The Line Between Good & Bad

Anyone want to take a guess at what this graph represents?

I'll give you a hint, it's sales in millions of dollars of a particular product in the United States between June 2019 and June 2020.

Any guesses what the product is?

It is hand sanitizer.

The Wall Street Journal recorded in the year 2020, sales of hand sanitizer went up 600% in one year.

Of course, we know why, COVID hit.

During COVID, all of us, we became rightly obsessed with purifying ourselves, with cleaning ourselves.

Germaphobes and non-germaphobes, we became obsessed with the thought that there is something bad out there that I need to protect myself from.

And I think it's probably fair to say we're still obsessed.

Ever since COVID, I personally at least, am so aware of how long it's been since I washed my hands.

For me, right now, I washed them about 6.30 this morning and I haven't washed them since.

When, don't, I mean, I shouldn't have told you that.

Don't shake my hand.

When I go fill up the car with petrol, the first thing you do when you get back in the car is, sanitize your hands.

Since COVID, we've become obsessed with this idea that we must remain pure and clean because there is something bad out there that will defile us.

I think it's true of germs and it's even more true at a deeper level, that spiritually, we are desperate to remain pure and untouched by that which is bad out there.

And of course, every culture might define what is bad out there differently, but the principle that humans have this self-preservation instinct is solid, I think.

We want to protect ourselves from what is bad out there.

Our passage today raises, I think, the central question, where do you draw the line between good and bad?

If we are so desperate to remain pure and clean, sanitarily but spiritually more so, we need to know where to draw the line.

So this message is titled, The Line Between Good and Bad.

And that's the question that we're gonna unpack.

I want to put it to you that there are three different ways you can draw the line between good and bad.

Kathleen has read for us the passage that we'll work through, but just before we get to Mark chapter 7, I want to take us back to the very beginning of the story of the Bible, back to Genesis chapters 1 to 3, because the first way to draw the line between good and bad we see in Genesis.

The first way to draw the line between good and bad is outside me.

Genesis 1 to 3 is a story we know very well.

God creates a very good world and he places human beings in it to work it and keep it and cultivate it.

And he says that you are my image, you are my image bearer.

And then God creates two trees in the middle of the Garden of Eden and he says, don't eat from these trees.

Genesis 2 verse 9.

The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground, trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food.

In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Skipping down to verse 15.

The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.

And the Lord God commanded the man, You're free to eat from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the knowledge of the tree of good and evil, for when you eat from it, you will certainly die.

Now, just the first thing to note here is when it says the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the Hebrew words there are tov and ra.

And tov means good, but ra doesn't necessarily mean evil as much as bad.

So there's this growing consensus among scholars that maybe the better way to translate the tree is the tree of the knowledge of good and bad, as in discernment, not utter good and abject evil, but the tree of knowing right and wrong, helpful and unhelpful, good and bad.

And so in Genesis 1-3, we see the first way to draw the line between good and bad is outside me.

The fruit of the tree literally represented the line between good and bad.

And for Adam and Eve, it was entirely outside them.

And the reason God created the world in this way is because he was inviting Adam and Eve to trust him to define what is good and bad.

He says, don't eat from this tree, but let me tell you what is good and bad.

That was the way that creation was originally intended.

They were invited to have a childlike trust.

So what does this mean for us?

What does this line mean?

Well, I think every human being is born into this way, this first way.

Think of a child.

I have three nieces under three, and all of them are totally dependent on their parents to define for them what is good and bad.

Don't touch that.

Do eat this.

Don't lick that.

Do wash your hands.

Which apparently some of us need more help learning how to wash their hands.

Children are totally dependent on their parents to define for them what is good and bad.

That is what the essence of childhood is.

The problem is most of us grow up.

We grow up and we come to know what is good and bad for ourselves.

So we don't live in the kind of world where the knowledge of good and bad is entirely outside of us.

We know in Genesis 3 that Adam and Eve ate of the tree.

They grasped the fruit.

And in that moment they took on themselves and in some way upon all of humanity the burden of the knowledge of good and bad.

So we don't live in this kind of world anymore.

We don't stay in the first way very long.

Isaiah chapter 7 verse 15 says, He will be eating curds and honey when he knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right.

For before the boy knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right, the land of the two kings you dread will be laid waste.

I think Isaiah is implying, one of the pieces of that verse is, there is a time when a child grows up and knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right.

Most of us, apart from those who have not cognitively matured beyond the age of a young child, most of us develop the capacity to choose between good and bad.

So we don't stay in this first line for very long.

It doesn't work for us to draw the line between good and bad outside of me.

Which brings us to the second way.

The second way to draw the line between good and bad is around me.

So we'll come now to Mark 7 that Kathleen read for us, verses 1-5.

The Pharisees and some of the teachers of the law who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus and saw some of his disciples eating food with hands that were defiled, that is unwashed.

The Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial washing, holding to the tradition of their elders.

When they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash.

And they observe many other traditions, such as the washing of cups, pitches, and kettles.

So the Pharisees and teachers of the law asked Jesus, why don't your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating food with defiled hands?

Firstly, check out verses 3 and 4.

We get this parenthetical comment.

Mark has said something in brackets, and I find it the coolest thing because it's a window into the fact that Mark is writing to an audience that doesn't understand what he's talking about.

We know from the historical context of the Gospel of Mark that Mark is writing in Rome.

Roman people are not Jewish people.

They don't understand the intricacies of the Jewish culture.

So it's as though Mark says in verses 3 to 4, by the way, the Pharisees, they wash their hands because of the tradition of the elders.

It goes right the way back.

Mark is explaining for his audience the context of why the Pharisees do what they do.

And he says it goes right back to the tradition of the elders.

So follow me right back to earlier in the story of Israel.

We know after Adam and Eve sin, they take on themselves the knowledge of good and bad, and sin spreads throughout the world after that.

There is this core need that humans have to purify themselves in order to be in God's presence again.

Humanity has sinned and at the end of Genesis 3, they are exiled from the Garden of Eden, meaning separated from the presence of God.

And so in Genesis 3 and 4 and the rest of the Old Testament, one of the key plot lines is how are human beings going to be in the presence of God again?

How are sinful, impure, unclean people going to be in the presence of a holy God?

And from Genesis, you turn two books to the right, you get Leviticus.

And Leviticus is concerned with this question.

Essentially, the question is how are unclean human beings going to be in the presence of a holy God?

And if you've read Leviticus, it's dense.

I've read through the Bible once as a teenager, and many times I've decided I wanted to read through it again.

I go Genesis, great, love it.

Exodus, great, love it.

And then I stop in Leviticus because it's the worst.

Leviticus spells out all of these rituals and practices and sacrifices for the people to purify themselves in order to be in the presence of a holy God.

In chapter 11, it's this great chapter in Leviticus that spells out the rules specifically regarding clean and unclean animals.

I won't read the whole thing, but verses 1 and 2 of Leviticus 11.

The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, Say to the Israelites, Of all the animals that live in the land, these are the ones you may eat.

What follows is a huge list of all of the clean and unclean animals.

Check this out.

This is highlighted in blue.

This is Leviticus 11, all of it.

Highlighted in blue is every time the word unclean pops up.

It's like this animal, that's unclean.

This animal, that's unclean.

That's unclean.

Forty-four times I count the word unclean appears in Leviticus.

This is detailed law.

So you can imagine they're a pious, God-honouring Jews who want to follow the law.

They want to honor God.

But they read this and go, it's insane the number of rules that I have to keep in my mind.

And so, the elders, the tradition of the elders was, why don't we just wash our hands whenever we touch anything?

Why don't we be extra conservative so that we don't come against the boundary of the law?

That's what the leaders of the Pharisees did.

It says this in Leviticus 11.32, when one of them, referring to unclean animals, dies and falls on something, that article, whatever its use, will be unclean, whether it's made of wood, cloth, hide or sackcloth, put it in water, it will be unclean till evening and then it will be clean.

If one of them falls into a clay pot, everything in it will be unclean.

And you must break the pot.

Leviticus 11 says that it's not only that some animals are unclean, but the vessels which the unclean animals touch become unclean.

So, all of this is the context behind why the elders would wash their hands all the time to be extra, extra careful.

They're drawing the line in from the edge.

And now the Pharisees come in 1,000 years later.

And it comes from this good heart that they want to honor God.

They want to follow the law.

And they follow the tradition of the elders.

That's what Mark is explaining.

When he does his little parentheses bit, he's telling that story.

He's saying the reason the Pharisees wash their hands is it goes right back to the tradition of the elders.

At our church, we have lately had a lot of toddlers running around, which is the coolest thing.

Imagine the toddlers are running around in the foyer and the front doors are open.

Now, the parents of said toddlers would rightly say, you can run around the foyer, you can run around the auditorium, but don't go out the front doors.

Why would they say that?

The forecourt is safe.

In fact, it's a great place to run around.

You could get some sun, you could bounce balls on the floor.

They would say that because if you're in the forecourt, you're only one step away from stepping on the road and that is a dangerous place.

So it's very pragmatic wisdom for parents to draw the line in from the edge of danger.

And that's exactly what the Pharisees do.

In the tradition of the elders, they draw a fence around the law and they pull it back from the edge.

They say, you know what, we're going to wash our hands whenever we touch a vessel, just in case it's unclean.

Now the law of God did not tell them to do that, but they're being extra careful.

They're drawing the line in from the edge of danger.

So these Pharisees come to Jesus, and they say effectively, why don't your disciples do what we do?

As if to say, if you really cared about honouring God, surely you would go over the top in protecting yourself from breaking His law.

But as it stands, your disciples eat with unwashed hands.

Like are you serious about God or not?

And this is what Jesus says in reply in verse 6.

Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites.

We're off to a good start.

As it is written, and then he quotes Isaiah, these people honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.

They worship me in vain.

Their teachings are merely human rules.

You've let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions.

And he continued, you have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions.

For Moses said, honor your father and mother, and anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.

But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is korban, and here he does another thing, that means devoted to God, by the way, is korban, then you no longer let them do anything for their father or mother.

Thus you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down, and you do many things like that.

That's full on Jesus criticism.

He doesn't hold back.

You nullify the word of God.

This is a cutting critique of the Pharisees.

And the essence of what he's saying is, you Pharisees and teachers of the law have become so concerned with being right, with following the letter of the law, that you've completely missed the heart of the law.

You've missed that it's grace, it's relationship with God that is at the heart of the law.

And second to that, Jesus actually says, it's not only that you're overzealous in keeping the law, but that in being overzealous, you break the law.

Jesus says, he goes back to Moses and says this command about honoring your father and mother, but the Pharisees, by being overzealous, don't allow people to follow the law.

Thus, they nullify the Word of God.

So we're looking at the second way to draw the line between good and bad.

The Pharisees draw that line around me.

They draw this strict hyper-conservative line around me.

And the implication is, I am pure and the world is not.

Thus, I must retreat and draw a strict line.

I will not touch the world.

I will not engage because I'm honoring God.

And of course, that comes from a good place.

It comes from a heart that wants to follow the law.

But they've gone way too far.

So how does this way to draw the line sit with us?

As I said at the start, in 2020, hand sanitizer sales went up 600% in America.

You and I now are probably more obsessed than ever with this idea of staying pure, of cleaning our hands, of staying away from that which is bad.

And so we could be tempted to draw a line around us and say, I'm good, and the world is bad, and I'm not going to touch the world.

The danger for us is that there is a good heart behind it.

As I said, the Pharisees, they wanted to honor God.

And if we do that, we want to remain pure because God says, be holy for I am holy.

But the problem is, by taking the Word of God, we can over read it, and we become so legalistic that we do miss the heart of it.

We miss the grace of God.

And we become insulated in our happy Christian bubble.

You know the parable of the Good Samaritan.

I imagine that maybe the reason why the Levite and the priest and all of the people who passed by the poor man, the reason they passed by could have been that they didn't want to defile themselves by touching someone who was dirty and bleeding.

They're thinking, imagine, I'm kind of reading into it, but I don't think it's too far from the truth.

Imagine that everyone who passes by the man on the side of the road is saying, God, I honor you, I honor you.

I will not touch someone who's unclean because I'm devoted to following you.

Jesus tells that story in order to show the ridiculous nature of what they're saying.

That by supposedly following the law of God, they are breaking the heart of it because God calls us to care for those kinds of people.

And yet, when we draw this line around ourselves, like an insulated bubble, we miss out on the fact that God is at work in this broken world.

In May mission month, we looked at the sermon series, Mending, and one of the key lines was, our God is at work mending a beautiful broken world.

If we were to draw the line between good and bad around us, we would never get our hands dirty in partnering with what God is doing in mending this beautiful broken world.

We would separate and become happy and holy in our Christian bubble.

And yet Jesus' criticism is so sharp to people who say that and who act like that.

He says, you nullify the word of God.

That's what the Pharisees do.

In cleansing themselves of anything that is dirty, they fail to receive and to hear the heart of God for the lost and the broken and the poor.

So Jesus says, it doesn't work to draw the line that way.

To draw the line between good and bad around me because all you end up doing is insulating yourself from the very broken yet beautiful world that God is trying to redeem through us.

It doesn't work.

You can't draw the line like that.

Which brings us to the third way, Mark 7 verse 14.

Again, Jesus called the crowd to him and said, listen to me, everyone, and understand this.

Nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them.

Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them.

After he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about this parable.

Are you so dull?

he asked.

Don't you see that nothing that enters a person from the outside can defile them, for it doesn't go into their heart, but into their stomach and then out of the body.

And then again, in saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean.

And that's a huge comment, but we could come back to that in a later week.

So we've been asking this question, the central question of this passage and of this message, where do you draw the line between good and bad?

We've seen that Adam and Eve in Genesis 1-3 drew the line outside them, but that doesn't work because we don't live in the part of the story where we can claim to be innocent and naive.

We know good and bad, so that doesn't work.

And secondly, we've seen that the Pharisees and the teachers of the law draw the line around themselves, as if to say, I am holy, the world is not, I'm not going to touch anything.

But Jesus says that too doesn't work because all it does is insulate us from the purpose that God has in sending us into the world.

So where do you draw the line?

Where do you draw the line between good and bad?

Alexander Solzhenitsyn says this.

The line between good and evil runs not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart.

That's where the line between good and bad runs.

It runs straight through the human heart.

Solzhenitsyn gets his idea from Jesus, because Jesus himself says, the line between good and bad is not outside me and it's not around me, it is through me.

It runs right through my heart.

Good and bad are in here.

That's where it comes from.

I am not pure and clean, seeking to clean my hands of the bad world, but good and bad run right through here.

Take a look at this diagram.

We've come to this diagram many times over the past few years.

This is from Dallas Willard in his book, Renovation of the Heart.

And it is the aspects, the various aspects of human personhood.

You might say the components of the soul.

In the middle, you have the will, which is the heart, the spirit, and then the mind, the emotions, the body, the social context that you live in.

And Willard says all of that comprises, all of that makes up the human soul.

We'll come back to this diagram.

What Jesus is saying is the line between good and bad runs straight down the middle of that, meaning this.

The line between good and bad is not outside me, and it's not around me.

It is through me, through every part of who I am.

Jeremiah 17.9 says, the heart is deceitful above all else, above all things and beyond cure.

Who can understand it?

If the line runs through our hearts, then we cannot fix ourselves.

We have no way, no faculty of transforming ourselves from the inside out.

No way to deal with the bad that is in here.

And just to make things worse, Jesus says in Mark 7 that it's not only that bad is inside us, but the bad inside us has a way of coming out.

He says this in verse 20, Jesus went on, what comes out of a person is what defiles them, for it is from within, out of a person's heart, remember the diagram, out of the heart that evil thoughts come, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly.

All these evils come from inside and defile a person.

I won't get you to raise your hands if you relate to any of the things on that list, because everyone would raise their hands.

There's no point.

Jesus says from the heart, we live broken and sinful lives.

It comes from in here.

And so we go back to Dallas Willard's diagram.

Out of the heart, into the mind, the emotions, the body, the context, out of the soul is our brokenness.

But it comes from in here.

Ephesians 2, 8, 9 says that we were dead in our transgressions, in our spirit.

We were dead in sin.

The will, which is at the heart of our human soul, which is all of us, the will is bent towards evil.

It does not choose the good.

It can't always choose the good, but it chooses the bad.

And so Jesus is a realist, and he knows this.

He knows what our deepest need is.

And that's why he's so harsh in critiquing the Pharisees, because they're so misguided.

The thought that the Pharisees are perfect in here, totally pure, but the world is bad, is completely upside down to what Jesus says.

It's as though he says the Pharisees are seeking to take refuge from a lion by locking themselves in a lion's den.

It's like, no, the problem is in here.

When you insulate yourself in a bubble, all you do is lock yourself in, because this is where the bad comes from.

This is the problem.

This is where the line between good and bad is drawn.

So what's the solution?

There is a solution.

I'll tell you first what is not the solution.

The solution is not try harder.

It's not focus on the good.

Habits stack your way to right living.

It's not quench the bad and squeeze yourself and you'll make enough good come out.

Jesus is a realist and he knows that doesn't work.

That's what the Pharisees tried to do.

They tried to squeeze the good out of themselves.

Jesus says something far more drastic is needed.

We need open heart surgery.

That's exactly what Ezekiel 36 says.

God says, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you.

I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

And I'll put my spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.

The Gospel, the good news of Jesus, is that it is finished, past tense.

Jesus has done what is necessary to transform our heart.

When Ezekiel 36 looks forward to the future that God will take our heart of stone and give us a heart of flesh, we look back in the past at the finished work of Jesus.

Because what Jesus did in dying on the cross is he took the fulfillment of our sin, which is death, on himself.

He took all of our hearts of stone on himself and he let it crush him.

He died.

And then he rose again three days later and he left those stony hearts in the grave.

And now because he has done that, because he has dealt with this broken heart, he is able to pour his spirit in us to give us a heart of flesh that would beat for the glory of God, that we would be moved to follow him.

This is the good news.

Tim Keller says this, the gospel is this, that you are far more sinful than you ever dared imagine.

And yet, in Jesus, more loved than you ever dared to dream.

The good news is that Jesus has done something to deal with this broken heart, to deal with the line between good and bad that runs through my soul.

And so now, because of what Jesus did, you and I who trust in his finished work can be transformed from the inside out.

That heart of stone can be taken away and replaced with a heart of flesh.

Ephesians 2 verse 5 says that we can be made alive with Christ in the Spirit.

That the Spirit that was once dead in transgressions and sins by the mercy of God is made alive.

So that this is now what a human, this is what a human looks like now.

The minute you trust in Jesus, that is what you become.

You are made alive in the deepest part of your soul.

Because he has taken that heart of flesh and in its place he puts a heart of stone.

He takes the heart of stone and in its place he puts a heart of flesh.

And he fills his spirit.

That's the Gospel.

That's grace.

That's the reality that those who live are trusting Jesus.

That's the reality that they live in.

The Bible refers to this as the New Covenant, Jeremiah 31.

This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time, declares the Lord.

I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts.

Remember, that's the deepest part of a person.

He will put his law in our minds and write it on our hearts.

I will be their God and they will be my people.

No longer will they teach their neighbor or say to one another, know the Lord, because they'll all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord, for I will forgive their wickedness and remember their sins no more.

This is the good news.

If we can go back to the diagram one more time.

That's what Jesus did to solve the problem of my bad heart.

He took the heart of stone and replaced it with the heart of flesh.

Now, there's a heck of a lot of dark on that diagram.

I would say this is day one of trusting Jesus, because the vision of the Gospel is that once you've been made alive in your spirit, the work of sanctification is working out the holiness, the work, the grace of God from the inside out, such that my mind is renewed.

Romans 12.2, Don't conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

And once your mind is renewed, that renews your emotions, which brings your body into line, transforms your context, and it makes your soul more like Jesus.

So this is technically correct, but it's day one of following Jesus.

By day, you know, five years' time, the vision of the Gospel is that the light of the holiness of God would be working itself out of our bodies from the inside out.

He has done what is required to deal with our broken and bad heart.

It is finished.

And so as we finish this morning, in the light of this good news, there are two things that every one of us are invited to do.

Firstly, for those who have not experienced that, for those who have not experienced the transformative work of God to take your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh, the invitation is, trust Jesus this morning.

Trust Him.

Repent of your sin.

Repent from living life your way and realize that when we do that, all we do is mess things up and believe that He has done what is required to transform you.

And then that promise from Ezekiel 36 will become true of you.

He will take your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

That's the first thing.

The second thing is for those of us, which I'm guessing is the majority, those of us who do trust Jesus, then remember this is day one.

The invitation for us is not to stay there, not to make use of grace to keep covering over our sin, but to use that grace like rocket fuel, that the grace of God affecting our heart and our spirit would work itself out into the rest of our lives, that we would as a church and as individuals be formed into the image of Jesus together.

The invitation for us, the second group of people, is trust Jesus.

Allow His grace to work in your life.

And as we do that, I think there is some wisdom in what the Pharisees say.

The Pharisees say that I got to be careful what I engage with in the world.

And that's actually wise.

Because even though at the deepest part of our soul, we are righteous and alive, the truth is that it matters, the things that we watch, the things we listen to, the people we hang out with.

That stuff matters.

And so for those of us who trust in Jesus, there is a wisdom component that the Spirit would lead us to know what to say no to and what to say yes to.

That's the core question we've been looking at in our Go24 vision for this year.

What do we say no to?

What do we say yes to?

What habits do we start and stop?

But this is ground zero of a redeemed human being.

That's where the potential for transformation is.

So whoever you are, trust Jesus and know that He has done what is necessary.

Where do we draw the line between good and bad?

We draw it not outside us or around us, but we draw it right through us because all the hand sanitizer in the world can't reach the brokenness that is in here.

But that is what Jesus has done.

He has taken our heart of stone and given us a heart of flesh, made us alive with Him that we would breathe and live for His glory, becoming transformed into the image of Jesus.

The invitation for us is trust Jesus and let him transform us.

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