My pulpit message notes: Go in purity of heart

Go in Purity of Heart

My Pulpit Message Notes are extracted from the sermon preached at the Nairobi Baptist Church (NBC) Ngong Road on Sunday 16th October 2022. Preacher: Pastor James Harmeling. Scripture: Mark 7:1-23. Topic: Go in Purity of Heart.

Living in Singapore over the past four years has introduced us to a lot of new food, cuisines, special dishes of spice and variety and fruit and the like. So we have had opportunity in a whole array of food before us. We also listen to the locals who tell us, if you want the best chicken and rice you must go here, the best Malaysian food you must go here and they would show us the best samples of the best dishes. But you know what we also found, that no matter how good the food would be there would still be cases of food poisoning. There would be cases of bad food. Why? Because it wasn’t properly prepared, or preserved.

You can have rotten meat sitting out and that would make you ill. You wouldn’t know it because it looks fine when served, but the moment you eat it you would know this is not good and you would suffer the consequences because of that.

There is a possibility that when you have many great opportunities for cuisine that you could still have bad food. That’s the same thing when you have a local church. You can have pure faith, but you can also have rotten faith that can fester within. It looks fine on the outside, but it may not be so pure when you begin to sample it and think this is not what was intended and it makes me ill.

Mark 7:1-23.

Part of the growing and going and in doing that we want to talk about purity. We don’t want rotten spiritual food sitting out on the counter that is going to do harm. We want to have the pure food of the Word of God lived out amongst His people.

When it comes to purity there are two ways you will approach it:

1. You will promote purity.

You will do the things. Like with unity you will do thing that promote peace. Purity you will pursue things which are going to be promoting holiness, godliness, righteousness.

2. Prevention.

We want to put a halt to the things that are going to spoil/ruin it. The sinful nature of man may be inclined to spoil the pure faith, to live lives that are actually covering over what is happening as rotten food on the inside.

Jesus is going to address three things to look at in prevention:

1. Pure faith becomes impure when the outside becomes more important than the inside. Mark 7:1-5

If you are starting to put the outside and the appearance of things of greater importance than the inside, you are starting to have rotten/impure faith

“The Pharisees and some of the teachers of the law who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus 2 and saw some of his disciples eating food with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed. 3 (The Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial washing, holding to the tradition of the elders. 4 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. 5 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 defiled hands?””

- Notice they are coming up from Jerusalem, not to learn, but to watch. Looking for something critiquing, to diminish and thus demean and eliminate Jesus’ influence. They are coming to the presence of God in their midst, not with hearts to learn, but with criticisms to offer.

- So they look at external observation of a ritual. In the book of Exodus you find this idea and the law prescribed of washing, but it is only for the leaders / the high priests. They are the only ones who are supposed to be doing this because they are representing the people and usually as they mediate on behalf of the people before God, they have to stand before Him pure, inside, as well as outside. So they do proper bathing, washing, clothing. Everything so that they will look like the perfect representation of what a human should look like before a holy God.

- Mentions a few times in Exodus and into Leviticus. It doesn’t say the rest of us don’t have to do this. Unless you happen to make yourself unclean because you have leprosy, or happen to come into contact with a corpse and a list of a few things which if someone does that they are ceremonially unclean, thus come before a priest, be clean then they can make an offering before the LORD.

- But normally it’s just the priest, so you can see that extension. Often impurity you are going to happen in two ways; Either you are going to cut out the Word of God and explain away things that you should be doing, or you are going to add to the Word of God and certainly set up this rituals, traditions, extra requirements and pretty soon, those take on pre-eminence. More important that you fulfil that. That’s what the tradition of the elders was.

- There is nothing wrong with traditions as long as they remind you of what does indeed require and as longas they point to an internal situation.

- If I’m ignoring what’s going on in the inside and the outside is not functioning as it should, if I have a ritual that I am not performing to remind, to reveal what’s going on in my heart great, but if I’m ignoring that and I’m focusing my attention on how I appear socially before others I’m now becoming increasingly impure. I’m setting myself up to have rotten, smelling faith. That’s what their attention was all about.

- There is so much that is given here about observation of washing of cups, pitchers, kettles. Some translations will say washing couches, as if you have to clean off the cups that you are drinking from, the place where you are sitting, get it all right and you can find that this can happen in a church setting as well, where there are external traditions, those are guarded more carefully than the internal spirit of the people. We have to keep these traditions, and there may not be anything wrong with those, but if it is neglecting what is going on in the heart.

- You may be having a crisis going on no one knows it. It will manifest itself in time. - There has to be something that causes attention to what is happening in the heart and that is when you gather in the presence of God and say, ‘Look at me God. I want to be pure before your sight. I don’t want to ignore that, or cover over it with some tradition, that then deflects away that I don’t have to look in the mirror and see what I really look like but look good what I am really not. I don’t want anything to hide that.

But if i’m putting more importance in fulfilling that, then I’m having an impure heart before God and begin to have impure faith that is beginning to smell like rotten food. I’m beginning to not adorn the gospel of God, I’m actually contaminating it.

- Think about that. I’m not coming in to make sure that I obey and fulfil traditions and look good before people, but that I look good before God who sees all things. Now it’s going to intensify from there.

- There is so much that is given here about observation of washing of cups, pitchers, kettles. Some translations will say washing couches, as if you have to clean off the cups that you are drinking from, the place where you are sitting, get it all right and you can find that this can happen in a church setting as well, where there are external traditions, those are guarded more carefully than the internal spirit of the people. We have to keep these traditions, and there may not be anything wrong with those, but if it is neglecting what is going on in the heart.

- You may be having a crisis going on no one knows it. It will manifest itself in time.

- There has to be something that causes attention to what is happening in the heart and that is when you gather in the presence of God and say, ‘Look at me God. I want to be pure before your sight. I don’t want to ignore that, or cover over it with some tradition, that then deflects away that I don’t have to look in the mirror and see what I really look like but look good what I am really not. I don’t want anything to hide that. But if i’m putting more importance in fulfilling that, then I’m having an impure heart before God and begin to have impure faith that is beginning to smell like rotten food. I’m beginning to not adorn the gospel of God, I’m actually contaminating it.

- Think about that. I’m not coming in to make sure that I obey and fulfil traditions and look good before people, but that I look good before God who sees all things. Now it’s going to intensify from there.

2. Pure faith becomes impure when we use God to fulfil human desires - Mark 7:6-13

“6 He replied, “Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written:

“‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.7 They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules.’[b] 8 You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions.” 9 And he continued, “You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe[c] your own traditions! 10 For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and mother,’[d] and, ‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.’ 11 But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is Corban (that is, devoted to God)— 12 then you no longer let them do anything for their father or mother. 13 Thus you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And you do many things like that.”

- There are two words that stand out here:

i. Hypocrites.

Jesus says, “You hypocrites”. He quotes Isaiah and says Isaiah said the same things before. Meaning things don’t change. This is not just for one generation. This is a common habit.

- Pretty soon you play a part and when you are in the assembly you are supposed to be religious you do that. That is an acting job. That is what hypocrites do. It refers to a mask that actors were wearing in Greek drama and they would have a mask. Some would have a smile on it, others a frown to indicate the mood that actors were in. Sometimes you would have tears to indicate sadness and you would put on the mask and went on stage and you would perform and everyone knew by looking at the mask what your mood was even if the actor was putting on a show and playing the part. Went off stage, drop off the mask and continued on what they really were.

- Impure faith is when we start becoming actors and actresses. And when we come before God because it is a Sunday and we are in the house of God so we have to dress the part, speak the part, do the part. And we have to put on a mask, not the real person who we really are that has been cultivated and is every where we go, but we play a part, that is when faith becomes impure.

- I have heard so many times people saying church is church, business is business. That means you do church where you act godly where you pretend

to be, that is your part and then when you leave you operate your business by cheating clients. Or you go up on campus and you are a complete different person than you were in your youth group. There is something inconsistent here and people sample that and it makes them sick because that is impure faith. You can go, but you go, but you go alone. You wont go in the power of God when you start doing that.

- Jesus is pointing out, that be careful if you start putting out these traditions that don’t have the power of God because they are not based on the Word of God and you start putting value in that because they deflect what’s really going on in your heart.

Everyone looks at that and they don’t inquire what is happening and you start to develop a habit of which you are consistently having two lives. One in which you really are and one that you pretend to be on certain occasions instead of being the same person no matter where you go. That is bad food. That is impure faith. Prevent that. Stop that.

- Isaiah was warning about it. Jesus coming later is saying the same thing really to the same people, the religious leaders who should have known better.

ii. Corban

- Then He also talks about a tradition known as, ‘Corban’. The only time you are going to find that in the New Testament. This was a tradition, it is a good practice, but can be abused. It’s not necessarily found in the Scriptures in the Old Testament as a requirement, but what it indicated is that if you wanted to give something, to dedicate it to the LORD, it was now set aside and it cannot be touched for anything else. It's Corban, reserved, no one else gets that especially when it comes to finances. If I’m saying I want to give to the LORD a certain amount of finance, i’m going to set that aside and nothing else will touch that. Why? Because it is to the LORD, therefore it outdoes anything else that comes underneath it. It becomes holy, set apart for that because you have dedicated it to the LORD. That’s wonderful because that can be a discipline that you wouldn’t miss spending. But suppose that you use that and in the process violate what is definitely in the Word of God, like honouring your mother and father.

- “Mum and dad I know you just got evicted out of your place and are now homeless and would like to help you, but the money that I would have helped you with has gone to my church and I can’t help you cause it’s Corban. That is kind of the idea.

- The Scriptures don’t tell you to set aside that, but to honour your father and mother and now you are dishonouring them and using God as an excuse to fulfil. Jesus points out that you do many things like that and get away with it, because you throw God in the process and people back off and don’t question it because you are using God to fulfil the selfish desires of the heart and when you do that you have impure faith. You will not grow or go anywhere. Not in the power of God, you won’t.

3. Pure faith becomes impure, when we no longer sense internal sin. Mark 7:14-23

“Again Jesus called the crowd to him and said, “Listen to me, everyone, and understand this. 15 Nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them.” 17 After he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about this parable. 18 “Are you so dull?” he asked. “Don’t you see that nothing that enters a person from the outside can defile them? 19 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.) 20 He went on: “What comes out of a person is what defiles them. 21 For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, 22 adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy (some translations say evil eye and the idea here is no matter what you see, you immediately want it for yourself, you try to figure out ways you can get it, whether it is someone else possessions or not), slander, arrogance and folly. 23 All these evils come from inside and defile a person.”

- I went to a particular church and I found out that there was a respected member of the community who had been singing in the choir and all the while he hired an assassin to kill a fellow choir member. You don’t think of those things immediately, you have been pondering it.

While he was singing in the choir, while a respected person in the community, he was plotting and hating someone so intensely, there was murderous ideas within his heart, but no one questioned it because he sang in the choir. Because he came to church all the time until ultimately the police caught on to the plot, they arrested him and the plot was never carried out and he spent time in jail. Where did it start? In the heart. It started with anger and bitterness that led into torturous thoughts to move that way.

- It could also be greed. I know of situations where people didn’t come to church to worship God, or to have their hearts exposed and purified and cleansed before God, they came to do business deals after church was done in the parking lot, or along the way. For them it was a professional appearance. It was a way in which they could build their standing, their CV, do business connections. Sometimes being a church member is going to put you in a better state for business. - As a pastor I have had to confront situations like that and ask, what are you here for? Are you here for God, purity of heart so that you can be before a holy God so that He can change you or are you here so that you can fulfil some of you selfish desires? Jesus wants to call attention to this saying to the disciples, don’t you get it. Don’t you understand this. The worst thing of all is that you don’t see what is going on within the heart. That is the work of God, the Holy Spirit exposes that.

- When you are coming before the LORD and God’s Word speaks to your heart and your conscience is convicted by the Spirit and you recognise, okay LORD, people have been praying, others maybe God has used to lovingly confront. There are a variety of ways in which God can call to attention something, you might get defensive and justify your life based on external actions, but in the meantime there might be impurity and bad food that is going on.

- One of the greatest people that God has given to me is my wife. She is not a whiner or complainer, but when she has something to say that I need to hear, I better listen up. That is the main reason God gave her to me. Without her I would be definitely less of a holy man. She may say very gently, but definitely, here is an area maybe you don’t see, and I won’t. And I am a godly man because I have a godly wife. She is a godly woman because she has a godly husband. And together we grow in maturity and in the faith which we have a greater chance of doing because that is part of the purpose of being married, which is to grow in Christ, helping each other become pure, so that we both can go, we both can grow in such a vital way, spotting God.

- Any of these list and this is just a sample all these evils, they come from inside a person. I don’t necessarily see that, the disciples didn’t figure this out, they were just doing the external thing and Jesus call attention to it and says, that’s fine, but if that now becomes a pretence for greed, or all these other evils that are brewing, growing and thriving within and you have a double life, you have now violated the purity idea.

- This is the prevention. That must stop and if God must work upon your heart and your are saying, Ive gone too far down that road, line, help me God, I want to change my mind on that, which is the word for repent. I want to do a 180 which is the O.T Hebrew word for repent. It is not just about changing my mind it is changing my position. I was going this way, changed what I was thinking I must now go this other direction so that repent does not just become lip words, but becomes action and life where you change what’s happened. God is purifying my heart. He has convicted me that I wall allowing bad food to fester above what it means to follow Christ and I realise that I don’t want to live that way any more.

- One of the most dramatic challenges that I ever saw was a move based on an Oscar Wild story, a picture of Dorian Gray which is more of a biop of Oscar Wild’s life itself. There was a man name Dorian Gray who had a portrait painted of him. But he made a deal with the devil that while he looked angelic on the outside, all the evil that he did would be reflected on the painting, not him. So throughout the years everybody thought that this guy was a cherub. He was perfect. He didn’t seem to age or have any guilt, no issues, but then he would go stare at his painting and find out that he would turn into this crazy, old man with blood on his hands. The painting showed what he really looks like even if no one could see what he looked like on the outside until ultimately guilt overcame him and he destroyed the painting and in essence destroyed his own life.

- If someone was to paint your picture, if God showed me what I really looked like on the inside, would I sink into depression? Would I just avoid it and say I don’t want to see that? Or would I say, Oh is it me LORD? Cleanse me, fill me, change me. I don’t want to look like that anymore. Now you are in a position to grow and to be used by God in a powerful way.

It doesn’t matter what your vocation, or location is. You will be used by God because now you are a clear vessel which He can fill with His Spirit and His power impact people through your words, and through your life.

- This is what Jesus came to do and ultimately what people killed Him for. Because it was a little too intense, a little too close, a little too personal and we want to hold on to the image rather than being pure on the inside.

- Don’t be bad food. Don’t allow for that rottenness to continue to grow from within, Allow the LORD to work in your heart as you study the truth, putting it into practice and saying cleanse me Father so that indeed I can be pure before You. You’ll use me. I’ll abide within You as a vine and i’ll bear much fruit, Your fruit. First You are going to have to change me as a branch and make sure that I’m not a dead branch that is hanging on and everyone thinks I’m healthy when I’m really not. Now is the time for change. Now is the time for salvation. Now is the time for God to do a new work within you. Don’t put it off. Don’t wait for another time. Today is that day.