Mark 7

Mark 7:1-8

Subdivision 2. (Mark 7:1-37; Mark 8:1-9.)The Opposition of Traditionalism and the Service of Love. The next subdivision runs still, for the most part, side by side with Matthew. Luke omits it all. We have here in the first place the opposition of traditionalism to the ways of God, and therefore to the true service of man; whereas faith directly connects us with God, discerns and owns His way and is confirmed by Him, as with the Syro-phoenician woman. The healing of the deaf man following this is peculiar to Mark; and in this man’s condition spiritually seems more fully imaged to us, with no ear to hear, and therefore speech failing. Here the Lord is specially oppressed by the condition, and His “Ephphatha” is uttered with a sigh. Then in another wilderness scene the divine mercy satisfies once more the poor with bread, which as a figure has been plainly interpreted for us; and with this the present subject ends.

1. The growth of traditionalism is not hard to trace. Truth itself from the source of truth, where ministered by man; necessarily accredits the one who brings it. So far this is well, or it would not be necessary; but how often it follows, and at no long interval, that the teacher comes to accredit the truth which first accredited him. We have gained confidence in the man, and begin to accept with less careful examination whatever comes to us from such a source. The interpreter begins to displace the Word that he interprets.

For the next generation this is an easier process, and the rule of the rabbi is soon begun. There is soon (formally or informally) a body of doctrine growing up, which although confessedly human and theoretically fallible, is accepted for truth and attaches to itself the masses. Henceforth he who will learn from God has to break through a steadily increasing barrier to the end he would attain. Traditional teaching is ever tending downwards. If it has a creed this will be a conservative element, no doubt, but a dead support at best, not a living principle. Being human, it will have gaps through which error will come in; if not error of its own; which will readily unite with further error. Immediate recourse to God is shut off by it, and the profit of His word “for correction, for reproof” is, at least, limited. In Israel the scribes arose as a reaction from that departure from the law which had been the nation’s ruin. They came forward as its defenders and vindicators, and in order to this its investigators and interpreters. Their zeal for its observance urged them to “make a hedge about it” of their own rules, which, while making it ever a heavier yoke, came naturally by degrees to displace what they were intended to enforce. The human came inevitably into conflict with the divine. As additions to it, they broke the law necessarily from the beginning; and the end could not but be still worse than the beginning. But worse even than their conflicting ordinances was their total mistake as to the nature of the law itself, and of the disease for which it was the appointed remedy. With all their laborious enquiries as to it, they interpreted it superficially, and had no knowledge of its true working. They had not learned the lesson of experience as the apostle declares it, that “that which was ordained to life” he “found to be unto death.” They tried therefore to remedy the failure under it by additional ordinances, instead of turning to that Saviour of whom the prophets with one voice testified. Their remedy was law, not grace; letter and not spirit. They would heal man’s deep-seated disease from the outside, and if they suppressed the external signs, only aggravated to a fatal issue the internal disorder. (1) Mark emphasizes beyond Matthew the religious scrupulosity which dealt with the outside, the ceremonial washings (or “baptisms”) of hands, cups, vessels, couches; tedious in proportion to its vain unprofitableness. God, by Isaiah, had characterized it long since as mere externalism without heart, human commandments claiming divine authority: so essentially hollow that the Lord denounces it as hypocrisy. (2) In fact, what God had commanded was set aside by it; and the breach of the “first commandment with promise” was only an example of many like things which they did. (3) With such it was even vain to argue. The Lord turns, therefore, to the multitude to show them the simple underlying principle which justified to the conscience what He said. Nature had provided for the cleansing of impurities as to the body. Moral, spiritual defilement is, alas, from what comes out of the man; from the heart, and is native there. But how then shall the heart be cleansed? 2. For this they are not ready. He turns from them towards the Gentiles as hiding Himself from their unbelief, to find in one herself a Gentile, a conscious need of Him from which He could not hide Himself, and a discernment of faith which Israel’s doctors lacked. This Syro-phoenician, content to take her true place as a dog before Him, could find her title in His grace to divine bounty, discerning what was impenetrable to the men of law. This faith on His part He recognizes and rejoices in. The power of Satan is quelled, and the soul satisfied. 3. But Israel had no ear to hear the Voice that spake to them: and this is indeed man’s condition naturally, a condition symbolized in this deaf man brought to Christ, and who has a corresponding impediment in his speech: for the speech can only be right where the ear is open. The Lord is oppressed in spirit with this condition. He puts the finger which had touched the leper into his ears: for does not spiritual leprosy underlie such deafness spiritually? and in the cleansing of the leper the ear is the first part anointed. In this type the meaning is quite clear. The soul under the power of sin is deaf to the voice of God - has lost even the power of hearing aright. That which cleanses the leper alone gives the ear to hear. The Lord touches the tongue also; and then; lifting up His eyes to heaven, sighs and says, Ephphatha! “be opened.” Immediately, his ears are opened, and the bond of his tongue loosed. He is here in Decapolis, a part of the land mainly Gentile and heathen, but the fame of this miracle goes far and wide. 4. The crowds follow Him; and the miracle of the loaves is repeated on their behalf. Here again we are in the track of Matthew’s Gospel, and the difference between the two accounts is very slight. The healing of the multitudes, however, which Matthew records, is omitted here, and their glorifying the God of Israel. Instead of five loaves among five thousand men; as on the former occasion, with twelve baskets of fragments taken up (see p. 157, notes), we have now seven loaves with seven baskets, and four thousand men: the numbers of perfection and of the world at large. They remind us of the perfect sufficiency of divine blessing for all human need, and of all men without restriction being in God’s desire participants in it. This fittingly closes what we have had before us.