How Can I Be Clean in God’s Eyes?

What Does It Mean to Be Clean?

This morning we’ll be continuing to look at the life of Jesus Christ, as it’s laid out in the book of Mark. So if you have a Bible nearby, please turn with me to Mark, Chapter 7. For the past several weeks, we’ve been seeing Jesus perform a number of powerful signs. He’s been doing miracles that reveal his identity as the Son of God, who’s come down from heaven to heal us, to shepherd us, and to save us. But in our text this morning, Jesus’s divine greatness is confirmed to us in the way that he speaks with authority to interpret and apply God’s law (explaining what it means to be clean). So this morning I’ll be reading from Mark 7, verses 1 through 23. But before I read our text – we need God to take action if we’re going to benefit from the preaching of His Word. So let’s ask for God to work through the Scriptures, by his Spirit, for our well-being this morning. Let’s pray:

[Pray and Read Text]

Super-Clean or Superficially Clean?

When we were first looking to move to Mt Pleasant, one of the houses we were interested in was a few miles south of town. And the house was a few decades old, but there were signs that it had recently been refurbished. The appliances all looked new, the carpets still looked clean and in good condition. From the surface, it seemed like a decent enough house – to the point where we put an offer on it, and set up a home inspection.

But as we were doing the home inspection – particularly, when we were giving a closer look at the crawl space under the house – a few issues came to light under the surface that we hadn’t noticed before. For one thing, there was a faint water mark on the wall around the foundation. That told us that there were still water issues in the crawl space, despite having a sump pump there. In addition to that, there was a propane leak – which, of course, that’s fixable but propane issues like that are extremely dangerous. If the fumes got ignited, that’s something that could cause the house to explode. But the thing that really concerned us was that we figured out – when the house was being refurbished, it was because the joists had rotted and had bug issues. You’d think that if they were going to redo the house, they’d pull out all the bad joists – but they actually left pieces of the old wood down there. And there was evidence that powder post beetles had now infected the new wood, as well as the old. So even though, in a superficial way, the house looked very clean and crisp, deep down the integrity of the house was threatened by muddy floodwaters, and mold, and wood-eating bugs. The core, structural issues of the house were being covered over by a thin layer of fresh paint and attractive furnishings.

But of course, people don’t just cover up house problems like this. It’s also common for people to cover up heart problems – to try to cover up our greed, our anger, our feelings of superiority, our grudges. It’s tempting to just clean ourselves up in a superficial, outward way – to look good to other people – without seeking true cleanness inwardly, to have a true cleanness before God.

And this is the sort of issue that Jesus addresses here, in his interactions with these Pharisees – these Jewish religious leaders. In our text, there are two things that Jesus addresses – two things he speaks about – in order to make sure that our priority is actually being clean, rather than just appearing clean. Jesus first addresses the standards of false cleanness that are being advocated by the Pharisees, here. And then, second, Jesus clarifies the sources of true defilement. These will by two main points as we break down our text.

The Standards of False Cleanness

So first, let’s look at what Jesus has to say about the standards of false cleanness, here, in verses 1 through 13.

In the first verse, here, we see that as Jesus and his disciples come to Bethsaida, there are a number of Jewish teachers and scholars – the Pharisees and scribes – who gather around Jesus. From what we’ve already seen, back in Mark Chapter 3(:6), many of these people from the religious establishment are skeptical of Jesus. Some are even hostile toward him. And so these Pharisees likely weren’t gathering around Jesus for a noble purpose. Instead, it would seem that they just wanted to contradict and critique him.

Because that’s what they end up doing in our text. As they observe Jesus and his disciples, the Pharisees pick out an issue they have with Jesus’s disciples. Verse 2 says, “they saw that some of his disciples ate with hands that were defiled – that is, unwashed.” And in verses 3 to 5, Mark explains for us why this was considered to be an issue. It was a violation of some old Jewish traditions – and the Pharisees believed that God had handed down these traditions from some of the ancient elders of Israel, even though these rules weren’t included in the Scriptures. And from the vantage point of the Pharisees, these rules about handwashing weren’t just important for good hygiene, but they were also necessary for being clean and acceptable in the eyes of God.

This idea seemed to be confirmed, back in the Old Testament. Because God gave clear instructions to the priests – that before they could come to his altar to offer a sacrifice, they needed to be clean. And God identified a variety of things that would cause outward defilement – certain animals were unclean like pigs, and rabbits, and horses – bodily fluids were unclean, touching dead bodies made people unclean. And God told the priests that in order to approach him, in order to offer acceptable worship, they needed to be washed of their defilement. And so in Exodus 30[:17-21], God gave them a command about washing their hands and feet. To the Pharisees, the idea seemed simple. If you want to be right with God, you just need to jump through the hoops, and do the right washings and rituals in the right way, and you’ll be all set.

And yet, when God commanded the priests to wash, it’s not because he was offended by their germs or something. Physical cleanness alone wasn’t the point. But God required this washing from the priests in order to visibly and tangibly show people his divine sacredness. Requiring outward cleanness was supposed to draw attention to our need for absolute cleanness, including inward cleanness, in order for anyone to come before God. That’s what this command was supposed to show people.

But as time went on, certain elders and teachers among the Jews just fixated on the outward ritual. And they reached the conclusion that if physical washing like this helped make the priests clean and acceptable to God – then everybody should be expected to wash like this. So the Pharisees made the case that if you wanted to be a really good Jew, if you wanted to make sure that you had God’s acceptance as someone ritually clean, you had to wash. Whenever you came back from the potentially-dirty marketplace, you needed to pour water over your hands three times before you ate. That was their tradition.

Now this is a bit unrelated – but as an interesting sidenote, the Greek word for washing hands here is actually the word baptizo. This is where we get our English word baptism from. Some people have argued that baptizo only refers to dipping or immersing something in water. But here in our text, the word baptizo describes a ceremonial washing that involved pouring water, rather than immersing. So when the Bible uses the word baptizo, it isn’t just referring to immersion, but the word is simply used to refer to ceremonial washings. And in these washings, water was applied a few different ways. So for baptisms at our church in Mt Pleasant, here, as you saw this morning, we recognize that the waters of baptism can be rightly applied by pouring or something similar. Scripture doesn’t use the word baptizo to refer to immersion only.

But of course, the main concern in our text, here, was that the Pharisees thought that outward handwashing and rule-keeping would make them clean in God’s eyes. So when Jesus’s disciples didn’t keep the traditions – when they didn’t clean their hands before eating – the Pharisees disapproved. Surely if the disciples were good men, they’d follow the religious customs. That’s what the Pharisees thought.

So in verse 5, the Pharisees confront Jesus about this. They ask, “Why do your disciples not walk according to the traditions of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” When they were asking this question, they probably thought that they had caught Jesus in a rather embarrassing situation. And yet as it turns out, the real scandal here that needed attention – it wasn’t with the disciples. But it was actually with the Pharisees.

Because even though the Pharisees were rigorously concerned about upholding their religious standards and traditions – they were missing the point. Because their standards gave people a false sense of cleanness, without actually making people right with God. And so in Jesus’s response, here, he points out three major issues with the Pharisees and their teaching.

First, Jesus rebukes the Pharisees because their idea of cleanness was only cosmetic – only surface level. They were essentially teaching – as long as you have the right outward appearances and behaviors, then God will be pleased with you. But they neglected to give attention to the true condition of human souls.

And so Jesus addresses this by quoting from the Old Testament (from the prophet Isaiah), in verse 6. He says, “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.’” In other words, Jesus was raising the concern – Pharisees, you know how to sound clean. You know how to impose religious rituals on yourselves and others, in order to look clean. But you don’t know what it actually means to be clean.

Essentially, Jesus is rebuking them here – You’re content with having clean hands. But shouldn’t you be concerned about having clean hearts? The Pharisees depended on their traditions and rule-keeping to make themselves feel clean. But it was like putting paint over rotten wood. No matter how much the Pharisees put on, it didn’t make the rotten wood underneath any less rotten. Instead, by piling up this resumé of religious accomplishments, it just made it harder for the Pharisees to see the real condition of their heart – and their real need for God to clean them.

And this is still an issue today. Many people are blind to the real condition of their heart, because they’ve relied on their religious works and experiences to make themselves feel clean. They think, “I go to church, I give money to charity, I donate blood, I recycle, I sponsor a child in Ethiopia – surely that makes me good and clean! And yet it’s a cosmetic cleanness. It’s a false cleanness. Trying to live a life of outward moral activity cannot make us clean within.

You can put on deodorant to cover up your smell, but it doesn’t change the fact that you still need to be washed. In order to be clean in God’s eyes, we need more than just an adjustment to our moral behaviors. But we need a work of God to wash us from the inside out.

But there’s a second reason why Jesus rebukes the Pharisees here. And that’s because they’re teaching human traditions as though they have the same weight as divine commands. In verse 7, Jesus continues to quote Isaiah in his rebuke of the Pharisees. And he says, “In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.” In other words, Jesus is saying that the religious zeal of the Pharisees about handwashing – it’s all vain, all empty. And the reason why it’s empty is because this doctrine they’re teaching isn’t actually from God, but it’s a commandment invented by men.

Last summer, I preached from a similar passage (from Matthew 15). And I drew out a very important point. Jesus’s words here teach us that the ultimate standard for directing the Christian Life is Scripture Alone. Not Scripture plus church tradition, like the Roman Church teaches. Not Scripture, plus new teachings from the Holy Spirit – many churches today make that mistake, too. But the final authority that lays out everything we need to believe and practice is Scripture alone.

Jesus leads us to this conclusion in our text. Because, as I mentioned earlier, many Pharisees wrongly believed that the oral traditions of the elders came from God, along with the Scriptures. But Jesus is very clear that the old Jewish traditions don’t have a divine origin. When God handed down authoritative teaching to his people, he didn’t pass it down in two streams – through Scripture plus oral traditions. But the Word preserved in Scripture – that’s the teaching that’s truly and inerrantly the Word of God. Jesus himself confirms that this is the established norm of how God reveals himself and his will to mankind. So you’re on solid ground, if you rely on Scripture alone as the final rule for the Christian life.

But what happens when you don’t? What are the consequences when people, like the Pharisees, insist on moral standards or religious requirements that are invented by humans? There are two problems that result.

For one thing, there’s the problem of false guilt. Manmade standards or rules have a way of making people feel guilt and shame even when they haven’t done anything wrong. For example, in some social circles, there might be the standard: “You’re a terrible parent if you don’t take your child to Disney World.” That can be a source of false guilt. Or when the Roman Catholic church insists that people need to make the sign of the cross, and pray to Mary, or practice various rituals in worship that have ultimately come from human tradition – many people in the Roman Church are trapped under this sense of false guilt. They’re afraid of leaving Roman Catholicism, because they’ve been taught that they need to follow these doctrines of men just as earnestly as they follow the commands of God. That’s one problem that happens when people’s consciences are governed by human teachings and traditions.

But there’s also the problem of false assurance. The Pharisees thought that handwashing actually contributed something to make them closer to God. But it was just imaginary. Manmade rituals have this effect, of making people feel close to God, even when they may not be. For some people, the religious ritual involves burning incense, or saying a Hail Mary. But for other people, the religious ritual is showing up on Sunday mornings for a Christian concert. In both cases, there can be a temptation to think “because I did this thing, because I had the religious experience, I must be right with God.” But God doesn’t want us to depend on human traditions and feelings and experiences like this. They don’t make us clean. Instead, God wants our confidence and convictions to be grounded in what He has said, here in the Scriptures.

But Jesus points out one more problem with the Pharisees here. Not only are they elevating their human standards alongside of Scripture – but they end up emphasizing their human standards in place of Scripture.

The more that the Pharisees demanded observance to human traditions, the further away it led them from the truth. This is the charge that Jesus raises against them in verse 8: “You leave the commandment of God, and hold to the tradition of men.”

And in verses 9 through 13 Jesus gives a specific example of how the Pharisees have done this. They had a human tradition that allowed children to withhold honor and support from their parents under the pretext of directing that attention to God instead, more directly. But by following this manmade rule, they were breaking one of the Ten Commandments – “You shall honor your father and mother.” They were making void the word of God by their tradition.

And this sort of thing is still an issue today. Even among many people who would call themselves Christians, human standards are prioritized over the word of God. They care more about whether your child is going to college than whether your child is going to Christ for the forgiveness of their sin. They care more about the dress codes you follow more than they care about the desires of your heart. They’re concerned about your views on economics and immigration more than they care about your victory over temptation, and the progress you’re making in daily obedience.

Of course, I’m not saying that the Christian faith has nothing to do with college decisions, personal conduct, or political questions. Knowing Christ will impact how we understand and interact with everything in life. And yet there are some issues, where even godly people with nearly identical Biblical convictions will make different decisions, or have different convictions. By conviction, Paul chose to remain unmarried, whereas many faithful Christians in the early church determined it was good for them to marry. Some people ate food sacrificed to idols with the conviction that the idols were nothing. But others couldn’t stand eating meat like that, or having any association at all with the pagan rituals. There were matters of conscience in the early church. And we need to be careful that we don’t transform matters of conscience into rules that are imposed on others or elevated above the commands of God.

But even though churches sometimes elevate human standards above the Bible – this happens even more outside of formal church situations. Commercials on TV tell you, “If you really want to be happy, you need to buy this product.” Various newscasters and podcasters will tell you, “If you really want to be a good American citizen, you need to be outraged about this thing.” Even you, individually – there’s a good chance that you might even elevate your own desire, or your own personal preference over what God says in his word. And if we aren’t careful, not only will these manmade standards control us more than the Bible controls us – but we might end up letting these manmade standards shape and distort how we interpret the Bible.

Here’s an example of this. The Bible teaches us that the greatest commands are to love God with all that we are, and to love our neighbor as ourself. We’re even told to love our enemies. After all, Jesus loved us even when we were still his enemies – even when we deserved death for stubborn selfishness and rebellion. He took the death penalty in our place, so that we could we brought back to God. And yet when the Bible tells us to love like Jesus, it doesn’t ever tell us to love sin. In fact, in Romans 12:9, the Bible tells us to abhor what is evil. To hate it. Because by hating sin in our own life, and by calling people out of their corruption and darkness – that’s an important part of what it means to love them.

But many people today have decided to give love a different definition – a definition that’s manmade. They say that loving someone means that you need to celebrate every decision they make – that you need to give your approval to all their desires and perspectives. And by holding to this distorted new definition, people end up leaving the commandment of God and holding to the tradition of men instead.

And so you and I need to carefully consider – is my understanding of love going to be shaped by my own desires or emotions – what I want to be true? Is my definition of love going to be determined by the shifting winds of political correctness? Or will I humble myself under God, and put aside my passions and preferences to live by Scripture alone? Living by false standards of cleanness won’t make us clean.

The Sources of True Defilement

Of course, the Pharisees didn’t understand this point. They really thought that these outward expressions of morality and piety made them clean before God. But not only did the Pharisees misunderstand what makes them clean before God. They also misunderstood what makes them dirty.

And this brings us to my second point in the text – where Jesus explains the sources of true defilement. (The sources of true defilement). Part of the reason why the Pharisees insisted on handwashing was because they thought that defilement was primarily an issue with dirty things coming onto or into someone’s body from the outside. They were concerned that people might touch something defiled in the marketplace, and ingest some of that defilement when they sat down to eat. And the Pharisees thought that getting defilement like this would cause a person to be dirtied and distanced from God. That was their big concern.

But as Jesus continues to speak, he makes it clear that the concern of the Pharisees is misplaced. Yes, the Old Testament law vividly demonstrated that people must be clean and undefiled before they can offer acceptable worship to God. And yet Jesus clarifies, that the truly serious sources of contamination aren’t dirty animals or dead bodies. Instead, the thing that ultimately contaminates a man is having a depraved heart.

After Jesus calls the people together to listen closely, he explains in verse 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.” Interestingly, when the disciples hear this, they don’t understand. Later, in verse 17, they ask Jesus to explain the parable. Because whatever it is Jesus said – they didn’t get it.

Of course, Jesus wasn’t speaking in a parable. He was speaking rather plainly. But patiently, with his disciples he explains this idea more clearly – and again, he draws our attention to the condition of our hearts. Because in verse 18 he explains – eating dirty food can’t truly defile a person, because the food doesn’t travel directly to the heart – but it goes to the stomach, and it’s expelled out of the body.

Instead – Jesus points out – people aren’t dirty because of something touching them or affecting them from the outside. But instead, people are dirty because of what they already have inside. The sewage of our sin bubbles up out of us, because our heart is a bad septic tank.

And notice the types of evils that Jesus identifies here – the types of things that make us dirty in God’s eyes. You’ll see that some of the things are outward actions, like sexual immorality, theft, murder,  and adultery. But a number of the defilements we have, are inward attitudes and affections – like the very first thing that Jesus mentions, evil thoughts. Just having an evil thought defiles us. And in verse 22 – coveting – desiring things in a wrong way – that also makes us dirty in God’s eyes. Having envy in our heart toward others. Being proud, arrogant – being unwilling to humble ourselves before other people or God. And even foolishness is mentioned here – refusing to learn wisdom, or listen to it. Jesus says that as these things seep out of our polluted heart, it confirms that we are defiled. And we’re defiled in a way that’s so deep, and so dark, that just covering it up with our best attempts at good works won’t fix it. It won’t make us clean!

But even in our text, here, we’re given a hint that the opportunity to be truly clean has come. Because in verses 18 and 19 Jesus explains that people can’t be defiled simply by eating things. And at the end of verse 19, Mark adds a note – that when Jesus made this comment, he “declared all foods clean.” Keep in mind, in God’s covenant relationship with his people, in the law that he gave to the Jews through Moses – certain foods had been restricted. God had wanted to remind his people of their need to be clean and consecrated for him.

But in this little side note, Mark is making the point that Jesus is speaking here as the Covenant-making God of the Bible. Jesus, with divine authority, puts away the symbolic rules about cleanness from the old covenant system. Though the covenant relationship will continue, it will be carried out in a new way. And he indicates that it’s because the true fulfillment of covenant cleanness with God has now arrived. With the arrival of Jesus, foods that were once unclean are now declared clean. And in a similar way, because of Jesus, dirty sinners who were once defiled can be declared clean, too.

He doesn’t just clean up our behaviors. But he purges and purifies our hearts. He takes away the heart of rottenness and he gives us a heart of faith. Trying to do good works can’t make us clean like this. But when God calls us to Christ, and renews our heart day after day, he produces good works in us – as evidence of his saving power, and as a gift of his saving kindness. And that means that as a Christian, any cleanness you see in yourself isn’t your gift to God. But it’s a gift from God to you. So with humility, let’s continue to treasure God and His Word as we look to him for our cleansing. Please pray with me: