Inside Out! (or, “The Heart of the Matter”) Mark 7:14-23

Inside Out! (or, “The Heart of the Matter”)

Mark 7:14-23

Introduction: There is the story of a father who told his son to sit down at the table for dinner. The boy was having too much fun playing and ignored his dad. Patiently the father again told him to sit down, and again the child stubbornly refused. Finally, the father said, “If you don’t sit down I’m going to give you a spanking!” The boy sat down, crossed his arms and said, “I’m sitting down on the outside, but I’m still standing up on the inside!”  It is (relatively) easy to do what is expected outwardly, but how are our hearts? When David was confronted with his sin, in his brokenness he saw his need for divine intervention and prayed, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me…” (Ps 51:10; cf. Ps 139:23,24).  In our study of Mark, Jesus has just rebuked the hypocrisy of the religious leaders, holding to the external system of rules that had been developed over the years while neglecting the weightier matters of the heart. They needed a “heart check”!  James got at “the heart of the matter” when he wrote, “What is causing the quarrels and fights among you? Don't they come from the evil desires at war within you?” (James 4:1, NLT). In another place Jesus said, “…out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks…” (Luke 6:45). 

       Did you go shopping on Black Friday? Imagine this. You are circling the parking lot at the Maine Mall, hoping to find a spot so you can get in for that door buster sale for which you’ve been waiting. Finally, you see an elderly couple walking toward their car. Why do they move so slowly? You feel like your getting older just waiting! Then the old man walks around the car and opens the door for his wife. She gets in slowly and buckles up before he closes the door. He hobbles around the car… meanwhile the guy behind you is beeping his horn and waving his hand at you. Finally, the old guy gets in the car, starts it, and seemingly five minutes later starts to back out. By now you’re thinking, “Maybe I’ll get my bargain on cyber-Monday at this rate!” And just as he pulls away, a van zips around the corner into “your” spot!  How do you react? Anger toward the guy who took your spot? Toward the old man who didn’t move quickly enough? Toward that impatient guy behind you? Or, should we focus on our own attitude: was it really that important to get that spot, or even that bargain? What if the old guy’s license plate said, “Combat wounded veteran”? Would it make a difference? Or what if his wife had just gotten out of three months in rehab, and she really wanted to go to the Mall just to do some walking, and something as little as Black Friday wasn’t going to keep her husband from making her day a little happier?  You get the idea, there is always a backstory that we don’t know, we’ve received grace, should we extend grace as well? What would Jesus do? How’s your heart?

The Maine* Idea: When God gives us a new heart in Jesus, our life will change, from the inside out!

I. The principle stated: Superficial rules can’t change hearts (14-16).

¹⁴ And he called the people to him again and said to them, "Hear me, all of you, and understand:  ¹⁵ There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him."  ¹⁶ [“If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear!”] 

       As our passage opens, Jesus turns from the leaders who He had just rebuked, to the crowd, and He speaks a short “parable” that has a spiritual point. The question of the Pharisees in Mark 7:5 had been addressed only in part: Why do some of your disciples not wash in the traditional way? He pointed out the foolishness of supplanting the Word of God with their traditions: they followed human traditions, yet neglected the Spirit of the Law!  After all, the Gospel He preached focused on faith in Christ and trusting in His grace, not man’s traditions! Their traditions were superficial, focused on external rules and regulations. They somehow had come to believe they would be able to earn God’s favor. The Gospel, on the other hand, acknowledges our depravity and our total inability to earn God’s favor. After all, as Jeremiah said, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked, who can know it?” We need a new heart.

       Have you heard the story of the little girl who wasn’t feeling good and was taken to the doctor for a check up…

A grandmother took her four-year-old granddaughter, Amanda, to the doctor's office because she'd been running a fever. The doctor looked in her ears and said, "Who's in there, Donald Duck?"

Amanda said, "No!"

Then the doctor looked in her nose and said, "Who's in there, Mickey Mouse?"

Again she answered, "No!"

Finally he put his stethoscope on her heart and asked, "Who's in there, Barney? [the purple dinosaur!]"

Amanda replied indignantly, "No, Jesus is in my heart. Barney is on my underwear!"

Most of us probably don’t have Barney on our underwear (I hope!), but is Jesus in your heart? If you have trusted Christ as your Savior you have a new life. Paul said “If any man be in Christ—a New Creation!” (2 Cor 5:17).  When God gives us a new heart in Jesus, our life will change, from the inside out!

II. The principle explained: What we eat or drink doesn’t make us “unclean” (17-19).  What goes in our mouth is neutral, in itself it has no spiritual implications.

¹⁷ And when he had entered the house and left the people, his disciples asked him about the parable.  ¹⁸ And he said to them, “Then are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him,  ¹⁹ since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.) 

       When Jesus confronted the Pharisees about the hypocrisy of their man-made rules that neglected the heart, he was always gentle and careful not to offend, right? Not exactly. After all, they were the supposed experts in the Law, the supposed “shepherds of Israel,” and they should have known better. So He pulled no punches. Listen to this, from Matthew 23:23-33,   

²³ "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others.  ²⁴ You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!  ²⁵ "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.  ²⁶ You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean.  ²⁷ "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness.  ²⁸ So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.  ²⁹ "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the monuments of the righteous,  ³⁰ saying, 'If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.'  ³¹ Thus you witness against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets.  ³² Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers.  ³³ You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell?

As we read that it is important to remember that Jesus is God, He knew the hearts of His audience, including the religious leaders! We only see the outside, God knows the heart. Rather than seeing this as motivation to judge what we perceive to be hypocrisy in others, we need to use this text as a mirror and turn it on ourselves. Remember Jesus, after the resurrection, asking Peter (the man who denied Him) “Peter, do you love me?” We need to ask ourselves, do we love Him? Really? How then should we live?  Paul said in Romans 12:9, “Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil; cling to what is good.” The Proverb says, “Above all else, guard your heart, for from it are the well springs of life…” (Prov 4:23).

       Mark says that “When Jesus entered the house his disciples asked him about the parable.” My first reaction when I read that was, “What parable?” Jesus’ teaching in vv.14-16 seemed so transparent, it seemed to me self-evident. But apparently this was a little like Nicodemus in John 3, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus was speaking to Nicodemus about spiritual birth, and he wasn’t elucidating the human digestive process to the crowd and to his disciples!  He was speaking about the actions that proceed from the attitudes of our heart. What comes out of us in terms of our attitudes and actions?  That is the point in this passage: When God gives us a new heart in Jesus, our life will change, from the inside out!

III. The principle illustrated: Sin is a matter of the heart, it comes from the inside out (20-23).

²⁰ And he said, "What comes out of a person is what defiles him.  ²¹ For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery,  ²² coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness.  ²³ All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person."

       Notice that the “sins” Jesus points to here focus on our sins that typically involve or affect other people… (focusing on 5-10 of the Decalogue). We see sexual sin, murder, adultery, coveting envy… Ultimately all sin is against God, but our relationships with other humans expose what is really in our hearts. God promised through Ezekiel a new covenant that would include a change in our hearts, and so result in changed lives. He said in Ezekiel 36:25-27,

I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you.  ²⁶ And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.  ²⁷ And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

Notice that it begins with cleansing, God pronouncing us righteous by His grace. That is justification. This New Covenant also includes regeneration, a new creation that includes a new heart. It also speaks of the gift of the Spirit, God himself who is with us and in us, to guide our new heart in making choices and decisions that bring glory to God. That is practical sanctification, growing in holiness. When I read this my mind went to Galatians 5 and the contrast between the works of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit. We read in Galatians 5:16-25,

¹⁶ But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.  ¹⁷ For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.  ¹⁸ But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.  ¹⁹ Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality,  ²⁰ idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions,  ²¹ envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.  ²² But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,  ²³ gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.  ²⁴ And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.  ²⁵ If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.

Notice that there is a statement in v.16, and then an admonition in v.25.  Do any of you ever use a GPS when you drive? I do it all the time. Sometimes I decide to take a different route than the GPS is suggesting.  For example, if I am going to Sawyers Island it still wants me to take the Gacklin Road!  My GPS is not fully trustworthy, but our new life in Christ comes with a guidance system we can trust. It includes a new heart, and it comes with a GPS… God’s Presence in the Spirit! If we “walk in the Spirit,” recognizing His presence and yielding to His guidance, we will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. V.25 reminds us that our will is involved, “…let us walk in the Spirit…” We need to trust the Spirit and not override God’s GPS! We can trust Him, and the fruit of the Spirit will be evident in our lives.

        We read in Luke 6:43-45 that Jesus said,

“For a good tree does not bear bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit.  For every tree is known by its own fruit. For men do not gather figs from thorns, nor do they gather grapes from a bramble bush. (45) "A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks…”

A pure heart comes from spending time in the Word of God and allowing the Spirit to apply the truth and to expose sin and cleanse us. The transformation is ongoing, and it happens from the inside out. People will notice by the way. Like it or not, if you name the name of Christ, you are a living letter, seen and read of men. We are His witnesses, good or bad, effective or ineffective.

What is God saying to me in this passage? When God gives us a new heart in Jesus, our life will change, from the inside out! In His sermon on the Mount Jesus said in Matthew 5:8, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” I like the way The Message puts it, "You're blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right. Then you can see God in the outside world.” That is the heart of the matter! A new heart in Jesus, and our life changed and changing, from the inside out!

What would God have me to do in response to this passage?  Do you ever find yourself “sitting on the outside, but still standing up in your heart”?  I think most of us do, at one time or another. Why is that? Could it be that we too easily neglect the inner matters of our hearts?  Let me read an excerpt from a letter written on October 2, 1840 by Robert Murray M’Cheyne to a young man leaving for missionary service in Germany.

“…I trust you will have a pleasant and profitable time in Germany. I know you will apply hard to German; but do not forget the culture of the inner man – I mean of the heart. How diligently the cavalry officer keeps his saber clean and sharp; every stain he rubs off with the greatest of care. Remember, you are God’s sword – His instrument – I trust a chosen vessel unto Him to bear His name. In great measure, according to the purity and perfection of the instrument, will be the success. It is not great talents God blesses so much as great likeness to Jesus. A holy minister is an awesome weapon in the hand of God…”

M'Cheyne seemed to understand that fluency in German was not as important as intimacy with God. Yes, missionaries need to learn the language of the people they are going to minister to, and they need to study the culture so they can be more effective in reaching them. But most important is nourishing their own relationship with God. You can't impart what you don't possess! I know from experience that a growing, intimate relationship with God is something that we cannot assume, and it is indispensable for life on the mission field. That goes for home missionaries as well, people reaching out to their friends, relatives, and neighbors.  There is no better time of the year to shift the conversation to spiritual things. Think of the questions Mark has been answering week by week: Who is Jesus? Why did He come? What does it mean to follow Him? We have some activities coming up relative to Advent and Christmas, including the program we are planning for December 9^th and 10^th. What a great opportunity to invite someone to come with you and to see the presentation and hear the message of the coming of the Savior of the world!  Amen.