If you would please now take your Bible in hand and open to Mark chapter 7. If you would please stand. We do that to physically express our reverence for God's written word. This morning we're reading from Mark chapter 7, verses 14 to 23. The Bible tells us that the grass outside might wither and flowers will fade away, but the word of our God will endure forever, therefore we strive to hear and heed it faithfully together. 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 then 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. Thus, Father, reading of God's Word, please pray with me. Dear Holy Spirit, we thank you for your life-giving word. We thank you that you inspired it. We thank you that you have preserved it in its integrity. We thank you for the promise and expectation now cultivated in our hearts that you will bless the reading and especially the preaching of your word, that not only might faith, joy, and comfort would also be worked in our hearts. We ask that you do this even now, through Christ our Savior we pray, amen. Please be seated. They call it a pandemic, a life-threatening disease which threatens the world worldwide. A pandemic, a disease that has no respect of persons, one that does not care if you are rich or poor, if you are young or if you are old, even if you are black or white. It kills, and not only has it taken many lives, it has ruined many lives. It is a dreadful disease, and what I speak about is not the coronavirus, but sin. a genuine pandemic that only the Gospel can cure. You have the points of the sermon this morning in your outline, and we'll begin working our way through the text by beginning with a little bit of a playfully titled section, Fake News Rebuffed. I know, you've heard the phrase, but that's not what I'm talking about. Jesus does indeed rebuff and rebuck fake news. beginning of the section here in Mark chapter seven, beginning at 14, Jesus calls people to himself. Often in the Gospels, Jesus simply travels and people come flocking to him, not in this particular text, And it's understandable why that might be. Remember again from last week, what we've been looking at is something of a rumble in the jungle. The Pharisees and the scribes have descended down upon Jesus. They have come like a pack of wolves hunting. And not only have they called out Jesus and his disciples for not keeping to their traditions, they have done so in a public and visible way. Jesus, the good shepherd, cannot abide fake news, or better put, fake theology, especially that which would destroy not just the body, that which is even more important, the soul. So Jesus now, in calling the crowds to himself, is doing so out of mercy, out of the resolve of a shepherd that senses that a snake or a wolf has somehow come among the sheep and they must be protected. His compassion is as forceful, if not more, than the resolve of the Pharisees themselves. His compassion drives him to teach. They are like sheep without a shepherd, like lambs being led astray, consumed by false shepherds. And so Jesus says, with the words and gentleness yet authority of a good shepherd, hear me and understand. And he goes on into what becomes a rather wonderful exposition of things related to not simply the law or the extent of sin, but ultimately the hope that can be found only in Him. Nothing outside of a person can defile him or her. The Pharisees had reduced the faith to a form of religious externals. It was all on the outside. What you see is what you get, and what goes in and what touches on the outside, those were the things that matter. To say it this way, keep the rules, avoid these foods and those people, and God will approve you. Don't dance, drink, or chew, or go with girls who do. Pharisees didn't write that, but the sentiment is alive and well within it. And again, Jesus responds that this is not what makes God happy. The Pharisees effectively taught what many people believe today, and that is all good people go to heaven, and that basically God just simply grades on a curve. And Jesus rebukes this. This is a lie. This is fake news that threatens the soul. Sin is not the product of environmental exposure, the things that touch you on the outside or go inside you as though consumed at a table. Sin is what already lies within the heart. By adding their long list of rules and commandments, the Pharisees had actually not strengthened the law of God, they effectively had weakened it, reducing it to almost an indistinguishable list of rules made by man. The Pharisees had shortened the arm of the law and its reach to the heart. In their rules, now only the tradition commandments of men went to the external part of the body. superficial surgeries and topical remedies can treat symptoms, but they don't get to the heart of the problem. And according to Jesus, it's the heart that is the problem, not what comes from the outside. So the Pharisees had reduced holiness and godliness to outward visible performance. Again, a Pharisee is one who wears the mask, looking religious, pretending piety, and yet on the inside being like a spiritual tomb. It was a vague combination of verit and mercy. Do pretty good, and God will judge pretty good. one author calls it, it was a skin-deep religion. And this Jesus rebuked, and then He takes us then to the hard truth about sin. So, we move in our scenes. The first scene is Jesus calling a crowd to Himself and explaining these things to the truth about sin, and the truth about the Pharisees' rules. The next scene is Jesus inside a house, and there he calls his intimate disciples to himself. And note again, the disciples not only ask Jesus about the parable, Jesus again expresses his frustration. and his patience. How many times now has Jesus taught and said something that, at least to us, seems pretty clear and the disciples just don't get it? It's a recurring theme that the disciples struggle to understand the words of Jesus, the actions of Jesus, even though he does the same thing repeatedly, even though he says the same things repeatedly. Their hearts are a little bit slow. a sentiment we sometimes find within our own. But again, all that will change, at least for the better, when the Spirit comes. So he asked them, are you two yet without understanding? Well, understanding about what? What is it that the disciples are still not fully understanding that the gospel of Mark is seeking to make clear? They're not yet clear in their understanding about who Jesus is? They're not clear in their understanding about the nature of His kingdom. They're not clear in their understanding about sin and what alone can cure it. These are pretty important things to get straight. Who is Jesus? What is His kingdom? And how do we enter into it? And so again, Jesus begins to explain, this time extending the metaphor, that what goes into a man's body is not the issue. Food is eaten, and then expelled. Behind the word expelled is the word, English word, It's kind of potty talk, but not in a crass or a moral way. Jesus is speaking from the basic, most familiar analogies of life. Every day you eat, every day you go to the bathroom, that's not the essence of religion. It's not what you put on a plate or passes through your body that makes you holy in the sight of God. Jesus, in this moment, as Mark says in parentheses, declares all foods clean. And I expect several hearty amens. Tonight after the evening service, I'm inviting a few folks over and we're eating brats. And all God's carnivores and lovers of meat said amen. In declaring all foods clean, Jesus has at the same time declared all hearts unclean. It's the flip side of the coin. It's not food that makes you righteous in the sight of God. It's not food that's the issue or the non-issue. At the end of the day, what matters in the sight of God is the heart. So I'll say it again. In declaring all foods clean, Jesus is declaring all hearts unclean. Now we're getting to the issue. It is what comes out of a man, not what goes into him, but what goes out of a man from his heart, not the other portions of his body. The heart itself is the issue. The Pharisees have reduced religion to a matter of externals, things that are visible. And Jesus is saying the law cuts deeper. It reaches further into the heart. It pierces where food cannot go. It exposes what we would not have seen. The dark catalog of sins of the heart is simply summarized in some of the things that Jesus mentions in verse 21. For from within, out of the heart, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. It's like being in a swimming pool and someone much bigger than you pushing you further down and further down and further down and further down and eventually you start to feel that kind of panicky feeling like this isn't okay anymore. With one or two pushes I was still close to the surface. Now I'm down deep. Now I'm in trouble. What happens if I can't breathe? Who will save me? That's what a list like this does. That's what the law effectively does in its first use. It exposes our sinfulness. It exposes our spiritual sickness. It exposes the fact that we need a Savior. And so anything that neuters that, anything that shrinks that down, the law from its real pointed effect, is at the end of the day unhelpful. That's why Jesus gives this dark catalog of the sins of the heart. Sin is within us. It's already there. You don't have to put it on a plate to get it inside you. Sin is within us. It's not simply what we do, it's what we are. We consume food, but sin consumes us. It's part of us. It masters us, it condemns us, it kills us, and most importantly, it cannot simply be washed away externally. This text began with the Pharisees rebuking Jesus and his disciples for not washing up, as the washing up would wash away sins. As the sin was that superficial of a problem, like dirt on a child's feet, it just needs a little hosing off and all will be fine. Sin cannot simply be washed off. And this is the point, beloved, that Jesus is really making. The Pharisees and their traditions cannot wash away their sins. The disciples were being misled. The disciples of the scribes and Pharisees were being misled. It's like they were suffering from a life-threatening disease and being told to take aspirin and go to sleep and that all would be well. So where does this leave us then? If sin is not simply something that we do, it's part of what we are, something that consumes us, something that potentially masters, condemns, and kills us, where does that leave us if the Pharisees are wrong? Does it leave us without hope, utterly lost and condemned? This brings us to the good news of the gospel. Against the backdrop of that which is false, wearing masks and washing hands cannot prevent this disease. There is no antibody for sin that you can go to a doctor and get put in your right or left arm. But Jesus, beloved, is the good physician, and he has come to seek, he has come to save, and he has come to heal what man and his medicine cannot do. It is his merit, not ours, that leads to God's mercy. It is his works, not ours, that are acceptable in the sight of God. Imagine this, the Pharisees try to wash away that which cannot be removed, but for Jesus, no washing was needed, because He was perfectly righteous in all of His thoughts. He was perfectly holy in all of His deeds. He was perfectly pleasing in the sight of God with every word He ever said. In Him was found, beloved, no sin, and therefore no need for such washing, only righteousness and life. What he eats and drinks make him no more and no less holy. He is perfectly holy already in himself, and yet what has he come to do? Not simply argue with the Pharisees, but to bring that which neither they nor even the law itself could bring. lasting righteousness, genuine acceptance, what we refer to as justification, being declared righteous in the sight of God. This is why Jesus has come. He's come to do what man-made traditions would never do. He's come to make us right with God, righteous before God in himself, what legalism and liberalism would never do. Paul will say it later this way, what the law could not do, God has done for us in His Son. The law can tell us what we ought to do, but it can't make us do it. The law can tell us what God demands, but it does not in itself provide it. And so Jesus, the God-man, has come down to fulfill all of God's holy law and to lay down His life as sacrifice for sinners who are in need of deep surgery. what the law demands, the gospel gives, what the law cannot do, Jesus did, and in his life, his death, and his resurrection, he does what the old hymn says, he hushes the law's loud thunder, he quenches Mount Sinai's flame, and he shuts the mouth of fake gospel news. So, beloved, you who have come to God through this gospel, that is to say through Jesus, the law-keeping Lamb of God who obeyed for you and laid down His life for you, you now are no longer in the sight of God unclean. You are clean. You've been declared clean and acceptable in His sight. To say it this way, you have been washed, but not the way the Pharisees washed pots and pans with the washing of water. Beloved, you have been washed with the blood of the Lamb. You have been clothed, but not with the garments and masks that the Pharisees would wear in their man-made tradition. You have been clothed in the righteousness of Christ. It strikes me every Sunday morning how quickly time runs away and how important it is to get ready. And what is getting ready involved? Washing off and putting on. And yet ultimately, it's only the gospel beloved that can wash you clean and robe you in a righteousness that is pleasing in the sight of God through Jesus Christ. This brings us to our third point of consideration. That walking with God is a matter of the heart. We have just discussed the one disease that wearing masks and washing your hands cannot cure and cannot prevent. Mere abstinence from foods won't make you holy in the sight of God, it'll just make you hungry in the sight of man. It's my best line of the day and it's not even in my notes. This is a matter of the heart. It is a matter of the heart. Sin is not simply that which has killed us. Be with me here, because we're making a turn. It is also that which ends up misaligning our desires. The Pharisees had cultivated a religion of externals, a form of asceticism, where you simply deny yourself of all good things, or so many good things, as though somehow by self-denial you make yourself acceptable in the sight of God. And the point is to say, many of the things that we desire are actually good. The foods that the Pharisees condemned, the people that the Pharisees condemned, many of the things that they condemned were actually things that God had deemed as good, good desires that God had written into our hearts, into our minds, even into our bodies. Wisdom is to be desired, it is a good thing. Men who wish to serve as officers, 1 Timothy 3.1, desire a good thing, and we are praying that some will desire that here. Desire, in and of itself, is not a bad thing, beloved, depending on what it is that we actually desire. 1 Peter 3, whoever desires to love life and see good days, let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit. 2 Peter 3, knowing, first of all, that all scoffers will come in the last days following their own sinful desires. The point is that some desire is evil, but many desires are actually good. And this is the flip side of the Pharisees' problem. They were condemning good desires and implicitly restraining us from healthy, God-pleasing desires. Some desires are indeed bad. Eve desired of the fruit that God said, you may not have it. And nonetheless, she took and she ate. The very word there for desire is used for the word coveting in the 10th commandment. regarding our neighbor's wife, his property, et cetera. Jesus said, but I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her, similar word, has already committed adultery with her in her heart. And Paul says in Galatians 5, and those who are Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. You see the point. Desire can be good in God honoring. Desire can be bad in God dishonoring. We sometimes refer to our fathers in the faith as Puritans. We have a class now on one of those during our Sunday school. They would often write about the importance of cultivating godly affections, godly desires. One of the effects of hearing God's word preached is that it should cultivate in us godly, sweet, honorable desires. Jonathan Edwards said, without holy affection, there is no true religion. In other words, if the Pharisees are saying, just don't do this, and don't do that, and don't do that, and God will be pleased, what I'm trying to argue and convince you of is that we ought to desire godly things, a holy affection, without which there is no true religion. J.C. Ryle, one of our favorites, says every Christian's heart is a field occupied by two rivals, two competing desires. Some are good and some are bad. George Swinock says, if you leave your heart with God on Saturday night, you will find it with him on Sunday morning. The converse of that is equally true. If you let your heart stray from God on Saturday night, you'll have a hard time getting it back on Sunday morning. Our little kids need their hearts cultivated, their desires cultivated, not just their appetites for food, but their appetite for the good and desirable things of God's kingdom. To say it this way somewhat bluntly, God created us to desire. Desire is not bad. Biblically informed passion is not bad. Painting with color, whether work or witness, music or ministry, family or faith, God actually intended for us, beloved, to cultivate a desire to glorify and enjoy Him in every detail. And the Pharisees weren't simply misleading people in their understanding of how to be saved, they were misleading people in how to live happily. how to live with the desires that God has planted in us in a good and God-pleasing way that at the end of the day is good and satisfying to us as well, to glorify and enjoy God in the smallest of details, in the biggest of details, whether you eat, drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. That great privilege is what they were stealing. And so it does raise the question as a point of application. As we hear about the Pharisees now for a second time, as we hear their approach to religion, which is to reduce it to a man-made external keeping of rules, some biblical, some extra biblical, as imagine that God grades on the curve for those that try really hard, whatever that even means, where is our heart? And what do we desire? Where is your heart, and what do you desire? Into what stream does your God-given abilities flow? The world has a commentary on this. It says that any desire unfulfilled is a tragedy, and we should take it by force. We should abandon at all costs for the sake of desire. The world makes an idol out of desire itself. But for the Christian, God is to be the treasure of our heart and the fount from whom all good and pleasing desires flow, the apple of our eye, for even as Jesus said, for where your treasure is, beloved, there your heart will be also. What your heart desires most, that is your treasure. Calvin had a playful way of saying it. He said, our hearts are like idle factories, always pumping out new things that take God's place. It reminds me of Plato. If you don't know what Plato is, you're really missing out. And he's right. Our hearts are constantly cranking out something that might seek to take the place of God. But just like Plato, it crumbles in the hand, and in the end, is not worth keeping. God says in response, little children who love Plato, keep yourself from idols, not just man-made miniatures, but from those things that genuinely compete with our affection for the living God and all that is beautiful and desirable in Him. One of John Calvin's most famous lines is, Lord, I give to you my heart promptly and sincerely. Pharisees had a wrong understanding of the heart and who had the right to reign over it. Who holds the keys of our heart? Is not God the great idol smasher, and at the same time also the great comforter who takes out of us the poison and puts into us that which is life-giving, pleasing, and sweet? If we were having the Lord's Supper today, we would go to Luke 22, 15, where Jesus says, and this is one of the sweetest lines in the Bible, at least in my estimation, I have earnestly, what's the word, desired. I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. Why is this so sweet? Because Jesus' great desire was to commune with us. Our great desire should be to commune with Him. Now as we close, It's good to remind ourselves that there is still, just as Ryle acknowledged, in the battlefield of our hearts, two rival kings, at least setting themselves to rival desires, one against the other, one righteous and holy, the other sinful and shameful. My own way of saying it, I know that there is a Pharisee in my heart that wants to measure what I'm worth and find my satisfaction in me. If I were to write my own personal catechism, it would go like this. My chief end is to glorify me and enjoy me forever. And yet God gives us, beloved, a much better way. He shows us that our satisfaction is in Him. He shows us that our hope for salvation is in Him. He shows us that our freedom is in Him. We are all still in many ways works in progress with much sin to be forgiven. confess, and yet much work to be done in our hearts, much affection to be refocused, much that is lustful and ungodly to be crucified, much that is godly, sweet, and desirable to be amplified. Would it seem a strange thing if a pastor were to say to you, amplify the desires of your heart? If by that we mean that which is pleasing in the sight of God. Isn't it marvelous that Jesus could be so patient with those disciples over and over and over again? How many times did he have to teach the same lesson? How many times did he have to take them back to the same stage? How many times did he have to review the same content of previous sermons? How many times did he have to ask them, are you still not understanding what I'm trying to say? I have come to set you free. free not only from the legalistic slavery of man-made traditions, free to glorify and enjoy God according to His ways and find genuine satisfaction that no one or nothing in this world can take away. He gives us a new heart and He continues to grow our hearts in love for Him. That, beloved, is the freedom of the gospel. It's the genuinely good news. It is the only cure for our spiritual disease. It is the gospel alone that sets us free, and from what? From sin slavery, from the lies of legalism, from the wages of our sin, but it sets us free to glorify and enjoy God with the best of our lives, our creative energies, and God-wrought desires. So perhaps you'll find it a little bit strange if I conclude the sermon this way. Go, eat your brats. paint your pictures, write your songs, use your energy, fulfill your calling, because you are free in Christ because of what He has done, and that is not fake news. Let's pray. Lord and our God, we thank you for the freedom of the gospel, We would acknowledge the Lord, but too often it's easy to set the gospel on a shelf, treating you something like a genie in the lamp. You're there for us when we need us, and we'll be sure to say thank you at Christmas and Easter. We ask the Lord that you help us to rather acknowledge that You are One who has come into this world, not only laid down Your life for us, but to give Your life to us. New life has been written in our hearts. We are free from the shackles of sin and the slavery that comes with it. We are free, O Lord, from man-made traditions, the opinions of man that would hold us down underwater. And we are free to rise up out of the depths of our sin and misery, and to enjoy that liberty that belongs exclusively to the sons and daughters of the kingdom. Lord, I ask that if there are any today who have come and visited and yet remain unconvinced and unconverted, that you give them no rest, no peace, no joy, until they bow the knee to King Jesus and submit in their hearts to Him by faith. And as your people, O Lord, we pray that you would free us from legalistic impulses, free us to walk in your word and to find it beautiful, life-giving, light-shining. Help us, O Lord, to take the very good desires that you have given to us and even the best of our creative energies, and as Calvin said, offer you our hearts promptly and sincerely. Through Christ our Savior we pray, amen.