The Everyday Prayer

Mark 7:1-23 (Day Five)
“Unclean.” Not an accusation of bad hygiene, the Pharisees used ritual washing as a defining mark of who was a “true Jew” against the backdrop of cultural and religious pluralism. It was their boundary marker of who was “truly devoted.” Every religious community does this. The Muslim will pray 5 times a day. The Mormon will serve a missionary term. At one point in the American south, it was said that a Baptist “doesn’t drink, smoke or go with girls who do!” Jesus’ answer is not to reject boundary markers and make everything acceptable (or sacred for that matter). Rather, Jesus affirms the target to which the law has always pointed. “Happy are those who keep His decrees and seek Him with all their heart,” Ps. 119:2. The heart has always been the aim of God’s commands, and it is a changed (and changing!) heart that Jesus says marks out who is “truly devoted” in His community. Is your heart changing?

RE Verse reading–Mark 7:1-23 (day four)
The problem with the Pharisees was not that they participated in elaborate rituals.  The problem was that they looked with contempt on those who did not.  Many of their practices had developed over the centuries to discipline mind and body toward greater understanding of and faithfulness to the Law of Moses.  The Bible does not forbid the development of such practices; Paul himself spoke of disciplining his body so as not to become “disqualified for the prize.”  But the Pharisees forgot that disciplines and traditions serve not as laurels for the strong, but as braces for the weak—people who need assistance to train themselves toward obedience.  By that reasoning, the Pharisees could have used more ritual, not less. Jesus’ disciples were in the physical presence of one who was himself serving as a brace for them as they learned obedience, so they had no need for these other methods at this time.  The Pharisees ignored that, to their great peril.

RE Verse reading–Mark 7:1-23 (day three)
Verse 14 begins a lesson on the heart of man.  The heart is the source of our actions.  Jesus made reference to concerns of the Pharisees…they were worried about the cleanliness of the hands, the utensils, and what was eaten.  Jesus said, it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles the man, because it enters the stomach and is eliminated.  What man needs to be concerned with are the thoughts and actions that come out of his heart…those are the things that defile.  Evil thoughts, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride and foolishness…quite a list of wrongs!  The source for these is our sinful heart.  Only Jesus can cleanse our heart, only He can replace these evil actions with the fruits of the Spirit.  Ephesians 5:26 says be cleansed with the washing of the water of the word…let Jesus’ Word cleanse your defiled heart.  He will! …He promised in 1 John 1:9!

RE Verse reading–Mark 7:1-23 (day two)
Mark chapter 7 is Jesus’ evaluation of the Tradition of the Elders. We tend to avoid evaluation at all costs. The cost of being stuck in tradition is challenged in Mark 7:8. Evaluation (the Work of the Holy Spirit- John 16) is a must for believers. Questions like “Why?”, “What if?”, Why Not?” often present unpopular responses that sometimes call for an uncomfortable direction. Some of the instruction I have received sounded like this: “Go talk to this person”, “Start a Bible Study group”, “Form friendships with someone not like you”, “Listen to their point of view (They may be right)”. Evaluation is most effective as a daily process that uses God’s Word as a mirror (James 1:22) and prayer as a intercom (Psalm 139:23-24). The last question (perhaps the most difficult) is “Will you?” (change, flex, start, stop, wait, forgive) The goal of the Christian Life and the WORK of the Holy Spirit is for us to be more like Jesus.

RE Verse reading–Mark 7:1-23 (day one)
“There is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.”  (vs 15)  One difference that Jesus had with the Judaism of His day was its externalism.  Over attention to what was touched, done or eaten.  The issue for Christ was deeper–in the heart.  The heart is the “inner man” consisting of both thoughts and intentions.  See Hebrews 4:12.  The heart is who we really are.  It is the place that is either cleansed by grace through faith or remains resistant to the Lordship of Christ.  Part of Jesus’ purpose was to expose the human heart in all of its deceitfulness.  Jeremiah 17:9.  An urgent warning to us lest we rely on religious tradition and duty (even done sincerely) to reach deep enough inside to address and cleanse the real problem.  “This people honors me with their lips, but their HEARTS are far from me.”  (vs 6)

RE Verse reading–Mark 6:1-6 (day seven)
“And they took offense at him” (vs 3)  Faith in Christ sets people free.  “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty”  (2 Corinthians 3:17)  Unbelief traps the human soul.  Wrong choices harden our attitudes into prisons.   When Mark describes the people of Nazareth (Jesus’ hometown) he says they took offense.  The word in Greek is very picturesque.  Scandolon was the stick inside an animal trap.  When the stick was dislodged, the trap fell into place and the animal was caught.  Good image.  That is what happened to the Nazarenes.  They refused to believe and got  trapped inside a world and a perspective of their own making–without life, without progress.  Are you trapped today?  Do you desire freedom?   Ask the Lord to help you return to the place where faith was being required of you.  Repent of your reluctant, stubborn heart.  Trust the Lord.  Faith can move mountains, it can also open traps.

RE Verse reading–Mark 6:1-6 (day six)
“Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary? . .and they took offense at Him.”  (vs 3)  Nothing is free.  Not even grace.  Not if you mean “without obligation”.  The grace of God makes us debtors.  See Romans 1. We have something to repay.   “To whom much is given, much is required.”  (Luke 12:48)  Perhaps this is where the people of Nazareth stumbled.  Rather than feeling the moral urgency of a faith response to Christ ( What the miracles and teaching of His public ministry were calling for), they used their history/personal knowledge of  Jesus as permission to “hang back” unchanged.  Is it possible that we do the same?  Do we ever allow past experiences with Christ to substitute for progress with Him?  Do we ever say, “I have known Him for years”, without appreciating that we are NOT following Him at the present moment?  God’s goodness obligates us to trust!  Even when the new chapter is unexpected.

RE Verse reading–Mark 6:1-6 (day four)
Verse 2 says, “When the Sabbath came, He began to teach in the synagogue;”  Jesus would always be found in His Father’s house on the Sabbath day.  There was no ‘day off’ from worshipping or teaching on this sacred day.  When the people heard Him teach, they were astonished!  They had never heard anything like this before.  And He demonstrated power…power to heal…power to do miracles…such wisdom…who was this man?  They clearly recognized the power that was Jesus’, but they didn’t necessarily accept the truth of who He was.  They couldn’t get past what their eyes could see to the point of faith to trust Him.  As believers, Jesus lives within us.  Do the people around us recognize the power of Christ in our lives?  Often, we pray and ask God to come in power among us.  As Henry Blackaby says, that is the only way that He comes!  In our faith, may God reveal His power through us to those who would believe!

RE Verse reading–Mark 6:1-6 (day three)
The fact that we read “He was amazed at their lack of faith” tells us that this was something Jesus did not expect.  That doesn’t make the Savior less divine.  It does make him human.  In Jesus we see how a human being at his best operates in the face of unexpected turns.  Jesus was amazed, and that amazement began to shape the way he engaged people.  It informed his refusal to force his thinking upon people when they clearly did not want it: Witness his “Shake the dust off” instruction to his disciples later.  It drove him to look for open doors to the gospel—even when those doors led to places and people outside Jewish ethnic zones.  May we become as amazed and as responsive.

RE Verse reading–Mark 6:1-6 (day two)
“He went…to His hometown, and…they were offended by Him” (6:1,3). We’ve seen what it looks like when people respond to Jesus in faith. Now, we see the opposite response. Same Jesus. Same power. Same wisdom. Same proclamation of the Kingdom of God arriving. Same gospel. Different response. Exposure to the gospel doesn’t guarantee a good response. Without faith, the gospel is just as likely to harden as it is to heal, to offend as it is to open, to rebuff as it is to redeem. Perhaps observing this phenomenon helped the Apostle Paul conclude “he saved us…by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit” (Titus 3:5). Paul realized that unless the Spirit initiates a work in a heart, the heart will never turn to Jesus in faith. Therein lies our hope for evangelism. If God has already sent His Spirit to work “regeneration” in hearts, then our task is to share faithfully. His task is to renew hearts so that they respond in faith.