Mark 7:13

In his declaration to the Irish people, in 1650, Cromwell assails the Roman clergy thus: 'How dare you assume to call these men your "flocks," whom you have plunged into so horrid a Rebellion, by which you have made them and the country almost a ruinous heap? You cannot feed them! You poison them with your false, abominable, and anti-christian doctrines and practices. You keep the Word of God from them; and instead thereof give them your senseless Orders and Traditions.'

References.—VII. 13.—Bishop Percival, Sermons at Rugby, p. 32.

The Sphere Not Prohibited

Mark 7:14-15

It is not often that Jesus 'calls the people unto Him' for the purpose of giving an address. He commonly finds the people already gathered, and the address is a matter of accident. But here is a solemn exception. I say solemn. If Christ called the people to give them a message, He must have thought it a very important message.

I. 'Nothing from without can defile a man.' It is the sweepingness that startles us. 'Nothing from without' What!—nothing? Not the theatre, not the opera, not the concert-room, not the public dancing-hall? No—not in so far as these are things outside. These buildings are all right until they are painted—and it is the soul that paints them. All the tarnish they ever get is from the brush of the soul.

II. You go to walk on a Sunday because other people are at church; you will show them how you are emancipated from superstition. The walk makes you feel atheistic, reckless, disdainful of sacred things. Have you got harm, then, from the outside landscape? No, it is the landscape that has got harm from you. Why did you go out with the belief that your Sunday walk was prohibited! It was that belief which poisoned the whole air.

III. If you had only made your walk a worship, if you had gone, not to repel man but to meet God, the outside world would have smiled upon you. The roses would have been radiant; the grass would have been green; the thrush would have been thrilling; the woods would have waved their welcome. The soul that feels God's presence in the garden will be hurt by no plant of Eden.

—G. Matheson, Messages of Hope, p. 269.

Reference.—VII. 17.—S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a Year (2nd Series), vol. ii. p. 66.

Mark 7:20

We can run up nearly all faults of conduct into two classes—faults of temper and faults of sensuality; to be referred, nearly all of them, to one or other of these two instincts. Now Jesus not only says that things coming from within a man's heart defile him, He adds expressly what these things that, coming from within a man, defile him are. And what He enumerates are the following: evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, stealings, greeds, viciousnesses, fraud, dissoluteness, envy, evil-speaking, pride, folly. These fall into two groups; one, of faults of self-assertion, graspingness, and violence, all of which we may call faults of temper; and the other, of faults of sensuality.... This was the method of Jesus; the setting up of a great unceasing inward movement of attention and verification in matters which are three-fourths of human life, where to see true and to verify is not difficult, the difficult thing is to care and to attend. And the inducement to attend was because joy and peace, missed on every other line, were to be reached on this.

—M. Arnold, Literature and Dogma.

The Genesis of Evil

Mark 7:20-23

Our Lord here declares the human heart to be originative; that the vices which darken the world take their rise within us; in the mystery of the soul He teaches us to seek for the mystery of iniquity.

I. Let us Observe Several Theories of the Origin of Evil which are Condemned by the Text.

1. The theory which finds the origin of evil in the physical world is thus condemned. Several sins mentioned in the text have nothing whatever to do with the body, and when fleshly sins are specified they are imputed to interior causes. Sin, then, can never be treated adequately whilst it is treated only medicinally.

2. The text condemns the theory which finds the origin of evil in the intellectual nature of man. Intellectual culture does not touch the inertia, the blindness, the ingratitude, the selfishness, the cruelty, the wilfulness, which bring our acutest sense of guilt, our bitterest experiences of woe. And careful observers are beginning to see that the redemption of the intelligence is not the redemption of the heart; that the race will not be saved by intellect; and that it is easy to expect too much from the spread of knowledge.

3. The text condemns the theory which finds the origin of evil in the power of circumstances.

Christ taught that human character is a question of soul and not of situation. He taught us to look into the infinite depths of the heart for the reasons of good and evil doing. And sin will not be cured by circumstances.

II. Christ's Treatment of Evil.—In the soul Christ declared that it took its origin, and in the soul Christ sought to deal with it—supplying a spiritual antidote for a spiritual plague. He sets before us the highest thoughts and ideals; He creates within us strong faith in these thoughts and ideals; He strengthens us in the inner man that we may scale the heights thus unveiled. The Cross is the symbol of pure thought; it is the truth, love, righteousness of God, appealing to the reason, heart, and conscience of the race. The New Testament is filled with this idea—the renewal of all things through the renewal of the soul.

1. We must remember the inwardness and spirituality of Christ's treatment of sin in the culture of our personal life.

We see here the necessity for that regeneration upon which Christ insists. The heart is the fountain of evil; it must be changed and become the fountain of good. 'Marvel not that I said unto you, ye must be born again.'

The perfecting of character throughout must be from within—must be worked out in sanctified thought, feeling, and will. Says Jacob Boehme in a deep passage, 'All now depends on what I set my imagination upon'. Setting his imagination upon the kingdom of God, upon the highest objects, patterns, and callings of the spiritual universe, the believer conquers successively all selfishness and sensuality, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. Let us set our thought on Christ, who is the Sum of all beauty, and that beauty shall dawn in us.

2. We must remember the spirituality of Christ's treatment of sin as we attempt the renovation of the world. It is the habit of some reformers to think very slightingly of what they are pleased to consider the sentimentalism of Christianity. But was not Christ right in trusting everything to the power of sanctified thought and feeling? The history of the world is the history of thought. The catastrophe of the race arose in thought—in a thought from beneath. 'And when the woman saw.' Out of that look, imagination, desire, arose the vast tragedy. The great redeeming system began in a thought—in a thought from above. 'It came into His heart to visit His brethren.' Out of that generous thought arose the whole magnificent history of Israel.

—W. L. Watkinson, The Transfigured Sackcloth, p. 25.

Reference.—VII. 20-23.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxii. No. 1911.

Mark 7:22

A slave unto mammon makes no servant unto God. Covetousness cracks the sinews of faith; numbs the apprehension of anything above sense; and, only affected with the certainty of things present, makes a peradventure of things to come; lives but unto one world, nor hopes but fears another; makes their own death sweet unto others, bitter unto themselves; brings formal sadness, scenical mourning, and no wet eyes at the grave.

—Sir Thomas Browne, Christian Morals.

In Peking captured concessions were bragged about as the Indians used to pride themselves on the number of scalps they had made. Nowhere as in China have I been so conscious of the infiniteness of space, yet nowhere as in Peking did it seem as if the wide world were not sufficient for the demands of men. The battle of existence was carried on there with that envious jealousy which would rather see a country waste and barren than leave it to the hands of others. However rich and big the world is, the weak will always be empty-handed, for the covetousness of the strong is larger than the largest space.

—The Letters Which Never Reached Him, pp. 9, 10.

The Mystery of Christ's Fame

Mark 7:24

I. There is a great peculiarity about the fame of Jesus: it came to Him through shut doors. For one thing, His own will shut the door against it. He wanted to be hid—to do good by stealth and escape the praise of it; He was afraid lest Divine Majesty should crush human love. When He performed a benevolent action He charged His followers that they should not make it known; when He was accidentally revealed in glory He said, 'Tell the vision to no man until the Son of Man be risen'—removed from human sight.

II. The men who win fame in this world are usually the men who strive for it. But the peculiarity of Jesus is that worldly fame beset Him when He was striving to avoid it. That is the paradox which Paul points out in the Epistle to the Philippians. He says that God gave Him a name that is above every name at the very time when He was performing an act of self-burial—when He was emptying Himself, assuming the form of a servant, wearing the fashion of human poverty, taking a lowly place, carrying the burden of the Cross, closing His career by a premature death.

III. And then, every natural circumstance in the life of Jesus was unfavourable to His fame His birth was humble, His surroundings poor, His home isolated, His youth toiling, His brothers adverse, His era prosaic, His country a Roman province, His auditors unlettered, His enemies influential, His ideal unshared. Is anything conceivable more opposed to fame! And yet, in spite of all, 'He could not be hid'. He has broken through the thickest cloud in the universe—the cloud of social obscurity. Truly was it written 'at midnight there was a cry heard, "Behold, the bridegroom cometh!"' His sunshine was unheralded by dawn; it flashed from a rayless sky. It was by night that Bethlehem's plains were flooded with His glory. His light shone from darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not—never has comprehended it. It has been the mystery of mysteries how a bad world has glorified a great soul. If there had been physical ornaments round that soul, we could have understood it; but it passes human knowledge to explain how in a field consecrated to materialism a life of spiritual beauty 'could not be hid'.

—G. Matheson, Messages of Hope, p. 277.

The Ever-evident Christ

Mark 7:24

I. Christ's Personality Prevents His being Hid.—

How could or can such a personality be hid? He was evidently man, but He was all but as evidently God. He was more than 'Rabbi' to those who were in the secret of His presence. He was 'the Christ' and 'Lord' and 'God'.

This is an eternal circumstance. Jesus Christ never has been and never can be absolutely hid. Jesus may have been, but Jesus Christ never. The Saviour was the Saviour or ever He was historified. Before His Incarnation He could not be hid. He was not hid from prophets and kings and priests and psalmists and lowly souls in the dispensation of imperfect times.

As in Old Testament times and as in New Testament times, so now, in these times, Jesus Christ cannot be hid. Here is the Christ's future history as well as His past history—'He could not be hid '. My text is prophecy, and not history alone. In heaven Christ cannot be hid. He never was hidden there.

II. Some Things in Christ are Hid.—Being man we can perceive much of His personality, but being God-man we realize that there is in Him much we cannot discern. Christ becomes less and less 'hid 'to His followers as they follow on to know Him. He discovers Himself to them. They see Him in His own light.

III. Sometimes Christ Seeks to be Hid.—There is a sense in which Christ can and will be hid. He wills to be hid from those who have grieved Him, but He longingly awaits their penitence that He may disclose Himself to them again. He at times seeks to be hid that He may save and help. He did thus to His disciples when He was here. Often He hides Himself in events. He hides Himself in persons. Christ hides Himself in influences.

IV. There are Those who Cause Christ to be Hid. They who do not preach Him are such. The pulpit may extinguish the Saviour it was built to uplift. When Christ is not lived He is hid. They who obey Him reveal Him.

V. There are Hallowed Spheres in which Christ cannot be Hid.—In a truly Christian Church He cannot be hid. In a truly Christian life Christ cannot be hid. There are few scenes in which it is more impossible to hide Christ than a Christian home. In a Christian sick chamber Christ cannot be hid. In the death of a saint Christ cannot be hid.

—Dinsdale T. Young, The Crimson Book, p. 190.

References.—VII. 24-30.—W. M. Taylor, The Miracles of Our Saviour, p. 295. Archbishop Trench, Notes on the Miracles of Our Lord, p. 280. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture—St. Mark I.-VIII. p. 268. John Laidlaw, The Miracles of Our Lord, p. 247. VII. 24-37; VIII. 22; IX. 29.—W. H. Bennett, The Life of Christ According to St. Mark, p. 99. VII. 26-28.—C. Holland, Gleanings from a Ministry of Fifty Years, p. 258. VII. 27, 28.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxii. No. 1309. VII. 28, 29.—'Plain Sermons by contributors to the Tracts for the Times, vol. vii. p. 28. VII. 31.—John Laidlaw, The Miracles of Our Lord, p. 258 VII. 31-37.—W. M. Taylor, The Miracles of Our Saviour, p. 187. Archbishop Trench, Notes on the Miracles of Our Lord, p. 288. VII. 32.—R. W. Hiley, A Year's Sermons, vol. ii. p. 100. W. C. E. Newbolt, Church Times, vol. lviii. 1907, p. 229. A. G. Mortimer, One Hundred Miniature Sermons, vol. ii. p. 76. VII. 33, 34.—A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture—St. Mark I.-VIII. p. 273.

Does God Suffer?

Mark 7:34

I. Jesus sighed when He said 'Ephphatha'—He sighed at the new possibilities of temptation, suffering, and sin that He was conferring by opening channels to a mind that had hitherto been closed, and empowering a tongue hitherto silent, but in spite of the sigh He spoke the Ephphatha. Whatever the risk, the gift must be given that the end may be attained.

I think that we have in this consideration the assurance of the unconditional responsibility of Almighty God for the final consummation of His purpose upon each one of us. He knew how much the gift of life would cost us. He did not give it frivolously and carelessly. He gave it because of the magnificent result that He purposes from it And this knowledge, in our higher moods, should encourage us in unquestioning submission to His blessed will, even when it seems most sharply to cross our human will.

II. Jesus is unceasingly saying 'Ephphatha' to every human soul. He is saying, 'Be opened' to those dormant faculties of our spiritual nature which we have overlaid with the flesh. The circumstances of the daily life of each one of us provide the medium through which the call comes. But we are not automata, we are not machines; and constantly the sigh of the Divine Humanity is intensified by our miserable human perversity, which enables us to go on hardening ourselves year after year against the influence of the God within us.

Human goodness, or character, is like the beauty that you admire in a flower; it is from within and not from without. You cannot make a flower beautiful by paint and enamel; you cannot make a life beautiful by external moralities and austerities, and the like—the beauty that is on the flower was in the flower first. The sun shining in its power speaks the 'Ephphatha, Be opened,' to the bud, and it obeys. And when that bud opens, when that Divine potentiality begins to spring within you, when those aspirations are felt struggling, when the heart, half-shrinkingly, turns Godward, when it recognizes fitfully the truth of Divine Sonship, when it begins to say, 'My Jesus, I love Thee, I know Thou art mine,' must not its capacities be stimulated and its life be fed? If you could see through a very powerful microscope the surface of a leaf, you would find that it was covered with tiny mouths, with lips like human lips seizing the invisible carbonic acid gas from sunbeam and air, and incorporating it into itself. It is as though the sunbeam had said to the flower, 'He that eateth me, the same shall live by me'. Similarly, the will, forcing the spirit upwards, drinks in and absorbs the life of God.

III. Finally, every opened flower speaks its Ephphatha to all that is around it; it appeals to the sense of beauty and to the sense of smell. And so every opened heart must be lifted above timidity, fear of criticism, moral cowardice, and must strive to help others. The first law of a converted soul is effort for the brethren.

—Basil Wilberforce. Sermons Preached in Westminster Abbey, p. 30.

The Conditions of Successful Work

Mark 7:34

Having regard to the text and to our Lord's actions we discern three things.

The first is, fellowship with God. 'Looking up to heaven.'

Second, sympathy with man. 'He sighed.' Third, these are the conditions of successful work.

He spake the word of power. 'Be opened.'

I. Fellowship with God.—'He looked up to heaven.' It is a way our Lord had. When He felt that any work required to be done, or when He had to make a fresh departure in His work, He always looked up to heaven. He felt He was doing the Father's work, and as He did the work He looked to the Father for help and guidance.

Heaven was always open to Jesus. It was His home, and its presence was always felt To other men the atmosphere of heaven seems strange. 'If a flower fell now and then from heaven,' says Mrs. Browning, 'we soon would catch the trick of looking up.' There is intercourse between earth and heaven, or there may be. Moment by moment the thoughts and prayers of man may ascend to God, and swiftly the answers of God may return to man. The example of habitual fellowship is one to follow. The example of looking up to heaven when any work has to be done, or when we are thinking of any new undertaking, is also one to follow.

II. Sympathy with Man.—'He sighed.' It is the outcome of the deepest sympathy with the wretched, miserable condition of man. This pity finds expression in that natural sign of an oppressed spirit—the sigh. It is also the expression of compassion, and of the hope that in some way they may be able to remove the causes of misery. But this feeling of compassion does not rest in mere feeling. With our Lord it is always the prelude to action for the removal of the causes of sorrow. Observe, however, that the conditions of successful work always go together. Fellowship with God and sympathy with man are the two conditions of successful work.

III. The man who has fellowship with God and sympathy with man can speak the word of power, and say to the darkened eye, 'Be opened,' and to the stammering tongue 'speak'. This is no mere expectation, no mere enthusiastic expression of hope. It is a fact which is as well attested as any fact within human experience. It is a fact guaranteed to us many times and often in the history of Christ's Church.

—J. Iverach, The Other Side of Greatness, p. 203.

Mark 7:34

See Keble's lines on 'The Twelfth Sunday after Trinity'.

The Saviour's Sigh

Mark 7:34

It would seem that while our Lord was doing acts of mercy publicly, intending them to impress the minds of the people as the prophetic marks of the Messiah (Isaiah 35:5-7), this miracle He reserved to be a private act of charity. He took the poor afflicted man aside from the multitude, and so effected his cure in private. The friends of the afflicted man entreated our Lord to 'put His hands upon him'. This our Lord did not do; perhaps there was superstition in their request. They may have attributed a magical charm to this particular action, instead of ascribing the cure of disease to the Divine power acting through the visible sign. But though our Lord would not perform this cure precisely in the manner dictated, yet nevertheless, on this as on other occasions He had recourse to an outward and visible sign. As in the Sacraments of His Church, which He instituted, our Blessed Lord seems to have kept in view a congruity between the outward and visible thing signifying, and the inward and spiritual gift signified, so, in this miracle, we may discern a propriety in putting His fingers into the man's ears, when He intended to pierce them; and in loosening the tongue, which had so long cleaved to the dumb man's mouth, by moisture taken from His own. The ceremonies were alike suggestive to the man himself, and must have awakened in him that degree of faith in Christ of which he was capable.

And now we come to what is very striking in this miracle: 'Looking up to heaven, He sighed'.

I. It may be that He sighed because there was some struggle or exhaustion in His human nature, and whenever He exerted His omnipotence He felt the virtue to go out of Him. But, passing by this consideration, may we not suppose that the sigh was occasioned by His foreknowledge of the abuse of that good gift He was about to bestow—an abuse which could scarcely fail to happen when the blessing was conferred upon a fallen man?

It is a cause of sadness at all times that no good can be done without its being mingled and clogged with evil. When, for instance, a child is baptized, there is joy and gladness in the Church. But, alas! that very child may, in after years, sin away baptismal grace, may crucify afresh the Lord of Life, and become twofold more the child of hell than before. Beyond all other thoughts, consider when God the Son became Incarnate, while the angels were praising God; was there not, think you, something of sadness in the praises of Simeon? Surely he must have sighed whilst, looking up to heaven in thanksgiving, he said: 'Behold this Child (our Incarnate God) is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel'. It was given him to foreknow that what would be 'a savour of life unto life' to some, would be to others 'a savour of death unto death'.

II. Our Saviour sighed, then, to think how the gift He was conferring might be abused. He sighed at contemplating the various temptations to wrong with which the blessing could not fail to be attended. But He looked to heaven, to have the comfort of seeing there the joys awaiting all the blessed, who, having been redeemed by His Blood, shall have passed faithfully the time of their probation here, and so, through much tribulation, have entered into glory.

What was present to the omniscient Saviour is still future to us; and, when that future comes, God grant that we may be among the redeemed, and bear our parts in the celestial song. Let us pray to our gracious Lord that He will open our ears to hear His commandments; that He will write His laws upon our hearts; and that out of the fullness of the heart our lips may speak words of devotion to Him, and of brotherly kindness to our neighbour.

References.—VII. 34.—H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Sunday Sermonettes for a Year, p. 109. C. S. Robinson, Sermons on Neglected Texts, p. 281. W. Boyd Carpenter, The Burning Bush, p. 111.

Christ the Good Maker and Doer (Epiphany)

Mark 7:37

I. St. Mark probably saw in the saying of the multitude an unintended likeness to the language which the book of Genesis uses about the finishing of the work of Creation. 'God saw everything that He had made, and behold it was very good.' The words as given by St Mark are nearly the same, though not obviously so in English: He hath made all things in a good manner: but the later saying goes further than the earlier.

For who is the 'He' in each case? In the book of Genesis we are told that God saw everything that He had made God therefore was the maker. In St. Mark when the multitude said, 'He hath done all things well,' they were speaking of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of Mary. Jesus therefore was the maker and the doer. We have all been taught not only that Jesus of Nazareth was Himself God, but that the Creation was especially His work. We, who already believe that He who restored speech and hearing to that poor man was the Son of God Himself, may gather from it much that we ought never to forget both about creation and about the work of Christ on earth, that is, the very substance of the Gospel itself.

II. Creation, in the way we usually think of it, cannot appear otherwise than a very cold and distant thing. But the Gospel brings near to us Him who once was afar off, and with Him all His works. When He in whom the world was made became man, every man might henceforth feel that the world belonged to himself in a way that was impossible before. All Christ's acts as man were so many signs that the powers which so plainly and wonderfully obeyed Him had in truth been obeying Him from the time they came into being.

III. 'God saw everything that He had made, and behold it was very good;' 'Christ hath done all things well' is the Gospel comment upon His miracles. In the time between these two sayings the fall of man had come to pass. In some way or other men fancied that the fall had touched God and His dealings with us men. But no. The Son of God doth all things well now no less than before man had fallen. He knows of man's fall and all the miseries that it has brought on body and spirit far better than man can do. Therefore He came from heaven to become a suffering man Himself. The virtue which went forth from His hands to cure those diseases of ear and tongue was but a faint token of the virtue which should hereafter go forth from His Cross to heal the more grievous hurts which sin had brought upon men's spirits.—F. J. A. Hort, Village Sermons (2nd Series), p. 73.

References.—VII. 37.—C. Parsons Reichel, Sermons, p. 277. H. Scott Holland, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lviii. 1895, p. 200. S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a Year (2nd Series), vol. ii. p. 99. C. W. Furse, Sermons Preached at Richmond, p. 121.

Mark 7:31

Any one associated with Lord Aberdeen might always rest assured that he was safe in his hands. When our law did not allow prisoners the benefit of counsel, it was commonly said that the judge was counsel for the prisoner. Lord Aberdeen was always counsel for the absent. Doubtless he had pondered much upon the law, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. It had entered profoundly into his being, and formed a large part of it.

—Gladstone, quoted in Morley's Life, II. pp. 639, 640).

References.—XII. 33.—W. Brock, The Religious Difficulty in the Schools and the Education Bill, Sermons, 1900-1902. C. Silvester Home, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxxi. 1907, p. 355.