The Heart of the Matter (Morning)
Download MP3If you have a Bible, I invite you to turn to Mark chapter 7 as we continue our study in the gospel of Mark. It's also there in your worship guide. A few years ago it was Christmas break. All my girls were home, and so I thought we would cozy up on the couch and watch, a Christmas movie together. So I I queued up on Amazon my my favorite Christmas movie, Die Hard.
Joel Brooks:And I was a little surprised that it was rated R, and so I I didn't wanna be an irresponsible parent, you know, and just show my my daughter something that was suitable for their age. So before showing it to them, I made sure to go to one of those parental guide websites. So I went to the, the IMDB parental guide site. And I've gone there multiple times before to look up other movies because it's really helpful. It breaks down a movie by categories, and then it gives you a rating within each category, and it actually lists all these parts in the movie that fall under that.
Joel Brooks:So so it breaks up movies into categories of, violence, or, sex nudity, or profanity, drug use, things like that. So I looked it up, and it said that there is 10 seconds of brief nudity, in Die Hard, and so I thought that's that's what a fast forward button is for. It's literally a fast forward is 10 seconds. Perfect. Got that.
Joel Brooks:Next it listed the violence. It was severe, rated severe. It talked about, you know, endless shootouts and lists all of them. You know, bombs killing people, one person is shot then falls out of a building. I'm like, yeah, it's the coolest scene.
Joel Brooks:And basically just, you know, there's a lot of violence, but in my mind, they were mostly terrorists who got killed, and so I mean, that's kind of a, you know, that's a good moral maybe, positive message. And so I just go to the next one, which was drug use, which it said minimal. And then it went to profanity. And my goodness, have you watched Die Hard lately? So there are a 147 uses of profanity, and including 54 uses of the f bomb.
Joel Brooks:So I'm a child of the eighties. That's essentially a PG movie for me. Alright? That's that's what I grew up in. That's that is certainly PG, but still I wanted to make sure this was appropriate for my kids.
Joel Brooks:You know, that's a lot, but you know, that's what a mute button's for. And and I think I'm pretty good with a mute. It might be easier to mute the whole movie and only unmute it during certain parts, but, but I thought I could do this. I bet a lot of you parents have done the same thing with your kids. There's certain movies you're gonna put forward, and you're like, I don't know, and so you go to one of those parental guide sites.
Joel Brooks:It's helpful. They're a good tool that we use to protect our kids. But here's the one thing I've come to realize over the years, and that's they usually don't include the real danger. The real danger in the movie is is not the type of stuff that just kinda hits you over the head, it's the more subtle messages that are embedded within the movie, embedded in those safe options that are often rated g or pg, and it's what I would call the gospel according to Hollywood, which could be summed up in this phrase, follow your heart. Follow your heart.
Joel Brooks:It seems like in every movie you watch, especially those inspirational movies, every Disney, Pixar animation, even now in in a lot of the commercials that we see, we're being urged to follow our hearts, to listen to our hearts, to follow our gut. We need to trust our intuition, to pursue our dreams and to believe in oneself even if everyone else is telling us something different. I mean, often at the climactic point in a movie, which you have the hero with the movie, and they're wondering what they should do. And some wise sage usually comes up next to them, you know, puts their arm around them and says, well, what does your heart say? And, of course, the implication is if you obey your heart, everything's gonna be okay.
Joel Brooks:Now the the fancy philosophical word for this is that this is expressive in individualism. And perhaps you've been hearing that word thrown around, expressive individualism, or to be your your authentic self. And there is currently nothing valued more highly in our culture than this. We're taught that actually to deny the desires that are happening in our hearts, to not follow our hearts is to deny our chance of happiness or of any meaning in our lives. And yet Jesus, in the words we're about to read, he's gonna let us know that there are few things more dangerous or damning than following our own hearts.
Joel Brooks:But I've never seen a parental guide that warns us about that. So Mark 7. We'll begin reading in verse 14. Jesus 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.
Joel Brooks:And he said to them, then are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from the outside cannot defile him? Since it enters 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.
Joel Brooks: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. This is the word of the Lord. Pray with me. Father, I, we ask that in this moment through your Spirit, you would do something supernatural, something we cannot, and that is to open up our hearts, to soften the callousness that we have there, so that we might hear from you.
Joel Brooks:I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore. But Lord, may your words remain and may they change us. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus, amen. In 2007, a man named EJ Jacobs, who at the time he was, one of the editors for Esquire Magazine, he decided that he was going to obey every rule in the Old Testament, every law. He was gonna do it for an entire year, and so he carried around with him a list of all 613 rules and prohibitions that he was supposed to keep.
Joel Brooks:The the list, I mean, if if if you read through the Old Testament, it it covers everything. And there's certain things you can wear, certain things you can eat, certain things you can't wear, eat. Like, you're supposed to not wear any clothes that have mixed fibers. You must grow a beard. You're supposed to stone adulterers.
Joel Brooks:That was problematic for him because he didn't actually wanna kill someone. So he actually kept with him little teeny pebbles, and anyone he suspected of adultery, he just began throwing little pebbles at them. He was once being interviewed by someone. They were writing about him, what he was doing, and that person confessed they were having an affair, and he like began throwing little pebbles at the person interviewing him. Now most people, they they mocked AJ as he did his little experiment here, not because they thought he was an idiot, but because they saw the Bible itself as ridiculous.
Joel Brooks:The Bible just has all these stupid rules. I mean sure there's some rules that are understandable. I mean, like you shouldn't murder people, but most of those rules in the Bible they're seen as silly primitive. I mean, have you ever tried reading through Leviticus? I mean, ad nauseam, there's all these lists of things that you can touch or you cannot touch, all these things that will make you unclean.
Joel Brooks:Touching someone dead, anything dead makes you unclean. Touching someone with a bodily discharge makes you unclean. Being sick makes you unclean. Eating pork or an ostrich, or a little owl, or an eagle, or all but 4 insects makes you unclean. And to be unclean, it means you can't go to the temple and worship.
Joel Brooks:You can't worship God if you're unclean. Now, AJ, as he's trying to keep all these laws, he actually found that he could do a really good job keeping the moral ones. The moral law that it was hard, but he could at least do an external, conformity to it, and so, he didn't murder people, he didn't have sex outside of marriage, he wasn't stealing from people. He found he could keep those laws. It was the ceremonial laws or what we call that maybe the purity laws that were impossible to keep.
Joel Brooks:He found himself constantly washing his clothes, washing all of his furniture, and basically ends up just trying to avoid any contact with people at all. Because there was no way that he could actually remain clean just going through normal life. So what is the point of all those purity laws? Why are they in your Bible? I've heard a number of people over the years, they they point to those things, they point to those ceremonial laws, and and all that, and they're like, you believe that?
Joel Brooks:That that's what they use use to mock Christianity. They're like, can't you see that the Bible's archaic? It's it's written by primitive people. It's a bunch of superstitious beliefs written by a bunch of superstitious people. Certainly you can agree that we have evolved since then.
Joel Brooks:Anyway, I usually answer, well, could you just pause for one second? Now, maybe you have these thoughts as well. And I would say, could you just pause for one second? What is the reason that sometimes we raise our hands in worship, or we go to our knees in prayer? What is the reason that some of you as you are observing Lent are fasting from certain things?
Joel Brooks:Perhaps you've decided for the whole season of Lent, I'm not eating any chocolate. That's always a favorite. Or maybe I am going to fast from social media because you probably should do that anyway. Or I'm gonna I'm gonna not drink any alcohol during Lent. Also probably a good idea.
Joel Brooks:Maybe some of you are fasting from food once a week during the season of Lent. Let me ask you, as you are not touching those things, not consuming those things, are you more holy? You probably said, well, I mean, of course not. I mean, of course, I'm not more holy. That's not the point of it.
Joel Brooks:But there is something about performing an action, doing something like that external that allows me to focus in on the heart. It allows me to concentrate on what's actually going on in here. It it creates a posture, if you will, that makes me more receptive to some spiritual things, what God might be pointing out in me. And I would say, exactly. Exactly.
Joel Brooks:The ceremonial laws in the Old Testament were to do the same thing. They were not good or bad in and of themselves, but they were set up by God as a way of pointing to our real need to be cleansed deep within. It was to open us up to the to that idea that something bad is happening in here, and we need to be constantly reminded that we need God to come and to cleanse us. Now the scribes and the Pharisees, they completely missed this. As Jeff pointed out last week, they actually thought that by trying to keep all of those ceremonial laws, plus maybe adding a a few more just for fun, that if they did all of that, it would cleanse their hearts.
Joel Brooks:They couldn't have been more wrong. I grew up in a a church, loved the church. It really helped shape me in many ways. I don't ever wanna be negative about the church I grew up in. But they did one odd thing.
Joel Brooks:The envelopes, the offering envelopes they had, they had a list on them of things you could check off. You just check them, and it was like things like, are you present? Easy one to check. Okay. I'm present.
Joel Brooks:Are you giving? Okay. Have you shared your faith? Or another way they phrase it was, have you visited any prospects? Like, okay.
Joel Brooks:Yeah. I mean, I think I talked to, you know, one of my friends. I think I mentioned the Lord in passing or something like that. Then it was, did you bring your Bible? Have you read your Bible every day?
Joel Brooks:They're just little you literally, you would check those things off and you would turn them in. I remember growing up I had next to my bed a framed Bible verse, Matthew 5 16. I will remember it to the day I die, because I wanted to check the box. I wanted to be sure like, okay, I have to check the box. Look at it.
Joel Brooks:Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works and glorify your father in heaven. Okay. I could go to sleep. Now on Sunday, I could check the box. I've read my bible every day, and there was something about seeing all of those check boxes that just felt so good.
Joel Brooks:The Pharisees, they they felt the same way. If they could just check all the boxes, perhaps add a few more, like some of you do when you're making to do list. Sometimes you write down the things you've already done. Just feels good to later check them off. Pharisees same way, they're like, I've already done I have to make sure I check off all those things, and they look at that, and they're like, man, I'm clean.
Joel Brooks:They completely missed the purpose of the law. Those purity laws, those ceremonial laws, they were not there to actually cleanse them, but to serve as a reminder of their need for cleansing, that something deep within them is stained, and they need to go to God for cleansing. And there were so many laws about this because they had to be reminded of this all the time. We need to be cleansed because look at what Jesus says is within us. Verse 21.
Joel Brooks:For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting. We're like, okay, we get the point, Jesus. He's like, oh, I'm not done. Wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they are what defile a person.
Joel Brooks:Now Jesus would have 100% been canceled for saying anything like that in our culture. I I mean, he was he was crucified in his day for saying things like this. We haven't evolved much 2000 years later. We would have done the same thing because there is nothing celebrated more today than the desires of the human heart. A matter of fact, to not give in to those desires is to live the inauthentic life, and to actually tell someone else that they need to not listen to their heart, that can be considered hate speech.
Joel Brooks:But look at the things that Jesus says comes out of our hearts. I mean, first thing, evil thoughts. If if you think, I'm not a evil person. Let me just ask you this. Would you like it if I could somehow just put up there on the screen everything that you have thought this past week for us to look through.
Joel Brooks:Everything. And I'm not just talking about the evil thoughts like when somebody pulls in front of you cuts you off in traffic. I'm talking about this. I'll give you this. What if I would post up there your your thoughts on a Easter Sunday morning, but I posted them all?
Joel Brooks:Even on our best day, even on our best behavior, you know there's thoughts in there that we have towards others, towards God, evil thoughts. Jesus, he did enlist sexual immorality. The word here is pornea, which is where we get the word pornography. And it means, any sex act outside of the relationship of a husband and wife. Any sex act outside of the relationship of a husband and wife.
Joel Brooks:Now today, to not act on any sexual desire you might have is considered harmful, repressive. As a matter of fact, in our culture, which is unique in all of human history, we base one's identity upon their sexual desire. No other culture or history, in time has ever done that. The we say one's identity is based on their sexual desire. And if we don't listen to what our heart says concerning sexual desire, well, then we lose our identity.
Joel Brooks:But Jesus here, he wants to free us from that. He wants to give us a much stronger, more glorious identity. One that comes from following Him and becoming a child of God. Jesus, He goes on to list other things, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, deceit, envy. Be honest, there are times I want you to think of your dearest friend whom you love so much.
Joel Brooks:Have you ever deceived them? Have you ever been envious of them? Yes. We do that to those whom we love. So basically what Jesus is saying here is we've got some bad things going on in here and we all know it.
Joel Brooks:If you were in this room and you're looking at this list and you're like, I've done most if not all of those things, You're not alone. So have I. So have all of us. It's actually why we're here gathered together. Because we're saying we need Jesus.
Joel Brooks:Jesus is not just describing your heart, he's describing my heart and all of our hearts. And he's saying do not do not follow your heart. Some of you are in the same bible reading plan that I'm in. This past week, you probably read through numbers 15, if you are. I love it.
Joel Brooks:There's this little note there that talk about it's going through all these ceremonial laws and said the the people had to wear these little tassels at the end of the robe. Said the tassels to remind you of something. To obey God and not follow your heart. That's literally what the tassels for, is to remember, I'm not to follow my heart, I'm not to follow my heart, but I'm to follow God. So we don't follow our heart, we follow Jesus, and we follow his word.
Joel Brooks:Will at times it feel like death to us to deny those desires? Absolutely. But we believe in a God who raises the dead. Yes. It feels like death but resurrected life follows.
Joel Brooks:He gives us a new life and a new joy, a new heart when we die to those things. So don't trust your heart. Trust the one who created you, and that He knows what is best for you. Jesus is the only one who can make you clean. Mark adds this hugely important parenthetical comment.
Joel Brooks:It's actually known as the silver rule. If you know what the golden rule is, do unto others as you would they would do you would have them do unto you. This is the golden rule. He declared all food clean. That there's nothing that you put in you that's gonna corrupt you.
Joel Brooks:Now notice that Jesus doesn't say that all foods are clean. No. He, in that moment, declares them clean. How can Jesus just do that? How can he just eliminate all of those food laws that you have in the Old Testament about what you have to eat or what you can't eat to make your heart clean.
Joel Brooks:Well it's because all of those laws existed for this one reason, to point to him. They're they're all pointing to our need for him, that deeper cleansing. But now that Jesus has arrived, their purpose is over, or he might say their purpose has been fulfilled. I did not come to abolish the law, I came to fulfill it. These laws have found their fulfillment in me.
Joel Brooks:They've all been pointing to me. You have a heart that needs to be cleansed, and I'm the only one who can do it. And one of the places that I think we most clearly see that there is nothing that we can do, No observance of the law, no good deed, no anything that we could do to actually make us clean is in Zechariah chapter 3. I would have you turn there, but we don't have 30 minutes. So I'll I'll just summarize it.
Joel Brooks:The prophet Zechariah, he's given a vision of Joshua who is the high priest at the time. Joshua is standing before the presence of the Lord which means it is the day of atonement and he is in the holy of holies because that's the only time that the high priest could ever stand before the presence of the Lord. It's Israel's most sacred day. It's it's Yom Kippur. It's the day when God would come and he would the Lord would remove their sins and he would make the people clean.
Joel Brooks:So a lot had to happen in order for the high priest to be prepared for that day. I would encourage you to to go to the Internet, look up a guy named Ray Dillard who in 1979, December 31st, preached a sermon on how the high priest had to prepare himself. It it will it will blow your mind everything that had to take place, but I'll give you just a little bit of the preparation. 7 days before the day of atonement, the high Priest, he would leave his own house in Jerusalem, and he would go and he would stay in a room in the temple where he would not have any human contact for 7 days. He literally he'd lock himself in the room because he couldn't risk being defiled.
Joel Brooks:He couldn't risk touching someone who was unclean. All of his food would be specially prepared for him, make sure it's kosher and it would be delivered to him. And he would do this for the entire week. And then he would, all week, he would cram basically for an exam, which was gonna be the day of atonement. He would study all the laws again.
Joel Brooks:He would practice making all of the sacrifices. He would practice all the prayers he would have to say. If he was uncertain about anything, he could just look out the door and call for help because he had all the priests and all the scribes there to serve Him. He had to know the order of all the sacrifices. He had to know the directions the animals needed to face as they were sacrificed.
Joel Brooks:He needed to know the exact words to say during all of the prayers. He had to know when and how to light the incense. He had to know how many times he was supposed to sprinkle the blood. There was a lot to remember. And then the night before the day of atonement, he would stay up all night in prayer and in meditation trying to purify his heart.
Joel Brooks:Well, the service would begin early the next morning at the first streak of of sunlight. Already by this time, the temple and everything around the temple would have been packed with people. All the priests would be there in attendance, and there would be a public crowd there as well. Those who couldn't get into the sanctuary, you know, they're surrounding the temple. And all of these people had also been fasting all day, praying all day, and they're looking on with anxiousness because they have a lot riding on the high priest.
Joel Brooks:He is their representative. If God doesn't grant him forgiveness, they're not forgiven. There would be 15 sacrifices that day. All of them done by the whole by the high priest. Can you imagine how exhausting that would be?
Joel Brooks:Fifteen sacrifices. There were 12 ordinary sacrifices. They were, they were all done in the temple, and then there was gonna be 3 sacrifices for atonement. 500 chosen priests would be there to once again give aid to the high priest if he needed anything, but the high priest had to make all the sacrifices himself. For the normal sacrifices, there's 12 sacrifices.
Joel Brooks:The priest, he would put on his priestly clothes, and then he would make the sacrifice, and then he would go and he'd take off his clothes, he would wash his hands, put on another priestly garment, and then he would come back in, make the next sacrifice. He was finished. He'd go, take off his clothes, wash his hands, put on the necks. He changed clothes 12 times for those 12 sacrifices. Then when he had to enter into the holy of holies and make the, the sacrifices of atonement, well, he had to strip down completely.
Joel Brooks:And this time not just wash his hands, but he had to take a bath. And since everybody wanted to see what the high priest was doing, it was a very public bath. To give him a little bit of privacy they put screen around a bathtub that you could kinda see through, but everybody wanted to make sure he was actually doing it. And so he would go and he would bathe and then he'd come out. And this time he wouldn't put on his priestly garments.
Joel Brooks:He would just put on a robe of white. Pure white, as white as he could possibly get it. There should not be a speck of dust on that robe. He was supposed to be at that point, a emblem of perfection. There could be no one more spotless than him in that moment.
Joel Brooks:He would then enter into the Holy of Holies for the first time. The room itself was surrounded by a very thick curtain, no light could get in. The only light that was in there was there were some coals that were glowing. And yet when he would walk in, the first thing he was to do is to throw incense on the coals, and so then smoke would fill the entire room. So he is now in darkness filled with smoke, And it's there that God's presence would come to him right there at the Ark of the Covenant or at the mercy seat.
Joel Brooks:And he would make his first sacrifice for atonement. The first one was to be for his sins. After he made that sacrifice, he had to leave the room, strip down, take another bath, put on another outfit of all white, go back in. Next sacrifice for atonement, this time for the priest. After he finished that, he'd have to go strip down, take another bath, come back in, or put on another outfit, come back in, And then finally, he would make a sacrifice for atonement for all of the people.
Joel Brooks:This is the scene that Zechariah is now looking in on in Zechariah 3. He has this vision of the high priest in that moment standing before the Lord and what he sees is horrifying. We read that he sees Joshua. He's standing before the angel of the Lord there. And it says that, his He is clothed with filthy garments.
Joel Brooks:The word for filthy there is the word excrement. Joshua, the high priest is covered with excrement. I mean, that's that's impossible. There's absolutely no way that that that could happen. That that he should not have had so much as a germ on him, let alone to be covered with escriment.
Joel Brooks:I mean, Zechariah, he's just he's horrified. How could that happen after all those careful preparations, after all of those washings, after everything. You know, and what's going on here is this, in this prophetic vision, the Lord is allowing Zechariah to see what he sees. And the Lord does not examine man by their out his outward appearance. He looks at the heart.
Joel Brooks:And he says that on man's best day, best day after all of man's efforts of being as pure and as holy and as righteous as man can get. Best day covered with excrement. It's shocking. What happens next is even more shocking though. You read, and the angel said to those who were standing before Joshua, remove the filthy garments from him.
Joel Brooks:And to Joshua, he said, behold, I have taken your iniquity away from you, and I will clothe you with pure vestments. And then the angel says that someone is going to come, someone called the Branch, have I mean, that would have stunned Zechariah. I mean, because he he knows he can't actually remove sin. I mean that's why you have sacrifices over and over and over because he can never actually really get rid of it. That's why you have to have the day of atonement every year.
Joel Brooks:There has to be another atoning sacrifice. It never stops. But here the Lord says, no it will because someday I'm sending my servant and my servant is gonna come and in one day he is removing all sin. Jesus is the one who claims to do this. Did you know that Jesus and Joshua are actually the same name?
Joel Brooks:Same name in Hebrew and in Aramaic and in Greek. Yeshua. Jesus is the greater Joshua. Jesus came as the ultimate high priest. He's the one who did the ultimate day of atonement.
Joel Brooks:And just like the high priest, Jesus stayed up all night beforehand praying, dedicating his life to the sacrifice that was gonna happen the next morning, next day. But that's where the comparisons end between his priesthood and the other high priests. Because unlike the high priest, Jesus didn't have his friends. Jesus wasn't surrounded by the crowds cheering him on, wanting to help him. All of his friends deserted him.
Joel Brooks:The crowds were cheering crucify him. Jesus wasn't covered with fine white linen. He was stripped of his clothes. Jesus did not take a bath. He was covered with spit.
Joel Brooks:2nd Corinthians 5 we read that at that moment, he who knew no sin was made to be sin. So that in him we might become the righteousness of God. And so in that moment is what we often call the beautiful exchange, which is when Jesus took upon himself our filthy rags, our filthy clothing, and then he put on us his righteousness. This is the gospel. Jesus alone is the one who can make us clean.
Joel Brooks:If you go to him, he will cleanse you in a way that you can never cleanse yourself. Some of you are so exhausted trying to cleanse yourself. You're just so tired trying to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, trying to turn over a new leaf, trying to do all of these things to make your heart clean, to make yourself presentable. And Jesus says you can't do it. On your best day, you can't do it, but I'll do it for you.
Joel Brooks:Jesus out of incredible love for us says, I will do it for you. If you go to Jesus, he will forgive you. He will give you a new heart, a new life, a new joy, and a new identity as a child of God. So the question is simply this, do you want to be washed? Do you want to be cleaned?
Joel Brooks:If so, call out to Jesus. Let's pray to him. Lord, for those who are so weary here, would they come to you and find rest? There is no longer a need to perform. You have done the performance for them.
Joel Brooks:You have lived the perfect life for us. For those who need to be cleansed were to come and clean us, Jesus. Thank you for your incredible love for us. Thank you for that beautiful exchange for taking away our sin and giving us your righteousness. I pray we would celebrate that till you come.
Joel Brooks:We pray this in your name, Jesus. Amen.
