Missing the Forest for the Trees (Mark #24)

A few nights before we opened this building, I was here late with a couple of guys running network cabling. We were standing in the lobby getting ready to start, and I took off my jacket and began looking around for the coat rack.

You have to understand that even the day before we opened, this place was still a disaster. Boxes and tools and materials everywhere. So I am scanning the room, and one of the guys notices me searching.

“What are you looking for?”

“The coat rack. I know I saw it somewhere.”

They both looked at me. “You mean… this coat rack?”

The one I was standing directly beside. It was right in front of me.

Embarrassing. Also pretty funny. Have you ever had that moment where the thing you are hunting for is right there? I do not know how many of you have done this, but you are holding your phone in your hand and suddenly panic — where is my phone? No? Me neither. Never done that.

It is the old idiom: missing the forest for the trees. The forest is right there, but the trees are in the way.

Today in Mark 7 we are going to watch the Pharisees miss the forest for the trees — twice over. First, the King of the kingdom of God is standing directly in front of them, and they will miss Him. Second, they have the key to a relationship with God right in their hands, and they will keep hunting for the key.

What they will do instead is assume that doing enough outward works will produce the inward change they are after. And Jesus is going to tell them plainly: no. It is not your outward works. What you need is an inward transformation.

Mark 7:1–13

“Now when the Pharisees gathered to him, with some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem, they saw that some of his disciples ate with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed. (For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands properly, holding to the tradition of the elders, and when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash. And there are many other traditions that they observe, such as the washing of cups and pots and copper vessels and dining couches.)

“And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, ‘Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?’ And he said to them, ‘Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written: “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.” You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.’

“And he said to them, ‘You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition! For Moses said, “Honor your father and your mother”; and, “Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.” But you say, “If a man tells his father or his mother, ‘Whatever you would have gained from me is Corban'” (that is, given to God) — then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And many such things you do.'”

Why Are They Here?

Last week Jesus and His disciples got out of a boat in the region of Gennesaret, an agricultural but well-populated area. People recognized Him immediately and ran through the region telling everyone that Jesus was there.

It is possible that as word spread, some local Pharisees heard it and sent word down to Jerusalem — he is here — and scribes traveled north to see for themselves. It is also possible Jesus has returned to Capernaum, which functioned as His home base, and the Pharisees simply knew where to find Him.

We do not know exactly where He is. But we know He has caused enough of a stir that officials are traveling from Jerusalem to investigate Him.

And they are not there to learn. These are scribes — men who love the word of God, who copy it by hand so it can be distributed. They are genuinely passionate about Scripture. But they have not come asking how to understand it better. They have come to verify whether He falls in line with Scripture as they interpret it. There have already been a few clashes between Jesus and the religious leadership, so they are uneasy. The question they are answering is: is this man a heretic, and if so, what do we do about it?

And while they are watching Him, they notice in verse 2 that His disciples are not washing their hands.

This Was Never About Germs

It almost sounds like a concerned mother — Jesus, aren’t you worried your guys will get sick? They should be scrubbing for twenty seconds.

That is not what is happening. In verse 3, where it says they wash their hands, the Greek says they washed their hands with the fist. They would cup their hands so it looked like a fist, dribble a little water over them, shake it off, and that was that.

Nobody is killing germs here. This is pure ceremony.

But they took the ceremony so seriously that when they saw some of Jesus’ disciples skip it, they were offended. They saw it as sin. They were genuinely shocked.

So they ask. Because if Jesus says it is no big deal, they have their answer — heretic. If Jesus says, “You know, I am a little uncomfortable with that myself, I wish they would,” maybe He is all right.

Instead He quotes Isaiah 29:13 at them and uses it like a biblical bullwhip. Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites.

Why is He that upset? We are talking about a little water.

Because nowhere in Scripture is any of this commanded.

These Pharisees claimed to uphold the Mosaic law. There were 613 laws in it — civic laws about how to function as a society, laws about clothing, food, sexual ethics, even farming. But there is nothing in there about washing with the fist or dipping your dishes. All of that was added. It was extra-biblical.

And the problem was that they placed their extra rules on par with God’s rules — and eventually above them.

That is exactly what Jesus exposes in verses 9–13. God’s word says honor your father and mother. And their tradition said: if a man declares his money “Corban” — devoted to God — he is no longer permitted to use it to care for his aging parents. And they treated that as pleasing to God, while a plain command of God was set aside.

Before You Get Too Comfortable

Most of you consider yourselves on team Jesus, so you are probably ready to pile on these guys too. How could they?

But look at church history. We Christians are extraordinarily good at doing exactly this. Over and over, church cultures have adopted extra rules to demonstrate godliness.

I had a friend who pastored a church that deeply valued their pastor wearing a full three-piece suit. Every Sunday: dress shirt, tie, jacket. Dressed to the nines, pounding the pulpit, and they loved it.

They were not a large church and could not pay him much, so money was tight. One day he was at a department store and found dress shirts on deep clearance — three or six dollars, something like that. He desperately needed shirts, so he bought two, and he was thrilled. He wore one the following Sunday.

Dress shirt, tie, jacket. Preached his heart out. And afterward one of the longtime members pulled him aside and said: “Pastor, are you going liberal?”

That is the moment he learned that a white dress shirt signified purity and godliness — and light blue was an abomination.

Other churches do not care what you wear, so the rules get built somewhere else. Piercings and tattoos. Drinking. Cards and gambling. Which movies you watch. Go into Paul’s letters and you find them wrestling over circumcision as the marker of holiness.

In our day — and some of you are going to be irritated with me for saying this — I would say it is voting. In the last couple of weeks I have heard people say that if you claim to be a Christian you cannot vote for one candidate. And I have heard other people say that if you claim to be a Christian you cannot vote for the other one. So apparently who I vote for determines my standing before God, at least in some people’s eyes.

We are just as good as the Pharisees at inventing extra rules to prove our godliness.

Why Do We Do This?

First, because many of these rules come from a good place

We want to honor God. We want to do what is right. We want a close relationship with Him. So we build rules to help get us there. And they are not always wrong.

Have any of you ever fasted? From food, from social media, from entertainment? If you have fasted from anything, you set a rule for yourself. There is nothing in Scripture requiring you to set aside a newspaper.

Which happens to be one of mine. When I lived in Colorado, the newspaper was dirt cheap — cheaper than water — so we subscribed. And every morning I would work through that paper, reading nearly all of it, which took me about an hour. Then I would think, I have no time left for the Bible, and I have already pushed my work back. So I would head to work having spent no time in Scripture.

So I made a rule: I could not read the newspaper until I had read my Bible.

Some people would say that would not work for them — they would skim the Bible as fast as possible to get to what they actually wanted. But it worked for me. Once I was in Scripture, I valued being there. That little rule came from a good place, because I genuinely wanted to be with God.

When you fast from something, you are saying: I am setting this aside for a time to remind myself that my true joy is found in Jesus. Good place.

But good rules get twisted. And when they do, it becomes more about the rule than about the relationship. I think that is precisely what happened here. Many of the Pharisees’ ceremonial washings began from a real desire to come before God pure — and then it curdled, until the rule mattered more than God did, and eventually their man-made rules overrode God’s actual commands.

Second, because deep down we know we are a mess

We look at other people’s posts, we have conversations with them, and they seem to have it together. Everything looks fine for them.

But we see our own thoughts. We know what is actually happening in us. We remember the moment we gave in. So we know we are a mess.

And to deal with that mess, we invent extra rules — so we can feel a little cleaner, a little purer, a little more loved, a little more accepted by God. It might be about clothes, or food, or drinking, or anything at all. But we do it to manage the mess.

I think that is what the Pharisees were doing with the washings. Something they could accomplish. Something God could see them doing.

But if the 613 laws of the Mosaic covenant accomplished anything, it was to demonstrate that we cannot save ourselves. Even keeping all 613 as best you could, you could not keep them all the time.

Outward works will not produce the inward change we need.

Mark 7:14–23

“And he called the people to him again and said to them, ‘Hear me, all of you, and understand: 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.’

“And when he had entered the house and left the people, his disciples asked him about the parable. And he said to them, ‘Then are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled?’ (Thus he declared all foods clean.)

“And he said, ‘What comes out of a person is what defiles him. 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.'”

Kids, I am sorry we did not have kids’ ministry this week — though I doubt anyone would have taught you this lesson, because Jesus is essentially talking about toilets. The food they ate could not make them unclean, because it goes in the mouth, through the stomach, and out again.

The Parenthesis You Should Not Miss

Of all the Gospel writers, Mark uses the fewest editorial asides. Matthew, Luke, and John insert explanations regularly. Mark almost never does — which means when he does, pay attention.

And in this passage he gives us two. The first explained the washings, because he knew many of his readers were Greek or Roman and unfamiliar with Jewish custom.

The second is five words: thus he declared all foods clean.

Wait. Just like that, Jesus takes two millennia of food regulations and cancels them? Is He saying, the Father and I got that one wrong when we set up the Mosaic covenant, sorry about that, we are good now, have at it?

No. So what is happening?

First, remember what we have been seeing all the way through Mark: Jesus is God. He is the King of the kingdom of God. As King, He has every right to declare something good, and to declare that something has served its purpose and the time for it has passed. He has that authority.

But I think something else is going on too. I think Jesus is saying the time for that has ended, and something new has come.

Why Fourteen?

My youngest son turned fourteen in August. In our state you can get a driver’s permit at fourteen — but because of the pandemic he could not go straight down and take the test. He applied on his birthday, waited about three weeks to take the test, nailed it on the first try, and then had to wait another three or four weeks for the appointment to actually receive the permit. Two months. We have been out driving maybe twice.

But here is my question. Why did he have to wait until his birthday to apply? Why not the day before? Why not a week earlier?

And while we are at it — why fourteen at all? Why not thirteen? Why not twelve? There are farm kids driving tractors at twelve, some at ten. Why not simplify things and hand out a driver’s permit at birth, right alongside the birth certificate and the social security number?

You are laughing, because obviously we have determined that a child is not ready before fourteen. So no driving until fourteen. And then at fourteen you spend at least two years with a parent in the passenger seat teaching you. Not until sixteen may you drive alone. You cannot vote until eighteen. You cannot buy alcohol until twenty-one.

We put those markers in place because we say: not until here are you ready.

God gave the food laws to protect His people, because they were not ready. Practically, a nation newly out of Egypt and entering a strange land could easily have eaten something that harmed them.

But I think there was a larger concern. There were other people groups and other religions all around them. With no dietary boundaries, Israel would have watched what their neighbors ate, joined them at the table, and gradually absorbed their customs — and then their religion.

So the food regulations were protection and identity. God was saying: you are Mine, and part of what marks you as Mine is that you do not eat these things.

But over time it stopped being about the relationship and became entirely about the regulations. So Jesus says, in effect: it was never the food that made you clean or unclean — only God does that. You did these things to identify with Him. And since it has become nothing but regulation, then do not worry about the regulation. Eat whatever you want.

Because what God wants is not your hollow obedience. What He wants is your heart.

That is why Jesus goes after them so hard. Whether it was the washings or the food laws or anything else, they were performing outward works hoping to produce inward change. And Jesus stands there saying: the outward works do not work. They cannot do what needs to be done inside you.

Because the uncleanness is coming out — out of the envy, the pride, the sexual immorality, the theft, the murder, all of it. So the change will not come from what you wear, or what you eat, or which holidays you observe. It comes from an inward transformation.

How Does That Transformation Happen?

Some of you already have a good idea. But I want to show it to you from an unexpected angle — from the Old Testament, in Zechariah 3.

First, some background, so you can appreciate what you are about to see.

On the Day of Atonement, the Jewish high priest entered the Holy of Holies to offer sacrifices for the sins of the people. But getting there was an enormous process.

A week beforehand, the selected high priest went into seclusion for seven days, so he could not accidentally be made unclean by contact with someone, or accidentally eat the wrong food. It was preparation for walking into the presence of God.

The night before, he stayed awake the entire night — praying, reading Scripture, fasting.

On the morning itself, he bathed head to toe and put on brand-new white linen garments. Then he entered the Holy of Holies with an animal and sacrificed it — not for the sins of the people, but for his own sin.

Now there is blood on his garments, so he comes back out, removes them, bathes again, puts on a second set of white linen, and enters with another animal. That one is not for the people either — it is for all the priests, because the priesthood was the link between God and the people, and if the priests were sinful the link was broken.

Then out again. A third bath. (Kids, you complain about one.) A third set of white linen garments. And only then does he go in and sacrifice on behalf of the people.

Imagine all that work simply to come before God.

Zechariah 3

“Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him. And the Lord said to Satan, ‘The Lord rebuke you, O Satan! The Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you! Is not this a brand plucked from the fire?’ Now Joshua was standing before the angel, clothed with filthy garments.”

Zechariah’s jaw must have hit the floor. He knew the process. Three baths. Three sets of clean white linen. And here the high priest stands before God — filthy.

An illustration with a black light

There is a video creator my family follows — a former engineer who makes science videos so popular he eventually left engineering to do it full time. My wife shows them in her classroom because the kids love them.

Right as the pandemic was beginning, before things shut down, he made a video explaining how germs spread. He used a powder that is invisible in normal light but glows under ultraviolet. He brushed it onto a teacher’s hands and had her shake hands with just three students. Everyone else she simply greeted.

Then he filmed a normal couple of hours of class — some academic work, some play, kids interacting the way kids do. Everything looked completely clean.

Then he walked around with the black light. The teacher was covered. Her desk was covered. The children were covered. Their desks were covered. The entire room was coated in that invisible powder.

I think that is what God does for Zechariah here. He switches off the light humans see by and switches on His own. Zechariah looks at a high priest who has washed three times and dressed in clean white linen — if anyone is clean, it is this man — and God lets him see Joshua the way God sees him.

Filthy.

What Does God Do With That?

Someone who is supposed to be the high priest, supposed to be clean, walks in as dirty as dirty gets. Does God throw him out? Ignore him? Strike him down for daring to enter His presence that way?

Verse 4: “And the angel said to those who were standing before him, ‘Remove the filthy garments from him.’ And to him he said, ‘Behold, I have taken your iniquity away from you, and I will clothe you with pure vestments.'”

Throughout the Old Testament there is this figure called the angel of the Lord who appears to Abraham and to others. Some scholars believe those appearances are Jesus Himself — what is called a theophany, an appearing of God the Son before the incarnation. I happen to agree with them. So I believe Jesus is the one standing there, saying: I have taken your iniquity from you. Kids, iniquity means sin. Jesus is saying: I have taken your sin off of you.

And notice the other character. Satan. The word simply means the accuser — and that is exactly what he is doing. He is playing Captain Obvious: God, look at this man. He is filthy. He is sinful. He does not belong in Your presence. Throw him out. Strike him down. He is not worthy to be here.

And it is as if Jesus just says hush, turns to Joshua, and says: someone get this man some clean clothes. The filthy garments come off. Pure white vestments go on.

That is the gospel.

Which Means This

All of us are sinners. All of us need God. Romans 3:23 says all have sinned and fall short of God’s glorious standard. We need help.

But too often we are Joshua — busy with extra rules, taking our spiritual baths, dressing ourselves in what we hope are clean white garments, trying to convince ourselves that if we eat the right things, wear the right things, read the Bible enough times, attend church the right way, and generally do the right things, God will be more pleased with us. That He will be okay with us.

And when we walk into God’s presence trying to fix the inside with the outside, God sees the inside. He knows you are filthy.

And rather than throwing us out — rather than turning His thumb down — Jesus says: I will take it from you.

That is why 2 Corinthians 5:21 says the One who knew no sin — Jesus, who came to this earth and never once sinned — became sin for us. At the cross He said: I will take your filthy garments and put them on Myself, and I will take My holy, righteous robes and put them on you. So that when you walk into the presence of God, God sees the clothing of Christ. He sees purity. He knows you have been washed, and that you belong there.

So by all means, help the older woman across the street. Be a decent person at work. Kids, obey your parents at home. I want people like that in our world.

But if you are doing those outward things believing they will impress God, Jesus is telling us here in Mark 7 that your outward works will not produce the inward change. And if that is what you are trusting in, you are standing in front of God dirty.

The only way to inward change is the gospel — letting the death of Jesus on the cross and His resurrection from the tomb be what covers you, what cleanses you, and what identifies you.

So Where Are You?

If you have never surrendered your life to Christ — if you have never let Him take your filthy rags and put His clean vestments on you — that is what today is for. And I want you to know this is why we started this church. Not to get a building. Not to collect nice people, even though we have plenty of them. We did it so that you could meet Jesus. Because what this world needs is people who love like Jesus loved and live like Jesus lived — and in our own power we are filthy and dirty.

That means confessing our sin and bowing before God: Jesus, You went to a cross for me, so I give my life to You — because You took my filthy rags and clothed me in Your purity. Most people mark a moment like that with prayer.

And some of you would say you have followed Jesus a long time — but as you have heard this, you have realized you have been trusting in your good works. You have not been staying surrendered. You have been assuming that if you do enough of the right things, God must be very pleased with you.

Today you are seeing that you have been acting like a Pharisee.

It is fine to keep your little ceremonies, as long as they are drawing your heart to God. But if you are realizing today that you have been trusting the ceremonies and trusting your works instead of trusting the shed blood of Jesus — this is your moment to get that right with God.

Which is exactly what communion is for. When we take that bread, it is His body broken for us. When we take that cup, it is His blood shed for us. And in taking it we are saying: His story is my story. He took my filthiness and gave me His purity and His righteousness.

Let us do this in remembrance of Him.