WEBVTT

00:00.080 --> 53:21.040
My name is Drew. I'm the pastor here at Hope Heights. Thrilled that you're here. Glad we can all be together. We're going to take a little time to get in the word here together, and then we'll sing some more, and then we get to eat some treats. It's a great morning to be together. I do like music. And what I was hoping today was not only a opportunity to maybe share. Maybe you learned someone. I saw a few of you taking notes, so maybe you learned a new thing or maybe something you didn't want to listen to, or you got to hear someone explain why they don't like to listen to music. But I was hoping not only that you got to hear the content of that, but maybe you got to experience something that we're going to think about today as we're in the book of Mark. Experience Music is one that I think can stir something up. As you hear someone say, tell me about music you like. At least for me, it stirs up. Like, I have to. I quickly, like, filter. What could I say? Because people have very strong opinions about music. So if I were to say a certain band or kind of music, someone might respond very strongly and say, oh, that's awesome. Or they might. You could see in their face, respond by like, oh, I didn't think he would be into that. Or if they, like. They go, oh, I know what your job is. I can't believe you listen to, like, not choral hymns. Right. All day. And so I think there's an element. We get kind of judgy about music, and it feels like almost a safe place to be judgy. So I was hoping maybe you didn't even feel that, like, as you said, what do I share? Because if I share this, then someone might go, oh, I can't believe you're that kind of person. Right. It's a thing that instantly kind of categorizes people in a place. It reminds me of when I was in high school. I had one of these. I don't know if anyone had one of these. Oh, look at that response. That's the loudest response ever, I think, in the history of the giant cd. It weighed a ton. It was in the back of your seat. There's a lot of this, like, driving and trying to remember what page, you know, my choral music was on. This one I just found online. This looks like all country music. So this might have been my wife's 90s country Joe Diffie. Is that a person? Oh, my goodness. All right, look up Joe Diffie. Everybody. Here's what I remember, though. I remember this having this. And this is where you're. If you don't know what this is. These are called CDs. And they held music on them. But you only could listen to the songs on that cd. It was crazy. But you could switch between them, which was pretty cool. Better than tapes. And you'd have all your music here. And I remember this often resulted flipping through this with a friend. In some of those moments where they go, oh, I can't believe you are into this. Or, you know, these guys aren't very. Actually very good. And this is the part I remember the most. I remember a friend flipping through my CDs and getting to a Green Day album. This was like, in 1996. And he said this. You know, Green Day are sellouts. You shouldn't be listening to them. I don't know if you've had this experience in music. This happens. Like a band becomes really popular and they make a living at it. And so now you're not allowed to listen to them anymore. They call that selling out. And so I remember my friend explaining to me, you can't listen to Green Day. Cause they're not like real music anymore. Because they are successful. Which I thought was the goal in any way. And I didn't know what to do. He was genuinely concerned that I was listening to bands that had sold out. That weren't like real garage punk bands. They were these. They were, like, on tour and making money. And so what I had to do is I had to take my Green Day CD and put it, like, in the back. In hopes that as he flipped through, he would find stuff before it and not see that I had this secret stash of sellout bands. Which were essentially just like popular music in the back. It was this thing, though, right? I learned this thing that was a cultural thing that happens in kind of any category, right, where we quickly decide kind of who's in and who's out. We kind of decide, hey, you've done this thing. And so now you're no longer what we thought you were. You're not a. You're not a punk band anymore because you sold out. Because you made. This happens with, like, a lot of the bands I liked. All of a sudden they become. Not to say I liked bands before, they were cool. They probably were. I didn't know about them, except they're on the radio. So they had to, by definition, be kind of popular. But this happens, right? This happens in many categories of life. A thing comes up and you realize, whoa, that is a signal to people, or maybe to you, that that thing is like, out now or in. Right. This is not a new thing. And this is what we're going to look at. How does it happen? Why is it happening, what's going on there, and what do you do with that? What's the answer to that? Rather than just creating kind of categories for all things and who's in and who's out and creating, like, that whole structure might use the word like legalism, we like to use in the church as a term for that. But just essentially saying who's in and out. And then quickly sometimes that becomes like a reason, like a doorway to just kind of pile on a person in that. So what does that look like? We're in the Book of Mark. If you want to open your Bibles. We're in Mark 7. We've made it to Mark 7. Friends, good work. We got through the first six. I hear they're the hardest ones. So the rest of it's smooth sailing in Mark. We're in Mark 6 and 7, beginning of 7. And up until this point, we've had some amazing things. Mark has said. I want to show you that this kingdom of God is here. I want to show you this good news, this gospel that's come through this person named Jesus. And I want to introduce you to this Jesus person and who he is and what he does and what he's brought and what's going to be through this person. And so he introduces us to Jesus throughout this book of Mark. This is the gospel, this good news of. And so we've got to see Jesus heal a lot of people, raise people from the dead, welcome people into the family of God who we would not have thought would be allowed in the family of God, eat with sinners. And at the same time, there's been a lot of tension growing between him and the Pharisees, these other religious leaders. And we get a lot of this discussion that Jesus don't, you know, not that they've sold out, but don't, you know, they're not necessarily in. They've committed sins that don't allow them in, or they're not following the rules as we've set, as they're not allowed in. And so there's this tension that has grown, which we will see eventually in the Gospels, grow to the point of killing Jesus. But it's growing and growing. And we get a moment now in Mark 7 that's a little different than what we've had not just Jesus feeding people, feeding the 5,000, he just calmed waters. He walked on water, then calmed waters with the disciples. And we end at the end of Mark 6 where it says his disciples still aren't getting it. They have these hardened hearts. And then we see another moment where the Pharisees come, these religious leaders actually come a long distance to see him from Jerusalem and tell him some issues they have with him, with his people. Now, I want you to hear that as really a Don't forget what happened last week on the last episode of Mark. Right? Because it ends with, there's these disciples and they still aren't getting it, who he really is, like, what's really going on here? Because they have hardened hearts. And now Jesus is going to Mark through this story with Jesus, is going to explain the Pharisees issue with him and then explain this issue of the heart that I think is the real issue here that's going on and goes on with all of us every day. And so we're going to look at even what the answer to that is. So let's just dig in. We're going to dig into Mark here together. It's a long longer passage today. I'm just going to walk through it with us, maybe highlight a few things and then hopefully get us to be reminded of what is really important here. So this is Mark after the hardened hearts. On the boat, we see some Pharisees actually arrive and start talking to Jesus. I'll just read this first part. You follow along here. Now, when the Pharisees gathered to him and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem, they'd come from a distance. This was important to them that they could come to him together. They saw that some of his disciples ate with hands that were defiled, that is unwashed. They came to say, your disciples are eating. They haven't washed their hands. Like, they're just good parents. They're like, hey, you gotta wash your hands, guys. For the Pharisees and all the Jews did not eat unless they washed their hands properly, holding to the tradition of the elders. And when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash. And there are many other traditions that they observed, such as washing the cups and the pots and the copper vessels and dining couches. And the Pharisees and scribes asked him, why do your disciples not walk according to the traditions of the elders, but eat with defiled hands? So they're still talking about this. They have this tradition, this law, their law of men, who said, hey, we've established this rule. You have to wash your hands before you eat and even before you do other things. And your disciples aren't doing it. And he says to them, well, did Isaiah. Well, did Isaiah prophesy of you? Or I know that Isaiah prophesied. He spoke about you a long time ago, you hypocrites, as is written. So he doesn't actually answer them. He doesn't say, here's why they don't wash their hands. He doesn't say, oh, they're silly kids and they always forget. Or they used hand sanitizer. You didn't see it, right? He says something very different. He's going to explain what the real thing is that's going on here. And first he says, isaiah, this prophet that you for sure respect and look to, probably one of your favorites would call you hypocrites. A long time ago he said this about you. And really he's saying it. He knows all people have this problem. This people honors me with their lips, they say, but their hearts are far from me. In vain do they worship me. Teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men. Isaiah says this about a group of people, says, hey, you act like you follow God, you honor God, you think God is holy. But your hearts, so your most inner, like motivation, desire, the center for what moves you, wakes you up, controls you. This heart, right, is what it means. Not literally, like just your heart that pumps your blood, but your heart that pumps all of who you are and how the world works and how you think about the world, how you feel about the world, how you actually act, that is far from me. But your lips, like your outward, seems to act like though you're close to me. And then he says, Isaiah says this, and Jesus here is now saying you're teaching them doctrines of men, commandments that men have created or just people have created, traditions that people have created. And so he even says here at the end, you leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men. He's summarizing Isaiah's passage here. You leave the commandments of God, what God has called us to, and you're now holding to what people have created. So there's this kind of new step away from just what God called them to said, now we're going to set up rules, which is what has happened historically. The Pharisees are people who love holiness. They want purity with God's people. They want people to worship God. And they think the best Way to do that was to create a whole lot more rules and laws kind of religion that you have to follow. And if you do that, then you will be close to God or God will be happy with us. That will make you right and righteous. And so there are people who have a desire for people to know God and they think the best ways we've created this set of rules. Let's look at our original passage here in Isaiah. This is what he's quoting from. And the Lord said, this is the part we just heard. Because this people draw near me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me. And their fear of me is a commandment taught by men. They're actually. The fear of God is actually not a fear of God. It's a fear of these, essentially this religion, these rules that we've created. Therefore, behold, I will again do wonderful things with this people. With wonder upon wonder and wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the discernment of their discerning men shall be hidden. Ah, you who hid deep from the Lord your counsel, whose deeds are in the dark and who say, who sees us, who knows us? You turn things upside down. That's such a great way to say this. You flipped everything upside down. Shall the potter be regarded as the clay that the thing made should say to its maker, he did not make me, or the thing formed say of him who formed it, he has no understanding. So those passages that Jesus quotes or mark quotes in here, and people probably would have known the other, the context of it, it's helpful to read. These are moments where when you read in Scripture, it's easy just to, hey, I'm going to zoom back there and see what all of this says. This is really helpful. He's saying you're like a clay pot who's claiming that you made yourself or claim that you know how to make pots. Which would be silly, right? If you went to your house and you walked in the door and you threw your keys down next to a bowl and the bowl went, hey, I made myself. And you go, that's crazy. Also crazy. You're talking to me. But it's crazy that you. You'd say, that doesn't make any sense. The things that are made, creation itself can't say to the Creator, you didn't make me. And Jesus is equating this as that thing that you've left God. And you now have essentially created the commandments of God. You have made yourself, in a way, God in the message. It Says, these people make a big show of saying the right thing and their heart just isn't in it. They act like they're worshiping me, but they don't mean it. They just use me as a cover for teaching whatever suits their fancy. They ditch God's commandments and take up whatever the latest fads are. Like in the message version, he always said, he says fads a lot, which, you know, he wrote it like in the 90s by using that word. So Jesus has this problem. He still hasn't answered, why aren't they washing their hands? He says, this is a perfect example of this, where you have created a law. And we know actually there is a law about washing hands. It's for the priests when they go in to do. When they actually go in to deal with the things in the holy of holies in the temple. It asks the priests to wash their hands. And that became then, well, if they should do that, we should do that. We should do it all the time. People have to do with anything they touch that has to do with us eating. And then it became written in the laws of the people, and then for many, many years passed down, you have to do this. And if you don't do this, then God is not pleased with you. And you can't be around us. You can't be in here. In fact, to the point of, like, depending on which group you're with, it could be like, you're unclean. And so you can't be in here. You remember not long ago in Mark, the Pharisees came and said, you're eating with sinners. Jesus, what are you doing? And this is part of that, right? I know for sure they're not washing their hands. And the pots and the pans, right? And the dishes, right? You're making all of you unclean by being there. He actually says, here's an example, not just of washing hands, that I see this happen, that your laws not only have made them more rules in religion that then keeps people from God, but now you're actually at times disobeying God because your rules supersede it. Your law that you've created actually doesn't allow people to do what God has created. He says this here in seven, nine. And he said to them, you have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition. For Moses said, honor your father and your mother. So that's from God. We see that in Scripture. That's in Exodus, in the Ten Commandments, honor your father and mother. Is one of the things God says, I want you to do this. And whoever reviles father or mother must surely die. But you say, if a man. This is now. This is the tradition you've now created. If a man tells his father or his mother, whatever you would have gained from me is corban, that is given to God. Corban is this word that describes this land that you could set aside. You could say, I'm going to give my money to God through this land. We don't use the word corban, right? But he's essentially saying they set up a law that says, hey, you can give your money to God and sort of set it aside to God. So if your parents say, hey, we need help, you could say, then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father and mother, thus making the void the word of God by your tradition that you've handed down and many such things you do. He just adds this. And there's a lot of these. So what's happening is he's saying, you made a law that says, if I take my money and I put it in this thing, that's for God, then my parents need help. Which culturally, and at that time, it wasn't like us. Now we're like, I would love to help my parents out, but often actually, your parents kind of help you out a lot. This was like, as your parents get older, you could have them. They're living with you, you're taking care of them, you're paying so they can eat and be taken care of. I mean, like, it's this. This kind of cool picture of family as they get older. You're very involved in that. And he's saying, you've given people an out to say, I. I will not care for my parents because I put money into this new thing. So you actually created a law, this rule, this way, this system that lets you get out of this very foundational law that God gave. This is a problem. And you've done this a bunch. He's kind of turning it up here. This is not just in other passages. Jesus, the Pharisees, come to him and he says, oh, you know, I know. I eat with sinners. You know, the physician comes to those who need help, not to those who aren't sick. Right? He gives maybe a short parable or he often just keeps moving on. He just goes, I'm gonna keep healing people. I'm gonna keep caring for people. I'm gonna keep raising people from the dead. And now he stops. He goes, we Gotta get to what's really dangerous here. You've created, I think, a lot of loss. Cause you are people who really love holiness. You really love God's word. And you want people to. To find God, to be close to him, to be right with God. And so you thought creating this system would bring you there, and it hasn't done that. It's actually really dangerous because it's not the real problem. You're creating a system that doesn't really deal with the real issue. Here's an example. And there's many more, right. He says he's going to get here. What's the real issue here? In a second. But just to stop. I think you feel this right with. We get this depending on what you've grown up in, in any version of any life you've grown up in, this happens. We create certain set of rules, a system, and you have to kind of abide by that if you want to be right made right. Okay. If you're going to be called a certain thing, this happens like in a household. Hey, if you're a zulkie, then zulkies do this, right? And then what was that set up? It sets up kind of this thing. And you're like, ooh, I got to do that if I want to be a part of this thing. Zolky's my last name, if you don't know. That was weird otherwise, like, was that like a Hebrew word for something? No, it's just old German family. This happens in the church right now. There's. There's not Christians yet in the sense, because Jesus has not went to the cross, died and rose. There's not people who follow Jesus in the same way. But today we do this exact same thing. I just quickly, off the top of my head went like, what are ways we see this now? Right? You're not a Christian. Right. You must blank to be a Christian. Now. There's only a few things that actually fit in that space. It'd be essentially putting our faith in Jesus, right? Saying, I believe Jesus, that I can't do this, that I'm broken, and I need Jesus to rescue me. Amen. Right? But we love putting things in the space. We love it, love it. So I just brainstorm some of my favorites. So these might be some of your favorites knot where jeans is a friend of mine's favorite growing up that he secretly would wear jeans. He would bring an extra pair in his backpack and he'd go hang out with friends and he'd wear jeans just to see what it felt like. Cause the tradition. He grew up in a church. He was told, if you wear jeans, then you can't be a Christian. And so he would do it just like, made him want to wear jeans because he thought it was cool. And then he was like, I was so disappointed. I put him on and I was like, oh, these kind of feel like slacks, but they're, like, scratchier, right? We put all sorts of things on it. Now, a lot of these came from people saying, hey, there's a reason, as I follow Jesus, I found this thing isn't helpful. And so I think it's not helpful to do this. But then it gets flipped upside down, right? It goes, actually, that's the way to Jesus, to righteousness, to God, rather than what kind of comes out of. It's a fruit of following him, right? It's all these things that we like to just put in the category of it. This is what we would call religion. So in the Bible, sometimes the word religion means what we talk about, like, just faithfulness to Jesus. But the word religion that I want you to hear. Religion is setting up a system of rules that then gets you close to God or brings you peace or whatever that would be in that world, right? We kind of hear this word. We think if someone says, what religion are you? You'd think, what system do you follow? It might be spiritual. It might not even be spiritual. But what is the thing that you follow? And so this is setting up a religion. There's a set of rules I have to follow, and then I get to be called this thing, right? There's a way a band has to perform. They have to, like, be unknown and not make money. And then they're a real band. But as soon as you start making money, you're a cello, right? We have the categories of all these. They've taken, like, what was originally created for us to draw close to God, originally created for us to realize that we need God, and then God come and rescue us and change us. And they just created a bunch of rules, almost skip over God and make themselves God. I had an experience like this when I was a kid. I went to a friend's house and we were playing Monopoly, which I don't love the game Monopoly. This maybe is part of it. We were playing Monopoly and I left to go to the bathroom quick. And when I came back, I had nothing left. Money gone. My houses had been distributed to other people. I was like, oh, did we stop playing? That'd be cool. Cause I don't like this Game anyway. And they're like, no, this is how we play what they're like in our house, you win by stealing the most money in houses. And I had not realized before that that was happening. People like, if you look away. And I didn't know that, otherwise I wouldn't have left the bathroom. But that's just how we played the rest of the game. I had no money, no houses. On my turn. I just was waiting the four hours it takes to play Monopoly to lose the game. They just said, that's not how it's played. And I was like, no, no, no, no, look, there's like a book, and it explains there's rules for a reason. This game is terrible. If it's just stealing the. Then it's a different game. Then we should just all, like, have paper and we should run around and try to steal it from each other. They just made up new rules. They had this, like, this is how we play it in our house. That's what Jesus is concerned about. Hey, God has actually set up a way for this to work, and it actually be enjoyable and lovely and wonderful. And you've said, yeah, but I think this. I think it's this way, in the end, Monopoly, the goal, right, is to have the most money. So why not just skip the playing and just wait till someone goes to the bathroom, steal the paper money. I did find a way to win. I just grabbed the thing, the banker's thing of money, and ran off. I don't know if I won, but I had that money at my house for a while. We see this happen, not just playing Monopoly, right? We see this throughout history. This is such a common thing, right? A labeling of a person because of an act, and they sort of become the outsider. We see this throughout Scripture. And I was thinking this week, actually, I was reminiscing about high school and my book, and then it triggered, I think, in my head, a remembering of a book I had to read in high school. Did anyone else read this book, the Scarlet Letter? So in high school, I read books and I don't remember them, I think because I was told I had to read them and I had to do a certain thing. It was like my rebellion. That was my punk rock rebellion in me. Then later, though, I actually reread this book and was very encouraged. It's a pretty incredible story. But in the book, Hester Prynne, this woman is accused of adultery, and they actually make her embroider, like sew an A on her clothes. So everywhere she goes, everyone knows that's an adulterer. She has her child, Pearl. Her husband sent her a head, I think is how the story goes. To Boston. Boston. And she was there to set up this life and then has this child, but her husband isn't around. But then, spoiler. You kind of learn some other things as it goes on. That book's been around. I guess I can't spoil it if you haven't read it. But this is incredible, right? They identify her, they label her. There's like an outward representation to say, you did a thing and now you're this person. And the story is all about what that looks like, this kind of policing of sin by people in the town, by the church, and throughout it. Then you actually learn about this priest who is probably the dad, and then his, like, internal torment. But he's not wearing an A on his chest because no one really knows for a long time of what that is. This is the picture of this, right? There's a, hey, you did a thing. And now you have an A on your chest. And now forever, we all know that. To stay away from you. I think it's like the lady we read about earlier in Mark that was bleeding for years and years. She is marked. I don't think they put a letter on her, but she's marked. So she's outside. It's this action that happened that then determines who you are and at the core, who you are. So Jesus has this real problem with this, right? All right. I think we all get with how this works. So he's like, what's really happening there? He could just leave it there and go, this is bad. You did this wrong. But Jesus actually is going to even, like, in the way he does this, show us what's really going on and what really the solution to this is. He's going to explain the real issue. So as we continue here, the last part of our passage in Mark 7, he called the people to him again and said to them, hear me, all of you, and understand. He wants them to understand this is the actual danger that's at play here. It's not that people are not washing their hands. There's a real danger, and I want you so to understand it. There's nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him. So use the word defile. That's what they said. They were defiled because they didn't wash their hands. He said, there's nothing from outside that can defile him. But the things that come out of a person are what defile Him. And when he had entered the house, he just says that phrase to them and they go, huh? It's not about what's coming. It's not the outward. It has to do with something from inward. That actually is what defiling. It's actually making you not right. It's actually making something wrong and off broken. He said to them, so then he gets inside with his disciples. He had entered the house and left the people. His disciples asked him about the parable. This is also not great. Just moment. His disciples don't know what's going on either. Remember last time we heard about them hardened hearts? They asked because they're like, what exactly does that mean? They've grown up in the same system. We gotta do these things. And that gives us access to God. And he's saying, that isn't it. And so they're now going, tell us more, Jesus. And he says to them, when you are also without understanding, do you not see that whatever goes into a person from the outside cannot defile him, since it enters not his heart, but his stomach and is expelled? That's what you think Jesus is describing. He's saying, you put food in your body and it comes out of your body. He says, but it doesn't go to your heart. Now he's still talking about this. Not like it goes to your heart, because I guess what you eat kind of goes go your heart depending on what you eat doesn't help your heart. He's saying what you eat, not washing your hands. All these religion we've created isn't the thing that's going in and defiling us. This thing inside of us, our heart, the center of our motivation and our desire, our deepest love, what we adore the most, that changes us. And that is what produces things out of us. Thus he declared all foods clean. I like that mark here. Just goes. Jesus said this thing about stuff coming in your mouth and coming out of you. And now all food is fine. That's a big deal that he says that casually. And then he says, what comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man or people, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All of these things come from within and they defile a person. This might not feel as big of a thing because we talk about this a lot in the church and a lot at Hope. He's saying, he's flipping it back. You had it upside down. He's flipping it back. He's saying, what's happening is you're seeing these things that aren't good. Sexual immorality and theft and adultery, foolishness and pride and slander. All these things that come out that we don't want to see those things. That's not what God's called us to. He has made it clear in scripture and, hey, those things aren't helpful. That's not what I made you for. But he doesn't want you just to, like, figure out a way to just not do those, to just buckle down and go, I just don't wanna do those. Stop doing those. He's saying, there's something in you. There's an engine that produces this stuff, this factory within your heart that's producing this stuff. That's the danger. And that's what I came to actually rescue you from. That's what I came to actually heal and make new again. Right? It's this picture we see of not really the thing. The thing we're seeing isn't really the issue. Right? It's the wizard of Oz. Ah, it's this crazy guy. No, it's actually just an old man behind a curtain, right? There's actually something back there that's making the thing happen. I want us to think just for a little bit about kind of three categories of how we see this happen. As maybe we moved a little bit. What does this look like then? First, I just want to think of yourself, just you and how this actually plays out in your life. How does an actual, like a heart position play out around us? There's a few. A few lies. I often believe in this when I'm just thinking about myself. I think if I just look clean, then I am clean. So if I have all this stuff, like, together, then it must mean that I'm actually forgiven. Loved, peaceful, joyful. It's like a Febreze, right? It's like there's a. Oh, you smell sweet for like 10 minutes. Or sometimes you're like, you smell sweet with a light hint of dog poo. You're like, you're not hiding it, Drew. We all know the dog pooped over there. There's this first just in my own life, just for me, Just think about yourself. If I look clean, then I am clean. That would be the flipped upside down lie. That the outside is really what matters. The danger's really in changing my heart. I also believe if I perform, God will accept me. If I do enough, if I look like I'm a Christian enough, if I Act all the right ways, then I am. Okay. Because that's what we really believe. I think a lot about everything. Right. If you say a thing and do a thing, then you must be that kind of person forever. And so if I want to be, then I just got to act those ways. And then I can fake. There's this like report card version of our faith where just I gotta make sure I get all the things right and then I am that person. In eighth grade, I snuck into. I've told you this before, I need to confess it again publicly. In eighth grade, I snuck into my math teacher's office and. And I changed all of my grades in the grade book. And no one ever knew that until I told my wife, like a couple years into marriage. I was like, hey, you guys know how in 8th grade you'd sneak in and change all your grades and then you look like a straight A student and you weren't? And she was like, what? Who did I marry? And I was like, oh, we didn't all do that. That's not like a normal thing. I was a straight A student in eighth grade. Not really. Nope. I just made the thing look like I was. She should have known that I was changing my grades somehow. This is weird that Drew's getting all A's. He's definitely not turning stuff in. Also, myself, I believe that the problem often this is internal. Drew is. Is over there or over here. It's not in here. So if I can just distract myself onto other people to say, oh, you guys, look what they're doing though. Look what they're doing. It's a classic move in our house for many, many years. Yeah, but my sister's doing the. You're like, yeah, I know, but we'll deal with that later. This is your thing. I think as I'm thinking about how sin works, how my heart works, how my righteousness works, if I can just remind myself and others that other people aren't righteous, then somehow it makes me righteous. That's a great transition to our next thought of not just ourselves, how we think about ourselves in this kind of self righteous religious system, but also how do we think of other people in there all ages, right? I put some little people in there too sometimes. You look at those kids, they're the ones that get like the harshest judgment in this. This legalism makes me obsessed with you even fixing other people. There's something about that, spending my time doing that that allows me the light to come off of me, the spotlight to come off of Drew. Even if it's just for myself to not think about my own brokenness or my own heart, this makes me think of. When you're at the end of any sporting event, there's like, if you watch it with a group of people, you guaranteed someone in the room at the end will go like, wow, if it weren't for the refs. And you're like, well, it could just be our football team's not good. But there's. Right, there's this internal, like this mechanism just goes, ah, over there. It's them. And so this. If we live within this system, this upside down system, which we do, and our hearts are there, then we just say, how do we push it over? There becomes blame shifting. If they were just better or kinder or did this differently, if our culture wasn't like this, then it just becomes a putting it on. Other people, we like to. I mean we. You can very quickly, right, think of like the Internet, social media, love to pile on to people say things like, we don't tolerate that. Expose people, destroy them. The number of YouTube videos start with like, this guy destroys this guy. And Christian debate. And you're like, oh, that sounds very Christlike in that. But it makes us feel righteous if we can make others outside, right? This is exactly what we see in the passage. We see them say, hey, they didn't wash their hands. Jesus, what is going on with your guys here? We've. We've set up a set of rules and then we've put them in. I. This is really the last part, though. That's. That is the important part. This is the passage from Isaiah saying, you have essentially taken God out of the equation and put yourself in as the one who gets to decide what is right and what is wrong and who we are. It's your view, not just of yourself or others in this, but the view of our God. Do you view God as just an employer and you got to just do the job right so that he'll pay you? Is God just, I'm going to follow the rules so I get paid in righteousness. We're really bad employees if. Right, we'd all get fired if it really came down to that. You view him as just an angry parent. I just gotta follow the rules, keep my mouth shut, do this because I don't want my heavenly father to yell. I don't want him to be angry with me. I don't want him to kick me out of the family. Maybe you view him as just like a police. Hey, I just gotta do this so I don't break the law and so I don't get pulled over, so I don't get put in jail, Heaven, jail, whatever that is, right? Do you view him only as a judge? Do you view him maybe only as love? Because this happens in the same way. We go, hey, God is love and he has compassion for people. And so we go, you know what? Actually the right way, the right system to live in is disregard all that God said and just do whatever you want and whatever you feel is right. That's the real way to live. We should just created another system. The rule is to be righteous is just do whatever you feel right. And you went, oh shoot, I'm in another. I just built another system. And so you, hey, Jesus, why do you make them wash their hands? That's not cool. Hey guys, you shouldn't have to wash your hands. Well, that's now a new thing, right? So we go back and forth. As soon as we take God out of it, then we miss the life, the abundant life we have with him and what he's called us to. I think what happens here, this is just my reflections from the week, is it's very hard for me to actually be honest with where I'm really at and where my heart's really at, which is what I have to do in order to actually get healing and actually be restored. And that's actually where joy and peace, self control, all those things come from because of this. So this is Psalm 139 and it says this beautiful song, right? It says, search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts and see if there any grievous way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. Isn't that beautiful, God? Just search my heart. And when I'm thinking who I really, really in there, who I am, I want you to heal it and make it right and lead me to the way you want me to have. That's a beautiful psalm for other people. I don't want to. I don't really want to. This seems like a dangerous prayer, right? If he actually searches my heart, I know what's in there. There's actually stuff I probably don't even know is in there. He's going to find. And then to say, God, I want you to teach me to move towards you is a big deal. It's scary, right? I think I'd rather read this, this is my version than not Psalm 139. No need to search me, God. I'm doing fine. Look at all the good stuff I do. You can see there aren't any grievous ways in me. You can chill. I got this. That's the prayer that we're praying, I think a lot more often than Search me, O God, right? Searching on God is scary because he's going to find some stuff and then I have to say, I need you. And I have to say, you're actually the one who knows all and is good and just and right. And I'm not the one who sets that up. I actually become the sinner in that, right? My big sin letter on me. And I have to say, yeah, I'm broken, I'm a sinner, I need you. But I so just want to say I set up a thing. So actually I look pretty good. I don't need you. It's really hard to just confess that we're broken, even though that is the thing, the first step in finding real healing and finding all the things I actually desire. In the Scarlet Letter, Arthur Dimmesdale is this priest who's like, eaten alive. The story is he just becomes actually ill. Like physically. His outward life mimics what's actually the brokenness, right? The darkness and evil in his own heart as he's wrestling through this. Like, he had this child with this woman and she has all this shame on her and he hasn't confessed it. Finally, he does confess that there's kind of a release in that and a forgiveness sort in that. It's a great picture of this. Like, he still is actually probably destroyed even more by this sin that just sits inside of him because he doesn't say, lord, search me, I need you. And we become the same. This is the reality of us. If we could say, I don't wash my hands before I eat the food. I am broken and I'm a sinner and I need you. I can't fix my heart. It's broken. And I try and try and try and I can't do it. I've created religion after religion in my life and it has not fixed me and often has made me more ill. And so what do we need? Feels like we're stuck, right? 11 years ago, I had heart surgery and many of you heard this story. I went into the doctor to find out what to do, and he's like, you just go to sleep and we do everything. And I thought, was there anything I can do? No, right? If you do heart surgery on yourself, you die. But thankfully, that's not where God has left us. We actually hear a Long, long time ago, before Jesus is standing with those Pharisees that day when or his disciples of the crowd, we hear a God promise this truth. That's a moment you wonder as he, Jesus, shares this. If they go, oh, Ezekiel 36, I will give you a new heart, a new spirit I will put within you and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh, and I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God. That is all I want, is for God to say, you're mine. Walk with me, show me what's right. Show me what to do. I need your wisdom, I need your justice, I need your love. And he says, I can do that. I can change your heart. And do that. Then, after these things happen. In Second Corinthians we hear similar thing written for God, who said, let light shine out of darkness, has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus. He's the one who's come. Jesus, who's telling them, you need your hearts fixed, is going to fix their hearts. Because he actually comes and he takes the sin from us, and he takes it onto a cross. He says, you know what I will become, and I will pay the price of the hypocrite. I will pay the price of the one who's turned from me from God. I'll pay the price of the sinner, of the person who's committed sexual immorality and theft and slander and all of that list. I will take all of that onto a cross and die so you do not have to. And then you'll be given new life and new hearts. It changes us. We see this in Hebrews 10. We were just singing about this a few minutes ago, about Jesus being our high priest who's come. And since we have a great high priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart. Because of this high priest, we can draw near with a sincere heart with the full assurance that what faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience, than having our bodies washed with pure water. So the thing that I so want, that I try so hard to act clean so that I am clean, Jesus does. He makes us clean, sprinkles our hearts, cleans us. Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess for he who promised is faithful. How it looks like turning to him and putting faith in him, seeing that I am broken and I can't do this, search me. And then he makes us and gives us clean hearts. And not only this. I love this passage because it also directs us. Now what do we do with other people around us? Then we get to go around and say, you didn't wash your hands? No. Let us consider how we may spur one another on towards love and good deeds. Not giving up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another. And all the more as we see the day approaching. What is our hope now? Our hope is that I've been cleansed by Jesus because I am a broken sinner who has a heart problem and Jesus has come to rescue me. And I now get to spur other people. I say, hey, let's go together, all of us who have been healed by Christ for good deeds. Let's encourage one another to be together so we can remind each other of this goodness. Not to gather, to tell each other when we didn't wash our hands, what rule we didn't follow, who can't be here because they aren't dressed in the right way or doing the right thing. But instead we gather to encourage one another to keep moving towards Jesus and continuing to be healed by Jesus. And this prayer from Psalm 51 just comes alive if we're praying this each week together. It says, create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence and take not your holy spirit from me. Restore me to the joy of your salvation and uphold me with a willing spirit. This flips it back on its head. Lord, I need you to cleanse my heart. I need you to renew my spirit. I need you to just continue to allow your Holy Spirit to work in me. Not me. Create ways to be righteous, but you make me right. And Lord, please restore a joy in me, a willingness to be with you. This is our prayer. So what's the answer to not being becoming police over what band is in or out, right? Over who's washing their hands or who isn't. The answer is, lord, I need you to clean my heart. One moment I saw this week, as we end our time here, move to worship. This week was the anniversary of my mom passing away. And this week I had these moments in my week where, like, I just felt sad. I was just like, I don't know why I'm so bummed out. I had A moment where I was, like, listening to music, and it was like, no song felt right. And it was like, what is going on? I feel weird. I feel, like, kind of tired, even. And then I realized on the calendar, oh, it's the week my mom passed away three years ago. My body is, like, grieving. I don't even realize it's happening. My body kind of knows. It's that time of year when I'm remembering the sad thing, when I'm remembering my mom passing away, when I'm remembering kind of the hurt and the pain of that. But I'm actually not, like, in the moment going, hey, Drew, think about those sad things. I'm just doing my life and feeling this. My body's actually responding and, like, outwardly expressing something that's happening deep within my heart without me even thinking about it. And if I start thinking about it, lots of other tears, lots of other things happen, right? But it's amazing how that happened. I was thinking. I was driving and thinking, how amazing is it? Like, your body can know that, like, grief can sit in there. This love I have for my mom sits in there. And even when I don't know it, it still affects my life. It still expresses itself in my life. I was thinking, how does this work with my heart? That's where I want my heart to be with Jesus. I want to, like, say something and someone go, well, that was very kind or thoughtful or. I want to just go, of course I want to do this thing. Of course I want to move this way. Of course I want to resist this sin. And then I go, where did that even come? I didn't even think about that. It just. It, like, happened to me. What would it look like for me to continue to put. To just adore Jesus and love him in a way and be transformed by him where my heart wasn't even thinking in the way that I grieve for my mom and not realize it. I want to just, like, live and express a life that Jesus has put in my heart without me having to think about it to go, okay, is that a sin or not? Should I do it but just go like, oof, I don't even want that? And go, whoa, I wonder why I don't want that. Oh, it's because my heart has been changed by him. What does it look like for me to move towards Jesus each day, each moment, continue to ask him, clean my heart, clean my heart, clean my heart. I need you so that I would just live my days and not even have to consciously think about things. What an incredible life I could have as I just continue to pursue him and he changes my heart to a place that I actually acted out without even having to think about it. It's like a dream to just continue to be that way. I'm sure, you know, some of you are those people. You just go, how did you resist that? And you're like, I didn't really have to think about it. Just I didn't want it. That's my hope. I want to welcome our worship team up so we can sing to this good God and continue to just receive even this grace through our songs. A couple things to consider as we move to a time of gospel response. Will you trust Jesus with your sin, receive his grace? That's step one. Search me Lord, and when you do, I need you to give me a clean heart. Where do you find? Where are you self righteous? Where do you find yourself thinking I'm so good because I do this? Those are opportunities to turn to the Lord and say, lord, I need you. And who maybe can encourage you today and even this encouragement this week, maybe just be praying this prayer, creating me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit as just a prayer of heart change. If each day we pray that if in the moment of a recognizing, I need that to just pray this, if this became a sort of mantra, a prayer in your heart, in your life that we could say over and over again, that would still mean it each time we said it. This is ultimately what we're asking is I think what Jesus is calling them to say. The real danger here, friends, is the heart. Let's work on this heart ways that we also respond here, not just by considering this. And singing is prayer. People would love to pray for you. They're in the back of the room. They have yellow lanyards on love to pray for you for anything. Even if you just say I need prayer, they'll pray. They don't have to know you or know anything. They'd love to pray. We always have an opportunity to give. You can do that online on the app. There's also a box out at the communion table as a way just to respond also to the Lord and support the ministry here. And we also respond with communion. Our service builds to a place where we sing and take communion. Communion, something Jesus commanded us to do. He said, when you get together, remember that my body was broken, that I had to go to a cross and pay for a sin. And then I rose from the dead. And that heals this broken heart that you have. It heals this heart that I searched and needs healing and needs restoration. And that moment in history changed everything. And so as our God was willing to do that, he says, get together, crack that cracker, and remember that my body was broken. Drink that grape juice. Remember that my blood was shed. He doesn't say those words, but as you drink those, remember those. We encourage you to do that throughout the next few songs. Out in the hallway, there's tables on both sides as an opportunity just to pray and remember that, even be just transformed in that. Let me pray for us as we continue to worship. Lord, thank you for your mercy that I don't have to be scared to say I'm not clean. I don't have it together. I don't. I don't know what to do. And I need you. Lord, I pray that you'd put us in these positions of surrender, and in that you would transform us, you'd restore us, that we'd find great joy and peace, and we'd find even community in that, as this group of broken people cling to you. Lord, I pray that you would create in us a clean heart, that you'd renew our spirits. We pray this in your good name. Amen.