The Heart of All Our Problems

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You probably watched, as I did, the day of 9/11/2001, watched the events unfold on your television. It was on that evening, that CBS News Reporter Jim Axelrod said this "Less than four miles behind me is where the Twin Towers stood this morning, but not tonight. Ground Zero, as it's being described, in today's terrorist attacks that have sent aftershocks rippling across the country." And so today, the area where the Twin Towers used to stand is called Ground Zero. But that term was first used 54 years earlier than September 11, 2001. It began, the term Ground Zero, began with the Manhattan Project and the bombing of Japan, the end of World War 2.

The Oxford English Dictionary says that the term was used in 1946 in the New York Times report on the destroyed city of Hiroshima. That article defines Ground Zero in this way: "It is that part of the ground, situated immediately under an exploding bomb, especially an atomic one. It's the point at which the devastation began." Now that term Ground Zero is not only used of bomb blasts, but also of earthquakes, of epidemics, and many other kinds of disasters. Ground Zero now marks the point of the most severe damage or destruction, where it all begins.

So when we think about man's problems, when we think about the issues with mankind and the vast problems with humanity, we really need to ask ourselves the question, "What is Ground Zero?" Or when we think about the people and problems around us, we need to ask the same question, or even more personally, when we think of our own lives, what is the point at which the devastation in our lives begins? What is Ground Zero?

Well, in the passage we come to in our study of Mark's gospel tonight, our Lord identifies the Ground Zero, and it is identical in every one of our lives. He does so, He responds really in answer to the question that the Pharisees asked back in Mark 7:5, when they said, "Why do Your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat their bread with impure [unclean, ceremonially unwashed] . . . hands?" And Jesus in response to that question, He sort of hasn't answered it yet in the flow of the passage, now He's going to answer it. And in response to that question, He identifies the heart of all of our problems. Let me read it for you, Mark chapter 7, beginning in verse 14:

After He called the crowd to Him again, He began saying to them, "Listen to Me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside the man which can defile him if it goes into him; but the things which proceed out of the man are what defile the man. [If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear."] When He had left the crowd and entered the house, His disciples questioned Him about the parable. And He said to them, "Are you so lacking in understanding also? Do you not understand that whatever goes into the man from outside cannot defile him, because it does not go into his heart, but into his stomach, and is eliminated?" (Thus He declared all foods clean.) And He was saying, "That which proceeds out of the man, that is what defiles the man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed the evil thoughts, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, deeds of coveting and wickedness, as well as deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness. All these evil things proceed from within and defile the man."

This is really still connected to the same confrontation that began between Jesus and the scribes and Pharisees, back in Mark chapter 7 verse 1 and runs down through verse 13. You'll remember that in verses 3-5 of this passage we learn that the Pharisees believed that if you avoided external contamination, if you kept all of the external contamination away, then you would be qualified, you'd be pure enough, to enter God's presence. The problem was the stuff that came at you from the outside; and you could avoid that contamination by all kinds of ritual purity, by washing your hands, by bathing when you came back from the market, by washing your pots in a certain way; you could be able to go into God's presence.

You see again the Pharisees had managed to miss the whole point; because all of the ritual and the ceremonial laws of cleanness and uncleanness, were there primarily to make a spiritual point. If you want to enter God's presence, symbolized at the Temple, you have to be clean. But it wasn't about being outwardly clean, it wasn't about all of the ritual, it was about being morally and spiritually clean. God's requirement to enter His presence is true moral purity. Tragically the scribes and Pharisees had made it all about the outside, all about the external. In the first 13 verses of this chapter, Jesus rebukes them for the false religion that Judaism had become; they had replaced God's Word with human tradition, they had replaced the true way of salvation with works righteousness. Then here in these verses that I just read for you, Jesus tells the crowd around Him what truly defiles a person, what truly renders you and me unable to enter God's presence - the heart of our problem.

So let's look at what Jesus deals with here; first of all, we see the source of sin identified in verses 14 to 16. Look at verse 14: "After He called the crowd to Him again, He began saying to them, 'Listen to Me, all of you, and understand.'" Now remember, back in chapter 7:1, the Pharisees and some scribes had come from Jerusalem, they'd come up to check on Jesus, to see what He was teaching, to see if they could trap Him. Well apparently, verse 14 implies that when they showed up, when this delegation of religious leaders showed up, the crowds sort of withdrew out of deference to this delegation of leaders. And now Jesus having done with the leaders, calls the crowd back, calls them back around Him. And He talks to the crowd and His disciples here, and He authoritatively calls them both to hear and to understand. He wanted, notice verse 14, "all of you," to both really hear and to really understand. Here is something extremely important, Jesus says, foundational, crucial; if you want to understand the ways of God and His interaction with men.

With that call, He gets to the point in verse 15: "there is nothing outside the man which can defile him if it goes into him; but the things which proceed out of the man are what defile the man." Because we live on this side of the Cross and because the church has read and taught this passage for 2,000 years, that doesn't sound to us nearly as shocking as it would have sounded to those first-generation Jewish people gathered around Jesus that day. This was radical, this was revolutionary. William Barclay says that this is, quote, "Well-nigh the most revolutionary passage in the New Testament."

Now, the basic idea of the first half of Jesus' statement there in verse 15 was obvious and clear. Remember the context, in the context, there's been a confrontation about hand washing. So in the first half of this statement in verse 15, Jesus was saying, "Eating food with hands that haven't been ceremoniously cleansed, does not, in fact, render a person unable to enter God's presence. You're wrong, doesn't happen."

Now, the meaning of the second half of Jesus' statement there in verse 15, is much more difficult to ascertain without His explaining it to us, but it is clear that He's identifying the true source of our problems, the true source of every person's moral defilement. So He gives this statement. Now you'll notice verse 16 is, in our New American Standard in brackets and you'll notice the marginal note that says, "Early manuscripts do not contain this verse." Jesus said this often, and it is in the inspired text, but it's not likely that He said it here.

So that moves us on, then, from His simple statement to the crowd, that's all He said to the crowd; what you read in verse 15, He said, "Listen, I've got something important to say to you, here it is." And He spoke those words and then He left. That's the source of sin, identified.

Verse 17, the scene changes and we have the source of sin explained. Look at verse 17: "When He . . . left the crowd and entered the house, His disciples questioned Him about the parable." Now we've already seen this sort of pattern before: Jesus speaks to the crowd, He speaks to them in parables, and then He expands on that truth to His own disciples privately. So again they left the crowd, and they entered the house; this is probably happening in Capernaum, Jesus' home base of operations where He lived during His ministry, and it's also likely that the house here is the one where Jesus stayed. We don't know if it was His own house, that is a house that had been loaned Him - we know He didn't own it, because He makes reference to the fact that He didn't own a house - but whether it had been loaned to Him and this was in a sense His house, or whether He stayed with Peter in Capernaum. We really don't know, but regardless of wherever it was He stayed each night in Capernaum, that's probably where this conversation takes place.

Once they left the crowd, either on the way to the house or once they arrived at the house, Matthew, in the parallel passage, tells us that the disciples were not happy with Jesus. They were not happy with what Jesus had just said in verse 15. In fact, keep your finger there and turn back to Matthew 15. They have something they want Jesus to know; notice verse 10 of Matthew 15. Here's the parallel passage, Jesus calls the crowd, "He said to them, 'Hear and understand . . .'" And then He gives them this statement. Verse 12, "Then the disciples came and said to Him, 'Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this statement?'" There's a sort of implied rebuke in there. They're saying to Jesus, "Jesus, don't You understand that You offended them? That was offensive to them."

Verse 13, "But He answered and said, 'Every plant which My heavenly Father did not plant shall be uprooted.'" There's a lot of discussion about what that verse means, most likely it means, "Every truth, every doctrine that is from My Father is permanent, and those that aren't, are not." But then He says this in verse 14, "Let them [the Pharisees] alone; they are blind guides of the blind. And if a blind man guides a blind man, both will fall into a pit."

It's clear from several passages in the New Testament and outside the New Testament, that the rabbis thought of themselves as guides of the blind. People didn't understand the truth, they needed to be guided into the truth, and they were the guides. Jesus adds a different little nuance though, and He says, "They, too, were blind. They don't understand and know the truth. So of course they're offended by what I said. Don't worry about the Pharisees; it's a false religion, with a false basis of truth, and a false way of salvation."

Now Mark 7 tells us that once they got to the house the disciples questioned Jesus about what He had said. But here in Matthew notice verse 15, "Peter said to Him, 'Explain the parable to us.'" To us means that Peter is speaking here on behalf of the group, he's being the spokesman as he so often was. And all the disciples had a question, and they put Peter forward; Peter asked Jesus what He meant; ask Him to explain it, and so Peter steps up and does just that.

Now go back to Mark 7. What happens in the rest of Mark 7 here, at the beginning of verse 18 Jesus restates the first half of that enigmatic statement to the crowd. And then in the second half of verses 18 and 19 He explains what the first half means. In verse 20, the first half of verse 20, He restates the second half of what He had said to the crowd, and the rest of verse 20 through verse 23 He explains what it means.

Now, the first half of the statement, then, let's look at as we see the source of sin explained. The first half is what never defiles, and that's what goes in; that never defiles. Notice verse 18, "And He said to them, 'Are you so lacking in understanding also?'" Jesus here is genuinely disappointed that they had been His companions for so long and so closely, and yet they still don't get it; they don't even understand this basic principle. "Do you not understand that whatever goes into the man from outside cannot defile him, because it does not go into his heart, but into his stomach, and is eliminated?'"

Now notice He says, "whatever goes into the man from the outside." What does Jesus mean? Well Matthew says, He said, "everything that goes into the mouth." So it was clear to the people who heard Jesus, that He was talking about food and the ceremonial laws that had to do with food. Food cannot defile a person, whether it's eaten with unwashed hands or not; whether it's clean or unclean or not. What a person eats, cannot actually morally defile him before God; they had misunderstood the whole point of all those Old Testament laws. Why?

Notice what Jesus says, "because it does not go into his heart." In Hebrew thinking the heart was the center of the person; it included your mind, your emotions, your will; it was the real you. The real you, that's your heart. And whenever a person eats, what he eats never touches his heart, it never enters his real self; what you eat, you know that "you are what you eat," that's a lie, okay? Your body may be what eat, but the real you is unaffected by what you eat, so, have another piece of fried chicken, it's okay. It doesn't touch our souls. Notice Jesus says, it goes "into his stomach."; literally into his belly. Doesn't refer just to the stomach but to the whole cavity in which the digestive tract sits, and the digestive tract itself.

I don't know if you know this, well you probably do because of the sort of popularity of certain surgeries and other things; the stomach is really just a convenience to allow us to eat less often. The real work of digestion is done in the 26-foot long intestinal tract that's woven around in our inner cavity. There's some two gallons of fluid and mucus from our bodies that is added to the digesting food in the small intestine, and then as it passes through the large intestine removes most of that two gallons of fluid, returns the fluid cleaned out to the body, and only the waste, the semi-solid waste is eliminated. And after the food has gone in the mouth, it's gone down the throat and into the stomach, has worked its way through the digestive tract, it passes out of the body, what remains, and is eliminated. Literally what Jesus says, "It goes into the latrine, into the sewer." Food goes into and through the body, into the latrine, all without touching the soul, without touching the real you.

By the way, this is interesting, Jesus is actually here making it clear that man is a two-part being. He's implying anyway, it's taught more clearly in other passages, but He's implying that there are two parts of you; there's your body, and then there's an immaterial part of you, that's the real you. The real you isn't affected by what you eat.

Notice what He says, "It cannot." It is not able to, is the Greek word, defile the man morally before God. And then Mark adds this little interpretive point, notice the end of verse 19: "Thus He declared all foods clean."

If you go back to the Old Testament Law, this was huge by the way, because if you go back to the Old Testament Law, if you were a Jewish person, even today, but certainly in the first century and before, a large part of the Law as given to Moses at Sinai had to do with the laws of clean and unclean. And a lot of that had to do with what foods you could and couldn't eat; certain foods were acceptable for God's people, others were not. Now the question is, why? Why did God give His people those food laws? What's wrong with a good pork chop? Well understand this, the food laws were there primarily for two reasons; first of all, the food laws, along with the other laws of ritual cleanness, taught the people a spiritual point. They were an object lesson that to enter into God's presence and to fellowship with Him required moral purity. The food laws were an object lesson. They were not a reflection of God's eternal character like the Ten Commandments, they were shadows that eventually went away; they were an object lesson.

Secondly, they were there to keep Israel separate from the other nations. Because of the various rules about food, a practicing Jew could not simply sit down and have a meal with a Gentile. Because there were so many things that Gentiles didn't do, that they were required to do, it made that kind of social interaction very, very difficult. And so those food laws had a tendency to separate them naturally from other people, and that was God's way of keeping His people pure from all of the pagan practices around them.

But here, in verse 19, Mark says "[Jesus] declared all foods clean." Apparently, no one understood the full implications of what Jesus said here until much later. Peter didn't come to grasp it until Acts 10; in fact, turn with me to Acts 10. This is when Peter got it, this is long after Jesus' ascension. Acts 10, Peter, you remember the story? He falls asleep on a rooftop in Joppa, while he was waiting to eat lunch, and God gives him a vision of all kinds of unclean animals, and God's voice tells Peter, "Get up [arise], . . . kill and eat!" Now with that in mind, look at the response, Acts 10:14:

But Peter said, "By no means, Lord, for I have never eaten anything unholy and unclean." Again a voice came to him a second time, "What God has cleansed, no longer consider unholy [or common or profane].' This happened three times, and immediately the object [sheet on which these animals had come down] was taken up into the sky."

Peter's wondering what all this means, but he comes to understand because a couple of people come to get him from Cornelius, you remember, and he's taken to Cornelius' house; notice verse 25:

When Peter entered, Cornelius met him, and fell at his feet and worshiped him. But Peter raised him up, saying, "Stand up; I too am just a man." As he talked with him, he entered and found many people assembled. And he said to them, "You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a man who is a Jew to associate with a foreigner or to visit him; and yet God has shown me [through this vision I just had] that I should not call any man unholy or unclean. That is why I came without even raising any objection when I was sent for. So I ask for what reason you have sent for me."

And Cornelius explains. Now notice verse 34:

Opening his mouth, Peter said: "I most certainly understand now that God is not one to show partiality, but in every nation the man who fears Him and does what is right is welcome to Him."

So he then embarks on the gospel about Jesus Christ. So Peter at this point still doesn't fully make the connection that he can eat everything. He understands this is an object lesson, he's to go now to the Gentiles: they're not common, they're not profane, they're not unholy; he can go and interact with them. But you remember later, he withdraws, even from that.

So he still doesn't fully get it. But it's clear that the time had come for all those food laws that had kept the Jews separate from the Gentiles to go away. And now they were to go to the Gentiles with the gospel. Undoubtedly Mark had heard Peter share that story numerous times, and what had happened to Peter in Acts 10 made the implications of Jesus' statement about what goes into the mouth can't defile him crystal clear.

We can't be exactly sure when Jesus intended them to stop keeping the food laws. It might have been right at this point, it might have been after His crucifixion, or it might have been after Pentecost. But nevertheless, there was a clear implication that they were no longer to keep those food laws.

Now before we leave this point, it's not the main point of the passage, but let me just make a brief application here. In Genesis 9, Noah is told, and his sons, that all of the things on earth are there for them to eat, all the animals as well as the vegetation. In the Mosaic Law then, that is pulled back for Jewish people; some animals are not acceptable for Jewish people; some are clean and some are unclean. In Mark 7, pardon the pun, all foods are back on the table. In Acts 15, the only stipulations, there at the Jerusalem Council they put on Gentile converts, is they shouldn't eat the blood or the meat that had been strangled for the purpose of keeping the blood in it.

What I want you to see is this: When you look at the flow of biblical history, there are no biblical diets, okay? Those clean and unclean laws weren't God's way of directing His people to eat what was best for them; if so, that means that other times God wasn't so concerned about their health. Don't let anybody take you to the Bible and try and sell you a diet. First Corinthians 10:25, "Eat anything that is sold in the meat market without asking questions for conscience' sake." I love that verse; I'm thinking about getting that framed. Colossians 2:16, "No one is to act as your judge in regard to food or drink [talking about those Old Testament laws] or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day."

But maybe even more pointed, look at 1 Timothy. Now I understand that this passage doesn't apply to everyone, every Christian talking about a biblical diet, all right? But I want you to see what that kind of thing is usually connected with. First Timothy 4:

"The Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons, by means of the hypocrisy of liars seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron, [and here's what they'll teach] men who forbid marriage and advocate abstaining from foods [certain foods, and let me tell you about those foods, Paul says], . . . God has created to be gratefully shared in by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with gratitude; for it is sanctified by means of the word of God and prayer."

Often, abusing the Bible to make it say what it doesn't say, is connected to false religion; to cults built on Christianity, to doctrines of demons, who encourage people to abstain from things that God has declared good, including marriage, and all kinds of foods. So the bottom line is, don't let anyone sell you a diet from the Bible.

So, let's move on. We've seen Jesus' explanation of the first half of this statement: Foods cannot defile us; what goes in, the foods you eat, cannot defile you – why? Because it never intersects with your soul.

That brings us to the second half of His statement: what always defiles, and that is, what comes out. Jesus again repeats His statement made to the crowd, this time the second half; notice verse 20: "And He was saying, 'That which proceeds out of the man, that is what defiles the man.'"

Now in the verses that follow He's going to explain what He means; look at verse 21: "For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed the evil thoughts." From within, by this He doesn't mean from the body, He's already excluded that; He means out of the heart, which is what he says here. From man's immaterial nature, from his soul. And notice what proceeds: evil thoughts.

Most commentators agree that that expression is sort of the one that sits at the head, and all the rest of the sins here flow out of that. The evil thoughts is sort of the beginning of our problem. In the heart, there are these evil thoughts. The Greek words translated evil thoughts are literally, the dialogismos, the evil ones. You recognize the word dialogue, our English word dialogue in there? The evil dialogue. This word pictures the thoughts of our hearts as a kind of internal dialogue.

Now maybe I'm the only person here - I know this isn't true - who's ever done this, but if you've ever had an argument with yourself in your own mind? That's a dialogue; that's what He's talking about; there's this dialogue that goes on, unfortunately, because we are fallen, often that dialogue is an evil one. It's in man's heart, his immaterial nature, his soul, not his body that this evil internal dialogue takes place, and those evil thoughts, those evil dialogues, produce evil actions.

What follows then are 12 kinds of sins. Most of these are found in the Septuagint but notice the list. The first set of six is this: fornications. Out of these evil thoughts, out of these evil dialogues, flow these kinds of sins.

• Fornications: that describe all illicit sexual sin with another person or entity.

• Thefts: taking from others what doesn't belong to you.

• Murders.

• Adulteries: that's a married person's voluntary sexual intercourse with someone other than his or her spouse.

• Deeds of coveting: it's a very general expression. It could refer to just coveting things you don't have or in this context since there're sexual sins around it, it may refer to sexual coveting or lusting.

• Wickedness: this is a word that literally means "deliberate, malicious, hateful acts." Deliberately, malicious, hateful acts.

Then there's the second set of six. He goes on to say.

• Deceit: that is when you bate someone for your advantage; you deceive them for your own advantage or to do them harm.

• Sensuality: that is a lack of self-control in which a person gives in not merely to sexual sin, but to an unrestrained, unashamed life given over to the pursuit of debauchery.

• Envy: it's an interesting Greek expression. You've ever heard of the expression "the evil eye?" That's where this comes from, that's what it literally says in the Greek text; the evil eye. In Greek thinking and in first-century thinking, it was looking at another person with displeasure, because of who he is or what he has. In other words, you were wanting him not to have that, or you were wanting to have it yourself; the evil eye.

• Slander: this is the word for blaspheme. When it's to God it's blaspheme, when it's to human beings it's abusive speech, name-calling. We call it verbal abuse today. It's either directed to that person, or to someone else about that person behind their back.

• Pride: this is literally arrogance; seeing yourself as better, more capable, greater than others.

• Foolishness: this is a disposition, this isn't talking just about a child's foolishness where he just hasn't learned yet how to function. This is the kind of childish foolishness and adult foolishness that is moral and spiritual insensitivity. As one commentator says, "He doesn't know God, and he doesn't want to know God." Foolishness.

That's not a full complete list. Jesus just lists 12 sins. And then He says this in verse 23: "All these evil things [and we could add others like them] proceed from within and defile the man." All these sins come out of our hearts, they are spawned by our evil internal dialogue, and they render us morally unclean before God.

Rather than being contaminated by outside influences like the Pharisees thought, we, in fact, contaminate everything we touch. The Pharisees and scribes had gotten it all backward. They thought they were clean until something outside made them unclean; Jesus says in reality, human beings are unclean until something outside makes them clean. William Lane, one of the commentators writing on this passage says, "The capacity for fellowship with God is not destroyed by uncleanness of food or hands, it is destroyed by personal sin." And that sin issues flows out of the heart, spews out of the heart, just as a volcano spews out its lava.

What Jesus was teaching here in this passage, was what theologians call total depravity; it's part of what would be called original sin. And when we say original sin, here's kind of a summary: you hear that expression original sin, perhaps from time to time; theologians use it. It involves two things: imputed guilt. That is, when you were born, you were born with Adam's guilt imputed or credited to you. You were born guilty; you bore the guilt of Adam's sin because he was your representative and mine. But you were also born, as I was, with inherited pollution or corruption; not merely guilt for Adam's sin, but pollution, corruption of who I was. And that really has two parts to it, what theologians call total depravity, and what they call total inability; inability being, you can't please God, you can't do anything that pleases God.

Now because this is so misunderstood, let me just remind you of something we studied when we went through this together. Total depravity does not mean that people act as bad as they really are by nature. Why? Well because God has put restraining forces around us, and that keeps people from demonstrating their badness fully. It doesn't mean that every sinner will indulge in every form of sin. It doesn't mean that people have no knowledge of God and His law; they have no functioning conscience. It doesn't mean that sinful people don't admire things that are good and virtuous. And it doesn't mean that every sinner is as depraved as he possibly can become. That's not what it means.

So what does it mean? It does mean that the corruption that is inherent in every human being permeates every part of us, every faculty, and power, of both our soul and body. Total means complete, it touches every part. There is no part of who you are, there is no part of who I am, that is not touched by our inherent corruption or depravity.

And secondly, it means there is nothing spiritually good in us at all. What it means is, that we don't sin because of something outside of us. We sin because of who we are because we are inherently evil, we are totally affected by sin in every part. That's what Jesus was teaching.

Now I want us to consider in the time we have left, the practical and theological implications of what Jesus taught here and they are huge. First of all and very importantly, don't try to attain true moral purity without dealing with the heart. That's what the Pharisees tried. But they had a flawed view of man and a flawed view of sin. As Ken Hughes says, "They treated the symptoms of sin with their legalism, but they left the root cause untouched."

Same thing happens today. There are no Pharisees walking around here with phylacteries on their arms, with longer tassels on their robes, but people are still trying to attain true moral purity without dealing with their hearts. How? One way is by isolationism. They conclude that the real problem we have is being contaminated from the outside, so let's isolate ourselves to protect ourselves. Parents can be especially guilty of this. Parents, you cannot protect your children from sin by isolating them, because you can't protect them from themselves. Ultimately, you can't blame and I can't blame my children's choices on their friends or their school or their teachers or their movies or their music. Now don't misunderstand me. I don't mean that we shouldn't protect them from evil influences – we should. As parents we better warn them, we better try to protect them from evil, outside influences but not because those influences are going to somehow contaminate their otherwise pristine hearts. We better protect them from those outside influences, because their hearts are so inherently sinful, like their parents' hearts, that those evil influences will awaken their lusts, and strengthen the hold of sin in their lives. That's why we protect our children; not to preserve their innocence, but to keep their sin from having more avenues in which to manifest itself. Isolationism doesn't work. If you have the mindset, you're going to keep them from being contaminated, you're going to preserve their pristine hearts; they don't have any.

Secondly, moralism or self-reformation. Here's another way people try to attain true moral purity without dealing with the heart. Just change your external behavior. The world is filled with people attempting to make changes like that. You probably have people in your life who are trying to do that. Legalism as a way of salvation. I can produce my own righteousness by my own efforts, and God will be pleased. Ritualism, baptism, such as is practiced by the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Church, and some Churches of Christ. Legalism as a way of sanctification; making rules that focus on external behavior as a path not to salvation, but to true holiness, to true sanctification.

I grew up in a kind of fundamentalism that embraced this. There're some in the homeschool movement that have embraced this as well. In the secular environment values education is a way to try to change people without changing their hearts. Don't try to change people without changing their hearts. The problem with all of those is that none of them address the fundamental issue of all moral defilement before God – the heart.

Now that brings us to a second practical implication. Understand this: our hearts are always the real problem every time we choose to sin. The problem is not anything external; it's not my environment, it's not the people around me, it's not the internet, it's not my spouse. Jesus lived in the same kind of evil environment in which we live, but He lived without sin. The problem is not the enemy without; our problem is the traitor within. As that cartoon figure Pogo said so many years ago, "We have met the enemy, and it is us."

Jeremiah 17:9, "The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; Who can understand it?" It's terminally ill is what Jeremiah said. Our hearts deceive us. You cannot trust your heart to tell you the truth; those evil thoughts, that evil dialogue that goes on will convince you that it's okay; God will be happy, you'll be happy.

Our sin and this is a startling thought, but our sin is not an aberration. I don't know about you, but when I sin I find myself thinking something like this: "I can't believe I did that! That was stupid." What's the implication of that? "I'm really a better person than the choice I just made." And of course, as a believer, there's a sense in which that's true because I'm new in Christ. But there's another sense in which it's not. The truth is that sin is a very accurate reflection of who we are apart from the grace of God. The problem is always us.

Number three. The source of all our sin comes from a fallen heart and its evil thoughts and desires, and those evil thoughts translate into actions. In fact, look over to James. James sort of gives you an outline of how this works. James chapter 1, he says, verse 13, "Let no one say when he is tempted, 'I am being tempted by God; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone." So it's not God, so how does it happen? Verse 14 of James 1,

Each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust [his own craving, that's part of his fallenness]. Then when lust has conceived [he uses language of pregnancy here, when that craving conceives], it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished [that is when it becomes full grown], it brings forth death.

That's the process. Evil craving issues forth in sin, which issues forth in practice and habit, which issues forth in death.

Now, if we were to use the analogy of a tree and sort of identifying what's going on in our hearts, we could say the soil is our heart. The root is our evil thoughts, and the fruit of the sins that we commit that flow out of those evil thoughts, that evil dialogue. Very important to understand that. You have your heart is a problem, the root is the evil thoughts, that's a problem, and the sins that we commit are the fruit that comes out of all that.

So, number four. When we deal with sin in our lives we must address it at all of those levels. First, our hearts must be completely changed in regeneration. You cannot change without God changing your heart. To use the New Testament images of regeneration, we must be born again, we must be raised from spiritual death, we must be recreated by God into a new creation. But even after that, we still retain the flesh, a portion of us that remains unredeemed, that has its beachhead in our unredeemed bodies, so that remaining sin in our lives as Christians has to be dealt with at both the root and the fruit levels.

Let me see if I can illustrate this. Let's take someone who's struggling with abusive speech toward someone; what we would call verbal abuse. Abusive speech, slander, as it's here in Jesus' words. The external sin, the fruit, is that abusive speech. But if all you do is deal with your sin at that level, and obviously translate this into whatever your specific sin struggles are, that's the point of the illustration. If all you do is deal with it at the fruit level you can pluck as many pieces of fruit off that tree as you want, and it's going to keep reproducing, it's going to keep putting the fruit back on the tree. You've got to deal with it beyond that. Yes, deal with it at the fruit level, but then you've got to go further. And internal sin, connected with abusive speech, still another fruit, might be sinful anger at that person. So, maybe the one fruit is abusive speech, and internal sin connected with that, still a fruit, is anger. You use that abusive speech because you're angry with them. So then you've got to go beneath that. What is the root that prompts the anger and the abusive speech? What are the evil thoughts, the evil dialogue that enters into your heart, that has led you there? Well, it varies with different people, but let me just choose one that's not uncommon. A husband, using abusive speech with his wife because he has concluded this in his evil internal dialogue: I have a right to be respected. She's not going to disrespect me! And so, anger builds when he feels he's being disrespected, and that anger pours out in another fruit of abusive speech.

If I'm going to address the sin in my life, let's assume this is it, by God's grace this isn't one that I struggle with, but it is a common one, we all have sins that we struggle with. Whatever yours is, whatever mine is, we have to address it the same way. We have to address not merely the fruit, we have to go back to the root and deal with the root thinking – why am I angry? What thinking, what are the evil thoughts that have led me to these actions? And deal with it at that level, or it will simply grow back and manifest itself in some other way. I have to address my sin at all those levels if I'm going to deal successfully with my sin.

So when you look at your own life, I would encourage you to do something very practically. Tonight, sometime this week, spend some time, get alone, ask yourself this question: What are the greatest sin struggles I have in my life? That, I can promise you this, what you put on that list, what you make a list of in your mind at least, those will be fruit. You've got to go beneath that to find what you're thinking, the evil thoughts that are issuing in those sins, and you've got to cut it off at every level. But first, you've got to make sure you're in Christ, you have a new heart that can embrace the truth and can embrace Christ.

Number five. We are really personally guilty before God at all those levels. Understand this: at the evil thought level, at the internal fruit level, where it's just inside me, and at the external fruit level where it pours over into the lives of others, at every one of those levels I am guilty before God. I desperately need His grace. I need the grace of regeneration to give me a new heart; as Ezekiel said, "God give me a new heart, put a new spirit within me, remove the heart of stone from my flesh, and give me a heart of flesh." Every person starts there. I have to begin there, with a new heart, but I also need the grace of forgiveness when I sin as a Christian. I need the grace of sanctification to grow in real moral purity. In other words, I need God's grace, and where do I get God's grace for these things? The answer is in so many passages. Paul ends most of his letters with a clear statement of this reality. You know what he says in all of those passages I put on the screen? "May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you." The grace of regeneration, the grace of forgiveness when we sin as Christians, the grace of sanctification to grow in real moral purity, all comes to us from God through Jesus Christ.

Here's the point I want you to get; please don't miss this. You know what Jesus' statement in Mark 7 was designed to do? When He said, "Your real problem is your heart. It's something inside of you that you have no capacity to change." You know what Jesus intended to do by that statement? He intended to send us running to Him because He is our only hope. By His grace, He can change us at all of those levels. And He's the only one who can. You know you can't; if you've tried, and you probably have, you know you don't have the capacity to change yourself. It takes the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, manifests in regeneration, in forgiveness, in sanctification, and ultimately in glorification, when we're completely made like Him.

I hope tonight, your only hope of true change at the heart level, is in Jesus Christ. I hope you're not depending on some method to prop up your soul; it won't work, because everything that comes out of you, and out of me, defiles us, because of our hearts, and only Christ can make that change. Let's pray together.

Father, our only hope of standing in Your presence is to be clean. Only the pure in heart will see You, Scripture tells us. And Father, we have no capacity to make ourselves pure, we have no capacity to change our hearts, to change our lives. We thank You, O God for Your grace to us in Christ. We thank You that even this statement that is so hard, for Jesus tells us we're the real problem, is filled with grace because it pushes us toward Him, it causes our souls to run in desperation to the only One who has the power to make these changes. Lord, we've seen in all through the Gospel of Mark already, we've seen Him touch people and change them, we've seen Him work miracles on the outside and we've seen Him work miracles on the inside. And so we come like so many we've seen already in the Gospel of Mark, running to Christ, crying out, "O Lord, heal me, change me, at the heart level. Make me like Yourself."

O Lord Jesus, we thank You that You are our hope, and it's not a faint hope either, it's a certain hope; because someday we will awake in Your likeness. Lord until that day, help us to use the means You've given us, Your Word and Your Spirit and the church and prayer and all of the things You prescribe for us. Lord help us to use those, understanding that we can't change ourselves but by Your grace, You can change us and will change us until someday, we morally look just like You. O, Father, we long for the day when we look like Your Son, and we reflect His glory. To His praise, we pray in His name, amen.