Chapter # 7 Paragraph # 1 Study # 4
April 26, 2022
Moss Bluff, Louisiana
(302)
1901 ASV
7:6 And he said unto them, Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honoreth me with their lips, But their heart is far from me.
7:7 But in vain do they worship me, Teaching [as their] doctrines the precepts of men.
7:8 Ye leave the commandment of God, and hold fast the tradition of men.
7:9 And he said unto them, Full well do ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your tradition.
7:10 For Moses said, Honor thy father and thy mother; and, He that speaketh evil of father or mother, let him die the death:
7:11 but ye say, If a man shall say to his father or his mother, That wherewith thou mightest have been profited by me is Corban, that is to say, Given [to God];
7:12 ye no longer suffer him to do aught for his father or his mother;
7:13 making void the word of God by your tradition, which ye have delivered: and many such like things ye do.
7:14 And he called to him the multitude again, and said unto them, Hear me all of you, and understand:
7:15 there is nothing from without the man, that going into him can defile him; but the things which proceed out of the man are those that defile the man.
7:16 [If any man hath ears to hear, let him hear.]
7:17 And when he was entered into the house from the multitude, his disciples asked of him the parable.
7:18 And he saith unto them, Are ye so without understanding also? Perceive ye not, that whatsoever from without goeth into the man, [it] cannot defile him;
7:19 because it goeth not into his heart, but into his belly, and goeth out into the draught? [This he said], making all meats clean.
7:20 And he said, That which proceedeth out of the man, that defileth the man.
7:21 For from within, out of the heart of men, evil thoughts proceed, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries,
7:22 covetings, wickednesses, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, railing, pride, foolishness:
7:23 all these evil things proceed from within, and defile the man.
- I. The Beginning Of Jesus' Response To The Pharisees And Scribes: "Now (de) He Said To Them..."
- A. Jesus immediately responds by referring to Isaiah.
- 1. "Well" did Isaiah prophecy concerning you...
- a. In five texts/contexts Mark reveals what he means by "well".
- 1) 7:6 is the first time Mark uses this word and his use is in a quote by Jesus. In this quote, Jesus takes Isaiah's words and claims that he was exactly accurate in what he said of "you" (a generation of national leaders who lived 600+ years after Isaiah died).
- 2) 7:9 is an immediate follow-up by Jesus in which He reveals just how "exact" Isaiah was. The translators use "experts" (an adverb translated as a noun). The idea, however, is "verbal"; it focuses upon how "well" ("expertly") they do what they do. Their behavior is pretty close to a "perfect" conformity to Isaiah's "prophecy".
- 3) 7:37 records the witnesses' reaction to Jesus' healing of a deaf man whose speech was significantly unclear: they said, "He has done all things well". Their meaning is that His correction of the man's hearing and speech was so "expertly done" that the man could both hear and speak as a normal person could.
- 4) 12:28 records the reaction of "one of the scribes" when he heard how Jesus answered His argumentative adversaries: he recognized "that He had answered them well". What this means is that Jesus' response was a complete "win" over His adversaries. He both revealed their wicked ignorance and the real truth they had dismissed.
- 5) 12:32 records that scribe's (the one from 12:28) description of Jesus' answer to his question as a "correct" answer.
- b. "Well" means "exactly, and without contradiction, correct".
- 2. The text to which Jesus appeals is Isaiah 29:13.
- a. It was not, strictly speaking, a "prophecy" in that it was a description of the people to whom the Lord had sent Isaiah.
- b. It needs to be kept within it own context (29:13-16) for the weight of the quote to have its impact. 29:15 says "Woe to those who deeply hide their plans from the Lord..." This is "exactly" what the Pharisees and scribes were attempting to do by "questioning" Jesus as a subtle "accusation" rather than a desire to find "truth".
- c. It is "prophetic" in the sense that it describes a "condition" that existed in Isaiah's day and continued to exist up to Jesus' day. When Isaiah recorded it as God's utterance, he was recording a perpetual condition of humanity. In that sense, he was "prophesying" that there would always be those who use deceptive "honorable speech" to mask the wicked intentions of the heart.
- 3. Jesus' summary of Isaiah's meaning: "hypocrites".
- a. Mark only uses this word this one time in his entire Gospel, and his use is rooted in Jesus' speech. Matthew used it in 14 of his texts/contexts and Luke used it 3 times.
- b. The word was used of "actors" whose vocation was "to pretend to be someone else and to pretend to be of a different essence and expression than their own".
- c. In our generation, we have an exhortation that captures the essence of this word: "Be real".
- d. This word has its roots in the verb "hupokrinomai" which is a compound verb made of the prefix "under" and the verb "to judge". It's idea is presented in the only place in the New Testament where it is used: Luke 20:20; "they pretended to be righteous". They established the basis for the judgment of others regarding them by getting "under" a false facade.
- 4. Isaiah's actual words.
- a. "This people with the lips sets forth a positive value..." The product of their lips (speech) sets forth, in words, expressions that, of themselves, give "honor" to Yahweh.
- 1) "Honor" (time) is the expression of the positive value that one holds for a person/thing and, as such, has a very close relationship to "love" (agape). It may be that "agape" is the actual value of the heart, and "time" is the outward expression. Thus, one may "honor" with the lips while the actual value of the heart is nowhere close to what the lips claim.
- 2) In multiple places in the New Testament "honor" is the amount of money that one would spend to obtain something desired. Thus, if the amount of money expresses the actual sacrifice of the heart, "honor" has been bestowed; but, if the amount of money is viewed in terms its use to obtain something that can, then, be turned around and sold for a significantly larger amount of money, the "honor" is hypocritical. "agape", on the other hand, is often a "heart-value" that slides along a continuum according to what that "value" can yield in terms of an objective of greater "value". For instance, "honor" is the actual sacrifice of one thing to obtain another that will, then, be held in place, but "love" is always a "value" viewed in terms of what it can obtain even though the thing obtained may well be re-sold for something of greater "honor". I "honor" what I will keep; I "love" what I may use to obtain an object of greater "honor".
- b. "...but (de) the heart of them holds (itself) a far distance from Me.". The true values of the heart (agape) are pretty much diametrical to God's values.
- c. "But vainly they are showing reverence for Me..." Here the word translated "worship" is used in a parallelism to "honoring".
- d. "...teaching teachings [that are merely] commandments of men".