The Enemy Within

Mark 7:14-23

13^th Sunday after Pentecost ~ September 3, 2006

Jesus said, “Hear me, all of you, and understand: These words mark the beginning of our text today from the Gospel of Mark. Jesus wants us to pay attention to what he is going to say, that it is something important about the kingdom of God. And this is what He says, “There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him.” (Mark 7:14-16, ESV)

Wow. These are hard words to hear! Jesus is saying that within us is the true enemy. These words of Jesus are part of the challenge that has been posed to Him by the Pharisees as the crowds are watching. Jesus, and his disciples weren’t following the “tradition of the elders” or the laws and customs designed by the religious leaders to help people obey God’s command. But what these laws were doing was placing blame outside of one’s self for being unclean. A good Jew would ritually wash after encountering non-Jews. They would pick and choose the right foods (some are bad and some are good). They would do all kinds of things to remove from their lives the very things they feared would make them unclean.

But Jesus turns that all upside down. Instead of looking outside ourselves and seeing other people and things that make us unclean, Jesus says look to your own heart. Look inside yourself and there you will see the ugliness of sin. “For from within, out of the heart of man, come 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.” (Mark 7:21-23, ESV) The important teaching is a harsh one – we are all sinful human beings. Out of our hearts comes evil. We are all born into sin and in sin do we live our lives. Not a pleasant teaching that instill joy. But it is the truth. We are all sinful.

In the verses before our text today Jesus calls the Pharisee’s “hypocrites.” This word has come to be known as a negative slam against someone’s personality but the root of this word came from Greek theater. In Greek theater there would often be many parts to a play but only a limited number of actors, so each actor would have to play several parts. To distinguish each part the actor would put on a different mask for each role – he would be a hypocrite or a different person than he was before. Jesus is saying to the Pharisee’s, the disciples, the crowd and to you and me – stop pretending to be perfect, or to think that you can keep sin at bay.

As many of you may know I have been in Clinical Pastoral Education for several years now. This education focused on the psychology and sociology of Pastoral Care. We learn from the sciences of human condition. In my learning we talked about basic brain functions. When studying how we process thoughts and ideas and events we can see many ways the brain function. Basically there are several levels that an experience is processed by the brain. The lowest level is called “primary process.” This is the gut level feelings and emotions and is often most carnal in nature. Things like survival and meeting physical needs are part of the primary process. Things like hunger, fear, anger and sexual desires are primary processes. Once we experience things we first see it through our primary process and decide that we need to do something – that leads to higher levels of thinking which more learned behaviors are. Viewing the primary process of a person and exploring what is going on often leads to seeing dark ideas, and ugly inclinations. It is the higher functions of the brain that control’s the primary process, but it is still there in our lives. What we learn form this science is that we are all capable of the worst behaviors imaginable. We like to hide it, but it is still there. We like to think we are better, but really we can be dragged down at any moment. This became clear for me as a foster parent. At first, when an abused child comes into my home I wanted to label the parents as bad people. But after being frustrated as a parent, while not acting out, I could see that the ugliness of sin is right there in me as well.

Science views these as mere behaviors that can go positive or negative in result. But Jesus goes deeper than science and tells us that our primary process has been corrupted by sin. Jesus explains this clearly in His Sermon on the Mount in Mathew, here again challenging the Pharisees. Jesus says that someone may not have murdered and therefore feels as though he hasn’t broken the commandment. But if you hate a person (primary process) you have already broken the commandment. Or you say you haven’t committed adultery (actually had sex outside of marriage) but by looking at another person with lust (primary process) you have broken the commandment. Basically Jesus is making the Law of God much stricter and more personal. He is saying we all are guilty of sin in our lives; no escaping it, no hiding it, it is there in each and every one of us. We are sinners!

And then our Gospel lesson leaves us there; leaves us hanging. We are sinners, now what? The Gospel. We need to see our sin to know our need for a Savior. Jesus, our Savior, shows us our sin. Hoe ironic today that the Gospel comes from the Old Testament, from the Psalm for the day. The Old Testament, usually associated with the Law of God, also contains the Gospel message we need.

Psalm 51 was written by King David after are particularly big scandal in his life – infidelity. King David, revered by the people as a great King and man of God was also a sinner. One day David saw a beautiful woman, Bathsheba, bathing on a roof top. He lusted after her and gave in to his passion and took this married woman for himself. Not only that, he had her husband sent to the front lines of battle to be killed. Murder and adultery, David gave into the sinful nature and defiled himself and the people around him. So what was David going to do? At first he hid from this sin but soon, through Nathan, he confessed his sin and turned to God for help. He then penned these words:

Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin!

Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit. (Psalm 51:2, 7, 10-12, ESV)

David knew that his sin made him unclean in the eyes of God. He knew that there was only one way to make himself clean again – only by the power of God. David knew his sin, a sin that came from within him. No one made him sleep with Bathsheba or have her husband killed. It was the things that came from his heart. But David also knew that God could help him. God was the only answer to our problem of sin. In fact, God loved us so much and wanted to cleanse us from our sin that he sent His son Jesus to atone for our sins. The ugly, sinful nature inside of us has a penalty – death. Jesus took that penalty for us and died on the cross. In him we have forgiveness and new life. In Him we are made clean. We are sinners; the enemy is within us. No more being hypocrites and pretending we are alright. Let’s confess our sinfulness, know that we can’t solve it on our own and make ourselves clean and let us turn to Jesus who is the only answer to our sinful selves.