This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Welcome to our look at the Gospel of Mark in Daily Drive Time Devotions. We're
starting a look at Mark chapter 7 today. We're going to look at verses 1 to 7.

And in this chapter we're going to see the next several days, five days
together, that Jesus once again confronts the Pharisees and the teachers of the
law. And we're going to see that this is a chapter, especially the beginning
part of it, it's about the dangers of becoming over familiar with the things of
God in your life. Jesus once again comes up against the Pharisees and you just
have to notice the contrast between the end of last week, the chapter, and the
beginning of this week.

Last week people's opinions of Jesus, it's all positive and here all of a sudden
it's all negative. If Jesus Christ had depended on the opinions of others to
determine the ministry that he did, he would have gone crazy. You can't depend
on the opinion of others.

He instead depended on God's direction in his life. And here in this chapter, in
the beginning, we're going to see Jesus facing this group of the Pharisees and
also the scribes or the teachers of the law. Now who were these guys, by the
way, Pharisees and teachers of the law?

We in America and other countries today, we have political parties. In Israel in
that day, they also had parties. They were political/religious parties and there
were many of them, five of the major ones that you hear about in the New
Testament that were there in Israel that was under Roman occupation at the time
were the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the scribes, the Herodians and the Zealots.

Who were these guys? Well, the Pharisees were a very strict sect of religion who
also were leaders in the Jewish church. They were legalists in religion.

They were nationalists in their politics. The Sadducees were also religious
leaders, a party of religious leaders in Israel, but they were the wealthy party
and they rejected the supernatural. They still held to God's word, but not quite
as, not nearly as strictly as the Pharisees.

And then you have this group called the scribes or teachers of the law, they're
called here in this passage. Many times their job was to explain the position of
the Pharisees. Now, you didn't have to be a Pharisee to be a scribe and you
didn't have to be a scribe to be a Pharisee, but they were very, very
intermixed.

They would teach the Pharisees position, so that's why you see them put together
in passages like this. You also had a couple of other groups that we hear about
in the New Testament, the Herodians. These were political opportunists who
wanted to keep Herod on the throne because it was good for them, good for their
business.

You had a group called the Zealots. These were anti-Roman Jewish patriots who
would use any method that they could to try to bring down the Roman occupation.
Those are some of the political religious parties in Jesus' day.

And Jesus' greatest enemies in these two groups were the Pharisees and the
scribes. In verses one to seven, Jesus is going to hear another question from
these groups. And this time, he doesn't answer their questions.

Instead, he just speaks directly to them about their hearts. And in talking to
these men whose traditions had become more important to them than their
relationship with God, he reveals a lot to us about the danger of legalistic
religion. Verses one to four in Mark chapter seven tell us more about who Jesus
is talking to here.

Let me read those verses. The Pharisees and some of the teachers of the law who
had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus and saw some of his disciples
eating food with hands that were unclean, that is unwashed. The Pharisees and
all the Jews do not eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial washing
holding to the tradition of the elders.

When they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash. And they
observe many other traditions such as the washing of cups, pitchers, and
kettles. Notice in verse three where I read the Pharisees and all the Jews don't
eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial washing.

It's sort of a parenthesis that Mark gives because he's writing to a Roman
audience, people who were not Jews and didn't grow up understanding these
different political religious parties. So he explains to them what they do. He
says one of the things they do is the washing of hands with ceremonial water.

This washing of the hands was not just for cleanliness, not just for hygiene. It
was a very spiritual thing. In fact, there was a very certain way that you would
do it.

You would use ceremonial water that was used for nothing else. It was in a
special pitcher to be used for the washing of hands. You would first wash your
hands, pour the water over at least down to the wrist with the fingertips
pointed up.

And you'd use one fist, not one palm, but one fist to wash the palm of the other
hand. And then you would take your hands and you would point your fingertips
down. And you would rinse your hands with the fingertips pointed down.

It was done the same way every time. And the point was not cleanliness. The
point was this was supposed to keep yourself cleansed from an unclean world.

That's why it talks about in these verses they were always cleansing themselves
when they came from the marketplace. Because that's where the Gentile people
were. That's where the unclean people were.

These verses also talk about the washing of cups. There's deep concern about how
a cup, a plate, a pot was to be washed. And it goes to the concern about outer
cleanliness and inner cleanliness.

Let me tell you about the washing of cups. A flat plate without a rim couldn't
become unclean in that day. But a plate with a rim could become unclean because
it had an inside to it.

So the inside could become unclean. A clay pot couldn't become unclean on the
outside, but it could become unclean on the inside. And if it was made unclean
by something that was put into it, then it had to be broken so that no inside
piece of that pot remained that was so large as to hold even enough oil to
anoint your little toe.

They got very exact about this. It's all about inside and outside and clean and
unclean. And they come to Jesus with some questions about this.

And Jesus uses these questions as an opportunity to talk about spiritual
priorities. Jesus these next few days we're going to see talks about three
indications that you're in a very dangerous place in your spiritual life. And
the first of these is in verses five to seven.

Let me read those verses. So the Pharisees and teachers of the law asked Jesus,
"Why don't your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead
of eating their food with unclean hands? " He replied, "Isaiah was right when he
prophesied about you hypocrites, for it is written, 'These people honor me with
their lips, but their hearts are far from me.

They worship me in vain. Their teachings are but rules taught by men. '" In
these verses you see in Jesus' teaching the first indication that you and I,
anybody, can be in great spiritual danger.

The indication is this, when your words don't match your heart, when you're
saying things that do not match your heart, Jesus says to these, he calls them
hypocrites, "Your lips give honor. " He doesn't say that it's wrong to honor God
with your words, only that it's wrong to substitute that for the feeling, the
depth of commitment in your heart. You talk the walk, but you don't walk the
talk.

You tell the truth, but you live a lie. The problem, Jesus says to these men,
very, very clearly, is you have a hypocritical heart. You may have studied this
word before, this word "hypocrisy," "hypokritos" in the Greek language.

It's from a stage term. The term made the picture of somebody who would hold a
mask. You remember those Greek masks that you've seen maybe in stages where
you'd hold this mask in front of your face?

That's what it means to be a hypocrite, to hold a mask, to put on an act. And
hypocrisy, it's not a matter of not being perfect. It is not hypocrisy for a
Christian to be imperfect.

The fact is, we're all imperfect. It is hypocrisy for a Christian to try to hide
that imperfection behind a mask. And here's the question to me in what Jesus was
saying.

Do I speak from the heart, or do I let my words act as a mask for my heart? Do I
use words to mask what's really going on in the depth of my heart? Jesus says
when you do that, your hearts are far from me, and you worship me in vain, and
your teachings become rules just taught by men.

Now how do I know if I'm struggling with this? These Pharisees, these teachers
of the law, were struggling with words that didn't match their heart, but they
didn't see it. They thought they were doing the right thing.

They convinced themselves, even to the point we're going to see later in Mark,
that they killed Jesus, thinking they're doing the right thing. How do I know
that my words don't match my heart? I need to do the same thing that these men
needed to do in that day.

I need to listen to what Jesus has to say. I don't know my own heart many times,
and you probably don't either. It's easy for us to fool our hearts.

How do I know if my heart doesn't match my words? If I'm using my words as a
cover for some pain that's going on in my heart, ask Jesus Christ and then
listen to what he has to say. Jesus said to them, "You're being hypocritical.

You need to change. " And they refused to listen. In fact, they heard what he
had to say, but instead of listening, they tried to silence him.

They couldn't do it, but they tried. So what do you do? You open your heart and
say, "Jesus, would you tell me what's going on in my life?

" You and I can choose to listen. In fact, let's take a moment in prayer to do
that right now. And just say to Jesus Christ with an open heart, "Jesus, what do
you have to say to me about my words and my heart?

Am I saying things that I'm not willing to live? Am I trying to get other people
to live up to things that I'm not living up to in my life? Am I using holy words
to somehow try to cover up a pain and unholiness and uncleanliness in my life,
in my heart?

Jesus, help me to hear what you have to say about my heart right now. And if you
have to tell me there's hypocrisy in my life, give me the humility to listen.
Give me the humility to change.

Remind me that you love me no matter what, and that you're going to grow me the
rest of my life and put into my heart a sense of humility before you right now.
Jesus, I want to grow. I want my words more and more to match my heart.

I pray you'd help me to grow. In your name, amen. " Join us tomorrow.

We're going to continue this look at spiritual dangers by talking about the
danger of traditions replacing God's direction.