- The Illustration (Mk 7:14-16)
- The Explanation (Mk 7:17-19)
- The Solution (Mk 7:20-23)
Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above for answers!
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Mark chapter 7.
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Let's turn there nice and loud.
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While you're turning there, I want you to imagine, I want you to imagine that you're having some car problem.
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For some of you, you're like, "Imagine?" Let's imagine that you're having car problems, and you put the key in and it won't start, and you get your car towed to the garage, and you say to the mechanic, I don't know if it's the starter or the alternator or the battery.
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When I turn the key nothing happens.
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Anybody else like me when you go to the mechanic you just feel like a complete idiot? Anybody else?
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Everybody but Ben Moll probably.
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Mike Gates is probably in there too, right? But no?
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I feel like a complete idiot when I go to the mechanic.
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Because the mechanic is always like, what do you think is wrong with it?
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It doesn't move. That was my first diagnosis. I notice it's not doing the down the road thing that it usually does. What do you think is wrong with it? And then you try to imitate the sound. How many people have done that?
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It's like I'm going down the road and I'm like, sounds like you have a cat stuck in your fan belt.
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I feel like a complete idiot when I go to the mechanic. I'm like, I don't know what's...I'm at the point now I'm just shameless. I'm like, unless I pop the hood and there's like a hammerhead shark crammed into the engine somehow that's stopping it from running, the problem has to be that obvious for me.
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to know that there's something wrong with the car.
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But if it involves anything less obvious, I have no idea.
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I'm just like, I don't know.
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I just-- I don't know.
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So imagine you take your car to the garage.
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I don't know what the problem is.
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I turn the key and nothing happens.
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The mechanic says to you, come back tomorrow.
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You show up the next day.
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The mechanic goes, "Come on in here, I want to show you." Check it out, you walk in, and your car is gleaming!
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And you say, "Well, what did you do?" The mechanic says, "Well, here's what I did.
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You had this little rust spot right around the passenger side, a wheel well on the back.
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We patched that rust spot up for you.
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And then we gave it a wash, a wax on the outside.
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did all the glass, completely detailed the inside.
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I mean, we vacuumed and we took our little toothbrushes and got all the grime out from your gear shifter and we armor all the hole insides and we even treated the tires with that stuff that makes them real shiny.
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And you're like, is it fixed?
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And your mechanic says, look at it.
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It's never looked better.
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We did everything that we could to make it look great.
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You jump in, you turn the key, and nothing happens.
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You say to the mechanic, I thought I brought this to you to fix.
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And his response is, look, we made it look good.
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Isn't that what you wanted?
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Is that what you wanted?
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Your reply would be, I don't want it to look good.
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I want it to move.
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And as ridiculous as that story sounds, many people fall into that trap in regards to Jesus Christ.
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All they're concerned about is looking good on the outside.
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"Look at me give.
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Look, I don't drink.
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Look, I don't smoke.
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Look at how I dress.
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I dress perfectly for church.
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Shirt, tie, suit coat.
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Look, I don't swear.
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Look, I don't dance, and I don't play cards, and I don't this, and I don't that, and look at how great I look, and the outside does look good.
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But you know deep down that this isn't working.
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Just as that car isn't moving with a dead battery, you aren't living for Christ with a dead heart.
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Remember chapter 7, we've been talking about legalism and how blasphemous, blasphemous it is to reject God's work and insist on trusting your own work.
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Yes, legalism is blasphemous.
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Here's something else you need to know about legalism.
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It just doesn't work.
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It just doesn't work.
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Keeping the rules, thinking that that is what makes you clean, that's what makes you holy, it doesn't work.
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Because it can't fix heart problems.
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So this passage we're going to look at today, we just have one point.
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I want you to write this down.
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This is it. One point.
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Sin is from within.
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The sin is from within.
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A little pastoral insight for you.
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You know, every week I sit down and open the Bible and try to understand what is God wanting me to know about Him, and what does God want me to communicate about Him.
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And some weeks are a lot easier than others to do that.
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And getting to the heart of this message this week probably the easiest it's ever been for me.
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Because, you know, in this one passage we're going to look at today, Jesus Christ said the same thing five times in this passage.
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If you think I'm repetitive, and I am for a reason, you think I'm repetitive sometimes.
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Jesus said the same thing five times in this passage.
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And do you know what He said?
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Tell me.
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within is from within.
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He says it in verse 15.
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He says it in verse 20.
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He says it in verse 21 twice.
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And he says it in verse 23.
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If Jesus says something once, do you think you should pay attention?
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If Jesus says something twice, do you think maybe you should sit up and listen a little closer?
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If Jesus says something three times, do you think He's putting the stamp how important it is what He's communicating.
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So, when Jesus says something five times in the same teaching, is it possible for us to underscore how important this teaching must be?
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This has to be something so incredibly important for Jesus to keep hammering this nail over and over and over in just one passage.
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And this is the sermon.
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Sin is from within.
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Let's look at the illustration first of all.
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That's the sermon.
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Here's the illustration.
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Verses 14-16.
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It says that He called the people to Him again and said to them, "Hear Me, all of you, I don't understand.
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Okay, so last week we saw previously what Jesus was dealing with was legalism.
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And if the repetition doesn't underscore the importance, how about this?
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Over and over and over throughout the Gospels, we see what?
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People flocking to Jesus.
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People coming after Jesus.
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What do we see here?
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Jesus was calling to people, "Listen! Come here!
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I've got to tell you something." He called the people back to Him.
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Hear me!
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All of you!
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See?
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He says, "And understand." What we're going to look at here, verse 17 actually tells us this next statement we're about to look at is actually a parable.
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This is a physical illustration and you can't miss that.
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Jesus teaches a one-line parable here.
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He says, "I want you to listen to this and I want you to get it down." Here it is, verse 15.
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"There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him.
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But the things that come out of a person are what defile him." What does it mean to defile?
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Well, the Greek word means to pollute or to make unclean.
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This parable is the most graphic sermon illustration that Jesus ever used.
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What he said here in this parable was, "What goes in doesn't make you dirty, it's what comes out." And you're like, "Pastor Jeff, that sounds like a bathroom story." Well, it is. Let's all be mature.
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I'm not going to give you any potty humor. These are the words of Jesus. This is what Jesus literally said, okay?
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So let's be mature about this.
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Jesus was using a bathroom illustration. You're like, "Well, surely that's not what he was talking about." Well, just in case you're not convinced, we see in verses 18 and 19 Jesus was explaining this to the disciples because they didn't get it either.
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Even the disciples when Jesus taught this were like, "What's with the potty story?" Look at verses 18-19.
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We're going to come back to this.
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Jesus said, "Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, since it enters not his heart, but his stomach, and is expelled?" The Greek word for expelled refers to the place where you sit.
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Okay?
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So Jesus' sermon is, "What goes into you isn't what pollutes you, or makes you dirty.
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It's what comes out." And this is a truth about people, physically and spiritually.
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Look at verses 17-19 again.
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He entered the house and left the people.
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His disciples asked him about the parable.
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Like, where were you going there, Jesus?
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What was that all about?
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They knew what He was saying.
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He said to them, "Are you also without understanding?
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Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him?
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Since it enters not his heart, on his stomach and is expelled.
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Thus, he declared, "All foods clean." This is the explanation.
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And this gets literally to the heart of the matter.
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That is this.
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Down with the externals.
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Down with the externals.
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Notice that with one statement, Jesus lifted all of the Old Testament dietary restrictions.
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Mark inserted that here parenthetically in verse 19.
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He declared all foods clean.
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The Pharisees taught that avoiding certain things was what kept you ceremonially clean or holy.
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We talked about this last week, And we can't emphasize how important the statement of Jesus really is because of the prevalent teaching of Jesus' day.
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In Jesus' day, all of their rabbis, all the Pharisees, all of the scribes, all of they teachers that were revealed all had the same sermon.
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And it was this, "Avoid this if you want to be holy." "Avoid this if you want to be holy." "Avoid this if you want to be holy." "Don't eat this." Don't touch this. Don't go near this.
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Don't consume this.
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Don't walk here.
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Don't wear this." That was their sermon.
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Avoid. Avoid. Avoid. Avoid.
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Pigs are unclean animals, so don't eat bacon or you're unclean.
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Remember last week we talked about the Talmud.
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They wrote all these rules to help you keep the Levitical law, and then they wrote a commentary about their own rules, Their rules and the commentary about the rules are collected in this volume called the Talmud.
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And part of that was the washings.
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How many volumes and chapters about washings, washing your hands, washing the cups, washing the pots and pans, washing the sippy cups.
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Over and over and over, what the people in Jesus' day heard was this sermon.
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Defilement comes from the outside.
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That's what they always heard.
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being impure.
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It comes from what you touch and what you consume.
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That's how you get unclean.
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That was the sermon everybody heard.
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They said the inside's fine.
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What's going on in here? This is okay.
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We run into problems when we break the rules.
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We touch things that we shouldn't touch.
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that in here we're good.
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There was a day, even in recent history, and I don't think I'm that old, but I remember that there was a day that people thought that man was basically good.
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Even though the Bible says otherwise.
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There was a sort of an understanding amongst us in this culture I think deep down people were basically good.
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Those days are gone.
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Even the secular people don't believe that anymore.
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Did you know that?
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Even the secular people are like, "Yeah, people are messed up." Everyone now agrees that man has some problems going on in here.
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So now the question is, where did it come from?
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How did man get evil?
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A man by the name of Philip Zimbardo a book that was published in 2007 called "The Lucifer Effect." And this is the gist of his book.
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Evil is environmental.
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Does that sound familiar?
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Just like the people in Jesus' days said, "Evil is what's out here and comes in here.
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Evil is out here and comes in here." We have a guy that just wrote a book a few years ago, and that's his whole...he put some psychological labels on it. He's revered for this.
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But that's the thesis of his book, "Evil is Environmental." I want to read a short quote for you. This is from the website. You can look this up, The Lucifer Effect. This is straight from the website. It says, "The Lucifer Effect raises a fundamental question about the nature of human nature. How is it to become perpetrators of evil.
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In trying to understand unusual or aberrant behavior, listen, we often err in focusing exclusively on the inner determinants of genes, personality, and character.
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You catch that?
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When we're trying to understand why people do evil things, "Do you know a mistake that we make, people? Do you know a mistake that's common that we make?" It's looking at a person's heart.
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That's a common mistake. That's rookie. They should have covered that in 101.
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Looking at the heart.
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He says, "We also tend to ignore what may be the critical catalyst for behavior change" - here it is - "in the external situation, or in the system that creates and maintains such situations.
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What makes people evil?
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He says, "Here's the thing we're overlooking. It's out here.
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It's the situations that people find themselves in.
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It's the system." He says, "I challenge readers to reflect on how well they really know themselves and how much confidence they have in what they would or would not ever do and put into new behavioral settings.
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That's his book.
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He's like, being in the wrong environment can turn you into Hitler.
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It's all about the environment.
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And this fundamentally backwards philosophy about man, about the origin of evil, and about what causes evil things to happen, it's still being promoted.
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You have to understand this, people. This is in your face.
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Literally, in our day, this is in your face every day.
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What do you mean?
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Anytime there is a mass shooting, for example, you know how tragic for one of those to happen.
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But how frequent has it become for somebody to show up, whether it's at a school or a military base, and just start shooting people.
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theater, they start shooting people. What do you always hear on the news when there's a shooting? All the politicians lobbying for what?
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Yeah, I heard somebody say gun control, right? Because what's the problem?
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If somebody's shooting other people, what's the problem?
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The problem is obviously the gun, right?
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It's the gun.
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It's the gun's fault. Because if If that person didn't have access to a gun, they wouldn't have done such a thing, would they?
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Would they?
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Would they?
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Will gun control stop murder? Yes or no?
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It will not.
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Now look, this isn't a political platform here, okay?
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Gun control will not stop murder.
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It won't.
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Remember the first murder in the Bible?
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You didn't kill Abel, right?
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You didn't have a gun.
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What was the problem? Gun control is not going to do it.
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No amount of gun legislation can even touch the real problem because that's not going to the source.
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If there were a way, and we know that we are so far beyond this, but let's say hypothetically there was a way to physically remove every gun from the planet, would that stop murder?
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It would not. It absolutely would not.
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Every time there's a shooting, it's the gun's fault.
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Where do we place the blame?
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What makes people do this stuff?
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Secular psychology, by the way, has made this a science.
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You're always going to find someone to blame for your problem.
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Why do I sin?
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Well, it's because of how I was raised.
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My parents never loved me.
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I never had a swimming pool or a pony.
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And I got hooked on drugs because it was my friend's fault.
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It was my wife's fault.
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It's the economy's fault.
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It was President Bush's fault.
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We live in a society where it's just constantly, it's everybody else's fault.
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Who can we blame?
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Who can we blame?
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Who can we blame?
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I have a problem, but it's not my problem.
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You're causing my problem.
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Who can I blame?
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Better yet, who can I sue?
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Psychologists say that we live in a toxic environment.
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How about a toxic heart?
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Anybody think that that might be part of the problem?
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Anybody think that the problem might not be a toxic environment?
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Anybody think that there's a possibility that the problem's in here?
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Now listen, you've got to hear this.
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I am not discounting the effect that outside influences can have.
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I'm not discounting that.
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I realize that some people have been affected by some outside influences, but we are always looking for someone else to blame.
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It's never your fault.
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By the way, that's not a fad.
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Remember back in Genesis chapter 3 when Adam sinned?
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God's like, "Adam, where are you?" "I'm naked, so I hid myself." Like, "Confession time, Adam." Do you remember what Adam said?
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Adam literally blamed everyone that he knew.
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True or false?
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At this point in history, Adam knew two people.
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And what did he say to God?
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"The woman that you gave me." True or false?
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"The woman that you gave me." It's like, you know what, God?
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Things were pretty hunky-dory when it was just me and the animals.
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I'm not saying I'm just saying that when you put me in the sleeper hold and brought Eve and you did that whole thing.
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I'm just saying.
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I'm just saying, there were no problems before that.
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That's all I'm saying.
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He believed every single person that he knew.
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And we do the same.
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Ok, so secular psychology says, just like the first century Pharisees said, your problem is environmental, toxic environment.
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You've got to avoid things.
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What's the Bible's answer?
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You know what the Bible's answer is?
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James 1.14 says, "But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire." That's one of the most manly verses in the Bible because lured and enticed - hunting, trapping, fishing turtles.
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James says, "You're tempted when your own heart sets the trap for you." So Jesus' simple explanation of the problem completely went against the current of all the teaching in His day.
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And for me to stand and say the same thing today goes completely against the current of what's being taught today.
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But it's so urgent and it's so clear, And the message is this, sin is from within.
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So what's the solution?
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Look at verses 20-23.
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And he said, "What comes out of a person is what defiles him.
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For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness all these evil things come from within and they defile a person.
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You know, the Pharisees, they loved their list.
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They loved their list, right?
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Don't do this, don't touch this, don't do this, don't touch this, don't do this, don't touch this.
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And Jesus said, "You like lists?
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list for you. This is a legitimate list though. And there's 13 things on the list here. By the way, this isn't like FYI that Jesus was just like, "Here's a little factoid for you." What Jesus was saying was, "The problems from within, so the work needs to happen in your heart and only God can do that." Every one of these could be an entire sermon. We're We're not going to do that.
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Because we just want to look at the main point.
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And this was Jesus' point.
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All of this sin is from within.
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Looking through the list quickly, the first several on the list are actually in the Greek.
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They're plural.
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The words are in the plural indicating that these are more of the action type things.
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The first thing it says is evil thoughts.
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that's intentions or ideas.
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That's what that means.
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You have evil intentions.
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You're inclined to do wrong things.
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That's not your mama's fault.
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That comes from within.
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That's a problem in your heart.
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It is from within.
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Next on the list is sexual immorality.
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We live in a day that the only thing that's considered immoral Marriage and sex the way God intended.
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I read an article just last night.
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You know the actress Kirsten Dunst?
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You know that actress?
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She was I'll put it in our context - she was Mary Jane in the Spider-Man movie.
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She came under heavy criticism.
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Go home and look this up.
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Did you hear about this?
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She came under heavy criticism for her controversial talk, for her controversial opinion marriage. You want to know what she said?
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I'm going to paraphrase. You can look up the quote.
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I didn't like print out the article or memorize it. Paraphrase it. What she said was, "I think there's something to be said for a woman who is a homemaker and takes care of things at home and wants that knight in shining armor to take care of her." And the feminists were like, Where is the panic button?
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"Eee! Eee!" "I can't believe you would say something like that!
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You've just set us back a thousand years!" That was the controversial thing.
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And you know, you know, that if she would have come out yesterday and said, "I'm in love with another woman," you know everybody would have been applauding that.
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And you'd see it on the Today Show, and you'd hear about it on the news, and it'd be on every website.
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She was so proud of the courage that she showed.
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But because her opinion of marriage and sexuality kind of echoes concepts from the Bible, it's really sad.
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Next on the list is theft.
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You know why you steal things?
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Because you're a thief in your heart.
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That's why.
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That's the reason.
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It's not an external thing.
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It's because you're a thief in your heart.
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Murder.
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We know that Jesus said murder was if you hate someone.
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If you hate someone, that's the same as murder.
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That comes from your heart. Adultery. If you lust, that's committing adultery. That comes from the heart. Sin is from within. Coveting, that's just literally greediness.
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You can never have enough. Sin is from within. Then wickedness. Wickedness.
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It is from within.
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The problem is not out there, it's in here.
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The next part of the list is singular.
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These are attitudes.
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Deceit.
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What would you do if you were put in a situation where you had to lie for someone?
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There again, well, deceit is environmental, right?
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Well, not according to Jesus, if that matters.
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Jesus said it stems from within.
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Sensuality.
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What's sensuality?
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That's just having a dirty mind.
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Everything's an anatomy joke.
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Everything's a joke about private parts and double meaning in everything you say.
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Dirty mind - what's the expression we use?
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Your mind's in the gutter.
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That's from within.
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Envy - literally, that's evil eye.
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Having an evil eye.
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It's from within.
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That's abuse of speech.
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Sin is from within.
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Pride.
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That's really like the grandfather of all sin.
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Me first.
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It's all about me, my wants, my preferences.
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What's good for me, what's in it for me, what's best for me.
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You weren't raised that way.
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Sin is from within.
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And last is foolishness.
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That's just unthinking or senseless.
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It's interesting that that's on a list.
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That's on a list with sin.
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I don't think that's just like a person with a lower IQ than the average person.
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It's just somebody that chooses to not think.
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Chooses to not apply wisdom.
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Chooses to not accurately or earnestly receive God's Word.
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Sin is from within.
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All of these things - point, they're in the heart. Pharisees and America 2014, the message is just as controversial, it still rings true, the pollution doesn't come in, pollution comes out.
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The question is where does change need to happen? Where does the change need to happen?
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It needs to It's in here, doesn't it?
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We've convinced ourselves by going to the right therapist, the right counselors, and we can put all this external scaffolding.
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This is going to fix my addiction.
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This is going to fix my marriage.
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Now listen, I'm not talking about getting biblical spiritual counsel.
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We all need that. Amen?
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The Bible says we all need that.
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What I'm talking about is going to this secular guy who's trying to blame all your problems on these external things and try to use other external things to fix.
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You are wasting your money.
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You are wasting your time.
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The sin is from within.
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You have to acknowledge that you are the problem.
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And you have to acknowledge that you can't fix the problem.
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Here's the good news.
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provided exactly what you need.
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If our ushers would come forward, we're going to receive the Lord's Supper.
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If our worship team would make their way up.
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What a perfect opportunity to receive the Lord's Supper.
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As we gather around His table, we remember the provision that Jesus made.
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Listen, church, as we're entering into this season especially, I'd like to remind you that Jesus' death and resurrection is so much more than just forgiveness.
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Jesus' death and resurrection is so much more than forgiveness.
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When I was a kid, I went through confirmation classes in the Methodist church.
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Do you know what they did in this class?
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One by one, the pastor would pull you into the auditorium for a one-on-one talk.
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This was the talk that he gave me.
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He's like, "Jeff, you don't want to go to hell, do you?" Twelve years old, I was like, "Do you mean today?
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Do you have a sign up? Are you getting a bus today?" He's like, "You don't want to go to hell, do you?" I was seriously freaked out.
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I'm like, "No, I don't want to go to hell!" He's like, "Then you want to receive Jesus as your Lord and Savior, right?" I was like, "I guess." And every time that pastor saw me after that, he would say, "I remember the day you gave your life to Jesus." And I would just be like, "Yeah, it was a good day." Church, some people look at Jesus that way like He's just a ticket to heaven.
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Jesus died on the cross and He's my ticket to heaven.
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That is not the Gospel.
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That is not the Gospel.
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Jesus isn't just about getting you free past the heavens, He is about transforming you.
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God's goal for you is to conform you into the image of His Son.
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The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, here's what this is about.
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His death was to forgive you of your sins.
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He took the wrath of God on Himself in our place.
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But He arose from the dead so that we might have eternal life.
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You understand, God doesn't just want to save you and say, "Hey, I'll see you when you get to heaven.
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Best of luck to you in the meantime." The Bible says He gives you a new heart.
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His Spirit comes and indwells you and He changes your heart of stone, your cold, dead, calloused to the things of God heart of stone, and He gives you a heart of flesh, a heart that is alive, and your appetites are changed, and you want to live for Him, and you want to please Him, You want to serve Him.
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He wants to change you.
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And you can't miss this, people.
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Sin is from within.
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That's exactly where God wants to rest.
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He wants to do the business in here that only He can do.
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You're never going to fix the problem from the outside in.
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But if you're willing to receive, God will fix the problem for me.
Small Group Questions (Whole Group):
Read Mark 7:14-23
What was the point of Jesus' teaching? How would you restate it in your own words?
What are ways people think they are "defiled from the outside" today? i.e. What are some things you have blamed YOUR sin on?
Breakout Questions:
Pray for one another!