apart/completely other

Without sin

Every attribute of God is shaped by his Holiness

What does it mean for us to be Holy?

Set apart from other people

God’s standards not worldly standards

A fence around the law.

Sermon Outline Template:

IMAGE:

Christmas tradition, waking mom and dad up at exactly 8am

Breaking that tradition seems almost like a sin!

NEED:

In our faith, sometimes we can get so caught up in a certain way of doing things, or a routine that we lose the heart behind why we’re doing it.

SUBJECT:

We’re going to talk about Holiness tonight

BIG IDEA:

The heart behind holiness highlights hypocrisy.

OOOHH! You know it’s gonna be a good word when the preacher starts alliterating!

TEXT ADDRESS:

Continuing in Mark, we’ll be in chapter 7 tonight

SET UP:

Here’s the scene, Jesus’ disciples are seen by the pharisees (religious leaders) eating a meal without washing their hands first. You’re probably like, “ooh that’s nasty I agree with the pharisees that’s gross.” But it’s not that they didn’t wash their hands before dinner, it’s that they didn’t do the washing ceremony that had become the tradition for jews to do. There was a specific way to do it to remove the “impurity”

The jewish leaders had for generations built up extra traditions or laws around the actual law of God like how you have to wash your hands. The idea behind it is actually good. They don’t want to break God’s law. That’s a good thing. So they put a fence around the law. They said, if we don’t jump the fence, we wont even get close to breaking the law of God.

But what happened was, they started caring more about the fence than what the fence protected. Their man-made rules started to take over.

The whole thrust of the passage we’re going to look at is this: what does it mean to be holy?

When the bible calls God holy? what does that mean?

TEXT:

Let’s read Mark 7:1-23

POINT 1:

Following Tradition Doesn’t Make You Holy

What Does It Mean?

In order for this message to actually change your life tonight, it’s not enough to just know in your brain what it means that God is Holy. We have to figure out how this text teaches us to be Holy.

Leviticus 19:2 ESV

“Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them, You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.

We see really clearly that it’s not about the traditions. The pharisee’s come to Jesus and put a finger in his face and say “your disciples aren’t following the traditions!”

Mark is kind enough to explain what traditions they’re talking about for us as readers - there was a certain special way to wash your hands and to wash the dishes. But none of those rules were actually in the bible. They were the fence put around God’s law.

The pharisees thought that following these traditions is what would make them holy. They didn’t have the heart behind holiness and it highlighted their hypocrisy!

Why is This Important?

It’s important for us to see this because we all try and do this same thing!\

The type of clothes that are “church clothes” is a tradition. Some people believe that you have to wear a full suit or a dress to go to church or else you are sinning. The style of the worship music is tradition. There are christians that think it’s sinful to play drums in the worship band.

But my guess is you have never worried about wearing a t-shirt to NXT or even thought twice about the fact that Mikayla plays drums on the worship team.

But here’s a way that you might be elevating a tradition: If you allow your relationship with Jesus to become an obligation.

If your faith is just an obligation, then why are you coming to church? Oh it’s just what I do on Sundays and Wednesdays. Why do you sing songs in worship? Oh it’s just what we do at church.

There are a lot of people calling themselves Christians because they go to church on Sundays who don’t actually follow Jesus. I heard somebody say one time “going to church doesn’t make you a christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.”

If we’re trying to be holy without the heart behind it, we’ll just highlight our hypocrisy.

What Can We Do About It?

If the ditch on one side is doing things that look good in order to be seen by others as holy, the ditch on the other side is not doing anything because “don’t feel it”.

You might be like, oh Danny said i shouldn’t come to church if it’s just tradition and tonight I don’t really feel like going, so I don’t want to go if my heart’s in the wrong place.

But having a heart in the right place doesn’t equal feelings. So many times we get caught up trying to chase the feeling of God that we think we’re not close to him or that he’s not close to us.

Deuteronomy 31:8 ESV

It is the Lord who goes before you. He will be with you; he will not leave you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed.”

But what you can do even tonight, is seriously take stock. Where is my heart at right now?

Illustration:

Transition:

So it isn’t our traditions that make us holy what we see next is:

POINT 2:

Saying the Right Words Doesn’t Make You Holy

What Does It Mean?

Jesus calls out the pharisees and says YOU HYPOCRITES!

He quotes from Isaiah 29:13 and says that their words are good, but their heart is far away from God.

Good words without a right heart is fake.

I see this on social media all the time, and maybe you do too. Someone (usually a girl) posts a picture of themselves on instagram and then they get 50 comments all like “oh my goodness you’re soooo pretty” “fire emoji fire emoji” “heart-eyes” “cuteee” “it’s note fair that you’re this pretty” “ugh why can’t i be you”

Do you hear how fake that sounds? They’re commenting nice things, flattering things, but my guess is they don’t really mean them.

And we do this with God too.

It’s like we’ve invented a church language called Christianese and we know all the right words to say to make someone think we’re super duper holy.

Matthew 6:7 ESV

“And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words.

Why is This Important?

Traditions make us look good. Words make us sound good. But it’s our heart that determines if they’re worship.

If you’re saying true and good things about God without a heart behind them that supports what you’re saying, Jesus says your worship is a farce. It’s a comedy routine. It’s fake and worthless.

What Can We Do About It?

But don’t hear me saying this and think “oh I can just say whatever I want, because my words don’t matter.”

That’s not what I’m saying at all. Our words matter A TON!

James 3:8–9 ESV

but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God.

Proverbs 18:21 ESV

Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits.

Luke 6:45 ESV

The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.

Our words are valuable and weighty but we’re being hypocritical not holy if our heart is not behind the words we use to worship God!

Illustration:

Transition:

So our traditions don’t make us holy, our words don’t make us holy

POINT 3:

Avoiding “Bad Stuff” Doesn’t Make You Holy

What Does It Mean?

The Jewish leaders were concerned with certain foods that would make you unclean. Or if you ate with dishes that hadn’t been ceremonially washed you might accidently make yourself unclean by eating off of them.

And Jesus is so funny in his response. I had a student ask me earlier this week if Jesus ever joked around, and here is a great example of Jesus being hilarious. In response to the Pharisees concern about unclean foods Jesus says, if you do eat something unclean doesn’t you just poop it out? It doesn’t effect your heart, so it is not the thing that makes you unclean. And therefore, it’s not the act of avoiding it that makes you holy!

Holiness is not about what goes into your stomach, it’s about what comes out of your heart. He lists a bunch of things that make you unholy:

Mark 7:21–23 ESV

For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

Why is This Important?

There are plenty of things that we should be avoiding as Christ followers because they don’t push us closer to Jesus.

But if your heart is “I don’t listen to THAT kind of music because I’m holy” or “I don’t hang out with THOSE people because I’m holy.”

Then you’re missing it.

Holiness isn’t about intake it’s about outflow.

And all of us are guilty of being more about the show than the substance at times.

What Can We Do About It?

So here’s what you can do:

keep track of what is coming out of your heart. Ask yourself, is this going into my stomach or my heart?

And if you start to see a sin pattern developing do whatever you need to do to eliminate the sin. Be ruthless about your sin.

If out of your heart is coming a constant stream of comparison - she’s prettier than me, he has better clothes than I do - if that’s your thought pattern - destroy whatever is causing it. Get off social media if you have to. Find ways to practice the spiritual discipline of gratitude.

If out of your heart is coming slander and you see that sin pattern - destroy its source. If you can’t talk about other people without slandering them stop talking about people all together. Take drastic measures to eliminate sin.

Illustration:

Transition:

SUMMARY:

Here’s what I told you tonight so nobody gets it twisted:

it’s not our traditions that make us holy.

it’s not our words that make us holy.

it’s not what we avoid that makes us holy.

BIG IDEA:

The Heart Behind Holiness Highlights Hypocrisy

CLOSER:

So if it’s not our traditions that make us holy, it’s not the words we say that make us holy, and it’s not the stuff we avoid that makes us holy - what does? How can we be holy? How can we have a heart that is close to God and that backs up everything we do, everything we say, and everything we avoid?

2 Corinthians 5:21 ESV

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

This is the Gospel. the Good News.

Jesus took your place so that you could have what belongs to him. Jesus lived the life we were supposed to live but couldn’t. Jesus died the death we were supposed to die but didn’t. So that when he rose from the grace after three days we destroyed sin, death, and shame forever.

And when we trust Jesus, his righteousness, becomes ours. And it’s only in Jesus that we can truly be holy and live holy lives.