The Faith of the Little Pet Puppies - Mark 7:24-30 - May 24, 2020

These are the Sermon Notes for May 24, 2020. Watch our livestream service every Sunday at 9:37 am on our facebook page or watch the livestream recordings any time.

Mark 7:24-30 The Faith of Little Pet Puppies

Good morning! I ‘d like to say, welcome back, to all of those who are brave enough to return after the beating we all took in last week’s sermon!

We are returning once again to the Gospel of Mark, chapter seven, verses twenty four through thirty.

To some it may seem as if Mark had turned the page and changed the subject in his Gospel account here in our text, but that isn’t really the case. Jesus didn’t move on from this teaching about what defiles, or doesn’t defile a person.

In this chapter Jesus has shown us that it is not the keeping or breaking of tradition that defiles a person or makes them clean, it is not what a person eats or avoids eating that make a person clean or unclean, and now, in this morning’s text, He shows that it is not a person’s race that makes them clean or unclean.

This is a very important text for us to consider this morning and there is a lot for us to learn here from Jesus, from the Gentile woman, and about the expansion of the Gospel. So let’s read the text together.

24 And from there he arose and went away to the region of Tyre and Sidon. And he entered a house and did not want anyone to know, yet he could not be hidden. 25 But immediately a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit heard of him and came and fell down at his feet. 26 Now the woman was a Gentile, a Syrophoenician by birth. And she begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. 27 And he said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” 28 But she answered him, “Yes, Lord; yet even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” 29 And he said to her, “For this statement you may go your way; the demon has left your daughter.” 30 And she went home and found the child lying in bed and the demon gone. Let’s pray.

Jesus and the disciples had been near Capernaum in Galilee previous to this account and now traveled to the Northwestern border of the District of Galilee. The cities of Tyre and Sidon were Gentile cities on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, today this is Lebanon. In going to this region Jesus hoped to avoid the crowds and be able to teach His disciples, and on its face, this account shows, once again, that Jesus could never be hidden, people always found Him and brought their troubles to Him. But that isn’t to say that He wasn’t able to teach His disciples. This account teaches a great deal and we would do well not to miss it.

So what do we know about this woman? She was a Gentile, Matthew calls her a Canaanite, and she was. She was born in Phoenicia which was in the province of Syria, and she had a little daughter that was possessed by a demon.

In Matthew’s account of this event it shows how she initially tried to play by the Jewish rules in order to get Jesus to meet her need. Matthew 15:22-24 says,

22 And behold, a Canaanite woman from that region came out and was crying, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David; my daughter is severely oppressed by a demon.” 23 But he did not answer her a word. And his disciples came and begged him, saying, “Send her away, for she is crying out after us.” 24 He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

She calls Jesus, “Lord, Son of David.” This is the Jewish reference to the Messiah. But Jesus did not answer her a word, He kept silent. The disciples tried to get Jesus to grant her request so she would go away but He said, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

It was only after she dropped the pretense and simply said, in Matthew 15:25 “Lord, help me,” that Jesus responded.

Mark skipped those details but we don’t have to, I think that they’re very important.

What’s also important is that this was the first act of salvation in the Gentile world, this was a prophetic and symbolic representation of the future progress of the gospel from Jews to Gentiles. Those of us that are not descendants of Abraham can have saving faith in Jesus Christ and it started right here!

Now all through this chapter of Mark we have been dealing with cleanness and uncleanness, uncleanness due to the lack of following traditions and washing your hands correctly, uncleanness due to eating the wrong kinds of food and drink, but as we saw last week, defilement comes from within a person, not from without. Jesus goes to the region of Tyre and Sidon to continue to teach this point to His disciples and to you and me.

The Jews taught that uncleanness came from breaking tradition, from touching the wrong thing, from eating the wrong thing, and from being born of the wrong people. The Jews were not allowed to interact with Gentiles, they couldn’t eat a meal with them, they weren’t even allowed to go into their homes or use a dish that a Gentile had used without being considered ceremonially unclean and disqualified from worship until they were ritually washed. 

But Jesus shows us here that a person’s race has nothing to do with whether or not that they could come to Him in faith, sin remains condemned but faith is available to all.

Now, I don’t know if this lady was trying to trick Jesus into thinking that she was Jewish by referring to Him as the Son of David, but I do know that Jesus knew that she wasn’t and He made that pretty clear in Matthew.

So she dropped the pretense and humbly said, “Lord, help me.”

This woman crossed the lines of race and social stigma and looked with longing to the Savior. She begged Him to cast the demon out of her daughter.

Jesus’ response at first looks pretty harsh but it did offer a glimmer of hope.

27 And he said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”

Yikes!

Some of the Jews, in their pride, referred to all Gentiles as dogs, but not the same type of dog that Jesus meant here. Jesus used the diminutive form of the word to mean more like little pet puppies, not dirty, scavenging street dogs that are common in Palestine even today.

Let the children be fed first, for it’s not right to take your children’s bread and throw it to your puppy.

So where is the kernel of hope? Let the children be fed first, meaning, the pets will get their chance later.

Notice how the woman responds. She doesn’t say, “How could a loving God allow bad things to happen to my daughter? God is love, now give me what I want!” These are demands of pride, demands we hear far too often today.

Instead she responds in humility.

27 And he said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” 28 But she answered him, “Yes, Lord; yet even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”

1 Peter 5:5 says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” And that’s exactly what is happening here. The woman recognized that she wasn’t owed anything, another lesson we all could learn, She didn’t want the children’s meal, she didn’t want the children’s bread, she only wanted a crumb of God’s grace to heal her daughter.

She looked longingly to the Savior, she waited in humility for help, she persisted though she recognized that she was owed nothing, and when Jesus granted her request she held fast to that hope with confidence.

29 And he said to her, “For this statement you may go your way; the demon has left your daughter.” 30 And she went home and found the child lying in bed and the demon gone.

Notice that she had no evidence that Jesus had done what He said. This was one of two miracles performed by Jesus from a distance. She left with no evidence that her daughter had been healed, just hope. But her hope was not just a wish, she held fast in confidence that Jesus did what he said He did.

She didn’t leave there saying, “I hope He really healed my daughter.” That’s not hope, that’s wishful thinking. She left with a confident expectation that Jesus did what he said he would do. That’s what hope is. 30 And she went home and found the child lying in bed and the demon gone.

I’ve said before that what is recorded in Scripture is strategic and is put there on purpose, it’s not just a collection of random stories. So why did Mark record this account?

First of all, this account was the glimmer of hope that salvation through faith in Jesus Christ would not be for the Jews only but for the whole world, Gentiles included.

Secondly, this account shows just exactly how people should come to Christ for salvation and help in times of trouble. 

Like this Syrophoenician woman, we should look with longing to the Savior, bringing to Him our needs, whether it’s for forgiveness and salvation, or for help in times of trial and trouble. 

We should come to Him humbly and persevere in our prayers recognizing that we are not owed anything but are totally dependent on His grace.

And we should hold fast our hope with firm confidence in Jesus, not that we will always get what we ask for, but that He will always do as He said.

I hope this has been an encouragement to you today, and if there is anyone watching that hasn’t put their trust in Jesus that you would come to Him just like this woman did, humbly, confessing your sin to Him, confessing your need for forgiveness, and accepting His death on the cross was for you.

Let’s pray.

Defilement's Origin - Mark 7:14-23 - May 17, 2020

These are the Sermon Notes for May 17, 2020. Watch our livestream service every Sunday at 9:37 am on our facebook page or watch the livestream recordings any time.

Mark 7:14-23 Defilement’s Origin 

We are returning in our study of the Gospel of Mark with chapter 7:14-23. Last  week we left Jesus and His disciples on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee in the region of Gennesaret in a dispute with the Scribes and Pharisees.

The Scribes and Pharisees had been questioning Jesus as to why His disciples eat with hands that were defiled, meaning that they had not gone through the ritual of ceremonial washing before they ate according to the traditions of the elders that had been passed down.

Jesus condemned their religious tradition for what it was, a tradition of men and not the command of God. He then went on to expose the hypocrisy of their hearts by showing how they very easily ignore the commands of God in order to protect their traditions. Jesus used the example of their violation of the fifth Commandment in order to protect their own wealth and resources instead of caring for their aging parents. He exposed that they were making void the Word of God by their traditions not just in this way but in many others.

And then we come to our text in chapter seven, verse fourteen.

14 And he called the people to him again and said to them, “Hear me, all of you, and understand: 15 There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him.” 17 And when he had entered the house and left the people, his disciples asked him about the parable. 18 And he said to them, “Then are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, 19 since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.) 20 And he said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him. 21 For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, 22 coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. 23 All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

Last week I quoted Matthew Henry when he wrote, “Corrupt customs are best cured by rectifying corrupt notions.” Here in this passage Jesus not only shows the answer to the Scribes and Pharisees corrupt notions but He also exposes the corrupt notions of all mankind when it comes to defilement.

Now, I’m sure that that may not be the vocabulary that people use when, or if, they consider this issue but the concept is there that mankind is basically good and whatever makes him bad comes from outside. 

This is at the heart of modern psychology, that a person starts out as good but their environment, their education, or their examples let them down and somehow damaged them, defiled them.

The Scribes and the Pharisees taught the same thing, that the children of Abraham were pure in and of themselves, and as long as they carefully held to the traditions of the elders that they would remain pure and acceptable to God. If something on the outside of a person could defile them, the assumption is made that they were inwardly pure before but Jesus here says that it’s exactly the opposite.

The problem with thinking that people are basically good, that people were morally pure in and of themselves before situations arose, or circumstances changed, or bad things happened that damaged them and defiled them is that it ignores the Scripture, it ignores what God’s Word actually says.

I want to be very clear before I go any further: I am not downplaying mental health problems, I am not denying that mental health problems exist, I am not suggesting that if people just believe in Jesus that their problems and issues will disappear. I am an example of exactly the opposite, I have put my faith in Jesus, I have given my life to His service, and yet I still struggle with anxiety and depression. These things are real and are constant companions so please do not hear me saying that this stuff is not real, it is.

The problem is not the psychology, the problem is moral defilement, what makes a person bad. And the question before us, the question that Jesus answered here is, does defilement come from the outside or the inside?

The Scribes and Pharisees were saying that moral defilement comes from the outside, from external, outward performance. But the Bible says, Jesus says otherwise.

Jeremiah 17:9 says, that the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick, Romans 3:23 says, that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

Jesus said, “Hear me, all of you, and understand: 15 There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him.”

That is to say that a person is not morally defiled by what he eats even if his hands were not ceremonially washed, disobedience is what causes defilement, disobedience to God’s Law. A person who ate unclean food or ate with unclean hands as defined by the Law of Moses was not defiled by the food nor defiled by their hands but by disobedience to God’s commands. Even Adam and Eve are an example of this, it wasn’t the forbidden fruit that made them sinful, it was their disobedience of God’s command not to eat from that particular tree. Mankind has suffered from their disobedience ever since.

The scribes and Pharisees taught that a person had to follow their rules in order to maintain their cleanness, but external rituals do not cleanse a person, God alone can cleanse a person’s evil heart.

The Disciples still did not get this. 

17 And when he had entered the house and left the people, his disciples asked him about the parable. 18 And he said to them, “Then are you also without understanding? I grew up with the New International Version of the Bible where my life verse here is translated, “Are you still so dull?”

Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, 19 since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.) 

Good news for all you bacon and lobster lovers! Paul also echoed this truth in Romans 14:17, the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

This was a problem that plagued the early church, not just eating non-kosher foods but the eating of meat that had been sacrificed to idols. Even the Apostle Peter struggled with this long after this teaching from Jesus and visions given by the Holy Spirit. You can read about that in Acts 10 and Galatians 2.

And yet somehow, though we don’t really struggle with the cleanness of foods or the ceremonial washing of our hands we still don’t get Jesus’ real point, that defilement from sin does not come from outside a person but from inside a person.

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

 20 And he said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him. 21 For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, 22 coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. 23 All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

This is a list of evil that is tolerated, accepted, celebrated, even seen as fundamental rights of the individual in our society.

Evil thoughts, the first item on the list, is the general category and root of all the various evils that follow. Evil thoughts unite with a person’s will and produce all these various evil words and actions.

When Jesus said, in verse 21, out of the heart of man come evil thoughts and so on, He was not talking about one man, but every man, all of mankind, men and women alike. This is the common condition of all mankind, bubbling over with evil thoughts that give rise to evil deeds.

Sexual immorality, that is, any sexual activity outside the covenant of marriage, theft or stealing, murder (1John 3:15 says that everyone who hates his brother is a murderer), adultery, that is any sexual activity with someone who is not your spouse or who is the spouse of someone else, coveting, that strong urge to collect more and better material things than others around you, the need to keep up with the Joneses, wickedness, generally doing evil things, deceit, lying, trickery and treachery, sensuality, meaning sexual activity with no moral restraint, envy, literally “an evil eye,” an idiom that means a feeling of resentment or jealousy because of what someone else has, slander, speaking about someone in such a way that damages their reputation, pride, meaning arrogance, foolishness, not goofiness or silliness but an unwillingness to use one’s capacity for understanding, some might say living in a constant willing denial of God. 

This is the common condition of the insides of every person who has ever lived besides Jesus. No external ritual can cleanse us of this, no amount of hand washing or rule following will ever effect this condition.

And this condition, which the Bible calls “sin,” brings with it consequences.

Romans 6:23 says, the wages of sin in death. That is that the reward for this inward sinfulness is death, eternal death. This is the great predicament of mankind. This is the bad news. Because of our inward sinfulness we are defiled in God’s sight and that sinfulness earns us only death and eternal judgment.

This bad news from Jesus is offensive, I wouldn’t blame you for shutting off this video long before now, but Jesus didn’t come to make your life easy or to make you feel good about yourself and I’m not here to make you feel good or make your life easy either. It’s the badness of the bad news that makes the Good News so good!

Jesus didn’t come to condemn us, Jesus came to expose our sin, remind us of its consequences, and offer a solution. It is by God’s grace that we are saved from the condemnation that we deserve because of our inward defilement, it is by God’s grace that though we sin against Him, God the Father still loves us. John 3:16-20 says:

16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. 19 And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. 20 For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.

Not everyone will accept this word, not everyone wants to come out from the darkness. But I do pray that everyone who hears this word today will come to the light, confess their sin, and trust in the Savior, Jesus Christ, who died on the cross to take the punishment that we all deserve for our sin. Through faith in Him He cancelled the record of our debt that stood against us, this He set aside, nailing it to the cross.

May His Name be praised.

Let’s pray

Traditions Examined - Mark 7:1-13 - May 10, 2020

These are the Sermon Notes for May 10, 2020. Watch our livestream service every Sunday at 9:37 am on our facebook page or watch the livestream recordings any time.

Mark 7:1-13 Traditions Examined

We are returning to the Gospel of Mark, in chapter seven, verses 1-13. What a timely Scripture this is that we are going to examine! I say that because we are living in a time when people are beginning to examine the traditions of the church.

There have been several articles and discussions lately about what it means to “go back to church.” “Church” meaning the event that traditionally happened on Sunday mornings in a church building. Our brothers and sisters in Maine and in various other states now get to do “drive-in” church where everybody just stays in their cars, honk twice to say, “amen,” turn on the windshield wipers to raise their hands in worship, one long honk of the horn because they’ve fallen asleep and are slumped over onto the steering wheel…

This discussion about going back to church and how to do that best is an important one. Every church has traditions and ideas about what church is supposed to be like, CrossRoads Church is no different. But what we have the privilege of doing now in this time where we are not allowed to gather together for corporate worship is to examine our traditions and see if they measure up to Scripture or if they are based just in our own ideas of how we should please God.

Jesus had a similar opportunity in our text today, Mark 7:1-13 where He was confronted by a group of Scribes and Pharisees over adherence to their traditions. So let’s look at that together and see if we can glean any guidance for our own situation as a church family.

Now when the Pharisees gathered to him, with some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem, 2 they saw that some of his disciples ate with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed. 3 (For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands properly, holding to the tradition of the elders, 4 and when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash. And there are many other traditions that they observe, such as the washing of cups and pots and copper vessels and dining couches.) 5 And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” 6 And he said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, 

“‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; 7 in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’ 

8 You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.” 

9 And he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition! 10 For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’ 11 But you say, ‘If a man tells his father or his mother, “Whatever you would have gained from me is Corban” ’ (that is, given to God)— 12 then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, 13 thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And many such things you do.”

Now this is only part one of a two part teaching of Jesus on the idea of defilement or what defiles a person, and we’ll look at the second part next time. In the first part of Jesus’ teaching here He deals, in a general sense, with the idea of traditions and their motivation behind them.

The first tradition examined is the tradition of ceremonial hand washing before eating. Now to be clear, since we are in the age of diligent hand washing to avoid a virus, the interest here was not hand washing for sanitary reasons. Their concern had nothing really to do with washing off dirt or germs. Their concern was preserving adherence to the traditions of the elders.

Warren Wiersbe wrote, “The Jews called tradition ‘the fence of the Law.’ It is not the Law that protected the tradition but the tradition that protected the Law!”

We’ve talked about this idea before when dealing with the Sabbath laws. God said to keep the Sabbath holy and that the people were not to do any work on the Sabbath, so in order to protect the Law they put in place specific rules defining just exactly what one could do before it was considered work, how many steps one could take and things like that. 

What began as a desire to keep the Law of God became a law unto itself, an empty law that became even more revered than the Law of God. In fact, in the Talmud, the collection of all these teachings it’s recorded, “It is a greater offense to teach anything contrary to the voice of the Rabbis than to contradict Scripture itself.”

There were Levitical Laws concerning washing and ceremonial cleanness but the traditions of the elders took those Laws to a whole new level to the point where cleanness wasn’t the point, adherence to the tradition was.

I want to skip down to verse 9 and then we’ll circle back to verses 6-8.

9 And he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition! 10 For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’ 11 But you say, ‘If a man tells his father or his mother, “Whatever you would have gained from me is Corban” ’ (that is, given to God)— 12 then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, 13 thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And many such things you do.”

The Pharisees had developed their own loophole to God’s commands and this truly exposes what their real concern was. 

Verse 10 says, For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’

Honoring one’s father and mother was the fifth commandment, our parents who raised us, fed us, and taught us deserve our love and support when they reach old age and need us to do for them what they did for us, and caring for them in this way is a way to honor God by obeying His commandment. 

Paul also wrote about this in 1 Timothy 5:4, 8:

4 But if a widow has children or grandchildren, let them first learn to show godliness to their own household and to make some return to their parents, for this is pleasing in the sight of God…

And…

8 …if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

But the Pharisees, the traditions of the elders said, ‘If a man tells his father or his mother, “Whatever you would have gained from me is Corban” ’ (that is, given to God)— 12 then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, 13 thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And many such things you do.”

This is in essence saying something like, “Mom and Dad, I know that it’s not really safe for you to live on your own and I do have that nice big spare room but… The church really needs a place to store the costumes and sets for the Christmas play so you’re just going to have to figure something out for yourselves.

There were no nursing homes, there were no convalescent centers, this was a sentence of poverty and destitution.

What this exposes was that the Scribes and Pharisees had no interest in real holiness, or in real cleanness, it had to do with preserving their own wealth, power, and influence. 

Jesus posed a threat to their influence because people were flocking to Him, He was a threat to their power because he came to give freedom to the captives, and a loss of their influence and power over people was a threat to their wealth and comfortable lifestyle.

Traditions can be a way that some people preserve their own power and influence, and as Matthew Henry wrote, “Corrupt customs are best cured by rectifying corrupt notions.”

6 [Jesus] said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, 

“‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; 7 in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’ 

8 You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.” 

But what about us?

Traditions sometimes are based on a misinterpretation of Scripture, sometimes they are added on top of the requirements of Scripture, and sometimes they ignore Scripture altogether!

But not all traditions are bad, so how can we tell the difference? How can we tell if a tradition that we hold, something that we do as a church family is a command of God, or is sinful, or is something totally innocuous, something that is just practical?

Scripture is the key! Does the tradition misinterpret Scripture, does it add requirements on top of Scripture, does it ignore the teaching of Scripture?

We must also be careful to avoid using the rights words but the wrong attitude, just because our description or defense of a particular tradition sounds “bible-ish” doesn’t make it correct.

Does the tradition lead to a feeling of self righteousness, as if our adherence to that particular tradition is what makes us acceptable to God in our minds?

Are we just using worldly philosophies cloaked in religious words?

Are we adding a secondary set of rules as if the plain commands of God are not enough?

True confession: It seems as if I’ve made a career out of bucking tradition and questioning everything the church does and that certainly hasn’t made my life any easier, but I don’t regret it. The truth is that if the Bible is not our true source of how we practice our “religion,” we are only leading people to an imaginary god of our own making.

The One True Living God has made Himself known, He has revealed to the world how we can have a relationship with Him through faith in His Son Jesus Christ and be filled with His Holy Spirit so that we can interpret His holy Word. He has given us everything we need, we don’t need to add to it.

Some traditions we hold are outside the scope of biblical teaching, some may very well be against it, and some may be perfectly in line, but let’s all examine them together as a family so that we can know for certain that our traditions are in keeping with the Father’s instruction through Christ and His Apostles so that as we move forward as a church family we bring honor and glory to Him alone.

Amen.