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03/22/2009 - Inside Out, Mark 7:14-23

This morning we continue our series through the gospel of Mark with a teaching I've called Inside Out. If you have a Bible meet me at Mark 7:14-23.

When I was a student in seminary I had to write a major research paper for my Hebrew class on Leviticus 11. I don't think I had ever read Leviticus 11 and if I had I didn't have a clue what was in it. But now I had to read it in Hebrew, translate it into English, write a major paper on it, and then preach a sermon on it too. And when I opened my Bible I just groaned.

Leviticus is the third book of the Bible and chapter 11 is all about the dietary restrictions that the children of Israel had to observe, what food they could eat and what food they couldn't eat. And it's a long chapter too, 47 verses, and filled with all kinds of names of birds and animals and reptiles and sea creatures. And some animals are clean and some animals are unclean.

And it just seemed crazy to me. And I thought to myself, "Of all passages why did I have to get Leviticus 11? How am I going to preach on this?" Then a friend came up to me and said, "Hey, it could be worse. I've got Leviticus 13 which is all about pimples, mold, and mildew. Count your blessings!"

But in Leviticus 11:3-4 God says, You may eat any animal that has a divided hoof and that chews the cud. ⁴There are some that only chew the cud or only have a divided hoof, but you must not eat them.

So animals that could be on the Jewish menu had to chew the cud and have a divided hoof which means God's people could eat beef, but they couldn't eat camel and rabbit because those animals chew the cud, but they don't have a divided hoof.

They couldn't pig either because even though it has a divided hoof, it doesn't chew the cud. So they couldn't eat pork, or ham, or bacon, or sausage, or hot dogs. But they could eat lamb or chicken as well.

If they wanted to eat fish it had to have fins and scales. So they could eat trout or salmon or flounder if they could find them in the Middle East. But anything living in the water that does not have fins and scales is to be regarded as unclean by you, Leviticus 11:12. So they couldn't eat lobster or crab or shrimp or clams or oysters because they had shells not fins and scales.

(Blank Slide) A bunch of birds were unclean like eagles and vultures, ravens and gulls, hawks and owls as were most flying insects that walked on all fours, but not all insects. They could eat katydids and crickets and grasshoppers and locusts like John the Baptist did. Sounds delicious, doesn't it!?

They couldn't eat lizards and rats chameleons and geckos. And if they touched any of these unclean animals or birds or fish when they were dead they would be unclean until evening. And if these dead animals touched their clothes they would have to take them off and wash them. And if one of these unclean animals fell into a clay pot everything in that pot would be unclean and the pot would have to be smashed and discarded. And if a carcass fell on a seed that hadn't been planted that was okay, but if water had already been put on the seed then it was unclean and the seed had to be thrown out.

The whole thing sounded so complex and like a huge hassle to me. And yet it's all in context of holiness. At the end of this long list of do's and don'ts God says in Leviticus 11:44-45, I am the Lord your God. Consecrate yourselves and be holy, because I am holy. Do not make yourselves unclean by any creature that moves about on the ground. ⁴⁵I am the Lord, who brought you up out of Egypt to be your God, therefore be holy, because I am holy.

One way that Israel was to be a holy, separate people was reflected in their everyday diet. Their menu was meant to keep them separate from the nations all around them. And there are all kinds of theories that scholars have suggested for the reasons behind the dietary laws. Many believe they were hygienic and that God was protecting his people from food that carried disease. And that's very possible. Others believe the animals that God called unclean were associated with pagan deities and used in pagan worship and God wanted his people to avoid them. And that's possible too.

(Blank Slide) The truth is that we don't know for sure, but what we do know is that what you ate and what you didn't eat defined who you were. What did and didn't go into your mouth gave you your identity as a follower of Yahweh, the one true God. The dietary restrictions were at the heart and soul of what it meant to be an Israelite, a child of Abraham. And the Jewish people took those restrictions very seriously.

And so over the centuries men, women, and children were killed over the menu and would die before they would desecrate themselves by eating unclean food. The heroes of the Jewish faith were the martyrs who had been tortured and killed for refusing to eat unclean animals, especially pigs.

One of the most famous stories has to do with the Syrian king Antiochus Epiphanes who lived about 200 years before Jesus. He persecuted the Jewish people and desecrated the Temple in Jerusalem by doing the unthinkable, sacrificing an unclean pig on the altar. Then he demanded that all the Jews eat pork and if they didn't they would be killed. And hundreds of them literally exposed their necks and said, "We'd rather die then eat pork." And they were slaughtered like pigs.

The book of Maccabees tells the horrific story of a widow who had seven sons. And they were all brutally tortured to death and dismembered in front of their mother while she cheered them on because they would rather die than eat meat that was unclean.

Why am I giving all this background? Because we need it to understand the highly controversial and explosive statement that Jesus makes in the passage we're looking at this morning. It could cause a riot and cost him his life. One author I read this week said that this is perhaps the most revolutionary passage in the entire New Testament. In one sentence Jesus is going to wipe out the dietary laws that identified the Jewish people. He's going to lift the ban on the menu that thousands of very devout people had suffered and died for over the past 1,500 years!

Look at Mark 7:14-16, Again Jesus called the crowd to him and said, "Listen to me, everyone, and understand this. ¹⁵Nothing outside you can defile you by going into you. Rather, it is what comes out of you that defiles you.'"

Remember in our passage from last week Jesus has been attacking man made traditions like ceremonial hand washing and the washing of cups and pitchers and kettles. He was attacking these traditions for two reasons. First, because these traditions had led people to believe that what's most important to God is what we do on the outside, whether or not we appear clean. So we can jump through all the religious hoops, practice all the religious rituals and even feel good about ourselves, but our hearts can be far from God. And Jesus says that's hypocrisy, that's putting on the mask, that's being one thing on the outside and something totally different on the inside and that does not please God.

The second reason he was upset with these religious leaders was because their traditions had taken precedence over the Scriptures. Their human tradition of Corban gave them a loophole to the fifth commandment,Honor your father and mother. So instead of financially supporting their parents when they were old and dependent, the people were asking the Pharisees to declare their resources Corban which means "dedicated to God."

So assets that should have been used to help aging parents were now off limits and could only be used to support the Temple in Jerusalem. And the Pharisees were encouraging that. It was like, "Give you money to the church, but don't take care of your parents." And Jesus said, "That's wrong. And you do a lot of things like that."

But now he goes after a real sacred cow, literally! He goes after the dietary laws in Leviticus 11 and says, "It's not about what you eat and what goes into your stomach that makes you unclean. It's about what comes out of your heart that defiles you and keeps you at a distance from God."

Look at verse 17, After he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about this parable. ¹⁸"Are you so dull?" he asked. "Don't you see that nothing that enters you from the outside can defile you? ¹⁹For it doesn't go into your heart but into your stomach, and then out of your body." (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean.)

That's a shocking statement that I think deserves a little more explanation than a parenthesis. But that's all Mark gives it here. In one statement Jesus is overturning the dietary laws that have identified the Jewish people for 1,500 years. Jesus is saying that it doesn't matter anymore. You eat anything now, even unclean pigs!

Well it took a long time for the disciples to digest that statement and for the early church to swallow it too! Years later in Acts 10 the apostle Peter will have his famous vision where God drops a sheet down from heaven three times with all kinds of animals and reptiles and birds and a voice will say, "Get up, Peter. Kill and eat."

And Peter will say in Acts 10:14-15, "Surely not, Lord!" Peter replied. "I have never eaten anything impure or unclean." ¹⁵The voice spoke to him a second time, "Do not call anything impure that God has made clean."

Peter and the rest of the disciples and Jesus as well had grown up eating kosher all their lives. That was a huge part of what it meant to be Jewish. There's no evidence that any of them had ever tasted pork or camel or lobster or crab or anything else that wasn't on the menu. But now with one sentence Jesus is changing everything. That's radical.

And even after the vision in Acts 10 it will take a long time for Peter to feel comfortable eating Gentile food. And you can understand why. This was deeply ingrained within his psyche as a God fearing Jew. Why would God change the rules?

So he struggles with it. And years later we read in the book of Galatians that the apostle Paul calls Peter out on this issue because he stopped eating with the Gentiles and by doing that he was sending a mixed message that to have relationship with God you need to keep the Jewish dietary laws.

To which Paul says in Galatians 2:15-16, We who are Jews by birth and not sinful Gentiles ¹⁶know that a person is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ.

After centuries of dietary restrictions Jesus is saying, "You can eat anything now because it's not food that makes you unclean. It's not pork that's the problem. Food just goes from the refrigerator to your mouth to your stomach and into the toilet. It doesn't go into your heart. It's what's in your heart that defiles you. It's the dirt in your heart that needs to be cleaned up."

Look at verse 20, (Blank Slide) He went on: "What comes out of you is what defiles you. ²¹For from within, out of your hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, ²²greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. ²³All these evils come from inside and defile you.'"

This is strong stuff! This is groundbreaking truth! This is something that had never been said before, at least not this way. This is why we all need our hearts to be cleansed. This is why we all need our sin to be forgiven. This dirty laundry list is made up of all kinds of things that keep us at distance from a holy God. And Jesus is saying, "It's not what's on our plate that matters. It's what's in our heart. It's not how clean our hands are that matters. It's how clean our heart is."

And Mark doesn't tell us right away what Jesus is going to do to clean up our hearts. But later on he will. Later on in the gospel we will find out that the dirt in our hearts is why King Jesus will have to die on the cross to satisfy the justice of a holy God against evil and to take the punishment for all this ugliness that's inside your heart and mine. It wasn't inside his heart. His heart was pure, but our heart isn't. You see the line of good and evil doesn't run between nations like Jew and Gentile. For centuries the Jewish people thought they were good and the Gentiles were evil. No. The line of good and evil runs right down the center of each one of us.

And if we're honest with ourselves we know the evil thoughts that we wrestle with and the lust and the jealousy and the hatred and the greed and the malice and the deceit and the lewdness and the envy and the slander and the arrogance and the folly that threatens to control our lives. We know its there. And we struggle to manage it every day. And we will until we finally see Jesus then we will be like him.

But the good news is that even before then it can all be forgiven when we put our faith in Jesus Christ and invite him to clean up our hearts by trusting that his death on the cross was enough to satisfy God's justice, to rescue us from judgment, and to give us life. And when we do he cleanses us from the inside out.

The apostle Paul puts it this way in Titus 3:3-7, At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another. ⁴But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, ⁵he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, ⁶whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, ⁷so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life.

Wow! That's a mouthful of wonderful, liberating truth. Jesus came to rescue us from self-destructing, to cleanse our hearts, to give us eternal life, and to renew us by the Holy Spirit not because of good things that we have done, but by his grace and mercy that he poured out on us through Jesus Christ our Savior. The good works that we do don't earn God's grace in our lives they are a result of God's grace in our lives.

So Paul goes on to say to Titus in verse 8, And I want you to stress these things so that those who have trusted in God may be careful to devote themselves to doing what is good. These things are excellent and profitable for everyone.

Devote yourselves to doing what is good. "It's a win/win," Paul says. Around here we call that making a difference in this world. That's what we're trying to do at Valley View both individually and collectively as a church community. And that's what Carol is doing at PACS and Genny is doing at the Homeless Shelter and Loretta is doing at the Food Pantry in Schwenksville and Beth is doing at the Laurel House in Norristown. We all want to make this world a better place because of what Jesus has done in our lives. And we want to see others come to know and love him as well by having their hearts cleansed, their sins forgiven, and their lives rescued from destruction.

(Blank Slide) This is a powerful passage and it raises some valid questions about how Jesus viewed Scripture, questions that we need to wrestle with. I appreciate what N. T. Wright has to say in his commentary on this passage, "Was Jesus setting aside Scripture? After all, this is where the laws about clean and unclean food come from? Well, yes and no. Yes, the Bible says don't eat pork and lots of other things and Mark is telling us that this doesn't apply any more. But no, Jesus basic point is that the purity laws don't actually touch the real human problem, and that is what the kingdom of God addresses. What happened in Jesus brought the old scriptures, the whole covenant with Israel, to a new completion, a new fulfillment. The scriptures spoke of purity and set up codes as signposts to the reality that Jesus was offering. And when you arrive at the destination you don't need the signposts any more, not because they were worthless but precisely because they were correct!

"Learning to read the Old Testament this way wasn't easy for the early church, and it isn't easy today. The starting point is to realize that the Jewish scriptures aren't to be seen as a timeless code of behavior, but as the story that leads to Jesus. This doesn't mean we can casually set aside bits we don't like or understand. When things are set aside, like the purity laws are here, it's not because they're irrelevant but because the deeper truth to which they pointed has now arrived. Everything the scriptures were getting at reached a peak in Jesus Christ and from now on everything is different. Figuring out that difference, and still remaining loyal to scripture, is one of the key arts of being a Christ follower, then and now."

FOR MORE INFORMATION about Valley View Community Church, feel free to contact us at info@valleyviewseek.org or call 610.631.2707.