The King’s Conflict: The Root of Rebellion

Mark 7:14-23

Transcript

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Can you guys hear me? Yeah, there I am. Um it's good to see you this morning. Thank you, Matthew, for for leading us in in prayer and uh for our students this morning at Bee Reach and and uh next week as well. Man, we are really uh really blessed to have Matthew and Taylor. I don't know if y'all know that, but we're so blessed to have that couple in our church family, and uh they really do such an amazing job. Of course, you see Taylor up here all the time, and and she does a great job leading us in worship, but uh they do an amazing job with our students too. And um, you know, I I I have a student of my own in that class, right? And uh I trust them and I'm so excited about what they're doing and how the Lord's uh leading their life. We are just abundantly blessed to have that family, and um, so uh thank you guys, thank you, Matthew, for for sharing this morning. If you don't know Matthew and Taylor, you need to know them. So have them over for dinner for a free meal, and they will come and they will eat and they will get to know. And um, yeah, no, get get to know them. And um uh yeah, we're again we're just we're just I can't say enough about them. So blessed to have them. Um please do be plump praying this week for our BCM students, and and hopefully Matthew can can post that that prayer guide or that um whatever it is where you can you can actually pray at the same prayer chat. That's what that's the word I think I'm looking for. Um and you can actually look as they're having this conversation, somebody's in that van, updating that chat, and you can pray in real time uh for that person, that conversation that's having at that moment. Um so do that. Get on there and um and pray for these students uh this week, um, for their safety, for their growth, for uh certainly for gospel conversations that the Lord will bless. Um and and we're just as much a part of of what they're doing by being here and and praying for them. You know, it matters, it matters what we do here um while they are gone. And of course, we we miss them not with us this morning, and probably a lot of them won't be here next week either, but um, but we're we're thankful for them going, and and I just ask you to to pray for them. Um and and then I I'm really excited about too. I'm not trying to sit resay everything Matthew said, but I'm I'm excited about these things and uh excited about our students going to Ridgecrest um uh Friday. And and they also won't be with us next Sunday, but uh but we're we're thankful that they'll be there and growing in the word. And I I don't some of you may have gone to Ridgecrest growing up. Um I I know Mariah did, me and Mariah, but um I don't know if any of you others may have, but um it was uh for me, you know, such a um such a game changer for uh for my faith growing up, um and and and for many others as well. And so uh I'm just praying for the Lord to move in in really mighty ways um this this coming weekend. So uh you'll be praying for them as well. So uh let's turn to Matthew, I'm sorry, Mark chapter uh seven, Mark chapter seven, and we'll get started in the word this morning, uh continuing our study through uh this wonderful gospel of Mark that the Lord has preserved for us. And um, as we opened uh chapter seven last week, uh we saw that the religious leaders, um as the scribes and the Pharisees, are once again they're coming against Jesus and they're trying to trap him in front of a crowd. And so they're always trying to trap Jesus. Remember that the goal of the leaders at this point in Mark is really they're trying to find a way to put Jesus to death. The hatred and the hardness of heart has grown to the point of they are plotting his death. And so um, they're not coming with sincere questions here uh to Jesus, but with hardened hearts, with wicked motives, um, uh trying to trap Jesus. And and so we we've entitled, we've titled these two weeks, last week and this week, as uh the king's conflict, because there's one conflict that's that's being um in view here in these these first 23 verses. Uh but last week we looked at the first part and uh we subtitled that The Trap of Tradition. The Trap of Tradition. In this chapter, uh they really think that they've got him. They've got Jesus again, as they they look and they see Jesus' disciples eating with hands that were not ceremonially or ritually washed. And um that's what the Pharisees would have required of the people, is that they would do this ceremony of hand washing uh before uh before they would eat. And they see that his disciples are not doing that. And remember, Jesus' disciples are not violating God's word in this passage, but they were violating the uh tradition of the elders that we we spent a lot of time talking about last week. That was an oral tradition from the Jewish scribes that the leaders had wrongly come to view as just as important and sometimes more important even uh than God's word. And so they put those things on par uh with God's word. And our focus last time was on their tendency and ours to elevate our own traditions, right? And whether they be uh written or oral uh rules passed down, uh, just like these guys, or maybe it's just silly preferences that we have in church services or about uh certain things in the church, or even our own feelings sometimes can serve as our traditions that we elevate. And so we we focused last time on the danger of elevating those uh traditions to an inappropriate place of equal to or even greater than God's word, and we really live off of those things more than we live on God's word. And uh, the underlying issue in those first 13 verses, Jesus is going to make even more apparent in our verses this morning. And this is it, this is that underlying issue. God looks at the heart. He looks at the heart. We we cannot make ourselves clean before God by following a list of rules and external acts. I'm I'm really glad you're here this morning, but that's not earning you brownie points with God. Understand, we we do not follow a list of do's and don'ts, and that justifies us before God. Uh what really makes us unclean before God is the state of our hearts. And God looks at the heart, and that's gonna be our focus this morning as we look at uh kind of the second part of this, the root of rebellion. And so, if you'll stand with me, we're gonna read verses 14 through 23 here in Mark chapter 7. And he called the people to him again and said to them, Hear me, all of you, and understand. 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. And when he had entered the house and left the people, his disciples asked him about the parable, 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, since it enters not his heart, but his stomach, and is expelled. Thus he declared all foods clean. And he said, What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart come of man come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person. Let's pray. Father, we uh just thank you this morning for who you are. We thank you that we get together this morning as a church family. Father, we miss those who aren't with us. Um, we miss those who are at Beach Reach uh this morning. We pray for them, fathers, we already have, but we we just continue to just pour our prayers out on them, Lord, for those gospel conversations, for boldness, Lord, for that they would be able to see the fruit of their labor uh this week and that you would give them strength uh to get through these nights, press on um and have those difficult conversations with with people that that didn't come to have them. So uh, Father, just give them the boldness to do that and just cover them with your grace and your mercy and your love. I pray that each of those students would just be overwhelmed with a sense that they are yours this week and and just be able to walk delightfully um in that truth and walk out in boldness. Father, I pray for our time uh this morning together as we open your word, Lord. You know I don't have the words to speak, and nobody needs to hear my words, Father. We want to hear from you, and uh, Lord, we pray that we would. We pray that you would move me out of the way, that you would speak to your people, um, that you would do Holy Spirit things uh this morning, uh, Lord, that you would move supernaturally amongst this body and in our hearts. Um we love you and we pray that you be glorified by this time together. And we ask all these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. You can have a seat. Well, before Jesus launches into uh this section on what truly defiles a person before God, the last thing he says publicly to the Pharisees in this section is in verse 13 that we looked at last week. He says, You have made void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down, and many such things you do. The Pharisees had fallen into a system of trying to justify themselves by following a huge, burdensome list of external rules. Uh, this is called legalism, as we talked about last time. And uh we all have this tendency. You and I both, uh, and and along with these Pharisees, have that tendency towards legalism. If I just do this, this, and this, maybe everyone will think I'm good, and maybe God will be pleased uh with what I've done. But Jesus reveals that that way of legalistic thinking does nothing to change our standing before God. Yes, we may fool others, but God is not mocked, and God is not fooled by our legalism. The real issue is the heart of man that has to be dealt with. The heart of man. Jesus in verse 14 caused the crowd to himself now to speak. Um, evidently the Pharisees and the scribes were no longer now a part of this conversation because of probably their heart and hearts. You know, they didn't they had not earned uh the right, they had not shown the humility to be a part of this closer group. And Jesus draws the people in and gives them a radical revelation. That's going to be our point, first point this morning. Now, again, these are people who grew up in a system of religion where they were told, you must follow all of these external rules in order to be clean. That wasn't the heart of Judaism, as we'll see here in these verses and this morning, but it was what Judaism had become under the scribes and Pharisees. And Jesus completely shatters that way of thinking in verse 15. He declares, Hear me, all of you, and understand, 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. Jesus, for these burdened people who were who were trying their best to stay clean by avoiding certain people or foods or locations, they were trying to check all the boxes, they were doing all these ceremonial washings in case something had defiled them. He completely redefines what clean is for them. He says, being clean is not about what goes into the body or washing off your body, but it's about what comes out. Now, this was a radical revelation to this crowd. Now, before we go any further, let me let me just address that if you're using the ESV this morning, which I'm reading from, or another modern translation, you're gonna notice that the text skips from verse 15 to verse 17. Anybody see that when you're reading? It skips from 15. Nobody saw it? I shouldn't have even brought it up. I'm sorry. Well, if you look at your Bible, if you're if you're in the ESB this morning or some of the modern translations, you're gonna see it skips from 15 to 17. And somewhere at the bottom of the text, uh you'll see a note about verse 16 saying something like this. Uh some manuscripts add verse 16, uh, which says, if anyone has ears to hear, let him hear. And so Jesus has said that many times, right? We've we have seen uh Jesus make that statement. If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear. He's made that statement on numerous occasions. That's certainly in line with something that Jesus would say, but the fact is that in our earliest and best manuscripts, that phrase is not in this passage. So it's not in all of our manuscripts. Uh now don't let that discourage you. The presence or absence of that phrase uh really doesn't change the meaning in any way of this passage. And be encouraged that there is no, that's what we call a textual variant. So it's different from one manuscript to another. It's here in this manuscript, it's not here in another manuscript. And we have over 25,000 manuscripts of the New Testament so that we can compare with each other and make sure that we have the correct text. So having this abundance of manuscripts, even if they're slightly different in different places, we can compare all of them with each other, and it gives us a more sure idea of what the text was saying. So this is called a textual variant, and you can be encouraged that there's no textual variant in any of our manuscripts, um, in any passage that affects the real meaning of those passages, and certainly that affects our faith or any tenets of our faith. But as we discover more and more and better manuscripts, and closer to the time of writing manuscripts, uh, we can be more sure of exactly what the text says. So the more we do that, the more sure we are that our English text in front of us is pretty much exactly what they wrote, except they wrote it in Greek. So we can be sure that we have what Mark wrote. And so most scholars have concluded that the phrase in verse 16 was not original based on comparing those tons and tons of manuscripts. Again, completely insignificant to the meaning of the text, but something worth mentioning, even if you didn't notice it, it's worth pointing it out. Um, and honestly, it's an opportunity to boast about the sure word that you have in front of us. You can be sure that you have uh the word of God in front of you. And I'll be glad to explain that further after if you're interested in going deeper with that. But but don't let that disturb you this morning. If you saw 15 and then 17, like what are they trying to hide here? Nothing, no, they're not trying to hide anything, but I just wanted to clear that out. Uh clear that up. But um, let's get back to the main point of the passage here. Jesus has redefined cleanness for this crowd. Uh see, because of the tradition of the elders, the idea that cleanness comes from washing or not touching or not associating or not eating or other external acts, that was ingrained in these people. It's hard really for us to understand how ingrained it was in these people. And, you know, God did institute some of those things. Not nearly all of those things that they followed. A lot of those were tradition. But some of those ceremonial and dietary laws in his word, you know, he prescribed for the Jewish people to obey. And the reason he did that is to help his people see the gap between himself, holy, holy, holy, perfect and us, unworthy, unclean. We are unclean. He is perfectly, utterly holy in us. We are sinful in our nature and unclean. And so these ceremonial and dietary laws, a part of the reason for that was to show that contrast between himself and us. Sin is a barrier between us and God. And those laws were meant as a symbol to reveal that to us, to be a constant reminder to us, and also to point us to the one who would ultimately remove that barrier. And we're going to talk about that this morning. They were not meant as a means for salvation, as a way to say, okay, I've checked the list and now I'm clean before God. Nor were they to be added to, like the Pharisees had done. They had added so many rules to the people, to where this really had become such a burdensome religion. So Jesus kind of rocks their world with his statement that it's what comes out, not what goes in, that makes someone unclean. That thought had been lost in the ritual and the tradition of Judaism. But this actually was not a new teaching at all. This is all over the Old Testament. The Old Testament always testified to what Jesus says here. God looks at the heart, not the externals. Let's look at some of the verses that say this. 1 Samuel 16, verse 7. But the Lord said to Samuel, do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees. Man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart. This is when David sinned, and this is his prayer of confession and repentance, for you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it. You will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit. A broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. That was all over the Old Testament as well as the new. Proverbs 4, 23, keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life. Joel 2, verse 13, rend your hearts and not your garments. Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and he relents over disaster. Don't rip your clothing. Rend your heart, he says. Bring your heart back to God. That is true mourning, humbling yourself before the Lord. And we could go on and on and on because this is a consistent testimony from the beginning. It is the heart that defiles. God looks at the heart. External actions are only of value in as far as they reflect the state of the heart. But sin flows from within. Again, this had been lost in tradition somewhere along the way, which is what made this such a radical statement. Now, before we just move on and think this is only their problem, let us consider that we still tend to think this way very much. Sin comes from our circumstances, not from me. Not from us. In fact, that's kind of the focus of modern psychology. Psychology. Right? Let's figure out what circumstance in your life led you to be the way that you are and act the way that you act and make the decisions that you make. Because the problem can't be you. It had to be something outside of you. We're always looking for someone or something outside of ourselves to blame. And you probably do this in small ways, right? Maybe in really big ways. Right? It's never my wife's fault. Or it's never my fault. It's got to be her problem, right? It's got to be, it's got to be her thing. It's my kids. It's not me. Surely I didn't do anything to contribute to this.

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So we're always looking outside of ourselves to blame. To blame someone. No different than what the Pharisees did. They were looking outside of themselves to both blame and justify themselves. The testimony of Scripture, though, is that the problem is actually internal. It's a problem of the heart. We have a rotten heart, a rotten reservoir. And that's going to be our next point where Jesus unpacks this a little bit further. In verse 17, the scene goes from a crowd around Jesus to now inside a house with just Jesus and his twelve disciples. And this is now a private revelation with just the twelve. Now, Matthew 15 is a parallel text to this. It's the same passage but in Matthew, and it has a couple of other details. And it says that the disciples came to Jesus and asked, Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying? Heard what you just said? Do you know that the Pharisees were offended? That seems like a pretty silly question. Do you know Jesus? Right? That's a pretty silly question considering all that they had seen from Jesus. Of course, Jesus knew. Of course, he knew exactly what the Pharisees both said and thought. He knew the depths of their hearts. And Jesus has a reply to that question, and we're going to come back to that in a third point. But then Peter asked Jesus to explain the parable. He had just spoken to the crowd. And Jesus seems a little bit frustrated with the question. To explain the parable. He says in verse 18 here, then are you also without understanding? He knows, but it's hard to believe. Like all that you've all that you've heard me teach. How could you not understand that external rituals do not make a person clean inside and right with God? I think that goes to show just how ingrained this kind of thinking was because of the Pharisees' tradition. It was so ingrained even in his disciples that it is about ceremonial cleanness. It's about external acts. That's what makes me right before God. It was so ingrained in them. But Jesus is patient with them. And in his patience and his grace, he explains once more. And he says, Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, since it enters not his heart but his stomach and is expelled. Now, Mark has a little parenthetical statement here. We're going to come back to that in verse in our third point as well. But for now, let's keep going. Jesus is saying that what goes into the mouth simply goes through the stomach and comes out the other end. That's what he's saying, right? It goes in the mouth, it comes out the other end. It's not food that defiles a person because food doesn't affect the heart. The heart is being used here now as a as not the physical organ of your heart that pumps your blood, but as a symbol for the rational, intellectual, decision-making element of a person. You might say the inner man, right? The inner man. And the heart is commonly used in scripture to indicate what's really going on inside. He says that food cannot affect the heart. Matthew, the parallel passage, chapter 15, verse 20, makes it even more clear. To eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone, he explicitly says, because that's the issue at hand, remember, from last week. Jesus goes on here in Mark 7. What comes out of a person is what defiles him, for from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness, all these evil things come from within, and they defile a person. He says it's what comes out of a person that defiles him. In Matthew, it says it's what comes out of the mouth. And I think it says it here too, actually, because the mouth is obviously where a lot of our evil thoughts and intentions end up escaping, isn't it? They come through the mouth as sin. In fact, Jesus says in Matthew 12, 34, out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. The mouth speaks what is in your heart. Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. What Jesus is implying is that the human heart is our main problem. That's where the evil lies. And out of that evil heart and evil desires, that's the first one mentioned here, evil thoughts. Out of those evil thoughts proceeds all kinds of wickedness. Sexual immorality, thefts, adultery, and much, much more. The problem is not, the problem is not that your circumstances are bad. The problem is not ceremonial uncleanliness. The problem is not other people. The problem is you. Not because I squeezed the bottle. Because what was in the bottle? Coke was in the bottle, right? Because coke was in the bottle. Yes, the squeeze applied a test, but what came out was what was in. What is inside is what matters, and what comes out when the pressure is applied. Now, Jesus isn't suggesting that external circumstances have no effect or that they don't matter, but that the deeper problem is the evil rooted in your heart. I don't want you to think that nobody else ever does anything wrong, right? That's not what I'm suggesting today. I'm not saying that your circumstances don't matter at all and they don't apply pressure and temptation. Certainly they do. But what comes out is what is in. It's what's in our hearts. The pressure is applied, and it comes out. The problem is the evil rooted in our hearts. This was also not a new idea. Jeremiah 17, verse 9. The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick. Who can understand it? That's one of my favorite verses. I'm ashamed to say. You're probably judging me for that, but because it just tells me how evil I am. But that's why it's one of my favorite verses. Because I need that reminder. You know, we love to put uplifting, joyful Bible verses on our walls, right? Come unto me, all who are weary and heavy laden, I will give you rest. I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength. John 3.16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only son. Right? Well, might I suggest Jeremiah 17, 9 for your wall? Can I just make that? I'm just gonna throw that suggestion. Now I've been trying to talk my wife into it for some time now, but it's still not on our wall. It's still not there. They still don't make it at Hobby Lobby. I still have not seen it, and I'm very disappointed. Someone make that, please. I will hang it on my wall. Make it pretty, and I will hang it on my wall. And then we'll start selling them, and everybody will hang it on their walls, right? We need a constant reminder of our tendency to chase sinful things and crown ourselves king over our own kingdoms rather than giving Jesus his rightful place. You need that reminder. I need that reminder. We need to be aware of what we're capable of and understand that in every single heart lies the seeds of every possible sin, which must be rooted out by something. We're gonna get to that. What if we saw our marriage problem as first of all a me problem? What if my struggles in parenting I saw first as a me issue? What am I doing here? Where is my heart? What if that unforgiveness we struggle with, or that that strained relationship, was first of all my issue and not just a result of what they have done? Again, that's not to say the external circumstances don't matter and don't shape us and don't affect us all. But what if your number one issue is not your upbringing or what everyone else is doing to you, or the current circumstances that that might be causing real suffering in your life? What if that's not the main issue? But the main issue is your wicked heart. That's not a fun message this morning. I know. These last two weeks, not as fun. There is good news here. All right, we're gonna get to the wonderful news, but we need to first sit and examine the bad news first. I am not good, and there is no good in me. There's no such thing as a good person. James 4, verses 1 and 2 explains this even more clearly. We read James 4 earlier in worship. We read the remedy, actually. Um, we read the remedy. Um, and we're gonna talk about the remedy a little later, but let me let me tell you what James says is the problem. What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this that your passions are at war within you? Isn't that your marriage problems, really? Your passions are at war within you. You're the king, you're the queen, and it must be your way. Is it not this that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. And James goes on from there to explain our condition. Um I've I've heard it said, um I didn't come up with this, but I've heard it said, I do what I do because I want what I want. I do what I do because I want what I want. We have evil desires, we act on them, and death is the result. Death to relationship, death to peace, death to freedom, death to purity, death to all sorts of things. Jesus lists several of these simple actions and attitudes here. Sexual immorality, that is any sexual act outside of marriage between a man and a woman. Adultery, that's sexual sin in which one party is married, right? Evil thoughts, that's where it all starts. That's that's the root. He actually says that one first. Theft, murder, coveting, or similar, envy, which literally in the Greek means evil eye, an evil eye. Deceit. We lie to keep out of trouble or make ourselves look better. Slander. Again, we slander so that we look better. We tear down, we say things and arguments that we cannot get back. Slander, foolishness. It's just tossing wisdom to the side. Pride. Wasn't that the root of most of our sin? Pride. We're the king. We're constantly fighting God for the throne of our hearts, thinking that our desires will really lead to life. And calling God a liar. Now you wouldn't just say God's a liar, but don't you do it every day when you choose to follow your feelings instead of what God's word says? When you choose to be the king of your kingdom, rather than making him the king in that moment. And there are all kinds of moments that test that every single day. But there can be only one king. There can be only one king of your heart. If it's not Jesus, it's me. If you think about most relational problems in your life, they spring from you just wanting to be king. Your way is better, and everyone needs to recognize that and serve you. It's just pride. And Matthew also, in his parallel account, he adds bearing false witness. And a lot of these mirror some of the Ten Commandments, but I don't think the point really is the specifics. Now we could all add to these lists a list that more specifically describes our sin struggles. Although look at that list, you can probably find two or three that you like pretty good, right? Yeah, but you could come up with another list that's expanded that that more accurately reflects your more frequent sin struggles. The point is not the specifics, the point is that our hearts are evil. We act out of the overflow of something rotten, a rotten reservoir. And it so far in this message, it seems to be a pretty hopeless state. And I hope I've painted that picture. Because it is without our next point. It is without point number three, which is regenerating remedy. The regenerating remedy. The evil within our hearts must be first recognized. Like first you just need to admit it. And then it must be dealt with. But how do we deal with it? Well, there's a couple of things I said that we would come back to. First of all, I told you earlier that in Matthew's account, the disciples asked Jesus, Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying? And this is Jesus' response in verse 13. He answered, Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up. Let them alone, they are blind guides, and if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit. What Jesus is saying here is that there was a fundamental problem with these Pharisees. And we share that with them. We must be planted, or in other places it says, born again. We must be planted, given a new root by our Heavenly Father, or we will be uprooted. We will be uprooted at the end of time in the judgment. We must be re-rooted, replanted, reborn. The Pharisees were unable to help others obtain salvation because they were blind about it themselves, thinking they could earn it. They couldn't see that they didn't need to follow the rules more strictly to earn. That wasn't their problem. They needed to be reborn completely. There is hope for our fallen condition, but it lies outside of anything that we're able to accomplish on our own. We must be regenerated, born again, given a new heart by God. But how can God just forgive us and give us a new heart if we are truly guilty before Him? He would not be just to forgive your sin with no payment for that sin. And Mark hints at the answer here. How does he do this? He hints at the answer, just barely in this passage in an unexpected way. This is the other thing I said we come back to. Mark gives this parenthetical statement in verse 19. Thus he declared all foods clean. Now that's going to take some explanation for us to get there. This doesn't seem to be something that Jesus said directly. Jesus didn't say this directly at this moment, but it's Mark seemingly putting the pieces together at the time he's writing this. Of course, under inspiration of the Holy Spirit. And he's commenting on what Jesus said. And he says, thus he declared. What he was saying was, Jesus was declaring all foods clean. Remember again that Mark is likely getting his information from who? Peter, primarily. And I want to take you back to something that God revealed to Peter in Acts chapter 10. Because for Jesus, for Jesus to say or imply that all foods are clean, for that's, for us, that's no big deal. I mean, we were eating our bacon in peace anyway. We weren't concerned about that. But for the Jewish mind, that was a huge statement. And the early church really struggled with this, along with some of the other ceremonial laws, along with what do we do with the Gentiles? Because they viewed the Gentiles as unclean and unable to come to God without coming first to the Jewish nation. But God revealed something to Peter in Acts 10 that would open his eyes. In Acts 10, there's this Gentile centurion named Cornelius, to whom God revealed himself in a vision that he needed to send to Joppa for a man named Simon Peter. At this point, there were essentially no Gentiles recognized in the church, but he obeys God and he sends for Peter, this Roman centurion. At the same time, Peter has this vision while he's praying, and what happened? And his vision is the heavens open up, and something like a great sheet descended from the heavens, and on it were all kinds of unclean foods, according to God's law. Unclean foods. And a voice came to Peter and said, Rise, Peter, kill and eat. Peter objected that he had never eaten anything unclean. I can't do that. I've never eaten anything unclean or common. But the voice from heaven said, What God has made clean, do not call common. And this happened three times to Peter. And then right after it's done, this vision, at that very moment, these men came from Cornelius asking Peter to come with them to Cornelius' house. And the Spirit tells Peter, Go. You need to go to his house. And so Peter gets there, and this is what he says to Cornelius in verse 28 You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with or to visit anyone of another nation. But God has shown me that I should not call any person common or unclean. Then Peter preaches the gospel to them. The whole family receives the good news. The whole family is baptized, receives the Holy Spirit, and Peter's world has been turned upside down, absolutely rocked. God was showing him that nothing God has made clean should be called unclean. Whether that be people like the Samaritans, like the Gentiles, or dietary restrictions. Now, Peter and the early church continued to struggle with this issue for a bit because it was so earth-shattering for them to everything that they knew. But Peter eventually began eating with and like the Gentiles. Paul tells us that in Galatians. He has another point in telling us that. But he says Peter was eating with the Gentiles. He was doing that. And of course, Gentiles were welcomed into the church because it couldn't be denied that God had accepted them, that God had poured his spirit out on them. And here in Mark, Mark is writing with all that background from Peter, and he concludes, what Jesus was doing there when he said, What goes in cannot defile was he was declaring all foods clean. Now, Jesus was not saying that God's law was bad, or that God's law needed to be redone, or anything like that. Brother, he was declaring that in him the law was fulfilled. The dietary laws were given to show the people that their hearts were unclean, that they needed to be cleaned up before they could face God. The ceremonial laws were given for the same reason. And in so many of the ceremonies that they would do, we see how every detail of the ceremony pointed towards Christ when we look at it from this side of the cross. The sacrificial laws were given again to show that sin was a barrier that must be atoned for, and it cost you something. But every year they had to sacrifice again because those sacrifices didn't really atone for anything. They only pointed toward the real fulfillment. The moral law of God was only strengthened and reinforced by Jesus, but Jesus fulfilled that law perfectly, and then he helped us understand how the moral law was really about the heart. He would say, you know, murder is wrong, but the deeper problem is the anger in your heart, just as bad. You've murdered that person in your heart. He uncovered the moral law to the heart of the matter, as he does in this passage of Mark. Everything had found its fulfillment in Jesus. The law, the prophecies, over 300 prophecies Jesus fulfilled to the finest detail. And so in Jesus, all foods are declared clean. All ceremony is fulfilled. All prophecy is fulfilled. God's moral law is reinforced. And most importantly, because he fulfilled the law and lived a perfect life that we could not live under the law of God in Jesus, our dirty hearts can also be made clean for good. That's the remedy. The Old Testament sacrifices pointed forward to this perfect once-for all sacrifice of the life of God's Son. And so in him, we can have our sins forgiven because he's paid for them as our substitute, taking our place on the cross. It is finished and paid for. Jesus took those 13 vices that Mark lists here, and so many more upon himself at the cross, enduring the cost of God's wrath poured out on those things. And then he declared, It is finished. The law and the prophets are fulfilled, sin is paid for. That's the first thing. That's what James says in James 4. Humble yourself before God. Submit yourself to God, resist the devil. Humble yourself before God. That's the first thing. Today is the day of salvation. But the gospel doesn't stop in our lives the moment we're saved. And then everything just becomes rule following. If that's what you've understood, Christian, you've misunderstood. It's not, oh, I'm saved by grace. Now I just got to be good. Be good. Be good. No, it's the gospel every single day of our lives. The gospel is not just for the day of salvation, but for every day. I say it often, but we must preach this gospel every day to ourselves. Don't grow weary of it. Pray for the joy of this gospel again. For God to restore that to you. Study this gospel. It's simple enough for a child to understand, yet complex enough to have us studying our entire lives and really not reach the bottom. Fall in love with this good news all over again of Christ crucified for you and risen again. Humble yourself before this gospel. Preach the gospel to yourself daily, moment by moment. Let it renew your mind, renew your thinking, renew your attitudes. And then let the scriptures renew your mind. How can you if you are not exposed to it? How will the scripture renew your mind if you do not read it? I mean, God's word will not return void. I believe that. But you've got to get God's word in front of you. You gotta get his word there in front of you. You're here this morning, you're hearing it. But that's not enough. What do you do when you leave this place? Is God's word a vital part, a lifeline for you every day in your life? Expose yourself to God's word. And with a humble heart, God's word will do its work. It will. Let's its work of renewing and transforming you begin. And then walk in the spirit. Walk in the spirit. So it's about humility, it's about exposure to God's word, letting it renew us, and then walking in the spirit. It is the Spirit of God who gives life and freedom. Galatians says to walk in the spirit, it tells us to walk in the spirit so that you do not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. You will fulfill the lust of the flesh if you do not continually walk in the spirit. Keep on walking in the spirit. This isn't a new rule to follow, but it's new power that you have within you. God Himself living in you, recognize that even as a Christian, your flesh is still very much present and desires ungodly things that will not bring you life. So go to war with the flesh by walking in the spirit, renewing your mind, preaching the gospel to yourself daily. And then it is God who will do the transforming work. And he is faithful to do that. I'm gonna ask the band to come on up, and we are gonna close this morning. We need to recognize that we do have a problem, and the problem is not outside of ourselves, but it's our own hearts. And even as Christians, we have this flesh that we so often are tempted to follow. The deceitfulness of sin is what it's so often called. The deceitfulness of sin, that's what it's called in Hebrews. It is deceitful because we think we're gonna find life by following those fleshly desires. And we never do. We always end up empty when we do not walk in the Spirit and trust the things that He has said in His word. Yes, we have external pressures that maybe squeeze us, but what comes out is what's in our hearts to begin with. Where does your heart need transforming this morning? I want to ask you to bow your heads and close your eyes. And just bow your heart before him this morning and ask, Lord, where does my heart need transforming? Where do I need to stop blaming others, blaming circumstances, and let the word, let the Lord deal with my wickedness? I know that's not the world's message. The world's message is you're awesome. Everything else is the problem. You just keep being you. But that's just not true. I cannot lie to you this morning. Be you is not the answer. You do you is not the answer. You crown him daily, moment by moment, as king of your heart. That's the answer. That's what gives true life. We need to come to terms with the real roots of relational problems that we face so that we can humble ourselves before the remedy who is Jesus Christ. And when we will humble ourselves, he is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And he will give us the power through his spirit to transform and bring life abundant. Do you believe that this morning? Or then fall before him in faith, declaring him as king. Tell him you're done with trying to fight for his rightful place on the throne of your heart. And begin to walk in the Spirit. What's the next thing that the Spirit and the Word wants you to do? We're going to close this morning as we do. If you need to be saved this morning, if you need to come to Jesus for the first time, it's through repentance and faith. Humble yourself before Him and say, Jesus, I need you. Will you save me? And he will. Just come and receive His free gift through faith. For us as believers, the payment has already been made for our pride, our selfishness, our lust, our envy, our gossip, our slander, our laziness that we continue to struggle with at times. In Christ, God looks at you and sees his perfect son. Yeah, you have a wicked heart. Yes, there's still a battle with the flesh, but thanks be to Jesus Christ. That when God looks at you, Christian, He sees perfection. Now walk in power. Walk in that light with His word renewing and transforming day by day. That sanctification is not an easy process. And it requires us to eat a lot of humble pie. Admitting where we're wrong and in need of transformation, but it is worth it. It is worth it. Let's end the way we did last week, asking the Lord to search our hearts, bring to light any wicked way in us, and then ask him to do his redeeming work in our lives. Give you a few moments just to do what you need to do with Jesus. I'll be in the back if you need me, and then we will uh close in just a few moments.