June 7 "The Deeper Problem" (Mark 7:14-23)

Student Pastor Jorden Hoffman continues the series, Mark: Living With Gospel Urgency

Transcript

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In the late 1700s, there was a man named William Brody. And William Brody was this well respected man in the community. He was successful, well known, a city leader, a skilled cabinet maker, and even helped install and repair locks for some of the most trusted people in the city. This is a man that if we saw today in our community, we'd say, that's a good man right there. He is a respectable man. But in Edinburgh, they were terrorized with this string of massive, confusing burglaries. Shops were robbed, homes were empty, and they had no idea how in the world this was happening. And I think you might know where I'm going with this. But whenever the police caught the culprit, it was William Brody. During the day he looked respectable, but at night he was a thief. How could he? The city was enraged. He was living two completely different lives. And when we hear that, we get furious. That might stir something inside of you because we hate hypocrisy. We hate it when someone looks one way on the outside, but inside they are rotten. But before we give Mr. Brody all of the hate, we're going to dive into the text this morning and see that we can also be just as guilty of living two lives. The difference between you and Brody was he got caught. And I'm hoping this morning, as the Holy Spirit works, you are also going to get caught. You will get caught. Last week, Kevin did a great job diving into the first 13 verses in Mark. And this morning I get the opportunity of going through verses 14 to 23. And the thing with this morning is that these Pharisees and the scribes, you know, they thought if I just keep dirty things away from me, I can be clean. But Jesus is going to show us, spoiler alert, that no, no, no, no, it's not the things that are outside of you. My friends, the dirt is already in your heart. The dirt is already in your heart. And so I've titled this morning The Deeper Problem. The deeper problem. And so let us read God's word this morning. Starting in verse 14. 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, left the people, his disciples asked him about the parable, and he said to them, Then are you also without understanding? This is Jesus speaking. Do you not see whatever goes into a person from the 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 the heart of man come evil thoughts, sexual morality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness, all these evil things come from within, and they defile a person. And so the way that we are going to attack this text this morning is that there are four things. We're going to look at the call, the clarification, the condition, and the cure. But before we dive into the text, I want to ask you a question, and I want you to be honest, because it does you no good if you come here, you hear God's word being preached, but you're not honest. What is your struggle? That thing that you just can't shake. That thing that you're living in right now. If you say, Jordan, I don't have a struggle. Well, there's your struggle right there. You're prideful. So what is your struggle? Keep that in your head and put it in your back pocket, and we're gonna bring it back out in a second. Diving into the call. So we have to remember the context here is that Jesus has been speaking to the Pharisees and the scribes, and they're out to get him because they want to ruin him, and they were upset because Jesus' disciples were eating without washed hands and following the man-made traditions. But but Jesus now calls the crowd in himself. And before he makes a statement, he says, Hear me, all of you, and understand. In other words, Jesus is saying, Hey, don't miss this. A crowd, crowd, scribes, Pharisees, disciples, everyone come here. Don't miss this. I can imagine whenever the boys come, all four of my boys, and they're a little bit older and have to be a little stern, get a little deeper voice. Boys, don't miss this. Listen. And this is what Jesus is saying right now. And he says this going on. He says, all of you. The Pharisees, the scribes, the disciples, the crowd. This was for all of them. And this is not just careful language that he's trying to use. He's trying to do a stern, loud language. This is language that we see in the Old Testament when the prophets have just received a word from God, and now he's telling them, hey, you guys need to listen. This is from God. And so this applies to all of us. Nothing outside of you defiles you. It's the things that come out of a person that do that. Now, this word defile means to make unclean. And the context that it carries is that in the Old Testament, you could be made unclean before God. You could be unfit for worship, uh-uh, unfit to come into the holy presence. And then the Pharisees, they were like, oh, okay, the main thing that this is is external things. Dirty hands, unclean food, wrong traditions, outside contamination. But Jesus is saying, hey, no, no, no, no, no. You're looking in the wrong place. He's not saying that external things won't have an effect on you. No, it is 100% possible that external things can have an effect on us. But he's saying, listen, that external thing though is not where the problem is. He's saying that moral and spiritual defilement does not originate from the outside. And whenever we hear defilement, we can just translate that to sin. You can put sin in right there. And so I got a confession time. We're not Catholic, we don't really practice confessions, but I'm doing it right now. My wife and I, we were having a discussion a uh few months ago, and I'll just say this was not a lovey-dovey discussion that we were having. We were arguing. Whoa, Pastor, you're saying that you and your wife argue? I am saying it. We argue, and I know that you guys also argue with your spouses, but I'm just up here to confess it to you guys. And so we are arguing. And I look at her as she had made me angry, and I say, Courtney, you are making me sin. Not my best moment. And she looked at me and she said, she said, No, no, no, no, no, Jordan, you have control of yourself. You have control of yourself. And how often do we try to blame something that is outside of us for our reason that we had sinned? This challenges up deeply because you know what we don't like to do? We don't like to take blame. We do not like to take blame in this world. Listen to this. Whenever there was only two people on earth, Adam and Eve, whenever they had sinned, God talks to Adam, he says, Hey, what happened? He goes, Oh, no, no, no, it wasn't me, it was Eve. She gave me the food. That's what that was. We do not like to take blame. You know, we like to blame our environment. Jordan, I sin because the environment I was in. Jordan, I sin because of my friends. Jordan, you don't understand. My parents, they're the reason that I was sinning. The culture of social media, there's so many things that pop up. Jordan, that was the reason that I sinned. Stress. You don't know what they did to me, Jordan. That's why I did it. My kids. My co-worker. My spouse, those are the reasons that I sinned. And listen, those can be real factors, and they may tempt you, they may pressure you, they may provoke you, they may even wound you. But Jesus says the source of defilement, the source of sin lies deeper. The outside may reveal what is in me, but it is not the root of what is inside. So this take-home truth is simple right here. Stop making excuses for what Jesus is exposing. Stop making excuses for what Jesus is trying to expose. Yes, that person may have provoked anger, but they did not create the anger in your heart. Yes, that situation may have exposed your pride, but it did not place the pride in your heart. Yes, that temptation may have revealed that you have a lust problem, but it did not invent lust in your heart. You see, Jesus is calling us to stop looking out there and start looking on the inside. Some of you will nod your head and say, Amen to that. Maybe God is trying to speak to you. Maybe you are the person that keeps making excuses. Man, you uh Jordan, it was this. Stop making excuses for what Jesus is trying to expose. Take the blame, take ownership, because it is not what enters a person from the outside that ultimately defiles them, is what comes from the end. And if that feels confusing, well, don't worry. Jesus' disciples were also a little confused by what he meant, and we'll explain that a little bit deeper when we get to the clarification. But before we get to the clarification, we gotta settle verse 16. You might have a Bible in your hands right now, and you're reading it, and you might be thinking, Jordan, you skip past verse 16. Or you might be thinking, I think my Bible's messed up. I think I have a misprint Bible. Your Bible is not messed up. The best way to explain this is that in the earliest manuscripts, the earliest texts, they didn't have verse 16 inside of it. And so the best way to do it is don't put something in there. Just just keep it out. Or maybe you are reading from a translation and it has verse 16 in there. And you're saying, Jordan, what should I do? Throw away your Bible immediately. No, I'm just kidding, don't do that. Don't throw away your Bible. It is possible that Jesus did say, if anyone has ears to hear, because he says it all throughout Mark, and he says it, and it's a good saying, but it's possible that it didn't say it in that moment. And so the Bible still remains flawless, and the fact that the translators kept it out is so transparent and makes the text even more credible. Diving into the clarification. And so now we pick up in that Jesus has talked to the scribes, he's talked to the Pharisees, He's talked to the disciples, and He's talked to the crowd. But now they've entered in a private house, possibly Peter's, and they're like, Jesus. Hey, hey, what you said earlier, that was a good word, brother. You were preaching. That was a good word. But uh, and I was amen and you heard me say that amen. I was with you. But can you exp can you explain it a little bit a little bit better for me? Have y'all ever been to a church? Maybe this church, don't look at the person after I talk about this. An amen or sometimes the amen moments that you're like, I don't know if that needed an amen. And you're thinking, are they even really listening? Because that didn't make any sense. And so in Jordan's sanctified imagination, I believe that maybe the disciples were a little, they're, you know, amen, amen to that. But then they got serious. You see, they were confused. They were confused. And Jesus believes that they didn't need to be confused. Why were they confused? Why were these disciples confused? Jesus' right-hand men, why were they confused? I mean, they have seen Jesus cast out unclean spirits, touch a leper, and instead of Jesus becoming unclean, the leper became clean. He ate with tax collectors and sinners, goes into places where real religious people try to avoid it, delivered a demon-possessed man among the tombs, heal woman with a bleeding condition, which would be unclean, taking a dead girl by the hand and raise her back to life, heal the sick, feed the hungry, calm the storm, walk on the water. Do you see what we're reading right now? You see, uncleanliness never overpowers Jesus. Jesus always overpowers uncleanliness. Always. And so why are they still confused? Why are they not getting it? And it's possible that they are not getting it because these were Jewish men. And they had been practicing the laws in the Old Testament their whole life. These traditions, you know, they they grew up with the clean and unclean. So, you know, some foods were clean, some were unclean. You know, people would be ceremonial clean and some people would be unclean. Touching a dead body could make someone unclean. A disease, a body discharge could make someone unclean for time. And so they were having a hard time grasping this idea that is going to change everything. He says, Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from the outside cannot defile him? Since it enters not his heart, but his stomach, and is expelled. And so Jesus is trying to get extremely practical right here. He basically says, Guys, think about how eating works. When you eat something, it goes into your mouth, it doesn't make a left turn and go to your heart, it goes into your stomach, and then your body uses what it needs and then digests what it doesn't. I mean, I'm not a doctor, but I know that we have some healthcare people in here. I think they would amend that. It checks out, right? I mean, that that's how it works. A piece of food does not have a GPS. I'm going to go to that person's. No, it doesn't have that. And while a nice burger from tiebreakers can give you heartburn, that nice burger will not give you a wicked heart. That will not. And while and while we're talking about food, he he writes, thus he declared all foods clean. No, no, no, he's he's explaining here that yes, that was the law then, and the the law was not bad at all, but the law was never meant to be the final answer to the problem of the heart. And so it's important to understand here when we're talking about the heart, what exactly is he talking about? Because I don't believe he's talking about the physical thing in your body that pumps blood. I think that Jesus is talking about your soul. I think he's going deeper. You're being, you see, we all have a free will to choose whatever we want to do. To do good, to do bad, to do wrong, to do right. And this part of your soul, this is your desires, your thoughts, your motives, your will, your affections, derail you before God. And Proverbs 4.23 says, Above all else, guard your heart for everything you do flows from it. Everything you do flows from your heart. Meaning, it is possible that you have a dirty heart. Everything that you do, everything that you decide, whether you decide to do a good deed, whether you decide to sin, whether you decide to give your money, whether you decide to do something else, everything that you do flows from your heart. Food can enter your body, but it cannot corrupt your soul. Food goes into the stomach, sin comes from the heart. And so Jesus, right here, is trying to correct their view of sin. Because you know what is possible? We can cheapen it. We can lessen what sin really is. And if we are not careful, we will do that. And I believe that we have done that. That we do that. You see, we call it a mistake, God calls it rebellion. We call it a slip-up, God calls it an abomination. We call it weakness, God says that is weak wickedness. We say, oh, it was just an accident, accident. God says, no, no, no, no, no. That came from somewhere. Sin is serious, and that is what Jesus is trying to do right here is He is trying to expose sin. Sin is not something that you just accidentally bump into, it comes from the heart. So for your next take-home truth, it is this external things cannot fix internal sin. External things cannot fix internal sin. Think about the disciples here. They didn't get it, they were confused. I believe Jesus was probably gracious with them for their misunderstanding, but they still didn't get it even after he explained it. And we're going to see that as we go through Mark, that they didn't understand sometimes. And Jesus has to be a little stern and say, hey guys, you need to understand this. But they didn't understand it until the cross, until his death, until his resurrection, and until the Holy Spirit. They weren't getting the external thing. Are you telling me that an external thing cannot fix an internal sin? Yes. Jesus is trying to explain that. And listen, we are here in 2026, and we still try to do that today. We try to let external things fix our sin problem. And let me tell you, it never works. It never works. I get the amazing opportunity to be the youth pastor and get to take our students on mission trips. And a few years ago, uh we got to go to Colorado. And I was in a little small tiny nursery room with seven other dudes, junior, senior guys. And you know, it wasn't the most comfortable. But you know what? We're doing service for the Lord, praise Him. And I'm gonna tell you, day three, day four, I walked in to our room after we had done some ministry for the day, and that was the nastiest smelling room that I had ever been to in my entire life. I cannot explain to you how bad that room smelled. And so, what did I do? Something that every good youth pastor should do. I went to Walmart, got one of those plug in air fresheners, plugged that bad boy in. We went and did some ministry and came back. Daisies and roses. Daisies and roses. It smelled so much better than it actually did. The question though, did it actually fix the problem? Yeah, it gave a little bit of a temporary relief. No, it just covered the smell. Or think about a middle school boy. And sometimes middle school boys forget to bathe. And if you're a middle school boy, I love you, but bathe. And you know, sometimes they'll they'll they'll try to, you know, they'll get some axe body spake. I'm good, you're not. Um and they think that they smell good, but they only smell like sweat and dark temptation. Um and in today, with 2026, we try to do the same things. We try to do the same things. Let me get my good deed body spray on to fix my internal stench. You know, we think, oh, if I come to church on Sunday, it will cover up my anger that I've treated my family with the entire week. You know, if if I give money to the church, and Jordan, I'm gonna give I'm gonna I'm gonna give a good offering. Don't you worry. God will just be so thankful and forget my sin. If I serve in the church, it will mask the secret lust, addiction that I have in the dark. If I post a Bible verse, if I talk about Jesus, oh I love Jesus so much, you it's gonna magically take away the gossip and the lies in your text threads. We can't spray good deeds over a nasty, wicked heart. It will never truly clean it. Never. And let me tell you something. We people have become good at covering up our image. You have fooled your friends, you have fooled your parents, you have fooled the people that you go to church with, you have fooled me, Pastor Jeff, Pastor Kevin, Pastor Ty, Pastor Jeremy, you have fooled your pastors. You will never, and listen to me right here, you will never fool Almighty God. Never. He sees it 100%. He sees that God doesn't just smell the air freshener, he sees the room. And in these last three verses that we're going to read, we're going to see what the room is and what the heart truly comes out of the heart. This is the condition. We're going to read this since it's been a minute. And it says this and he said, 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. I love you guys. And I love the opportunity to get to preach, to get to shepherd. But let me tell you something. God knows. Stop pretending. God knows. You see, we can be some of the at times the fakest people. We walk in the church, smile. Hey, how's it going? Everything's good. I got the kids in the car. And we sang hallelujah on the way here. We're so good at faking, we're so good at covering up the image. But listen, it is possible that we have a couple here in this church and they're contemplating divorce. But they're here, everything's good. It is possible that there are people that are here right now living sexually immoral, but you're here pretending like everything is good. We have people that are here that gossip, that tear people down the entire week, but walk into church with the biggest smile, have your prettiest dress on, your nicest shirt, pretending like you're good. Stop pretending. Stop pretending. And you say, Jordan, I think you're being a little harsh. Jordan, how do you how do you know this? Because I know what comes out of the heart. I know what really comes out of us. And it says that the heart is deceitful. Listen to what it says in Jeremiah 17, 9. The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? You see, in these verses that we just read, verses 20 to 23, there's this catalog of sin, and Jesus is like, hey, this is an x-ray of truly what is in your heart. This isn't an x-ray. This is a a showing of all the things. It is not unwashed hands that defile a person, but an unwashed soul. And these ceremonies, these rituals that we try to do will never deprefy a depraved heart. And so I'm not going to go through all 13 of these words, but I want you to look at them as I explain this. Is that there are two types of people that we see in these 13 words? You see, you have your obvious, your your big sins, you know, sexual immorality, murder, theft, adultery. And if I stopped there, some of you would be like, I'm good. He didn't cover me. And then we have our prideful people. The people, the socially acceptable sins, deceit, envy, slander, and pride. And you see this? He puts those two people in the same category and says that it's still sin. It's still sin. And we all have the capability of doing any of those sins. If you don't think so, you are prideful and you need to check your heart. Jordan, I don't know, I don't think I would ever murder. It is possible. Maybe you had great circumstances in life, but it is possible with an unfortunate circumstance that we could commit any of these sins. And so the last take-home truth is this stop pretending and receive a new heart. You say, Jordan, okay, how? How do I fix the the the internal sin problem? What do I do? What you need to do is receive a new heart. You need to receive a new heart from God. In the Old Testament, in the book of Ezekiel, Ezekiel is a prophet, and he is speaking to God. And the the the is the God's people at that time were sinful. They were living in the wreckage of their own sin and they could not fix themselves. So that's bad news. What do you do when you cannot fix yourself? What do you what are we supposed to do, Jordan? Well, God promises this right here of what He will do. He says, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit inside you. That's the answer. He will give us a new heart. He doesn't say, hey, hey, clean up everything and then come to me. No, no, no, no. He says, Come to me. I will give you a new heart. Meaning, he's not just a God that manages our sin, but he frees us from the grip that sin has on our lives. And if you are here this morning, whether you started your journey with faith or not, sin had a grip on your life. But God says, I'll give you a new heart. I will give you a new heart. Jordan, how do we receive this new heart? You see, there are there are there are two people that are here this morning. It's the person that has never received that new heart. Maybe you have been playing it off cool, doing religious things, but you have never truly changed. You see, you're not even pretending to be a Christian. What you are pretending is that you're close. And then you have the person that has drifted. And that's the person who would say, Jordan, you know what? When I was younger, I did. And I was living for Jesus. I was living for what the Bible says. But your car, your heart is cold. Your heart is cold. And you know it. You know that you have a cold heart and you're running on fumes and old memories. But here's good news for what God can do: is that He can give a new heart to that person who doesn't have one, but He's also able to soften your new one that God recently gave. So there are two things that I want us to do this morning. There are two things. The first thing is I want you to do is confess. Be open. God knows. We started we started the morning with asking this question. What is your struggle? We all have a struggle. We all have something, confess it to God. I'm gonna invite the band to come up now, and we're gonna do something that we don't normally do. But this is the second thing that I want you to do is I want you to come forward. I want you to lay it down to the Lord. God is the only one who is truly able to look at the heart. And so, yes, you could come forward right now and do this religious thing and act cool, but God knows your heart. And so, if you mean business, I want to encourage you to do something that you wouldn't normally do, is come forward. What you could do is you could encourage your family, your kids and say, Man, dad is coming forward. What you could do is encourage your wife. Man, look at my husband. And we need to do business with God. This whole morning has been about one thing. It's our heart. What is inside yours? So I'm gonna ask everyone to stand. I'm gonna praise out. I'm gonna ask you to stay put, and I'll conclude it. But I want you to do business with God. Come forward, use your seat as an altar. Lord, we love you, and we are so grateful that you have the ability to give us new hearts. And boy, do we need it. And so, Lord, search us. Holy Spirit, convict us. Show us what we need, and let that be you. Turn that a pray. Amen.