Thank you, Pastor David, for leading us in worship. Well, friends, letting you into my life for a moment. My wife and I, I don't think, fight about anything meaningful. And I think that's probably true of most healthy marriages. You know, you don't really argue about anything that's a knockdown drag out because the relationship tends to fall apart. But there are things that we do fight about. One of them being that her sense of direction and how to get places is very. She grew up in, you know, kind of rural Pennsylvania. She grew up in Boyertown, Bechtelsville. And she tends to be the type of person who's like, well, I know the way there, and she does. I think she'd be mad if I was, you know, talked about this with her here, but she has kind of her way of getting somewhere, and that's the way that we're going to go. And she knows the set of roads and the landmarks. And I, as a New Jerseyan, and I think as a person of the 21st century, some would say I am more of a GPS guy. I like to have the GPS on. And Alyssa, the conversation is fairly similar where she says, you don't have to turn that on. I know the way. And I'm like, well, that's connected to space. So it knows all the ways, all the possible ways. It knows where there's traffic. It knows all the things that could go wrong. It knows accidents. It. It does. Somehow she still gets places faster than me, but I have my ways of doing things right. And I always like to have kind of the map on. It's just maybe like something of a comfort blanket or something of a. Something that just makes me more comfortable. And it's funny that when we kind of know where we are, when we know the boundaries, right, we're all going to be more comfortable, right? When you come into a different, maybe social circumstance, you want to. You want to know kind of, who should I talk to? Who should I not talk to? What should I do? What should I not do? Most of us would be uncomfortable if we stepped into some type of, I don't know, an English royal affair or something like that, right? We wouldn't know what to do. We might not even know what plates or forks to use or what have you. We would be uncomfortable. We like situations where we know where we're supposed to be and when we're supposed to be there and how we're supposed to get there. And as we continue our study in the book of Mark, Jesus is coming face to face with Individuals who really, that was their story. They liked the idea of knowing, you know, what was what and what was not what. Right. They liked the idea of being clear on the boundaries, of being clear on the picture of what they were dealing with. And it's a long passage that we're reading, but we're going to kind of break it down together. So starting from where we were last week, mark6.53, it says when they had crossed over, they landed in Gennesaret and anchored there. As soon as they got out of the boat, people recognized Jesus. They ran through that whole region, and wherever he went, into villages, towns, or countrysides, they placed the sick in the marketplaces. They begged him to let him touch even the edge of his cloak, and all who touched it were healed. So we get this picture that Jesus is going around, he's healing people, and people are following him everywhere. People are interested to be healed. People have illnesses, they have demon possession. They have issues that are going on that Jesus can address. So they're doing everything to get there. So that's kind of the context for this story, because the Pharisees are going to have an issue with kind of his growing popularity. And so the Pharisees show up in chapter seven. The Pharisees and some of the teachers of the law who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus and saw some of his disciples and eating food with hands that were defiled. That is unwashed. And we're going, okay, well, what does that mean? And the Gospel of Mark was written for Gentiles. It was written probably for a Roman audience. So he's going to explain what it means in your Bible. It might be in parentheses, it says the Pharisees and all the Jews did not eat unless they gave their hands a ceremonial washing, holding to the tradition of the elders, which when they came from the marketplace, they do not eat. Or 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. So the Pharisees had a purity system that told them when something was clean and something was unclean. They had a whole idea, a whole set of rules and ideas, a whole set of rules and plans that told them when something was pure and impure or in and out. Right. And to kind of go back to our GPS example, purity systems, this came from a resource, but it was incredibly helpful. It talked about how purity systems provide maps that show us the boundaries of who is in and who is out of what is unacceptable and what is acceptable. This is kind of like what we call legalism, right? This is the idea that what makes us us, right? And, you know, that is going to be different in, you know, a lot of different churches, a lot of different Christian communities, right? It's going to be, well, what makes us us, right? And for some churches, it's. We are really involved in our community. We care for the poor, we do social services, and, you know, okay, we don't worry about this, that or the other thing. In some churches, it's, hey, we're completely separate from the world, right? We don't engage with the world around us at all because. Because we're kind of focused on holiness. We're kind of focused on separation. And I could sit here and list 100 different examples, and at some point in the hundred different examples, you would go, oh, yeah, that sounds like the church I grew up in. Or that sounds. But this expresses itself in all sorts of different ways where what happens is kind of in addition to Scripture, we end up in a situation where we have a whole set of other things that is. This is what makes us us. We don't shop at these stores. We do shop at these stores. We don't, you know, we don't do this. We do do this. And this is, like I said in the beginning, kind of a map. It's a map that shows us the clear boundaries of all the places you're allowed to go and all the things you're allowed to do and what it means to be in and what it means to be out. And the Pharisees that we meet here, they loved their kind of ideological maps. They loved it. They loved it because for one, for the most part, it was things that were easy for them to follow and difficult for other people to follow. Right? There was a little bit of that elitism, but also they just liked to have kind of clear boundaries. They didn't want to have a lot of. Well, it's kind of a gray area. They didn't like gray areas at all. They wanted clear, concise lines on their map. And Jesus was constantly going off of the Pharisees maps. A couple of weeks ago, we talked about how he broke kind of their map of how time was supposed to work by breaking the sabbath in chapter 11. He breaks their map of where people should be when he walks into the temple and he says, the way you guys are organizing people isn't right. He breaks their map when he touches lepers and sick people, because you aren't supposed to touch those people. He breaks their maps around meals, when he eats with sinners and tax collectors over and over again, Jesus is going to break the their map. He's going to break kind of their idea of how things would go. We shouldn't be too hard on the Pharisees because again, we do this too. But it helps us to see the conflict that was going on was that the Pharisees had their idea of, if I'm going to follow God, this is how I do it. And it was passed on from generation to generation and kind of like a whisper down the lane situation, right? The person who was getting it in the form of the Pharisees was getting something that was kind of far away from what God intended, which is what Jesus is going to point out. But we shouldn't beat up the Pharisees too badly, right? There is plenty of opportunity to do that in scripture. If you want to be mad at the Pharisees, I can give you a whole reading list. But in this verse, they're a lot like us, right? Because we like our systems, we like our maps. I like my little GPS sitting up there in the window, telling me how far I have to go and making sure that I didn't miss a turn. Right now you're gonna forget this and then you're gonna tell me we're gonna be going somewhere. You're gonna say, oh, just follow me. I hate it when people say, just follow me. Cause we're gonna mess up at a light. Somebody's gonna get between us. I'm gonna lose you. I don't wanna pay. Like, just give me the address. It's connected to space. Do you understand? It's a space. It's going to be able to tell where I'm going and where I need to go. I just, like, I need it from you. And so I am empathetic towards the Pharisees because I understand the desire to want clear, hard lines on things. But Jesus is confronting them and in a lot of ways confronting me and maybe some of us. And this is what he says. He says, so the Pharisees and the 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 defiled hands? And Jesus doesn't answer their question. He says he replied. Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites. As it is written, they honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain. Their teachings are merely human rules. You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions. He's saying, like I said, whisper down the lane. They've gotten far away. And then he kind of says, let me give you an example. And he continued, you have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions. For Moses said, honor your father and mother. We're familiar with that, right? It's the commandment. And anyone who curses their father and mother and is to be put to death. But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is Korban, that is devoted to God, then you are no longer. Then you no longer let them do anything for their father or mother. Thus, you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down, and you do many things like that. So what Jesus is calling them out for is he saying, your traditions that are trying to be about following God have actually led people away from the way God revealed himself. And that the Corban thing that he's talking about is Jesus said, honor your father and mother. And a part of honoring your father and mother was caring for your father and mother as they were aging and caring for them financially. Right? And what he's saying is that even though that is what people should do based on the commandment, you have said that if a son says that everything I have is Korban that is devoted to God, that it kind of creates this legal loophole where they don't have to. They don't have to support their parents anymore, and they can keep it for themselves. And he's saying, do you see what you've done? You've moved your heart away from following God while allowing yourself to appear more spiritual. And that's why he uses the word hypocrites, because hypocrites means a play actor. He's saying, you are doing this. You are pretending this, but your heart isn't in it. Right? He's saying, you're staying in character, so to speak, but nothing has touched your heart, right? This is like if you're watching a TV show or a movie and you see two people who are in love in a TV show or a movie, or I always wonder, how does that person's spouse, like, deal with watching it? You know what I mean? It's just like, you're doing great, babe. You seem super in love with that guy. It seems awesome. He's handsome. That's why he got the job. It's gotta feel weird. And what Jesus is saying is, to the Pharisees, he's saying, that's your relationship with God is it looks real to anyone who would look at it, but the reality is that it hasn't touched your heart. It hasn't changed who you are. In fact, he's going a step further. He's saying to the Pharisees, to continue to use kind of the map thing. He's saying your map that you designed to lead you closer to God is actually leading you further away. Your map that you designed to lead you closer to God is actually leading you further and further away. So Jesus, our question is if the map is wrong, if the map that they had is wrong. Because again, they were trying their best. They were trying to follow God. And, you know, I mean, maybe some corruption in there, but largely speaking, they were trying to follow God. And if their map is wrong, who has the right map? And we get the answer. And when Jesus pulls his disciples aside again, Jesus called the crowd to him and said, listen to me, everyone, and understand this. Nothing outside the person can defile them by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them. And then the interesting thing here is that the disciples, they missed the point. The disciples missed the point. Verse 17. After he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about this parable. Are you so dull? He asked. Don't you see that nothing that enters a person from the outside can defile them? For it doesn't go into their heart but into their stomach and then out of the body. In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean. He went on, what comes out of a person is what defiles them. For it is from within, out of a person's heart that evil thoughts come. Sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All of these evils come from the inside and defile a person. So we don't know what the disciples said, but they were looking for clarity here when they go, because Jesus says to the crowd, he says, listen, nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them. And then they go into a house. And the disciples say, okay, so what system should we be following? Right? Like, because again, their brain wanted a map. Their way of thinking about things is they wanted a clear this is what's in and this is what's out. And for them, the food laws were one of those maps. The food laws were a way to communicate kind of to the rest of the world. This is what it is to be Jewish. This is what it is to be Israelites. We don't eat what the rest of the world eats. We don't do what the rest of the world does. We are separate. We cleanse our hands before we eat. This was all kind of a part of their identity. And the disciples pull them aside and say, okay, yeah, I get that you're getting rid of that, but what map should we follow? What set of rules should we follow? And Jesus says, oh, you didn't get what I said. What I was saying was, was that it's not about a system of regulations. It's about your heart. And how you measure the heart is by what comes out of your heart, right? So the issue is that Jesus isn't saying. Basically, the disciples pull him aside and say, okay, Jesus, we understand they're not right, but, like, we need to know who's in and who's out. And Jesus says, listen, guys, we. We're all out, right? Like you, I should say, you are all out because Jesus wasn't out. But you know, it would say, you know, you are all out because all of you in your hearts have all of these things going on. All of you have evil in your heart that is working its way out into your life. In other words, he's saying you're looking for who's in and who's out. But the truth is, is that if you are honest about what is on the what is in your heart and what is working its way into your life, you are all on the outside. That no amount of ritual, that no amount of maps, that no amount of identities can help you to solve the actual problem that is going on, which is that you have sin in your heart that works its way into evil in your life. In other words, we are all hopeless. And our only hope that we would be set free from earning our way to God in is for God himself to come and in the death and resurrection of Jesus, to set us free from a desire to kind of figure out our way in. Or actually to solve our desire to figure out our way in, to set us free from systems and maps and rules and lines and to say, no. It's about evaluating where your heart is and taking your heart and offering it to Jesus and letting him do what only he can do. It isn't directly stated here, but this is the Gospel. See, Jesus is saying, there is no map that can lead you there, but you can follow me there. There is no map that can lead you there, but that you can follow me there. We are all out, but through Jesus, we can re brought in. And so Jesus point is that it's not the system that solves us. It's not these sets of identities. It's not this, you know, it's not this idea that we can just, you know, figure it out or that we can come up with all of the right rules. It is that we would follow Jesus and that he would do what only he could do. Jesus correctly diagnoses us here, which is what the purity laws were designed to do. We talk about, like what the purpose of the law is, right? And there's a lot of ways we could look at it. But. But on the whole, one of the things the law does is it points us towards Jesus. Because what we do is we read and we say, well, you know, we read through this. We read through, you know, sexual morality, theft, murder. And then he goes, adultery, and then he goes into kind of more thought crimes, right? Greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. And we kind of go, well, who could possibly not ever do any of that, right? If that's where Jesus lines in, how can I ever live inside of Jesus lines? And that is what the law is meant to do. It is meant to push us to a place where we realize that we are in need of a Savior, that what is wrong with us is successfully diagnosed by the fact that sin is at work in our hearts and sin is at work in our lives. And that we need the great physician to solve. Not our rule problem, not our map problem, not our practices problem. We need him to solve our sin problem. And so the truth that is kind of hidden in this passage is the idea that we are hopeless, that we are on the outside. That the Pharisees had the right desire, right? They wanted to create a system so that they could figure out how to be in the inside of God's grace because they knew that they were on the outside. And Jesus is saying, it's true, you are on the outside. And the disciples say, okay, how can we get in? And Jesus just says, it's not a system, it's me. You have to follow me to death and to resurrection. You have to follow me. You have to put your heart on the altar of Jesus, and you have to put your life in his hands and say, okay, Jesus, your way, not mine. I trust you with my life. I trust you with my heart. And I trust you to be transformed into the person that. That you would have me be. In other words, there is no map, but you can follow me. So it leads to kind of us, what do we do with this verse today? And the question, the first question we have to ask ourselves is, where am I living by a map that I made up, Right? Like, where am I living? There are kind of two places this passage challenges us is, where am I living by a map that I made up? And this is a hard question for us to answer, admittedly, because nobody, nobody who's legalistic ever thinks they're legalistic, right? Like, nobody's ever. There are things I am probably legalistic about. There are things like, I can't even fully say it because I'm like, well, I have good reasons. But, you know, like, nobody who's legalistic ever thinks they're legalistic. And none of us want to make an error the other way, right? The theological term is antinomian, right? Like, none of us want to be like, anti. Doing the right things. We don't want to be just like, well, nothing matters. I can just do whatever I want, right? So we don't want to do that. So we find ourselves in a place where we're going. We're kind of like the disciples. We're like, okay, Jesus, but what do we do? And the answer is that we take kind of our map, our rules, our rule set, and we put it before God and we say, does this truly line up with Scripture? Right. Does my thoughts about this truly line up with Scripture? And that's going to happen, you know, in church, in your private reading of the Bible, in kind of maybe things you hear people say and being willing to do the work and say, okay, what does Scripture say about how we should live? And I understand that that sounds frustrating. It sounds a little bit like following somebody from one place to another instead of just using our neat little map, right? But that is what Jesus has invited us to do. He has invited us to follow him. He has invited us to engage in kind of the messy work of following him, of figuring out what he would have us do, of honestly coming to Scripture and asking, what does this scripture teach about how I should live? We must follow Jesus dynamically and personally and every single day. And it's a funny kind of mental exercise because I, growing up, I had a pastor and his name was Keith Holt. And in my mind, Pastor Keith is either late 60s, early 70s now. And in my mind, he always struck me as fairly legalistic growing up, right? Because I came to church for the first time at 13 years old. I was the first person saved in my family. My family. My mom came with me, my sister came with me. You know, I'll tell you the story at some point, but point being, you know, I'm around this guy, Keith Holt, and. And, you know, I didn't know many Christian men, you know, in general. And so he was one of the few Christian men I knew. And he always struck me as kind of legalistic. Like, he just had, like, very, very staunch things. And I don't tell the story to make fun of him, but just to. Just to give you. I was talking to him once about, you know, alcohol, because I was. I was late in high school, I had the opportunity to get a job at a liquor store as, like, a stock boy or something. And he said, well, why would you want to do that? And I said, oh, it was money, you know, mostly how much I've thought about it. I'm 17 years old. And he was like, well, why would you want to support the idea of, like, a liquor store in the community when, you know. And that was. And so we talked about it. I didn't end up working there. Kind of beside the point. But in the midst of that conversation, he said, you know, I don't even think people should cook with wine, because people use that to, like, get their liquor fix. And that was who he was. Right? Like, that was just, you know, again, not making fun of him. But as I got to know him more, because I ended up working for him for three years. I worked at my home church, and as I got to know him more, he would tell me stories about his dad. And he would say, yeah, my dad didn't like for us to play pool because people who hung out in pool halls, that was where, like, a lot of sin happened. And so I started playing pool with friends. And, you know, we had to hide it from my dad at first. And then eventually I had a conversation with him and said, oh, he's really running a. You know, running a clean thing. Like, he grew up in a world where you didn't go to movies, where you didn't, you know, go to pool halls, where you didn't go to baseball games, where you didn't. So by comparison, he was. I mean, he was basically a liberal. You know what I mean? It was like he was. He was living wild and free. Like, you know, and my point is, is that my grandkids will have practices and beliefs and do things that right now, to me, probably feel really weird. And I know that that's true because it's been true for every two generations for as Far back as you want to go. Here's the problem. I can't point to one thing that I'm wrong about that they're going to do differently. Right? Like, you know what I mean? Like, if you said, addison, come up with one example of something your grandkids will do that you'll understand. You're just being legalistic about right now. I don't have one for you. I just don't. Because my reading of Scripture, my understanding of scripture is what I live out, right? And it's very, very hard for me to imagine that I'm very wrong about anything. I know that might sound weird, but it's like, you know, it's very hard for me to imagine. But I do think that even though somebody that's much older than me might think that about some things that I do or think or say, right. That the point here is that following Jesus is a dynamic and personal thing. And that is not to say that you do whatever you want, but that you honestly come to Jesus, that you read Scripture, that you do the hard work of the soul, that you wrestle with those spots where maybe I have slipped into legalism, maybe I've added something where Jesus never intended to add it. And we wrestle and we grow and we learn and. And we change and we come before Jesus every day and we put our lives in front of Him. And I only use that example not to say, like, you know, we should all embrace doing whatever we want. My point is, is that that's kind of confusing, right? Like that if I assume my grandkids will do something different, but I can't point to which things. I don't know. It's always been interesting to me. I don't really have a point that I'm making from that. It's just kind of fascinating. But the second question we have to ask ourselves as we're bringing ourselves before Jesus is what is coming out of my heart as I bring my life before Jesus every day? What is working its way out of my heart as I look at the things that I believe and I say and I bring them before Jesus? Does it line up with the way that he would have me live? And it's never going to fully line up. That's the point. Because he's the one doing the work. But the point is for us to continue to engage in. In the work. And we have to be honest. And this is hard, because when things come out of our heart, what do we say? We say, well, that's not me. Yeah, it is. Came out it's you. It is by definition, you. You know what that means for me? It means when I get mad at how long it takes somebody to take a right turn, that's my heart. You know what I mean? When I'm like driving and it's just like you've done it before, I think, I don't think this is your first day behind. Then I just get as angry as I've ever been in my life behind somebody. There's probably some anger in there that I have to deal with, right? And that's a silly example. I'm going to watch the Philadelphia Eagles today. The things that come out of me during those three hours, that's my heart. I don't like that. I don't like that. That's true. But that's the reality, right? That as we go through our day to day lives, we can't just say, oh, that's just me, or that's not me, or oh, I'm just stubborn. You know, my, my grandfather was stubborn, my father is stubborn and I'm just stubborn. Or oh, I'm just, I'm just angry. My grandfather was angry, my father, oh, I'm just. No. When we see things come out of our heart, Jesus would say, that is what's true about what's on the inside. But he doesn't say it with a judgmental anger. He says it with a, hey, let's work on it. He says that those things that work their way out of our hearts, those are symptoms of the reality of, of our hearts and that we should take those moments and we say, Jesus again. For me, Jesus, this isn't the man who I want to be. Show me what it looks like to make my heart more like what you would have my heart look like and teach me to grow to be more like you. So we bring our maps before Jesus and we say, jesus, what would you draw and how can I follow you? And then we bring our hearts before Jesus and say, jesus, show me what's inside of my heart and show me how to learn to follow you. Every day. Let's pray together. Jesus, we thank you. We thank you that you are good and good and good and Lord, that you are kind. That you don't walk with us as an angry disciplinarian, but as a loving father. Lord, help us to separate those ideas in our heads and help us to realize, Lord, that you are loving and you're kind and you guide us along and you teach us to be more like you. Lord, I pray that you would set us Free from those places where we have added to your Word, where we have created kind of avenues for legalism to creep in, well intentioned as they were. Lord, we put our whole lives in front of you and we say, lord, only scripture, only scripture as the guide for my life because I want to follow you. And Lord, help us to do the messy work of following you, of understanding that you invite us into a dynamic and personal relationship and that we learn to follow you each and every day by your word, in some cases by some traditions, in some cases by what we hear other people saying. But Lord, that we enter into it, that we don't seek the comfort of a map that makes things clearer than scripture might, but that we are invited into our relationship with you, of growing and learning and changing. And Lord, as we talk about our hearts, Lord, help us to realistically evaluate those areas inside of our heart that we need to bring to you those places where we have anger, those places where we have malice, those places where we have envy or covetous. Lord, if we look at our neighbor and say, oh, man, must be nice. Lord, help us to do the work of bringing that to you and saying, jesus, make me more like who you would have me be. And Lord, in those moments where our heart overflows into our mouth or into our actions, help us to not say, oh, it's just a one off thing, or oh, help us to say, no, I want to see where that came from. I want to uproot that thing that lives inside me and I want to learn to be more like you. Lord, we thank you. Because Lord, you walk with us and you don't leave us alone. And we ask that you would help us and guide us as we go through each day. We ask all this in your name. Amen. Would you stand with the closing song this morning? Take time to be holy, Speak off with the Lord.