God's Last Words

“Integrity of the Heart”

Mark 7: 1-8, 14-15, 21-23

An investment counselor started a business. She was shrewd and diligent, so new business kept coming in. Pretty soon she realized she needed an in-house lawyer counsel, and so she began interviewing young lawyers."

“I'm sure you can understand," she started off with one of the first applicants, "in a business like this, our personal integrity must be beyond question." She leaned forward and continued, "Mr. Peterson, are you an honest lawyer?""Honest?" replied the job prospect. "Let me tell you something about honest. Why, I'm so honest that my father lent me 100 thousand dollars for my education and I paid back every penny the minute I tried my very first case."

"Impressive. And what sort of case was that?"The lawyer squirmed in his seat and admitted, "My father sued me for the money he had lent me."

A lawyer named Strange died, and his friend asked the tombstone maker to inscribe on his tombstone, "Here lies Strange, an honest man, and a lawyer."The inscriber insisted that such an inscription would be confusing, for passers-by might think that three men were buried under the stone. He suggested an alternative. He would inscribe, "Here lies a man who was both honest and a lawyer."

"That way, whenever anyone walked by the tombstone and read it, they would be certain to remark, 'That's Strange.'" Someone told me when I was young that you can earn money and stay honest: It’ll just take longer.

There was a survey a few years ago that asked: What are you willing to do for $10,000,000? Two-thirds of Americans polled would agree to at least one, some to several of the following:

Would abandon their entire family (25%)
Would abandon their church (25%)
Would become a slave for a week or more (23%)
Would give up their American citizenships (16%)
Would leave their spouses (16%)
Would withhold testimony and let a murderer go free (10%)
Would kill a stranger (7%)
Would put their children up for adoption (3%)

Would…

Well I wonder what you would do? Have you ever wondered? Most of us know what we would do for God if he let us win the lottery, don’t we?

I also wonder what the results would be if people were asked: “What would you do to get revenge or inflict hurt on a person, family, business, or church that you don’t like? What an interesting question?

If you are a student of people then you know Human beings are capable of great acts of love and sacrifice but are also capable of much hate, violence, and evil. A man can show great compassion, patience, and love for a child and turn around and be cut-throated, manipulative, and vindictive to a business or sports rival minutes apart. Where does that ability or nature come from?

Let’s read the Gospel lesson from Mark’s 7^th chapter, verses 1-8, 14-15, 21-23:

Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. 

(For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.) So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, ‘Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?’ 

He said to them, ‘Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written, “This people honours  me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me,teaching human precepts as doctrines.” 

You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.’

 Then he called the crowd again and said to them, ‘Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.’ For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.’ 

Listen closely, I am about to reveal to you a Godly mystery that explains a lot about ourselves. It comes from Genesis 3: 16a. God is speaking to Eve regarding her part in the satanic deception of the forbidden fruit and humanity’s fall from perfection.

“He said to the woman: I will intensify your labor pains; you will bear children in anguish.”

The anguish (Hebrew word ‘etseb)  and/or sorrow that God is referring to here is separate from the concept of birth pain through labor and refers instead to the anguish/sorrow a parent feels when one’s child is born with or experiences disease, illness, deformity, or any other condition that makes them less than perfect.

God is telling Eve that her children will be born with imperfections and faults. Her children will be messed up! In the last few verses (Mark 7: 21-22) Jesus confirms this idea that our sinful imperfect nature pre-exists when He says:

“For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders,Thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness…”

Just as faith and trust in God must come from within, so to must integrity. We are born into sin and evil and must learn, through the power of Jesus Christ, to control and overcome it as best we can.

Paul writing in the Book of Romans, 7: 13-25 wrestled with this very issue:

Therefore, did what is good cause my death? Absolutely not! On the contrary, sin, in order to be recognized as sin, was producing death in me through what is good, so that through the commandment, sin might become sinful beyond measure.

For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am made out of flesh, sold into sin’s power. For I do not understand what I am doing, because I do not practice what I want to do, but I do what I hate. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree with the law that it is good.

So now I am no longer the one doing it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh. For the desire to do what is good is with me, but there is no ability to do it. For I do not do the good that I want to do, but I practice the evil that I do not want to do.

Now if I do what I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but it is the sin that lives in me. So I discover this principle: When I want to do what is good, evil is with me. For in my inner self I joyfully agree with God’s law.

But I see a different law in the parts of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and taking me prisoner to the law of sin in the parts of my body. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this dying body? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with my mind I myself am a slave to the law of God, but with my flesh, to the law of sin.

Paul nails it in this passage – we can not achieve perfection (or good) in the law on our own.

Paul is telling us that everything that is good comes from God whereas anything that is not good comes from the mind and desire of humanity, as passed down to us through the promise/curse given to Eve.

Now, I know you’re probably thinking – what’s his point? God must first win the heart of a person before the body can be glorified and sanctified. We may never be truly free of sin in our bodies (our flesh), until we enter those pearly gates of eternity.

It is why (and now my summation of five weeks of preaching) that Christ has given us, through Holy Communion, His flesh and His blood so that not only can we fulfill God’s love but overtake our own flesh as well. Unless the inside of a person changes, starting with the heart, eternal judgment will occur.

When God starts with a heart truly turned over to Christ, the mind, the eyes, the ears, the hands, the liver, the kidneys, and even the feet must soon follow.

Throughout his administration, Abraham Lincoln was a president under fire, especially during the scarring years of the Civil War. And though he knew he would make errors of office, he resolved never to compromise his integrity.

So strong was this resolve that he once said, "I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end, when I come to lay down the reins of power, I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside of me."

Many of you have heard me talk about my favorite quote from Dietrich Bonhoffer, that we are “to be wary of those who cannot be alone, for how can they then be with others.”

But learning to be faithful, full of integrity, and opening oneself to God requires lots of time alone, in study of oneself and getting to know God and Yeshua personally. It is only when one understands, as the Apostle Paul wrote in Romans, our internal struggle and how to win it, that one may become better Christians in our own communities.

Sure it’s not easy, but it’s not impossible. We start out respecting God, then knowing ourselves, and then loving others and our neighbors. Then perhaps we can be remembered as that strange Christian who lived as they believed. Amen.