Jesus Doesn't Gloss Over Sin

Mark 7 and the Defilement That Comes From Within

Welcome to the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church. Kungsvinger is a beacon for the gospel of Jesus Christ and is located on the plains of northwestern Minnesota. We proclaim Christ and Him crucified for our sins and salvation by grace through faith alone.

And now here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg. The Holy Gospel according to.

St. Mark, the 7th chapter. Jesus called the people to Him again and said to them, hear me all of you and understand. There is nothing outside of a person that by going into him can defile him. But the things that come out of a person are what defile him.

And when he had entered the house and left the people, his disciples asked him about the parable. And he said to them, then are you without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, since it enters not his heart, but his stomach and is expelled?

Thus he declared all foods clean. And he said, what comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man comes evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness.

All of these evil things come from within and they defile a person. This is the gospel of the Lord. In the name of Jesus. Amen. Alright, it's not a secret. I'm a fan of Monty Python, especially the movie The Holy Grail.

Y 'all remember that movie. Hopefully y 'all do. There's a goofy, silly kind of scene in there where King Arthur is traveling through the woods and none other than the Black Knight is there. And he's decided to take it upon himself to not allow anybody to pass.

And he even says, none shall pass. Well, Arthur challenges him to a duel and, well, Arthur immediately bests the Black Knight by cutting off one of his arms. And Arthur gets down on one knee to thank the Lord for his victory and, well, the Black Knight continues on and just kind of brushes aside the fact that he's lost an arm and says it's a mere flesh wound.

And he continues on, loses his other arm, then loses one of his legs. And no joke, he's hopping around going, come on, let's fight. And so Arthur finally cuts off his final leg and there is Stumpy the Black Knight basically wanting to continue the fight and basically saying, let's call it a draw.

And I think what the parting shot was, you're a loony. Now, here's the thing. It's funny when we see things like that in a comedy movie. But when it comes to sin, taking sin and, well, diminishing the impact of it, diminishing the importance of it, the severity of it, we end up doing all kinds of goofy things and this is not a good thing.

And you're going to note here that Jesus isn't like today's preachers who, for whatever reason, have lost the boldness that we heard Paul praying that we should pray for him for, the boldness to proclaim the gospel, that there are many pastors and preachers nowadays and Christians who don't want to talk about, well, that three-letter word.

You know what that three-letter word is? Sin. You have to say it with a southern accent when you do that. Sin. Nobody wants to talk about sin anymore. So they talk about slipsies and oopsie-doopsies and mistakes.

And when it comes to that, when you start talking like this and you start diminishing the importance, the impact, the severity of sin, you start giving people false hope because, well, if it's just a slipsie or an oopsie-doopsie or a mistake, do you really need a crucified and risen Savior for that?

Do you really need to feel all that bad about it? No, not at all. In fact, I have even heard of pastors when somebody comes to them and confesses, well, an egregious sin, the pastor or their church leader will say, you know, it's not that big of a deal.

I mean, it's understandable. Other people struggle with such things. You really shouldn't beat yourself up over stuff like that. Yeah. And then, don't even get me started about some of those liberal denominations.

What do they do? Well, they bless sexual immorality and say that God is not only okay with it. He's 100 in favor of it. And don't think that we're just merely talking about same-sex kind of stuff. They're blessing adultery.

They're blessing all kinds of weird, strange things. And here's the thing. Christ doesn't do any of that. If you remember last week, last week in our gospel text, Jesus was really going hard after the Pharisees because they were offering lip service to God, but their hearts were far from God.

And what they ended up doing was leaving the true commandments of God in order to establish their man-made traditions. And their man-made tradition was a competing religion altogether. And that competing religion really all in the name of honoring God and serving God and obeying God was doing the exact opposite.

I would remind you of that thing called Korban. Let me kind of give you the idea here. So, nowadays, when our parents get old, what do we start doing? We start looking for a facility for them, a nursing home, a place where they can go and be cared for.

And that's not a bad thing, but back in the day, they didn't have those. They didn't have those at all. So, when it came time to take care of your aging and ailing parents in their twilight years, who was going to do that?

Answer, their kids, right? And what if you and mom didn't get along so well? I mean, have you ever noticed that moms and sons sometimes can not exactly always get along? You can see the guy going, oh, my mother drives me nuts every time she comes to my house.

She tells me that I need to tell my wife to clean the floors more. And she found dust up on some top of a bookshelf. Who looks for dust like that? And she's always telling me, I've got to do this or I've got to do that or I've got to get a better job.

And so, what happens is mom gets under his skin. And so, here's what the Pharisees came up with. You can almost see it was like on a commercial. You know, like he was flipping channels on the cable television back at 2000 years ago.

Some guy goes, you know, and you can just see the intro. Does your mother irritate you? Are you really not looking forward to having to care for her in her twilight years? Well, don't worry. We've invented something called Corbon.

Corbon, yeah, it's a gift given to God. Yeah, that's right. You don't even have to take care of mom anymore. All you got to do is we'll work out an amortization schedule based upon the average lifespan that we would expect to see from your mother.

And what we'll do is if your mom has 12 years to live, we'll say, give us this amount of money. You can give it to God. And once you give that amount of money to God, you don't have to take care of mom at all.

Isn't that crazy? Alright? So, work it out. It's going to cost me $1 ,000, $12 ,000, $3 ,600, I don't know, amount of money to care for my mother. I'm just going to give it to the church. And so you can imagine how this conversation goes, right?

So there's mom. She comes to visit and for once the guy's happy mom's visiting, right? Oh, mom, I wanted to tell you, you know, you've been telling me that I need to take God more seriously, right? Oh, I've decided that you're absolutely right.

I need to take God more seriously. So have you heard of Corbon? And you can almost hear the voice of his mother, kind of like George Costanza's mother. What are you talking about? What's Carbon? Well, mom, the money that we would have spent caring for you, I gave it to God.

Isn't that great? I'm taking religion seriously. Well, what? Who's going to take care of me? Well, mom, that's between you and God. I'm sorry, but I can't help you. What a sick religion, right? Absolutely sick.

What does the scripture say? Honor your father and mother. Honor them. And so the Pharisees in their handling of things, well, they ended up basically telling people that they could break that commandment to honor your father and mother all in the name of giving money to God.

Of course, the Pharisees and people in the temple, they were the ones who were benefiting from those donations, if you know what I mean, right? So note here that when we establish our own religions, when we do not pay attention to what God's word says, we end up not dealing with sin properly at all, or worse, dealing with it lightly.

Christ Declares All Foods Clean and Exposes the True Source of Defilement

So Jesus here decides that he's going to give a little bit more explanation as to why he and the Pharisees aren't getting along. So he gathers the people. Come on, people, I have something else I need to tell you.

And he says this, hear me, all of you, and understand. There is nothing outside of a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him. And you can all see them going, what?

What about bacon? I mean, it's a legit question. I mean, what about bacon, right? So when he had entered the house, he left the people. His disciples asked him about the parable. And he said to them, then are you also without understanding?

And watch this explanation. Do you not see, Jesus says, that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, since it enters not his heart, but his stomach, and is expelled. And I would note in the Greek here, the Greek text actually explains the final resting place of this food.

In the latrine is how it's described in the Greek. So you'll know, what you eat doesn't impact you in that way. Thus he declared, all foods clean. Now, a little bit of a modern day example here. In the past couple of weeks, we've all been watching the news with the fall of Kabul and Afghanistan, and hearing stories of Christians who are being murdered.

Murdered by whom? Religious people. Religious people who do not eat bacon, but think it's completely fine to murder their neighbors. Do you see the disconnect? Right? That's a problem. So here's what Jesus says.

It is what comes out of a person that defiles him. In other words, what comes out of your sinful heart actually defiles you, while what comes out of you and ends up in your toilet at home doesn't. In other words, your poop is more sanctified than your heart.

Scary to think about it this way, but that's the gist of where Jesus is going. So here's what comes out of a heart. For from within, out of the heart of man comes evil thoughts, and watch this list and ask yourself this question.

Am I in the clear? Have I not done any of these things or thought these evil things? Out of the heart comes evil thoughts. Sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness.

Anyone here that doesn't describe you at all? Maybe I should have you guys raising hands. How many of you had three or more things from that list? Right. Me too. That was just yesterday. Yeah. All of these things come from within, and they are what defile a person.

You'll note that Jesus doesn't treat sin lightly, and he makes it very clear that these are the things that defile us, and the thing is if they're coming from within us, then the problem isn't out there.

The problem isn't with bacon. Thank God it's not with bacon. The problem isn't with bacon. The problem is my sinful heart, your sinful heart. Each and every one of us have defiled ourselves through our sinful thoughts that have resulted in sinful actions, and there's nothing sound within us within our sinful flesh.

And so you're going to note here, kind of like last week, this week also, our gospel text doesn't contain any gospel. Wait, wait. How is that possible? Well, that's kind of how it works sometimes. So I'll be sure to weave it in.

Now I'm going to make another point. I'm going to give you a cross-reference that's not part of our readings today. Our cross-reference today is going to be from the book of Jeremiah chapter 6. Jeremiah chapter 6, if you want to follow along.

I'll start in verse 9 for context's sake, and I'm going to point something out here. That in the apostasy of Judah leading up to their exile in Babylon, God sent prophet after prophet after prophet calling Israel to repent of their idolatry, of their syncretism, of their sexual immorality, and what had happened is that the religious leaders in Judah at the time, well, they were much like many of the pastors that we're hearing nowadays who just make so light of sin.

And so listen to these words and note the parallels. Thus says the Lord of hosts, verse 9 chapter 6 of Jeremiah, they shall glean thoroughly as a vine the remnant of Israel, like a grape-gatherer pass your hand again over its branches.

To whom shall I speak and give warning, so that they may hear? Behold, their ears are uncircumcised. They cannot listen. Behold, the word of the Lord is to them an object of scorn, and they take no pleasure in it.

Let those words kind of sink in for a second here. What a strange description of, well, the tribe of Judah. These are people who are descendants of those who received the Bible, the law of God on Mount Sinai.

Their descendants walked on the bottom of the Red Sea as on dry land with a wall of water on the right and left. And when Pharaoh's army pursued, well, God destroyed them. They were miraculously set free from slavery to Pharaoh and Egypt.

And generations later, the very words that God gave them as an inheritance, well, the word of God has become an object of scorn to them. They take no pleasure in it. And as we continue reading, you're going to see here, it's not merely the people who take no pleasure in the word of God.

It's also the prophets and the priests, the religious leaders as well. And this is a problem. Therefore, God says, I'm full of wrath, the wrath of the Lord. I'm weary of holding it in. Pour it out upon the children in the street and upon the gatherings of the young men also, and both husband and wife shall be taken, and the elderly and the very aged.

Their houses shall be turned over to others, their fields and their wives together. For I will stretch out my hand against the inhabitants of the land, declares the Lord. For from the least to the greatest of them, everyone is greedy for unjust gain, and from prophet to priest, everyone deals falsely.

In other words, they had gathered to themselves religious teachers who would tell them what they want to hear. And note that greed and falsehood seem to be top of the lists here as the problem. And this becomes the warp and woof of the religion of Judah before God acts in judgment.

Is it any different today? How is it that evangelicalism, the primary teachers in evangelical are Joel Osteen, Ken Copeland, right? All these prosperity preachers, people who will tell you what you want to hear.

Basically telling you that God and religion, Christianity, is a means to an end, and the end is your prosperity, your wealth, your influence. This is nonsense, right? And of course people say, yeah, I like that idea.

I'm glad that God wants to make me rich. God wants to make me powerful. I wish God would make me younger, but that's a different story altogether, right? Yep. So just like in Jeremiah's day, just like in Christ's day, just like in our day, prophet and priest, they deal falsely.

And then listen to these words. They say peace, peace when there is no peace. And the peace that is being described here in this text is the so-called peace with God. Now, is it true that there is no peace between sinners and God?

In a large sense, no, because Christ died for sinners. He died for the ungodly. He died for you and I. There is peace between God and sinners like you and I, only through Christ. And Christ's message to us is to do what?

Repent. To not look lightly on your sin, to not think it's no big deal, to not treat a fatal wound as if, well, just some kind of a rash ointment would solve the problem. Jeremiah goes on. Were they ashamed when they committed abominations?

No, they weren't ashamed at all. They didn't even know how to blush. Therefore, they shall fall among those who fall. At the time that I punish them, they shall be overthrown, says the Lord. But then listen to the turn, verse 16.

Thus says Yahweh. Stand by the roads and look. Ask for the ancient paths where the good way is. Walk in it and find rest for your souls. You see, the solution to our sin problem and, well, the problem that we have as far as our hostility towards God and His wrath towards our sin is found, the solution is found in the ancient paths.

It's found in the Scriptures. The very things that people do not even want to hear anymore today. The very things that we need to hear. And it's in those Scriptures that we hear that God so loved the world, that's you and me included, that He sent His Son, Jesus Christ to bear our sin on the cross, to be sin for us, to suffer and die in our place and experience God's punishment and wrath against sin so that you can instead receive from Him mercy, forgiveness, pardon, and peace.

This is why in Romans chapter 8 it says, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. You see, Jesus Christ and the gospel doesn't deal lightly with sin. Christ calls it what it is.

Says what it does. It defiles each and every one of us and the problem is within our hearts. But in Christ there is forgiveness and because we are in Christ, there is therefore no condemnation for us.

And this is something that we should rejoice in humbly and thank God for. Because Christ has dealt with the severity and the defilement of our sin by taking that defilement in Himself so that we can be clean.

So the text in Romans 8 says, To set the mind on the flesh is death, Paul says. To set the mind on the spirit is life and peace. The mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God. It doesn't submit to God's law.

Indeed, it cannot. But those who are in the flesh cannot please God. You, however, you are not in the flesh, but you are in the spirit, if in fact the spirit of God dwells in you. And I would remind all of you, yes, the spirit of God does dwell in you.

You've been baptized into Christ's death and His resurrection. And in your baptism, your sins and your defilement was washed away. Your sins were forgiven, you were united with Christ, and you were gifted by God, the gift of the Holy Spirit who convicts us of our sin and also teaches us to have confidence in the forgiveness and mercy of Christ, given and shed for the forgiveness of our sins.

You get the idea. Think of it this way. The solution that we need, again, is found in the ancient paths. And in the ancient paths in the Scripture, the very places that people do not want to hear these things, we hear again the words of our Intuit from Psalm 51 written by King David after Nathan the prophet confronted him regarding two whoppers of a sin, adultery and murder.

And don't even get me started on how he absolutely abused his power as king when it came to that. But what does David pray in Psalm 51? He prays to God, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity. Cleanse me from my sin.

Purge me with hyssop, and I will be clean. Wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. You see, in the ancient paths, we learn that God is the one who cleanses and washes away sin. We should not look lightly on it, and nor should we ever comfort somebody in their sin and say, it's no big deal.

Don't worry about it. Love is love. It's not the gospel. The ancient paths says that God washes away our sin. And so here's his plea, his prayer to God, and this is our prayer in just a moment when we sing the offertory.

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and only God can create a clean heart within us. You see, Jesus said it's out of our heart that sin comes, these things that defile us. But our plea to God is the same plea as David.

Create in me a clean heart, O God. Renew a right spirit within me. And in praying that, he's confessing that his heart is not clean, that he does not have a right spirit. Cast me not away from your presence, and do not take your Holy Spirit from me.

Please restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit. These are only found in the ancient paths, in the old books, the books that no one wants to hear anymore. The churches are not committed to preaching anymore.

Only there will you hear that God forgives, God relents, God gives peace, God gives a clean heart, God solves the problem that we all have. And so let us repent of taking sin so lightly, or worse, listening to pastors and preachers who treat sin like it's a skin disease.

Spray something on there and it'll go away. It never does. And let us rejoice in the joy of our salvation that God has given us a clean heart in Christ, forgiveness of our sins, and that he will not cast us away from his presence when he returns in glory to judge the living and the dead, but will welcome us freely into his kingdom.

In the name of Jesus.

Amen.

If you would like to support the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, you can do so by sending a tax-free donation to Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, 159 -50 470th Avenue NW, Oslo, MN 56744.

And again that address is Kungsvinger Lutheran Church 159 -50 470th Avenue NW Oslo, MN 56744. We thank you for your support. All of our teaching messages may be freely distributed as long as you do not edit or change the content of the message.

And again, thank you for listening.