Reference, McGarvey Fourfold Gospel

Mark 7


Clean and Unclean

¹The Pharisees and some of the teachers of the law who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus and ²saw some of his disciples eating food with hands that were "unclean," that is, unwashed. ³(The Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial washing, holding to the tradition of the elders. ⁴When they come from the marketplace they do not eat unless they wash. And they observe many other traditions, such as the washing of cups, pitchers and kettles.^[1] )
⁵So 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 their food with 'unclean' hands?"

The reference I was reading said the Pharisees apparently had the tradition of the elders which they claimed was passed down to the elders of each generation from the time of Moses. They upheld these traditions as being just as important as the old testament law itself. They couldn't find anything that Jesus and his disciples had done that was really against the law so they charged them with going against the tradition of the elders.

⁶He replied, "Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written:
   " 'These people honor me with their lips,
       but their hearts are far from me.
    ⁷They worship me in vain;
       their teachings are but rules taught by men.'^{[2] 8}You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men."

Jesus isn't denying that he was violating the tradition of the elders. Instead, he attacks the tradition of the elders, itself, quoting this prophecy from the book of Isaiah. Man has a tendency to try to put his own wishes and notions into place in worship. But God wants us to study and find out how he wants to be worshiped.

⁹And he said to them: "You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe^[3] your own traditions! ¹⁰For Moses said, 'Honor your father and your mother,'^[4] and, 'Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.'^{[5] 11}But you say that if a man says to his father or mother: 'Whatever help you might otherwise have received from me is Corban' (that is, a gift devoted to God), ¹²then you no longer let him do anything for his father or mother. ¹³Thus you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And you do many things like that."

Jesus pointed out that the Pharisees were merely using their traditions as a tool to help them escape a law that God had set in place, an obligation to their parents. This was obviously against God's will.

Deuteronomy 5
¹⁶ "Honor your father and your mother, as the LORD your God has commanded you, so that you may live long and that it may go well with you in the land the LORD your God is giving you.

In these times, to leave your mother or father or any member of the family without help, would possibly have left them to become beggars, which is a very bad situation to face in your old age. What we learn here from the Pharisees is that human additions to the law make worship useless and often miss the point. We are not to add or take away from God's word.

¹⁴Again Jesus called the crowd to him and said, "Listen to me, everyone, and understand this. ¹⁵Nothing outside a man can make him 'unclean' by going into him. Rather, it is what comes out of a man that makes him 'unclean.' "^[6]

Jesus comes back specifically to the charge of uncleanness made against him and his disciples. He says something kind of vague here. If you were in the crowd and this was all you heard, you might not understand it fully.

¹⁷After he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about this parable. ¹⁸"Are you so dull?" he asked.

[They had felt free to eat with him without washing their hands. They were with him throughout the whole thing. Didn't they understand at this point?]

"Don't you see that nothing that enters a man from the outside can make him 'unclean'? ¹⁹For it doesn't go into his heart but into his stomach, and then out of his body." (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods "clean.")
²⁰He went on: "What comes out of a man is what makes him 'unclean.' ²¹For from within, out of men's hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, ²²greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. ²³All these evils come from inside and make a man 'unclean.' "

Finally, here, when Jesus is in private with his disciples, he gives them the more meaty part of this teaching. As he preached many times, he says that sin starts as a fire in the heart before it is committed. We must work on purifying our hearts...not some useless rituals that we come up with ourselves as the Pharisees did. The uncleanness that God delineated in the old testament was mainly symbolic. For example, there is nothing really harmful about eating pork, which the Israelites were forbidden from. But God wanted to teach the Israelites the difference between clean and unclean. He wanted them to keep themselves unspotted from the idolatry of the nations around them. Jesus wasn't totally doing away with the old law at this point. He was just beginning to establish these principles that later replaced the Mosaic law in the book of Acts

We see Peter under this new way in

Acts 10

⁹...Peter went up on the roof to pray. ¹⁰He became hungry and wanted something to eat, and while the meal was being prepared, he fell into a trance. ¹¹He saw heaven opened and something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners. ¹²It contained all kinds of four-footed animals, as well as reptiles of the earth and birds of the air. ¹³Then a voice told him, "Get up, Peter. Kill and eat."
¹⁴"Surely not, Lord!" Peter replied. "I have never eaten anything impure or unclean."
¹⁵The voice spoke to him a second time, "Do not call anything impure that God has made clean."

So there was no more clean or unclean as the old law had marked things.

The Faith of a Syrophoenician Woman

²⁴Jesus left that place and went to the vicinity of Tyre.^[7] He entered a house and did not want anyone to know it; yet he could not keep his presence secret.

[Tyre and Sidon were far to the northwest of Jerusalem on the coast. From what I understand, this might have been the first time Jesus had left the Jewish territory. Perhaps this was intentional so that he could get away from the influence of the Jews for a time. It apparently wasn't a missionary journey because it mentions that he wanted to keep it a secret. And so he meets this Syrophoenician woman.]

²⁵In fact, as soon as she heard about him, a woman whose little daughter was possessed by an evil^[8] spirit came and fell at his feet. ²⁶The woman was a Greek, born in Syrian Phoenicia. She begged Jesus to drive the demon out of her daughter.
²⁷"First let the children eat all they want," he told her, "for it is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to their dogs."

[Jesus used the word, “first” to imply that eventually the Gentiles would have their time to be able to be followers of Christ. ]
²⁸"Yes, Lord," she replied, "but even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs."
²⁹Then he told her, "For such a reply, you may go; the demon has left your daughter."
³⁰She went home and found her child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.

This may sound like a pretty harsh thing for Jesus to say. The word that Jesus used for dog was kunarion which sort of means a tame pet. It might not be as much of an insult as we'd think of it.

Jesus mentioned elsewhere that the Gentiles would have their time in the kingdom.

Mat 8

¹¹I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. ¹²But the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth."

This woman and the centurion had such notable faith and they were both Gentiles.

But the woman replies that even while the meal is going on, the dogs are allowed to eat the crumbs. She was hoping to have one of those crumbs even while Jesus was in the midst of his ministry to Israel, in the middle of the meal you might say. What can we learn from this woman? She was persistent. Even though Jesus said something that would have discouraged her from asking further, she continued to ask. She knew Jesus' power and that this would be a small thing for him to do. She had complete faith that he could do it if he was willing. In the end, she received the blessing she'd asked for.

The Healing of a Deaf and Mute Man

³¹Then Jesus left the vicinity of Tyre and went through Sidon, down to the Sea of Galilee and into the region of the Decapolis.

[This would have been the eastern side of the sea of Galilee. Still far to the north of Jerusalem.]

³²There some people brought to him a man who was deaf and could hardly talk, and they begged him to place his hand on the man.
³³After he took him aside, away from the crowd, Jesus put his fingers into the man's ears. Then he spit and touched the man's tongue. ³⁴He looked up to heaven and with a deep sigh said to him, "Ephphatha!" (which means, "Be opened!" ). ³⁵At this, the man's ears were opened, his tongue was loosened and he began to speak plainly.
³⁶Jesus commanded them not to tell anyone. But the more he did so, the more they kept talking about it. ³⁷People were overwhelmed with amazement. "He has done everything well," they said. "He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak."

Just a little encouragement from Jesus would have gathered an even greater multitude to him. Even when he discouraged the people from talking about it, they did so. But apparently, he had journeyed up all this way to the north to avoid publicity. Unfortunately, the more he told people to keep quiet about it, the more intriguing he became to the people and the more famous he became. This was the same area where Jesus had cast out the demon into the herd of swine in chapter 5 and the people had asked him to leave. This was a big turnaround for the people in the area to crowd around him like this.

Mark 8

Jesus Feeds the Four Thousand

¹During those days another large crowd gathered. Since they had nothing to eat, Jesus called his disciples to him and said, ²"I have compassion for these people; they have already been with me three days and have nothing to eat. ³If I send them home hungry, they will collapse on the way, because some of them have come a long distance."
⁴His disciples answered, "But where in this remote place can anyone get enough bread to feed them?"

[Again, they were far up to the north of Jerusalem, apparently in an isolated place. It was strange that they were questioning how anyone could feed so many since Jesus had fed five thousand people back in chapter 6. But, this failure to expect anything from God happened over and over throughout the old testament with the Israelites and with the apostles as well. You remember how the Israelites thought God was going to let them starve in the desert after he had just brought down many miraculous plagues on Egypt.

Num 11

²¹ But Moses said, "Here I am among six hundred thousand men on foot, and you say, 'I will give them meat to eat for a whole month!' ²² Would they have enough if flocks and herds were slaughtered for them? Would they have enough if all the fish in the sea were caught for them?"
²³ The LORD answered Moses, "Is the LORD's arm too short? You will now see whether or not what I say will come true for you."

]
⁵"How many loaves do you have?" Jesus asked.
"Seven," they replied.
⁶He told the crowd to sit down on the ground. When he had taken the seven loaves and given thanks, he broke them and gave them to his disciples to set before the people, and they did so. ⁷They had a few small fish as well; he gave thanks for them also and told the disciples to distribute them. ⁸The people ate and were satisfied. Afterward the disciples picked up seven basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over. ⁹About four thousand men were present. And having sent them away, ¹⁰he got into the boat with his disciples and went to the region of Dalmanutha.

[This was on the western side of the Sea of Galilee.]
¹¹The Pharisees came and began to question Jesus. To test him, they asked him for a sign from heaven. ¹²He sighed deeply and said, "Why does this generation ask for a miraculous sign? I tell you the truth, no sign will be given to it." ¹³Then he left them, got back into the boat and crossed to the other side.

[It's strange that the Pharisees asked for a sign from Jesus when they refused to acknowledge his godly power even when he did miracles. They claimed he cast out devils through Beelzebub and criticized him for healing on the sabbath. You can see why it says in verse twelve that he sighed deeply. The KJV says he sighed deeply in his spirit. Hadn't they seen all the miracles he'd been performing? Like always they were totally missing the point. It might be that they wanted to see more large-scale miracles like the sun turning to darkness and the moon to blood, as Joel prophesied about in Joel 2. But we know today that Joel was talking about the final coming of Jesus when he returns at the end of time. Jesus again leaves the area where the Pharisees are beginning to hound him and goes to the northeastern shore of the Sea of Galilee.]

The Yeast of the Pharisees and Herod

¹⁴The disciples had forgotten to bring bread, except for one loaf they had with them in the boat. ¹⁵"Be careful," Jesus warned them. "Watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees and that of Herod."
¹⁶They discussed this with one another and said, "It is because we have no bread."
¹⁷Aware of their discussion, Jesus asked them: "Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not see or understand? Are your hearts hardened? ¹⁸Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear? And don't you remember? ¹⁹When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?"
"Twelve," they replied.
²⁰"And when I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?"
They answered, "Seven."
²¹He said to them, "Do you still not understand?"

[Jesus goes to a lot of trouble to get them to do some deduction to figure out that he's not talking about physical yeast and bread, but symbolic yeast. As Jesus reproves them he reminds them of the miracles he's performed, turning a small bit of food into a thousand times as much. He could so easily turn the bread they have on the boat into enough to feed them all. He was telling them about the leaven of the Pharisees which tended to creep into the church later on. He was warning them about those who would tell people they had to be circumcised to follow God and that they had to follow the traditions of the Jewish elders. On the other side, there was political corruption like that of Herod that Jesus also mentions that would be a danger to the church.]

The Healing of a Blind Man at Bethsaida

²²They came to Bethsaida, and some people brought a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him.

[Bethsaida is on the northern side of the Sea of Galilee. Jesus was heading further to the north.]

²³He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village. When he had spit on the man's eyes and put his hands on him, Jesus asked, "Do you see anything?"
²⁴He looked up and said, "I see people; they look like trees walking around."
²⁵Once more Jesus put his hands on the man's eyes. Then his eyes were opened, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. ²⁶Jesus sent him home, saying, "Don't go into the village.^[1] "

[KJV says don't tell anyone in the town. Jesus seemed to vary the visible means by which he healed. In this case he spit on the man's eye. In another case, he made mud from his saliva to heal a blind man. But he always made it clear that it was by his will, his divine power that people were healed. Even when the woman said that if she could touch his garment, she'd be healed, he confronted her and told her that her faith had made her whole.]

Peter's Confession of Christ

²⁷Jesus and his disciples went on to the villages around Caesarea Philippi.

[This was further to the north of the Sea of Galilee, about as far north as Jesus ever travelled...probably pretty far from the influence of the Pharisees.]

On the way he asked them, "Who do people say I am?"
²⁸They replied, "Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets."
²⁹"But what about you?" he asked. "Who do you say I am?"
Peter answered, "You are the Christ.^[2] "
³⁰Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about him.

[It may be that Jesus was asking this to find out the popular opinion about who he was. Not the opinion of the rulers or Pharisees. Peter tells him what people in general believe and then what he believes, that he is the Christ. Jesus tells them not to tell anyone about him. Perhaps he feels that they couldn't do it properly at this point because they still seem to have some misconceptions about him. If he has to ask them such a basic question, then they would probably not be ready in his eyes. We can definitely see some of their ignorance by what comes next.]

Jesus Predicts His Death

³¹He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. ³²He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.

[Imagine his disciples have been going along up to this point seeing all of the wonderful things Jesus did and taught. But now he tells them about his tragic end. He might have mentioned it vaguely before, but he says it plainly now. Peter is totally in denial about this to the point that he even takes Jesus aside. He seems to feel that Jesus is just feeling kinda down right now and needs to be set straight.. It doesn't seem true to him that the son of God would have to suffer like that. But God's ways are not our ways. In the end, Jesus' suffering would result in the salvation of all who come to him.]

³³But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. "Get behind me, Satan!" he said. "You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men."
³⁴Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. ³⁵For whoever wants to save his life^[3] will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. ³⁶What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? ³⁷Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? ³⁸If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his Father's glory with the holy angels."

[When Jesus called Peter Satan, he may have been talking about the way in which Peter, perhaps unknowingly, was trying to tempt Jesus away from God's plan for him. In that case he would have been playing into Satan's plans. Jesus talks to his disciples about the cost of being a Christian. There are difficult times to face. That would especially be true for his disciples at that time. Many would face death for his name. But Jesus also says that in counting this life nothing for Christ, you save your eternal life.]