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Battle Creek Tabernacle SDA Church

Chris Holland

Mothers, Daughters, and The Great Physician

May all who come behind us find us faithful.

That the footprints that we leave would lead people to believe.

That the lives that we live would inspire others to obey.

The apostle Paul, this, the aroma of life leading to life.

Will we as a congregation be that aroma in Battle Creek that changes society so much that it leads people to lead a life of obedience to God and an inspiration for them to believe in the 1 and only Savior, Jesus Christ.

Heavenly Father, as we are about to open your word, we want to understand your word and be transformed by it.

And so Lord we pray we know that your Holy Spirit has been here and we pray that your Holy Spirit would be here in even greater mess in even greater measure as we study the text.

If you have your Bibles, I would encourage you to open to Mark the 7th chapter.

Here in Mark chapter 7 the Bible says beginning in verse 24 these words, from There he arose and went to the region of Tyre and Sidon, and he entered a house and wanted no 1 to know it, but he could not be hidden.

For a woman whose young daughter had an unclean spirit heard about him, and she came and fell at his feet.

The woman was a Greek, a Syrophoenician by birth.

She kept asking him to cast the demon out of her daughter.

But Jesus said to her, let the children be filled first, for it is not good to take the children's bread and throw it to the little dogs.

And she answered and said to him, yes, Lord, yet Even the little dogs under the table eat from the children's crumbs.

Then he said to her, For this saying, go your way.

And when she had come home, rather when she had come to her house, she found the demon gone out and her daughter lying in the bed.

The passage begins with the words from there.

This is a continuation of a series of events in the life of Jesus.

In fact, some of the most dramatic moments in the life of Jesus.

He had sent the disciples on the Sea of Galilee after feeding the 5, 000.

You'll remember because they wanted to take him and make him king.

And so he sent his disciples across the Sea of Galilee where they encountered a storm of great magnitude.

And then Jesus walked on the water and encountered them.

Then they came to the place of Gennesaret where Jesus healed the people.

And then after that, Jesus had a very important confrontation with the Pharisees and scribes that is the very foundation piece to understanding this passage.

This passage is 1 of the most misunderstood passages because Jesus speaks in a way that we do not expect that he would have spoken.

Just prior to this event, The Pharisees and the scribes had come from Jerusalem and they came really with 1 purpose.

Jesus was gaining followers and this was a threat to them.

And so in Mark chapter 7 and in verse 2, the Bible says this, now when they, speaking of the scribes and the Pharisees, saw some of his disciples eat bread with defiled, that is with unwashed hands, they found fault.

Now later in verse 5, they asked Jesus a question.

Then the Pharisees and scribes asked him, why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat bread with unwashed hands?

The scribes and the Pharisees are disturbed because the disciples are seemingly not following the rituals as had been outlined by the Pharisees.

A ritualistic approach that you needed to wash your hands on the occasion that somehow, someway in the market, you might have touched or come in contact with something or someone that was unclean, which would then make your hands unclean, which would then make the food that you were about to be unclean, which would then therefore make you unclean.

And if that sounds a little bit ridiculous, it is.

And in verse 8, Jesus actually rebuked the scribes and the Pharisees of chapter 7 of the book of Mark and said, for laying aside the commandment of God, you hold the tradition of men, the washing of pitchers and cups, and many other such things you do." See the problem was that the scribes and the Pharisees in their effort of holiness and piety had gone far beyond what the law of God had outlined.

And in fact, Jesus then speaks to the Pharisees to demonstrate to them how hypocritical they are, because Jesus then says you dishonor your parents through keeping these traditions and he showed them their hypocrisy and how that tradition that they were keeping that they were so devoted to keeping, had really made of none effect the law of God.

And then in the verses following, verses 14 to 23 of Mark 7, Jesus said the following, When he had called all the multitude to himself he said to them, Hear me everyone and understand.

There is nothing that enters a man from the outside which can defile him, but the things which come out of him, those are the things that defile a man.

If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.

When he had entered a house away from the crowd, his disciples asked him concerning the parable so he said to them are you thus without understanding also do you not perceive that whatever enters a man from the outside cannot defile him because it does not enter his heart but his stomach and is eliminated thus purifying all foods.

And he said what comes out of a man that defiles a man for from within out of the heart of men proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness.

All these evil things come from within and defile a man.

Now commentators, scholars, Bible teachers, and others, when they study this passage, miss the whole point of these verses.

Somehow, some way, when they apply these verses, they apply it to Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14 and see that Jesus is doing away from that.

However, we see with Peter later in the book of Acts, that in fact, that has not been done away with.

What is Jesus trying to help us understand?

Jesus was in fact not calling into question any of the laws of the Old Testament, but was rather denying the validity of the oral tradition, and here specifically the tradition of the Pharisees to declare food eaten as unclean when it is eaten with improperly washed hands.

And this is what Jesus calls the commandments of men.

And he makes a clear distinction between the commandments of men and the commandments of God.

The problem that Jesus is dealing with here has nothing to do with the kind of food eaten, but what Jesus was dealing with is the way in which it was to be eaten.

However, the bigger concern that Jesus is emphasizing is not what goes into a man or a woman, but what comes out.

Jesus is affirming that moral defilement, that which actually makes you unclean, is the breaking of his law and has vastly greater consequences than not ritualistically washing your hands.

But I want you to not miss, because this sets the context of the words that Jesus uses in the story we are about to study.

Not only does Jesus emphatically state that it is what comes out of a man, what comes out of a woman that defiles him.

When he says what comes out of a man, that defiles a man.

For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, so on and so forth.

But Jesus was preparing his disciples for a lesson that would take years for some of them to understand.

And this is the lesson that Jesus was trying to initiate.

The differentiation of a people or a people group as clean or unclean is not valid.

It is a lesson that Peter specifically learned years later when in the book of Acts he has a dream and in that dream he is told to go and kill and eat animals that were all unclean.

By the way this happened well after the death of Jesus which meant that Peter still understood there was a differentiation between clean and unclean animals.

And God spoke at the end of that dream and said, what God has cleansed, you must not call common.

And by no coincidence, what happened immediately following, A Gentile came inviting Peter to come to his house and teach the gospel message.

And what was Peter's conclusion at the end of that?

Was his conclusion that, oh, God says now I can just eat whatever I want to eat.

Peter's conclusion and application as found in Acts 10, 34, and 35, Peter stated, in truth I perceive that God shows no partiality, but in every nation." How many nations?

Whoever fears him and works righteousness is accepted by him." This was a dramatic departure for individuals of the time who believed that salvation was only of the Jews and only if you were literally a descendant of Abraham, somehow, someway you had Abraham's blood, that it is only in that way that you could be saved.

But Peter applies this dream and no doubt the passage that we are about to study prepared him for that dream, that the Gentiles were just as worthy of the gospel as the Jews.

And it's in that context that we now return to Tyre and Sidon.

Mark 7 verse 24, from there he arose and he went to the region of Tyre and Sidon and he entered a house and wanted no 1 to know it.

But he could not be hidden for a woman whose young daughter had an unclean spirit heard about him.

The word used is the word that generally described Gentiles, outsiders.

But not only was she not a Jew, she was a Syrophoenician.

From the region of Tyre and Sidon, this is problematic.

Because throughout the scripture, Tyre and Sidon are linked not only as an area of Gentiles, but as whose inhabitants, according to the historian Josephus, were the bitterest enemies of the Jews.

What's the point being made by Mark as he records this story?

You're dealing with a woman that we might call the worst of the worst, the bottom of the barrel In the eyes of Jews.

And Jews at that time in the first century, without a question, without a shadow of a doubt demonstrated great prejudice against anyone who was not a Jew.

Some will sometimes say, but isn't that what the Old Testament said?

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Mothers, Daughters, and The Great Physician

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