The Lutheran Hour
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"Can’t Stay Clean"
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Text: Mark 7:23
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Christ is risen! He is risen, indeed! May the Savior who changed this world through His resurrection victory over sin, death, and Satan, send His Spirit upon us that we, too, might be changed and be recipients of His blood-bought redemption. Amen.
In June, when People magazine selected the 50 most beautiful people in the world, I wasn’t on the list. It was quite a blow. Now, I didn’t take it personally when Halston didn’t put me on his ten-best-dressed-men’s list. It’s hard to be in that group when you’re a pastor and you wear black most of the time. But I also didn’t make the list of the top-ten business men to watch in the future; nor the top-ten most influential writers in the literary world, or the top-ten list of American radio personalities with a German heritage, who have a white beard and work in St. Louis – above the age of 50. Nope didn’t make it on a single one of those lists.
You know, my friends, there are a goodly number of people out there who would eagerly run the risk of surgeries, endure the application, injection, and ingestion of drugs both tested and untested, if they were sure, no, make that if they believed there was a minute chance that their suffering would make them more beautiful, more acceptable, more desirable; if they thought that the calendar could be stopped or slowed down for a few months or years. Indeed, the statistics I have been given say that 99 percent of American woman and 94 percent of American men would change something about their looks, if they could.
And why this preoccupation with perfection; this desire to change our outsides to emulate some idealistic, unrealistic standard which seems to be attainable only through computer-enhancement, artistic air-brushing, and some anonymous alchemy? Well, there are, believe it or not, reasons. Some studies say that the pursuit of outside perfection can be important. Already in grade school, attractive children find themselves more popular with their classmates. Some of their teachers, quite unintentionally, have higher expectations and give higher evaluations to their more handsome students. When an attractive person enters the work force, being pleasing to the eye helps him, or her, get a better job, a higher paying job. If a person has to go to court, he doesn’t have to worry, if he’s good looking. If your outside is in great condition, you’re not as like to be found guilty as your plain compatriot. And, if you are found guilty, attractive people get lighter sentences than those who are not.
The long and short of what I’m saying is this: society as a whole, and many of us as individuals, are obsessed with making our outsides as flawless and faultless, as perfect and pretty, as is humanly, hopefully, medically, and surgically possible. We know the clock will tick, gravity will win, but we also know we’ve got to keep trying to look good. Would it comfort you to know that in history there have been other people who were obsessed with looking good? Who? you ask. Well, the Pharisees of the Bible, for one. “But those were bad people,” I can almost hear you say. Well, we think that way today, but the truth is, 2,000 years ago, these fellows were some of the most respected businessmen around. Let me tell you a little, just a little bit, about them. First, Pharisees never called themselves Pharisees; that was the name others gave them. Pharisee means to be separate, and that’s what these fellows were: separate. In a time when people’s morality was immoral and ethics were unethical, these fellows tried to separate themselves from everything and everybody which might mess them up. They tried to live the way the Bible said a person should.
That’s why, when the average Joseph saw a Pharisee walking down the street he would have been impressed. Pharisees understood the importance of looking good. For example, they often wore a blue robe. Why blue? Blue was the color of the sky and a blue robe showed they were close to God. A Pharisee tied a little box on his forehead and another on his arm. Those boxes contained passages from the Bible, and showed to anyone who looked at them that God’s Word was always on their minds and in their hearts. Then there were the tassels. God had said, “When you see a tassel move, remember Me.” Well the Pharisees took God seriously and they wore tassels on their prayer shawls that were so big nobody could forget God. Some might call it bling-bling. Pharisees called it looking good and they weren’t ashamed.
Now don’t get me wrong. These fellows knew their Bible; they prayed faithfully, they fasted, they gave more than a tenth of all they had to the Lord’s work; they were mission-minded; they knew more about God’s laws than anybody else… including God. Now that last part is an exaggeration, but not much. Let me tell you what I mean. You know, in the Bible, God gave some laws to His people. He didn’t give many of them, but the ones He gave, He expected to be obeyed, perfectly. Sadly, sinners like us are unable to obey God perfectly. But nobody told that to the Pharisees.
So, when the Pharisees got together, the conversation went something like this: one would say, “God’s law is sacred, right?” “Right!” everybody agreed. “We don’t want to break God’s law, right?” “Right!” “So, how can we be sure we don’t break the Lord’s laws?” That question wasn’t so easy to answer. After a while, somebody suggested, “If we don’t want to break God’s laws, let’s build a fence, a big fence around God’s laws. Our fence will make sure that nobody can get close to God’s laws. If they can’t get close to God’s laws, they can’t break God’s laws. Right?” Since the other Pharisees were mentally digesting the suggestion, their answer didn’t come back right away. But eventually somebody said, “Right!” and soon everybody agreed: building a fence of laws around God’s laws was the way to go.
So they built protective fences around God’s laws. Abe Lincoln couldn’t have built better fences and more fences than the Pharisees did. If God said, “Remember the Sabbath day,” and He did say that; the Pharisees told you how to remember it. They told you what you could do, and how far you could walk, and what you could cook, and… well, you get the idea.
There was no aspect of life; nothing a person could do, from break of dawn, ’till end of day that escaped their fence-building obsession. They wanted to look good to the Lord, and fence building was the way to do it. When they stopped and took a breath; when they stepped back to admire their work; they were impressed. God had given humankind a few laws, but the Pharisees had added thousands of laws to fill the loopholes God had missed. Then they turned to the other people, their neighbors, their friends, their coworkers, who were not Pharisees and said, “Look at all the laws.” And the people, overwhelmed by the sheer number of those laws, and impressed that anyone would know all those laws, let alone try to follow them, replied: “Sure are a bunch of ’em.” To which the Pharisee commented, in a most unhumble tone: “Yup, sure are, and I’m living my life by them.” Then, after a while, the Pharisee would say, “You know, if you want to look good to God; you need to keep these laws too.” And their neighbor who really did want to look good to God, who wanted forgiveness and heaven but knew he could never follow all those laws and commands, would sadly ask: “Really? God says I have to keep all these laws, or I won’t look good?” And the Pharisee, without blinking an eye, without a bit of hesitation, said, “Yup, that’s what God says.” That was a lie; he knew God hadn’t said anything of the sort. God didn’t give, or want all those commands. If He had thought they were necessary, He would have made them, but He didn’t. But the Pharisee figured since he was trying to protect God, and since he was trying to help his neighbor, it was OK to lie; it was OK to say his laws were as good as God’s. Well, it isn’t. Never has been. Never will be. Now don’t get me wrong. Organizations and families and institutions and countries can make up laws… but they can’t say, “These laws are God’s laws.”
Of course, nobody had the courage to call the Pharisees liars. They were pretty intimidating… they knew the Bible… and they had those tassels, and those Scripture boxes, and they supported the church, and, they looked good. So they got away with it. They might have kept getting away with it, if they hadn’t tried to lie to the Savior. But they did. They were jealous of Jesus’ popularity, and thought they could hurt His cause, and get rid of some of the crowds following Him, if they embarrassed Him, or His disciples. That’s why, one day some of the Pharisees visited Jesus about a grievous sin that they had spotted amongst the Lord’s disciples. Remember, these guys were experts on other people’s grievous sins. They said, “Your disciples aren’t washing their hands properly before they eat.” They really expected Jesus to cave in; to give in; to show remorse; to promise His disciples were going to get the thrashing of their lives. But that’s not what Jesus said. Jesus replied, “Isaiah was right: ‘you fellows honor God with your lips, but your hearts are far from the Lord. You teach your commandments as if they come from God. Your worship is in vain.'” (Mark 7: 6-7)
Jesus always, and I repeat that word, always said religion is useless and worthless, ineffective and ineffectual when it substitutes a human plan of salvation for God’s plan of redemption; when it rests upon man’s works, rather than God’s grace. Don’t take my word for it; listen to Paul. He’s the one who wrote: “We know that a person is not justified” (justified means we are declared forgiven of our sins by God the Judge). Did you get that? “A person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ.” The beloved disciple, John, agreed when he wrote: “The blood of Jesus His (God’s) Son cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:7); and bold Peter also confessed: “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18). The early church was deliberate and concise when it declared: “By grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not of your own doing; it’s the gift of God, it is not the result of your own work, so that any person can boast” (Ephesians 2:8). Nope, a person can’t look good to God by what he does. If we look good, it’s because of what Jesus has done.
To those of you who are listening to this broadcast and believe that all religions are the same, then you need to pay special attention when I say: Only Christianity believes that we are helpless to save ourselves, and only Christianity believes God has done all that was necessary to save us. Because only Jesus can save us and remake us, the early church condemned any doctrine which tried to minimize or obliterate what Christ had accomplished through His life, death, and resurrection. When somebody suggested, “We need to follow all the Old Testament ceremonial Laws,” or “You need some new special revelation to be saved,” the church said, “By grace you are saved, and not by what you do.” In the 16th century when people were told they could buy indulgences, pieces of paper that offered forgiveness of sins for a price, Luther and other reformers said, “Jesus has bought our forgiveness with His blood. The price for our sins has been paid.”
Today, as I look at the world’s religions, I see them telling you what you have to do to be saved. Say this sentence; make this pilgrimage; renounce everything worldly, follow this path. Do this. Do that. And if you do this and do that long enough, and right enough, eventually, maybe, you will receive some recompense, maybe. How sad, and what a contrast to the Pentecost crowd which, when they asked, “How can we be saved?” were given a straight answer: “If you confess with your mouth: Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” There was no maybe, or possibly in those words. It was simply, “Believe and you will be saved.”
Which is why I cringe to hear some religious broadcasters going on the air and saying, “My friends, God has told me that He wants you to have the blessings of salvation and prosperity. Now in order for you to claim those blessings, you need to prime the pump, you need to give God something to work with, you need to make a gift to my ministry. Then God can change your life.” God preserve us from such perversion of the Gospel. Scripture is clear: “He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all-how will He not… graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:32). God needs no pump-priming to find an excuse to love us, to reach out and save us. He needs no payola from us to buy His attention, to bribe Him into doing something good for us. Look at the cross and see how much God loves you.
Which means you can’t save yourself. Now it’s human nature to say, “But Jesus, how about if I were to give up…” He interrupts and says, “You cannot save yourself.” “But, maybe if I…” “No, you cannot save yourself.” “I’ve been thinking if I tried…” “Hush,” Jesus would say, “Listen to Me. You can’t save yourself. Those of you who are preoccupied with your exteriors; who are willing to do anything to look good to others, you need to know there is no surgery, no diet plan, no injection, no vitamin, no pill which will make you look good enough to My Father.” And then Jesus would explain, “The LORD sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7). And then Jesus would add, “And you can’t fix the sin that sits in your heart.”
And what about all the really good people, the fine people, the moral, sacrificing, upstanding people who are trying to earn salvation; what about them? I’m afraid all the good deeds they’re doing, and good deed doing is commendable, is not going to be enough to save them. You see, the best anyone can do is change his thoughts, words, actions; those are all externals, outside things. The sin which condemns us is internal. It’s sort of like having a car with a bad engine. Now, I don’t know anything about fixing engines. I can’t do it. I can wax the outside of the car. I can do a great job of that. But that doesn’t help, does it? I can put on new tires; I can repaint the car, or rotate the tires. But none of those things will help. Nothing will help until the car’s hood is lifted and somebody who is really able to do something gets in and fixes the problem. That’s what Jesus did with His life, death, and resurrection. He made it possible for the Holy Spirit to get into our hearts and fix things.
You do know, Jesus, don’t you? If not, let me tell you about Him. He’s God’s Son. According to His Father’s plan and promise, He was born more than 2,000 years ago in Bethlehem. Since we were helpless to save ourselves from the sin which is in us, God sent His Son to be born one of us. True man so He could take our place; so He might die; so His sacrifice might be accepted; true God so that He might successfully keep the commands that we break; so that He would not succumb to Satan’s temptations; true God, so that, having carried all of our sins, He might in His glorious resurrection on the third day, defeat even death itself. The living Lord Jesus Christ lived His entire life for you; He did without, for you; He was lonely, for you; persecuted, for you; insulted, hated, lied about, rejected, whipped, spit upon, and crucified, all for you. All so you could, someday, on the day of your judgment, stand before the Lord, and rather than sending you to hell, God would take a look and say, “Because of My Son’s substitution, I see no sin on you. You have been saved.” That’s who Jesus is. He has completely and totally done everything that was necessary to change your insides. Do you want to be forgiven; do you want to be saved? Jesus is the one, the only one, that can make that possible.
Now this is the part of the message where I should close with a story. But I won’t. I’ve been told that TIME magazine is putting together their Man Of The Year list. A friend has leaked word to me I might be on the list… somewhere in the top six-billion nominees, I’ve been told. I’ve got to find out more, and if you’d like to find out more about the Savior who changes people from the inside out, call us at The Lutheran Hour. Amen.
LUTHERAN HOUR MAILBOX (Questions & Answers) for September 3, 2006
ANNOUNCER: Is it possible for us to sing ourselves into God’s presence? That’s one of the questions we’ll be asking Rev. Henry Gerike. I’m Mark Eischer and we’re going to be talking about God’s presence in worship. Pastor Henry Gerike is a church composer and director of choral music at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. He was also one of many musicians, theologians, and scholars involved with the preparation of Lutheran Service Book, the newest hymnal for The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. This idea of “singing ourselves into God’s presence” was prompted by an advertisement I read for a book or a program that somebody is marketing to congregations, and they says that if you follow this step-by-step procedure, you’ll be able to “sing down the presence and power of God,” in your worship service. What does this tell us about this person’s understanding of what worship is and how God operates?
GERIKE: I would first have to start off with, what is worship? Worship really is God speaking to us and then we responding to that Word.
ANNOUNCER: Has God ever promised that He would be present because of us singing Him into our presence?
GERIKE: I don’t recall that He’s ever promised that. I do know that He has promised to be present where two or three are gathered in His name, where His Word is and they are gathered in His name, only because of His Word, then. And that Word is a word of forgiveness, a word of promise, of hope, that are all found in Jesus Christ. And that is the surest place where we know He can be found. In His Word. In His sacraments, which are His Word in a very visible way for us.
ANNOUNCER: We understand that God is omnipresent, which means He’s present everywhere. So it’s not like we have to do something to make Him present. He’s already there, right?
GERIKE: Right. God has given us His promise about His Word, and His sacraments, His presence through those means, it’s there for our benefit. Oftentimes, when we say that God is present everywhere, we tend to forget that. Especially when we are in time of need, that’s when we need to know that God is there. And we know that through His Word, through His promises that He is going to be there with us.
ANNOUNCER: There’s a quote that’s attributed to Martin Luther that says, “God is indeed present everywhere, in water and fire and rope, but He has not promised to be found everywhere, lest we drown ourselves in the water, burn ourselves in the fire, and hang ourselves with the rope.”
GERIKE: Right, and we see that all the time in our own lives, that so often we end up worshiping the creation rather than the Creator. I think that’s what Luther is getting at in that quote is that we’ll focus on this one little aspect where we think God is at and put all of our eggs in that one basket. And here all along He’s been with us through His Word, through His sacrament. Another way of looking at this is that so often we are looking for extraordinary ways for God to be present. But He’s there in the very ordinary things. He’s with us in the very ordinary days of our lives.
ANNOUNCER: And of course, this is the God who comes to us in a manger, and on a cross, and out of an empty tomb.
GERIKE: Right. Immanuel, God with us, are the words that keep coming back to mind; and those words are a good way of reminding us that God is truly with us.
ANNOUNCER: And that’s a good place to leave our discussion for today. Thank you, Pastor Henry Gerike.
GERIKE: Thank you for this opportunity.
ANNOUNCER: This has been a presentation of Lutheran Hour Ministries.
Music selections for this program:
“A Mighty Fortress” arranged by John Leavitt. Concordia Publishing House/SESAC
“The Law of God Is Good and Wise / The Gospel Shows the Father’s Grace” arranged by Henry Gerike. Used by permission
“Create in Me” by Healey Willan, ed. Henry Gerike. From Hope by the Concordia Seminary Chorus (© Concordia Seminary Chorus) Concordia Publishing House/SESAC
“These Are the Holy Ten Commandments” by J.S. Bach. From Organist Frederick Hohman & J.S. Bach by Frederick Hohman (© 1988 Pro Organo)
“Oh, That I Had a Thousand Voices (Fantasia)” by David Cherwien. From Hymn Interpretations, vol. 2 by David Cherwien (© 1997 Summa Productions)