What are you focused on? When it comes to serving God are you just ‘going through the motions’ or do you really believe what God has said?
In this chapter of Mark we see this question addressed head on when Jesus confronts the Pharisees concerning their traditions for ritual cleansing. The Pharisees looked very religious but their hearts were in the wrong place.
Contrasting the righteous looking Pharisees we see true faith in the words of a Gentile woman who came to Jesus to heal her daughter. To the Jews Gentiles were often considered about as far away as you can get.
As we look at the Pharisees and two healings in this chapter contrast your own heart with the characters we see here and ask yourself, “Do I put on a good show while inwardly while not seeking God or is my faith more than what it appears to be on the surface?”
STUDY NOTES: 7:1-37
7:1-23 Clean and Unclean
In spite of the great miracles Jesus had been performing throughout the region the Pharisees found fault in the way Jesus and his disciples were acting. Like the Pharisees it can become very easy for us to overlook the good in those around us and find fault in the action of others. Especially when the other person does not fit the image of who we think they should be.
The name Pharisee means “separated ones” and as a sect the Pharisees where highly concerned with ensuring that they remain different than the Gentiles who lived around them. In fact, the Pharisees were so concerned about maintaining a separation from the Gentiles around them that they created a very large list of traditional requirements called the Misnah. Which had about ~65 pages of guidance concerning just the sort of washing the Pharisees where complaining about in this instance. These guides not only described the way in which you was your hands but also how and how often you were to wash your cups and plates in between courses.
The pretense of all this washing was to become separated and holy before God but Jesus points out that this religious tradition had nothing to do with what God really desired. God desired a heart that was turned toward him and the Pharisees where simply trying to use this tradition to discredit the work of Jesus and his disciples.
The point Jesus was trying to make was that our heart and life must be in sync with our spoken beliefs. We can not say that we love God and perform religious rituals that look good on the outside while our heart is trying to discredit the very things that he is trying to accomplish. Sometimes this type of action isn’t even obvious to us when we’re doing it. It’s easy for us to become preoccupied with all the demands that are placed upon us that we fall into just going through the motions instead of taking the time to really seek out God’s presence and purpose.
For example, have you ever been worshipping and singing songs to God during a church service but the time your mind was on the list of tasks you have waiting for you the coming week?
If yes, then you have acted in a similar fashion to the Pharisees who were so concerned with their rituals that they lost sight of Jesus.
Jesus answered these accusations by making it very clear that ceremonial cleansings and what a man eats does not make his heart clean. It’s the purity of the heart that matters. Jesus states that it is what comes out of a man that defiles him not what goes in. Food does not enter into a man’s heart (This was huge news to the Jews, Peter still had troubles eating ‘unclean’ food even after Jesus was gone, Acts 10)
When we look at our own growth we must remember that it is the state of our heart trumps our physical activities. A pure heart will manifest itself in external purities. We must not believe the fallacy that just because we try to do good works that our heart is good as well.
7:24-30 The Faith of a Gentile Woman
Tyre and Sidon were Gentile cities both with excellent sea harbors on the Mediterranean. It is interesting that after declaring all food clean Jesus retreats to a region populated mostly by Gentiles.
It is in this context that the Gentile woman approaches Jesus to ask him to heal her daughter. Jesus’ response to this plea is at first look very shocking. Being called a dog was a very derogatory and insulting term in Jesus’ time. The Jews would look down their noses with pride at the Gentiles and insult them with this phrase. The animosity for Gentiles that the majority of Jews held was not something foreign to this woman. Jesus plays off of this understanding but uses a more diminutive and affectionate word for dog, inviting her to look deeper into what she was asking of him. Would a Jew really stop to help out this Gentile woman? Was Jesus just being tough on her?
Jesus was tough with this woman not because she was a Gentile but because he wanted to not only heal her daughter but because he wanted her to have deeper understanding of who Jesus really was. These questions tested the woman’s faith and clarified her understanding of who Jesus was. Her response to Jesus was spot on, as if she was saying,
“I know that Jews don’t like my people and that many Jews would rather spit on me and secretly celebrate the death of my daughter but you’re not like the others. I’ve heard about you and you’re different. You may not have come to minister directly to people like me but I know that you are a man of compassion. I have heard about you feeding the 5,000 and about how you have healed the crippled and saved those who were close to death. I believe that you have come from God and that you can heal my daughter.”
Jesus honored her request and her daughter was healed that night. Indeed Jesus was a man of compassion.
What is your view of God? Do you see him looking at you a one would look upon a stray dog, lost and unlovable or do you see him as a God who looks on you with compassion and mercy?
7:31-35 Healing of a Deaf Man
Many of the healings that Jesus performed were done in front of the crowds that had gathered. By taking the man away from the crowd to heal him Jesus shows great compassion for the man. Jesus was more interested in healing this man than in creating a public spectacle.
Before performing the healing, Jesus acts out what he is about to do and used signs to communicate to the man what was about to happen. It was important for the man to know that Jesus was intentional in his actions and that Jesus planned to heal his hearing and speech. The healing of once facet was in no way to be considered a by product of the other.
Then Jesus looked to heaven as another signal to the deaf man that what was about to happen was from God. Finally, with one last sigh of compassion the healing was complete. Now not only could this man hear his friend but he could also now hear the word of God being spoken and his faith could grow even more (Rom. 10:17).
Few of us have ever experienced such a complete loss of physical hearing, as this man had, but we’ve all likely had times in our lives where our spirit was deaf to the word of God being spoken around us.
When has your spiritual hearing been deaf to the Word of God? How was your spiritual hearing restored?
Conclusion
In our daily lives we can easily become so busy that we loose sight of the relationship that God has called us to have with Him. Our Christian walk can become a ritual that makes us look good on the outside but leaves our heart in completely the wrong place.
Jesus is a compassionate God who desperately desires our hearts to be in the right place. Jesus doesn’t care how hard we may be at hearing or if we grew up on the wrong side of the tracks. He only cares about our hearts. This is why we must constantly ask ourselves where our hearts are and what the output of our lives really produces.
It’s easy for our hearts to get so wrapped up in our jobs or even our family traditions that we can become just like the Pharisees. We can work hard at our job thinking that we’re doing the right thing and providing for our family in the right way. Those around us could even compliment us on what a great job we are doing for God, everything could look great. But our heart could still be all wrong and we could be further away from God than the homeless man sitting on the corner looking like his life is all in shambles.
Our appearances don’t count, it’s what comes out of our lives that matters.
We have all been guilty at some time of being deaf and dumb concerning the Word of God. As we continue to move forward I pray “Ephphatha” may our ears may be opened and our tongues loosened.