Bible Study on Mark - Part 11, Mark 6:53-7:23

Some call Mark 6:53-56 a kind of summary of the ministry in Jesus in Galilee, in the northern part of Israel. He had come across the Sea of Galilee again to Gennesaret, a small, fertile area along the Sea, and as before, people recognized Him and began bringing sick people to Him, placing them in marketplaces wherever He went. He continued to go to “villages, cities, and countryside,” preaching and teaching, and the healings continued, too.

At this time, He allowed sick people to touch even “the fringe of His garment,” and they would be healed. (Jesus wore an outer garment with fringes or tassels on each corner, as each faithful Jew was expected to do. See Deuteronomy 22:12. Jesus did not make a big show of this, with huge tassels, as some did; but the tassels were a helpful way for people to touch his garments and more to be healed, before His ministry in Galilee would soon lessen. He continued to care about His people and their spiritual and physical needs.)

As Chapter 7 of Mark begins, Pharisees and scribes “gathered to Him,” including a delegation from Jerusalem. They seem to have come to challenge Jesus and were looking for ways to criticize Him. They quickly saw that Jesus’ disciples did not do the proper washing of hands before they ate. (The Greek text literally says, “before they ate bread.” “Bread” sometimes referred not just to bread, as we think of it today, but to the food, the meals they ate. When Jesus taught us to pray in the Lord’s Prayer, “Give us this day our daily bread,” He meant all that we need to eat and live and survive.)

The religious leaders were not talking about washing hands for sanitary and physical health reasons, like we wash hands before meals or for 20 seconds, very carefully, in these Covid days. They were talking about their own prescribed ceremonial washings, developed over time by previous Jewish elders and teachers, in case people were spiritually unclean by contact with spiritually unclean people or things. (Mark explains in Mark 7:2-3 a little of what this meant. Remember that his Gospel was written especially for non-Jews, and he needed to give some of these explanations as God inspired him to write.)

The Pharisees were concerned with “holding to the tradition of the elders” and the many traditions they had developed as a kind of “fence” to protect people from violating God’s will, as they saw it (v. 3-4). They had 613 specific rules, plus some others over which they argued. If people kept all these rules, they should be following God acceptably. Many of these rules and traditions were not in the Old Testament, but were still required by the Pharisees and scribes, and over time, became more important than the Scriptures themselves. Sometimes, as Jesus said a little later in this passage, the traditions could even cause one to disobey clear Scriptures.

The one issue the scribes and Pharisees were raising here was about ceremonial hand washing. Their view seemed to be that if they allowed people to get by with breaking even one of the traditions, then all the traditions were in danger. They blamed Jesus because He was the leader and let His followers break the traditions (v.5). The “marketplace” was mentioned in v.4 because it was very likely that Jews could bump into non-Jews who were "unclean” and anything they touched and all sorts of other things considered unclean. 

Doing a regular ceremonial cleansing of hands was therefore very important to these Jewish leaders. It had to be done properly, too, in just the right way. The Greek text of v.3 literally speaks of “washing with a fist” - though we do not know today exactly what that meant. Were you to use a fistful of water or apply water only to the parts of a hand involved in making a fist?

Mark mentions that there were many other washings, too, of household items that might be unclean. The Greek word in v.4 for washing is literally the word for “baptizing.” Some understood that word only to mean immersing something in water. But how could one regularly immerse big items like a dining couch on which people would lay down to eat their meals?  This later became an issue for Christians. How much water is needed for a proper Christian baptism? Some said only immersion was allowed. Others said that the amount of water did not matter, because the Scriptures do not clearly tell us how much water must be used. (That is our Lutheran view, though we can’t get into this more right now. We simply try to follow what is clear in Scripture.)

Jesus, as he answered the question raised in v.6, pointed to what the Scriptures actually said and required. He quoted a passage from Isaiah 29:13 in the Old Testament, where God accused His people of teaching and following humanly-made commandments instead of what He commanded in Scripture. These Jews  spoke highly of God with their lips and words, but their hearts were far from God and what He really wanted for them. Jesus accused the religious leaders of His own day of doing the same, “You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men” (v.8).

Jesus used the example of making vows. The Scripture cautioned about making vows involving God, but the Jewish leaders encouraged people to make vows to give money and other things to them for their support or to help the temple in Jerusalem or synagogues. The gift was then “Corban,” that is, “Given to God,” even if it had not actually yet been given. If parents had an emergency need then, the religious leaders would not allow any of that money to be given to help the parents, even in a very dire situation.

Jesus said that their man-made rule was violating the clear Scripture, “Honor your father and mother” and other passages that talk about helping family and others (v. 9-12). You are “making void the Word of God by your tradition that you have handed down,” Jesus said. “And many such things you do,” He added (v.13). The Word of God alone was key - and now that Word interpreted by Jesus, as He brought in the New Covenant (Jeremiah 31:31-34).

In Mark 7:14-23, Jesus used His authority as the Son of God to make a definite change from the Old Testament, the Old Covenant between God and His people. Jesus followed the will of His Heavenly Father to declare that under the New Testament and the New Covenant He was bringing in, all foods were now clean (v.19). Under the Old Covenant, pigs and pork were unclean and not to be eaten. Now we have great freedom about what we eat or do not eat, including pork.

It is not really foods that we consume that make us spiritually unclean, Jesus said. Those foods just go in and out of our bodies. It is what comes from within, from our sinful nature and sinful hearts, that defiles us and others. Jesus went on to give a long list of attitudes and actions that are sinful and flow from our sinful hearts (v.21-23). These are things that God clearly calls wrong in His Word. These are to be our concern, not how we wash our hands and so many other traditions of the elders that we are not bound to do.

The real problem is our sinful nature and our sinful hearts. Here are just a few Scriptures that speak of the corruption of our hearts and minds, ever since the fall into sin by Adam and Eve. (These are Scriptures I was struggling to find to give you, if you listened to the podcast, this week. Many more could be mentioned, too: Genesis 6:5, Genesis 8:21, Psalm 51:5, Psalm 58:3, Ecclesiastes 9:3, Jeremiah 17:9.) Only Jesus could overcome these spiritual problems for us. That is what he came to do, in love for us all, as our Savior.

The scribes and Pharisees were even more opposed to Jesus now, as He had rejected their rules and traditions. His fellow Jews in Galilee were also becoming more focused on His miracles and healings and less concerned with the Gospel He came to bring. We will see next week how He spent more time in non-Jewish areas for a while, showing His concern for all nations and people.