Jesus’ Controversial Teachings

Now, what we’re doing every week here in the morning services is we’re looking at typical events from the life of Jesus out of the history of Jesus’ life, which we find in the Gospels, and we’re, in a sense, building a biography. And we really can’t go through a series like this without at least bringing out one of what you might call Jesus’ controversialist events.

Jesus debated, Jesus fought, Jesus argued with the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Herodians, the teachers of the law—people we would call religious and civil elites today. And so often, when you look at the argument, it’s so easy, superficially, when you read about these debates, to say, “Wow, this is not very relevant for us today. It’s of purely antiquarian interest. Who cares about the clean and the unclean laws and the ceremonial washings and the ablutions that the Jews observed? Who cares about that sort of thing?”

But Jesus never picked a fight unnecessarily. Jesus never debated something that wasn’t important, a universal, a profound principle, and that’s what we have here.

The Structure of the Passage

Now, there’s two ways—you might say, “Why did he choose such a large passage?”—and there’s two ways to do a passage like this. One is to try to deal with every single individual thought, which would take us too long. The other thing is to see the general gist. And what you have here is, in this very long passage, three basic sections.

In the first section, verses 1 to 5, we are introduced to the fact that we all have a deep sense of spiritual uncleanness, moral defilement. The Pharisees were not just obsessive-compulsive, always washing. There is such a thing as obsessive-compulsive disorder, but it’s an aggravation of something that is universal. We all have a sense of uncleanness, of defilement. And that’s what we see in the first few verses.

Then, from verse 6 down to at least verse 13, Jesus gives us an example—one particular example—of the way in which all of us are trying to deal with that uncleanness. Everybody, using different forms, tries to do self-cleansing. And Jesus shows a particular pattern, that particular pattern to the self-cleansing.

So, first of all, we’re shown that we all have a problem with this sense of spiritual uncleanness, and we all find a particular way of dealing with that uncleanness, trying to clean ourselves. And then lastly, verses 14 to 23, we’re told why that will never work and what will.

The Problem of Spiritual Uncleanness

Now, first of all, let me take a look at those three parts with you.

The first part—look at verses 1 to 5. We have here this discussion about the ceremonial washings. The Pharisees were very upset because Jesus’ disciples did not wash, and we’re told here in verse 3, “The Pharisees and the Jews do not eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial washing, holding to the tradition of the elders.”

Now, let’s talk about the issue then, but then immediately see why this is an abiding issue. The issue then was that the Pharisees were very strict about holding to the ceremonial laws of the Old Testament, in particular the clean laws.

When you read the clean laws in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, they’re really quite confusing to modern people, and they seem so unnecessary. And there’s many of them, and I’ll just give you some basic gist of them. In the Old Testament, you were not allowed to go into the tabernacle or into the temple to worship God if you had been in much contact with dirt, disease, or decay. Dirt, disease, or decay.

For example, the priests had to wash their hands and wash their feet before they came into the sanctuary. Here’s another example: if you touched a dead animal or a dead person, if you touched any dead animal or person, you could not go into the tabernacle to worship God for a week. Here’s another one, and this is really where it gets weird: if you had diarrhea, had an infectious skin disease, if you had a hemorrhage so that some part of your body was producing blood or pus in response to some sort of infection—in fact, if you even had in your home, on your clothes, or on any of your utensils, mildew—you couldn’t go worship.

There are also a set of foods you weren’t allowed to eat, especially for—and many of the foods we know now, like the shellfish that were forbidden, were foods that before refrigeration were particularly prone to infections and things growing. In other words, if you had a relationship to dirt, disease, or decay, you couldn’t go in.

And the thing that immediately strikes you today—you know what it strikes you as? Actually, for the first time, it really began to hit me as I was studying for this—that worship in the Old Testament, the worshiper in the Old Testament essentially had to have the same relationship to dirt that a doctor has going into surgery.

You’ll never see, for example, a doctor going from an autopsy and just go into brain surgery from there. He would have to—she would have to—go through the rites of purification. In other words, you had to scrub up to go into God in the Old Testament. There had to be all kinds of rites of purification. If you had any contact with decay, if you had any contact with anything that even might be decay or might be disease or dirt, you had to scrub and scrub all over the place. You had the same relationship in the Old Testament to God and to the tabernacle worship, excuse me, as the doctors today have to going into surgery.

The Meaning of the Clean Laws

Why? And see, we’re already getting there. The point is, the clean laws were there to teach something extremely important. God was saying—and actually, it’s easier for us to see now than it was for them, because we understand something about dirt and disease and decay more than the people in those days did—and that is that sin, sin does the same thing to the soul that dirt, disease, and decay do to the body. Sin defiles the soul the way dirt, disease, and decay defile the body.

Now, what does that mean? Here, for example, let’s think: how does dirt, disease, and decay defile a body? Well, let me give you three ways.

First of all, dirt, disease, and decay defile the body in the sense that it isolates you. It alienates you. If you go onto a subway car, and you may see a very poor person there, maybe probably a homeless person, and even if your worldview is incredibly, makes you very sympathetic to that person, tremendously sympathetic to that person, and in no way to think ill of that person, you can’t get within 10 feet of him. Why? Because the urine, because the feces, because the vomit, because all the stuff that’s on the clothes, you can’t even get near them. There’s hardly a culture in the world that doesn’t say this: if you want to meet people, if you want to get close to people, wash, clean up, because dirt defiles you, and of course infection defiles you. You can’t touch something that’s infectious, see. So it defiles you, and God is saying sin does the very same thing to relationships.

Secondly, I’ll give you another quick example, very quick. What does dirt, disease, and decay do? It eats away your insides. It’s cancerous, literally. I mean, actually, my wife explained this to me—I didn’t know this—but you know, actually dirt on clothing actually makes the clothing wear out faster. If you don’t keep your clothes clean because the dirt gets in and wears out the fabric through the friction and so forth, but you see it’s—but of course infection and decay literally pull the body apart, make it break down, and God is saying sin does the same thing. It makes the soul fall apart. It puts it at war with itself. Instead of cohering, it disintegrates.

And one more thing: dirt, disease, and decay discolor, stain, misshape, disfigure, just like cancer, just like mildew, just like these same things. What is God saying? God is saying, why do you have wars? Why do you have divorce? Why do you have conflicts at work? Why do you have internal dissension? Why do you have conflicts within your soul? Why is there twisting and perversion of your own humanity? Why do you see these things? Sin is what ails the world.

Now, do you believe that? That sin, you see, defiles you. It alienates you. It stains you.

The Universality of the Sense of Defilement

Now, you might not believe that. I only have a couple of minutes. I got to move on to the next point here, but I’ll tell you this: I know that that’s not a very—this whole idea that sin morally defiles you, stains you, makes you unclean—it’s not, it’s not a very sophisticated view.

I noticed this week I saw Woody Allen quip in the New York Times. Somebody asked Woody Allen, “Is sex dirty?” And Woody Allen said, “Only if you do it right.” And what is he doing? He’s making fun of the very idea that some things are dirty, some thoughts are dirty, some actions are dirty, you know, some words are dirty. We’re grown-up people now. We live in New York City. We’re over 30 years old. We, you know, we’re over—we’re adults.

And yet, you know, you can’t just quip this stuff away because over the years there is an almost universal and abiding testimony that people do not, when people, in spite of themselves, feel stained by sin.

Of course, you know, the most famous one is that place where Lady Macbeth, she takes part in murder. And afterwards, her guilt, the sense of defilement, is so strong that her mind cracks under it. And she walks around—one of the most pathetic figures in all of theater, of course—and she walks around and she says, “Out.” See, she’s pushing, she’s washing her hands. She looks at her hands and she’s stained. And she sees the blood on her hands and she walks around and she can’t get rid of it. And she says, “Out, out, damn spot. Out, I say.” And then she says, “Ah, hell is murky. Hell is muddy. All the perfumes in Arabia cannot sweeten this little hand.”

And, you know, Macbeth watches her going crazy under the sense of defilement, her husband. And he turns to a doctor and he says, “Canst thou not cleanse—oh yes, canst thou not with some sweet oblivious antidote, cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff which so weighs upon the heart?” She’s not clean. She needs some sweet oblivious antidote. She realizes that hell is murky. What does that mean? Hell is muddy. “I did something wrong. I did something wrong and I’m stained. I’m disfigured. I’m alienated.”

Now, you say, “Well, murder, all right, murder.” But, you know, I don’t feel—you have to decide what is dirty for you.

Listen, why do so many of you—why are so many of you such perfectionists you can’t delegate? You don’t want anybody to do it wrong. Why are some of you so driven to succeed? I’m trying to be gentle here. Why are some of you so obsessed with sleekness that you’ve got an eating disorder? Why is it that many, many of you are full of bitterness because you’re desperately trying to blame somebody else for why your life has gone the way it’s gone?

I’ll tell you why. You’re washing. You’re washing.

Look, Raskolnikov—remember, he was the great protagonist or whatever he was, the central figure of Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky—and he said, “You know, morality is all in the mind,” and he kills a woman who is bitter, who is hateful, who is hated, abused power, rich old woman, and then he feels defiled and he can’t get rid of it till he confesses.

And Raskolnikov, and 50 years later Jean-Paul Sartre, and 50 years after that, Foucault, and they all say, “Be bold. Create your own reality. Things are only dirty if they’re dirty to you, you see. Write your own scripts. Decide what’s right for you.” And yet, and you’re doing it, a lot of you are doing that, and yet you can’t get rid of a sense of condemnation and defilement, and there’s a voice that calls you a coward, calls you a fool, and you’re washing.

Come on. It’s there. It’s not just the Pharisees. Don’t laugh at the Pharisees. This is how they dealt with it. They’re always washing. So are you. So is Lady Macbeth. So are we all.

That’s the first point. Sin defiles, and we know it, and we know we’re defiled.

The Futility of Self-Cleansing

Now, what are we going to do about it? Well, the second point is here in verses 6 to 13. Jesus gives a very, very interesting analysis of how the Pharisees deal with that sense of uncleanness and, therefore, actually, a pattern for us all. Again, I’m not going to let us look down at the Pharisees today because Jesus—what Jesus is saying to us is the things that they do, so do we.

Now, he gives an example. The issue back then, then the issue now. The issue back then was that the disciples, Jesus’ disciples, were going against the tradition of the elders. And the tradition of the elders, which Mark makes little asides—you can tell here that the Gospel writer Mark, though he was Jewish, was writing to Greeks and Romans who didn’t know much about this. That’s why he has these little parentheses—but here’s what we can tell. You know, the tradition of the elders, which is the teachers of the law, decided to elaborate on what the law said about ceremonial purity.

For example, in the Old Testament, if you go back to Exodus, only the priests had to wash their hands and feet before they went in. Only the priests. Nobody else had to. But the teachers of the law said, “Well, if the priests have to do it, wouldn’t it be safe for us all to do it?” And then they went beyond that. And if you have to wash your hands before going into God at the tabernacle, wouldn’t it be safe if we always washed our hands before we ever prayed?

And next thing you know, what came up around all the ceremonial laws of the Old Testament was a vast, vast, huge number of very, very specific and all-comprehending rules and regulations, which were called the halakha, which means the fence around the law, and it’s the tradition of the elders. And it wasn’t in the Bible. It wasn’t something God had said. It was just a whole lot of rules and regulations around that.

But Jesus points out, first of all, that not only do they raise up many of their traditions and they make them every bit as absolutely necessary to obey as the law of God, but then, along with this obsession about rules comes the neglect of certain principles of God’s law. And one of them he mentions here is this. He says, “You’re supposed to honor your father and your mother.”

Now, without going into much detail, Leviticus 27 says that God owns everything you own. God’s claims on all of your wealth supersede anyone else’s claims. And on the basis of Leviticus 27, there was a tradition in the elders’ tradition that you could declare all of your wealth God’s and therefore not be able to feel like you say, “Well, I can’t give to the poor. I can’t give to my parents. I can’t help other people because this is God’s.” It would be very similar to somebody today giving 30, 40, 50 percent of their income away and then neglecting their own family.

And what Jesus is getting at is something that is much more universal. It’s not—you look at that and say, “What’s that got to do with us?” Everything.

Here’s what Jesus says. How do you deal with your uncleanness? Same way they do. You look at the law of God, and the law of God is very broad. Jesus mentions a whole slew of things in verse 23. You know that long list there at the end? These are all aspects of the Ten Commandments. “Don’t murder.” That’s murder and malice, you see. “Don’t lie.” That’s deceit. “Don’t commit adultery.” That’s lewdness and adultery. “Don’t steal.” That’s envy and theft. “Don’t covet.” That’s arrogance and greed.

Now, if you look at any list of everything God’s law says, you will always find something in there that you feel is very, very important and a lot of other things you don’t feel are important. And here’s what everybody does. We all do what the Pharisees do.

Let me give you a quick example in our modern day. Let’s talk about the culture wars just for a second. There’s three approaches to the culture wars that I know of. It covers almost everybody, and I don’t know where that leaves us.

First of all, you’ve got the liberals, and then you’ve got the conservatives, then you’ve got the beyondists.

Here’s what a liberal does. A liberal says, “Well, there’s certain things in the law of God that I consider hateful and defiling: greed, materialism, and prejudice.” They’re in the law of God. So we lift that up, and we also put a whole lot of other rules and regulations around it, and we say our kind of people and only our kind of people are inside our boundary. And people outside of this, we bash, we look down our nose at.

The conservatives—well, the conservatives are doing the same thing. Conservatives, they take part of the law of God. They take the sexual immorality, for example, you know. They take certain things. They take heresy, and they lift that up, and then they add all sorts of elaborations, and they kind of ignore things like materialism, greed, and prejudice.

And you see, whenever you lift up part of God’s law and elaborate it and you neglect other parts, you create a manageable law, a law you can obey, a law that you can get on top of, a law that’s doable. And then with it, you bash other people who are not doing it to justify yourself.

And then, of course, you’ve got the beyondists. And you know who the beyondists are? Beyondists are people who are saying, “I’m beyond the liberal and conservative, you see. I’m beyond politics. I’m beyond ideology. I’m too creative for that.” And of course, what you’re doing is you’re looking down your nose at them, which is what you have to do in order to deal with your uncleanness. It’s a way of washing.

And Jesus says, “You do many things like that.” And we all do it. And we’re desperately trying, but it doesn’t work.

The Radical Principle of Cleansing

And that’s the last point. Jesus says—it’s very intriguing—you know, I mean, I suppose you say, “Wow, that’s all extremely intriguing. You all do that. We’re all trying to cleanse ourselves in these ways, but it doesn’t work, and here’s why.”

First of all, Jesus lays down the principle. He says, because—he says it in verses 15, 17, and 23—“It is not what goes into a person that makes you unclean, but what comes out.” It’s not what comes in that defiles you. It’s not from outside in, but from inside out.

And this is incredibly profound. Listen, nobody understands this. Unless you really grasp the gospel, nobody else understands it. This is a radical principle. This would change the world.

First of all, nobody understands this. Let me give you some examples.

The philosophies of the world don’t understand this. They don’t understand that you can’t cleanse yourself because defilement does not come from outside in.

Let me give you one example. It’s easy to pick on. I’ll try to be nice. Marxism. Now, the reason I—it’s easy to pick on Marxism because socialism and communism virtually have collapsed. But, you know, I’ve been thinking about this lately. The people I read who were the disciples of Marx were not villains. They were not fools. They cared about people. And, you know, it’s easy for us to laugh at it since we live in America, but there’s vast millions of populations of people that have been in absolute serfdom and peasantry and poverty for years and years, and there’s no way they’re going to get out. There’s no upward mobility. And, you know, see, the people that read Marx said, “We’ve got to do something about this.” They weren’t fools. They weren’t villains.

But what was Marx’s mistake? He thought defilement came from outside. He said, “You know, the means of production were in the hands of the capitalists. If we put it in the hands of the workers, things will be different.” And you know what? He did. They did. And what happened? Did greed, did deceit, did arrogance, did murder, did theft—did they go away? No. Because they—what? My goodness, why didn’t they go away? Because they don’t come from the outside.

The world’s philosophies don’t get it. The world’s religions don’t get it. And, again, I’ll try to be sensitive here. When you see people going down the river Ganges to wash, when you see people following the fivefold, the eightfold path to enlightenment through Buddhism, when you see the people trying to use the five pillars of Islam to honor God—if you believe that defilement comes from the outside, then self-effort will be enough. Really work, really work hard. Rules and regulations. The Bible says, and only the Bible says, your problems are too radical for that.

Let me go one step further so you don’t think I’m beating up on everybody. Christians don’t understand that defilement does not come from the outside in. A lot of people—look, there’s a lot of Christians that hate cities. When they meet somebody from Redeemer, they say, “What are you doing living in New York City? That’s a terrible place for a Christian to live. What are you doing raising your children in New York City?” They don’t believe verse 15. They don’t believe verse 17. They don’t believe verse 23. They believe that the city defiles you.

But, see, Jesus’ radical principle is that you are defiled. It comes from the inside. The radical principle is no matter how fast you run, you can never get away from your shadow. No matter how fast you run, you can’t make one millimeter, one millimeter of progress to make distance between you and your shadow. It comes from within you.

Again, let me give you one more with qualifications. There’s very often when a person becomes a Christian in New York City here at Redeemer, it’s not long before they start to say things like this: “I can’t be a Christian where I work. There’s so much sleaze. There’s so much dog-eat-dog. Maybe I’ll go into full-time Christian ministry.” And, you know, look, I’m not against going into full-time Christian ministry. Some of you definitely are called to do that. I mean, you know, there has to be some. And I’m also not saying that you shouldn’t leave a job if the temptations for you to sin are too great.

But don’t you see, if you leave a job because the temptations for sin are too great, it’s because of the weakness of your heart. What really becomes a problem is when you forget and you think there’s something defiling about the finance industry. There’s something defiling about the fashion industry. There’s something defiling about the media industry. “I can’t be a Christian.” The sin is in you.

This is a radical principle. You will never get rid of it. You will never wash it. You will never, by running from things—see, Christians—here’s so radical—Christians should be the least squeamish people in the world.

The Cleansing Power of Jesus

Remember, I don’t understand how this game used to work, but when I was a kid, we used to have a game called cooties. And if anybody had cooties, everybody had to run away and couldn’t touch them or you’d get the cooties too. And Christians very often feel, “Oh my gosh, in the city, in this place, there’s so much sleaze over there. I’m going to get the cooties. How am I going to be able to be a Christian?”

Christians ought to be the least squeamish people. We should go places that—moral people say, “You can’t go there. That would defile you.” You’re already defiled.

Marx didn’t understand it. The religions of the world don’t understand it. Christians don’t understand it. You can’t clean yourself. It’ll never work.

Well then, what will work? What will work?

This is what will work. Jesus said, “Thus he declared all foods clean.”

Okay, stay with me because this is going to be fast. How could he do that? At that point, Mark was saying he declared all foods clean. That is not going against the tradition of the elders. That’s going against the Word of God in the Old Testament that said some foods, some things are unclean. How could he do that? Come on, Jesus, don’t you say that not a jot or tittle of the Word will pass away till all is fulfilled? Doesn’t the Word of God—doesn’t Isaiah say the grass fades and the flower fails, but the Word of the Lord will endure forever? How can you do that?

Well, the answer is Jesus said, “I do not come to abolish the law. I come to fulfill it.” And when he said that, that means when he said he declared all foods clean, he wasn’t saying, “Well, now God overlooks these things.” Jesus is not saying, “Here’s how you deal with Phariseeism.” You know, the trouble with Pharisees is they were too legalistic. That meant they put too much emphasis on the law. They put too much emphasis on holiness. But we know that that’s not important anymore. God accepts you just as you are. Is that what he’s saying? No.

You know why? Because the problem with Phariseeism, whether the liberal type or the conservative type or the beyondist type, is not that it has too low a view of the law. Never. Phariseeism, legalism, always is too—did I say high? They don’t have too high a view of the law. They have too low a view of the law. Phariseeism comes from having too low a view, whittling it down. It’s the high view of the law—are you following me after I made that little non sequitur?—it’s the high view of the law that’s the only hope for you to find the way of salvation, the gospel. You don’t make it lower. That’s what the Pharisees have done. They whittled it down. They made it doable. You make it higher.

Jesus is therefore not saying that. He’s not saying, “Well, the clean laws are gone. In fact, you don’t really—as long as you just go to God and you try your best.” No. What is he saying? There’s another way to be clean. He is not saying that sin doesn’t defile you. You know it does. He’s not saying that. He is saying there’s another way to be clean, a way that the clean laws pointed to.

The Gospel According to Zechariah

And what is that way? The Old Testament—there’s one place and only one place that really shows what the clean laws are about. A friend of mine and a couple of you I see around, it was an Old Testament professor, a man who’s died, unfortunately, at a fairly young age. His name was Ray Dillard, and he used to preach on a passage in Zechariah. And he used to call it the Gospel According to Zechariah. And whenever he would preach, he’d burst into tears. And it was a great thing to watch and to listen to.

And the passage was this. It’s a very strange vision in the Old Testament. It says:

“Then I saw Joshua, the high priest, standing before the Lord, and Satan standing at his right side to accuse him. For Joshua was dressed in filthy clothes, and the angel next to him said, ‘Take off his filthy clothes.’ And then he said to Joshua, ‘See, I have taken away your sins.’ So they put clean turbans on his head and clothed him. ‘Listen, O high priest,’ said the Lord, ‘you are a symbol of things to come. I am going to bring my servant the branch, and I will remove the sin of this land in a single day.’”

Now, here’s what was so astonishing to Zechariah. Zechariah sees Joshua, the high priest—this is the high priest at the time—standing before the Lord. Now, that could only have happened on one day. You know what day that was? See, the temple had three parts to it—the outer sanctuary and the temple court, I mean, where everybody would pray. And then you had the most holy place where the priests did their ministry. But then behind the veil, there was a very small, tiny place called the Holiest of Holies. That’s where God himself dwelt. That’s where the Ark of the Covenant was. And no one went there except the high priest one day of the year, and only one day of the year, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.

And so when Zechariah saw Joshua standing before the Lord, he would have known that it was the Day of Atonement. But he was absolutely astounded to see what he saw. And here’s why.

We know quite a bit—and I remember Ray Dillard, when he would preach on this, since he was a Semitic scholar, he knew much of the information about what happened on the Day of Atonement from the Talmudic and the Mishnah writings. And here’s what we know would happen. A week before the Day of Atonement, the high priest would go to an apartment in the temple. He’d leave his family so that he didn’t get into contact with anything unclean. During that entire week, he spent the entire week practicing for the day. And on the night before the day, he did not get a good night’s sleep. He stayed up all night. He was supposed to stay up all night. And on shifts, the other priests would be there to help him pray all night and read scripture to him and support him and help him to purify his soul.

And on the day of, he went about his rituals. He washed five times from head to foot in public, behind a screen, but in public, because it was that important for the people to know that their advocate, their high priest, their representative before God, who was going to atone for their sins, was absolutely pure. And he did not dress in the normal high priestly garments, but in perfect white linen, absolutely pure.

And first, he made a sacrifice for his own sins, and then he would bathe and get changed again. And then he’d come out and make a sacrifice for the sins of all the priests that were helping him on that day, and then he’d go back and bathe and change again. Finally, they killed two goats—pardon me. He would bring out two goats. He killed one goat, and they—that’s right—they laid hands on the other goat, and they sent it out, out of the camp, the scapegoat. They laid their hands on the goat. They confessed their sins, and so the goat, in a sense, received the sins of the people, and it was thrown out of the camp. And the other goat was killed—not two goats, one goat was killed—and the blood of that goat—now the high priest, multiple cleansings, multiple praying, right, multiple purification—he took the blood of that goat and went back before the Lord, and that was the day, that was the moment in which the sins of the people would be atoned for.

And that was the moment that Zechariah sees Joshua the high priest, and to his absolute astonishment, it says he’s clothed in filthy garments. But that’s just what the NIV translation says. You know what the Hebrew says? He was clothed in garments covered with excrement, with urine, with feces, with all of this stuff. And you can imagine the emotional impact on Zechariah when he saw that, but what God was doing was he was opening his eyes to show him what we look like before God. All the purification, all the washing didn’t matter because it’s the heart, the heart, the heart. Anybody who knows your own heart knows what God sees.

But instead of God smiting Joshua, he gives him clean clothes and he says, “I’m going to take away all the sin of this land, not multiplying it over the years through all kinds of sacrifices, but in one day through the branch, my servant the branch.” And I’m sure Zechariah wanted to know what in the world was that, but we know because we know a perfect one that came.

But when he showed up to be our high priest, when he showed up to make the sacrifice for us, what happened to him was exactly the opposite of what happened to Joshua the high priest in that vision—exactly the opposite. He had a week of preparation too before his sacrifice. And the night before his sacrifice, he stayed up all night, but nobody was supporting him. Nobody was praying with him. They were all falling asleep, clueless, and even the Father turned away from him.

And then when he went to make a sacrifice, he was not clothed, he was stripped. And he was not given a perfumed bath, but his ritual bath was the spit of the people around him, you see. And then finally, he did not get beautiful garments put on him, but what was laid on him was the filth of all the sins of the world, the excrement of all of our records. And where was he killed? Outside the camp, the place of the skulls, Calvary, the place of dead things, the place of defilement, and he was killed there.

Exactly the opposite happened to him. Why? So that we could be clothed in linen. Because you know what we’re told in Revelation 19? It doesn’t—in Revelation 19, there’s this wonderful spot where John has another vision, and it says:

“Let us rejoice and be glad, for the wedding of the Lamb has come and his bride is made ready. Fine linen, bright clean, is given to her to wear.”

And that’s us. See, we’re cleansed because he was spit on. We’re cleansed because he was smeared. We’re clothed because he was stripped. And now we can stand before the Father absolutely beautiful. Do you understand that?

Thus he declared all foods clean because that’s not the way that you can be cleansed.

Practical Applications

And what does this mean? Just remember these things.

Number one, practical application: stay away from sin. It does defile you. It does. Don’t do the things that are wrong. It will misshape you. It will discolor you. It will eat you away. It will alienate you. Stay away, number one.

Number two, however, make sure if you feel guilty, you’re not feeling guilty because you’re breaking the tradition of the elders. Make sure you’re breaking the Scripture. Can I just show you something quick? You know how liberating it is to actually believe the Bible? How are you going to know the difference between true guilt feelings and false guilt feelings? How are you going to know the difference between true defilement and false defilement? How are you going to know when you actually have really defiled yourself or whether you’ve just sinned against the tradition of the elders, your customs, what your family said, you know, what your culture says? How do you know? You’re in trouble if you don’t believe in this. Why?

Well, are all guilt feelings false? Are you going to say everybody who feels guilty is false? Are you going to tell that to Hitler? “Oh, that’s okay. False guilt feelings.” No, you’re going to say that’s true guilt. Well, if there are true guilt feelings, are you going to say all guilt feelings are true? No. Well, how are you going to know? How do you know the difference? You believe the Scripture. Make sure if you feel defiled, it’s true defilement.

Then lastly, lastly, there is a sweet oblivious antidote. And it doesn’t matter what you’ve done. And it doesn’t matter what has happened to you. There’s a great list of terrible, degrading sins in 1 Corinthians 6, where Paul says, “You did this, and you did this, and you did this.” And then he says, “But you were washed. You were sanctified. You were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

1 John 1:8-9:

“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness, for the blood of Jesus cleanses from all sins.”

Don’t try to cleanse yourself. But anything will come out.

There’s a Graham Greene novel about war in Indochina. Two men, Fowler and Pyle, I think, are working in the underground. And at one point, Fowler has to kill Pyle even though he’s his best friend. And he does. And he’s racked up with guilt. And he says, “If there was just somebody to whom I could go and say I’m sorry.”

There is.

Don’t be squeamish. Be careful you don’t feel defiled when you’ve just gone against the ruling of the elders. But if you have been, there’s a sweet oblivious antidote: the blood of Jesus.

Closing Prayer

Let’s pray.

Our Father, we want to be different. We do not want to fall into the mistakes and the ideologies. We don’t want to fall into the squeamishness of Christians who have allowed themselves to be affected by this sort of Phariseeism. We don’t want to be continually trying to cleanse ourselves of defilements that aren’t real. And we also don’t want to be sinking under defilements that are.

And therefore, we know that this long but important passage has so many, so many secrets to it, so many important and key principles that we need right now. And Lord, I see out there a thousand people, and every one of them needs this to be applied in a different way. I cannot do it. Would you do it through your Spirit? Show every person what this has to say to them, to him, to her. Apply this by your Spirit and answer our requests through Jesus Christ.

In his name we pray. Amen.