Heart of Darkness

6 · Applies the self-righteousness diagnosis to contemporary Christian life

Isn't that our default in any conflict? Who do we assume is right in the conflict?

I've never gotten into a conflict with my wife where the two of us are fighting and I'm assuming, you know, "I bet you're right here, but I'm," you know. That doesn't happen. We assume in any conflict we are the right ones. We assume, and what happens is we come to the Bible, we come to God, and we assume, no, no, no, this is the way it's supposed to be, right? I remember I was talking to a young believer once where they were trying to figure out what the Bible's teaching was on sexuality and on relationships, and it wasn't going well in terms of mapping this onto their life.

And they said, well, that can't be right. Because I don't agree with that. And I was like, wait, what? Wait, run that back to me. It can't be right because why?

Because I don't agree with it. And you just end up in this loop, right? If we come to the Lord, if we come to the Bible, if we come assuming we're the right ones, something's got, this has got to be mistranslated or something. I don't like this.

That's what happens. We're blinded to the real problem by our self-righteousness at times.

7 · Exposition of Mark 7:6-9

Second, we can be blinded by human religion. And he said to them, 'Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites,' which is kind of a great opening, 'as it is written, this people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.

You leave the commandment of God to hold to the traditions of men.' And he said to them, 'You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition.

8 · Develops the theological mechanism of religious blindness

Now remember, the Pharisees would have been the good guys in everyone's eyes in the first-century Jewish context, right? These are the guys that, you know, always the holy people that always pray before the meal. They always kept every part of the law. They would keep every little punctilious detail.

They would pray. They would fast. They were the super, the spiritual superheroes. And Jesus is saying, no, no, no, you're wrong. But they were so sure they were right because they had so so many rules and they kept so many rules that it began to make them feel like, "Well, I must be right.

Look at all the rules that I'm keeping." But in the process, here's what happens. In adding all of these traditions on top of the law, in adding these traditions again and again and again for generation after generation on top of the law, they obscure the law themselves. And what Jesus is pointing out is that they may be using religious Old Testament language, but their religion is not It's not the religion of the Old Testament. It is, in other words, their traditions have supplanted and overtaken and moved out of the way the law of God, especially the heart of the law. And this is what human religion often does.

Human religion always targets the external because it's the only thing it can target. And moving from the heart of the law, these core commandments of loving God, loving your neighbor, All of these things get piled on, and all of a sudden the focus becomes, well, did you do this, did you do that, did you do this, not did you love your neighbor, do you love the Lord? And this is what's happened here.

9 · Applies the Pharisees' religious blindness directly to contemporary Christian experience

Now, here's the thing. We can be guilty of the exact same thing.

Look, I grew up in church. I would describe myself growing up in church as a tiny Pharisee. I heard songs about the gospel, I heard songs about the grace of God, I heard all these things, but when I came to church, and I had done good obeying that week, I felt like, yeah, I deserve to be here. I know some of you don't, right? Some of the people in my kids' ministry class need the Lord, but I don't because I did all of the things this week, right?

And sometimes we even still come in like that. We come in confessing, you know, the Christian creeds and praying and all this stuff, but deep down our religion is not the religion of the Bible. It's our own religion of I did this and this and this and this, therefore God will be nice to me, God will owe me, God will give me, God won't be angry at me. You know, we do exactly what the Pharisees do.

10 · Expands the diagnosis to include secular systems

Now, the other thing, though, is that many people in our day and age don't consider themselves religious, right?

There's fewer and fewer people, the fastest growing religious group in America is those who claim no religion at all. That's the fastest growing group. And for them, they might think, well, hey, psh, Yeah, preach that, guy. All these hypocrites, these Christians out there, they are hypocrites. They're the worst.

Well, here's the thing, friend. You have a religion too. Webster defines religion as a cause, a principle, a system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith, right? For some, and I'm gonna use kind of an extreme here, maybe their religion might be being a good secular humanist who does good to fellow man, who always recycles, who marches for justice, celebrates diversity in the right ways, and then looks down on everybody else who's not as elevated and high up as they are. Like, oh, you person, where were you at the march?

You didn't even recycle this week. And you think, like, okay, you seem pretty intense about that. You seem like you're holding to that cause, principle, or system of beliefs with ardor and/or faith.

Right? I mean, he was even talking to a guy who's from a gang at one point, and he was saying, yeah, gangs are a religion. They have these values of loyalty and brotherhood and honor and respect for the right people in the right ways. And actually, when you're in the game, you look down on everybody else not in the game. 'Cause like, you don't get it.

You know, a bunch of these disrespectful guys that don't understand life. Right, we all do this. The problem is all of our religion, whether it's religious or irreligious, aims at fixing problems on the outside of us. Making more rules, requiring more things. Leading us to either feel superior to others when we succeed or crushed and dejected when we fail, but it never reaches inside.

11 · Exposition of Mark 7:10-13

Third thing that blinds us is being blind by calling bad good, by mixing up and excusing hypocrisy. Verse 10, Moses said, "Honor your father and mother, and whoever reviles father or mother must surely die." But you say, If a man tells his father or mother, "Whatever you have gained from me is Corban, that is given to God," then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And many such things you do.

12 · Translates the obscure Corban practice into a contemporary scenario: the easy chair illustration

So Jesus wants to help them see that they are hypocritical by using this one specific example. And so this may be a little obscure, but translating it into modern language a little bit, here's what was happening.

So say you have some aging parents and you're your aging parents, you know, say your father, his back is given out and he's really struggling, but you have the best easy chair in the world. And his father, you know, your father comes over and he's just like, "Oh, this chair. When I sit in it, my back finally feels better for a few minutes, son." And your wife is saying, "You should give him the chair. Give him the, you know, offer your dad the chair." And you say, "Oh, Dad, I would give you this chair." "Oh, really?" "But it's actually, I dedicated it to the Lord." I have to keep it now. And that's something that they would do, right?

If you dedicated to the Lord, you had to keep possession of the item because it was dedicated as unto the Lord. And so you're like, sorry, Dad, but praying for your back. And you'd sit in the chair, click on the TV, right? That's essentially what was happening. And the Pharisees were like, well, it is dedicated unto the Lord.

And they were using these sort of loopholes. Listen, man, any religious system, the human heart will always be able to find loopholes if it is inclined to find them. Right? So the Pharisees, these lawyers, knew the law better than anyone, and they would find these loopholes, like, "I can do this," or, "I can do that. I can excuse this.

I can excuse that," right? You see much of this in the New Testament. And Jesus is pointing out, by doing that, by keeping the externals, they're breaking one of the Ten Commandments, which is just honor your father and mother, right? I mean, and that is a heart thing. That's a posture thing, and they're completely violating it.

By their sort of religious lawyering around it.

13 · Personal anecdote applying the Corban principle to contemporary Christian life

And this is exactly what blinds us as well. We can get so convoluted in our religious systems that we end up calling bad good and good bad. And let me give you one example. So I was talking to my wife a few months ago and one of my family members needed help with something practical, like moving something around.

I don't remember what it was, but they needed help with something practical on a Saturday. And I just remember beginning to argue to Jen, well, you know, I mean, I'd love to go help, but I, I just feel like I want to spend some time with the boys. You know, that time is very important. And, you know, it is my day off, and I want to be restful. I want to respect the Sabbath.

I want to not do, you know, too much work on the Sabbath. And I'm explaining these things to Jen, and she's just nodding at me like, uh-huh. So I finish my argument, and I'm kind of like looking at her to give me approval to like, yeah, it's fine. And she looked at me, and she just said, uh-huh, and then just kind of looked away. And I thought, I guess I'm going to help my family member, right?

Because I'd gotten so confident. I was using all of these things to justify, but the law of God itself, the heart of the law of God has this way of just exposing us and saying, "No." But when we're so blinded by our obfuscation, we don't see what's really going on.

14 · Synthesizes the three forms of blindness into a single claim: the Pharisees exemplify our condition

So what do we see here? Okay, the Pharisees are us. They are very much more like us than we want to admit.

And they were so concerned with all of this external good that they neglected the heart.

15 · Uses Paul Tripp's fruit-stapling metaphor to visualize the futility of external religion

Let me give you one illustration of this. So Paul Tripp uses the illustration of fruit stapling. He says many people's lives are like trees that are sick and rotten and produce no fruit, no leaves. But what we do with external religion is we go up and we staple fruit we bought from the grocery store onto the leaves, you know.

Imagine somebody in their backyard, they've got a, you know, bucket of apples and they're stapling them on the leaves and then standing back and saying, Looks pretty good, you know? It's pretty good, I think, right? Definitely better than my neighbor's tree, for sure, you know? And that's what we do with human religion. That's what the Pharisees are doing.

That's what we are doing, where Jesus is saying, "Listen, put that aside. What's going on down here?"

16 · Structural pivot from diagnosis of blindness (section 1) to diagnosis of the problem itself (section 2)

Point number 2, seeing the problem. The real problem, Jesus points out, is not outside of us but inside of us.

17 · Direct exposition of Mark 7:14-23

Verse 14, and he called the people to him again and said to them, "Hear me, all of you, and understand. Nothing outside 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'd entered the house and left the people, his disciples asked him about the parable." Even the disciples weren't getting it.

Even the disciples were like, "I thought the Pharisees were good guys, and now you're, like, calling them hypocrites. I don't know. I'm not sure what's going on." "He explains to them, 'Are you also without understanding? Don't you see that whatever goes into a person from outside can't defile him, since it enters not his heart, his heart but his stomach and is just expelled? Thus he declared all foods clean.

And he said to him, 'What comes out of a person—' what comes out of a person— 'is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these things come from within, and they defile a person.'

18 · Develops the contemporary application of Jesus' diagnosis

Now, this would have been radical and countercultural in Jesus' day, perhaps even more radical and countercultural in our day. We are used to seeing the world entirely as if what is wrong in our lives is somebody else's fault, is external to us. It must be my boss's fault that I'm not a happy worker.

It must be society's fault that I'm not at peace. It must be my spouse's fault if I, have an affair, they push me to it, right? Jesus gives this long list of sins that we look at and we're like, yuck, man, that is terrible. But Jesus points out those things aren't things that enter into our lives from the outside. It's not the fault of society or our work environment or our parents or our family or our friends.

These things happen because they flow from inside of us. Now, certainly, these things Things external to us can wound us. We can suffer. We can be influenced to sin in particular directions. But Jesus is pointing out at the very bottom, the most fundamental level, our problem is not outside of us, it is inside of us.

That's why these Pharisees, these pristine, sparkling religious figures that everybody had on a pedestal, that's why Jesus could look at them and see all the way down into their heart and see See, look, it's rotten too. This is a problem too.

19 · Confronts the cultural mantra 'follow your heart' with Jesus' diagnosis

Look, one of the other things that's so common these days in our culture is that we look to the heart as the problem to the solu— like, as the solution to the problem, right? How often do we hear, like, follow your heart? You know, what's going on in your life?

My life's not going well. You know what you need to do? You just need to follow your heart. You know? What's going on?

I just have this, you know, these relational problems. I don't know if I should be dating this person or not, well, you know what, just follow your heart. And Jesus is out there going, no, do not do that. Do not follow your heart, right? In that sinful respect that he's talking about here.

These things are coming out of you. The source of the problem can't be the solution, right? This is what Jesus is telling us. In fact, he, Let me give you one quote here, 'cause I think it's too good. So Lord David Cecil, reflecting on the Holocaust, he was a Brit, and he was reflecting on the Holocaust and how it happened, how Europe, for all of his technology and advancement and humanism and all this stuff, he says this, "The jargon of the philosophy of progress taught us to think that the savage and primitive state of man is behind us, but barbarism is not behind us, it is within us." Meaning, The problem with the Nazis wasn't some weird environmental thing.

The problem with Nazis is the same thing was in our hearts, all of our hearts, to begin with.

20 · Names the dual consequences of internal defilement: vertical alienation from God and horizontal damage to others

Now, that leads to two problems fundamentally. It means that vertically, our sin defiling us cuts us off from God. It pushes us away from God. God can have no sin or defilement in his presence.

Actually, that's why the Pharisees were doing all of this ritual stuff is because they wanted to be close to God because sin, defilement, keeps you away from God, keeps you out of the presence of God. And so they thought by washing externally again and again, by keeping every external part of the law, they could make it a little bit closer into the presence of God, that God would be happy with them, give them what they want, not condemn them or bring his justice on them. They wanted that, but the problem Jesus is pointing out is there's nobody that can do that. There's nobody that can be externally clean enough themselves to make it into the presence of God. That's their first problem.

The second problem is just the problem that we all deal with, that it keeps— this stuff keeps coming out of our hearts horizontally, keeps affecting the people around us. It keeps— we have these patterns of sin in our lives that we just can't seem to kill.

21 · Structural and tonal pivot from diagnosis to solution

So what's the solution? Well, the text ended, and so that's all I got. So you guys come back next week.

No, I'm not going to do that to you. That's how the text ends. And at first, it feels like, what's going on there? But point number 3, solving the problem. What is the resolution to this problem that Jesus points out?

I mean, it's actually terrifying 'cause we look in the mirror and we see, ah, that's not good, I don't like that. What do we do here? What is the solution? Well, as in so much of the gospels, the solution is standing right in front of us. One of the reasons I think the solution is unstated here is because it is so obvious.

Stated throughout the rest of the Gospel of Mark. This problem is what Jesus is aiming his ministry at. If the heart of the problem is our heart, Jesus is aiming his ministry at our heart to fix what truly ails us. Only he can truly see it. Only he is truly going after it.

22 · Announces the two-part solution corresponding to the two-part problem

And in Jesus' ministry, I'm going to show briefly that he goes after both the vertical dimension and the horizontal dimension of our defilement. First, he goes after this vertical dimension. He solves our defilement with salvation. Okay, so I want you to do something this week. Look at Zechariah 3 this week because Zechariah 3 has this crazy picture where God sees the high priest of the people of God, Joshua is the priest's name, sees the high priest whose garments are supposed to be sparkling white, who is about to approach into the Holy of Holies, and he's ritually washed himself.

He's cut himself off from everybody else in the community. He's washed himself. It's a multi-day preparation process to stand before the Lord. And with God's eyes, we look at Joshua and his garments are not white. They're covered, it says, in filth.

Now Joshua was standing before the angel clothed with filthy garments. The word filth literally means excrement. It means the worst stuff imaginable.

23 · Expounds Zechariah 3:4-8

So what will Jesus do? What can Jesus do?

Well, it's pictured here in Zechariah 3. The angel said to those who were standing before him, "Remove the filthy garments from him." And he said, "Behold, I have taken your iniquity away from you and will clothe you with pure vestments." The Lord sees our problem, but he doesn't leave us there. He goes to us and said, "Remove this," and clothe him with something pure. So how does that happen? How can that happen?

Verse 8, "Hear now, O Joshua the high priest, you and your friends who sit before you, for they are men who are assigned. Behold, I will bring my servant the Branch, and I will remove the iniquity of this land in a single day." What he's saying is this Zechariah gets his new robe from somewhere. From the branch. And, and, and if you understand a little bit about the, the names here, yeah, that word Joshua is from the name Yeshua, which is also the root of the name Jesus. So you have, in a sense, picture two Joshuas, two Yeshuas.

One who is supposed to be clean outwardly but is clothed in filth and excrement, and one, Jesus, who stands completely completely pure, completely white, completely righteous. And in a sense, what happens is Jesus takes the filthy Joshua's robe and gives that filthy Joshua his robe. Jesus takes that filthy garment, goes to the cross, and bears the justice of God directed at our defilement so that the other Joshua, the formerly filthy Joshua, can enter into the Holy of Holies and the presence of God.

24 · States the contrast between external religion and the gospel

This is what Jesus means to do in his ministry. He does not say, "Hey, more religion, more rules, more stuff.

You gotta obey enough to scrub your garments clean, then we'll see, maybe someday you'll enter into the presence of God." He says, "No, abandon your garment altogether. Get a better one from me that I purchased with my own blood." wear it yourself and enter into the presence of God.

25 · Cites 2 Corinthians 5:21 as the New Testament's explicit statement of the exchange: Christ becomes sin for us; we become the righteousness of God in him

2 Corinthians 5:21 says this: God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

26 · Direct pastoral address to those burdened by guilt and shame

Look, friend, if you are here today and maybe your problem is almost the opposite of what I've been preaching to— maybe your problem is not that you don't see the defilement on you or see the sin or see the guilt. Maybe you feel the guilt every day.

And maybe you're here in church or doing Christian stuff 'cause you hope that maybe someday, one day, you'd finally feel like God loves you. You finally feel like you're close to God. You finally feel like you've got the stains rubbed out of your garments enough to get close to him. That is not the way. Jesus offers a better way to you.

And he offers it freely to you. He holds out his hand and says, "Give me your garment. Stop trying to wipe this thing clean. I have a better one for you." And Christians, when we wear the garment of Christ, what we experience is what's proclaimed by the church in Revelation 19 at the end of history when the church gathers and confesses together, "Let us rejoice and be glad. Fine linen, bright and clean is given to us." given to us to wear.

At the end of history, when we stand before God, the church will not be arrayed in filthy rags, but in the righteousness, the gleaming righteousness of Christ. And rather than experiencing alienation or exile, it will be brought in close to the heart of the Father and rejoiced over for all eternity. That is the insane trade the gospel of Jesus Christ Christ offers the sinner.

27 · Direct evangelistic call

So if you don't believe that, if you haven't arrested, if you haven't taken your garment off and received this garment of righteousness for Jesus, do it today. Confess your sins.

Say, "I can't do this," and receive it with joy.

28 · Transitions to the horizontal dimension of the solution: internal heart renovation

Second, Jesus not only solves the vertical dimension of our defilement, he also solves what's going on inside of us. In Ezekiel, there's this picture that the people of God have a heart of stone. And because they have this heart of stone, everything coming out of their heart is stone, in a sense. But the Spirit of God has promised to go reach into that heart of stone, remove it, and give the people of God a heart of flesh.

That's the work of the Holy Spirit. That's Jesus, when in restoring our relationship with God, makes possible for the Spirit Spirit to come into our hearts and renovate and change our hearts so that the, the source of our defilement begins more and more to look like the heart of God, not the heart of sin, not the heart of, of evil.

29 · Cites Ephesians 4:22-24 as the New Testament's imperatival form of Ezekiel's promise

And Ephesians 4, we're then called to put off your old self which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through the deceitful desires, and be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the a new self created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

30 · Applies the horizontal solution to Christian sanctification

So as Christians, here's what we're trying to do. We are not trying to staple better-looking fruit on our lives.

We as Christians need to aim our ministry where Jesus aims his ministry, which is at our hearts. Rather than just saying, like, "Oh, I'm angry," you know? Have you ever said, like, "Oh, you're making me so angry. This situation is making me so angry," right? That's just— and try to be less angry.

Try to remove the anger-inducing things from your life. No, don't do that. I mean, you should maybe practically do some of that, but look at your heart and ask, why are you angry in the first place? Where are you saying, I am going to be God and I'm going to rule the situation? Maybe you've got to step down off the throne and allow God to be God, right?

Begin to allow the Lord to change your heart on the deepest, most fundamental level by applying the truth of the gospel to the situations you encounter in your life. That's the only way to truly changed, not by cleaning ourselves from the outside, but leaning into the work of the Spirit to cleanse us and change us from the inside out.

31 · Restates the sermon's thesis and pivots to gospel assurance

So in conclusion, the heart of the problem is our heart, but the text does not just leave us there. The text reminds us that Jesus is aiming his ministry at the heart of our problem, which is our hearts. And the good news for us, friends, is that Jesus turns no stone filthy sinner away.

32 · Returns to the Gospel of Mark immediately preceding the sermon's primary text

Briefly, look, Mark 6:56, and we'll end with this. Right before this passage, I think there's an instructive couple verses. It says, whenever, wherever he came, in villages, cities, or countryside, they laid the sick in marketplaces and implored him that they might touch even the fringe of his garment. All these people would have been unclean— sores, open wounds, all this stuff. Jesus should have backed off from them, do you know what happened instead?

And as many as touched his garment were made well.

33 · Final applicatory synthesis

What Jesus calls us to do in the end here is to reach out and grab his garment, to be willing to look at ourselves. If we truly look at the law of God, we will see, man, there's a lot of hypocrisy in there, a lot of self-righteousness, a lot of ugly stuff. But we don't run and fix that with self-righteousness, we run and fix that with with Jesus' righteousness and his renewing work. Amen.

34 · Closing pastoral prayer

Well, let's stand and let's ask for God's help.

Lord, I pray for us today, God. I pray that you would do a work of renovation in our hearts. God, if we are Christians, if there is an area in our life that we feel stuck in, that we've been looking all around us and blaming other things or other people for and wondering, like, ah, why? Why, why is this thing making me do this? Lord, I pray that we'd be honest enough with ourselves to see ourselves as we truly are, to see what's going on in our hearts.

And I pray that we would bring that area to you right now in the name of Jesus. I pray that we would bring that right now, that area, and say, Lord, I can't change this, but you can. Please help me. Please help me see how I need to change. Please help me see how to change.

Please give me the power to change. Help us. With that in Jesus' name, God. And I also pray for those that may not know you. I pray for those who've found themselves maybe in a religious system without the heart of Christ in it.

I pray that they would abandon it and instead cling to the garment of Jesus today. In your name we pray, amen.

Well, as we sing together to close, the Holy Spirit has spoken to us through his word and he's impressed truth on our hearts, and now we want to respond as we