Sermon Tone Analysis

Mark 7:14-23

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*14 *And he called the people to him again and said to them, “Hear me, all of you, and understand: *15 *There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him.”*17

*And when he had entered the house and left the people, his disciples asked him about the parable.

*18 *And he said to them, “Then are you also without understanding?

Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him,  *19 *since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled?”

(Thus he declared all foods clean.)

*20 *And he said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him.

*21 *For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, *22 *coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness.

*23 *All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

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Mark 7 begins with an accusatory question that the Pharisees and scribes asked Jesus when they saw that some of his disciples were not following the religious traditions regarding ceremonial purification.

“Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands” (v.

5).

It was unfathomable to them how this supposed holy man could ignore these traditions for purity and piety.

Last week we noted that Jesus responded to their question first by attacking the hypocrisy of the religious elite.

They had found a clever way to appear outwardly righteous without ever entering into genuine worship of God.

Their traditions were merely ways to honor God with their lips, without having had to undergo heart change.

But only heart change could make obedience to God’s laws joyful worship.

This is why religion is the perfect soil for the formation of hypocrites.

Most people understand religion as ritual: there are certain ways of performing or behaving that make us right with God.

But it is much easier to keep the rules and traditions and religious expectations than to change our rebellious hearts so that we delight in loving God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Give me a checklist and I’ll always know exactly where I stand with God.

But Jesus will not leave us alone with our checklist.

Here in Mark 7:14, he summons people to gather around him.

“Hear me, all of you, and understand,” he says.

He is about to reveal something very important, and he wants everybody to hear it.

(This is probably why scribes inserted Jesus’ customary concluding admonition, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear,” following verse 15, which is reflected in the KJV.) Jesus is now going to address the specific concern of the Pharisees, and his comments are going to radically alter the contemporary views of his day.

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DEFILED OR DEVOTED

The issue at hand is the question of personal defilement.

The Pharisees accused the disciples of Jesus of eating their food “with defiled hands.”

And so five times in verses 14 to 23 Jesus uses the word /defile/ as he takes up the question of what it is that defiles a person.

But what exactly is meant by this idea of defilement?

The word that is here translated /defile/ is a word that can also mean “to share.”

The idea is that things that are shared lose their value because they become common or ordinary.

This is the meaning behind the word /profane/: when something becomes accessible to everyone then it is no longer sacred.

It is /defiled/ because it is not /devoted/, that is, it is not set aside for God and for God alone.

That’s the meaning of holiness, something that is set apart for God.

Inherent in the concept of holiness, then, is both a separation /from /something as well as a dedication /to /something.

God himself is holy because he is separated from sin and evil and is dedicated to his own glory and honor.

And he commands us to be holy as he himself is holy (Lev 19:2; 1 Pet 1:16).

He commanded the Israelites therefore “to distinguish between the holy and the common” or, as it came to be known, “between the unclean and the clean” (Lev 10:10).

There were strict guidelines for maintaining religious purity, most notably the regulations regarding the clean and unclean foods.

The Israelites were careful to remain pure by following these guidelines, because anyone who became unclean would be excluded from the public worship of God or perhaps even from the fellowship of the community (Lev 7:19-21).

So when Jesus gathers the crowd together to address this question of personal purity, it is a significant topic.

It remains significant for us, too.

Because here Jesus is telling us what it is that will separate us from fellowship with God.

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A PARABLE REGARDING DEFILEMENT

Now that Jesus has the attention of the crowd, he delivers his speech.

It is short and to the point.

“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” (v.

15).

This seems easily understandable, but Mark tells us in verse 17 that “when he had entered the house and left the people, his disciples asked him about the parable.”

How could Jesus say that a person could not be defiled by what he eats, when the Mosaic Law clearly taught that he could be?

Jesus’ parable has again left some puzzled as the audience is left to draw the conclusions from what he has said.

Fortunately, Jesus gives his disciples a private interpretation of his teaching, something we have seen him do before (Mark 4:10).

And again he chides them for their failure to understand what he has said (see Mark 4:13).

There are two basic parts to this parable, which are fleshed out for us in the explanation given in verses 18-23.

Jesus explains that we far too often get this issue of holiness all wrong.

The reason is because we misunderstand the source of defilement.

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DIRTY HANDS

The Pharisees questioned Jesus because he permitted his disciples to eat with defiled hands.

We inherently think that defilement comes from outside of us.

This is what religion teaches us.

As long as we can stay away from certain people or places or things, we can remain pure and right with God.

It’s all about overcoming bad habits and bad company because if we can remain separate from the evil outside of us then we will remain pure.

Every generation has their list of the kinds of things that “real” Christians do not do.

No dancing.

No drinking alcohol.

No tattoos or body piercings.

Or certain words that should never come from a Christian’s mouth.

But Jesus says that things outside of us /cannot/ defile us.

They have no ability to do so.

Why? Because, Jesus says in verse 19, things outside of us, such as the things we eat, do not enter into our hearts.

In the case of food, which was the issue of debate in this text, Jesus gets specific.

Our bodies know how to make use of what is nutritious and how to expel into the toilet that which is of no benefit.

The slogan, “You are what you eat” may be true physically, but it is not true spiritually.

As we read in 1 Corinthians 8:8, what we eat (or do not eat) will not affect our relationship with God.

“We are no worse off if we do not eat, and no better off if we do.”

!! God cleanses everything

It is hard for us to imagine how significant this change of thinking would have been for a Jewish audience.

But Mark draws the conclusion of Jesus’ teaching for us at the end of verse 19.

“Thus he declared all foods clean.”

The New Testament repeats this radical point.

Paul says, “I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself” (Rom 14:14).

In Acts 10, Peter has a vision in which he sees all kinds of animals that Jewish law forbade God’s people to eat.

But in the vision, God commands him to eat the animals.

When Peter objects, God responds, “What God has made clean, do not call common” (Acts 10:15).

Peter was therein instructed that the entire Old Testament distinction between clean and unclean things was symbolic.

There was no inherent impurity in anything God created.

And as Peter was about to find out (and as we will see in the passage next week), under the terms of the new covenant expressed in the gospel, all symbolic barriers are now removed.

Fellowship with God is made available to all people through Jesus, not through religious ritual.

This is an important point.

We are all tempted to believe that our purity before God depends upon what we do with things outside of us.

While we don’t usually see our diets as indicative of our spirituality, we view other things in that light.

It can be as silly as how we dress when we gather for corporate worship or as serious as how we think politically.

Our tendency is to judge spirituality on the basis of external practice.

!! Everything created by God is good

There is another major implication of Jesus’ radical view in the first part of this parable.

In declaring “all foods clean,” Jesus is not only forbidding us from looking negatively at creation.

He also does not want us to be neutral.

He wants us to be favorable toward everything in the created order.

Paul makes the point clear in 1 Timothy 4:4, “For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving.”

It is far too common to find ascetic views of creation within professing Christians.