Traditions vs. Godliness // Mark 7:1-23

In today's sermon, Pastor Evan Bialk continues the series on the Gospel of Mark, focusing on Mark 7:1-23. The passage highlights a confrontation between Jesus and the Pharisees about the significance of traditions versus God’s commandments. Pastor Evan emphasizes Jesus’ teaching that true defilement arises from within a person’s heart, rather than from external practices, such as the ceremonial washing of hands. He warns against the danger of adhering to human traditions that overshadow the vital command to honor God through genuine purity and internal transformation.Pastor Evan urges the congregation to introspectively evaluate their own traditions and preferences, asking if these are obstructing genuine obedience to God. He discusses how Jesus critiques the Pharisees for prioritizing outward appearances and religious customs over internal moral purity. Furthermore, Pastor Evan expresses the need for churches to continuously reform and ensure their practices align with their mission to spread the Gospel and make disciples. Ultimately, he challenges believers to seek authentic faith that stems from a heart transformed by Christ, emphasizing that genuine holiness is not about external rituals but about a sincere relationship with God.

Transcript

We are continuing our series in Mark. Mark 7:1 23. And I know you've already had a lot of up and downs this morning. It probably feels like you're in the Catholic Church. I'm going to ask you to stand one more time as we read Mark 7:1 23. In 1 through 23, Jesus is confronting the Pharisees and scribes who are about to see this about their adherence to human traditions over God's commandments, emphasizing that true defilement comes from within a person's heart rather than external sources.

And so let's read through this this morning, starting in verse one. Now, when the Pharisees gathered to him with some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem, they saw that some of his disciples ate with hands that were defiled. That is unwashed for the Pharisees. And all of the Jews did not eat unless they washed their hands properly holding to the tradition of the elders. And when they came from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash.

And there are many other traditions that they observe, such as the washing of cups and pots and copper vessels and dining couches. And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elder, but eat with defiled hands? And he said to them, well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, these people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.

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, and whoever reviles father or mother must surely die. But you say, if a man tells his father or his mother, whatever you have gained from me is corbin that is given to God, then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down, and many such things you do. And he called the people to him again and said, hear me, all of you, and understand. There is nothing outside of a person that is going into him, by going into him can defile him.

But the things that come out of a person are what defile him and what he has entered. And when he had entered into the house and left the people, his disciples asked him about the parable. And he said to them, then are you also, without understanding, do you not see, whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, since it enters not into his heart, but his stomach and is expelled. Thus, he declared all foods clean. And he said, what comes out of a person is what defiles him.

For from within, out of the heart of man comes evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person. You may be seated.

This morning, we're going to be looking at how the external rituals and traditions that we oftentimes make in our own lives do not make a person holy, but rather it is what comes from within that defines our purity and relationship with God. Jesus here is presented as the ultimate authority who transcends all of human traditions. And he is offering to us a new understanding of holiness that stems from the heart and emphasizing his role as the one who cleanses us within. We need to realize that genuine godliness is not measured by traditions, but by a heart transformed by Christ. And he does this by illustrating.

He does this this morning by illustrating the significance of internal purity over external compliance. The first thing I want us to see here, that I want us to focus on is the first eight verses that we see here about confronting corrupted customs. We see here that the Pharisees and scribes who had come up from Jerusalem, they had witnessed the disciples eating with unwashed hands. And so there's this tradition that the Pharisees and Jews, we call it the tradition of the elders, because that's what scripture calls it, right? The tradition of the elders in verse three, holding to the tradition of the elders that they would not eat hands that were defiled, that is unwashed, but they would also.

Part of the tradition of the elders is when they would come from the marketplace, they would make sure they were washed, but they would also have to wash their cups and pots and vessels and dining couches. So, you know, basically every time you came home, you'd have to scrub down your chairs, your table. I mean, hopefully you clean your table, but you'd have to scrub your chairs as well. But that was the tradition. And the Pharisees and scribes are asking, why do your disciples not walk according to this tradition, but they eat with defiled hands?

The Pharisees here were more interested in the sacred purity or the purity of the sacred rather than the purity of the heart, the purity of the external rather than the purity of the heart. And that's why Jesus rebukes them in verses 6. And 7, when he quotes Isaiah 29:13, he tells them, he says, well, did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites? And he says, this people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.

And they. So essentially what they have done is they have set up the tradition of elders, the traditions of their religion. We talked about how they, in weeks past, how the Pharisees and the religious elite had made up all these rules, especially when it comes to the Sabbath, right? They had all these rules that you had to follow and traditions to follow. And they had set these up above the commandments of God or equal to them, and expected people to follow them.

They expected the external view of purity. They thought it more important for the external view of purity than the internal view of purity. And we know this. We know this because in verses 9 through 13, he starts to critique and bring evidence about the way they had been living. I want to.

Before we move on to that, Warren Worsby has a quote that says, tradition is the living faith of the dead. Tradition is the living faith of the dead, but traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. And so what that means is that oftentimes religious organizations, churches in this regard, can oftentimes elevate their tradition over God's commandments. And this is, I mean, it's so often. It happens so often in churches.

And that's why churches have to be very aware that that can happen. And so they have to be very open to change. They have to be evaluating constantly the things that they are doing. Because our primary purpose, our primary mission, as we talked about last week, our primary mission is to love God, people and reach people for him, to spread the gospel, to teach people about the gospel, to make mature disciples. And oftentimes, churches can build out programs, can build out ways of doing orders of worship, and solutions for making disciples that oftentimes are beneficial and effective for a time.

And they become our preferences. They become our preferences. This is the way I like to do church. But then they don't realize that as time goes on, they become. Those ministries might become less and less effective, less and less effective of training people, of maturing people, of reaching people.

And so churches need to be constantly evaluating how and what they are doing to reach people for the gospel. And when churches decide that their traditions or their preferences come before the mission of God, of reaching people for Christ, of maturing people in Christ, then they are setting their tradition. They're doing exactly what the Pharisees and the scribes are accusing Jesus of doing and his disciples are doing. They're putting their traditions over the commandments of God. We are looking at the external way of how we worship versus the internal way of how our relationship with God is doing.

We are more worried about our external purity in the traditions and preferences that we have than we are about seeing people come to know Christ.

And the thing is, authentic faith. Authentic faith begins with aligning our hearts to God's word rather than our culture. Authentic faith begins when we align our hearts with God's word rather than the traditions and the preferences that we might have.

In verses 9 through 13, he goes on and he begins to critique the traditional transgressions. And here Jesus is rebuking the Pharisees for abandoning God's command in favor of tradition. And he brings the receipts, if I might say that that's a new slang of saying it. Essentially, he bring examples. He brings examples of how they are doing this.

The first is he says in eight, he says, you leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men. You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition. For Moses said, honor your father and mother, and whoever reviles his father and mother must surely die. Now, this is coming straight from the decalogue, right? The.

If you don't know what the decalogue is, it's a fancy way of saying the Ten Commandments. All right? Straight from the Ten Commandments, right? We're to honor our father and mother. And how that played out, and how that played out in Israel was they had a much different culture than we do, right?

They had a much more family oriented, community oriented culture than our American individualistic culture. And so I need us to step out of our American individualistic kind of idea and thought here and understand that we are speaking to, or Jesus is speaking to, a culture that is deeply ingrained in community and family. And so the parents would raise their kids and then they would get married. And then as the parents grew up, I mean, grew older, the parents would then live with their kids, and their kids were expected. And it was very normal for the kids to be taking care of their aging parents.

It was considered a dishonor if kids did not do that, right? So the kids had the responsibility to take care of their aging parents. And we could speak on how American culture is definitely not like that, how most, most of the time when our aging parents, what happens with them is we just shove them in A nursing home and forget about them. So much of American culture is like that because our individualistic mindset is, well, I'm done with them, or this is the best thing for them. That's the primary excuse oftentimes given is this is the best thing for them.

And oftentimes it's not the best thing. Most of the time, the best thing for them is to be around family. I'm getting off on a tangent here that I need to rein back in. We can talk about how we treat grandparents later. But anyway, in this culture, it was very common that the resources of the kids were available to help their parents as they aged and grew older.

And so he is saying, he's explaining that, hey, Moses says, honor your father and mother, right? The Decalogue, the Ten Commandments, says, honor your father and mother. But in verse 11, and it even goes farther, he says that whoever doesn't do this, right? Whoever doesn't do this. And this is found in the Old Testament in Leviticus and in numbers, that whoever doesn't do this should be surely put to death.

I mean, that's how serious it was, the expectation that kids would take care of their parents as they aged, that if you're not honoring your parents, that surely you should be put to death. And in verse 11, he says, but you say, if a man tells his father or mothers, whatever you have gained from me is corbin that is given to God, 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 have handed down and many such things you do now, you might not understand what is happening here, and I'm going to explain it to you. So the term corban is an Aramaic term, and we know that it means gift or offering to God. It's recorded not only in scripture but in Jewish history as a reference of tithe or offering to God.

We've actually found pottery in ancient Israel, like when they've. When they've dug it up and they've found pottery in jars that have been marked. This is Corbin. And so it was. Is designated to God.

And so what that means is the priests had figured out a way around this responsibility to take care of their father and mother and of the fathers and mothers. So somebody could come and they could pay the priest, the Pharisees, the religious elite, they could pay them as a gift of corbin. And so essentially, they would designate all of their wealth to God or to God's uses, right? It didn't restrict. It didn't restrict what the son could do or the son could do with that money, but it restricted because everything he would be doing was for God.

But what it did was it eliminated the ability for parents to use those resources because it would be going to the parents, not God. Think of it this way. In our modern day kind of thought, there's a lot of wealthy individuals out there that have been able to avoid our tax laws by setting up essentially shelters or nonprofit organizations. Many of them are out there. I think Bill Gates has one.

I think the Zuckerbergs have one. They have these nonprofit organizations. I think Bill Gates is called the Gates Foundation. And so this is a nonprofit that the Bill Gates. And they can, they can put as much money in that into that nonprofit as they want.

And they get a tax credit for doing that because they're giving to a nonprofit. But guess who controls that nonprofit? They do. Right? So essentially it's sheltered away from their money being used to, to benefit the majority of society by paying taxes.

And instead they're sheltering it. And they can use that money in whatever they want. They can go places, they can buy jets with that money. As long as it's owned by the Gates Federation, Federation Foundation. There we go again.

As long as it's owned and there's some kind of purpose they can tie back into that nonprofit, they get away with it. It's perfectly legal. And so I'm not here to speak on the legality of that, on whether or not they should do that or should be allowed to do that. What I'm saying is this is a modern day kind of example of what this is. Corbin would mean.

Essentially it was the son who was not wanting to honor his father and mother and setting up a shelter and saying that my money is designated for God's purposes, so you can't have any of it. And so Jesus is saying that the church, the Pharisees, that the temple was complicit in this action because they are allowing, and not even allowing, but promoting it to happen. And thus thus making void the word of God. And so this tradition that they have by designating money as Corbin or gifts to God is invalidating and making void the command from God to honor your father and mother. And so they're using traditions.

Man made traditions. Man made ways of doing things to supplant or circumvent the law of God. And this is just one example because he says, and many such things you do. So this is just one example of doing this. And so this passage should suggest to us that we need to examine if certain traditions are standing in the way of genuine obedience to God's commands.

If certain preferences we have as a church and as individuals are standing in the way of genuine obedience to God, Are we using our preferences, are we using our traditions to circumvent the command of God, the command to reach people for Christ, the command to mature people in their faith?

And all the while. So, I mean, it's a pretty honorable right. You would sit there and say, well, I mean, he's designating, he's giving all his money, he's offering it to God, right? This is Corbin. I'm turning it all over to God and how God wants to use it, that would be an honorable thing, Right?

But you're missing. They were missing how they were or on purpose. And Jesus actually makes it clear that this is done on purpose, that they're doing these things to circumvent God's commands. And so often I hear. So often I hear from people, especially people that are looking for small churches.

And I have no problem with small churches. I love small churches. I'm a pastor of a small church. But I hear from people who sit there and say, I'm looking for a small church and I hope it stays small. And I don't understand what you mean by that, because I see the command of God that we are to go and make disciples.

And so why would you walk into a church and say, hey, I want this church to stay small? And what influences that is most of the time they have preferences and traditions they would like to keep in the church to keep it small, that actually actively pushes people out the door or doesn't encourage them from coming in the door. And I don't understand that mentality, because our mentality should be to reach people for Christ. We should be hoping that people are pounding down the doors to coming in, right? That every Sunday, this sanctuary and worship hall is full of people that desire to hear the gospel and be transformed.

That should be our desire. Our desire should never be that man. This needs to stay small. Cause I just like it small. That's a preference.

That's a preference that you like, that smallness. And I get it, I get it. You like to know people and you like to feel like you've got a place here and you, like, you might like that. You get to have a say in things. But those are all preferences.

Those are all preferences and dare say traditions that are circumventing our command to go and make disciples. And I'm not here To. I'm not preaching that, hey, we need church growth or anything. I mean, we do need church growth. Every church needs to grow.

There's about 90,000 people in Topeka that are considered unbelievers or non Christians. 90,000 people out our front door that don't know Jesus, that are going to hell, that need to know Christ.

That should motivate us. There's 276 churches. There's 276 churches in Topeka. And I don't even know how many of those are gospel believing, Bible believing, gospel preaching, gospel centered churches. I'd imagine it's probably less than half.

That's not a lot of churches to do God's work to a population of about 150,000 people. So let's say there's 150 churches. I'm going to do really bad, like really probably bad math right here. 150 churches. 150.

1,000 people per church. If we didn't have any extra churches and we're sitting here at about 100 people. And so if every church, I mean, I recognize this, but if every church in Topeka grew by about 1000 people, how awesome would that be? Because people would be reached for the gospel. And yet there are people who hear that and say, I don't want that to happen because I like small churches.

And they're really wrestling with this right now. But that should be our desire. Our desire should be that churches grow.

John Wobert Stott, who is an English preacher, said this, that every church should be engaged in continuous self reformation, scrutinizing its traditions in light of scripture and where necessary, modifying them. And I 100% believe this. Because every church needs to continually grow, grow in its maturity, grow in its membership, because we should be reaching people for Christ. And when we don't do this, when we don't do this, we can go down rabbit trails that really take us away from the gospel. And I've got a video I want to show us.

Drew, you got that? I want to show you how far we can go. Take a look. Amen. Thank God for the word of God.

Amen. Thank God it's built on this. You can't separate Jesus Christ from the Bible. You're biblioliters. Yes.

Amen. We believe the King James Bible is the word of God. Every word of it. Amen. I can take this book and correct the Greek.

Amen. Say why? Because I'm a loser.

Amen. And I've had Greek. Amen. And Hebrew.

Last class Hebrew. We finished the Last class D says, what are you doing? I said, I'm going out here in the backyard and I'm burning this Hebrew grammar book. What? I torched it.

I said, had to learn Hebrew and Greek and all that mess. Amen. He said, what did you learn out of that? The King James Bible is the word of God. Thank God for the English.

Amen. Who cares what the Greek says? They make pretty good sandwiches. That's about it.

All right, so this is. I know, right? You hear that and you're like, what? A pastor said that on stage behind a pulpit, right? But this is what it means when tradition circumvents the commands of God.

And looking at our preferences now, I have no problem with the King James Version. And if you use it here this morning, you know, that's great. I grew up with that. That's why my dad read to us every morning when he would do devotions with us. He had a King James Bible sitting out on the table and he'd read.

And I learned the thous and shalls. And, you know, and you know, I'm totally fine with the King James Version. But if your whole premise. If your whole premise is the preference and tradition of using the King James Bible and it is more authoritative than the original languages of Greek and Hebrew, and you say something like, I can correct the Greek and Hebrew based on an English translation that was made off the Greek and Hebrew, that makes no sense. That is tradition and preference coming before godly wisdom.

And so I'm not saying that you should change your Bible if you use King James Version. Praise the Lord. But should we use the King James Bible today? Probably. I would say, for the majority of people, no.

The wonderful thing about translations is that there, a lot of times translations have a group of really educated Bible scholars using tens of thousands of manuscripts that have been found since the writing of the King James Version, and they are trying to faithfully and accurately translate the word of God into English and into a readable English translation of how we talk now, not how we talked about in the 15, 1600s. So I am not here to get up here and debate about if, you know, the reliability of the King James Version. But I'm just showing this is how far we can go when we put preferences and traditions above godly wisdom. The other. Another thing I recently saw, I recently was listening to a pastor in a sermon, and he said that I love this clip because I felt it resonated really well that there are many churches that open up on a Sunday, and every morning they have the organ.

The worship leader gets up and he tells them, hey, we're going to turn to hymn 3:22. And they're all wearing suits and they're going to Sunday school. And God hasn't been in that church in 15 years.

They're doing all the external traditions and preferences, and God hasn't been there in 15 years. Now, I'm not just talking about those churches on the other side. You've got the popular churches that. You've got the many churches on this Sunday they opened up, and they've got the drums and they've got guitars and they've got lead singers that are probably professional musicians. And you've got the popular songs written by heretics.

Sorry, you got. I'm talking about Bethel and Elevation Music. I'm calling them out. You got the popular songs. You got the cool, hip pastor that dresses super nice and looks cool and has cool catchphrases and has 10,000 followers on Instagram and TikTok and stuff.

But God hasn't been there in 15 years either, because God is not concerned about the preferences and tradition. He's about the internal heart of a believer and our position toward him.

I've talked about in the past about Golden Calves and how every church has them. Everybody has them. Individually, I would call them your preferences. Your preferences on how church should look and how a pastor should dress and what worship should look like. And everybody has them, and churches have them.

And I remember, and I'm going to be real raw with you here, I remember both in my interview process with y'all, so I'm bummed up against a year. I've almost been here with y'all for a year. Can y'all believe that? You know, we're. We're.

We're getting close to that year, Mark.

And I remember going through the interview process and very clear to me that golden calfs existed at Bethel because this same phrase has been told to me repeatedly over these last 11 months. And so when I ask somebody about, hey, why do we do this? Or why is this here? Why are we continuing in this ministry if it feels like it's not productive? And the answer I have gotten, and it has been shocking to me, is that, and this is multiple times about multiple things, is that, oh, yeah, that won't change until somebody dies or leaves.

That's the position that, as a pastor, I have been confronted with here at the church on multiple occasions. We're Golden Calves at Bethel. And this is getting real real with y'all, that the Golden Calves Here are so important that we can't tackle those. We can't kill those golden calves until somebody else dies or they leave the church? And I'm not going to talk about specifics here.

There's going to be a point in time. I think that conversation is going to be relevant and I think it is approaching soon. But. But as a church, we need to go through some reflection. As a church, as individuals, we need to go through some reflection.

Are our personal preferences of what we think church should be like or what we think that is the best thing for us? Is that getting in the way of reaching people? Is that getting in the way of seeing people come to know Christ? Is that getting in the way of maybe a non believer walking in off the street that needs God? Is it getting in the way of them staying and wanting to learn about God?

Is it getting in the way of us maturing believers? And I'm not saying that the ministries here haven't been beneficial and haven't flourished and seen people grow. They have. There are many people that I've talked to and seen and talked to them about their maturity over the life of this church, and it's fantastic. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't have the conversation and we shouldn't be continually evaluating the effectiveness.

And if our preferences and traditions are getting in the way of coming to know Christ more, being able to reach people for Christ.

Moving on to verses 14 through 19, we're going to Jesus here. He's going to clarify the real contamination. So he has addressed this, that tradition and preference is both circumventing God's commands and in a lot of cases, they are putting tradition above God's commands. And he is going to. And that's because, remember at the beginning of the message I said that the Pharisees were more concerned about sacred purity than they were about moral and internal purity, the purity of the sacred, more than they were about the internal purity and moral purity of the people and following God.

So he is going to clarify where the real contamination comes from in these verses. And so we see here in 14 through 19, he says he calls the people back to them and he tells them, hear me, all of you, and understand. There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of the person are what defile him. And then he when he had entered into the house and left the people, his disciples asked him about the parable. And he said to them then, are you also without understanding, do you not See that whatever goes into a person from the outside cannot defile him, since it enters in not his heart, but his stomach and is expelled.

Thus, he declared all foods clean. And so this is a pretty radical. This is a pretty radical claim that Jesus is making here that nothing outside a person can defile him and that he is highlighting that true defilement comes from within.

This point here should be an encouragement. It should be an encouragement to believers to reflect on their own inner motivations and recognize that true holiness stems from a transformed heart by Christ's love and grace, and not by external actions. Think about. I don't have my smartphone here, but here, think about, think about this tablet I have here, right? Super slick.

If I take it off, this really looks nice. Slick. Great technology. It's kind of. In some circles they would say, that's beautiful.

It's a really cool piece of technology.

And it might have the latest sleek exterior design.

But if you've ever owned an iPhone that has been, or an iPhone that has been out that has like this super sleek, really cool design, but you've owned it for maybe, let's say five years, and maybe I'm calling some people out here, you've owned this. But you'll get this. The software now is outdated and the battery life is failing and it won't function well. And likewise, we may look. It might look good.

The phone looks good. It looks perfect, right? You've got the case, so you've protected the outside. You got the screen protector so there's no cracks on the screen. And so on the outside, it looks really good.

That's some people I know, other people that don't take care of their phones. But on the outside, it looks really good, but what's on the inside, it's failing. Our thoughts, our intentions, our values, those are the things that determine how well we operate in life.

And God cares about our internal state, not just our appearance. God cares about our internal state, not just our appearance. Warren Worsby has another quote that says, it is important that we, as God's priest, maintain our separated position in this world. We must not be isolated because the world needs our influence and witness. But we must not permit the world to infect us or change us.

Separation from the world is not isolation. It is contact without contamination.

And so what Jesus is pointing out here is that that is not the things on the outside that matter. It is. It is the. It is inside. It's not.

It's not, and I mentioned this before, it's not. If a person walks in here and he's tatted all up, got face tattoos, wearing a hat, maybe some ripped jeans. Looks like his shirt hasn't been worn or washed. And three years. God doesn't care if he walks in this room because of how he looks.

He cares about what's going on inside just the same as God doesn't care. If you woke up this morning and you were in a suit and tie and slacks that are pressed, leather shoes that are shined so you can see your face in them. You look dapper, you look fly hairs, hair's looking good. He doesn't care because if you walk in and you look fantastic, exactly what you would think that a Christian should shape up and look like. But on the inside, on the inside, you're filthy.

I think about. And this is a really sad thing. There's a pastor recently, he was the pastor of Trinity Bible Church in Dallas, Texas. Many of you might know him. His name is Stephen Lawson.

He was a pretty popular pastor. I loved listening to him. He was a little bit. He's on the reformed side of things, but really handled the word of God really well. And he had a lot of influence.

And about a month ago, maybe a month and a half ago, it came out that for years. And this guy, when you look at him, he was the typical reformed pastor, always wore a suit when he was preaching, had a tie on, looked sharp, hair fantastic. This guy, it was found out that he had been having an affair with a woman for many years. And so that's what I mean, what God is pointing out to us is that it doesn't matter. And that's a really sad situation.

And as believers, we should pray for him, that his heart is turned back to Jesus.

But that's what I mean. I mean, you can. You can be the guy that everybody is looking up to, wearing a suit and tie, have an influence.

And yet on the inside, you're filthy and you have not met God. You can say all the things, you can have the intelligence, then knowledge about God, but the heart has not been transformed.

And so we need to focus less on the outside and the way things look and on the outside of things that can defile them. And look at how true defilement comes from within.

And we do so by cultivating clean consciousness. In Mark 7, 20, 23, Jesus gives a list of what comes out of a person that defiles him. I don't know if this is a comprehensive list. I think this is an example list of things that defile a person. He says for.

From within out of a heart of man 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. Now, I want you to notice that he doesn't say the temptation of these things defile a person. So that's another thing in the church that we have come to, I think, misinterpret, is that if you are tempted with evil thoughts, or you're tempted with adultery, or you're tempted with alcoholism, you're tempted with slander, you're tempted with envy, you're tempted with deceit, you're tempted with these evil things.

Oftentimes we see that as defilement, that because I was tempted in that way, then I'm under punishment for that. That's just not simply true. Just because you're tempted in a certain way does not mean that you were defiled by the temptation. After all, right? Jesus went out and he was tempted by Satan.

And yet we maintain that Jesus was perfect and sinless. Temptation does not defile you, but instead, what we do with that temptation is what defiles us. What we do with that temptation, if you give in to the envy, if you give in to the greed, if you give in to the pride, if you give in to the sensuality, if you give in to the sexual morality, that is what defiles us. And so for us to move forward, we need to recognize Jesus final warning about intentions emerging from the heart and recognize that sometimes our feelings, our feelings are not the best judge of character in what to do in a situation, right? Sometimes our feelings can get it wrong because our heart, because defilement comes from the heart, the heart is wicked.

So if you're sitting there saying, well, I feel that this is the best way of doing. You know how many times I've heard that as a pastor, somebody come and say, you know, I had somebody, I think I might have shared this, come up and be like, I just feel like God has told me that I shouldn't tithe anymore. And I'm sitting there, I'm like, that's an interesting thing. So God has said that he doesn't want you to participate in the work of advancing the gospel. Let me go back to my Bible.

Don't see that anywhere ever. Once that God said, don't participate in the advance of the gospel, right? Sometimes our feelings can get us into trouble. We see that so often in culture, right? Our culture is not based on truth anymore, but in feelings.

And so Jesus final worrying about our intentions emerging from the heart. It should cause us to be introspective and look up the inside and challenge is this coming from the Word of God or is it coming from my feelings or preferences?

And it should challenge each believer to seek a heart purified by Christ and asking Christ to continue to transform us and lead us into genuine godliness that reflects our commitment to live out our faith authentically for him and his glory.

I hope that this sermon, this message this morning will challenge us as believers as much as it's challenging me to examine our own preferences, our own traditions, our own practices and ensure that they align with the Word of God.

I hope it encourages you to focus on the internal condition of your heart and recognizing in areas where God is calling you to change because your feelings are leading you down a wrong path. Instead, focus on leading focus on genuine transformation in the desire for godliness. Let's pray.