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Announcer: Welcome to Connect with Skip Heitzig. So glad you've tuned in today. At Connect with Skip, our passion is to help you grow in your relationship with Jesus through solid verse-by-verse Bible teaching that's both clear and practical. Every message you hear is designed to strengthen your faith and help you live out God's truth wherever he's placed you.

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Skip Heitzig: The Gospel of Mark, second book in your New Testament, Mark chapter 7. Mark chapter 7 where we're going to attempt to look at this statement that is often used in our culture: cleanliness is next to godliness. I was reading the other day on Pinterest a little post that somebody posted that said, "If cleanliness is next to godliness, then my house must be the portal to hell."

Many a parent has said this statement to their kids, many a kid has heard this from their parents. My own parents used to say this to four boys, four rambunctious boys, to get them to clean their room, wash behind their ears, and brush their teeth. The first time this statement appears in writing, it seems, is back in 1791, strangely in a sermon preached by none other than John Wesley himself.

John Wesley preached a sermon, the name of the sermon was "On Dress," that is what you wear. I found it interesting that John Wesley preached a sermon on looking nice in church. And so this is what he said. He said, "Slovenliness," that is sloppiness, "is no part of religion. Being clean is a sign of spiritual purity or goodness. Cleanliness is indeed next to godliness." So there's John Wesley saying, "Don't dress like a slob."

Now, as you read his sermon, it seems that he is making reference to something that was believed well-known, written down somewhere else. We're not sure where this idea originated. If you look back, back in 1605, 200 years before Wesley, an essayist in Britain, a Lord Chancellor in Britain, a philosopher in Britain, same guy, Sir Francis Bacon, wrote a little piece called "The Advancement of Learning" in which he stated, "Cleanliness of body was ever deemed to proceed from a due reverence to God." So this seems to be the origin of the statement, cleanliness is next to godliness.

Announcer: This is Connect with Skip Heitzig. When you give to this ministry, you help reach thousands of people every day with God's life-changing truth, encouraging them to know him and grow in his word. And to thank you for your support this month, we'll send you Reload Love: Transforming Bullets to Beauty and Battlegrounds to Playgrounds, a powerful book by Skip's wife, Lenya Heitzig.

It's a gripping, hope-filled story of how God transformed weapons of war into tools of joy and how playgrounds rose from battlegrounds because one person chose compassion over despair. Your gift today helps bring the life-changing message of hope in Jesus to people around the world through Connect with Skip. Request your copy when you give $50 or more at connectwithskip.com/offer or by calling 800-922-1888. Now, here's more from Pastor Skip.

Skip Heitzig: Now, I'll give you my personal testimony as a recovering slob-aholic. Somebody who threw socks wherever and t-shirts wherever he felt like it. I now appreciate a tidy environment, putting things in their place, a clean home. My wife makes sure of all of that. But as a kid, I figured if you go long enough without a bath, even the fleas will leave you alone. My parents did not agree, and I'm grateful that they did not.

Mark chapter 7 is an argument about cleanliness. It is about ritual purification, and that is something that the religious leaders of the time held in high regard, almost sacrosanct. In fact, the Pharisees would probably have agreed with the statement that cleanliness is next to godliness. And they confront Jesus, and when they confront Jesus, it's as if Jesus will say in effect, "No, cleanliness is not next to godliness; holiness is next to godliness."

Let me give you a little background of Mark chapter 7. Jesus is in Galilee with his disciples. He's becoming very popular. He can't really go anywhere without an enormous crowd following him around. Hundreds, thousands of people watching his every move. He has already by this point fed the 5,000, he has walked on water, he has healed miraculously the diseases of several people, and with each of those events, more and more people are following him.

You have another group of people who are very skeptical. Those are the religious leaders, the scribes and the Pharisees. They will be mentioned in our text. And they are getting more and more vocal against him. They are in opposition to him, and at this point in the narrative, headquarters, Jerusalem, sends a couple of people to ask him very pointed questions. And they want to know where Jesus stands on the tradition of the fathers, Jewish tradition, especially this idea of cleanliness. So these are like spiritual hitmen, theological hitmen, who want to find out from Jesus where he stands on these issues.

Just a note before we get into our text. I've discovered that religious people in general are the hardest people to reach with the gospel. That's because they have this idea that because they are religious, they don't need anything, even a relationship with Christ. So you have to peel back several layers to get to the heart of a very religious person. Well, we will see that here. Now, I want to show you three categories of cleanliness, three classifications of cleanliness. The first two are incorrect; the last one is indeed correct.

First one is cleanliness had become external. It was all about what you do on the outside that was important to these people that approach our Lord. Look at verse 1. Then the Pharisees and some of the scribes came together to him, having come from Jerusalem. It's about 75 miles or 100 miles away, depending on the routing. Now when they saw some of his disciples eat bread with defiled, that is with unwashed hands, they found fault.

For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands in a special way, holding the tradition of the elders. When they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash. And there are many other things which they have received and hold, like the washing of cups, pitchers, copper vessels, and couches. You'll notice there's a phrase in what we just read, and that phrase is "the tradition of the elders."

What is the tradition of the elders? It is the oral law. The oral law were oral interpretations of the written law, the actual law. Now some of these Jews actually believe that Moses was the one that handed down the oral law. He was not, but they came up with that idea. What the oral law really was was a body of material from different rabbinic teachers interpreting and applying Old Testament law.

And all of those oral teachings were eventually codified in two different sources, one called the Mishnah and the other called the Talmud. The Talmud itself is 63 books often found in 18 separate volumes. All of this deliberations on what the law of Moses meant. Now, one of the very famous rabbis in Judaism who was actually contemporary with Mark, the author of this book, his name was Rabbi Akiba.

And he said that the oral law served as a fence of protection around the written law. And so the Jews had a statement: Seyag la-Torah, the fence of the law. The oral tradition will serve to protect the written law of God. But the fence itself became cumbersome. And let me give you a few examples. On the Sabbath, it was forbidden for you to look in the mirror if you spot a gray hair and pluck it out. Because if you pluck out that gray hair on the Sabbath day, you are guilty of breaking the Sabbath because you have worked.

On the Sabbath, you could not wear false teeth. Yes, they had false teeth 2,000 years ago. But you couldn't wear them on the Sabbath because if they fell out, you'd want to bend down and pick them up, which is an act of labor on the Sabbath. And get this: on the Sabbath, you were prohibited from spitting in the dirt. You could spit on a rock, but you couldn't spit in the dirt because if you spat in the dirt, your spittle would roll in the dirt and dig a furrow, and you can't dig a furrow on the Sabbath day.

That's how ridiculous it became. So part of the emphasis, this external emphasis, is on cleanliness. Now I want to be fair with these Pharisees and scribes and let you know that this emphasis on outward cleanliness originally came from the Bible itself, from the law of Moses. The Bible in many places does emphasize the importance of cleanliness. There are several laws about it.

Leviticus chapter 10: you are to distinguish between what is holy and what is ordinary, what is ceremonially unclean and what is clean. In the very next chapter, Leviticus chapter 11, there's a list of clean and unclean foods, kosher and unkosher foods. In Numbers chapter 19, there were laws about not touching a dead corpse because if you do that, you are unclean, you are defiled.

Then in Leviticus chapter 15, there were purification rituals. If you had a bodily discharge or you needed to wash your clothes, there were details regarding that. These were rituals not only for physical hygiene but for spiritual purification. In other words, cleanliness was the visible barometer in those days of a godly life. But eventually, what happened over time is that the focus entirely became external. And that usually is what happens in most religions.

It becomes all about ceremony, ritual, observances, holy places, formalities. The result of all of that is you start to approach the scripture not asking the question, "What does the Bible say?" but rather, "I need to find a verse to substantiate my tradition." When you focus on externals, you begin ignoring what concerns God the most. You are valuing what is worthless and you are devaluing what is priceless. You're focusing just on the external.

So cleanliness had become external. That's the first category. The second is that cleanliness was seen as eternal. They got this whole thing confused. The external was becoming confused with the eternal. And so they come and they say, "Your disciples are eating food with unwashed, defiled, unclean hands." Now, that's a long way to walk to tell somebody they need to wash their hands.

My mom was a clean freak, but this is a little bit ridiculous. We're going to walk 100 miles to tell you that your disciples aren't doing it right. But notice what their complaint is. Their complaint is not that his disciples have broken God's law, but they have gone against the tradition of the elders. Look at verse 5. The Pharisees and the scribes asked him, "Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat bread with unwashed hands?"

They had come to believe that external cleanliness is what brought eternal cleanliness. I'm not making that up. One rabbi insisted, "Whosoever has his abode in the land of Israel and eats his common food with rinsed hands may rest assured that he shall obtain eternal life." You want to go to heaven? Just live in Israel and wash your hands. One rabbi was imprisoned, this is during the Roman era, as a prisoner he was given a small portion of water to drink.

He wouldn't drink the water, but he used it to wash his hands ceremonially before he ate, claiming he would rather die than transgress the tradition of the elders. So it became a greater offense to go against the tradition passed down orally from the elders in the oral law than it was to even break God's written commandments.

Now, rabbis had all sorts of reasons for this, and one of the reasons they cited is they actually believed a demon could get inside of you if you ate food with unwashed hands. They even had a name for this demon: Shibtah. And Shibtah would get in your bed at night and cling to your hands while you're sleeping, and then when you got up the next day, if you didn't ceremonially wash your hands and you ate food, that that demon would crawl inside of you.

So look back at verse 3 for a moment. There's a little phrase I want you to make a note of. "For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands in a special way." Literally, that phrasing is: unless they wash their hands with the fist, holding the tradition of the elders. What that is referring to is an elaborate, ceremonially complex process.

To wash your hands, you would place your hands in front of you, fingers pointed upward. Somebody would apply water, pour water on the tip of the fingers. The water would run down to the wrist and then fall off the wrist because the water now is defiled, it has touched unclean hands. Then you would turn your hands over, somebody would pour water from the wrist, it would drip off the fingers.

After that, you would take your hands, put them together, fist and hand on the fist. Somebody would pour water and you would rub your fist in the hand, rub your fist in the other hand. You had to do all three of those things. Jewish people did that before every meal. Strict orthodox Jews did that between every course of every meal. So in effect, the Pharisees and the scribes were saying cleanliness is next to godliness.

The ritual will make you right with God. Well, we know that's not true. The ritual of washing your hands may kill germs, it's not a bad thing to do, but it doesn't remove spiritual germs. You could actually be concealing something. Now notice something in the text. In the end of verse 8, it says Jesus speaking, "And many other such things you do." And then at the end of verse 13, a little further on down, "And many such things you do."

What Jesus is acknowledging is you have a whole list of rules and regulations about every single little thing that needs to be washed. It's mentioned here, the washing of cups, pitchers, copper vessels, and couches. Did you know that the Mishnah devoted no less than 35 whole pages on how you should wash dishes? It became laborious to keep the law.

So cleanliness had become external, cleanliness was seen as eternal, but the third one is the truth and that is cleanliness is really internal. It's a matter of the heart. So they come to Jesus, they surround him, they ask him this question, and I love how he answers all questions, but this is a classic. Verse 6: "He answered and 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 they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. For laying aside the commandment of God, you hold the tradition of men—the washing of pitchers, cups, and many other such things you do.' He said to them, 'All too well you reject the commandment of God that you may keep your tradition.'"

Now, that's a very biting response. That's a scathing response. He calls them hypocrites. Nobody likes to be called a hypocrite. But when he used the term hypocrite, *hypocriton* is the word. It simply was a Greek word that meant an actor. You guys are putting on a show. You're just acting a part, you're playing a role.

In Greek terminology, a *hypocritas* wore a mask in a Greek tragedy or a Greek comedy, a smiley face or a sad face, and would play a part on a stage. And so what Jesus is essentially saying to them is this is simply a show to cover up your moral filth. You don't really care about cleanness; you only care about the external ritual and will condemn others if they don't practice it.

I can see their faces now. Their blood is boiling. Jesus is calling them out. Hypocrites, he calls them. Why a hypocrite? Number one, because their teaching is rooted in tradition, not in scripture. Number two, because their actions are only external, but not internal. They do not come from the heart. It's just about checking the boxes and looking good.

If you go to the Italian Riviera, you discover that homes, very colorful tiled homes in those areas, think that balconies are very important commodities. So a lot of homes will have balconies on them. They like to go outside and enjoy the view. But not every person can afford to put a balcony on their home. So what many of them will do is just paint a balcony on a plain wall.

It's very convincing if you go by it from a distance, you think, "Oh, those are beautiful balconies." Sometimes they'll put windows and balconies and even the family wash on a clothesline painted on the wall to make it look real. This was just a show, it's just painting on righteousness. And so a person can go to church, carry a Bible, sing songs, but in their heart, they are dead to God.

The music doesn't move them, the sermon doesn't convict them, the experience never changes them. It is all external and they have confused the external with the eternal when it's really internal.

Announcer: Or so glad you joined us today on Connect with Skip Heitzig. Before you go, remember that as our thanks for your gift today, we'll send you Lenya Heitzig's book Reload Love: Transforming Bullets to Beauty and Battlegrounds to Playgrounds, a gripping, hope-filled story of God transforming battlegrounds into playgrounds. When you give, you help keep this Bible teaching ministry on the air, connecting more people with the truth of God's word and the hope found in Jesus. Give today at connectwithskip.com/offer or call 800-922-1888 and request your copy of Reload Love: Transforming Bullets to Beauty and Battlegrounds to Playgrounds when you do. See you next time.

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Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.