1. Grace, mercy, and peace to Your from God our Heavenly Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. The message from God’s Word on this 15th Sunday after Pentecost is taken from Mark 7:14-23. It’s entitled, “The Sin Within,” dear brothers and sisters in Christ.
2. The blockbuster movies Iron Man and Iron Man 2 have an interesting premise. Tony Stark, who is Iron Man and becomes one with his iron man suit, has an electromagnet implanted in his chest. It’s to keep shrapnel in his body away from his heart—keeping him alive—and also to power his suit. The irony is that the palladium core that powers the electromagnet is slowly poisoning him—that which keeps his heart alive is also killing him. We might draw a parallel to the statement of Jesus that “from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts” (Mark 7:21). That which is in our hearts is that which kills us—slowly poisoning us from the inside out.
3. Our nature is to focus on external sin rather than on internal sin. We are in a “beauty is skin deep” culture that judges by outward appearance. We act like Pharisees in focusing on external sins of others rather than the sins from within ourselves. We see a married man holding hands in public with a woman twenty-five years younger, not his wife. Yet, we don’t see what’s going on in our hearts when we flip the remote back to the channel we shouldn’t see. We see a woman flaunting her furs and jewelry. We don’t see the catty thoughts that cross our minds about how she thinks she’s so great. We see the story in the paper about the triple shooting in Milwaukee. Yet, we don’t see how being angry with someone at church is also murder too. Remember how Jesus says in Matthew 5:21-22, "You have heard that it was said to those of old, 'You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.' But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, 'You fool!' will be liable to the hell of fire.”
4. Maybe you’ve read Oscar Wilde’s story, “The Picture of Dorian Gray.” The story plays on what is inside versus what is seen on the outside in a dramatic way. For any who know the story, it’s a perfect match for our text from Mark 7. In Wilde’s story an artist named Basil Hallward meets a young man named Dorian Gray. Impressed by Gray’s beautiful physical appearance, Hallward paints a picture of him. A friend of Basil’s named Lord Henry Wotton promotes a life view that beauty and sensual desire are most important. Dorian considers the idea that his beauty will fade and thinks aloud that if only the picture could age instead of himself, he would sell his soul. A Faustian bit of magic grants this, so that the picture will not only age, but also take on changes in appearance for all the evil acts Dorian starts to commit. Gray therefore goes through life looking perfect and beautiful on the outside, while his picture becomes hideous and disfigured, the embodiment of all the evil within him. He remains “pretty as a picture” while the picture becomes “ugly as sin.” Only in the end as Dorian stabs the picture does he become the picture, with a knife through his heart, and a final hideous representation of his own sins. The connection to the text from Mark 7 is clear: the evil that is on the inside doesn’t at first show itself, but in the end, judgment brings to light all of the evil we would try to hide.
5. What is “under our skin” or inside of us is killing us. Have you ever known of someone who looks healthy but has a disease raging inside his or her body? Looks can be deceiving. In the 1950s and ’60s and well beyond that, Rock Hudson was one of the most handsome leading men in Hollywood. Six-feet-five, a smile ladies would swoon over. Not until shortly before he died in 1985 did the public know he was homosexual—and that for the last years of his life he was infected with the HIV virus. Behind that million-dollar smile was an incurable disease taking its deadly toll. People can smile nicely and be pleasant but still have sin down deep at their core. We are also those people who may look okay on the outside but are not fine on the inside.
6. The old radio show The Shadow always began by asking, “Who knows what evil lurks within the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!” Jesus pointed out the evil that lurks in our hearts that we may be able to hide from others. Mark 7:14–15, 21–23 says, “And [Jesus] called the people to him again and said to them, “Hear me, all of you, and understand: There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him.” 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.” Like Tony Stark with the palladium core in his chest, inside sins like these will slowly kill us.
7. It takes something completely outside us to wash us clean on the inside. That’s why Martin Luther, the great reformer, used to refer to the Gospel in Latin as “extra nos,” that which is, “outside of us.” In the context of the Gospel, this phrase emphasizes that salvation and righteousness come from outside of ourselves—they are not something we achieve or produce on our own. Instead, they are given to us as a gift from God through faith in Jesus Christ.
8. Luther used "extra nos" to underscore that the Gospel is entirely about what Christ has done for us, rather than anything we can do to earn God's favor. Our justification before God is based solely on the grace of God and the merit of Christ, not on our own works or merits. This teaching was central to Luther's theology, especially in his emphasis on justification by faith alone (sola fide) and grace alone (sola gratia). The concept of "extra nos" is a reminder that our hope and assurance rest not in ourselves but in the saving work of Christ outside of us.
9. God looked into his heart, not ours, to devise a plan for our salvation. It wasn’t anything inside us that paid for our sins—no good, pure thoughts of the heart, no outward action that would please the strictest Pharisee. It was the God of heaven, infinitely above us, completely outside us, who came to earth and paid the price: his life on the cross.
10. Look away from ourselves; look to Jesus up there on the cross: his pure, undefiled, sinless heart broken, pierced through for our sinful ones. And then the Holy Spirit—from outside—comes into our sinful hearts and brings the cleansing of Jesus’ death. He comes to us in the water of Baptism, which washes away our sins in a miraculous way. He speaks to us, not in a whisper from within (our sinful hearts could play all kinds of tricks with that!), but in God’s external Word—of preaching, of absolution, when we read the Bible—and he declares us pure, holy, forgiven. And while nothing outside a person and coming into him can defile us, taking into ourselves Jesus’ very body and blood in the Lord’s Supper does purify us. It brings forgiveness so real to us that we can taste it. Through these Means of Grace—God’s Word and Sacraments—God creates faith in our hearts.
11. See, that faith is totally from outside us too. And a heart of faith is a clean heart, purified of that sin within, and it receives eternal life. In Christ, we are washed clean of the sin. The old adage “The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach” has, I suppose, always had some truth. But the way to a pure heart is through the cleansing blood from the heart of Christ. Amen. Now the peace of God that passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus until life everlasting. Amen.
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