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“Clean Hearts”

Allen Dvorak
12/15/24 - Sun AM

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I'll be reading Mark chapter 7, verses 1 through 53.

I'm gonna be reading from the Legacy Standard Bible.

And the Pharisees and some of the scribes gathered around him when they had come from Jerusalem and had seen that some of his disciples were eating their bread with defiled hands, that is unwashed.

For the for the Pharisees and all the Jews.

Do not eat unless they carefully wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders.

And when they come from the marketplace, they do not, they do not eat.

Unless they wash themselves.

And there are many other things which they have received in order to observe, such as the washing of cups and pitchers and copper pots.

In the Pharisees and the scribes asks him.

Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders?

But eat their bread with defiled hands.

And he said to them, Rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites as it is written.

This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.

But in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commands of men.

Leaving the commandment of God, you hold the tradition of men.

And he was also saying to them, you are good at setting aside the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition.

For Moses said, Honor your father and mother, and he who speaks evil of father and mother is to be put to death.

But you say If a man says to his father or his mother, Whatever you might benefit from me is Corbon, that is to say, given to God.

You no longer leave him to do anything for his father or his mother.

Thus invalidating the word of God by your tradition which you have handed down.

And you do many such things as that.

It is very good this morning.

To be with you And to worship with you.

And to teach God's word.

And that's how I've been teaching for the last 2 weeks in little chunks, which is the way you have to do it with some translators, and that was virtually the only way I was able to teach was through a translator.

But I am certainly glad to be back with you.

I have missed the opportunity to sing with you and to see your faces.

To be encouraged as we meet together.

I can't sing with the brethren in Tanzania.

They sing in Swahili.

And I know two words, 3 words in Swahili, Karibou, which means welcome, and as sante, which means thank you.

I never did learn the word for bathroom.

But it makes it difficult to sing.

Uh, the prayers were translated graciously by some translators, but, uh, you feel kind of disconnected from the worship when you can't understand a lot of what is going on.

But it's good to be back with you, and I pray that this morning, some of the things that I will say will make sense.

I spent well over 30 hours traveling the last couple of days.

Some of my thoughts are not very clear right now, but hopefully you'll be able to understand what I'm, what I'm talking about.

One of the things that uh is a consequence of having chickens is that I've become a hand washer.

And by that, I simply mean that anytime I go out to the chicken coop and I gather eggs, or if I have anything to do with the chicken coop, when I come back in, the first thing I do is wash my hands.

And for obvious reasons, chickens can carry some kinds of uh diseases, and so it's important to maintain cleanliness.

So it wasn't all that hard for me when we arrived, Rick, uh Westbrook and I traveled together and he left Moshe, but I went on to Mortoorro and medicine, one of the translators who is involved in a medical field, said, I have some information for you as we arrived late that evening in the hotel.

He said, in Moragoro right now, there are a lot of people who are having intestinal issues.

Uh, diarrhea and that sort of thing, and he said it's important that when you go out and talk to people and shake hands with people, we went house to house, uh, type evangelism, that you wash your hands before you eat anything.

And so I paid close attention to that because I did shake a lot of hands as we were out and about.

And so, being a hand washer was not a difficult thing for me.

I think we have become a nation of hand washers, sanitizers, automatic hand sanitizers are now found in a lot of public places, airports, restaurants, restrooms, even in the church building here.

You will see them, and there are some even in Tanzania, although sometimes there's no sanitizer in them, which makes them less productive.

A lot of you women probably carrying your purses, maybe just a little bottle of hand sanitizers so that if you're out and about and there's no way to clean your hands, sanitize your hands, that you may do so with just a squirt of some sort of substance.

Every year, the flu bugs that make their rounds remind us of the need for sanitation, hand sanitation.

The Pharisees of Jesus' day were also concerned about hand sanitation, but for a different reason, as the reading that Ed did in a few moments ago, uh makes it very clear.

They were concerned about ceremonial cleanness.

Now, they talked about physical sanitation, but for them, that physical sanitation even had religious connotations or implications.

You could become ceremonially unclean and thus not able to worship God.

The way you should.

And so they were very careful, the Pharisees were, to avoid touching anything that was considered unclean.

They considered Gentiles in general to be unclean and anything that had to do with Gentiles or associated with Gentiles.

And so that provides the background for the text that we're going to consider this morning in Mark the 7th chapter as was read to you by Ed just a few moments ago.

I relate very well now to mark the 7th chapter in verse 3, or verse 4 rather, when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash.

And so that's uh kind of what I was paying attention to over the last couple of weeks.

Their concern for cleanliness, for sanitation of the hands had led to some criticism of the Lord's disciples, who the text says were eating with defile that is unwashed hands.

So what I want to do this morning is talk about Mark 7 and note that the emphasis of the Pharisees was at least to some extent, misplaced.

They were concerned about something that really wasn't the real important thing and to encourage us to focus on the cleanliness, the purity that is really much more important.

Well, as verses 1 through 83 of Mark 7 tell us, The Pharisees were criticizing Jesus' disciples because they ate with unwashed or defiled hands.

And Mark explains, since he appears to be writing to a Gentile audience, in verse 3, he explains their custom for the Pharisees, and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands in a special way, holding the tradition of the elders.

In verse 5, it seems though that maybe the disciples had in fact washed their hands, but not in the proper way.

If you look at Matthew's parallel account in Matthew 223th chapter, it'll tell you that they didn't wash their hands according to the tradition of the elders.

Whether that refers to just the idea of washing their hands in general, or whether it had to do with the way that you washed your hands like this, not like this.

Uh, is a little bit difficult to determine, but at any rate, the Pharisees, Pharisees considered the disciples to be eating with hands that were still defiled regardless of what they had done.

And that physical defilement, the fact that their hands were dirty.

Had spiritual or religious consequence.

But Jesus responds to the criticism, beginning in verse 223, by noting the hypocrisy of the Pharisees who would leave the commandment of God to keep their own traditions.

He doesn't talk so much about washing hands, but he gives a different example.

Read along with me in verse 225.

If you will pardon me, I'm going to reread some of the things that Ed read, since this is our text.

He says, Well, did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites as it is written.

This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me, and in vain, they worship me, teaching as doctrines, the commandments of men.

And so for them, the traditions of the fathers were just as valid in terms of religious law as the very laws that Moses had uh delivered for, uh for God.

For laying aside the commandment of God, verse 226, you hold the tradition of men, the washing of pitchers and cups and many other such things, you do.

So it wasn't just that they were observing these traditions as being uh incumbent upon anybody to observe to be acceptable to God.

They were actually setting aside some of God's commandments, so they could keep their own commandments.

And Jesus gives an example there in verse 227 and following.

All too well, you reject the commandment of God, that you may keep your tradition.

For Moses said, here's the law, honor your father and your mother, and you who curses father and mother, let him be put to death.

But you say, if a man says to his father or mother, whatever profit you may have received from me is Corbin, and again, Mark explains to his Gentile audience that that word means a gift to God.

He says, if you say that, then you no longer let him do anything for his father or his mother, making the word of God of no effect through your tradition, which you have handed down, and many such things you do.

This is just one example, Jesus says.

So here's an individual who has declared that whatever he might use to help his parents in their older years as they might need financial help, or you, that's, that's a gift to God and notice the language here.

He says, then you no longer let him do anything for his father or his mother.

It wasn't just you don't have to, you may not use what has been devoted to God, a gift to God.

You can't use that for such a mundane purpose as taking care of your parents.

And so what they did is they basically voided the commandment to honor father and mother by this Can I use the word loophole that they had devised with their own tradition.

And so the consequence was that essentially they set aside God's law to keep their own tradition.

Down in verses 25 and 8.

Jesus says, and when he had called all the multitude to himself, he said to them, Hear me, everyone, and understand.

Here's the principle.

There is nothing that enters a man from outside, which can defile him, but the things which come out of him, those are the things that defile a man.

If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.

Now, the disciples will get some uh uh additional information.

In verse 223, they ask him about the parable, that is the comments that he'd made earlier in verses 226 and 265.

He says, are you thus without understanding also?

Do you not perceive that whatever enters a man from outside cannot defile him in the sense of religious defilement because it doesn't enter his heart, but his stomach and is eliminated, thus purifying all foods.

And he said what comes out of a man that defiles a man.

For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, and evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness.

All these evil things come from within.

And defile a man.

And so Jesus gives this list of some sins, it's not intended, I don't believe to be a comprehensive list to show the extent of the evil that can come out of a man's heart.

What is the application for us?

Well, as I said, we've become a, a, a nation of hand washers.

We're very concerned about our hands being clean, and I think there's legitimate reason for that.

We don't want to get sick.

We understand, uh, from scientific research that that's one of the most common ways of uh communicating disease or germs from one person to another is through physical touch, the washing of, or the shaking of hands and that sort of thing.

So I'm entirely in favor of hand washing.

How many of you still go to all you can eat buffets where you serve yourself at the buffet?

There are a few brave souls here.

Some of you are probably already asleep.

Some of you are just not going to answer.

Because you're ashamed to answer, but some of you had admit, have admitted that you will go and you will ladle onto your plate using a utensil that who knows who has touched, and you put that food on your plate and then you will go and eat with your hands, food that was ladled onto your plate by people who ate with their hands and touched the utensils.

I made a big deal of that cause I wanted your skin to crawl.

I want you to think about the transmission of germs that takes place at the buffet.

Debbie and I confession.

They and I used to eat at buffets some time ago.

But I just about have to drag her kicking and squalling into a buffet anymore.

She just doesn't care to do that because it's just not very sanitary in terms of the transmission of germs.

But I wonder If we are as careful with the condition of our hearts.

Because Jesus' point is, what's more important than just the outward sanitation of our hands or our bodies is the condition of our hearts.

Because if our hearts are defiled, that's going to be reflected.

In our conduct in the way that we behave, and of course the biblical heart is our mind.

Our intellect Sin, Jesus says, originates in the heart, from out of the heart of men.

One of the things that I had the opportunity to teach this last week or the week before that, was that we need to, as Christians become a new person.

We need to put off the old man and put on the new man.

And one of the things we talked about or that I talked about was how do we do that?

How do we transform ourselves into new people?

And the answer is you change the way you think.

You have to change the condition of your heart.

In Matthew the 18th chapter, And in verse 8, Jesus said, And if your hand or your foot causes you to sin, Cut it off and throw it away.

It is better for you to enter life crippled or lame than with two hands or 2 ft to be thrown into the eternal fire.

But I understand Jesus to be speaking in a figurative way here, especially in light of Mark 7, where Jesus says that what defiles a man is not eating with unwashed hands, but having defilement or corruption in one's heart.

So when Jesus says, if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off.

He's not contradicting what he said in Mark the 7th chapter by suggesting that here's where sin originates.

And so if you're sinning with your hand, then cut it off and that'll take care of the sin.

But what Jesus is saying instead is make whatever sacrifice is necessary for you to stop sinning.

Because the thought of cutting one's hand off.

Or as Matthew 5 talks about plucking out one's eye.

Just as an extreme sacrifice.

But that won't solve the problem of sin, cutting off a hand or plucking an eye.

Because that's not where sin originates.

Sin originates in the heart.

James tells us basically the same thing in James the first chapter and verses 26 through 15, where James talks about how temptation arises, how it works.

He says in James 1 and verse 13, Let no one say when he is tempted, I am being tempted by God.

God's not the source of temptation, for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one.

But James says, each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.

Then desire, when it has conceived, gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown, brings forth death.

And so the biblical heart, the seat of emotions and intellect, our minds, that's where temptation comes from.

When we are lured by our own desires, sin originates.

In the heart, Jesus said, out of the heart of man comes those things that defile Him.

And so while it is certainly important for us to wash our hands, sanitation, I'm not saying is unimportant.

I wonder if we're nearly as careful.

About the condition of our hearts.

What we hear.

What we read.

What we watch.

In media Because that's going to determine to some extent the condition of our hearts.

You can't take evil into your heart all the time and expand, expect them to have a good treasure from which you can bring forth good things.

You have to purify the heart.

You got to keep it clean.

The Pharisees were concerned about the cleanliness of their hands.

But apparently they had failed to see.

The uncleanness of their hearts.

In Matthew the 23rd chapter, one of the most scathing rebukes of the Lord of the Jewish leaders in his time.

He says in Matthew chapter 23 in verse 25 and 26, he says, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites.

A hypocrite is an actor, a pretender.

The hypocrite wants to give you an impression.

It's not actually accurate.

He wants to build a facade behind which he can hide and be entirely different.

And Jesus says, for you, cleanse the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.

Some of Jesus' illustrations are almost humorous, if it were not for the seriousness of the topic.

You can imagine as uh the woman of the home or the man of the home as, as he cleans up or she cleans up the table and we've eaten all these dishes and so the, the individual then goes and carefully wipes the outside of the, the cup, leaving whatever dregs of what was drank out of the inside of the cup which the skin crawling again.

I'm not finished.

And there's the plate, and we'll wash the bottom of the plate, but we leave all of the old food, whatever's left on the plate so that it can be used again.

There's There's a scene in one of the Chevy Chase movies.

Where Chevy and his wife are washing the dishes.

And because there's conversation going on, you may miss what's going on.

But Chevy's not even, they're not even washing the dishes.

He's just taking the plates and putting dirty plates back in the, in the cupboard to be used the next time.

That's what Jesus is talking about.

He's talking about people who are more concerned with the appearance of the out, outward appearance of things than they are the, the necessary sanitation of those things.

You blind Pharisee.

First, clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean.

All illustrations at some point break down.

You can't make the outside of the cup clean simply by eating or cleaning the inside of the cup.

But Jesus is now already into the application stage of this illustration.

If you and I will cleanse the inside of our hearts.

Our conduct will also cleanse itself.

It will become pure.

It works from the inside to the outside, whereas the Pharisees were just concerned about the outside and failed to take care of the inside. Continue.

on in verse 27, Jesus says, woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead men, dead people's bones and all uncleanness.

So you also outside.

Outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

And so another illustration.

Tombs that were in the area of Jerusalem would be whitewashed during the time of the festivals, Passover and Pentecost in particular.

So that pilgrims who were coming from other places and maybe unfamiliar with the location of various tombs would not accidentally defile themselves by touching something that was considered unclean, rendering them unacceptable in worship.

And so they whitewashed the tomb.

Place of dead bones.

Corruption A place of uncleanness, but they made it look pretty so that It looked like it might be clean.

The Pharisees focused on the exterior man.

And I believe that Jesus indicated that they must think about the condition of their hearts, and I would suggest to you that we should as well.

It occurred to me over the last couple of weeks that we are people who are much more concerned about sanitation, personal sanitation than a lot of the world is.

And some of that may be that people just don't have access to clean water or sufficient water always to cleanse themselves, but I know that I shower every day.

But I'm fairly certain that I work with people, I, I shouldn't say work with, that makes it sound like Rick and Ed Brand, but I was teaching people who I'm fairly sure were not concerned as much about sanitation.

I wonder if we're concerned as well about the condition of our hearts.

We wouldn't go out in public with dirt on our face if we can avoid it, we're aware of it.

We would make sure that we look clean and Yet sometimes I think we go out into public or among others.

With hearts that are full of evil thoughts.

Sinful desires, sinful attitudes.

What's the condition of your heart?

Is it pure?

Is it clean?

Or have we just sanitized our hands?

And forgotten about the more important issue.

In the sermon on the Mount, Jesus said in the beatitudes, Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

Matthew the 5th chapter and verse 8.

It's interesting that the word that is translated pure there, catharras is the same word that is translated clean in Matthew 23 and in verse 26.

May I read that passage, that verse again to you?

You blind Pharisees, first clean, that's the verb form, uh Caross, the verb form of that.

First, clean the inside of the cup and the plate that the outside also may be.

Pure, clean is the translation.

It's the same word.

Blessed are the clean in heart, for they shall see God.

Those who are citizens of God's kingdom must have clean hearts.

I'm 65.

By the time most of us reach that age or even sometimes somewhat younger.

Our hearts have started to develop some problems.

There are some issues perhaps.

And unfortunately, we can't always take care of some of those issues.

Some of those things are irreversible.

But the beauty of the gospel is that those of us who have Uncleanness in our hearts.

Those uh those of us who are guilty of sin, who have the stain, the blemish of sin against God's law, that can all be wiped clean.

That we can be made pure again.

That's not to say that we don't have to continue to cleanse and purify our hearts, but we can start out as new creatures in Christ.

Watched by the blood of Jesus.

If you need to do that this morning, if you need to respond to the gospel to be forgiven of your sins by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, that you can be pure and holy again.

Then we want to encourage you to think seriously.

About expressing your faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God this morning.

And having repented of your sins, be buried in water with Christ into his death that you can be cleansed and be pure and holy again.

And for those of us who are Christians, Maybe we've worried more about our hands than our hearts.

But God is interested in pure hearts, clean hearts.

And if you need to purify your heart, if it's something that is public, something that you would like to have the, the brethren pray with you, we invite you to come to the front as we stand and sing.