Last week, in Mark 7, Jesus began to answer the question, “What defiles a person?” We saw that a person is not defiled by his failure to hold to a set of man-made traditions. God looks at the heart, and his concern is whether our obedience to him comes from a heart that desires his glory above all else. This morning, we come to the second answer to this question, from Mark 7:14-23. There are two points I want you to see in the text: Sin does not begin with a substance; sin begins in the soul.
First, from verses 14-19, see that sin does not begin with a substance. Mark connects the previous conflict with the Pharisees over clean hands with another teaching of Jesus. In verse 14, it says that Jesus called a crowd to him to teach them the true principle of defilement. He tells them, “there is nothing outside a person that can defile him by going into his body, but rather, it is the things that come out of a person that defile him.” This teaching of Jesus is revolutionary, not just to his Jewish listeners who believed that foods could make you sinful, but it stands against every false religion in the world. The Muslims believe, even more strongly than the Jews, that it is the environment that makes you sinful. In fact, Islam teaches that everyone is born innocent and good, but their experience with the environment (what they eat and touch) leads them to sin. Hindus believe that all of the physical world is imbued with divinity, whether for evil or for good. So, certain substances bring good karma, and some bad. Certain foods are good to eat (like plants), and others are corrupting to eat (like meat). Animist beliefs, like the New Age movement and Wiccan, believe that stones and talismans carry good and evil powers that can affect people. Even secular liberals believe that the environment is to blame for evil. Much of the drive for action on climate change stems from a belief that changes in climate lead to lawlessness and war.
This is such a radical departure from all religion that even the disciples have a hard time understanding it. So, it says in verse 17, that they ask him to explain more fully, and Jesus even mocks them a bit by asking, “are even you so dumb?” This was so different that they had even thought it was a parable, but Jesus answers by giving a lesson in physiology. In effect, he says, “look guys, when you eat food, it doesn’t go into your soul, but rather into your stomach, and it’s digested and used by the body, and what remains is expelled from you.” There is nothing about food that creates sin in the person. There is nothing about a physical substance that carries with it some spiritual corruption. Yet, even though this is the direct teaching of Jesus, Christians can be the worst about assigning sinfulness to a food or drink or substance. There are some Christians that believe that it is wrong to drink alcohol because the fermentation process is a corruption of the food, and therefore, when you consume alcohol, you are drinking a corrupt thing. There are some who believe that you should not eat meat because, in the Garden of Eden, God only gave plants for Adam and Eve to eat, and therefore eating meat is unholy. There are Christians who believe that vases and statues from pagan lands carry demons that can oppress you if you allow those items into your house. All of these are examples of extending this idea of material defilement to our little pet peeves.
But, let me give you a personal example of what Jesus means here. Let’s say that I have a bowl of ice cream. As some of you have noted, I’ve been on a strict discipline of diet and exercise for the last few years, and much of that involves avoiding most sweets. As you well know, if you are going to do a diet right, you have to be pretty strict about it. Now, I really do believe that Americans eat way too much sugar and carbohydrates, and that these things are contributing to a massive epidemic of all sorts of diseases from high blood pressure to diabetes to dementia and everything in between. I really do think that our community and our nation would be far healthier and better off if we could break our addiction to sugar. But, having said that, is this ice cream going to make me sinful if I enjoy a bowl of it after church? No, certainly not. Even if I eat the whole gallon, or a gallon every day, in a gluttonous binge, it is not the ice cream’s fault. The ice cream goes into my system and converts to glucose, which my body burns for energy. If it can’t use it for that, it converts it to glycogen in my muscles, and if my glycogen is full, it converts it to triglycerides (or fat) to store in my liver or around my other organs.
If there is sin in my gluttony, it did not come from the ice cream, but it did come from somewhere. And that brings me to my second point: Sin begins in the soul. What Jesus says after this physiology lesson is just as radical (and I’d encourage you to memorize verse 20): “What comes out of a person is what defiles him.” Then, he proceeds to list off all of the sins that come out of a person’s heart, from evil thoughts to sexual immorality to pride and foolishness. It is the thoughts and intentions of the heart and soul of a person that makes him unacceptable before God. Now, in saying that, I want to warn you against a certain line of thinking. You might think, “OK, that means that there are certain people who have a good heart, and others who have a corrupt heart, and thank goodness, I have a good heart.” Isn’t it funny how we always assume we have a good heart. But, Jesus’s condemnation of the heart is a condemnation of all of humanity. The whole Bible witnesses to the total depravity of the human heart. In Gen. 8:21, God says, “The heart of man is evil from his youth.” Jer. 17:9 says, “the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, who can know it?” Rom 8:7 says, “For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law, indeed it cannot.” Friend, if you have not been born again through faith in Jesus Christ, the problem with your guilt and shame, the problem with your struggles against sin, is not just a problem of your environment. You do not need to clean up your act. You do not need a set of rules to follow. Even if you avoid the ice cream and booze, it will not solve the deepest problem you have. The greatest problem you have is that your heart is set against the things of God. Your heart yearns to sin. It intends to do it, even when a part of you would want to do right, it is still yearning for the wrong.
So, what are we to do? If our heart and soul are corrupt, how can we ever be right with God? Gal. 4:4-7 says, “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba, Father’. So, you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.” Praise be to God, Jesus Christ has done what we could not do. He was born under the law to live in full obedience to it on our behalf. He had a heart set on God, and so he could perfectly obey the law. On the cross of calvary, that pure heart bled sacrificial blood, which paid the full penalty for our corruption and rebellion. In his resurrection, Jesus Christ has sent forth his Spirit into the hearts of those who receive him by faith, so that now, we cry out “Abba! Father!” Through his Spirit, we now have a heart for God. This means that in Christ, we have the power to resist sin. Our heart no longer works against us, desiring the things of this world, but now we have a heart that desires God.
So, circling back to my gluttonous consumption of ice cream: the ice cream is not sinful, but my gluttonous desire for it, born out of a heart that is set against God, is. While substances do not make you unacceptable before God, it is certainly the case that, in our sinfulness, we can abuse substances, even though they are part of God’s good creation. So, it may be the case that, from a heart that is set on God, we choose to avoid certain foods or drinks, not because they are wrong in and of themselves, but because we know our own bent towards sin. So, if we are to rightly handle food and drink, we should acknowledge five things. First, it is not the food or drink that is sinful, but our desire to abuse it. Second, we should confess and repent of that sinful desire to and ask the Lord to keep us from it. Third, if you haven’t already, you should turn to faith in Christ as the pure sacrifice and true Lord of your life. Fourth, we should pray that the Lord would give us a desire for him that would overshadow every sinful desire that could pull us away. Finally, if we cannot trust ourselves with that food or drink, then we should remove it from our lives so that we might honor God with all we are.
Regardless of our own personal temptations, may we each recognize, that without Christ, our hearts are deceitful and desperately wicked, and it is only by the power of Christ that we can escape the grasp of sin and desire the things of God.
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