Mark 7

For six chapters, Mark has been presenting Jesus as the Messiah, God in flesh, with power over demons, over sickness, over nature. But this isn’t a divine side-show to make Jesus look good: It leads to a problem we all have – sin – and the only solution for it. In Mark 7, three encounters sum it all up. What makes our hearts dirty? What makes them clean?

An Encounter with Jewish Religion (1-23)

• The Jews’ problem: ‘Your disciples don’t follow our rules!’

• The real problem: Jewish tradition trumped God’s truth!


Principle: Inside-Out Defilement: It’s not what we do, but who we are!


Principle: Outside-In Cleansing: It can never clean the heart.



Healing a demon-possessed girl (24-30)

• Lesson: Inside-out cleansing is by faith


Healing a deaf-mute (31-37)

• Lesson: We need a personal encounter with Jesus


Principle: Inside-Out Cleansing: That’s what Jesus alone can do.


“Create in me a clean heart, O God…”

For Further Study

1. In Mark 7:1-5, the Jewish religious leaders confront Jesus and His disciples, and Mark explains it for us. Their complaint is not that the disciples broke the Law, but that they didn’t follow the “tradition of the elders” (v5). Where did these ‘traditions’ come from? Can you think of any traditions which Christians today similarly tend to over-emphasize?

2. Jesus doesn’t dispute the value of traditions, but confronts them for making these traditions more important than the condition of a person’s heart (6-13). He points to a loop-hole they used – declaring something to be “Corban” – which was really just a pious-sounding way to avoid obeying God’s Law! Can you think of any pious-sounding excuses we use to avoid following God’s will in our lives?

3. Jesus’ explanation in verses 17-23 goes to the very heart of the matter (no pun intended). We tend to look at what people do or don’t do, and judge them spiritually as a result. Jesus goes to the root problem: We sin because in our hearts, we are sinners. Read how David put this in Psalm 51:5. Now apply this truth to life: How can this perspective change the way you look at people who are struggling with sin, or who differ from you?

4. Consider the geographic and personal features of the story of the healing of the Syro-Phoenician woman’s daughter (24-30). Where did she live? What was her ethnic heritage? How would the Jews have viewed her? What does Jesus point to in her that resulted in healing (see Matt. 15:28)?

5. In His healing of the deaf-mute (31-37), Jesus got alone with him, touched him, and was deeply moved (sighed). What does this show about Jesus? Perhaps people were astonished (v37) because the man cured not only of his deafness, but the effects of deafness – his speech impediment. In our Christian lives, what does this suggest that a faith-encounter with Jesus can mean for us? What is your own experience?

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