The title of the message this
morning is, Where's Your Heart? You know, whenever we come to
church, gather together as a congregation, the main purpose for that is
not evangelism, unlike what a lot of churches proclaim. The gathering of the saints are
for those who have already been evangelized. for those who have
been made disciples and have been immersed in water and have
been added to the membership of the local assembly and are
now being taught all things whatsoever Christ has commanded. They are
already a part of the church. They are a part of that congregation. And so we have already been evangelized. The reason that we come together
to meet is so that we might worship God as those who have been called
by God. We worship God as those who are
the elect of God. We worship God as the family
of God, as the church of God. We worship God because of what
he has done for us. And so the main purpose that
we come to church is to worship the one and true God. And then there's also a part
of the congregational worship That is to edify one another
or to build each other up in the most holy faith. So whenever
we come together, we come together to worship God. Those who are
on the outside, those who are not converted, who are not been
brought into the fold, who have not been made disciples, cannot
truly worship God. God is one who claims for himself to
be worshiped, in spirit and in truth. And those who have yet
to be acknowledging the truth by conversion, repentance, and
faith, looking at the true gospel, they cannot come and worship
God rightly. They cannot come in true spirit. They cannot come in the truth
because they don't know the truth and they don't have the spirit
to guide them in the worship. And so, The congregational meeting
is for those who have been already born again, and then called by
God in repentance to acknowledging the truth, and then they gather
together for worship. And whenever we come to worship,
a lot of times, and especially in today, and here, we're not
really formal here. I've never been really a At one
time when I first came here, I tried to be formal because
it seemed as though the church that was here whenever I arrived
seemed to be more formal than I myself was. And so I tried
to respect that in some regards for their sake and not to offend
them or not to wound them. And then as time progressed,
begin to teach and show that whenever we come together in
the church, there is to be a reverence for what we are doing. But yet
the formality and pomp and circumstance doesn't necessarily always have
to be there. And just for instance, you know, the way we dress, you
know, we don't have to come in suits and ties. If you want to
come in suits and ties, that's up to you. That's fine. But we
don't have to come like that. We don't have to come making
ourselves outwardly look like everything is OK, when sometimes
we know it's not OK. We don't have to follow regimented
rules, other than what's been prescribed in scripture. Robert's
Rules of Orders and things such as that, you know, following
creeds and confessions on how things should be done. But we
look to God's Word, but yet still there is to be reverence for
the worship of God. Whenever we come together to
worship, we are here to worship God. It isn't just a play time. It isn't just a fun time. And
I know sometimes I may crack some jokes and I may lie over
a few things here and there as we all do when we're together.
And I'm not saying that we can't be ourselves in that regard. But whenever we come together
for worship, especially whenever we come to this time where the
singing of hymns and the preaching of God's Word comes together
where we are extolling Christ, where we are preaching truth,
we are opening God's Word and expanding God's Word. We are
to be reverent in those regards because it is a very serious
matter that we are here for and what we are to be doing. We have
been entrusted as a church to hold the oracles of God, to hold
the truth. We are the pillar and the ground
of truth. So our engagement of the truth
should be a serious matter and our worship of God should always
be a serious matter. Now with that being said, like
I said, a lot of times we come and we think that because we
follow some formalities that everything is just great and
wonderful. But I want us to look at some things here today in
the seventh chapter of Mark that Jesus addressed with the Pharisees. Now, if you'll remember in Mark
leading up to this chapter, if you're familiar with this gospel,
you will have seen that Jesus has already encountered some
engagement with these Pharisees multiple times. And they have
come to Him accusing Him of breaking God's law, specifically the Sabbath,
and how He has healed people and raised people to life on
the Sabbath, and how He has done things on the Sabbath. against
what they prescribed or what they thought was prescribed.
And so these Pharisees, these religious men, were always looking
outwardly on the things and not the intent or the heart of the
matter on why Jesus was doing the things that he was doing.
And so, again, we know because of this testimony of scripture
that Jesus never did sin. So all these things that he did,
according to them, that was blasphemy and that was against the Sabbath
or against the law of the Sabbath. that he really didn't break that
in the eyes of God, okay? Because the Bible says that he
knew no sin. So all those things that Jesus
did, the healing on the Sabbath and the picking of the grain
as they walked through the field and things like that, they were
not disobeying the law of God. But what we see in all this is
the heart of religious people versus the heart of God's people. Can somebody be a child of God
and be religious? Yes. Can somebody be religious
and not a child of God? Yes. Yes. Somebody can be religious and
not a child of God. They have a religious zeal. And
we see that many of these religious men had a zeal for God. They had a righteousness of their
own, though, and not a righteousness that came from Christ. But we
see leading up to this, we see that they've just come off of
feeding the 5,000, or what, this was before, feeding of the 4,000,
I believe it was. Anyway, they had just fed the
people, but right before that, Jesus had desired to get away
with the disciples alone and spend some time teaching the
disciples. And yet here comes all these
people and in coming, then Jesus ministered to them by feeding
them and then sending them away. And then right after all that,
he tells these disciples, get in the boat. Go over to the other
side of the Bethsaida, and there I'm gonna meet you. And so Jesus,
while they were going, sent the people home, and then he went
up into a mountain and he prayed to the Father. And then we see,
as they were going across the sea, Jesus appeared to them on
the water. And what an amazing miracle that
took place of him walking across the water, but then he met them
on the other side. And again, this is where Jesus
had desired to meet with his disciples and to teach and to
be with them alone. But once again, the Pharisees
and the Sadducees and the scribes And a lot of the people came
and found them and began to circle around the thing. And so the
Pharisees began to once again accuse Jesus and try to find
fault with him and his disciples. And that's kind of where we pick
up here in chapter seven. And I want to start reading verse
one. I'm going to read down to verse 30, then we'll come back
and look at a few things. It says, Then came together unto
him the Pharisees and certain of the scribes, which came from
Jerusalem. And when they saw some of his
disciples eat bread with defile, that is to say with unclean or
unwashed hands, they found fault. For the Pharisees and all the
Jews, except they wash their hands off, eat not, holding the
tradition of the elders. And when they come from the market,
except they wash, they eat not. and many other things there be
which they have received to hold as the washing of cups and pots,
brazen vessels, and of tables. That word table there actually
means bed. The word table is the bed. It's
that little couch that they would recline on whenever they would
eat. But they held that they needed to wash the cups and the
pots and the brazen vessels and the beds Then the Pharisees and
scribes asked him, why walk not thy disciples, here again, according
to the tradition of the elders, but eat bread with unwashed hands? And he answered and said unto
them, Jesus did, well hath Isaiah prophesied of you hypocrites,
as it is written, this people honoreth me with their lips,
but their heart is far from me. I'm going to pause there for
just a minute. There's a big discussion that
goes on the internet all the time that I see. Can we worship
God just by preaching and teaching doctrine? Or is there a heart
thing? Is there a difference between
what we have in our head and what we have in our heart? Can we worship God with our head
and not our heart? Or can we worship God with our
heart and not our head? And that seems to be this debate
that goes back and forth and back and forth on the internet
that I see all the time. But here we see that God, by
the Spirit of God, had these men write down that there can
be a way to honor God with your lips in what you say, in your
outward conduct, but your heart not be in it. Your heart can
be far from God, not be set upon God, not be considering God,
not be reverencing God, not be desiring God. So you can be saying
it with your lips, you can be honoring Him with your lips,
You can be telling the truth of God with your lips, but your
heart and the reason that you are coming and worshiping and
doing what you're doing, your heart though is somewhere else.
Verse 7, How be it in vain do they worship me? Whenever you
worship this way, you're worshiping in vain. How be it in vain do
they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of
men? For laying aside the commandment
of God, ye hold the tradition of men, as the washing of pots
and cups and many other such things that ye do. And he said
unto them, full well ye reject the commandment of God, or despise,
that word reject there means despise. He says, full well ye
reject the commandment of God that ye may keep your own tradition. So what he's saying is you're
completely neglecting what God's Word says so that you can keep
your tradition. Instead of keeping God's Word,
Looking to God's word, you're more interested in your tradition. And I hear this also among many
people groups, denominational groups, and even those that claim
not to be a part of a denomination. They keep bringing up their non-denominations,
holding to this certain belief system. Because that's what we
believe, and that's what our type of people have believed
all along. And so they reject what God's
Word says for the traditions of men. Verse 10, For Moses said,
Honor thy father and thy mother, and whosoever curseth father
or mother, let him die the death. But ye say, If a man shall say
to his father or mother, It is Corbin, that is to say, a gift
by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me, he shall be free. And ye suffer him no more to
do aught for his father or his mother, making the word of God
of none effect through your tradition which ye have delivered. And
many such like things do ye." Okay, I'll come back and explain
that here in just a minute. Verse 14, "'And when he had called
all the people unto him, he said unto them, Hearken unto Me, every
one of you, and understand. There is nothing from without
a man that entering into him can defile him." Boy, that's
not believed by a lot of professing Christians today. They think
that what we put in our mouth, take in our mouth, what we eat,
what we drink, defiles us. But the things which come out
of him, those are they that defile the man. If any man have ears
to hear, let him hear. And when he was entered into
the house from the people, his disciples asked him concerning
the parable. And he said unto him, Are you
so without understanding also? Do you not perceive that whatsoever
thing from without enter into the man, it cannot defile him? because it entereth not into
his heart, but into the belly, and goeth out into the drop,
purging all meats. And he said, that which cometh
out of the man, that defileth the man. 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, all these evil things
come from within and defile the man. And from thence he arose
and went into the borders of Tyre and Sidon, and entered into
a house, and would have no man know it, but he could not be
hid. For a certain woman whose young daughter had an unclean
spirit heard of him, and came and fell at His feet. The woman
was a Greek, a Syrophoenician by nation, and she besought Him
that He would cast forth the devil out of her daughter. But
Jesus said unto her, Let the children first be filled, for
it is not meat to take the children's bread and to cast it unto the
dogs. And she answered and said unto
Him, Yes, Lord, Yet the dogs under the table eat of the children's
crumbs, and he saith unto her, For this saying, Go thy way,
the devil is gone out of thy daughter. When she was come to
her house, she found the devil gone out, and her daughter laid
upon the bed. Now, I want you to see two things
here in this passage of Scripture. And it seems to be all unrelated. Here's the story of Jesus where
He fed the 5,000 people and where He walked upon the water. And
now in chapter 7, here's where Jesus was trying to teach His
disciples, all the people gathered around, and now the religious
leaders are wanting to know how come He's not following the traditions
of the elders or of the fathers. Now Jesus is having to call them
out and set them straight. And then now from there, he teaches
his disciples about his little parable. And then we break that
up and go from there into a house in Sidon, a tower in Sidon, and
a woman from Syrophoenicia comes and wants him to throw... Okay,
so we maybe segment these things out and we think, okay, well,
here's a story, and here's a story, here's a story, and here's a
story. Now listen, brother. Everything that Jesus did, he
did exactly as God had decreed. Every place that he went, he
went exactly as God had designed for him to go. Every person that
he encountered, every town that he went to, everything he did,
he did according to the Father's will. God has decreed a thing
and he has given all of that decree to the Son. God manifested
in the flesh. He has given it to the Son to
do all that God has decreed and to carry it out, to make sure
that it happens exactly as God has decreed. That's called providence.
And so when Jesus goes to this place or to that place or whenever
he engages in a miracle or a lesson or he begins to be engaged by
Pharisees, every bit of that is by God's decree, by God's
design. And the order in which he experiences
these things is also by God's decree, that he experienced the
feeding of the 5,000, that he experienced the walking on the
water, that he experienced the engagement with these religious
leaders that he experienced this woman coming to him right on
the heels of the religious men coming to him. That is all by
design of God. And while we read it here in
a book, broken up by chapters and verses sometimes, it can
easily become segmented to where we lose some of the things that
we might see in here and pull out of here. Now we see right
in the middle of this, Jesus is tongue lashing these religious
leaders because look at verse, look if you would at verse six
again. He calls them hypocrites. He
said, Isaiah prophesied about you guys, you hypocrites. He
said, this people honoreth me with their lips, but their heart
is, that's what hypocrisy is. Whenever you say one thing, but
really in your heart, you'd rather be doing something else so that
you really do something else. That's what a hypocrite is. I remember right whenever you
kids were little, you heard us and I was teaching about the
word hypocrite at one time, and you went around and was calling
each other hypocrite, you didn't even know what the word meant,
and you just kept calling each other hypocrites. Every time
someone did something wrong, you would call them a hypocrite,
okay? Well, a hypocrite is someone
who you were saying that they were a hypocrite when they lied,
just outright lied. You were calling them, you're
a hypocrite, you're being a hypocrite. Y'all remember that? A hypocrite basically is someone
who lies, but what it is is someone who in their heart they really
don't desire this or their heart really isn't towards that or
wanting that or engaged in this. but yet they know outwardly they
need to do that so that they might gain respect, that they
might be seen and honored of men, that they might be able
to outwardly say that, you know, I'm perfect or I'm doing good
or whatever the case might be. That's what these men were doing.
They were keeping the external things of religion But yet Jesus
said, all along, you're doing this outwardly so that you could
have a self-righteousness, so that you could look upon others
as saying, you're not quite as good as us. But he said, inwardly,
your hearts are wicked. Inwardly, your hearts are dead. The Bible says in some of the
other gospels, in some of these passages where Jesus confronts
them, it's like this. He calls them whitewashed sepulchres.
A sepulchre is a tomb, a grave, a whitewashed sepulchre, meaning
it looks pretty on the outside, but inside is dead men's bones. Jesus said that they were like
vipers, that they were like a brood of vipers. And so Jesus here
is not saying very good things about these religious leaders.
Why? Because they're hypocrites. They're
saying and promoting something outwardly that really isn't what
is inwardly. And whenever we come to worship,
a lot of times we can put on this external thing of we look
nice, we act nice, we talk nice, but yet inwardly it's like I
really would rather be home playing Fortnite. or whatever your poison might
be, okay? Whenever our lips are saying,
I love the Lord, I love to come and worship Him, I love to come
and be with His people, but in our hearts, it's far away. Whenever we look and see that
we're saying that we are keeping God's law, but yet in our heart
we don't desire to keep God's law. This is what Jesus is telling
them. Notice if you would, go back
to the first part of the chapter. It says, when they saw some of
His disciples eat bread with defiled, that is to say, with
unwashing hands, they found fault. For the Pharisees and all the
Jews, except they wash their hands off, eat not, holding the
tradition of the elders." So this very thing that they're
accusing the disciples of doing in front of Jesus and trying
to bring them to account, hey, listen here. What's wrong with
you? Why aren't you letting your disciples
act unaccordingly? Why are you letting your disciples
come and worship in a way that we've not said to come? See,
the washing of the hands here before they're eating, now granted,
it's sanitary. We ought to wash our hands. There's
nothing wrong with that. But these men have made a tradition
of that Of their self, God's law never required them to wash
their hands before they ate. God's law did talk about eating
uncleaned animals, or being unclean because you have touched this
or touched that, or done something to something that was unclean.
But it never did say that you had to wash your hands. And in
the tradition of these men, you had to wash from here up to all
the way to your elbow before you could even eat. Now, this
is still true today. If you've ever encountered any
Jews that are practicing Jews, you'll find this to be true.
I remember whenever I worked in McDonald's, there was not
only Jews, but also even Muslims follow after this. But whenever
I was working at McDonald's, There would be a group of these
people come in and before they would come and order, they would
go into the bathroom and maybe I would have just been in there
and cleaned the bathroom. Whenever they were gone, it was
like I'd never even cleaned the bathroom. Because they come in
and they wash their head, they wash their arms, they wash their
feet up in the sink. feet and all like that. As a
matter of fact, if you remember several years ago, I think it was when
Obama or maybe even when Bush was still the president, you
know, there was this big push by Muslims to have feet washing
stations installed in the bathrooms and make people put so that they
can wash their feet before they ate. and everything. Well, these
were these were commands that that these religious men added
to the law of God that wasn't in the law of God, that they
added it to the law of God. And by keeping these things,
they made themselves look better than other men. And so now they're
coming and judging these men and how they worship by their
tradition and not by the word of God. It didn't matter what
God's Word says, it's what does our tradition say. You're not
following the way we say to do it. And that's what Jesus is
confronting here, is the fact that these men are saying, listen,
you need to be washing your hands. That's what the tradition of
the fathers are. Matter of fact, go down there in verse five,
they say it again. Then the Pharisees and scribes asked him, why walk
not thy disciples according to the tradition of the elders?
Listen, I hear that all over the internet all the time. How
come you're not following after the traditions of such and such,
you know? Whether it's the 1689 Baptist, or the 1644 Baptist,
or the Westminster Confession of Faith, or how come you're
not following after the Nicenist, or how come you're not following
after the Athanasians, and how come you're not following after
this or that? How come you're not following after the traditions
of men? Listen, brethren, just because
professing Christians throughout the centuries have followed certain
things, for a certain amount of time doesn't make that to
be the truth. Now that can be the truth, and
we are glad to see tradition of the things of God being passed
down from generation to generation, but all things, even church history,
must be looked at in light of God's Word, and not because it's
the tradition of man. Listen, the Baptists have a lot
of traditions, and a lot of those traditions have been passed down
through men and they're not necessarily part of God's Word. Okay? And so sometimes there are things
that are done that are because of tradition. Now that doesn't
mean necessarily that the tradition is bad. It's like, again, washing
hands. Nothing bad about that. Nothing bad about washing hands.
We encourage everybody to wash their hands before you do that.
Especially with the with the China disease going around. But it's whenever we start to
place the traditions of men before the Word of God, that's where
it becomes a problem. And is our heart more for following
the traditions of men and are worried about what might be said
of us because we're not following the traditions of men Or are
we more worried about offending God by not following God, by
not following His commands? See, whenever we outwardly are
doing all these traditions of men to keep it to look good to
men, but inwardly, maybe our heart is saying to us, you know,
I know that this doesn't really make a difference, but I'm making
a big thing of it because if I don't, then I'm not going to
be accepted by this guy or that guy or this guy or that guy. See, whenever we come to worship,
it shouldn't be about a competition, who's good better than who. As
a matter of fact, Jesus made that very clear that every one
of us have defiled hearts inside. Out of the man, all these evil
things come from within. If you think you're better than
somebody else because outwardly you've whitewashed your sepulcher,
They don't make you anything except a whitewashed sepulcher.
You're still full of dead man's bones. You still are full of
evil in the flesh. But see, Jesus here, He says,
You honor me with your lips, but your heart is far from me. just because you have an outward
appearance of worship, an outward appearance of following after
God doesn't mean that your heart is necessarily there. It says,
how being in vain do they worship me? Whenever we come to God in
this way, we are worshiping in vain. I remember growing up,
I heard the phrase before by many preachers and many different
men that cold-blooded obedience is better than no obedience.
Outwardly, that might be true. You know, it's nice to have people
come to church and be at church. Okay? It's nice to have somebody
come and, you know, do whatever needs to be done. But is that true? Is cold-blooded
obedience What I mean by cold-blooded obedience? That means by, well,
I know it's my duty and I'm going to do it, but I really don't
feel like it. OK? I want to do it because I
know I ought to do it, and I should do it, but I don't feel like
doing it, and I really don't want to do it. But I want to
do it anyway. Well, the problem with that is
that is self-righteousness. That's the problem with that,
is that you're now doing that not because it comes from the
heart, but you're doing it because a duty has told you to do that. Some kind of a list or command
outwardly has told you to do that, and you're worried about
your outward appearance more than you are the worship of your
heart. You're worried more about how
you look outwardly to other people than you are on how you really
feel about God inwardly. See, it should be more about
how is it that it is my heart. See, I shouldn't be praying,
oh Lord, keep me outwardly in front of these people looking
good. It should be, oh God, give me that desire in my heart to
do what is right, to want to do what is right. Not just to
do it outwardly, but to truly from my heart do that. The Bible
says, that he gives us his spirit and puts his spirit in us, that
we might walk in his statues. The Bible also says that we obey
the law from within our heart, that we keep the law and establish
the law, not because of the outward appearance, not because of the
outward activity, but because of the work inwardly that the
Holy Spirit does by giving us the desires to do what God has
commanded. And so we are pushed inwardly,
not outwardly. As a matter of fact, I had in
my notes here somewhere, let me see if I can find them, I
found a, I found a, haven't even been following my notes, but
I found a, I found a quote, ah here, found
a quote this week that says, Christian activity never stems
from the imperative of a divine command, but from the impulse
of an indwelling presence. And that's what this is all about.
Whenever we come to worship or whatever we do in serving the
Lord, it should come from that inward dwelling of Christ propelling
us from inward to outward, not the worrying about how we look,
whether it's worrying about how we look to men, or worrying about
if we don't do that, then we're going to be rejected of God,
okay, because that's still, again, self-righteous. We're saying
that my righteousness, my doing this good, makes me look better. My doing and following after
this tradition makes me look good in the eyes of men, makes
me look good in the eyes of God. See, that's where we find ourselves
here in verse 6. We're honoring God with our lips,
but not our hearts. He says, how being in vain do
they worship Me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of
men. They're teaching the teachings
and commands of men more than they are searching the Word of
God and preaching the Word of God. You've got to do this. You've got to do that. I don't
know how many times. The Bible says not to forsake
the assembling of yourselves together. Right? Find that in
Hebrews. That's truth. We shouldn't forsake
the assembling. Whenever the church meets, we
should be coming together. And everybody should do all that
they can to be there for the assembly. Now, there's going
to be instances where you're going to be hindered and not
going to be able to come. And that's not forsaking the assembly.
But there are some that forsake the assembly of themselves together.
They just don't do it. And then some will add the tradition
of men on there to say, Sunday school, worship. Sunday evening
Bible study, worship. Wednesday night. Some may also
add on Tuesday, youth meeting or Thursday, older people meeting,
Saturday, men's breakfast. And if you don't meet those things,
you're browbeat. You're forsaking the assembling
of yourselves together. You may have even heard some
older Christians, maybe even newer, younger Christians, may
still say this today. I'm at church every time the
doors are open. Sunday school, worship, Sunday night, Wednesday
night. Never miss it. Not forsaken sibling
of ourselves together. But yet the whole time some of
those may be looking at their watch. Man, when is the preacher
going to be done? Man, he's been preaching for an hour and 25
minutes or so. Has it been that long? Or they may be saying, the game
starts in about 25 minutes, and he's still talking. I've come and done my duty. Come
on, preacher. Their lips are honoring God,
but their hearts are far from Him. They've added traditions. Yes, we're not to forsake the
assembly of ourselves together. But then they've added, We're
gonna meet 25 times this week, and if you don't make those 25
times, then you're forsaking the assembling of yourself together. Or they may look at our church,
because we only meet once during the week on the first part of
the morning, and say, your church is just not as spiritual as our
church. We have two meetings on Sunday
morning, two meetings on Sunday night, Wednesday night service.
Listen, there are some churches that only meet once a month.
Some may even meet once a quarter. Are they forsaken the assembling
of themselves together? Well, not if the congregation
has desired and chose to say, this is the time that we're going
to meet. As long as everybody meets at the time that the church
puts together to meet, then they do that. See where we can get off on our
commandments of men? And there are many others that
I could talk about besides that. I could go into a bunch of different
examples, but that's just one. Verse 8, for laying aside the
commandment of God, ye hold the tradition of men. They're holding up the tradition
of men above the Word of God. I see that a lot sometimes in
men. I've been guilty of that myself. I'm not without fault. And that still can be true. The
heart is deceitfully wicked above all things, and who can know
it? As long as I'm still in this
flesh, I can be deceived. So can you. Can you. whoever's watching, listening.
We can be deceived. And if we have too much pride
to say, well, no, I've learned it enough. If we have too much
pride, we can easily say, no, I've been there, I've done that,
I've put my time in on the study of that. Matter of fact, I've
learned it from the Greek and the Hebrew, and I know that that's
correct. You know what? I used to preach Arminianism,
and I preached it from the Greek and the Hebrew. You say, well, how can that be? The Bible teaches sovereign grace.
How is you preaching that from the Greek and Hebrew? That's
the original language. It should have been telling you otherwise.
You know why? Because I was deceived. I was looking at the Greek and
Hebrew and making the Greek and Hebrew what I thought the Greek
and Hebrew said say what it said. And I was trying to prove to
people that believed the doctrines of grace that they were wrong
by the Greek and Hebrew. See, we can take any of that.
We can take the very words of God's Word and we can twist them
the way that we want. And then we can in pride say,
I know it, I've learned it all, there's nothing left to be taught
to me on that regard. I know what I know and that's
it. And not be humbled to know, you
know, I very possibly could be wrong. I very possibly could
be wrong. Or we could be like some of these
men here, think because they are so above us with their long
robes and their phylacteries and their education, the scribes
and the Pharisees, the wise and the prudent, look down upon someone
else and say, well, you just don't understand. You just don't
know. You've not been educated enough. You don't have a degree. You
know, I was accused by a gentleman just not long ago of not being
able to understand some things of the scripture about a certain
doctrine because I was unleathered. And that was his defense, that I was making stupid propositions
because I was unleathered. Do you realize some of the men
that wrote this Bible were unlettered men? Luke, he was a doctor, so he
was probably lettered, but at least lettered in being a doctor,
but not in being a scholar in the Bible. There was John, he
was a fisherman. Peter, he was a fisherman. Really,
the only one out of all these men who had actually been schooled
in Bible was Paul. And he said, all those things
that I thought were awesome about me, and all the learning that
I did and all that stuff, I counted as done for righteousness. I
counted as done. Listen, I was actually schooled
on the back side in Now I forgot where he went. But
by Jesus, for three and a half years, and everything that I
thought I knew, I learned the truth about it. All the Pharisee
of Pharisees had to be humbled by Christ and taught the truth
of Scripture. We can become so proud that we
think we know it all and cannot be taught or corrected I don't
mind correction. As a matter of fact, since I've
been pastor here, I've been corrected many times. Not only from people
in this church, but from those outside of this church. I've
preached at Bible conferences before, and had men come up,
pull me aside, and take me to God's Word. They took me to God's
Word. They didn't take me to a confession of faith. They didn't
take me to an article of faith or a creed. They didn't take
me to a commentator and say, look here, John Gill says this.
They didn't take me to that. They took me to God's Word. They
didn't even try to beat my head with Greek and Hebrew. They just
took me to God's Word and said, listen, consider this. Consider
this. They didn't talk down to me.
They didn't condescend upon me. They didn't immediately just
say, mark this man as a heretic and put him out. They lovingly
came and said, consider these things. And they took me to Scripture. And as I examined the Scripture,
the Spirit of God convicted that that was true, what they said.
And I had to correct what I would say and teach about that very
subject. And that's happened several times
in the ministry since I've been in Joplin. But there's also been
several times that men have tried to correct, but they come with
things outside of Scripture, and I cannot be convinced outside
of Scripture. I have to be convinced by what
Scripture says. I don't put before the commandment
of God the tradition of men. And just because I reject a correction
that comes from without God's Word, doesn't mean that I reject
correction. And neither should you. If someone
comes and tries to correct you, but they're trying to correct
you on things that the Scripture does not teach, then there is
no place for you to need to be corrected. But if it's by God's Word, then
you need to repent of that and turn from that wrong thinking
and turn to the right thinking. Jesus says, for laying aside
the commandment of God, you hold the tradition of the man and
the washing of pots and cups and many other things like that
that you do. He's saying you're looking at
the trivial things. You're looking at trivial things.
What's the heart of the matter? The heart of the matter is where
is your heart when you come to worship? Is your heart really
truly on worshiping God, or is it to keep up the outward appearance? I'm going to be very, very, very
honest right now. Like I said, many of my sermons
that are topical, a lot of times come from personal struggles
that I have myself. Either wrestling with a point
of Scripture, debate that I might have had with somebody over the
course of time on the Internet or in person, or whether it's
just an inward struggle that I have, a lot of times it comes
from a personal experience that God has brought me through and
in my study of God's Word have learned from those things that
I want to pass on because I know we're all cut from the same cloth.
If I'm going through these struggles, I'm sure somebody else is going
through these struggles as well. There's been many times that
I've come and stood behind this podium and preached. But I didn't want to be here.
I didn't feel like being here. Whether it was I just didn't
feel good, or honestly, I just really don't feel like it today. Yes, pastors can feel that way. Men of God can feel that way. And if you are out there and
you say, not me, brother, not me, I was saved when I was 15. I
was called to preach when I was 18. And there hasn't been one
day that I've not felt like getting up in the pulpit and preaching.
Matter of fact, I want to get up more times than I get to and
preach. I would have to call you a liar.
I would have to call you a liar. There have been many times that
I have not wanted to be here. But I came. You know why? I have a responsibility as the
pastor to be here. God's called me to preach, so
I need to honor God and what he's called me to do. The outward appearance. What
would it look like if the preacher just called and said, I don't
want to be here today. Everybody go home. What would other people think
if the preacher didn't want to preach today? There's been a
lot of time, so I've came and I've done it. Not feeling my
love. That's what this is talking about.
You honor me with your lips, but your heart is far from me. He said unto them, full will
ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own
tradition. Then he gives them an example. What these men were doing, if
you look there, he says, Moses said, honor thy father
and thy mother. That's in the Ten Commandments,
right? Honor thy father and thy mother. And he also says, whoso
curseth father or mother, let him die the death. That's in Exodus. Exodus 21, right? Exodus 21. Exodus 21 and verse 17. And he that curses his father
or his mother shall surely be put to death. Y'all kids hear
that? He that curses his father or
his mother shall surely be put to death. Aren't you glad you
don't live in the Old Testament under the law? How many of you
would still be alive? Y'all would be dead, wouldn't
you? Jesus said, OK, you're worried
about keeping the law. You're coming to me asking how
come these men are coming in to eat, to worship with unwashed
hands, according to your tradition. So obviously, you must be worried
about keeping laws. But here the Bible says, God's
Word says, God's commandment, not man's traditions, but God's
commandment says that you're to honor your father and mother
and whoever cursed his father and mother should be put to death,
but yet here you are. Every one of you have said Corbin.
You know what that means? Kind of weird that that's right
there in the middle of everything. What's Corbin? What does that
mean? But ye say, If a man shall say
to his father and mother, It is Corbin, that is to say, a gift by whatsoever
thou mightest be profited by me, he shall be free. What these
men and their traditions had done was, yes, God's Word said
that you are to honor your father and your mother. Now, that means
to respect them, for one. But also, honoring your father
and mother means you need to take care of them, especially
whenever they are old and aging and can't take care of themselves,
that you ought to be taking care of them. They've spent their
life taking care of you. Now, you have a responsibility
to take care of them. Remember that when your dad gets
old and feeble, or more old and feeble than I already am. But yet what these men say that,
well, yes, but if we come in and say, Corbin, to our father,
that is to say, we've vowed to use our money for this cause. So we can't take care of you
because we've made a vow. Now, under that vow, under their
tradition, they've made a vow that we've got to spend this
money Let's say I've made a vow. I tell my mom and dad, I'm sorry,
mom and dad, I can't help you because I have vowed to give
Sovereign Grace Baptist Church 98% of my income, and I'm going
to live on 2% of that income. According to their tradition,
though, that if the 2% of my income doesn't meet up, I still
can use some of this money that I've vowed to give to Sovereign
Grace Baptist Church to use for my personal self but everything
else has to be for the church. Okay? So I've made a vow to the
church, so now I have to keep that, so I can't keep this. And Jesus is saying, see, you
have circumvented God's commandment with your tradition, and you've
made, what does it say here? You've made the word of God of
none effect through your traditions. Meaning that I found a way to
not have to, yes, I'm keeping all of God's law, but what about
honoring your mother and father? Oh, well, I've said, Corbin,
I've dedicated and vowed my money to go over here for this. So
I'm relieved of this obligation of keeping this law. And Jesus
is saying, you've made your tradition, You've made that law of God of
no effect. By keeping your tradition, you're not keeping the law of
God. And this is what you should be
worried about and not this. And so he says, so ye suffer
that man who does that to do ought for his father and his
mother. making the Word of God none effect
through your traditions, which ye have delivered, and many such
like things do ye." He says not just that, but there's other
things just like that that you do. You find an excuse not to do
what God's Word says, or you find an excuse not to follow
what the Word of God says, you replace God's Word with something
else. That's what they were doing in
essence. They were replacing God's Word with the traditions
of man. So we should be careful. Where is
our heart? Is our heart on truly being obedient
to God, following Him, worshiping Him correctly? believing what He says in His
Word, trusting in Him, all those things will come from the heart
as the Spirit of God leads us. And so we should be searching
God's Word, not man's traditions, for what we are to know, what
we are to follow, and how we are to worship. Where is our
heart? Is it on the outward things to
do those things that look and appear outwardly good? Or is
it to truly be and follow and do what God has said because
we have been taught of God and not by men? Jesus says, if any
man have ears to hear, let him hear. If any man has ears to
hear, if you are spiritually alive, hear what I'm saying. You can have a hypocritical worship
whenever you put up the traditions of men over the words of God. Now, I mentioned to you that
this whole sequence of things happened according to God's providence,
right? The crux to this context is Jesus
saying, where is your heart at in your worship? Is it on the
outward things for men to see and applaud you by and so that
you can say that you kept all these things according to your
traditions? Or is it truly seeking after
the heart of God in His Word and following after Him because
of the impulse from within and not the external pressure from
without? We see the Pharisees that look
to their self-righteousness and who they were and what they should
be respected as. And then right after that, we
see a woman who knew her place, who came to Christ knowing she
was unworthy, knowing that she had nothing to put forth for
her own righteousness. Look at what he says here. And
from thence he arose and went to the borders of Tyre and Sidon,
and entered into a house that would have no man know it, but
he could not be hid for a certain woman whose young daughter had
an unclean spirit heard of him and came and fell at his feet."
Look how she came. Those religious men came to Jesus
all puffed up in pride and arrogance. Coming to God and questioning
God about how He was doing things. Can you imagine that? These religious
men had become so puffed up in their religiosity, in their letteredness,
that they looked on others and said, how dare you do it different
than we do it? Because they're puffed up in
pride. Now that doesn't mean that whenever
a man truly comes with a loving heart, brother to brother comes
and tries to bring a brother back from an error or something
like that. That doesn't mean that everybody that does that
is doing it in pride. There is a way about doing those
things. Even the Bible tells us that
we should be careful in how we go and do those things that we
might not harm the weaker brother. But these men come full-blown
out in front of everybody when Jesus had the masses and confronted
Him in front of the masses and accused Him of blasphemy, accused
Him of breaking the Sabbath, accused Him of not keeping the
law of God, and accused Him of breaking the traditions of the
elders. and claiming that they have done
it. We've done this, but you haven't, and here you are. You're
coming to us and telling us that you're the son of God. You're
telling us that you've come from God. You're telling us that you
are God, and here you are coming, and here you are. You're not
even keeping the traditions of the elders. You're not following
after the traditions. Can you imagine the self-righteous
attitudes of these men coming to God and saying that? But on
the other hand, and these were the Jews. These were men of the
Jews. These were God's people that God had called out of the
world as a special people and nation for himself, who had been
given the oracles of God and the ordinance of God, who God
had promised his presence among them. And here comes a woman from Syrophoenicia,
a Greek, A Gentile. The Jews consider the Gentiles
dogs. Call them dogs. Consider, as a matter of fact,
that it's even brought up here in this passage. Jesus even said
it. Let the children be filled, for
it is not meat to take the children's bread, and to cast it under the
dogs. But yet this woman comes and
what does she do? She comes to Jesus and falls
at His feet. She humbles herself. She realizes who it is that is
superior. She realizes that He is the Lord. Realizes that He is who He says
He is. And so she falls at His feet. And whenever He tells her, listen,
it's not for me to give to the dogs what I'm supposed to be
giving to the children. Because Jesus even said that
he has come to seek and save that which was lost. And particularly
at that point in time, those are the lost children of Israel.
To the Jew first, then to the Greek. The gospel was to come
to the Jew first, then to the Greek. The Greek was to be able
to come after his resurrection. but to the Jew first. And so
Jesus' mission, Jesus' coming was to come and to preach and
to teach to the Jew first. And then even whenever the church
come together, they was first to preach and together to the
Jew first and then to the Greek. Whenever God called Paul, whenever
Jesus came and talked to Paul and converted Paul, Then the
ministry to the Greeks began on a large scale. But at this
point, it was for the Jews. And so Jesus said, it's not right
for me to take from those that I've been sent to give this to
and to give it to the dogs. And here's her humble reply. She said, yes, Lord, yet the
dogs under the table eat of the children's crumbs. What she's
saying is, yes, there are some that realize what's going on
here, but yet we understand and have been made to believe that
you are who you say you are. See, even in the Old Testament,
there were people that were Gentiles that the Lord said Rahab is one
of them. Matter of fact, Rahab is in Jesus's physical line of
people. Rahab the harlot. Don't know
what a harlot is? Now they turn to the hooker.
Prostitute. A woman who sold her body for
money. Rahab the harlot becomes saved. Or was saved. As a righteous
person. Matter of fact, it talks about
her in Hebrews. But in Hebrews, it says, verse 31 or verse 30. By faith the walls of Jericho
fell down after they were compassed about seven days. By faith the
harlot Rahab perished not with them that believed not when she
had received the spies with peace. So here Rahab the harlot is added
in the list of faithful people Here this woman comes, a Greek,
Gentile, Syrophoenician woman, who comes not having the law,
not having all the outward appearance, comes and humbles herself at
Jesus' feet, and realizing that there is a reverence that should
be given, that there is an order, and that only His words matter.
She said, Yes, Lord. Yet the dogs under the table
eat of the children's crumbs. And he said unto her, For this
saying, Go thy way. The devil is gone out of thy
daughter. And when she was come to her
house, she found the devil gone out and her daughter laid upon
the bed. So we see here that the Lord
granted unto her that very thing, but notice that the difference
was her heart, she was motivated from the heart because she knew
what was true from the heart, not just from the head. The impulse caused her to reverence,
caused her to fear, caused her to beg, caused her to come, and
prostrate herself before the Lord and know that only by His
words can it be done. Brethren, our heart when we come
to worship or whatever we do should always be from the propelling
of the heart. Yes, knowledge is important.
We don't know the things unless we understand and gain the knowledge. The Spirit has to teach us that.
And as we gain that knowledge and that doctrine, then the right
application of that also comes from the Spirit, but it doesn't
come from a head knowledge of doing it outwardly because we
have an outward duty to perform. It comes because there really
has been a transformation in our heart by the indwelling of
the Spirit who is now prompting us to good works. The flesh hasn't
changed, and I'm not preaching that. I'm not preaching becoming
more holy. I'm not preaching that we're
pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. I'm saying that we should be
praying to God to give us right hearts before we come, preparing
ourselves for worship, preparing ourselves for service by asking
the Lord to give us the right understanding and that we might
serve from the heart. And He promises that we will
serve from the heart those things which He has commanded. Gabriel can put the verse down
at the bottom that I'm thinking of, but I can't think of it right
now. Brethren, where is your heart?
I know a lot of times my heart's not here. And I do it. But I've gained no righteousness
because of it. I've not done anything in vain
I've come. Now that doesn't mean that everything
that happens here was in vain. But in vain, I worship the Lord. Matter of fact, there's been
many times when I've had that very attitude, and I've come and preached.
And there's been times I've not wanted to come preach, and that
is because I really didn't have anything prepared. I didn't know
what I was going to preach. Even this morning, I was still
conflicted about whether or not I was going to preach this or
preach something else. I didn't know exactly which way I was
going to go this morning. I still wanted to come do it this morning.
I wanted to be here. I wasn't feeling like I wanted
to be here, but there's been times I've come and I've preached
and I've thought, man, that's been a horrible message. And in my
heart, and in my case, my worship was in vain that morning, but
others have claimed Brother, that really blessed my heart.
That really touched me. I was edified by this or I was
edified by that. Someone came up and said, that's
the best way I've heard that explained or something to that
effect. And I feel so bad knowing in my heart, my mind, if you
only knew how I really felt as I was preaching that. If you
only knew the thoughts that I was having of, can I shut myself
up so I can get on home? Listen, we all fall in those
areas, but where's our heart? There's a preparation that we
should make before we come to worship and asking the Lord to
prepare ourselves as we come so that when we come, we'll worship
in Spirit and in truth. Does anybody have any questions
that you'd like to ask this morning or any comments? Anybody want
to tell me what a good job I did in preaching this morning so
I can feel better about myself on the outward? I'm just kidding. That's just
a joke for anybody watching and listening. That's just a joke. Alright, let's go and have a
look. Gracious Heavenly Father, we
do come to You this morning. Jesus, we ask now that You just receive the glory and honor that's
due to Your name through what we've done today. We pray that
it has been pleasing to You. Father, we pray through the singing
and through the preaching Lord, that you've been honored and
glorified. Lord, we pray this morning for all of our members,
none being here this morning, except here in my family. And
Lord, we don't know where they're at, what's going on. We know
a lot of health issues has been going on with folks, and they've
been dealing with that. And so Lord, we pray for them. We thank you for your watch care
overs. Again, as we talked about last week, we talk about what
You have said in Your 91st Psalm, that we do trust in You as our
buckler and our shield. We know that Your sovereignty
does count. We look to You in that. We ask, Lord, that You
just might help us be faithful each and every time that we come
together, but also whenever we are out and about, wherever You
have us to be, Father, may we be witnesses of Christ and His
Gospel. Father, I thank you for the time
that we've had together this morning, me and my family here.
And I ask, Lord, that you just might bless it. I pray that you
just might take this word and that you might apply it in our
hearts and minds. Father, we just lift up the church
and ask, Lord, that you might grow and enlarge it. Lord, not for our glory or our
gain, but for yours, for your namesake. Father, for those who
are in this town that love and believe the truth, that they
might be edified, for those that they might be part of the service
of God, and that they might be co-labors in the ministry of
the gospel. Father, Lord, we just ask that
You just might continue to bless and minister us here. Be with
us now as we eat, that You might bless the food, and that You
might bless the fellowship. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.