It becomes increasingly obvious as we read through the gospel of Mark, what a vast difference there was between the religious leaders of his day and Jesus himself. They had the God-given laws and the inspired scriptures. Yet when God’s only son comes to earth there is this vast difference in their attitudes and understanding to that of Jesus.

To put it simply, they had different priorities to Jesus. They had somehow drifted away from the priorities of loving God and loving their neighbour to regarding the most important thing as making sure that everyone complied with their rules and regulations.

And it was a problem that was by no means new. Isaiah had had to contend with the same attitudes in religious leaders over 700 years earlier. The problem was that their religion was far too shallow. They paid lip service to God, but they didn’t love God; their hearts were far from him.

It’s a problem that we see today in all walks of life. Human nature has this tendency today. Keep the rules, follow procedure, pass the responsibility or blame for as much as possible onto other people. That is what Jesus critics were doing. The teachers of the law had come down from Jerusalem to Galilee; not because they wanted to listen to and learn from Jesus, but because they were intent on finding fault with him.

And if you look for faults you will always find something that you can criticise. But Jesus will not let them get away with this unchallenged. The Jewish religious leaders had developed a highly complex set of rules and regulations that they imposed on their fellow Jews. They were an extension of certain aspects of the Old Testament law, but they went far beyond the requirements of the law.

In their zeal for promoting these men made rules they were neglecting vital aspects of God’s law. Still today our society makes the mistake of thinking that the answer to societies’ ills is more rules and regulations, more dos and don’ts. Have you also noticed how along with all the new rules and regulations there is a tendency to discard and abandon the God given laws of scripture?

I’m not arguing for a legalistic religion, or that the Ten Commandments should be enforced with Old Testament penalties. Jesus brought grace and forgiveness into our way of relating to God and he brings a freedom. But it’s a freedom to embrace God’s law of love in our hearts, to live by it and to teach it as Jesus did. There is a tendency in our liberal society that wants to silence the challenge of the gospel that calls people to repentance, forgiveness and holiness.

2000 years after Jesus, there is still a tendency to discard the law of God in favour of our sophisticated rules and regulations. God’s requirements of mankind have always been based on love. Not the shallow sentimental love that ultimately is only self –love; but committed, faithful love that is willing to sacrifice self-interest for God and others.

Jesus gives an example of the way that the religious people of his day used to avoid their responsibility to honour their parents. Apparently they had a procedure whereby individuals could dedicate their possessions to God. It did not mean that they had to actually give the assets away; they could still have the benefit of them personally. What it did mean was that they could avoid their responsibility to support their parents, however needy they might be because they had ‘given their wealth to God’.

That’s what Jesus is talking about in verses 9-13; the law of Corban and he says that that is just one of many ways that religious establishment of the day were ignoring God’s ways in favour of their own warped home-made rules and regulations.

This also has an application for us in the church. People always have a tendency to degenerate from God’s ideals; we have an inclination to stray away from the teaching of Jesus in favour of traditions and rules that are less challenging. Religious rules and traditions can even become an excuse for avoiding truly following Jesus.

Just as Jesus challenged and discarded the man made rules of his day, as far as the Pharisees and teachers of the law were concerned he threw their rule book out of the window, we should beware of imposing rules that are not of him. Christians have often made God's love too narrow with false limits of their own. Over its history the church has often been oppressive or coercive, when what Jesus taught was a willingly imposed self-discipline. Being zealous at imposing rules and regulations or even excellent at keeping the rules and regulation is just a sham, without a right relationship to God and without a sincere love for our neighbour.

But then Jesus goes on to define where the source and root of sin are. The source of sin is in the human heart. The teachers of the law had got it all wrong. They thought that the source of sin was in other people, generally speaking they thought the gentiles were the source of sin, and if you washed your hands after any contact with them, or shook the dust off your feet when you left their territory then you were OK, you were acceptable to God.

But Jesus says that it's not at all like that. Sin doesn’t come into our lives from the outside, from eating unclean food or contact with sinful people. Sin is something that is there in the human heart. That is the thing that makes people unclean. It’s from our hearts that the thoughts and actions come that make us unclean. Jesus gives a whole list of these things; evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. That is the reason that Jesus had to die on the cross. He had to die to cleanse our hearts from sin.

The problem is not the company we keep or our failure to keep all the rules. The problem is our sinful nature. Then Jesus says something that is quite revolutionary.
'Nothing that enters a man from outside can make him unclean.' Jesus is changing God's Old Testament law.

God had given the Jewish people laws relating to food they could and could not eat. It was part of what made them distinct as God's chosen people. God had also given them laws about worship and sacrifice as a way to deal with the problem of sin. But all of theses things were only temporary arrangements. They were only preparatory, like the scaffolding around a new building under construction.

They were necessary only until God revealed his plan of salvation. And God's plan of salvation was now coming together in Jesus. Jesus had come to abolish the old way of how people were to deal with the problem of the sin that separated them from God.

People's sins would no longer be atoned for by animal sacrifices, but by the sacrificial death of Jesus on the cross for the sin of the world. People would no longer be defined as belonging to God by which race they were born into, or by the type of food they ate, but by the fact that they share in a meal that symbolised that they gratefully accepted that Christ's body had been broken for them, and that his blood had been shed for them. Jesus had come to change the rules.

Then Mark goes on to tell of the events that occur after that. Jesus moves on to the vicinity of Tyre. Tyre is on the Mediterranean coast and is actually in gentile territory. He probably did it because he wanted to escape the crowds and have time and space to teach his disciples, but it is a reminder that Jesus was quite happy to move into gentile territory.

Even here Jesus gets no peace. A distressed woman arrives who had a young daughter who was demon possessed. She begs Jesus to heal her. Now Jesus was consistently clear in his earthly ministry that God had sent him to minister to the Jewish people. His travels outside of Judea and Galilee were still focused primarily to the Jews, although he does travel through Samaria to get from Jerusalem to Galilee. In this instance he is in gentile territory, but its with a view to having time to teach his disciples before returning to public ministry.

It's important to us to remember that Jesus didn't try to do everything. His feet in ancient times are unlikely to ever have walked upon England's mountains green. It's important that we remember that because there is the danger that we can lack focus. Some Christians try to do everything and end up achieving nothing. We have to discern the tasks that God calls us to and be willing to faithfully stick at that. Jesus’ focus was on the 12 men he had called to be his disciples, and on his ministry to the people of God; although when gentiles came to him in humility he never turned them away.

He doesn't turn this lady away. He responds to her faith, his power goes out to deliver her daughter but no, his priority at this time is not to be taken up with healing an endless stream of sick and demon possessed from the gentile world. His priority is to teach the disciples who he will then send into all the world to preach and heal in his name.

Then finally Jesus heals a man who is deaf and dumb. We could say a lot about it, but briefly, Jesus action are probably his way of communicating with a deaf person, it's no good speaking because he can't hear, looking up to heaven is probably to tell the man that his healing will come from God. The commentators say there is a spiritual lesson hear, it teaches us that by his power Jesus is able to open the ears of those who are spiritually deaf to God if they come seeking his help; I'm sure that is true.

Yet the truth remains, Jesus performed miracles. Someone told me this week of a pastor in Chelmsford who is able to go up to people he doesn't know, tell them what their ailments and problems are, pray for them and they are instantly healed. That's wonderful if it's true. But my experience, and the experience for most of us I suspect is that we rarely see that sort of miracle. The miracles mark Jesus out as the unique and only Son of God, the one who does all things well.

But he call us to love and worship God, and then to make the thrust of our lives not an egocentric pursuit of keeping rules and regulations or even criticising others who don't manage to keep the rules.

Jesus calls us to make the purpose of our lives to be expressions of love and service to others. Jesus reaches out in love across the barriers of race and culture that divide mankind to help a pagan mother. Jesus uses sign language to reach out to and heal a man who before had been deaf to everything.

His ministry wasn’t ultimately motivated by rules, his ministry was based on the life-giving power of the love of God. As we have said: he calls us not to a life of rules and regulations that don’t change our sinful hearts. Rather, when we receive him, by his Spirit he changes our hearts. He puts the love of God there to motivate and direct all we do. He invites us to abide, to remain plugged in that his love will be a continual stream flowing out from us to God and others.

Not many Christians do miracles of healing, but hundreds of thousands work as doctors and nurses to bring healing and help to men and women in hospitals and communities across the world; millions in their daily lives and by their actions and often their words of witness point people to Jesus and his love for them.

Jesus calls us to have our hearts right with God, through repentance, through the cleansing of his blood, and he sends us to speak his truth, and to show his love where he has called us to be. May we know his strength and his guidance as we seek to do that in the coming week.
 

Amen.

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