Coming Clean

Another great message from Ben Stuart. Just subscribe to them. It takes me like 2 hours to get through them because i take very meticulous, word for word notes, as you know, but they are only 30 minutes long, just do yourself a favor.
This weeks message was about the Jewish tradition of washing before you eat, and how Jesus puts the Pharisees in there place about it. Its also about how filthy and full of sin we are, something everyone needs to hear, and hear in a way that offends us, because we need to be offended about this and we need to realize that everything we do to justify our guilty conscience offends God. You can study theology till the cows come home, but God knows your heart. Also, at the end of the day, we don't have to be covered in shame anymore, because Jesus fulfilled the law for us, and became our sin.
So if you get something out of my horrible summary, awesome, but this is something that everyone needs to hear. So i ask you, that if you only take time to listen to one of these, make it this one. Im so tempted not to post my notes, but im not so naive to think that will make you go listen to this. So they'll follow, because if your not going to seriously listen to me and go subscribe to these, i have to try and get you to at least hear this. 

before you read my notes, it'd probably be idea to read the verses first, just for the back story. Its pretty short.


Coming Clean
Mark 7:1-23

-The Pharisees come to pick a fight with Jesus. They are looking for confrontation.
-They notice that some of the disciples are eating with defiled hands (unwashed hands).
-The Jews don’t eat unless they wash their hands, holding true to the traditions of the elders. The disciples aren’t following any of the traditional rituals.
-Mark is explaining what Jews do, so that tells us that the audience he’s speaking to aren’t Jewish, they’re gentiles.
-2 things you need to catch:
1. The washing of the hands thing before you eat isn’t about germs. Its about defilement. Defilement in this case means “common.” To be put out for common use.  The opposite of being holy. This was merely a ceremonial ritual to show you were pure before God.
2. This ritual is not a mandate from scripture. They are getting this from the traditions of man. There were cleanliness laws in the old testament, but what they’re talking about here isn’t from the old testament. The only group of guys who had to wash their hands in the presence of God were priests. The Pharisees wanted to surpass the priests in terms of zeal for holiness for God. So therefore everything that is mandated for a priest is mandated for us and everyone else. Everyone not only has to wash their hands when they go to the temple, but every time they eat anything. By 3rd century A.D., Israel had made this a law.
-Back to the point, Jesus’ disciples weren’t doing it.
-The Pharisees ask “Why aren’t they following the traditions of the elders?” they make it sound so important. The way tradition worked back then was that the bible had mandates, but where the bible didn’t speak, the elders would.
-The way they asked Jesus why was more of a “We see your disciples are defiled, and we were wondering why your cool with that?” No dialogue here, only an accusation.
-In Jesus’ response in verses 6-13, he never talks about washing hands. He’s going to cut to the heart of the issue.
-Verse 6. “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites…” Jesus is calling them hypocrites. Have you ever called anyone a hypocrite? That’s usually the bombshell moment of a conversation. But when Jesus opens his argument with it, this is just his warm up. Then he quotes Isaiah 29. “This people honors Me with their lips, But their heart is far from Me. And in vain they worship Me, Teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.”
-Jesus isn’t denigrating the bible. He’s saying you guys arent taking the words of God seriously enough. You are putting the commandments of men before the commandments of God. You are putting the words of God and the religious ideas of some guy next to each other, and where they don’t agree, you go with this guy. God is not impressed by your religious game.
-Next, he quotes Moses. “Honor your father and mother”, and, “He who curses father or mother, let him be put to death.”
-Response: Verses 11-13.
-”Corban”- given to God.
-We were meant to honor our parents. You get into this situation where some guy looks at his parents and says whatever I was going to use for your benefit, your aging, you need me to take care of you, but whatever I was going to give to you, I declare ‘Corban’ (or given to God) . When you declare something corban, that doesn’t mean you give it away, that means that no one else can use it. So this guy is saying to his parents, “I was going to take care you when you get older, but I gave everything to God.” Then the elders come to him and say they when you vow things corban, you are no longer allowed to take care of your parents when they’re older.”
-Jesus says the heartbeat of God is to care for people. A clear law of God, and you guys are finding ways to bend scripture to fit your selfishness. And next he says, ‘you guys do this stuff all the times, you make void the word of God by your tradition.’
-Jesus’ assessment of these people: You guys are playing a religion game. But you know what your religion is? You found a way to bend scripture to justify your own selfishness, that’s your religion.
-God’s assessment: That’s worthless. Not just worthless, offensive, hypocritical.
-The tough thing about this text? The Pharisees aren’t the only ones who do this. We do this. All the time. We come up with a way of framing religion in a way that justifies whatever we want to do.
-we get busy, and we quit every avenue in which we had a way to take care of people.
-Examples: quitting a youth group for homework or sports.  Quitting a bible study because that’s your only “free day”. Quitting a volunteer organization because you think it takes up to much of your time.
-you took a position somewhere to help people and you blow them off so you can study more?
-are you cutting out T.V. video games too?  Call it ‘stewardship’ but all your doing is punting obligations to do whatever you want. Its just selfishness.
-take sex before marriage. You love your significant other, what really is marriage anyway but a ring and a bunch of people watching? All that matters is love.
-Ok sure, but did you forget about the honoring your parents thing? Like her parents, and yours? Forget about the institution that God ordained of marriage to be a picture of his church before the world, your blowing all that off, but your doing this because God says its ok? Lets just be honest about it. You just want to get layed. Just say that, don’t make it sound spiritual.
-We’ve created a religious game to play, and we do it to suit what we’re good at.
-Studying theology might be your thing, but it doesn’t do anything if you don’t care and love for people.
-We carve out a ‘Christianity’ that makes us look good.
-JESUS DOES NOT LIKE THIS! And that should be a devastating critique for us.

-Next Jesus looks to the people, he’s done with the Pharisees. (Verses 14-23)
-He says ‘hear me and understand me, it’s not what goes in, it what comes out.’  and then he leaves. That’s the sermon.  So the disciples go with him, and they ask what he meant by that.
-Whatever goes into a person from the outside can’t defile them, but the things that come out do. What you eat doesn’t matter, because it doesn't touch your heart. The external things arent the problem, its what’s going on in your heart.
-the problem is that you have something wrong with your heart.
-Jesus and the Pharisees do agree about one thing. That we are all defiled.
-The Pharisees just thought that we could manage it with some external activities. Jesus says no, you have no idea how deep the stain goes.
-Verses 21-23. ‘From within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts…’
-Every evil thing we do starts with an evil thought. And out of that comes sexual immorality, you take from people, you covet, your not honest with people, you gloss things over to make them sound good.
-you are foolish, meaning morally or spiritually insensitive. It means you arent even seeking to know the heart of God.
-you have got to be honest with yourself. You are defiled. Not because of what you’ve done, but because of what rises up in your heart. And we don’t like hearing that, so we do what the Pharisees did, we find a way to try to cover it over.
-some people dive into theology to cover it up. THEOLOGY WILL NOT MAKE YOU CLEAN.
-some people work so hard in Christian organizations solely because they are trying to make themselves look ok.
-you can be as passionate about evangelism as you want, but most people do it to justify themselves.
-we push so hard into ‘busyness’ because we are trying to block out the voices that are telling us we’re guilty.
-some of us, if we’re honest with ourselves, all these things we do, we do them because we are trying to outrun the condemnation that is on our heels, telling us that we are not ok, and most of us, if we’re honest, we feel it. We feel dirty.
-Jesus tells us we are defiled, and the external things didn’t do it, nor can they fix it. And Mark ends this text there. That’s a pretty devastating place to leave people.
-The interesting thing about Mark though, is that he does this all the time. He ends these stories with total cliffhangers. He does it to bother you, to make you think ‘what am I supposed to do to fix it!’ the reality is there is a little sentence in there that tells us how to fix it. You probably didn’t think much about it. Verse 19: because it does not enter his heart, but his stomach, and is eliminated, thus purifying all foods
-Jesus is changing the law there. He took the dietary codes, not just in tradition, but in the actually law and he said 'these things about what your supposed to do and not, they aren’t true anymore. I declare all foods clean.'
-whats interesting about that is later, Jesus says that he didn’t come to abolish law. He came to fulfill it.
-you and I aren’t ok before God, we are defiled. And we can’t fix us, and the law condemns us. Jesus comes to fulfill it on our behalf.
-In Zechariah chapter 3, the prophet Zechariah paints a beautiful picture. He gets a vision, he sees the high priest Joshua standing before the angel of the Lord. (the high priest represents the jewish people in seeking for atonement). To be a high priest, to go into that one big day of atonement was a pretty big deal. You’d be sequestered for a week, they would ritually bathe you, they’d put you in clean, fine, white linens. You would sacrifice on your behalf, then you wash again, then sacrifice for the people…you went through all these stages to try to show God that you were clean, so that you could walk before God and that you wouldn’t die, so that you could atone for the peoples sin. In Zechariah’s vision, he sees Joshua standing before the Lord, then he sees Satan accusing him. (Zechariah 3:3) Now we see Joshua clothed in filthy garments standing before the angel. ESV says filthy garments, the actual translation is ’garments covered in excrement’s’
-If you’re a Jew, your asking how did he even get there!? How did that even happen? He isn’t clean.
-the idea your getting here is that this is a vision of how God sees his people. The most clean we can get ourselves when we wash is filthy. If we’re honest, we feel this.
-then something shocking happens, it says the Angel said to those who were standing before him “remove the filthy garments from him.” and to him he said, “Behold, I have taken your iniquity from you and I will clothe you with pure vestments.
-God says I’m going to come and clean you, you don’t clean you.
-Zechariah 3:8-10 “… For behold, I am bringing forth My Servant the BRANCH…
-the branch is referring to the Messiah
-He says the Messiah will atone for you in a day. (that was shocking because the Jews would come year after year sacrificing animals, and this is saying the Messiah will atone everyone’s sins in one day.) And Joshua is a picture of it.
-How did Jesus do it? He put our defilement on himself. He became sin. He who was totally pure became filthy for  us, that we might be robed in fine linen, white and clean.
-So what do you do? You don’t try to come up with a plan to impress God. You come honest and open. You come empty and trust that he has a solution. So we come with hope, because we are no longer covered in shame, because someone else has fulfilled the law for us, and his name is Jesus.