Within Us, Without Us

Challenge:

• Roy has challenged everyone to answer the question, "What is the joy of the Lord (Nehemiah 8:10)?" Pray about it, search the scriptures, etc. Come up with some great examples for Sunday!

Announcements:

• Roy and Julie are having a worship service at their house at 7 PM on Tuesday. Bring your voices, instruments, etc., and come for a night of fellowship. Call them for more details. 

Praise Reports:

• A relative of June's passed on recently. She was in her 90s and had Alzheimer's for 15 years, so it was a good going-home.
• No one we know has lost electricity so far, praise God!
• Kim's left rotator cuff was giving her a lot of pain last week, but is better now.
• Elaine's ear infection is healed.
• Vivian's knee is back to normal.
• Roy's shoulder was really hurting him for a long time, but now it's much better, thanks to Julie, God, and glucosamine.
• Rod's back is much better after giving him pain all week.
• David's knee is still messed up, but most of the pain is gone.
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Prayer Requests:

• Pray that God will keep people safe in the ice and snow.
• Mary is still battling her infirmities. 
• Vanessa's niece was recently widowed. Her husband, Ricky Harris, was 49 years old.
• Kim's neck has been in terrible pain recently.
• Darla Davidson.
• Ruby.
• Dixie.
• Rebecca. 
• Jim and Bridgette.
• Kaitlin.

Dirty cup, originally uploaded by Ninja M..

Mark 7:1-23 It all started with the Pharisees calling Jesus's disciples hypocrites--teaching holiness and righteous living while they were "unclean" according to tradition. Jesus used this as a teaching opportunity and called the crowd together (vs. 14). He was about to talk about something much bigger and more important than ceremonial handwashing, "Listen to me, everyone, and understand this. Nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them." Then He went into the house. That was it, the big message. 


But by digging deeper we can see a massive clash of worldviews.

The Pharisaical Worldview: "I am holy to God, set apart and sactified (this was certainly true for the Jews). I must keep things from the outside from contaminating me and making me unholy." 

By extending this we get something like, "Some external things are evil and can corrupt us if brought into our lives." Can this be true? We will look at many scriptures that clearly say otherwise, yet this statement could very well summarize the worldview of many modern Christians. They believe that to maintain our relationship with God we must keep bad things from defiling us.


Now that all sounds good at first, but so did the traditions of the Pharisees. After all, God's Law was the inspiration for the traditions of men that Jesus was criticizing. But their worldview is definitely wrong. Look at Romans 8:35. Certainly there is evil in the world, but there's nothing out there that's evil that we have to worry about. In fact, there is no evil thing out there (Genesis 1:31). Mark 7:15 says that there is nothing outside a person that can defile him by going into him. Even an idol is nothing (1 Corinthians 8:4-6).

The Christian Worldview: "I am holy to God, set apart and sanctified. I must keep my heart from releasing the evil things within that would defile me.

The evil we need to worry about is not without us, but within us (Matthew 23:25-26). The Pharisees' mistake was that they thought it is the outside of the cup that is in danger of dirtying, when it is really from inside the heart that filthy thoughts come (Mark 7:21). 


Notice that Jesus did not say that we would be unclean because we had evil in our hearts, only if that evil came out of our hearts in thoughts and actions (Mark 7:20). Here are some more verses on evil and our hearts:

• Genesis 8:29 
• Ecclesiastes 9:3 
• Matthew 15:19 
• Jeremiah 17:9
• Luke 6:45

"Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life." (Proverbs 4:23) We are not trying to keep things from getting into our hearts, but keeping things from getting out of them. We will always have to do battle with sin (Romans 7:21-25); it's like keeping vicious dogs on a leash. We should keep our sin inside where God has it covered. 


All of this is not a license to sin, by any means, but it frees us from the vain pursuit of protecting ourselves from external "impure things". We don't have to fear R rated movies, cuss words, etc. They just go in and out of us. God is concerned with what is in our hearts. Now if these things will corrupt our hearts, harden them, etc., then we need to protect ourselves from them. But it isn't the actual hearing of a bad word that makes us "dirty", but what that word brings out of our hearts. Nothing out there is capable of defiling us.  


Therefore, we don't need to worry about constantly sterilizing everything around us to keep ourselves holy! Colossians 2:20-23 talks about the "basic principles of this world." These principles are, "Keep the good things in and the bad things out." All of this can give us some insight into Titus 1:15--the spiritual "glasses" of our heart color the world and make things look evil. In Mark 9:43 it talks of getting rid of temptation, or living under parts of the Law. For example: if alcohol is your stumbling block, become a teetotaler. But don't put everyone else under that same restriction! We are to give thanks for all God's good things. 


So then, the question we should be asking ourselves is not, "Was I defiled by something today?" Instead we should be asking, "Did I indulge my sin today in thought or deed?" This is the way to stay pure.