Heart Problems: Mark 7:14-23
Have you ever heard of the Twinkie Diet? I have an old friend who was a Navy Chaplain. He was always in great shape. Sometimes he was stationed with the Marines and ran with them all the time. He was in great condition.
• I asked him one time how he stayed in such amazing physical condition. He explained the secret to his condition was the Twinkie Diet. He said, “Just hold a twinkie in your hand. You will find that it is very greasy. If you eat Twinkies with every meal, the grease of the Twinkie makes everything you eat slide through and not take hold in your body and you stay slim and trim.”
• A likely story! Obviously, he was joking.
• The twinkie diet will no more make you healthy than eating a kosher diet will save your soul!
• In Mark 7:14-19 Jesus makes it clear nothing that goes into our body makes us unclean.
• In Mark 7:1-13 Jesus had a major confrontation with the teachers of the law and the Pharisees about He and His disciples not keeping the traditions of the Elders.
• Jesus said the Jewish religious bigshots elevated their traditions above God's word. Mark 7:13 is where Jesus summarizes the Jewish leader's problem with these words, “Thus you nullify the word of God by your traditions that you have handed down. And you do many things like that.” (NIV)
• After the confrontation with the Teachers of the Law and the Pharisees, Jesus calls the crowd to Him and takes advantage of a teaching moment.
• He makes it clear nothing from outside a man can make him unclean by going into the man. Jesus said it's the stuff that comes out of people that makes them unclean!
• Jesus left the crowd and went into a house for another teaching moment with His disciples and they asked Him about the parable He was teaching to the people.
• In verse 18A Jesus asks the disciples, “Are you so dull?” (NIV) That's like saying, “don't you guys get it?”
• He tells them nothing that enters a man from outside can make him unclean by going into him. Why? Because it doesn't go into his heart, but into his stomach and then out of his body.
• Notice verse 19B, “(In saying this Jesus declared all foods clean.” (NIV)
• Remember in Acts chapter 10 Peter was taking a nap on a roof top and had a dream. Peter was a good Kosher Jew and had never eaten unclean food in his life!
• In his dream a large sheet was lowered before him with all kinds of unclean animals on it. The voice said, “rise, Peter, Kill and eat.” In Acts 10:14, Peter responds, “Surely not Lord! Peter replied. I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.” (NIV)
• Listen to verse 15, “The voice spoke to him a second time, ‘do not call anything impure that God has made clean.” (NIV)
• All that happened three times and Peter was beginning to get the idea! God has declared all foods clean.
• Again, eating a Kosher diet will no more make you acceptable to God than eating the Twinkie Diet will make you healthy!
• In Mark 7:20-23 Jesus makes it clear what comes from the heart makes you unclean!
• The source of uncleanness and sin come from the heart, and these are the things that make people unclean.
• Evil stuff is the stuff that fouls life, and it starts in the heart. The heart is the center of the human personality, the thinking and feeling that goes on inside you. If you think about something enough, it makes its way into your deeds. Doing the wrong things begins in the heart! What messes up life with sin is always a heart problem.
• Guess what sin is listed first. “Evil thoughts” is the first sin listed. Why is that? Because evil thoughts become evil deeds!
• When I was working with teen guys as their youth pastor, I explained it to them like this, “When you see a woman with a revealing halter top at the mall and you look away, your fine. But if you take another trip close to where she is walking to take a second look you are having a heart problem.”
• The thought is the origin of all sin! That is why evil thought is the first sin on the list! It's the origin of all sin!
• Sexual immorality is the second sin listed. This is illegitimate sex generally. That means any sexual immorality, except that between a man and his wife!
• It's the translation of the Greek word, PORNEIA, the word that gives birth to the English word pornography. The current situation in the world today and in our country today is sexual immorality is rampant. The only solution to that situation is hearts transformed by the presence of Jesus Christ.
• Theft is the next word. We have some theft of an extraordinary sort going on in our country today. People are planning to rush into high end stores and steal everything in sight!
• It's evil and starts in the heart of man. We need to enforce the law and work on getting it stopped. Ultimately, it will never stop without changed hearts.
• The next word is murder! So far this year the city of Chicago has had 678 murders. I read about murders in Tulare County every week!
We have murders here too.
• Murder is a crime that's undoable! The person killed isn't coming back. I've performed the funeral for one murder victim. It is tragic! Such evil begins with some person's heart problem.
• The next word is “adultery.” Adultery is someone who's married having sexual relations with someone other than their spouse. In this country, 20 percent of older couples admit they have cheated in their marriage. Adultery is over the top, indicating heart disease of the spiritual sort!
• Greed comes next and is about wanting something that belongs to someone else. It's close enough to sexual sins to suggest that wanting someone else's spouse may be a sexual greed. Regardless, greed is a heart disease.
• Malice comes up next and is usually connected to wanting to take revenge on someone! It starts in the heart.
• Deceit is next. Deceiving someone to get what you want is always a problem of sin that comes from the heart.
• Lewdness is shameless and blatant immoral behavior. We see this all over the place in our country, maybe most often in the entertainment industry.
• Envy is to literally have an evil eye. You're envious when you want what another person has, or you resent them having something you want. Envy is a heart problem that can lead to other heart problems and can be super destructive in life.
• Slander is to speak against God or someone else. Slander is rampant in political circles and most everywhere else.
• Arrogance and folly are all over the place and show the reality of heart problems everywhere.
• Fix hearts and fix people! Fix enough hearts in people and fix an entire culture!
• Can you fix hearts by passing laws? No, people break laws all the time!
• Galatians 5:24 puts it this way, “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires.” (NIV)
• When you sell out to Christ as Lord, convert to Him and bring Him into your life, you crucify the sinful nature! That means that your sinful nature was nailed to the cross with Jesus! It's dead when you belong to Jesus.
• The solution to heart disease, and thus the solution to sin is to convert to Christ and nail the sin nature with its passions and desires to the cross with Jesus.
• Then Galatians 5:25 becomes your reality, “Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.” (NIV)
• Once you belong to Jesus you live by the Spirit and keep in step with the Spirit. The Spirit writes a new law on your heart and changes you from inside!
• When I sold out to Jesus my sin was nailed to the cross and crucified with Jesus. That means it was killed. As I got to know Jesus, His Spirit took over and some of the sins were removed and gone for good. Others took more time.
• Drinking and fighting were gone, nailed to the cross with Jesus! Smoking was removed by the intervention of the Spirit over a few months but was gone.
• No Kosher diet, not even a Twinkie Diet will fix the heart. Only ownership transfer to Jesus with sin being crucified with Him and living by the power of the Spirit will fix the heart!
• Fixing heart problems is a God thing!