October 6, 2024 NOTES NOT
EDITED
The Story of Jesus According to Mark: “The Devil is in the Details”
Mark 7:1-23
SIS – Religion nullifies the grace of God; or, a person can be
devoutly religious down to the smallest detail and still miss heaven by a mile.
Have you ever heard the warning: READ THE FINE PRINT! This is very
important when you are entering into any agreement or contract, or purchasing
any product. The reason that warning is so important is because: THE DEVIL IS
IN THE DETAILS. This is a phrase in English meaning, “The details of any
matter are the most problematic.” Consider a group of ladies at an office
who are planning a vacation to the Island of Maui. They are all excited about
the idea of such a trip. One of the ladies speaks up and says, “I agree that
it'd be really fun to have a girl's trip to Maui. Just remember that the
devil is in the details! We have to make sure our schedules line up and
that everyone has enough Paid Time Off.”
If the Devil is in the Details regarding a trip to Hawaii, imagine
how much more so he is involved in trying to disrupt your trip to heaven. One
of the Devil’s best weapons is to “bind up our devotion to Jesus Christ with
endless details of tradition and religion.”
If the Devil can keep us busy being religious, we won’t have time
to truly serve Jesus by faith. I’ve said
it many times: heaven comes as a result
of what Jesus has done for us, not what we do for Him!
What Jesus did on the cross, dying on our behalf for our sins,
provides the foundation for a relationship with Almighty God. Human efforts—no matter how sincere or
austere—can provide nothing more than a foundation for religion; and religion
actually nullifies the Truth of God according to Jesus Christ in our text.
Religion is all about the “traditions of men” and Jesus said (v
7):
“You
completely invalidate God’s command
in order to maintain your tradition!
The fact is that salvation is not a stairway or path of any kind,
but, heaven is a “gate, a narrow gate.”
You pass through in one moment in time as the mercy of God floods over you with
irresistible grace. We do nothing to
earn salvation—in fact, we CAN do nothing to earn salvation.
READING: Mark 7:1-7.
Herein, lies the foundation for our text this morning: the religious Jews of Jesus’ day believed
that by keeping the minute
details of the O.T. Law, including the hundreds of detailed laws
they added, they felt they could be justified before God—that is, by their
works.
Jesus said: “You are hypocrites! Even if you could keep the Law, which you
can’t, you could never by the details of your self-righteous devotion inherit
the Kingdom of God.” The Lord spoke
very harshly to the Pharisees in regard to the plethora of religious details
they taught others to practice.
Paul echoed what Jesus taught about how to be righteous. Paul said,
“Therefore since we have
been DECLARED righteous by faith, we
have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:1).
Salvation is not the reward for our devotion, but the source of
it. It’s that “cart and horse thing.” A
tradition-driven, religious devotion puts the “cart of works before the horse of devotion,”
and Jesus, Paul, and even James taught that it must be the other way around.
The old saying, “The
Devil is in the Details,” refers to the fact that one might have a great
idea for some grand venture, but unless one gets the “details” correct, success
will be an illusive dream.
I’m going to turn that phrase on its head and say, “One can get
every detail of one’s religion correct to the most precise degree and the grand
venture of gaining heaven will remain an allusive dream.
Religion—the devotion to ritualistic details—will nullify the grace
of God that leads to salvation; that is, a person can execute every minute detail
of religion precisely and still miss heaven by a mile.
The Devil is in the Details.
It is not what we do that gets us to heaven, but what Jesus has already
done. In fact, Jesus stresses in our
text that a “devotion to religious details will pollute one’s soul and prevent
one from gaining eternal life. That’s scary thought.
We read earlier what Jesus said about the Devil being in the
Details. Now, let’s take a closer look:
1. The PROCESS by
which tradition develop (1-5)
Traditions, by nature, take time.
They develop slowly, often with the best of intentions. The harshest words Jesus speaks in the N.T. are
directed at the “religious crowd,” especially the Pharisees.
How did the sect, or group called the Pharisees come about, and how
did they come up with hundreds of new religious rules to put on the backs of
people and enslave them in the chains of impotent religion?
The Pharisees developed during the time of the Exile in Babylon (7th
Century BC). Prior to the Exile, the
Temple and Priesthood was the center of Jewish life. During the Exile, without
a Temple, the Law (O.T. writings) became the foundation for Israel’s identity
as the People of God. Pharisees were
experts in the Law. There emphasis was
on “purity” which came from keeping the Law of the O.T. along with hundreds of
additional rules, strictly enforced.
Additional religious experts, like the Scribes, came along a few
centuries later and the “purity rules” (traditions of the elders) expanded even
further.
These arduous, tedious, and exacting “purity rules” are targeted by
Jesus with reference to “washing hands” (vv. 1-5), just one of many, many
“purity practices” required by the Jewish religious leaders. This “hand washing
had nothing to do with hygiene.” It was totally religious and the process was
exacting.
Verse 2 uses the word,
“koinais,” to describe the unwashed hands of the disciples. The
word literally means, “common,” as opposed to “sacred.” The HCSB correctly translates it “unclean”
which means, ceremonially unclean.
Verse 3 uses one of
the most unusual Greek words in the N.T.
It literally says that the Pharisees and religious Jews would not “eat
unless they washed their hands with a fist.” The word for fist is, “pygmē”
which sounds like the English word, “pygmy,” but there is no connection
between the two. The word comes from the
same root word as the Latin word, “pugnare,” which means to “fight, or
hit with the fist.”
This word occurs only here in the Bible. It refers to the “exacting method” of washing one’s hand by rubbing the fist in
the palm. The Mishnas, or later
Jewish writings describe the exacting way in which one must ceremonially remove
worldly defilement that could be transferred from the hands to the food to the
body and soul by way of the mouth. The entire process was proscribed dictating
exactly when and how to pour the water—palms up, then palms down; and exactly
how much water—until it ran down the elbows to the waist, and exactly how to
scrub with the fist. The process was exacting.
So important was ceremonial handwashing that according to Jewish
tradition, eating without proper handwashing put you at risk of being possessed
by the demon, Shipta. Shipta was
the demon of poverty and destruction.
Following tradition was a serious matter.
Originally, the tradition of the elders, or prophets, based their
practice of hand washing on the texts in the O.T. such as Exodus 30 and the
Book of Leviticus which talk about various washings. These texts were part of the holiness code of
the temple ceremonies to serve as a reminder that a person is “unholy” and
“unable” to approach a Holy God without dealing with the matter of sin. None of the O.T. ceremonial system of
washings, sacrifices, and other parts of the Holiness Code were ever intended
to be practiced indefinitely, nor were they intended to be an alternative
to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ—the only sacrifice that could remove sin.
The Book of Hebrews says about all the ceremonial laws of the O.T.
Heb 10:1 Since the law has ⌊only⌋ a shadow of the good things to come, and not the actual form of those
realities, it can never perfect the worshipers.
Paul further explained the purpose of the
O.T. traditions in Gal. 3:24:
24 The law, then,
was our guardian [tutor]
until Christ, so that we could be justified by faith. 25 But
since that faith has come, we are no
longer under a guardian.
So, this is how traditions grow and gain
power. It starts out with something good that is stretched far beyond what was
intended and becomes an “end in itself,” rather than a “means to an
end.”
ILLUS: A young woman is getting ready to host her
first big family gathering and wants to serve her grandmother’s “special
recipe” roast. The woman calls her mother and asks for the recipe. The mother
begins, “First you cut off both ends of the roast before placing it in the
roasting pan. . .” The young woman inquires: why cut off the roast’s ends? To
which the mother replies, “I’m not sure. That’s how my mother taught
me.” The big day arrives and the young
woman serves the roast. Her grandmother is at the gathering, so she
inquires, “Grandma, what is it about cutting off the ends of the roast that
makes it so tasty?” The grandmother replies, “It has nothing to do with the
recipe. The reason I cut off the ends of my roast was because the roast was too
big for my roasting pan.”
Almost
everything we do in church we do because, “that’s the way Momma did it, Grandma did it,
Great-grandma, did it, etc.” Jesus said
that these kind of “traditions” were “traditions of men” and would “invalidate (nullify) the truth of God in regard to
salvation.” Such traditions Jesus condemn in the harshest
terms.
That’s the
process by which traditions develop. As one great preacher once wrote, “tradition is the power of the past reaching into the present to strangle
the future” (Stedman, adapted).
Tradition is the folly of men now living blindly following the
methods of men long dead and completely missing the message that gives eternal
life. Traditionalism is a very serious error with
eternal consequences. This is why Jesus
is harsh and direct with His words.
That’s the process of how traditions grow
and gain power. Now, look at the
2. The PRODUCT
that tradition produces (6-13)
In a word, “following traditions of men” (religion)
produces, “hypocrites.” Look
at verses 6-7:
6 He answered
them, “Isaiah prophesied correctly about you hypocrites, as it is written: These people honor Me with their lips, but their heart is far
from Me. 7 They worship Me in vain, teaching
as doctrines the commands of men.
Ouch! That is some straight-forward rebuking. Jesus did not beat around the bush with the
Pharasees—He beat the Pharisees with a good, old tongue-lashing as “Momma would
say.”
You may have heard that the word, “hypocrite”comes from the
Greek theater referring to actors donning different masks to play different
parts. It literally means to “act
under” (hupo, under; krinō, act, decide).
The idea is a “false presentation.” Basically, a hypocrite is
a liar who is playing a part superficially, but it has no substance.
One great scholar says this about a hypocrite: “it is one whose whole life is a piece of
acting without any sincerity behind it at all.”
Hypocrites do more than just, “say one thing and do
another.” That’s the common
application of the word, referring to another lack of sincerity. But, that is not primarily what is at issue
here with the Pharisees—they were very
sincere! In fact, Jesus sort
of praised the sincerity of the Pharisees when he said: (Mat. 5:20)
20 For I tell you,
unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will
never enter the kingdom of heaven.
Jesus was not praising them for being “righteous” in the sense of
having a right relationship with God.
Jesus was referring to the exacting manner in which they
practiced their religion. It was all
about the details, or the methodology. Like
Grandma’s pot, the method is the same but the message has long been forgotten.
The problem with tradition is it produces “superficial Christians”
who “do all the right things (and more) but for all the wrong reasons.” Religion is like a mask that simply covers up
the real person underneath.
All world religions have strict rules to follow that determine your
standing or position in that religion. It’s all about the “details”—kissing the
Pope’s ring, lighting candles, saying a rosary, making the sign of the cross,
bowing toward Mecca, giving alms, wearing special underwear, or being married
in a special temple, and on and on and on the list goes. The focus with any religion is on the
“details”—and Jesus is warning us here: “The
Devil is in the Details!”
So, if tradition corrupts the truth and becomes a substitute for
true righteousness produces hypocrites, then what’s the solution? Jesus teaches here that the solution to
falling prey to the Devil in the Details, is to understand the
3. The PRINCIPLE of
True Faith (14-23)
NOTE: THE SOLAS. Sola Scriptura-Scripture Alone. Sola Christus. Christ Alone. Sola Fide. Faith Alone. Sola Gratia. Grace Alone. Soli Deo Gloria. For the Glory of God Alone. The key word is, Sola—alone, as in, with no help outside
of God.
The Pharisees methods focused on keeping ceremonially clean, and Jesus demolished the very foundation of
their religion by saying:
Don’t you
realize that nothing going into a man from the outside can defile him? 19 For
it doesn’t go into his heart but into the stomach and is eliminated.” (As a result, He made all foods clean. o) 20 Then He
said, “What comes out of a person—that defiles him. 21 For from
within, out of people’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immoralities, thefts, murders, 22 adulteries, greed,
evil actions, deceit,
promiscuity, stinginess, blasphemy,
pride, and foolishness. 23 All these evil things come
from within and defile a person.”
This was like dropping a bomb on the religion of the
Pharisees. Without all the “external
ceremonial details,” there was nothing of the religion of the Pharisees left.
Jesus was basically teaching what had been true all through the
prophets and would continue with the teaching of the Apostles: religion is about external details, but
salvation is about a change of heart.
Religion is an outside job.
Salvation is an inside job.
Religion is all about the principle of “working for salvation, (whatever
that particularly salvation looks like in any particular religion).
Christianity is all about the principle of faith—faith is simply
believing in your heart that Jesus is Lord and surrendering to Him so that He
becomes your Savior.
You can adhere to every minute detail of the strictest religion and
it will only lead you to the Devil—the Devil is in the Details. Salvation is in the Deliverer, Jesus
Christ.
By faith . . . is the
term used throughout the 11th chapter of Hebrews to demonstrate the
true path to salvation.
By faith, Abel offered a better sacrifice; by faith Enoch
was snatched alive into heaven; by faith
Noah built an ark to save his family; by
faith Abraham set out for a land he could not see to possess a reward he
could not earn; by faith men and women
have followed God and received the prize of heaven—by faith, not by traditions!
The Principle of Faith is diametrically opposed (the exact
opposite) of the Traditions of Men. The
Principle of Faith is about something that happens “inside a person” not
something external that a person does.
This has always been God’s plan. Jeremiah, the Prophet, declared:
31:31 “Look, the days
are coming”—⌊this is⌋ the Lord’s
declaration—“when I will make a new covenant
with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. 32 ⌊This one will⌋ not be like
the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring
them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant they broke even though I had married
them” —the Lord’s declaration. 33 “Instead, this is the
covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days”—the Lord’s
declaration. “I will put My teaching within them and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God, and they will be My people.
Paul reiterated this fundamental principle of salvation by faith:
2Cor. 3:3 It is clear
that you are Christ’s letter,
produced by us, not written with
ink but with the Spirit of the living God —not on stone tablets but on tablets that are hearts of flesh.
Sadly, most people follow the dead-end path of the Pharisees and
seek salvation through religion which is concerned with issues like “ceremonial
washing, lighting ceremonial candles, saying ceremonial prayers, or a plethora
of other religious activities.”
Jesus taught the Principle of Faith: believe in Your heart that He is
Lord and you will be saved by what He HAS done—not anything that you can do.
Look at verse 19 and you see the Principle of Faith stated clearly,
. . . nothing
going into a man from the outside can defile him? 19 For it doesn’t go into his heart but into the
stomach.
It used to be that the standard
definition of “death” was when someone stopped breathing. A doctor would hold a mirror up to the
person’s face. If the warm breath fogged
up the mirror you were alive, if not, you were buried—case closed. Not a very
accurate test. Then, with more
sophisticated tests, the definition of death was “when one’s heart stopped
beating.” That no longer works as a
standard test because we can keep the heart beating almost indefinitely by
artificial means.
But, the “definition of spiritual death remains the same”—a
person is spiritually dead when one’s heart has not been changed by the
Indwelling of the Holy Spirit at the moment of salvation. It doesn’t matter whether one’s breath can
fog a mirror if one’s physical heart is still beating, or one has “brain
functions”—those are all just details.
The Devil is in
the Details – Eternal Life is in a Relationship with God through Jesus Christ.
Everybody in this room today is in one of two categories: 1) one, you are relying on religious notions
or practices to gain favor with God and go to heaven when you die—basically,
you are trusting that your good deeds (your religious traditions) will outweigh
your bad deeds; or 2) two, you are Trusting in the Principle of Faith that
causes a change in your heart and establishes an eternal relationship with God
through Jesus Christ. There is no
middle ground. It is one or the other.
Doing the wrong thing never makes it right no matter how often you
repeat it. I remember three hunters on an excursion to Alaska to hunt for
elk. The each had two permits to bag two elk each. They were successful and
bagged and tagged six elk. When they got the elk back to the bush plane for the
flight back to their city, the pilot said, “I can only carry you and four elk.”
One of the hunters protested, “But the plane that we used last year was exactly
like yours. Same horsepower. The weather was the same. We have the same three
hunters and same six elk. Hearing this, the pilot decided to load up the
hunters and six elk and fly out. Sure enough, before the plane did not have
enough power to climb out of the valley with all that weight. They crashed.
Nobody was seriously hurt. As the hunters were stumbling out of the wreckage,
one of them said to the other two, “do you guys know where we are?” One of the
other hunters answered, “I’m not exactly sure but it looks like about a mile
from where we crashed last year!”
Religion will surely lead to a catastrophic crash no matter how
much you pay attention to the details. Only faith in what Jesus has already
DONE will bring you salvation
Jesus spoke harshly against the Pharisees for putting an emphasis
on the external religious details like “ceremonial handwashing.” The Pharisees were “dead wrong” – eternally
dead wrong. Don’t let the
Devil defeat your devotion by entangling you in a web of religious details.
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