In Mark 7, Jesus interacts with Jewish religious leaders. Hear Thomas Terry deliver key insights to understand this message.
Transcript
Welcome to this week’s sermon from Trinity Church in Portland, Oregon. We hope this message inspires you, roots you down deep into the Lord, into His Word, and may His Spirit be your guide as you enjoy this teaching. Thanks for joining us. Here’s the message. This morning’s scripture reading for the sermon comes from Mark chapter 7, and we’ll be reading verses 1 through 13. Now when the Pharisees gathered to Him with some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem, they saw that some of His disciples ate with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed. For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands properly, holding to the tradition of the elders. And when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash. And there are many other traditions that they observe, such as the washing of cups
and pots and copper vessels and dining couches. And the Pharisees and the scribes asked Him, why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands? And He said to them, 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. In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men. And He said to them, you have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition. For Moses said, honor your father and your mother, and whoever reviles father or mother must surely die. But you say, if a man tells his father or his mother, whatever you would have gained from me is Corban, that is given to God, then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father
or mother, thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And many such things you do. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Well, the more popular a person becomes, the more polarizing the public opinion of that person becomes. In fact, in our growing celebrity culture, what always comes with fame and notoriety is a deep and strong opinion of that person. And there doesn’t seem to be any middle ground. Really, if a person is popular, they’re either loved or hated. Rarely will a person be indifferent towards that celebrity. Now, take, for example, Kanye West, known for being a creative genius, loved by his confident ingenuity and arrogant artistry, praised as a dominant force in the world of music and fashion, hailed by people for being prolific and provocative. But the very things that some people love about Kanye are the very things that people hate
Celebrity Culture and Jesus
about Kanye. Hated by half the world for his radical and unfiltered opinions, for his off-the-cuff emotional and mentally unstable rants, for his political views, and of course, his very antagonistic attitude towards Taylor Swift. Yeah. And that’s just Kanye. But it’s not just with him. All types of famous people in our culture are either celebrated or canceled depending on the culture’s perception of that person. That’s just the culture that we live in. But this celebration or canceled culture isn’t unique to our world. It was alive and prevalent in the first century culture. In fact, this is what we see in our text this morning. Jesus was loved by many people, but he was hated by Pharisees. If you remember last week, we talked a bit about the reputation of Jesus, how Jesus was trending in the region. The people loved him because he met the people’s needs, because he was kind and generous and
gracious and approachable, because he was for the people, because he moved among the people, even the most unclean of people, because he was accessible, but because he was powerful. The people loved him because he helped people to know the love of God. And you see, this is the total opposite of the religious leaders of the day. Though they were commissioned by God to help people know the love of God, rarely did that ever happen. They didn’t really seem to care about people. They seemed more interested in judging people, more interested in parading their piety and promoting their religious traditions than pointing them to the love of God. The Pharisees tend to always put themselves at the center of tension. They love to showcase their religion and their righteousness. They love the reputation of being righteous and spiritual. These Pharisees promoted their religious work and created burdens that were far too heavy
for people to bear. But Jesus, on the other hand, promoted true religion. He promoted relief for their religious burdens. In fact, the very reason people loved Jesus was the very reason why he was hated by the Pharisees. The lifestyle and the message of Jesus was such a contradiction to the lifestyle and message of the Pharisees that this created a collision of controversy. And that’s really what we see in our text. That sets the context of this confrontation narrative this morning, this hatred of the so-called Pharisees, the so-called religious Pharisees towards Jesus, the righteous one. And so this morning what I’ve done to help us along in this narrative is I’ve broken it up into five sections. So we’ll look at the attitude, the audience, the accusation, the admonition, and finally the authority. So let’s begin first by looking at the attitude in verses one and two.
The Pharisees’ Confrontation
Now when the Pharisees gathered to him with some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem, they saw that some of his disciples ate with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed. So the Pharisees have a perspective of Jesus that does not in any way correspond with the crowd’s perspective of Jesus. In fact, the Pharisees have viewed Jesus, as Ryan pointed out this morning, as a threat to their religious institution. So they intend to confront Jesus. They want to make an official charge against Jesus and his ministry and his ministers. But historically, Jesus has been too good at dodging their charges. So in order for these Pharisees to do that, they need to bring in some hired guns. They need the scribes, the so-called experts in Jewish theology. Now this isn’t the first time that we’ve seen this scenario in Mark’s Gospel. If you remember, in Mark 3, the Pharisees had reached out to the scribes then to come
down from Jerusalem to accuse Jesus. And during this confrontation, they accused Jesus of being in collusion with Satan, saying Jesus was exercising demons by the power of demons. Of course, this was a bogus charge, and it couldn’t stick. So Jesus ends up masterfully exposing the stupidity of their accusations. And that’s the same type of scenario here this morning. But this time, the Pharisees and the scribes together build a case against Jesus and his disciples. Now it’s subtle, but I don’t want you to miss this. The joining of these two groups to conspire against Jesus reveals the depth of their hatred towards Jesus. It also reveals their inability to intellectually outmatch Jesus or land a legitimate charge. And so what we see here is kind of two against one. They’re ganging up on Jesus, which in most cases would make for an easy fight, but we’ll
see here it’s not. See their attitude towards Jesus was first and foremost hatred. It didn’t matter what Jesus stood for, they just hated it. And it wasn’t just hatred, but it was also an attitude of presumption of guilt. In their bloodthirsty religious self-righteousness, they wanted so badly to accuse Jesus of something. They wanted so badly for him to be guilty of something—anything. But they couldn’t find fault with Jesus before, and they definitely can’t find fault with Jesus now. So instead, they try to find fault with Jesus’s disciples. And in their observation, the only thing that they get is that the disciples are eating with unwashed hands. That’s it. The scribes came all the way down from Jerusalem, almost 80 miles, to build a case against Jesus. They can’t do that. And so they move to the disciples, and the only thing that they can do is call out their
unclean hands. Now, just to be clear, this concern for having clean hands has nothing to do with hygiene. That’s not what they’re getting at. This has everything to do with religious tradition. But why is this an issue with the Pharisees? Why do they leverage this as a charge against the disciples? Well, it’s here where Mark does something so powerful for us, so helpful. Mark takes this slight detour from the flow of the narrative to give us some context, to give us some clarity, and we see that in verses three through four with the audience. For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands properly, holding to the tradition of the elders. And when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash. And there are many other traditions that they observe, such as washing of cups and pots
and copper vessels and dining couches. So this little detour here is actually very helpful for us because Mark recognizes that his audience, the people who would be hearing this narrative or reading this narrative, would predominantly be Gentile. They would be irreligious people. And so he uses accessible language, and it’s so good for us to see this. He knows that the people listening to this account would likely be totally confused about the religious language, the customs of washing hands, and these traditions. And so Mark, in these parentheses, not only defines his terms, but he also unpacks the extent of the religious tradition of the Pharisees. See, Mark is helping his readers to grab hold of the significance of clean hands, that it’s so much bigger than hygiene. And a side note, this is good application for us as a church, so that we don’t assume that the irreligious people in our world will understand the religiousness of Christianity,
the words, the religious words, and the nuances of Christianity. We must, like Mark, help Christianity to be accessible in an irreligious world. So instead of just throwing around big words like sanctification, things like that, take time to explain and unpack what those words mean. Explain that sanctification simply means spiritual growth and maturity. Or maybe instead of using those words, simply say spiritual growth and maturity. Mark makes no assumptions that the irreligious audience would know what these words mean, that they would understand the tradition, so he takes time to break it down in a way that’s made plain for his audience. Spiritual words are oftentimes so much more powerful and helpful. I’ve learned this over the last six years with my own children, and context really does bring a lot of clarity and understanding, and that’s exactly what Mark does here. He says the Pharisees don’t eat until after they wash their hand, not because of hygiene,
but because of religious tradition. They view people and things as spiritually unclean, so when they walk through the marketplace and they bump into unclean things and unclean people, they need to clean themselves up. They view themselves as being touched by things that are unclean, and so the tradition is these religious separatists would wash their hands, and the assumption is that what made them spiritually dirty can easily be made clean by simply washing hands. And they take all this tradition so seriously. It’s not just washing hands. It’s all kinds of things. They wash cups and pots and really everything. This is an expression of their religious piety and their religious separatism, and it’s subtle here, but you kind of get this undertone of Mark’s writing, and this is what I love about Mark. He’s sort of being sarcastic here. He’s saying, look at the ridiculous nature of these Pharisees.
Religious Tradition vs. God’s Law
Not only do they wash their hands, but they wash everything, and so Mark sets some really healthy context for us, and then Mark immediately pulls us back into this conflict narrative in verse five with the accusation, and here’s where we get to the meat of the issue. Verse five, and the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands? So first was the observation, and now here comes the charge. This is what they came up with. Your disciples don’t live according to the religious tradition. You see, they couldn’t find any fault with Jesus, so instead, the Pharisees and the scribes ask Jesus a question concerning his disciples, and the reason why they ask Jesus about the disciples is because in this culture, the rabbi was the one held responsible for the
actions of the disciples, so this here is kind of like a backdoor accusation of Jesus. The way they get to Jesus is through the seemingly recklessness of the disciples, so if they can catch the disciples slipping, if they find fault with the disciples, well, then they can hold Jesus accountable for allowing the disciples to break the religious tradition, so they ask this rhetorical question that’s presented in the form of an accusation. It’s a question, but it really is an accusation. You see, the religious leaders had framed the accusation as if the disciples had somehow broken God’s law, but the law of God was not in violation here. Their accusation was based not on scripture, but tradition, but if this washing of hands is not a violation of God’s law, then why is this even a charge? Where does this come from?
Well, the original intent of their tradition was to be a safeguard for God’s law. In fact, they referred to these types of safeguards as a fence around God’s law, the idea being that if God gives us a law, in order for us to not break that law, we need a trip wire. We need a mini law set in place to keep us from breaking the actual law of God, and that’s what was happening here with this hand-washing issue. See, in the book of Exodus, it was the priests who were commanded by God to wash their hands and feet before they entered the tabernacle. This was all part of the priest’s ritual duties. Of course, God made them do this as a symbol, as a sign that clean hands represented a clean heart, but the Pharisees took what was meant for the priests only and then pushed it into
this universal Jewish practice. They took what was symbolic, and they made it part of this religious oral tradition, and they did this all the time. This was their M.O. with all types of oral traditions, which eventually all these oral traditions made itself into this book called the Mishnah, and we’ve talked about this before, and 25% of the Mishnah alone is dedicated to cleansing and purity practices. So the Pharisees’ accusations could not be held up against scripture, they just couldn’t do it because there’s nothing in scripture that would condemn them in that regard. It could only be held up to the oral tradition. The implication of their accusation is this, your disciples claim to be righteous, but they don’t look righteous. They claim to follow God’s law, but they don’t even follow the many laws that we’ve set in place to keep them from breaking God’s law, so how could they be righteous people?
Based on the logic of these Pharisees, the method for measuring righteousness, the method for measuring the disciples’ righteousness was based solely on whether their hands were clean. See, what an empty and superficial method for measuring righteousness, because you could have clean hands and a completely polluted heart. See, at the heart of the Pharisees’ issue was identity. Their identity was wrapped up not in their quiet and private obedience to God, but instead their identity was completely wrapped up in their public display of righteousness. They needed to look and act the part of righteous, when in reality they were far from righteous. So Jesus does not receive their accusation, and instead gives them a swift and aggressive rebuke, and that’s what we see here in verses six through eight with the admonition. He said to them, well, did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites? As it is written, this people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from
me. In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men, and you leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men. This is heavy. Just the kind of response you get from Jesus when you add religious work or traditions to his free gift of grace. The reason for this sharp rebuke to the Pharisees is because their works-based religious tradition was an attempt to undermine all that Jesus has come to do through his life and ministry. And so Jesus begins his rebuke by saying, Isaiah was completely right about you. In fact, he was dead on when he prophesied about you hypocrites. We see that in Isaiah chapter one. If you have your Bibles, turn with me quickly to Isaiah chapter one. Isaiah in chapter one gives this account concerning the people of Israel and their hypocrisy when it comes to worship.
So starting in verse 11, Isaiah says,
what to me is the multitude of your sacrifices, says the Lord. I’ve had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of well-fed beasts. I do not delight in the blood of bulls or lambs or of goats. Verse 13, bring no more vain offerings. Incense is an abomination to me. Verse 15, your new moons and your appointed feasts, my soul hates. They have become a burden to me. I am weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you. Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood. Now listen to this, verse 16, wash yourselves, make yourselves clean, remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes, cease to do evil.
— Isaiah 1
(ESV)
This kind of response here, you see, you see what Jesus has done?
He has masterfully flipped the accusation of the Pharisees, not only by pointing out their blatant hypocrisy, but he flips the original accusation of not having clean hands. He flips it back on the Pharisees, did you catch it? Jesus appeals to Isaiah who is rebuking Israel for their vain worship, telling them to wash their hands and make themselves clean. Jesus pushes back on these Pharisees by saying, you’re the ones with unclean hands. You’re the one with dirty hands. You need clean hands, not my disciples. And again, Jesus quotes from Isaiah 29, he says, you honor me with your lips, but your heart is far from me, which means your worship is in vain. See here, Jesus gets to the heart of the issue by revealing that the Pharisees had a heart issue. That just because you parade your religious traditions and present yourself as righteous doesn’t mean that you’re actually righteous.
Your works and your worship, it’s just an act. It’s just a play, a performance. It doesn’t come from a genuine or pure heart, which makes all of your worship and all of your religious work bankrupt. He calls them hypocrites because they teach the tradition of men as if it were doctrine to make themselves look good. That’s why they do it, to make themselves look good, which means all of their acts of worship are not really meant for God, but meant for themselves so that they might be worshiped. That’s really at the heart of all this. This is a skill that most legalists use, but see the tone and tenor of Jesus’s rebuke here reveals how exceedingly dangerous it is to do that. It is dangerous to do that. The Pharisees were using acts of worship intended for God and making them all about themselves. God hates that.
Jesus’ Sharp Rebuke
He hates it. Not only do they add religious burdens on the people of God by placing traditions on their backs, they actually place more stock in religious tradition than in God’s law. We see that in verses nine through 13 with the authority. And he said to them, you have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition. See Jesus continues to push in on these Pharisees. He does not let up. That’s how big of an issue this is. Essentially Jesus is saying, you Pharisees have mastered the art and skill of placing tradition above and beyond the commands of God. You become so good at it that you’ve actually convinced the people of God that they must prioritize these traditions above the commands of God, which in actuality is a rejection of God’s law. See the issue here is one of authority.
They’ve placed more authority in tradition than in scripture. And look at how Jesus masterfully addresses this issue of authority. He appeals to the authority of scripture to reveal their authority issue. And we see that in verse 10, for Moses said, honor your father and mother and whoever reviles father or mother must surely die. But you say, if a man tells his father or mother, whatever you would have gained from me as Corbin, that is a gift from God or gift to God, then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you’ve handed down and many such things you do. Now before we dive into the specific scripture Jesus uses here, let me first say that I’m so thankful that this is here because this is another good application for our church.
We need to understand how Jesus deals with authority issues. When we confront false teaching, when we need to correct people biblically, we must appeal to the authoritative word of God. Even if you intend to have any meaningful fruit, appealing to philosophy or culture will not get you the results that you are looking for because none of those things have authority. They’re not authoritative. They don’t have the power to change people. I’m not saying that using philosophy or culture or even tradition is bad. Those might be good things, but those don’t have the power to change the way people, the way people grow. They don’t have the power that God’s authoritative word has. God’s word is the only thing that can pierce the hearts of people. Just so you know, this issue of authority, this is where we are in our modern Christian world.
It’s becoming more and more common for Christians or professing Christians to disregard the authority of God’s word. They might not appeal to tradition, but they do place more authority in experience, in culture, or in their political profits than they do the Bible, and this is very bad. Christians must live in such a way where they are submitted under the authority of God’s word. That’s where we go to, to appeal to everything. That’s it. Jesus here uses two portions of scripture to illustrate how the Pharisees have flipped authority and priority of tradition and scripture. So in Exodus 20, 12, we get one of the 10 commandments to honor your father and mother. In Exodus 21, 17, Moses says, whoever curses his father or mother shall be put to death. So there’s that appeal to scripture. Now, honoring your father and your mother is more than just being respectful.
Though it is, children, you need to be respectful to your mother and father. Obey what they say. So it means obedience, but it also means to care for your mother and father, especially when they’re older and in need. And if you don’t honor your parents, well then for you, you’re in a bad place. But Jesus points to this concept or this tradition called Corban, which is something that Jews, some Jews would use to nullify the responsibility to care for their parents. So Corban was essentially this vow or commitment, a delegation to designate your money to God after you die. So it was like a deferred gift of finances to God, like a trust fund for the temple. And so a lot of religiously sharp Jews who had parents that were struggling either financially or health-wise, who had needs, instead of giving their money to their parents, would
say, Corban, I can’t give you any money because I already said I would give all my money to the church when I die, so I’m sorry, can’t do anything for you. This was a way for young men to avoid their obligations while staying wealthy and to thrive with their money until they died, and of course, it would all go to the church. So Pharisees viewed Corban as an acceptable breach of God’s command. In fact, they actually placed Corban above the command to honor your father and mother because in their mind, they viewed a dedicated gift to God or to the temple as more spiritual, more important than honoring God’s command. Now, not only is that completely cold-hearted and just backwards, it’s also sin. Your allegiance is to the commands of God, not tradition. You are to care for your mother and father. And so what good is a gift of money and resources to God if at the same time, you disobey the
commands of God? 1 Samuel 15, 22 says, to obey is better than to sacrifice. And this here is just one example. Jesus said to these Pharisees, you do all kinds of things like this. All the time, you put more stock in tradition than the commands of God. You are constantly placing tradition above the commands of God. He’s telling these Pharisees, you promote legalism and moralism, and God hates that. The very reason Jesus responds this way is because legalism and moralism attempts to undermine the work of Christ, what he has done in his life and his death and resurrection to give us the free gift of his grace. This is a heavy rebuke to these Pharisees about their legalism. It’s heavy because God hates it. Now, we could look at this conflict narrative in one of two ways. We can simply look at this narrative and see the foolishness and the inconsistency of these
Heart Transformation Over Performance
Pharisees. We could look at this text and see the empty worship and see how God hates hypocrisy and how he rebukes the Pharisees for their legalism, and we can thank God that we’re not at all like those religious hypocrites. We don’t think or act like those Pharisees. Or we could humbly submit ourselves to God’s word. We could see ourselves and our own sin of self-righteousness and legalism in the mirror of God’s transforming and authoritative word. And I do hope you see yourself and your sin this morning in the same way that I see my sin this morning. See, this was God’s perfect and divine plan with his scripture. This is what God intends for us to do, is to see ourself and our own sin in God’s word. It reveals, it exposes, it brings to the surface the sin that is hidden deep in the
cracks of our hearts. Its intended purpose is to turn us, to correct us, to bend us back, because we in so many ways can think and act just like these Pharisees. Can I ask you this morning, are you doing religious works to earn the free gift of God’s grace? Are you placing unnecessary or unbiblical burdens on the backs of God’s people when Jesus has given his life for God’s people to give them the rest from their burdens? I see this all the time in our church, telling people that they’re not Christian unless they vote for this particular president, or how can you be a Christian for voting for that particular president? Don’t do that. I’ve seen it more recently when people say, you’re sinning by not opening up the church completely, by not following the city’s regulations. That’s putting more on the Bible than what the Bible puts on it.
If you’re doing that, stop doing that, that’s legalism. Can I ask you this morning, what does your worship look like these days? Is your worship in vain? Has your religious piety been a performance for the people around you? Do you hate coming to church with your mask on, and then when you get to church, decide, oh, it’s all good, we’re loving people? Are you saying things and doing things that are religiously routine, but you are completely disengaged emotionally and spiritually? Is your heart in the right place when you come to this place? What does your Christianity look like when the world isn’t watching? Does your behavior seem to change when you come around the people of God? If it does, that’s behavior modification, but it’s not behavior modification Jesus desires from you. It’s heart modification, because behavior always follows the heart. Listen, Heather and I, we catechize our kids.
That’s just a fancy way of saying we teach our kids things about God, the truths about God. We teach them about Jesus. We help them to memorize scripture, but our greatest desire for our boys is not that they would simply repeat the things that we tell them, that they would just say scripture, that they would know certain things about God or just do good things, but that their hearts would overflow with love for Jesus. Our hope and our prayer is that their behavior would be an outworking of a heart that has been transformed by the gospel. We desperately pray to that end. That’s our desire for our boys. Listen, this is the Lord’s desire for you. That’s what he wants for you. Not that you would simply know things or that you would behave a particular way, but that you would love him. As a result of loving him, that you would live for him with joyful and obedient hearts.
That’s true religion. Listen, Jesus has done everything necessary to save you. You brought nothing to the table, absolutely nothing, but you have gained everything, everything. You don’t need to work to earn God’s approval. You don’t need to perform to be accepted by God. You don’t need to parade your righteousness. God has made you righteous through his life, death, and resurrection. Have you trusted in this free gift of salvation and forgiveness? Have you come to know the true and living God who offers himself freely? You don’t need to wash your hands to get Jesus. You don’t need to clean yourself up to come to Jesus. All you have to do is take him by faith, trust him, believe who he says he is, embrace him by faith, and he will make you clean. He will give you a heart that beats for him. Let’s pray. Our Father and our God, we thank you that your word confronts and that it cuts deeply.
Your word is surgical and its intended slices is for our healing, for our restoration, that we might be made whole. We pray, God, that your word does that to us this morning, that we would be mastered by it, that we would see the areas in our life where we are putting more stock in our religious work than we are in the work of Jesus Christ. When our worship is in vain, when we parade our righteousness, when deep down inside we know that it’s empty, God, we pray that you would fill our hearts with genuine love for you. Would you give us hearts that beat for you? Would you help us to worship in spirit and truth? Rid us from our religious self-righteousness and our self-sufficiency. We admit we can’t do it on our own. Our works will never please you unless they come from a heart that is genuine.
Give us hearts, God, that beat for you, we pray in Jesus’ name. Thanks for joining us for this week’s sermon from Trinity Church in Portland, Oregon. If you’d like to learn more about us, you can visit our website at www.trinityportland.com.