Sermon Tone Analysis

“Jesus 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.’”[1]

It is jarring to hear a professed Christian using profane or crude language.

Such language does not honour the Saviour; nor does it reflect well on our divine parentage.

Likewise, it is disturbing to witness professed believers slander one another.

Some behaviour is incongruous with the confession of new life in Christ that we profess.

It is not that the people of God are incapable of sinning, but rather that we expect better of those who follow Christ; and we are always shocked when God’s people fail to live as children of the Living God.

Overt sin obviously cannot be justified in the lives of Christians; sexual immorality, theft, murder and adultery are clearly proscribed in the Word of God.

However, we tend to excuse what I call polite sins—those character traits that are less obvious, or at least more difficult to pin down in the lives of people we know.

When we are guilty of evil thoughts, no one knows of this, except for us.

Envy, pride and foolishness are tolerated.

If someone should accuse us of such, we bristle and question how they could dare judge us.

We are taught in the Word of God that we are responsible to live lives which are distinguished from the world.

We are not to live as the world does, nor even to be friends with the world.

James excoriates those who imagine that they can live as the world does while claiming allegiance to God when he writes, “Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God” [*James 4:4*].

The Word of God teaches that we are corporately responsible to judge ourselves as members of one body; but even more vital is that we each assume responsibility to individually judge our own lives.

Join me in looking to the Word of the Master as we examine a strong teaching which He provided His disciples on one occasion after exposing the hypocrisy of the Pharisees.

*The Background of the Message* — The Pharisees, together with some scribes from Jerusalem, witnessed the disciples eating without washing their hands.

This washing of the hands was a ritual washing required of all observant Jews.

This was not a hygienic requirement, but a religious requirement, as is obvious from Mark’s comment that this was done “holding to the tradition of the elders” [*Mark 7:3*].

The disciples’ failure to observe protocol was offensive to the mobile truth squad that followed Jesus and His disciples.

They were usually looking for an indiscretion, an offensive statement—anything with which they could accuse Him of religious deviation.

Things were no different on this occasion.

The religious arbiters saw that the disciples failed to wash their hands before they ate.

You can almost see their raised eyebrows as they nodded knowingly to one another before they turned to the Master; I can only imagine that their tone indicated their incredulity as they accused the Master, “Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands” [*Mark 7:5*]?

It was always a mistake to attack the Master, but these experts in religious minutiae were ever hopeful that they might prevail.

As was His wont, Jesus responded to their accusation with Scripture.

How they must have winced when the Master replied, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written,

“‘This people honours me with their lips,

but their heart is far from me;

in vain do they worship me,

teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’

“You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.”

“You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition!

For Moses said, ‘Honour your father and your mother’; and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’

But you say, ‘If a man tells his father or his mother, “Whatever you would have gained from me is Corban”’ (that is, given to God)—“then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down.

And many such things you do” [*Mark 7:6-13*].

The religious leaders were exposed as frauds—and that before all the people who seemed always to swarm about the Master.

Then, driving the point home in the minds of the crowd, Jesus addressed the broader group that surrounded Him, saying, “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” [*Mark 7:14*].

The text seems to indicate that His words caused bewilderment, perhaps even consternation.

I imagine that were we able to have a photograph of those about Him at that moment, allowing us to see the faces of the people, we would see confusion writ large on their faces.

As soon as the Master went into “the house,” perhaps the house of a disciple living in the region of Gennesaret or His own house in Capernaum, the disciples questioned Him.

You observe a formula in the Gospels, whenever Jesus gives a parable, if it is readily understood by the disciples or by members of the earliest churches, there is no explanation provided—it is self-explanatory.

There is no need to ponder what the Master may have meant, for it is obvious.

However, if there is a question, you will note that the disciples asked; and in asking, they ensured that we are thoroughly instructed.

As an aside of some considerable significance, the fact that the disciples enjoyed such an intimacy with the Master that they could question what He meant should be an encouragement for each of us.

God does not call us to “blind faith,” a “leap in the dark” when He provides instruction.

God expects us to think, to dare question and seek the truth.

God is too great to be dethroned by our questions; and in asking for clarification, we will grow stronger in our faith.

The Faith of Jesus Christ is a reasonable faith; it will withstand questions.

The thought that we dare not challenge what is taught is foreign to both the Word of God and to the idea that God is sovereign.

God is sufficiently great that He is not dethroned by our honest search for truth.

Jesus encourages honest pursuit of the truth.

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.

For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened” [*Matthew 7:7, 8*].

Surely that is the encouragement that we receive when the Master instructs us, “When the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all the truth, for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak, and He will declare to you the things that are to come.

He will glorify Me, for he will take what is Mine and declare it to you” [*John 16.13, 14*].

It is the will of the Master that we will know the truth and pursue knowledge of the truth, for the Lord Himself has said, “I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life” [*John 14:6*].

Indeed, we are promised, “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him” [*James 1:5*].

There is wisdom, there is understanding, there is knowledge—all that is lacking is the willingness of His people to ask Him.

I am not advocating doubting God, nor am I suggesting that we operate in the negative mode.

I am not suggesting that we must be obstreperous or combative with those who provide leadership.

I am saying that the honest search for the will of God will be rewarded.

The reason many don’t find the will of God is because they come before God prepared to tell Him what He must do for them rather than approaching Him with the desire to know what is pleasing to Him.

*The Cause of Evil* — In a sense, the Pharisee movement, and the Jesus movement, were each holiness movements.

Either sought a way to be set apart for God’s service.

However, they each adopted different approaches to holy lives.

The Pharisees sought to achieve holiness by external effort.

They thought that how they dressed, how they acted, how they spoke, would make them acceptable to God.

Jesus focused on the heart.

In effect, Jesus taught us that if our heart is right, our actions will follow suit.

The flaw in the Pharisaic effort is that people can perform every religious act imaginable, and do so flawlessly, but if the heart is corrupt, the actions fail to honour God.

To understand the cause of evil, you and I need to determine how we will define evil, and then ask what the source of that evil is.

Evil is violation of the perfection of Holy God.

Evil is any deviation from what is correct and good.

The standard for good is God—not what we determine is good.

You and I tend to define good by what is personally beneficial, and we define evil by what makes us feel badly about ourselves.

Our definition for either good or evil revolves around the impact of an action on our own being.

In other words, we are at the centre of our definition.

However, the biblical definition of good and evil is determined by measuring an action against the will of the Living God.

Accordingly, Jesus gives a list of actions that are obviously evil.

After all, in His words, Jesus is focused on what defiles an individual.

So, He lists “evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder [and] adultery” [*Mark 7:21*].

So far, few of us would dissent from this list.

We see these character flaws and we agree, in part because we see each of these acts as potentially harmful to us.

It was at this point that Jesus quit preaching and began meddling.

He listed “coveting [and] wickedness” as evil; and though these actions are clearly wrong, they are often justified in our minds.

Throughout the past two or three decades we were told that greed was good—we were urged to make all we could, to acquire all that we could acquire.

We could always get more because credit was unlimited and we were growing the economy.

Someone forgot to inform us that we need to pay for all that we were acquiring.

We Christians confused our wants and our needs.

Likewise, we often want to quibble about what is wicked.

One man’s wickedness, we say, is another man’s pleasure.

However, let’s assume that we are willing to concede that coveting and wickedness are indeed evil, if the actions of far too many professed Christians is any indication, “deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride [and] foolishness” [*Mark 7:22*] must not be evil.

We are prepared to act deceitfully—fudging on income tax or taking longer coffee breaks than our contract permits.

Evidently, few Christians are generous toward God as we don’t even approach a tenth of our wealth in charitable giving in Canada.

The word speaks of treachery, the resort to falsehood and guile to achieve what we want.

It speaks of refusal to live openly, rather wearing a mask as we speak kindly to others, even as we plot their downfall.

This is the descriptive word that spoke of the plots of the Sanhedrin to seize Jesus and arrange for His death [e.g.