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Jesus exposes our hard hearts (Mark 8:1–21)

Just yesterday, I had a brain-dead moment, commonly known as a “senior moment”—except that I’m not a senior. I was having lunch with a family from church, and I’d brought with me a glass plate which I had borrowed a few months back. However, after entering the house and being warmly welcomed, I suddenly realized that the plate wasn’t with me. I had left it out in the car, I announced to my hosts. And then they told me that I’d actually brought it into the house and given it to them not a minute before—none of which registered in my memory.

Major brain farts are a part of life. Unfortunately, in today’s passage from Mark, Jesus’ disciples are going to experience something more than a brain fart. They’re going to get called out on the carpet for being spiritually dull—by Jesus himself.

Our adventure begins with a moment of déjà vu. Once again, a great crowd gathers, they get hungry, Jesus feels compassion for them and asks his disciples to feed them, they bristle at this unreasonable request, and then Jesus supernaturally feeds the entire crowd with several loaves of bread and a few fish. It’s just like his feeding of 5,000 men, except now it’s a smaller crowd of 4,000 people. However, the context of this story tells us a couple of interesting things. First, Jesus is still in Gentile territory; this is a Gentile crowd! He’s doing the same thing for the Gentiles as he did for his fellow Jews, showing compassion on them and caring for their needs. Second, his disciples haven’t caught on after the first feeding—their response to him is nearly identical to their response the first time around. They still think this is a problem too big for Jesus to handle. They haven’t learned their lesson.

Well, right after this story, Jesus shows up in Galilee again, and he’s confronted by the local Jewish leaders in yet another showdown. Their attitude is unmistakable—they want to discredit Jesus and shut down his teaching ministry. Mark says that they’re “seeking from him a sign from heaven to test him.” Now, this isn’t an open-minded search for the truth. After all, Jesus has just fed 4,000 people with seven loaves of bread! The truth is obvious. No, these Pharisees have already decided that they don’t believe Jesus is from God. They’re just looking for an excuse, any excuse at all, to disparage him.

Jesus is exasperated with these hard-hearted opponents. He knows that no amount of evidence will convince them. “Why does this generation seek a sign?” he asks. “Truly, I say to you, no sign will be given to this generation.” He is adamant that they will not get what they’re demanding. Jesus won’t play their stupid game. Instead, he turns and walks away. He gets in a boat with his disciples and heads to the other side of the Sea of Galilee.

Now, here’s where it gets interesting. Jesus’ disciples apparently aren’t very good at planning ahead, because once again they didn’t pack enough food. They forgot to get more bread, and they only have one loaf with them! They’re pretty hungry, and you can guess what their thoughts go when Jesus mentions in his teaching, “Watch out; beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.” His disciples have bread on the brain, so they completely misunderstand this obvious parable. They hold a little pow-wow afterward to figure out what Jesus meant by this cryptic statement. Is he giving them baking advice? Should they change their brand of yeast? Have they been buying bread that has been contaminated by the Pharisees and Herod? But that makes no sense! They only have one loaf with them; why is Jesus bringing this up? Maybe it’s a veiled rebuke for neglecting to bring bread! Man, we really should have remembered to bring bread. I’m starved.

Jesus gets fed up (haha) and breaks into their conversation: “Why are you discussing the fact that you have no bread? Do you not yet understand?” He is incredulous. Remember that he’d told them that his parables keep spiritually dull people from understanding the truth he wants to teach (Mark 4:10–12). And as he did then, he refers to Isaiah 6:9–10. “Do you not yet perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Having eyes do you not see, and having ears do you not hear?” His disciples just aren’t getting it!

So Jesus conducts a memory drill. “When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?”
“Twelve.”
“And the seven for the four thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?”
“Seven.”
“Do you not yet understand?”

Jesus wasn’t worrying about bread, and his disciples should have realized that. Why? Because he could make as much bread as he wanted, whenever he wanted, with plenty left over. Bread wasn’t a big issue to him. So they should have realized it was a parable at once. Jesus is warning them about the Pharisees and about Herod—both of whom feel threatened by his authority and therefore oppose him. He’s worried that their “yeast” of unbelief may work its way into the disciple’s hearts and corrupt them. He knows that his disciples are in danger of developing hardened hearts that won’t comprehend what he’s saying to them. The awful irony is that even when he’s warning them, they miss the point of the warning because their hearts are already hard! It’s a catch-22: they can’t understand because their hearts are hard, and their hearts are hard because they can’t understand.

What this means is that the most ignorant, hard-hearted people are often the people who have been with Jesus the longest, who have been “Christians” their whole lives and have heard sound preaching for 50 years. It could be you or me. A skilled surgeon, only Jesus exposes our hard hearts. Only he can rescue us from them.

Posted on by Dave 0

Jesus has authority to rescue captives (Mark 7:31–37)

Everyone likes a good prison break. But what if the prison is your own body?

Jesus has been traveling through Gentile territory, and he’s become just as popular here as he has among his fellow Jews. Remember how the demon-possessed man of Mark 5 had been proclaiming that Jesus had freed him from the influence of unclean spirits? Apparently, he was a successful herald of Jesus’ return to the Decapolis, because now a crowd of people want to listen to him and ask for his help.

Mark focuses on one particular healing event during this time. A with a serious condition is brought to Jesus. This man is deaf and also has a speech impediment. Of course, these two problems tend to go together; if you’re deaf, it’s hard to know how to properly control your voice. As is often the case, the man’s friends are desperate when they come to Jesus, begging him for help. That’s just the sort of attitude that Jesus likes, so he pulls the man aside from the crowd.

It’s interesting that Jesus shows so much private attention to this man. No doubt most people would feel awkward and try to avoid him, but Jesus takes him aside and gets a little bit invasive. He pokes his fingers into the man’s ears, spits on him, touches his tongue. It’s sort of a personalized healing ritual for the man. Now, Jesus could have healed him any way he wanted, but Mark seems to be emphasizing the degree of personal attention Jesus is showing him.

Then Jesus looks up to heaven and sighs deeply. He sympathizes with this man. He feels in his heart the loneliness and suffering of a man isolated from communicating with his friends and family. This is a man who has been imprisoned in his own malfunctioning body. Jesus brings this tragic situation before God the Father, then turns to the man and utters one word: “ephphatha.” This word remained vivid in the minds of his disciples years later, when Mark heard it from them. Mark explains to his readers that it means “be opened.” It’s the first word this man has heard, perhaps for years.

Instantly, like the doors of a dungeon swinging open at Jesus’ words, the man’s ears allow waves of sound to wash over him. His tongue is released from the chains that bound it, and he is able to speak plainly. From now on, the real trouble is going to be to get him to shut up!

Jesus orders the man and his friends to tell no one what has happened. Of course, they don’t listen. In fact, Mark writes, “The more he charged them, the more zealously they proclaimed it.” Jesus wants his name to be known, but he doesn’t want to be known merely as a miracle worker. Can you blame these people, though? This is great news! Even the Gentiles are saying, “He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.”

These words would have reminded Mark’s readers of Isaiah’s prophecy concerning the coming Messiah:

Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,
and the ears of the deaf unstopped;
then shall the lame man leap like a deer,
and the tongue of the mute sing for joy. (Isaiah 35:5–6)

It’s clear that Jesus has fulfilled the promise that was given through Isaiah. Another piece has been added to the puzzle of who Jesus is. He is a man whose authority and power are so great that he can release people who have been imprisoned in their own malfunctioning bodies. He can unstop deaf ears and make mute tongues sing for joy.

Now, here’s what Isaiah says our response to Jesus should be:

Strengthen the weak hands,
and make firm the feeble knees.
Say to those who have an anxious heart,
“Be strong; fear not!
Behold, your God
will come with vengeance,
with the recompense of God.
He will come and save you.” (Isaiah 35:3–4)

You and I are captives—prisoners of Satan, prisoners of sin, prisoners of weak and decaying bodies. If we are careful and rational thinkers, we won’t have much faith in our own abilities and our own wisdom. We can’t rescue ourselves.

If we believe this, you and I will become desperate. If that’s you, you’re just the kind of person Jesus likes to help. Come to him; he will pull you aside from the crowd and respond to you personally. He’ll invade your life and make you uncomfortable. But he will give you the freedom and joy you never thought possible.

So if you are weak and worried—“Be strong; fear not!” Jesus will come and save you. Put your faith in the One who has authority to rescue captives like you.

Posted on by Dave 0

Jesus wants worthless people (Mark 7:24–30)

To be healed, first you must be sick. To be set free, first you must be a slave. To be rescued, first you must be in peril. To be saved, first you must be a sinner. To be resurrected, first you must be dead.

And to be a child of God, first you must be a dog.

For the second time in Mark’s account, Jesus travels outside of Jewish territory into a Gentile region. He’s apparently taking a sort of “vacation” with his disciples, trying to get away from the chaos and crowds so he can devote his time to his immediate followers. However, as a result of his spectacular ministry, his reputation precedes him. He can’t stay hidden even in the region of Tyre and Sidon, two cities to the north of Galilee. Before long, he is approached by a woman whose daughter is possessed by an unclean spirit. She falls down at his feet and begs him to cast the demon out of her daughter.

Now, this story comes right on the heels of Jesus’ confrontation with the Pharisees, a group of nationalistic Jewish religious leaders. They are very concerned about the national identity of Israel, and they devote themselves to staying ceremonially clean, even inventing their own laws to stay safe. If they were in Jesus’ shoes, they would shrink back from this helpless wretch: she is an unclean Gentile, a woman, and her daughter is possessed by an unclean spirit. She is not a part of God’s chosen people, the people of Israel. She has no claim to the kindness of God. That’s what a “good Jew” would have thought about this woman.

So Jesus responds to her request with a proverb. He says 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.” Yes, he is referring to the Jews as God’s “children” and to the Gentiles as mere “dogs.” If your concept of Jesus is limited to Flannelgraph Jesus from Sunday School or Hippie Jesus from American culture, this statement seems appalling. But a Jew of the time wouldn’t have blinked an eye. That’s how they thought about their pagan Gentile neighbors. Jesus is asking the woman, “My priority is to minister to the people of Israel. You’re not a part of God’s chosen nation; why should I help you?” He’s challenging her the way a Pharisee would; he’s playing “devil’s advocate.”

It becomes clear right away that this woman understands the meaning of grace. The Pharisees thought of themselves as earning God’s favor through their merits, but she admits that she has no merits to speak of. “Yes, Lord,” she says, “yet even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”

There are a lot of ways she could have responded. If it were me, I might complain that I am a valuable person created in the image of God. I might plead my self-worth. I probably wouldn’t say out loud that I deserve Jesus’ help because I’m a good guy, but I would probably think it. This Gentile woman, though, doesn’t miss a beat. She embraces her status as a “dog.” She doesn’t think there is anything special about her that should convince Jesus to help her. Instead, she finds an opening in Jesus’ proverb and seizes it. He had said, “Let the children be fed first.” She admits that the power of God is “to the Jew first” (Romans 1:16). But she believes that Jesus’ power is more than enough, that it can overflow to her as well. Jesus had fed 5,000 men with five loaves of bread, and there had been twelve baskets of leftovers; she is convinced that there will be leftovers for her as well.

In other words, this woman does not plead her own merit. She pleads the unlimited power of Jesus. She pleads his compassion that overflows from his love for Israel and splashes down on wretched Gentiles like herself. She has nothing to offer him, but she believes that he has the authority, power, and compassion to rescue her daughter.

Jesus is delighted with her answer. She has wrestled with him and prevailed. “For this statement you may go your way,” he tells her. “The demon has left your daughter.” Sure enough, when she gets home, her daughter is lying asleep in bed, and the demon is gone.

The contrast is sharp between this woman and the Jewish religious leaders. They are clean; she is unclean. They are “good people”; she is not. They are in a position of privilege; she has no rights to claim. She is a loser, and she knows it. That’s what makes her an insider and the religious leaders outsiders. She doesn’t plead her own goodness. She pleads only the goodness of Jesus.

If you and I want to see the power of Jesus at work, in us and around us, we must abandon our merits and our rights. We are morally bankrupt, powerless, helpless. We don’t deserve to be rescued by God. All we can plead is the compassion of Jesus and his superabundant power to save. So don’t try to be accepted by God on the basis of your performance. Come to him, filthy and broken, and plead Jesus Christ, because Jesus wants worthless people.

Nothing in my hand I bring
Simply to the cross I cling
Naked, come to thee for dress
Helpless, look to thee for grace
Foul, I to the fountain fly
Wash me, Savior, or I die!
—Augustus Toplady

Posted on by Dave 0

Jesus knows the law won’t help you (Mark 7:14–23)

Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.
—Ephesians 6:4

If you’re the father or mother of a teenager, then you’ve probably had to face the implications of this verse. When children are younger, you can develop a whole system of rules to keep them in line. Often, this helps give them the structure they need to develop and learn right from wrong. By the time they’re teenagers, however, they chafe against these rules. What’s sad is that sometimes parents respond by clamping down even harder, binding their children with rule upon rule to keep them under control. The parents’ intentions are good; they want to keep their children safe from harmful external influences. But they don’t realize that the problem is not something outside of their children but something inside their children’s hearts.

Jesus has just finished lambasting the Pharisees for supplementing God’s law about keeping ceremonially clean with their own man-made rules for washing before eating. He’s told them that when we make our own laws like this, we’re setting ourselves up as moral lawgivers, which is God’s place, not ours. Not only that, but we’re trying to dethrone God by pushing his rules aside to make room for our own. Replacing God’s law with human tradition is an act of insurrection against God. Ironically enough, the usual culprits of this crime are religious people. They think they’re worshiping God by supplementing his law with their own, proving their great dedication to him, but in reality they are hypocrites. They’re actors; they’re worshiping themselves and their tradition rather than God.

Now Jesus delivers the coup de grace. Not only are such legalists replacing God’s law with they’re own, they’re also making a fundamental mistake about the purpose of the law. Jesus gathers a crowd together to hear a short message. “Hear me, all of you, and understand,” he says. “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.” Now, apparently this “parable” wasn’t clear enough for his disciples, because they approach him afterward to ask about it. Jesus gets a little frustrated here and exclaims, “Then are you also without understanding?” His disciples may not be inventing their own laws like the Pharisees are doing, but they’re still thinking about the purpose of God’s law in the same way as the Pharisees.

Jesus explains that food can’t make a person ceremonially unclean, since it simply passes through the body and is expelled. It doesn’t affect the core of who a person is—the heart. So Mark observes, “Thus he declared all foods clean.” This is very significant, because Jesus isn’t just condemning the Pharisees’ man-made laws. He’s also canceling the ceremonial regulations in the law of Moses that identified many foods as unclean. Jesus is nullifying the law, exactly as the Pharisees just did! How can he not be a hypocrite as well? The only way he can declare that all foods are clean is if he has divine authority, as the Author of the law, to rewrite it. If this comes as a surprise to you, you obviously haven’t been paying attention as we’ve been working our way through Mark’s gospel!

After this, Jesus says, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him.” He lists a litany of wicked attitudes and behaviors—sexual sins, violent sins, sins of speech, sinful habits of thinking. He says that these sins come “from within, out of the heart of man.” And when they do, they defile the person who commits them.

The Pharisees thought that the primary problem was outside of a person. They believed that if you could put him or her in the right environment, free from evil influences, then he or she would turn out a good person. All you need is to separate people from the corrupt Greco-Roman culture. To the Pharisees, the law was a tool to make people holy. And apparently, the disciples bought into that way of thinking, because Jesus’ perspective is completely foreign to them.

We can’t come down too hard on the disciples. From birth, we’re raised to think just like Pharisees. We’re told that people are basically good deep down, and that if children are raised in the right environment and surrounded by the right people and given the right education, then they’ll turn out okay. And of course, these things do help. However, they don’t change the reality that the human heart is a fountain of evil desires. Our culture’s presuppositions are wrong: people are corrupt and depraved, down to the very core of their being. Trying to make people holy by tying them down with rules—even God’s law!—just won’t work. The cancer is within us; it’s genetic, and we can’t cure it. Our own good behavior won’t help. There is no hope.

We’ve seen that Jesus is the only one who knows how to interpret and use God’s law with wisdom. He knows that the law is a reflection of God’s character. It tells us who he is—that he is holy—and it commands us to be like him (Leviticus 19:2). And Jesus knows that this is a lost cause; we can’t do it.

If there’s any possible way to be accepted by God, that way is going to have to be through Jesus. It’s obvious that he is a singular piercing light in a dark and hopeless world. If there’s any way out of our slavery to sin, it will have to come through the gospel—the good news that Jesus brings.

Run, John, run, the law commands,
But gives us neither feet nor hands;
Far better news the gospel brings:
It bids us fly and gives us wings.
—John Bunyan

Posted on by Dave 2

Jesus is not impressed with your rules (Mark 7:1–13)

Ah, legalism.

We’ve faced this issue before as we’ve worked our way through Mark. We’re facing it today, as we reach chapter 7. And we’ll face it again if we keep going as we have. It’s the sinister old enemy of Jesus; it’s the brainchild of the devil. Oddly enough, it’s perpetuated by the most well-meaning people.

Jesus has been working miracles left and right, proving that he is more than a man. Mark has been threading subtle hints of deity into his account of Jesus’ life. Now, Jesus is about to remind the religious leaders who oppose him that they have no right to claim divine authority, as he has done.

The Pharisees of Galilee have once again called up some teachers of the law from Jerusalem. They’re calling in the big guns to take down Jesus. They soon find a reason to criticize him—he doesn’t seem to care that his disciples never wash their hands before they eat! Now, the religious leaders aren’t concerned about their hygiene, bad as it is. Ceremonial washing is very important to the Pharisees because it’s one of the ways in which the Jews can set themselves apart from the corrupt and godless Gentiles. In the law of Moses, given by God at Sinai, washing was commanded for the priests to ceremonially cleanse themselves from defilement. The Pharisees, zealous to preserve the identity of God’s people, have decided to beef up God’s law a little by adding a few safeguards to it. If everybody washes their hands all the time, then there’s no danger of being defiled. The Pharisees’ motives seem to be pretty good—they want to keep God’s people from being corrupted by the immoral influences of the surrounding culture.

Jesus, however, isn’t a fan. He calls them “hypocrites.” He says that there are two things wrong with people inventing their own moral laws which they expect others to follow. First, when people invent their own rules, they replace God’s law with their own. Jesus quotes from Isaiah 29:13 to make his point:

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

The Pharisees think they’re worshiping God. They think they’re protecting his law by buttressing it with their own. But what they’re really doing is replacing his law with “the commandments of men.” They’re trying to worship God in a way which he has not authorized. In fact, their respect for tradition has mutated into idolatry. By insisting on following man-made moral rules, they have set up man in God’s place.

And that leads Jesus to the second reason why it’s wrong for people to invent their own moral laws. He offers this caustic remark: “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition!” He’s telling the Pharisees that not only are they replacing God’s law with their own, they’re also rejecting God’s law outright! Not only are they exalting human tradition, but they’re also trying to dethrone or “de-God” God. Jesus backs his statement with this evidence: the Pharisees allow grown children to ignore their parents’ needs by declaring their own possessions to be Corban, devoted to God. So then they can refuse to provide for their parents, which violates the commandment to “honor your father and mother” (Exodus 20:12). The man-made law nullifies God’s law. Nor is this an isolated incident; Jesus says to them, “Many such things you do.” He could rattle off a whole list of other examples if they’d ask him. Somehow, I have the feeling that they aren’t in the mood to hear more.

As I’ve considered what Jesus said, I’m shocked at how hard he comes down on the Pharisees. He absolutely rips into them. He calls them hypocrites; he beats them over the head with scripture; he pierces them with sarcasm; he accuses them of rejecting God. Jesus loathes what they are teaching—how they are undermining the moral authority of God himself. He spares them no mercy.

So be very afraid. Inside of you and me there is a little legalist, always scheming, always inventing new laws to make us look more righteous and usurp God’s authority. And these laws always seem to be invented for good reasons. The inner legalist might provoke a fundamentalist Christian to declare that drinking alcohol is a sin, or to castigate young women because hemlines of their skirts are above the knee. The inner legalist might provoke a progressive young believer to declare that anyone who doesn’t recycle is immoral or (ironically) to ridicule Christians who won’t drink alcohol. Legalism and the worship of human tradition is a problem for young and old, men and women, believer and unbeliever, across all human traditions and cultures. Deep down, all of us possess a sinful impulse to dethrone God and take his place.

Because Jesus came to establish God’s kingdom, he will not stand idly by as people try to destroy it. He is not impressed with your kingdom. He is not impressed with your rules. And he has the authority to put an end to your insurrection. So let’s abandon our attempt to be lawmakers and instead submit with joy to the only one who can save our rebel hearts.

Posted on by Dave 0