{"id":24253,"date":"2022-12-04T22:00:59","date_gmt":"2022-12-05T05:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/mark-7_1-13-copy\/"},"modified":"2022-11-22T18:17:09","modified_gmt":"2022-11-23T01:17:09","slug":"mark-7_14-23","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/mark-7_14-23\/","title":{"rendered":"To Be Truly Clean Before God"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"flex_column av_one_full  flex_column_div av-zero-column-padding first  avia-builder-el-0  avia-builder-el-no-sibling  \" style='border-radius:0px; '><section class=\"av_textblock_section \"  itemscope=\"itemscope\" itemtype=\"https:\/\/schema.org\/BlogPosting\" itemprop=\"blogPost\" ><div class='avia_textblock  '   itemprop=\"text\" ><p><strong>Mark 7:14-23 \u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=Mark+7%3A14-23&amp;version=NIV\" rel=\"noopener\">Click here for Bible Verses<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-24255 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/22-1205.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/22-1205.jpg 600w, https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/22-1205-300x150.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Hi GAMErs!<\/p>\n<p>Today\u2019s passage is Mark 7:14-23.\u00a0 Let\u2019s go!<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mark 7:14-23 (NIV)<\/strong><br \/>\n<em><sup>14\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0Again Jesus called the crowd to him and said, &#8220;Listen to me, everyone, and understand this.<br \/>\n<sup>15\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0Nothing outside a man can make him &#8216;unclean&#8217; by going into him. Rather, it is what comes out of a man that makes him &#8216;unclean.&#8217;<br \/>\n<sup>17\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0After he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about this parable.<br \/>\n<sup>18\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0&#8220;Are you so dull?&#8221; he asked. &#8220;Don&#8217;t you see that nothing that enters a man from the outside can make him &#8216;unclean&#8217;?<br \/>\n<sup>19\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0For it doesn&#8217;t go into his heart but into his stomach, and then out of his body.&#8221; (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods &#8220;clean.&#8221;)<br \/>\n<sup>20\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0He went on: &#8220;What comes out of a man is what makes him &#8216;unclean.&#8217;<br \/>\n<sup>21\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0For from within, out of men&#8217;s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery,<br \/>\n<sup>22\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly.<br \/>\n<sup>23\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0All these evils come from inside and make a man &#8216;unclean.'&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>On verses 14-23:\u00a0 The kind of unclean Jesus is referring to here is about being unclean before God.\u00a0 God is so perfectly holy and pure that nothing impure or \u201cunclean\u201d can stand in His presence.\u00a0 That\u2019s why the Pharisees and teachers of the law focused so much on cleanliness, washing their hands, their cups and their dishes, all under the belief that those who washed were clean before God whereas those who didn\u2019t were unclean.\u00a0 Jesus clarifies that it is not what enters a person from the outside that makes him spiritually unclean; rather it is what comes out of that person\u2019s heart \u2013 the sin that is already there \u2013 which makes him unclean.<\/p>\n<p><strong>We tend to focus so much on the condition of our appearance, when what really needs our attention and work is the condition of our heart.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>God knew that too.\u00a0 That is why He sent Jesus Christ for us, not to deal so much with our outside appearance, but more importantly to deal with our broken and dirty heart condition. \u00a0\u00a0Jesus Christ died so that all the sins we have committed, including those he lists in verses 21-22, could be forgiven.\u00a0 Only through Jesus can we truly be clean before God.<\/p>\n<p><em>Father, I recognize today that there is nothing we can do to make ourselves perfectly clean before God.\u00a0 Only the blood of Your Son Jesus washes us clean of sin and makes us acceptable before You again.\u00a0 In Jesus\u2019 name, AMEN!<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hi GAMErs!<\/p>\n<p>Today\u2019s passage is Mark 7:14-23.\u00a0 Let\u2019s go!<\/p>\n<p>Mark 7:14-23 (NIV)<br \/>\n14\u00a0\u00a0Again Jesus called the crowd to him and said, &#8220;Listen to me, everyone, and understand this.<br \/>\n15\u00a0\u00a0Nothing outside a man can make him &#8216;unclean&#8217; by going into him. Rather, it is what comes out of a man that makes him &#8216;unclean.&#8217;<br \/>\n17\u00a0\u00a0After he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about this parable.<br \/>\n18\u00a0\u00a0&#8220;Are you so dull?&#8221; he asked. &#8220;Don&#8217;t you see that nothing that enters a man from the outside can make him &#8216;unclean&#8217;?<br \/>\n19\u00a0\u00a0For it doesn&#8217;t go into his heart but into his stomach, and then out of his body.&#8221; (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods &#8220;clean.&#8221;)<br \/>\n20\u00a0\u00a0He went on: &#8220;What comes out of a man is what makes him &#8216;unclean.&#8217;<br \/>\n21\u00a0\u00a0For from within, out of men&#8217;s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery,<br \/>\n22\u00a0\u00a0greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly.<br \/>\n23\u00a0\u00a0All these evils come from inside and make a man &#8216;unclean.'&#8221;<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nOn verses 14-23:\u00a0 The kind of unclean Jesus is referring to here is about being unclean before God.\u00a0 God is so perfectly holy and pure that nothing impure or \u201cunclean\u201d can stand in His presence.\u00a0 That\u2019s why the Pharisees and teachers of the law focused so much on cleanliness, washing their hands, their cups and their dishes, all under the belief that those who washed were clean before God whereas those who didn\u2019t were unclean.\u00a0 Jesus clarifies that it is not what enters a person from the outside that makes him spiritually unclean; rather it is what comes out of that person\u2019s heart \u2013 the sin that is already there \u2013 which makes him unclean.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24255,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gametime-sharing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24253"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24253\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24256,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24253\/revisions\/24256"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}