How Can We Ever Be Clean?
Download MP3If you could turn in your bibles to Zechariah 3 1 through 4. We will be reading from the English Standard Version. Zechariah 3 1 through 4. Then he showed me Joshua, the high priest, standing before the angel of the lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to to accuse him. And the lord said to Satan, the lord rebuke you, oh, Satan.
Speaker 1:The lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you. Is not this a brand plucked from the fire? Now Joshua was standing before the angel clothed with filthy garments, and the angel said to those who are standing before him, remove the filthy garment garments from him, and to him, and to him, he said, behold, I have taken your iniquity away from you, and I will clothe you with pure vestments. The word of the lord.
Jeffrey Heine:If you would pray with me. Lord, we thank you for your word. We pray that you would honor the very reading of that. Your word alone can cut open our hearts and our minds. Pierce us with your truth.
Jeffrey Heine:And I pray that you would do that. I pray that we would leave much different than the way we walked into this place, with a greater understanding of you, a greater affection for you, greater understanding of the gospel. Spirit, I pray that you would teach. I ask that my words would fall to the ground and that they would blow away, and no one would remember them, Lord, but your words would remain and change us. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus.
Jeffrey Heine:Amen. Some of you might have noticed we we have departed from 1st Corinthians briefly, And, I sent an email out about why. What we're gonna be doing over the next year is the last Sunday of every month, We are going to part from whatever series we're in the midst of, and we're gonna take a a fresh look at the cross from different passages. Some of the passages passages will be in the Old Testament. Some will be look at Jesus's sayings from the cross.
Jeffrey Heine:But once a month, the last Sunday of every month, we're gonna part from whatever series we're doing, and we're gonna try to take a fresh look at the gospel and the cross. And so that's what we're gonna do tonight with with a somewhat obscure passage from Zechariah 3. And the reason I know it's obscure is because when Brian said turn to Zechariah 3, everybody's flipping around like crazy trying to find Zechariah. And then you finally found it probably when we were done. Last year, AJ Jacobs, some of you might have read this article that he wrote.
Jeffrey Heine:He's an editor at large for Esquire Magazine, and he decided that he was going to obey every rule in the Bible for an entire year. Every rule for an entire year. And so what he did is he had with him a stapled list of 700 of the rules and prohibitions in the Bible. And he took it around with him everywhere, and, this list included things like don't wear clothes of mixed fibers, grow your beard, stone adulterers. It was, the the stoning adulterers is is really quite funny because, you know, he doesn't wanna kill anybody, but he wants to obey the commandment.
Jeffrey Heine:And so it actually says that he picked up a lot of little pebbles, and he used to follow behind people, and he would, like, throw them at their feet. And, then he just felt kinda wimpy. And and so he was sitting in a park bench, I think, in, New York, And a guy sat next to him and said, you're dressed, kinda queer, actually, because he was dressed really unusual keeping this, the law. He says, why are you dressed like that? He goes, actually, I'm trying to obey every verse or every commandment in the Bible, and I'm trying to figure out how I could stone adulterers.
Jeffrey Heine:The guy goes, well, I'm an adulterer. Are you gonna stone me? And he goes, well, actually, I would just use these little pebbles right here. And immediately, the man grabbed them and threw them all at them. But he said he stole he picked up some, and that's the man he got to stone.
Jeffrey Heine:He threw it at him as the man was leaving, and so he checked it off his list, stone and adulterer. And, and so he he he tried to obey all of them, all of the laws. He had especially a hard time with the purity laws. People mocked him for doing this. They they really mocked him a whole lot, because most people, they see the Bible as a set of ridiculous rules.
Jeffrey Heine:Ridiculous rules. Some rules might be understandable. Maybe some people even agree, yes, you should punish an adulterer. We we understand that, But most of the rules in the Bible we see as silly and pretty primitive. Have you ever tried reading through Leviticus?
Jeffrey Heine:I mean, have you ever tried reading through and you get, you know, into the puss chapters and the white haired chapters and the what you can touch, what you cannot? You can't eat an eagle. You can't eat a hawk. You can't eat all these different birds. You can eat all the insects except for these 4, and it like it goes on and on and on.
Jeffrey Heine:All of these things that if you touch or if you eat, that will make you unclean. And to be unclean means that you cannot stand in the presence of God. You cannot go to worship God if you are unclean. Now, A J Jacobs, he found all of these purity rules to be impossible to keep. He was constantly washing his clothes, dipping his bed in water.
Jeffrey Heine:He was it was doing all of these things, and finally, he was just avoiding contact with everyone, because if you touch someone who's unclean, you're unclean. He didn't know what to do with all these purity laws. You know, what is the point of all of these? If you ask Christians what is the point of all the purity laws, if you ask 10 Christians, you'll get 10 different answers. Most people don't know what to do with them.
Jeffrey Heine:And I've heard a number of people point to those things and say, you know what, the Bible is irrelevant. It's actually somewhat silly. It's a bunch of superstitious beliefs by some superstitious people. Certainly we've evolved since then, in the last 2000 years or the last 4000 years. Certainly we've evolved.
Jeffrey Heine:And even if one does believe in God and takes the Bible somewhat seriously, they will still think, you know what, Little washings are not gonna make me presentable before god. They're not gonna allow me to come and worship god. Well, actually, looking at the purity laws, which we're gonna look at, is not as archaic as you might think. It's really not as archaic as you might think. If any of you have ever fasted, if you've ever fasted, what you are doing is you're doing something physical, hoping that something spiritual happens to you.
Jeffrey Heine:Physically, you're saying, I'm not gonna have any food. Why, I'm hoping to produce not a physical hunger, but a spiritual hunger. And so you do something physical, hoping that something spiritual would happen, something external, hoping that there will be an internal change. That's what the purity laws were about. You're doing something external hoping that there's gonna be this internal.
Jeffrey Heine:You wash your hands hoping that there'll be a true washing of your spirit. The Israelites, they knew that washing your hands didn't make you clean, but they they hope by by taking the time to do this, they would reflect, that it would change their hearts. And we do physical things all the time to bring about inward change. If you're going to a job interview, you know, you take great time. You brush your hair.
Jeffrey Heine:You brush your teeth. You iron all your clothes. You put on clean underwear, which the boss is never gonna see. And you do all this why. You're you're you're in a sense getting rid of uncleanliness.
Jeffrey Heine:You're going to meet somebody who's very important. The Israelites did the same thing. They went to great lengths with all these purity laws. Why? Because they were meeting the king of kings.
Jeffrey Heine:They wanted to give a great impression. We do things like we bow down in worship. We we're in prayer. Why? It's a physical act, but we're hoping it changes us inwardly.
Jeffrey Heine:We're hoping it does something like that to us. Open your Bibles in Mark chapter 7. Mark chapter 7. Jesus talks a little bit about these purity laws, which we need to understand if we're going to understand Zechariah 3. Mark 7 verse 18.
Jeffrey Heine:And Jesus 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 from 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, out of the heart of man comes evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness.
Jeffrey Heine:All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person. Here, Jesus, he's responding to the Pharisees who are arguing over the fact that the the disciples aren't washing their hands. They're not washing their hands, and they're saying your disciples are impure. And Jesus responds by saying, don't you know, they're not unclean because they don't wash their hands. You know, what you put in your mouth goes out into the latrine.
Jeffrey Heine:He's very graphic. It never touches the heart. It never touches the heart. You can never work from an outside source for an internal change is what Jesus is saying. It won't happen.
Jeffrey Heine:Now notice that Jesus, he disagrees with the Pharisees about what makes you unclean. But he says, you are absolutely right. You are unclean. My disciples are unclean. You're wrong about what causes them to be unclean.
Jeffrey Heine:It's not about what they eat. What's wrong is the heart. It's from within. There's uncleanliness in here. It doesn't come from an outside source.
Jeffrey Heine:It comes from within. And what he's saying is you're if you wanna change it, you gotta change in here. Nothing outwardly is gonna change your heart. Everyone's unclean. No one can approach god in worship.
Jeffrey Heine:And and I think that all of us believe that. I think every heart believes that. We understand that we don't measure up to god's standard. I think whether you're a Christian or not, you feel that inadequacy. You you sense your uncleanliness.
Jeffrey Heine:If if you were to go home right now, and you were to find in your mailbox a note, you were to open it up, and the note were to say, I know what you did, and I'm telling. I know what you did, and I'm telling. Almost every one of you would have every one of you would have fear. You'd be thinking, now what could they know? What could they know?
Jeffrey Heine:And you would start racking your brain, and you'd be thinking, like, oh man, I hope it's not that. I hope it's not that. Woah, I thought nobody saw me do that. And and you would be thinking, but all of you would immediately know, you're guilty. There is something that is there.
Jeffrey Heine:There is something that you are ashamed of. There's something that you you are scared that other people might know about you. And I don't care if you're a moral relativist, or if or if you have a fixed morality on the Word of God. It doesn't matter. If you believe that what's right for you is right for you, and what's right for me is right for for me, you still would be scared if you got that note.
Jeffrey Heine:Because you know you have failed your own moral standard. Apart from God, you failed your own moral standard. That's why thieves get mad when people rob from them. That's why liars are angry if people lie to them. Even if even if they don't believe in God, they have a sense of moral code, and they know when it's been violated, and they know that they have fallen short of their own moral standard, just like we all have.
Jeffrey Heine:And so we're scared. We know we're unclean. And the thought of that being projected to others terrifies us. I don't think anybody would get a note like that and think, I'm safe. I've done nothing wrong, nothing I'm ashamed of.
Jeffrey Heine:There's a recent study last year, that ran in a couple of national papers. Maybe you guys read it. It was in the Birmingham News. It also appeared in the Journal of Science. This, behavioral researcher named Chenbo Zhang.
Jeffrey Heine:He's at the University of Toronto, and he wrote about the Macbeth effect, the Macbeth effect. And, in one of several experiments with Northwestern students, and this is fascinating, the the researchers, they gave one group of students. They they told them they had to recall, they had to remember an unethical thing they had done in the past. That they just sit there, and they had to remember an unethical thing in the past. Like betraying a friend.
Jeffrey Heine:Then another group over here, they had to reflect on an ethical deed they had done. Maybe giving some money to a poor person. At the end of the study, they could get a free gift, and they were just sitting there at the table. Not a big gift. One was a pencil, and one was a little, cleaning pad.
Jeffrey Heine:You know, the what are those things? Little wipes. Well, the people who had thought of the unethical deed were twice as likely to pick up the wipes. They felt unclean, and they would go, and they would wash. And they called this the Macbeth effect, that we want to do something to to cleanse our soul.
Jeffrey Heine:Psychologists have known for years that when people betray their values, they need to compensate. You've got to do something to compensate. Christians who have read a blasphemous story about Jesus, you know what they compensate? They see a horrible movie. They compensate by saying, I'm going to church on Sunday.
Jeffrey Heine:Compensate. Wash my soul. Get the stain off. Social liberals who feel that they have maybe discriminated against some person, they'll go out of their way to make sure that that they they maybe volunteer for a civil rights cause, or they do something to compensate. And this is what this study noticed, that people have to somehow re establish their moral order.
Jeffrey Heine:They call this moral cleansing. Doctor Philip Tetlock says, people have to repair their moral identity. Now, this shows in a lot of other things that we are not so much different than the people that Jesus was addressing 2000 years ago. We still want to do something external to make us clean internal. And you see this all the time.
Jeffrey Heine:Sometimes it's not as obvious as washing your hands. It can be something as subtle as, well, you're gonna spend all your time and work trying to rise up the corporate ladder, so somebody will say, you know what? You really are of value. You're really not unclean. You really do measure up.
Jeffrey Heine:Maybe it's you spend a whole lot of time on your appearance. You're always in front of the mirror doing something because you want to be without spot or blemish. Because it's if people praise your appearance, then you know, alright, I'm not unclean. I'm not unclean. Probably the the thing most of us in here do is we attempt to be very religious to get rid of our uncleanliness.
Jeffrey Heine:We become very religious. We go to church every Sunday. We say we're gonna turn over a new leaf. We're gonna give our money away. We're going to read our Bibles.
Jeffrey Heine:And at the end of the day, we've totally exhausted ourselves, but you know what? This radical self centeredness of your heart is unchanged. You've done all of these externals, and you've exhausted yourself, and you're unchanged. And we looked at the summer that people can be religious and they could be irreligious for the exact same reasons. You can pursue power and religion, or through irreligion.
Jeffrey Heine:You can try to cancel out the fears that you have in your life by being really religious, or being really irreligious. But your heart's never changed. You can't go from an outside in. That's what this passage in Zechariah 3 is about. Zechariah is given this vision of a the high priest Joshua standing before the angel of the Lord.
Jeffrey Heine:That is the Lord. And he taught me, the Angel of the Lord standing before the presence of the Lord. That can only happen one day, the Day of Atonement. Only one day could the High Priest ever go before the Lord and to the most holy of holies. It was on Yom Kippur, the the Day of Atonement.
Jeffrey Heine:The temple had 3 3 courts. I had the outer court, I had the inner court, and then I had the Holy of Holies, where the ark of the covenant was kept, where the mercy seat was kept, which was the throne of god, one day a year, day of atonement, the high priest would enter. God would meet him there. And the the Lord will remove sins, he will postpone judgment. Doctor Albert Edersheim, he's a Jewish scholar, and he writes a lot about this day of atonement.
Jeffrey Heine:And he said that this day took enormous preparation to be clean. Enormous. The week before, the high priest would seclude himself. He he would he would go into his home. He had a home in the temple, and he would go in there and he would be in total isolation.
Jeffrey Heine:And because he didn't want to make the mistake of accidentally touching somebody who was unclean, accidentally eating something that was unclean, all his food will be brought to him, and it was specially prepared all week long. He would practice the sacrifices he was to make. He would practice verbatim all the prayers that he would have to pray. He would do things like know which direction each sacrifice had to face, which way you were to sprinkle blood. Was it once downward and 7 upwards?
Jeffrey Heine:I mean, it it is very, very detailed. He would practice all that. He could not make a mistake. Things had to be perfect, absolutely perfect. And there was a lot to remember, and he had to take an oath saying he would not deviate from the slightest word.
Jeffrey Heine:The service would begin at the first streak of morning light, and the entire night before this high priest had spent in fasting and in prayer, he would not sleep, waiting for the morning light, trying to cleanse his soul. And at daybreak, the sacrifices would start. On the day of atonement, there was actually 15 sacrifices. 12 of the normal sacrifices, 3 sacrifices for atonement. And by daybreak, the whole temple would be packed, and the whole outer courts packed, all surrounding the temple packed, thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people there to see their representative go before God.
Jeffrey Heine:They would cheer him on. They would pray for him, praying out loud that God would honor the the the sacrifice that he makes, that he would accept it, that he would forgive them. There would be 500 specially chosen priests that would be there on the periphery to assist. If anything happened to go wrong, they could assist. But it was the high priest's job to do all the sacrifices himself.
Jeffrey Heine:He would wear his priestly clothes which had a lot of gold on it, and he would do that every time he would offer one of those normal sacrifices, one of the normal 12. And after every sacrifice, he'd have to wash his hands, he'd have to wash his feet, and he'd have to take off his clothes, and he'd have to put on new clothes. Then he make a sacrifice, then he would wash his hands, wash his feet, take off his clothes, put on new clothes. He would do that over and over and over. But when it came time for him to make the sacrifices of atonement, there was a much higher step of cleanliness.
Jeffrey Heine:He would strip down completely naked in front of everyone. All the people around it. They had a little screen, this this see through cloth to give them just a teeny bit of privacy, but everybody was invested in what this man was doing. And he would take a complete bath. He would get up, and this time he would put on just robes of white linen.
Jeffrey Heine:Nothing else. Pure white. Then he would go into the holy of holies in this thick veil. He'd walk in, close it behind him, total darkness. Maybe a little bit of the red embers there, and he would throw the incense on it and smoke would fill the room probably for his protection so he couldn't see.
Jeffrey Heine:And so he's suffocating in there, hard to breathe, there's no light, and he would make his sacrifice for his sin. He would walk out, take off all of his clothes, get a full bath in front of everyone again. Get up, put on white linen, go in, this time offer sacrifices for the priest. Then you would go out, take off all of his clothes again, take a bath in front of everyone. By the end, he had washed 12 times and he had taken 3 full baths.
Jeffrey Heine:And he put on his white linen, and he would go in again. This time making atonement for all of the people. And that's the scene that you see here in Zechariah 3. Zechariah is seeing this vision of Joshua, the high priest, his high priest, before the Lord. Look at verse 4.
Jeffrey Heine:And the angel said to those who were standing before him, remove the filthy garments from him. He had these filthy garments on. The the word for filthy there is actually excrement. Zechariah had to be absolutely stunned, horrified when he sees this vision. It's not possible.
Jeffrey Heine:This is the most clean man in all of Israel. He's bathed all these times. He's made all these sacrifices, all of this. He's finally standing before the Lord, and the Lord looks at him, and he's covered with excrement. The guy shouldn't have a speck of dust.
Jeffrey Heine:He shouldn't have a germ on him. And here he is smeared all over with that. And what Ray Dillard, a former professor at Westminster, he preached a sermon on this. He says, what the Lord is doing is allowing you to see things as he sees them here. Here is the most outwardly clean man in all of Israel standing before him, and this is what his righteousness looks like.
Jeffrey Heine:Excrement. Had to be horrifying. But then something shocking happens which we just read in verse 4. After Joshua standing before the angel of the lord with filthy garments, then the angel said to those standing before him, remove the filthy garments. Remove them.
Jeffrey Heine:And and and if you go down, go down to verse 8, Says, hear now, oh Joshua, the high priest, you and your friends who sit before you, for they are men who are a sign. Behold, I will bring my servant the branch. For behold, on the stone that I have set before Joshua, on a single stone with 7 eyes, I will engrave its inscription, declares the Lord of hosts. And I will remove the iniquity of this land in a single day. In a single day.
Jeffrey Heine:Now the one thing that Zechariah knows is you cannot remove sin. You can't do it. The best you could do is come year, after year, after year, and make all these sacrifices, and postpone judgment. But you gotta keep coming. You can never have it just wiped out, and here the lord says, my servant, the branch is coming.
Jeffrey Heine:It will all be gone in a single day. This happens happened through Jesus. Did you know that Jesus and Joshua are the exact same word in Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek? Yeshua. So you have your high priest, Joshua, here covered in excrement.
Jeffrey Heine:And then we have Jesus, our high priest, who comes and who takes it away. Who takes it away. Hebrews 10 says that while priests offer daily sacrifices that can never take away sin, Jesus offered for one time a single sacrifice for sins. Jesus, like the high priest, the week before he went to give his sacrifice with his own body, That week was a week of preparation for him. The very night before he was to give that sacrifice, he spent the entire night up in prayer, purifying, getting ready for the next day.
Jeffrey Heine:The exact same things that the high priest would do. But but it's that there that the comparison ends because Jesus didn't have crowds of friends around the temple cheering him on. Saying, go Jesus. Yes, Jesus had none of that. His friends betrayed him.
Jeffrey Heine:His friends left him, deserted him. Jesus went all alone. Jesus didn't have his fine linen there. He was stripped of all of his clothing, naked on the cross. Jesus didn't take a bath.
Jeffrey Heine:Instead, he was showered with spit, as people would spit on him and spit on him as He went to the cross. And Jesus did not receive the acceptance of His heavenly father there. He was utterly forsaken. Forsaken. 2nd Corinthians 5 says that he who knew no sin was made to be sin was made to be sin.
Jeffrey Heine:So that in him, we might become the righteousness of god. And this is what sets Christianity apart from every other religion. You know, I don't have time to go in this, but every other religion is outside in. These are the things you do. These are the things you do, and that will change you from within.
Jeffrey Heine:Christianity says, no. It is nothing you can't ever it's not outside in. It's about what one person has done, and he has paid it. He has changed your heart. I tell you, I have a little 5 year old girl, Caroline, and this is so hard to communicate to her.
Jeffrey Heine:And at night when I'm tucking her in bed, she can go off for an hour on this. Daddy, what all must I do? Do I have to do everything right to get to heaven? No, Caroline. You don't have to.
Jeffrey Heine:You don't have to do everything. Alright. Tell me all the things I have to do. Tell me exactly what I have to do. You know, do do do I have to do them all?
Jeffrey Heine:I'm like, what what it's not about what you do, Caroline. It's about what Jesus has done. Okay. So so you're saying, I don't have to do any of those things. I I can, you know Or do I have to do most of those things?
Jeffrey Heine:Caroline, it's not about what you do. It's about what Jesus has done. Okay. So so what you're saying is, like, is is there 10 things that I need to do? I'm not kidding.
Jeffrey Heine:And this will go on. You know why? We're not wired to understand grace. We are wired outside in. What do I do?
Jeffrey Heine:Tell me what I do. What performance thing can I do? And you can never work from outside in. Christ has got to change your heart. I love it in Mark 7.
Jeffrey Heine:There's a little parenthetical note there that we we read. It says, thus Jesus declared all foods clean. He declared it. Whenever Mark has a little parenthetical note, you should start, highlight it. It's like a billboard because Mark never includes details and here it is.
Jeffrey Heine:Jesus thus declared all foods clean. And what he didn't say is, okay, the old testament was wrong. We've evolved, you know, now we're moving on to bigger and he doesn't say that. He he acknowledges the old purity laws were right, but now things are different. You know why?
Jeffrey Heine:Because all of those laws pointed to me. I am the fulfillment of all of them. You don't have to do anything anymore. I will do it all. Think of the purity laws as John the Baptist.
Jeffrey Heine:They simply prepared the way for the Lord, and they point to Him. And then when He comes, there's no need for them. He's the fulfillment of it. This brings us to this table. I love a passage that comes in Revelation 19.
Jeffrey Heine:It says that when Christ returns again and is described as a great wedding, do you know what we're gonna be dressed in? Linens of pure white. Don't you love that? Linen of pure white. And let me tell you, it's not gonna be because of anything you have done.
Jeffrey Heine:That's because of Christ who became sin on your behalf. That's what we're gonna celebrate here at the the Lord's table. The Lord, the night before he was betrayed, he had a special meal with his disciples, the ones who would later forsake Him that very evening, in which He took very ordinary elements. He took bread, and he got bread and he broke it, and he said, This is my body, broken for you. And then he got the wine and said, this is the wine of the new covenant that is poured out for the forgiveness of sin.
Jeffrey Heine:He said, Take, eat, this is my body. And he said, Drink, this is my blood. And so that's what we're gonna do tonight in remembrance of His sacrifice to make us white before Him. And this table is is open for all those who have professed their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, who trust in His merits alone. I love the line that we just sang in our last song, the best obedience of my hands.
Jeffrey Heine:Think of Joshua the high priest. The best obedience of my hands dares not appear before thy throne. But faith can enter thy demands by pleading what thy son has done. Pray with me. Lord, we thank you for your broken body, and we thank you for your blood.
Jeffrey Heine:Forgive us for all the ways that we try to work outside in to change our hearts. What that means is we don't believe the gospel. We confess we are wired that way. We are so performance oriented. I pray we will let that go, and we will cling to the merits of your son.
Jeffrey Heine:And it's in Jesus name we pray. Amen.
