The Inside Out - Wild Heart: Mark’s Portraits of a Radical Messiah

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We’re continuing our series Wild Heart: Mark’s Portrait of a Radical Messiah this morning.

Last week we looked at how Jesus brought healing within reach of everyone. By simply touching the hem of His garment, something that possible for even the most broken could do, they could be healed. What Jesus started all of those years ago is still possible today. Healing is within our reach through faith in Him.

This week we have the first direct confrontation with the religious leaders for their emphasis of their man made traditions over the law of God.

The scribes and the Pharisees had created a comfortable relationship with Romans that allowed them to maintain their power over the religious life of the Jewish people. The Romans didn’t want anything to do with sorting out disputes and arguments over what they saw as a strange religion. So they gave the religious leaders freedom to do what they wanted as long as there wasn’t any trouble.

What they did with this power was create rules that looked good on the surface but were corrupt to the core. Of course we can only reproduce what we really are and when we have a corrupt heart our rules will be corrupt too. Before this point Jesus was willing to defend Himself and His disciples from their accusations of wrongdoing, but in this passage Jesus goes a step further and turns the tables and points out their rotten core.

Let’s read Mark 7:1-23….

On this trip they tried a new tactic, instead of attacking Jesus directly they went after His disciples. Their thinking went something like this: if Jesus is such a great teacher why can’t His disciples follow the simplest rules about holy living. If they could get the people to question the disciple’s actions it would give them a way to accuse Jesus.

But they started in the wrong place when they accused the disciples of not following ‘the tradition of the elders.” The ‘traditions of the elders’ were man made rules for following the commandments of God. For example God said to remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. Simple enough, but because people are hardwired to break the law the religious leaders made up rules that would help them decide if someone was breaking the law. Not a big deal there, except over time the rules to keep the law became more important than the law itself.

Not only that but the ‘elders’ created traditions that would give them loopholes allowing them and their friends to ‘legally’ break the law. Sounds kind of like congress doesn’t it? That should tell us something about the real problem. Jesus goes right after that issue.

The corruption that resides in our heart is our real problem.

He starts off by calling them hypocrites, two faced phonies, and uses scripture to back up the charge. Then He points out an example that sums up the entire issue perfectly. They allowed people to give Corban, and pledge to the temple, even if it meant allowing someone to neglect His duty to their parents. They would allow their rich friends to give them money so they didn’t have to give it to their parents in need. If their parents were in need its obvious they had been neglecting them for some reason anyway, so this Corban simply gave them cover to make their sin look good. It was a conspiracy to undermine the law of God and create a new one that they liked better.

Doesn’t that sound terrible? But let’s be honest we’re prone to do the same thing, maybe not quite so blatantly, be we do it all the time. When we accuse someone of being a gossip by telling someone else aren’t we trying to whitewash our own sin? When we get all condemn someone because they have trouble breaking a bad habit that’s not even mentioned in the Bible and we go through the buffet line 4 or 5 times every time aren’t bending the rules to suit our sin?

Having helpful guidelines is good. We need those things to help us get along, but when we start to make the rules to give us an out and allow us to condemn and control other people then we stepped over the line.

Jesus is clearly tells us that the most evil place on this earth is the human heart and no amount of rules and laws will change that. Changing the rules was useless, the only hope was for the heart to change but no one can do that for themselves. That’s why we’re so tempted to make the rules suit our sin we know we can’t change our heart.

You’ll notice something in this passage. Jesus points out the problem but He doesn’t offer a solution.

Jesus creates a ‘holy’ tension that causes people to look deeper than the rules and traditions they had come to rely on.

We seem to be drawn to create religious rules to help us but the problem is that instead of making things easier it makes them more complicated and burdensome. That’s why Jesus said that the entire law could be summed up in two: Love God with our whole being and love our neighbor as our self. But since we’re really powerless to do even that we keep running on this treadmill going nowhere.

So what are we supposed to do about this dilemma? There is help and it’s described by the apostle Paul in….

Romans 8:3-4 For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, 4 that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

Someone said to me the other day that they were struggling with something in the Bible and my response was ‘good.’ While it’s true that the scriptures provide comfort and peace when we’re troubled…..

The truth creates a ‘holy’ tension in our heart that causes us to seek the help we really need. The epistle of James tells us that the Bible is like a mirror that allows us to see ourselves clearly enough to know how we’re really doing. We don’t need man made rules and regulations to know how we’re doing.

We need to join with the Psalmist and sing “Create in me a clean heart Oh God and renew a right spirit with in me.”

What’s your heart telling you today?

You are thy light unto my path and the footsteps to my path and cross that u died for me to save my life from sins.

Soul Soil - Wild Heart: Mark’s Portraits of a Radical Messiah

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We’re continuing our series Wild Heart: Mark’s Portrait of a Radical Messiah this morning.

Last week we talked about the way that Jesus revolutionized relationships and we looked at how Jesus revolutionizes our relationships with others, how He revolutionizes the priority of our relationships and He revolutionizes our relationship with the kingdom of God.

Today’s talk will be quite different. So here goes…..

The kingdom of God is like a man who went to buy his wife a card. He looked at the card rack and saw a beautiful card. The cover had splashes of orange, purple, and red with two intertwined hearts and the message “To the One I love….” and when he opened the card the message was beautiful. It was the perfect card. When the man got home he found that his wife was away running errands and it gave him just enough time to write a quick expression of love in the card and place it next to the gift he had purchased for her. But much to his dismay when he pulled the card out of the bag he saw that the cover words actually said “To the Man I love….” It was too late to get to the store and back for a new card so this man decided the next best thing to do would be to change the word man to say “woman.” The family had a good laugh together after she opened the card and heard the man’s pitiful story.

That’s the message. Let’s pray….

What? Were you expecting more? What was wrong with my talk?

O.k. I’ll level with you there’s more.

After what just happened you have a better idea of what the people felt like after Jesus taught them.

I have heard some people say, in fact I have even thought this myself, that Jesus used parable so that common men and women could understand spiritual truths. But if you read what the Bible actually says you realize that’s not true.

Jesus used the parables as a kind of ‘test’ a pop quiz to determine who was ready to receive the word and enter the kingdom. You might even say that He threw these out to see who would respond and those who responded were the ones who’s hearts Holy Spirit had penetrated to create a hunger for spiritual truth.

Take a look at Mark 4:10-12, and 33-34. To make the point even further let look at a couple of other passages. Mark 7:27-30. A Greek, Syro-Phonecian gentile woman came to Jesus asking Him to because her daughter was possessed by a demon and Jesus tells her a little parable and because she understood it Jesus responds to her faith and delivers her daughter. The point here is that her response showed that the Spirit had prepared Her heart to respond to Jesus.

Then look at Mark 8:13-20 I’ll summarize it Jesus tells the disciples a little parable to beware the leaven of the Pharisees and the disciples didn’t get it. They thought He was mad because they forgot to bring bread and Jesus rebukes them because they didn’t get it then after His rebuke they’re still baffled and Jesus doesn’t even tell them what He meant.

Jesus was not what you would call a typical teacher. His method was designed to gauge spiritual receptivity not human wisdom or understanding.

Now let’s read Mark 4:1-34

We’re going to focus on the parable of the sower the rest of the way this morning because it gets literally at the heart of why Jesus used parables.

When the folks left the seashore that day they would have thought they had heard a nice story about farming. The disciples’ response tells us that they didn’t get the deeper meaning. Keep this in mind; Jesus explained it to the disciples because they asked. He revealed the deeper truth to them because their curiosity revealed a desire to know more about the kingdom of God. Here’s the interesting thing to me anyone could have asked what Jesus meant, but only those who asked received more.

What Jesus reveals to them is a diagnostic for the souls of people. Jesus simply states as fact that wherever the Word of God is proclaimed people representing these different ‘soils’ will be there. That’s true even today. Something I noticed is that Jesus doesn’t tell them to go and break up the hard ground, or sow the seed in productive soil. He simply says that some will get it and others won’t and it’s not our job to change them, it’s our job to tell them.

We are called to be sowers not plowers and prepared not passive.

I know how I am when I share with people and they just don’t get it. I want so bad to plow up the hard soil of their heart, as if God needs my help to do that. I used to get really frustrated, but now I share and simply take joy in watching as the Lord begins to do His work. vs. 26-29 get at this. It’s a mystery to me just how God does this but I have to trust that if I share then He will have already begun to prepare their heart, and will do what needs to be done.

I’m going to openly wonder something this today is that o.k.? I wonder if I have been missing the point of why I share the word with you? I sometimes put so much pressure on myself to convince you to believe what I say that I over explain and maybe, just maybe I should say less and let you wrestle more trusting that…

When God prepares your heart you’ll be ready to receive the word and ask for more.

Matthew 7:7-8 "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8 "For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.”

Are we ready to ask? Are we ready to seek? Are we ready to knock? Do we really desire to receive the Word and discover more about the mysteries of the kingdom of God?

How’s your soul soil?

Passive and uninterested? Because what I see here in this parable is those who sit by the wayside passing the time never see any growth.

Shallow and self serving? It also say that those who have a shallow ‘religious’ covering may experience a sudden inspiration but will abandon their search as soon difficult times come their way.

Cluttered and preoccupied? Then of course those who find themselves too busy, or preoccupied with the cares of life to seek His kingdom will experience a slow spiritual strangulation cutting them off from the riches of God’s truth.

Ready and receptive? If we are then what would that look like here in our community of faith and in your life at home? Wouldn’t we really want to spend time reading the Scriptures? Won’t we intentionally carve out time to spend with God in prayer and worship? Wouldn’t it be true that we’d find opportunities to share our insights and receive instruction from one another?

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