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Mark 7:1 - 23
He Can Be Gentle

Our Lord doesn't want religious rituals from us - He wants our hearts. Because that's what He wants, He may deal with us either gently or harshly - whichever we need - to bring it about. It would be far better for us to commit ourselves, therefore, to sincerity of heart as we come before Him in worship!

I believe that's the message for us today from Mark 7. Let's learn from it so that He won't have to deal harshly with us.

In the incident before us, as usual, the Pharisees and scribes were bringing an accusation against Jesus. This particular one had to do with His disciples' disregard for a tradition of the elders, the tradition of ceremonially washing hands, wrists, utensils, plates, pots, etc., etc. before eating.

As was the case with so many traditions, this one started out well enough. Its original purpose was to express by one's actions the desire not to be corrupted by anything that may even at one time have been touched, however insignificantly, by a Gentile. In other words, it was done to express the desire to be totally separate from the "unclean" world - to be the special people of God.

In time, though, the tradition became a mere display of religious zeal. Emphasize "display." It was just one item in an entire system of religious zealotry, a system that was like a game whose rules were made by those who stood to gain the most from winning! Those who displayed the most "zeal" by remembering and keeping the most rules thereby assumed positions of esteem, positions in the "inner circle."

It must have been obvious to these zealots, though, that this Rabbi Jesus wasn't going to play their game. They probably thought He didn't care much about separation from the Gentile world. They probably wondered how He could He be so unfamiliar with the thinking of the elders as reflected in their written traditions or even with Isaiah's prophecy that said, "Depart, depart, go out from there, touch nothing unclean; go out of the midst of her, purify yourselves, you who carry the vessels of the Lord!" (Is. 52:11).

To the Pharisees and scribes such a Scripture would make their game mandatory, and surely no one could be a Rabbi and have disciples if he didn't keep the rules. Israel, after all, was a separate and holy nation, and its leaders should make their separation obvious at all times.

But Jesus' answer to these zealots makes it very plain that they were the ones who had missed the point of God's admonishment to holy separateness. They, not Jesus, had missunderstood God's instructions. As we ourselves often do, they had removed Scripture from its context to make it support their traditions.

The truth is that God really does want His people to be separate from the rest of the rebellious world. But - the separation He wants is a heart separation, a separation from the attitudes of the world, a separation out of love to Him - not for the mere sake of separation. To do as the Pharisees, to make a display of it - one that was entirely external - was not at all pleasing to God. It was legalism - a keeping of the law (both the law of God and man-made laws) without any real heart-reference to God.

It's not different for us. God wants heart separation in our case, too, but, if we merely keep laws or rules without the right heart attitude - whether they are God's own holy laws or our own man-made traditions - we're legalistic. If we don't aim at pleasing Him, if our motivation doesn't arise out of reverence and love to Him, then we're hypocrites, and we fail miserably.

The Pharisees and scribes were hypocrites. Their concern with the tradition of the elders was self serving, aimed entirely at achieving esteem among their peers. Jesus told them as much, and they went away with His criticism ringing in their ears. Once they were gone, though, Jesus called the rest of the multitude to Himself in order to teach them more gently the true meaning of separation, a meaning never before taught to them by their teachers.

His teaching on the subject is very, very clear. He tells them that they won't be corrupted by foods that might enter their bodies, nor by eating with unwashed hands, etc. Real corruption would come not from what entered them, but from words and actions that came out from their hearts. Observing or not observing religious exercises would not affect their standing before God. Thoughts and intents of the heart and the actions that proceeded from those thoughts and intents - those would affect their standing.

Are we ever very much like these Pharisees and scribes? I don't believe this incident would be here if we weren't intended to check our own hearts.

Prideful thinking like that of these legalists can come out in us in many ways. Perhaps we think, for instance, that singing the songs of the charismatic movement is the only right approach to worship. Or perhaps we think that singing hymns that are at least 200 years old is the only right approach to worship. Some find it easy to lift their hands in worship, either as a gesture of praise to the Lord or as an expression of desire to receive from Him. Others don't feel at all comfortable making gestures of any kind. But is one way right and the other wrong? Suits and ties, jeans and teeshirts - they don't matter to our Lord - as long as our practices aren't merely for the purpose of "fitting in" (or standing out!), and as long as we don't make unwritten rules about the "uniform of the day!" Externals of worship won't affect our status with the Lord. The communication of our hearts with Him in worship - that concerns Him. Externals are only important as they reflect sincere internals.

Listen to the list of things that our Lord says corrupt us: "For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness." (vss. 21, 22). I suspect that in these few words our Lord summarized most of the evils that can come from a human heart. None of them come from external sources. None of them are inescapable consequences of performing or not performing religious exercises. All of them come from an alienated heart, a heart focused upon self, a heart that may, after all, not love and admire the Lord God.

Our Lord tells us that these heart habits result in "defilement." To the Jew, to be defiled is to join in fellowship and oneness with the world in its alienation from God. In fact, what our Lord said would probably have alarmed His Jewish listeners, because, above all else, the Jew thought of his relationship to God as a member of the chosen race to be entirely distinctive and unique - something no one else had.

And they were right! To join the world is alienation from God - an alienation that places one in the midst of the human rebellion and under the curse of the only rightful King. But our Lord is saying that hearts habitually focused upon self, with no reverence and admiration for the Lord God, hearts from which come "blasphemies," "adulteries," "murders," etc. are just showing that they are in fellowship and oneness with the rebellious world! No amount of religious exercises can erase that curse! It may be covered before men, but it can't be kept from God's sight.

The great question for us is this: are our hearts right with God? Or are they in rebellion against Him internally?  The real condition can be indicated by thoughts and intents, with or without external religious exercises and duties. So - are our deepest concerns reverential and loving toward Him, or would they - if allowed - produce the evils on our Lord's list?

This is not to say that even truest disciples of our Lord do not sometimes think evil thoughts or desire things contrary to their Lord's best for them, but it is to say that their deepest desire is to please Him, and that they continually return to that desire, even if they have to do it by repenting! True saints of God often fail, but again and again they return to Him.

All right, then - How is your heart? Are you truly in love with God as He is revealed in His Son? Ritual won't do. The most obvious conclusion we need to take from this incident in Mark is that our Lord hates hypocrisy, legalism, and anything else that's short of a heart attitude of love to Him. When we go home today, then, let's pray that our Lord would, every day of this week, fill our hearts with pure, unhypocritical love to Him, love that moves us to love and serve others and love Him more and more.

Our Lord is very gentle when it's best for us, as we see here in His dealing with the crowds after the Pharisees departed. We should picture Him calling them to gather around Him as a hen gathers her chicks. We should see Him carefully explaining to them what He had just said to the Pharisees - so that they would understand, so that they themselves might not be lost by falling into the Pharisee's hypocrisy.

Our Lord will deal gently with us, too, if we ask Him to.  Let's ask Him to remove far from us any tendency toward prideful legalism.