← The Wake-Up Call
The Wake-Up Call
The Problem with the Rules . . . or the Possibilities
00:19:41
This episode centers on Mark 7 and Jesus’s challenge to religious legalism. J. D. Walt contrasts a “gotcha” mindset with a God who is “for us,” arguing that the heart of the law is not rigid rule-keeping but love, protection, and flourishing relationship with God and others. He emphasizes that what defiles a person is not external conformity but what comes from within, and he connects that message to the need for deep internal transformation through the Holy Spirit rather than surface-level obedience. The second half moves from teaching into reflection and application. J. D. shares how his own legal training shaped his understanding of the difference between law and legalism, then asks listeners to examine the brokenness that causes people to defend themselves, prove others wrong, and wound others in return. He closes with prayer, a hymn focus on turning our eyes to Jesus, and a program note promoting new women’s Bible studies from Seedbed, especially a study on James, while also p...
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Foreign.
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Hey.
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Good morning.
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It is Monday, July 20th, in the year of our Lord 2026. I'm John David Walt and this is your wake up call. So glad to be here in a new week with you. We are making our way through Mark's gospel, the Mark Pizza Challenge, chapter A day. We'll get there in just a second, but you know how we start. Every week, every day, every series, every month is today again. And it's another day to consecrate ourselves unto Jesus, right? So wake up, sleeper. Rise from the dead and Christ will shine on you. Jesus, I belong to you. I lift up my heart to you. I set my mind on you. I fix my eyes on you. I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice. Jesus, we belong to you. And we're praying. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Well, today's entry is entitled the Problem with the Rules or the Possibilities. Our Text. You're reading Mark chapter 7. Today I'm going to read the verses 9 through 15. So hear now the word of the Lord. As he continued, you have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions. For Moses said, honor your father and mother and anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death. But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is Corbin that is devoted to God, then you no longer let them do anything for their father or mother. Thus you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down and you do many things like that. Again, Jesus called the crowd to him and said, listen to me everyone, and understand this. Nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them. The word of the Lord. Now consider this. I'd like to go back to an earlier text and passage which sheds light on this text as well as the larger principle at work. It's right here in Mark, chapter seven. In response to the hand washing complaint, Jesus offered this. He replied, isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites. As it is written, these people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain. Their teachings are merely human rules. That's verses six and seven. Sometimes you can get the A and still fail the course. There's the letter of the law and then there's the spirit of the law. The law will lead in one of two directions and it depends on who is handling the law. The law will move according to the dictates of the letter or in keeping with the spirit behind it. The Pharisees are clearly moving in the legalistic direction. They are trying to catch Jesus in some kind of breach of the law. They are gotcha people. And people who are gotcha people also believe in a gotcha God. Take it out of a religious context and put it into a work context. Have you ever had a gotcha boss? When employees have this type of boss, they stick exceedingly close to the policy manual. They play the CYA game. You know what that stands for? Cover your butt. Let's just say, but cover your butt. Maybe you have a gotcha spouse in the game of gotcha. It's all about the rules and keeping the letter of the law and covering your rear and being ready to justify your actions. It's a horrible way to live. No one thinks about the mission anymore, only appeasing the boss or the spouse or the God. This is how legalism works. The law is wielded as a sword. The outcome of legalism is honoring me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. So what would it mean to honor God and the law of God with our hearts? It would mean seeing a different kind of God. Not a gotcha God, but a for you God. God is not out to get us. God is out to help us. God is for us, not against us. Behind every precept of God is the Spirit of love. Far from a sword in God's hands against us, the law becomes his shield of protection for us. Again, Jesus called the crowd to him and said, listen to me everyone and understand this. Nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them. The way to life is not external conformity to the letter, but deep internal transformation by the Holy Spirit. Are you a gotcha person? Is it all about conformity to the policy manual? Or are you a for others person? It's not a matter of law or no law. It's a matter of law as a sword or a shield. What you believe about God will determine the direction you go with us. Here's 2 Corinthians 3, 6. He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter, but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. Yeah, you all know. Some of you know, I became an attorney. I went to the, what I call the Harvard of the Ozarks, the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. I went to college there and then I went on to law school and what a difficult and yet amazing education that was for me. Just getting inside of the inner workings of what law is
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how law works. And you know, you just begin to. I was of course also very involved in the church. I was being called into ministry when I was in law school and just always trying to do the calculus between law and legalism and then on the other ditch license and just taking liberties. And it's not an in between place, it's on a whole nother plane. But grace and mercy and justice, these are the more weighty matters. And you just can get so lost in law and legalism and the letter. And Jesus is really first off trying to wake us up to like what the law is about. It's not about following the rules, it's about following the ruler. It's about understanding the heart of the ruler. And that the ruler in the first instance with law is trying to create and preserve a flourishing relationship between us and God and then to branch outward to create a flourishing and safe space for us to have relationship with each other. I don't know, there's so. There's so many directions I'd like to go with this today, but it's Monday, gang. We gotta get, we gotta get on the fields today. We gotta get to work. We gotta get, get out there. But oftentimes people think, well, the gospel throws away the law. And Jesus says, you know what? I didn't come to, to get rid of the law. Not a single jot or tittle. He's come to fulfill it. And he's come to fulfill it so we could obey it. I've been leading our men this, this summer in my church in Gillette. I've been making a little Bible study curriculum with videos and worksheets on Psalm 1. And it's, it's led us into the Ten Commandments. And I just find myself now meditating on the Ten Commandments every day and, and beginning to, to get a sense of God's wisdom from them. Again, a lot to say about that, but it's fascinating how these Pharisees and religious leaders and scholars and they were out to get Jesus, they were trying to catch him, the ruler, in the very rules that he had himself inspired. It's so ironic and tragic. So yeah, let's pray we're going to sing that, that prayer song we've been singing every day.
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Spirit of the living God fall afresh on me Spirit of the living God Fall afresh on me and melt me, mold me, fill me, use me, Spirit of the living God. Fall afresh on me.
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Amen. Here's a journal prompt for today. What is it deep inside us that makes us want to cover ourselves and prove other people wrong? What is that? That's brokenness. I'll tell you what it is. It's brokenness. But I just want to push a little further and say, ask Jesus. Say Jesus, what do you want me understand about my particular brokenness and how I've been broken by life and other people? And how are the ways that I have really turned inward and sought to simply protect myself from other people? And you know what I like to say, I hate to say it, actually, but it's the truth. Broken people break people and whole people heal people. This just comes out of you. And that's why we're working our way, by the grace of God into wholeness and into becoming healers. What's in you comes out of you. Isn't that interesting? That's kind of what Jesus said in that text. It's not what goes into a person that defiles them. It's what comes out. It's what comes out. And if you want healing to come out, you got to seek and pursue his. You got to receive his wholeness. Well, we're going to sing here and then I want to. I got a little program note to share with you if you'll just stick with me for a minute more. But I want to sing today, on Monday. Dad's not here today, but I thought I'd lead us again in that little. That little chorus. Turn your eyes upon Jesus. It's number 670 in our seedbed hymnal, Our Great Redeemers Praise. 670. You probably know the words. Turn your eyes upon Jesus. We'll sing it through twice. So what we need to do as we start this week, Turn our eyes toward the ruler.
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Turn your eyes upon Jesus. Look full in his wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace. Again, turn your eyes upon Jesus. Look full in his wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace.
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Amen. That's what we're doing all day long. We're just. We're just going to keep shifting our focus just ever so slightly, often just getting back focused on him. He's where the action is. He's where the joy is. As Tara Lee Cobble says, he's where the joy is I love that. From Bible Recap program note. Okay, can you give me a. Just a couple more minutes here? So, see, bed has discovered a fabulous new. I want to call her an author. She's an author, but she's more than that. She's a Witness Bible teacher, a preacher. Her name is Luann Riley and Luann is a pastor down in Texas. She's the pastor of discipleship preacher in the loft community. She runs the and leads the women's Bible study Radiant at the Woodlands Methodist Church.
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she has signed on as a seedbed author. And she is writing Bible studies for women Bible study series. She has written two for us. She's written several. We're just getting on board with her, actually. And we have just released one. It's got video, weekly video. They're seven or eight weeks long. There's a weekly video teaching each week. There's a workbook. The one that we first just released is called Growing Faith Lessons from the Book of James. And I just am trying to get the attention of the church and of women, particularly women's ministries and women's groups out there and say, would you give this Bible study a shot this fall? Would you get a hold of it? You just buy the books. The video comes with the books, no extra charge. And it's turnkey. It's ready to sit down with your My little women's class over here in Gillette on Sunday morning. They're using it. They love it. And you're going to love Luann. She's down home. She's very southern. She's from Luverne, Alabama, back in the day. She's going to be one of our preachers at the new Room conference this year. Another reason to come. And then we've already now filmed and are in the process of developing her second study, which I don't know if I'm at liberty to even say the name of it yet because she wants to announce it to her church first. So good on Luann for that. But we're going to put a banner over the email today. We'll. We'll have a link to it. I want you to check this out. Okay. Would you do this? We've got a good supply. I want to see hundreds, if not a thousand women's group groups diving in to this brand new inaugural release of seed beds, a new line of seed beds, Brand new Bible studies for women. This one's on James. So good. All right, well, it's time to let you guys go out and hit the. Oh, oh, almost forgot to tell you. Luann is coming on to lead the wakeup call for one week, five days. I think it's maybe the first week of August. So start praying for her as she gets ready to take the mound of the wake up call. I'm so excited to share it with her, and I just know you're going to really appreciate her and I'll be saying more, but we'll call this a day for the awakening. I'm J.D. walt, and I'll see you on the field.