“Cleanliness in God’s Sight” Mark 7
Intro.: Dear friends in Christ, many mothers live
with a terrible fear that something might happen to them which would leave their
helpless children to be raised by their husbands. The reason for their concern is that men and
women have different ways of looking at and of doing things. For example:
While women may find it necessary to do four loads of laundry a day so
that they can dress their children in fresh, nicely pressed outfits to send
them off to school, we might be more likely to dig in the bottom of the closet
each morning, give the clothes a quick glance and sniff, and say here kid put
this on. If such a difference can exist
between men and women regarding the cleanliness of clothing what kind of
difference must exist between the way God and sinful humanity view spiritual
cleanliness.
No doubt, this is an issue of great
importance to each of us here this morning.
What does it take to be clean in the sight of God? What does it mean to be pure and blameless
before Him? And how can we, sinful human
beings, ever hope to measure up? In
today’s Gospel lesson two opposing views of spiritual cleanliness are uncovered
in Jesus’ discussion with a group of Pharisees and Scribes.
I.
The Pharisaic View Of Cleanliness In God’s
Sight Focuses On Doing.
A. The Pharisees believed it was a matter of what is on
the outside; of doing the right thing, being with the right people, and in
essence raising oneself up to God’s level through a religious lifestyle that
made a person clean in the eyes of God.
To them, it was up to each person to make himself clean; it was what you
might call a “do it yourself” religion of the law.
They
belonged to a group within the church for whom rigorous outward exercises of
piety were of the utmost importance.
Forgiveness, mercy and grace were words missing from their vocabulary. For them it was more an issue of proving
themselves to be the children of Abraham and separating themselves from the
rest of the world. They believed that
this was accomplished by following the writings and traditions of the
elders. Such writings and traditions
were kept, studied and interpreted by the Scribes and the teachers of the law,
but they weren’t from the Bible at all.
Contrary to the mandate of our Old Testament reading they were added in
such a way that they actually did away with the spirit of the law. By misinterpreting and misapplying God’s Word
in devilish ways they changed the meaning of it, to the point that it no longer
presented the love and promise of salvation, but became a rule book for
life. The traditions of the elders set
forth a stringent code of behavior through which many hoped to gain acceptance
before an angry and forbidding God.
The hearts of the Pharisees and Scribes
were set only on holding to the outward works of the traditions. Cleanliness in the sight of God, to them,
meant subjecting the flesh to a strict code and keeping themselves ceremonially
clean and separate from those nasty people outside of the Church; the Gentiles,
tax collectors, harlots and openly sinful people. This is what led them to seek out Jesus. He was not playing by their rules. So a group of them came down from
B. Many of us still carry the Pharisaic view of
making ourselves clean by doing.
We do
not view Christianity as what God does for us and in us, but as a system of ethical
codes and moral standards. We deceive
ourselves into believing that cleanliness in God’s eyes has to do with the way
we dress, the way we act, and even begin to think of Christianity is all about
what we do.
For
many so called Christian churches today, and perhaps whole segments of our own,
consider telling people how to live becomes more important than the
Gospel. They spend less and less time
speaking of the glorious truth of life and salvation through Christ, and more
and more generating a weekly behavior organizer guaranteed to win God’s
approval and capture His blessings.
Viewing the Bible as merely a handbook for
life and a divine do-it-yourself manual or how to book leaves us like the
Pharisees attempting to prove our cleanliness with a “do it yourself” religion. Many of you may be here today for the wrong
reason. Like the Pharisees you are here
because you are duty bound and are seeking a place for yourself above all the
rest of them, out there. You are here
because you want to prove you are clean by the things you do.
C. Jesus tells us that such a view is false and
still leaves us filthy in God’s sight.
To the Pharisees, and to any of us who
follow the do-it-yourself religion of outward works of righteousness Jesus
says: “Isaiah was right when he
prophesied about you hypocrites: “These
people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are
but rules taught by men.” How
many of us are guilty of offering lip service to the LORD? How many of us are fooled into believing that
we are saved by the things we do, the duties we perform, the number of Bible
studies we attend, prayers we offer, or checks we write to the Church?
In the 3rd chapter of Romans
the apostle informs us that none of us do, by nature, what is right in God’s
sight, nor seek Him properly, rather we all have turned away and become
worthless. Through the prophet Isaiah
(64) God tells us that all our assumed good works are unclean and impure like
“filthy rags.”
With a Pharisaic view of spiritual cleanliness
we might put on a good show, but it gets us nowhere. A “do it yourself”
religion of works is absolutely worthless.
It reminds me of the discipline visited upon a boy with whom I went to
school. He spent most of Kindergarten
and first grade standing in the corner with a bar of soap sticking out of his
mouth. It never really changed his
heart, but in the end he developed the strange habit of eating soap. Rather than an emphasis on the outward works
we are doing
II. The Lord’s View Of Cleanliness In His
Sight Focuses On What He Does In Us.
A. Jesus reveals that cleanliness in God’s sight
is a matter of the heart.
It is the uncleanness of our sin stained
hearts, not the things we do outwardly, that make us unacceptable to God. Our Lord says in our Gospel, "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. 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."
In the same way it is not the goodness of
what we do that counts for anything before God, but the purity of the
heart. It is only a right heart that can
worship God acceptably, as the Psalmist declares: “you will not delight in sacrifice, or I
would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a
broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. (Ps. 51:16-17)
But how can our hearts be
made pure? How can we, people who are
sinful from birth and damaged to the very core of being, make our hearts right
and pure? That’s do it yourself religion
talking again, isn’t it? Remember, the
Lord’s view of cleanliness focuses on what He does.
B. It is God, and God alone, who makes us clean
in His sight. This is a lesson I learned
as a young child when in love with a girl down the street with beautiful
porcelain skin. I wanted so much to be
like her and be liked by her, that I even tried to change my darker skin, by
scrubbing it with Comet cleanser so that it would be as white as hers. My mother who often caught me doing such
stupid things taught me that it was God who made her that way and there was
nothing I could do to make me like her.
In the same way there is nothing we can do to cleanse our hearts and
make us pure in God’s sight, and nothing we can do to make ourselves like
Christ. But what we are unable to do God
has done for us.
He gave
us His own beloved Son, Jesus Christ, who sacrificed Himself, the holy,
unblemished Lamb of God, to make us clean. St. Paul writes in Ephesians 5: “Christ loved the church and gave himself up
for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the
Word, and to present her to Himself as a radiant church, without stain or any
other blemish, but holy and blameless.” (Eph.
5: 25-27)
It is God, and He alone, who can bring this
work of Christ to us and work in us new and clean hearts by His Holy Spirit. Again the Psalmist prays: “Create in me a clean heart, O God. And renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence and take
not your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to
me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit to sustain me.” (Ps. 51:10-12) No amount of self-scrubbing and no man-made
cleanser can ever cleanse these hearts of ours, but God has provided us with
the Word and Sacraments to wash us clean in the blood of Christ.
Here He makes us clean through baptism and
the Word. After identifying the many
sins which make us unclean and unfit for life with God,
Thank God that you are not asked to do the
impossible; God has not placed upon you the burden of making yourself clean in
His sight. You are clean and pure and
holy because of God’s Work: the work of
God the Father who continues to love you even when you are a mess, the work of
God the Son who offered Himself as the sacrifice for your sins, and the work of
God the Holy Spirit who has called you by the Gospel, and by the Gospel in Word
and Sacrament has washed your hearts and adorned you with the robe of Christ’s
righteousness. You are people who have
been given a cleansed heart and new spirit, and…
C. From this cleansed heart and new spirit will proceed truly righteous works.
After making us clean in Christ, God works within
us a changed heart with new motives and desires. The apostle makes the affirmation in his
second letter to the Corinthians “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new
creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” (2 Cor. 5:17), He then goes on in His letter to the
Galatians, “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness,
goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is
no law. And those who belong to Christ
Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the
Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.”
(Gal. 5:22-24) Brothers
and sisters you are not who you once were.
You are new people, with new hearts which are the dwelling place of the
Holy Spirit.
From the new motives and desires which
have been given you will come a new way of life. In Romans chapter six Paul points out again
that our old sinful selves have been crucified with Christ through baptism to
live new lives. Sin is no longer our
master, because the lives we live, we now live to God. (cf.
The good works which now mark your new
lives in Christ are no longer like filthy rags, but they are clean and pure
because they are not your own; they are God’s work in you, as it is written in
Galatians 2, “...through the law I died to the law so that I might live for
God. I have been crucified with Christ
and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.
The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who
loved me and gave himself for me.” (Gal. 2:19-20)
Concl.: Dear friends
in Christ, let go of your do-it-yourself religions and cling tightly to what
God is doing for you and in you. No
longer think about what you must do to be clean in God’s sight, but rather
trust in the purity that you have in Jesus!
“‘Come now, let us reason together’, says the Lord: ‘though your sins
are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they are red like
crimson, they shall become as wool.’”
Amen.