Flagging the False

Transcript

JR 3
April 10, 2022
Flagging the False
Matthew 15:1-20
Jesse Randolph


Well if you, like my family, spend any time watching any of the major sports like baseball or football or even soccer, you know what a plague on those sports the art of flopping has become. You've seen it. I can hear it from the snickers out there. Grown, strong healthy men have been known to throw their bodies around in the face of minimal of zero contact in order to draw a foul or in order to shoot an extra free throw or to gain a few extra yards down the field. It hasn't been lost in all of the sports commentators out there who recognize that so many of these world class athletes have indeed become world class performers. In fact this plague of flopping has become so prevalent in the sports world that there have actually been movements forming to start flagging those who are flopping. Now I'm not sure how much traction has been gained in flagging those floppers, and I do hope for the sake of purity of sports and sports watching that that will start to happen soon. But we're not here this morning, are we to talk about sports or the purity of our sports or sports watching. What we're here this morning to discuss is the purity of religion, the purity of faith, the purity of worship. As we're going to see here this morning, unlike those referees in sports matches where you might be a little reluctant to flag the floppers, the Lord Jesus Christ has no trouble flagging false worshipers.

This morning we're going to be in Matthew 15. Someone asked if we would be in Leviticus 2 this morning, based on what I preached last time. No, not this morning, we're going to be in Matthew 15 where we are going to encounter a scene where our Lord Jesus Christ encounters the Pharisees. He encounters them over this seemingly small matter. He has this confrontation with them over this seemingly small matter of this topic of whether Jesus' disciples washed their hands before eating. That then erupts as we're going to see into this broader and weightier teaching from Jesus on the topic of true religion, true faith, and true worship. As we're going to see here this morning, the Lord's teaching here really has two aspects to it. He rejects hypocritical traditionalism, and He requires genuine heart level worship. Those are the two big ideas from this text that we will be in this morning. The Lord rejects hypocritical traditionalism and requires heart level worship. We're going to see this in our text this morning developed over three sections of narrative in Matthew 15. We're going to see the confrontation; we're going to see the condemnation, and we're going to see the correction.

Now before we just parachute into Matthew 15 this morning we need to consider where today's text is situated in the Gospel of Matthew. We all know in this room that the Gospel of Matthew has 28 chapters, so we are really jumping in, parachuting in nearly halfway into the book. By way of review, what has happened so far in the Gospel of Matthew the Lord has been baptized, the Lord has been tempted by Satan, the Lord has given us His Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7, the Lord has been engaging in healing and cleansing and casting out demons, the Lord has called the twelve, He has laid out the cost of discipleship, He has taught in parables, He has fed the 5,000, He has walked on water. And we have also seen in Matthew 12 that already at this point in Jesus' Galilean ministry He has had previous encounters with the Pharisees.

If we were to go back to Matthew 12 we'd see the Pharisees there interrogating Jesus about why His disciples, you might remember, were plucking heads of grain on the Sabbath. We see the Pharisees implying that the only reason that Jesus could cast out demons from a demon-possessed man was because He was somehow linked to Beelzebul, the ruler of the demons. And, the Pharisees in Matthew 12 insisting that Jesus perform signs for them, wonders for them, miracles for them. Which brings us to our text this morning, Matthew 15. Again, as we work through this text I'm ambitiously trying to hit 20 verses this morning, forgive me. We're going to see the confrontation in verses 1-2, the condemnation in verses 3-9, and then the correction in verses 10-20.

Let's start with the confrontation, looking at Matthew 15:1-2. It says “Then some Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, why do Your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat bread.” Now to set the scene here Jesus and His disciples have just crossed over the Sea of Galilee, landing on the western side at Gennesaret. The context here is that after getting away from the crowds on the opposite side of the sea and after calming the fears and bolstering the faith of His disciples, namely Peter, Jesus is now looking for a place to rest. In fact, if you let your eyes go up to Matthew 14:34-36, that's what we see. It says, “When they had crossed over,” meaning the sea,” they came to land at Gennesaret; and when the men of that place recognized Him, they sent word into all that surrounding district and brought to Him all that were sick. And they implored Him that they might just touch the fringe of His cloak and as many as touched it were cured.” The setting is this. The people of this region were following the Lord wherever He went, they were circling the perimeter of the Sea of Galilee, tracking His every move and maneuver, and pressing in on Him with increasing demands for healings and miracles. And with all this going on we get back to the start of our text here in Matthew 15:1 where it says, “Then some Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem.” That first word there, then, tote in Greek, is very common in Matthew's Gospel. In fact, we see it over 90 times in Matthew's Gospel alone. Compare that to Mark where we see it six times, or Luke where we see it fourteen times. The idea, it's a strong temporal linking term, meaning it is directly connecting what we are about to go through to the scene that proceeds it.

So, Jesus has come over to Gennesaret to rest but He receives no rest, and not only because of the crowds and not only because of their request for healing, but because this text tells us because of the interaction He is about to have with the Pharisees and scribes. Now note the text says it is the Pharisees and scribes. Previously in Matthew 12 it was the Pharisees who Jesus was interacting with, it is limited to that group. But now it is no longer just the Pharisees we see here, it's the Pharisees and scribes, which means the opposition that Jesus was facing at this point was increasing in its intensity. And note that the Pharisees, it says here, and the scribes “came to Jesus.” So, these religious leaders weren't just happening upon Jesus, they weren't just stumbling upon Him as they paid their visit to Galilee. This wasn't a case of an accidental run-in and hey, what are you doing here? No. The Pharisees and scribes had converged on Galilee for a singular purpose which was to confront the Lord, and note that these weren't just any scribes, any Pharisees. No, verse 1 says “they came to Jesus from Jerusalem.” These were the expert teachers of the Law in Jesus' day; these were the masters of divinity and the doctors of theology before there were any seminaries that were conferring such degrees. This was an official delegation; this was a very somber convoy. Evidently the account of Jesus' previous interactions with the Pharisees back in Matthew 12 had reached Jerusalem and so now this convoy of scribes and Pharisees had now come down from Jerusalem, remember they were always coming down from Jerusalem, to stop Jesus in His tracks.

And look at what they asked Jesus in verse 2, the first part of verse 2. They say, “Why do Your disciples break the traditions of the elders?” And what traditions of the elders are the Pharisees referring to here? Well, they tell us in the second half of verse 2 “For they,” meaning Your disciples, “do not wash their hands when they eat bread.” Now the last time I was behind this pulpit, the end of February, about 6-7 weeks ago, you might remember I did preach from Leviticus, Leviticus 1, where we looked at one aspect of the very specific worship practices that God had laid out for Israel in the Old Testament. And one such requirement in the Law in general was that priests go through very meticulous cleansing process in order to be presented as clean before they presented their offerings to God. In fact, this time instead of going back to Leviticus, let's go back to Exodus, let's look at Exodus 30. Flip over to the second book of the Bible, if you would, with me to Exodus 30, just to feel the weight of this and the context of this. Exodus 30:17, it says, “The Lord spoke to Moses saying, you shall also make a laver of bronze with its base of bronze for washing; and you shall put it between the tent of meeting and the altar, and you shall put water in it. Aaron and his sons shall wash their hands and their feet from it; when they enter the tent of meeting they shall wash with water so that they will not die; or when they approach the altar to minister, by offering up in smoke a fire sacrifice to the Lord. So, they shall wash their hands and their feet so that they will not die; and it shall be a perpetual statute for them, for Aaron and his descendants throughout their generations.” So, what do we see there? The priests were required to wash up as part of their ministry. But I can assure you, I can tell you this, you can search the Old Testament high and low, you can look through every nook and cranny of the Pentateuch to find any laws or any rules or any regulations pertaining to common non-priestly worshipers of Yahweh being required to wash their hands before eating, but you won't find any because there were no such laws. Instead, what the religious rulers of Jesus' day had done is developed a series of orally transmitted Talmudic traditions to serve as a protective hedge around the Torah in which they carried over the rules and the requirements of priests from Exodus 30 related to ceremonial purification and handwashing and carried them over to the common Israelite worshiper when he was doing something as simple and pedestrian as eating. Again, God had nowhere prescribed handwashing in connection with every meal eaten by every Israelite of this day. This was strictly a tradition developed by and then imposed by these religious rulers.

That's confirmed in Mark 7:3 where it says, “For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they carefully wash their hands,” see that new requirement for the Pharisees and all the Jews, “thus observing the traditions of the elders.” And even though this tradition was unsupported by any provision of God's Law, the Pharisees here had nevertheless made it a matter of emphasis. And that is all explanation for why they are doing what they are doing here. Confronting Jesus over His disciples' failure to engage in handwashing before eating. The Pharisees weren't accusing Jesus' disciples of murder or mayhem or anything of the sort. No, they were instead coming down on His disciples because they had broken the traditions of the elders, they were not observing a rule of human origin, they were not observing a rule of human invention. They were not washing their hands when they ate bread.

Now, there is a lesson for us to learn here and it is this. Elevating human tradition to a place of authority, not only above Scripture but alongside Scripture, is a plague that has infected generations from time immemorial. And why? Well as J. C. Ryle once put it, whenever a man takes upon himself to make additions to the Scriptures, he is likely to end with valuing his own additions above Scripture itself. The modern day Roman Catholic church does it with its dogmatic pronouncements and traditions; the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the Mormon Church, they do it with the Book of Mormon the Doctrines and the Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price; the Seventh Day Adventists do it by requiring that they interpret Scripture through the lens of their so-called prophetess Ellen G. White. That's what the Pharisees were doing here ultimately, though in their piety they were claiming to be people of the book, holding answers to the contents of the Word of God but in reality, as Ryle notes, they were more impressed with their own intellect and their own ingenuity in devising extra-biblical rules, extra-biblical commands and extra-biblical prohibitions than they were in adhering to the precious truths and the purity of the Word of God.

It should go without saying, and whenever somebody says that they say it anyway, so I'm going to say it anyway, that we must with every ounce of our strength and in total reliance upon the Spirit who indwells us resist any temptation to be like the Pharisees were here in Jesus' day. We must resist the temptation to elevate our own traditions, our own 21st century traditions, our own 20th century traditions, our own 2022 traditions, our own 1969 traditions, our own Nebraska traditions, our own California traditions, our own Indian Hills Community Church traditions, our own Mission Bible Church traditions to the seat that rightly ought to be occupied by Scripture alone. Some Christians you know don't homeschool, fine. Some Christians you know do homeschool, fine. Some Christians you know allow their kids to stay up until 9:30 p.m. instead of 8:00 p.m., fine. Some Christians you know who are married have a joint Facebook account or don't have a joint Facebook account, fine. Some other church in town has decided to move on to the Legacy Standard Bible and ditching the old NASB '95, fine. Let's never be, in the words of Jesus elsewhere in Matthew 23:24, “those who strain out gnats while swallowing camels.”

Let's get back to the narrative. As we get to verse 3 note how Jesus here responds to the Pharisees and scribes. He doesn't make an excuse for His disciples' practices of supposedly not washing their hands when they are eating bread, He's not here fumbling around searching for an answer, He's not backpedaling or apologizing or conceding or asking them to explain the meaning of their interrogation. No, instead in verse 3 our Lord goes on the offensive and He does so here by calling out the Pharisees for quarreling with Him over such insignificant matters when they themselves were breaking God's law. So, whereas we see the confrontation, meaning the Pharisees' confrontation of Jesus in verses 1-2, we see the Lord's condemnation, meaning His condemnation of the Pharisees in verses 3-9.

Let's look at those verses together, starting in verse 3. It says, “And He answered and said to them, why do you yourselves transgress the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said, honor your father and mother and he who speaks evil of father or mother is to be put to death. But you say whoever says to his father or mother, whatever I have that would help you has been given to God. He is not to honor his father or his mother. And by this you have invalidated the word of God for the sake of your tradition. You hypocrites, rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you, this people honor Me with their lips but their heart is far away from Me. But in vain do they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.”

Let's unpack this line by line and verse upon verse, starting with verse 3 where it says, “And He answered them and said to them, why do you yourselves transgress the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition.” What's going on here? Well, this is again less a response by Jesus than it is a counterattack to those religious men who are getting on His disciples about washing their hands before He ate, Jesus effectively here is saying, really? You are one to talk. He is not blame shifting, He is not passing off guilt. He is instead shifting the focus here away from the matter of inferior traditions which the Pharisees were so zealous to enforce to the superior law of God which as we are about to see the Pharisees were in violation of. Those who appear to be upholding Scripture were in fact violating Scripture which is why Jesus in verse 3 says, “Why do you yourselves transgress the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?” Or put in our modern context, why do you say grace at the dinner table but fail to show grace in your home, or to your neighbor? Why do you insist that all Christians who are married have a set date night every night of the week, but you are actively sinning against your spouse, committing adultery? Why do you show up at church dressed to the nines and playing the part when all week you have shown zero interest in pursuing the things of God? The hypocrisy of the Pharisees angered Jesus, which is why later we'll see in verse 7 He calls them hypocrites.

Now from Jesus' words here can we deduce that He is against every tradition that has ever been created on the planet? I don't think we can go that far but the principle here is that if left unchecked by the passages of Scripture like these, there is a tendency in men to elevate our traditions over God's Word and then expect others to follow those traditions and expect to be applauded when we follow our own man-made traditions. I won't have you go there right now, but Luke 20:45-47 says, “Beware of the scribes who like to walk around in long robes and love respectful greetings in the marketplaces and chief seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets, who devour widows' houses and for appearance's sake offer long prayers. They,” it says, “will receive greater condemnation.”

Do you think there might be some application and some words of warning for us in the church age today? I think so. What if we played around with that language a bit from Luke 20 and something like, beware of those Indian Hills people who like to walk around in their suits and their ties and their fancy dresses and love respectful greetings during greeting time right before the sermon begins. And they like their chief seats in the sanctuary, the same seats that they sit in every single week. And they devour one another and they offer long prayers—oh sovereign Jehovah the triune God of all time revealed in the pages of Your holy writ. What does this text show us? That the spirit of the Pharisees lives on, not just potentially here at Indian Hills but in any church USA.

Going back to Matthew 15 and looking specifically at verses 4-6 we're going to see those specific Scriptures that the Pharisees were violating while at the same time insisting that their own manmade traditions be followed. Again verses 4-6, “For God said, honor your father and mother and he who speaks evil of father or mother is to be put to death. But you say whoever says to his father or mother, whatever I have that would help you has been given to God, he not to honor his father or his mother. And by this you have invalidated the Word of God for the sake of your tradition.” Here is how Jesus is making it the case for how the Pharisees are themselves lawbreakers. First He begins there in verse 4 by quoting Exodus 20:12, “Honor your father and mother,” which of course comes from the decalogue, the Ten Commandments, and He is quoting here the fifth commandment. And then He goes on to quote Exodus 21:17 where it says, “Moses said,” inspired by God, “he who speaks evil of father or mother is to be put to death.” So right here in verse 4 Jesus in a very literal sense is laying down the law. He is reminding the Pharisees, who mind you were the legal experts of this day, of the very Law that they were charged with knowing and upholding. But then in verse 5 Christ, as He is reminding them of what the Law says, it is as though He is taking His finger, that He is pointing them to what God's Word reveals and He is now lifting it and pointing it at them.

Look at verse 5, the first three words, “But you say,” “but you say.” Note the contrast between the opening words of verse 4, “For God said,” and then the opening words of verse 5, “But you say.” In the Sermon on the Mount, we have those infamous “you have heard it said, but I say” words of Jesus, those are scattered all throughout Matthew 5. Here something totally different is happening where Jesus is saying, “you have heard it said but you say.” He is calling out and condemning the Pharisees here, He is calling out and condemning them for undermining and contradicting the very word of God that they had been set apart to enforce.

A fireman can be called out for failing to put out fires, a baseball can be called out for failing to throw strikes. A so-called legal expert as the Pharisees held themselves out to be can rightly be called out for misinterpreting and misapplying the Law of God. And what was it that the Pharisees were teaching that was drawing Christ's ire? We see in verses 5-6. They were saying, “Whoever says to his father or mother, whatever I have that would help you has been given to God.” And then they would say, he is not to honor his father or his mother. There was this Jewish tradition that had developed by this time which allowed a person to avoid having to honor his father or his mother specifically by providing for them and meeting their needs simply by saying that whatever resources they would have used to support their mother and their father had been given to God. “Corbin” was the Hebrew term. Whatever means such a son would have had to support his parents was now gone, it evaporated, it had been given to God, it was “corban.” The money had been dedicated to God and so sorry, Mom, so sorry, Dad, it's no longer available to you. It really had by this time become like a magic word, a password that allowed children to justify their refusal to support their parents. And as a result, parents were being dishonored. And importantly, God's Law was being broken. And this tradition allowed for falsely pious men, men like the Pharisees, to nullify the Scriptures, which is what almost always human traditions do.

Now some might raise the objection as to what Christ here is saying about the corban principle. Isn't all of our life truly to be fully dedicated to God? Isn't God in fact more important than our parents? Shouldn't we, when put to the choice between honoring God and honoring parents always choose God? Didn't Jesus tell us and tell His disciples that we cannot be His disciples if we don't hate our own father and mother? Sure. Prioritizing our relationship with God is, of course, the most important thing. It is central to our relationship with Christ. But capitalizing on the name of God, trading on the name of God as was being done here by the Pharisees, that's not prioritizing God at all. The rule of corban was not divinely inspired. It was derelict and it was defiant. People who were living by such traditions in the words of 1 Timothy 5:8 really were denying the faith and were worse than an unbeliever. Proverbs 28:24 has a similar idea which says, “he who robs his father or his mother and says, it is not a transgression is the companion of a man who destroys.” Those are strong words. Worse than an unbeliever, “the companion of one who destroys.”

But the barbs from Jesus here get even more intense toward the Pharisees in verses 7-9. Look at what comes next in verse 7. Our Lord says, “You hypocrites, rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you. This people honors Me with their lips but their heart is far away from Me. But in vain do they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.” This is the first recorded instance of our Lord calling the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law hypocrites. And the word could also be rendered, you phonies, you fakers, you actors. This accusation surely would have struck at the heart of these religious bigwigs in Jerusalem. And we know from reading all throughout the New Testament that Jesus had a way with words when it came to expressing how He felt about the Pharisees and the whole false system of worship they represented. He used words like blind guides, fools, blind men, serpents, vipers, whitewashed tombs, and now hypocrites.

Verses 8-9 He says, “Rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you. This people honors Me with their lips but their heart is far away from Me. But in vain do they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.” This was a damning accusation against people who were considered the religious elites of the day. Jesus is taking here the words of woe and warning that Yahweh originally gave the prophet Isaiah to deliver to the people of Jerusalem before their time of exile. That's the “this people” that is used here in the original Old Testament referent. That's a reference to Isaiah 29:13. And those words of Isaiah are now being directed toward the Pharisees and scribes here who surely would have been familiar with the context and the principle that Isaiah prophesied these words before.

So, Jesus is now turning these words from Isaiah on the Pharisees to condemn them for their own lack of devotion to God. This no doubt was a jarring condemnation, but it was a just condemnation because the Pharisees were making a show of their so-called devotion to God. But in reality the religious traditions, their unabashed self-righteousness had eclipsed any notion of a genuine love for God and His Law. They were honoring Him with their lips, verse 8 says, meaning they could talk a big religious game, they could cite a lot of Scripture, they could read a ton of theology. But the end of verse 8, “their heart is far away from Me.” That heart-level faith, that true worship that the living God requires was completely foreign to the Pharisees. They had not received a new heart, they did not have broken or contrite hearts, their hearts had not been circumcised. They were not in the words of Proverbs 4:23, “keeping their hearts with all diligence.” No, theirs was a form of worship that was all about form and tradition and external formality, which is why Jesus says in verse 9, “But in vain do they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.” Jesus here is condemning the very best-known form of human religion at this time. This self-willed, self-righteous religion that was embodied by the Pharisees Jesus says was completely in vain. They were going through the motions. They had no notion of the truth that the only basis for anyone's justification before a holy God is Christ's righteousness, not our own. And therefore, right here on these pages they are receiving Christ's words of condemnation which would not be the only form of condemnation they would encounter, mind you, because they were ultimately careening toward the ultimate form of condemnation where they would one day spend an eternity in hell, facing the eternal wrath of the Lamb.

So thus far we have seen the Lord's confrontation from the Pharisees, we've seen the Lord's condemnation of the Pharisees, next we are going to see the Lord's correction of those same Pharisees. Now I want you to note the scene shifts a little bit here because up to this point the conversation has only been between Jesus and those Pharisees and scribes. But for the rest of the conversation and the rest of the context here that the conversation broadens, it widens as Jesus is now having conversation with people other than the Pharisees. Look at verses 10-11. Verse 10 says, “After Jesus called the crowd to Him, He said to them, hear and understand. It is not what enters into the mouth that defiles the man but what proceeds out of the mouth, this defiles the man.”

Now the crowd that is being referred to here likely was a crowd that up to this point had been sort of huddled around and standing back and watching this interaction between Jesus and the Pharisees in the verses that we've gone through so far. Now put yourself in the shoes of this crowd. This crowd undoubtedly had been taught through the influence of the Pharisees over the decades prior that they did need to perform certain ritual acts like washing their hands before eating bread or else be considered unclean in the sight of God. But now what they've seen is Jesus completely excoriate the Pharisees by calling them hypocrites, by saying their hearts were far from God and by saying their worship was in vain. So it looks like what is happening here is Jesus sees an opportunity not only to deconstruct the false religion of the Pharisees but to instruct the crowds that are around Him on what true religion and true worship looks like.

Look at verse 10. It say, “After Jesus called the crowd to Him, He said to them, hear and understand.” Listen to what I have to say, think about these things. And the instruction comes in verse 11, “It is not what enters into the mouth that defiles the man but what proceeds out of the mouth, this defiles the man.” This was a revolutionary statement; this was a world-shifting statement. And do you want to know why? The answer is in Leviticus 11. We won't go there right now. I thought about reading that whole chapter to you just to allow you to feel the weight of the dietary and food laws that this crowd would have experienced at this time, but we would get out of here about 1:30 if I did that. But I'll just summarize. Leviticus 11 taught very clearly that it is what a person puts into their mouth that defiles them. It distinguishes between clean and unclean foods based on the nature and the character of the animal that was killed. For instance, the eagle and the vulture and the buzzard, those were unclean. The winged insects that walked on all fours, those were unclean. All the animals which divide the hoof but do not make split hoof. I don't even know what that means. Those were unclean. California. But those are all examples from Leviticus 11 about foods that were unclean.

But now getting back to our text, Matthew 15 and specifically verse 11, Jesus turns all of those food laws completely on their head by saying “It is not what enters into the mouth that defiles the man, but what proceeds out of the mouth, this defiles the man.” With these words in verse 11 Jesus completely does away, completely abolishes the food laws of Leviticus 11. Mark 7:19 is a cross reference which says that by this statement He declared all foods clean. Those old food laws had their time and their point and their purpose, but with Jesus' arrival on the scene of earthly history they were no longer needed.

Jesus is the mediator between God and man. Not our diets, not our appetites, not what we put on the dinner table. Which means application wise, Friday night fish fries at the local Catholic parish during lent, they don't work. So are modern Jewish kosher practices, don't work. So it is with the dietary limitations that are placed on members of the Seventh Day Adventist Church, they don't work.

But getting back to our text Jesus here says it's what proceeds out of the mouth, that's what defiles the man. What defiles us, what soils us, what pollutes us is what comes out of our mouth, our words which ultimately reveal our heart. The Lord communicated something very similar in Matthew 12:36-37 where He says, “But I tell you that every careless word that people speak, they shall give an accounting for it in the day of judgment. For by your words, you will be justified and by your words you will be condemned.” He says something similar in Luke 6:45, “For his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart.” And of course, I taught this to the AO group yesterday, but Jesus' half-brother James in James 3 lets us have it for an entire chapter about the polluting effect and the power and poison that exists within our tongues. The big idea here is that Jesus is flipping the then-conventional way of religious thinking on its head.

The Pharisees were certainly aware of this as were Jesus' disciples, which is why they come to him, the disciples I mean, in verse 12. The disciples know what is going on, they understand the world-shifting nature of events that is happening right before them. So they come to Him in verse 12 and look what it says here. It says, “Then the disciples came and said to Him, do You know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this statement?” I mean, Jesus has just rebuked the Pharisees, He has blown the minds of the crowds by teaching them about what actually defiles a person and now His disciples come up to Him and say, do You know that they were offended?

I actually find that question pretty funny. Of course, they were offended, of course. What self-righteous person is not offended when we tell a person about their sin and their need for a Savior? What self-righteous person is not offended when we tell them that they must abandon all hope of saving themselves and instead bank their entire eternal existence on what a murdered Messiah has done? What self-righteous person is not offended when we tell them that even their best deeds, their best behavior are like filthy rags before a thrice holy God? What the disciples' question here shows us is that they had taken note of the wide gulf that separated the religious teaching of Jesus that they had just heard and the religious teaching of the Pharisees which they had been indoctrinated under previously. Like most Jews during this time these disciples would have been conditioned over the years to initially hold the Pharisees in high regard. So here with this question in verse 12 they are really trying to make sure they have this clear, about the nature and the change that Jesus is ushering in here.

And then look at verse 13, He gives them their answer. It says, “But He answered and said, every plant which My heavenly Father did not plant shall be uprooted.” Jesus here is completely disabusing His disciples of the notion that the Pharisees and scribes were trustworthy leaders and teachers. He calls them plants, it says, “which My heavenly Father did not plant.” That's pointing back to Jesus' teaching on the wheat and the tares in Matthew 13. The Pharisees were tares. They had been mixed in with the wheat, but they had not been planted by the Father. In fact, in Matthew 13:39 Jesus says, “the enemy who sowed them,” meaning the Pharisees, “is the devil.” So, though the Pharisees taught boldly and taught confidently, though they claimed to represent God and claimed to be teachers of His Law, the reality is they were not from God, they were not of God. In fact, they were of the devil. And they would eventually be uprooted. As Jesus says back in Matthew 13:40, they would eventually be gathered up and burned with fire.

He continues on with His assessment of these Pharisees in verse 14. He says, “Let them alone, they are blind guides of the blind, and if a blind man guides a blind man both will fall into a pit.” Let them alone could also be rendered, stay away from them. And why? Because they are unreliable spiritual guides. Far from it, He says they are blind guides. That is a blistering critique of the Pharisees. Remember these are the theological elite, the religious illuminati, the enlightened ones; they are supposed to have more light, not less. And Jesus is now calling them blind.

Imagine with me if you would for just a moment that you were physically blind and you sign up to go on a guided van tour of the Grand Canyon. You have not experienced physical sight your whole life but you are going to go on this van tour and they are going to tell you what you are seeing and experiencing, though of course you can't see. Only now you hear that the driver of the van that is going to be taking you on the Grand Canyon tour is also physically blind. Are you going to go on that tour? Of course not because knowing what blindness entails and involves, you are not getting into that van. Well, spiritually speaking Jesus here says, “If a blind man leads a blind man both will fall into the pit.” It is spiritually disastrous, He is saying, to follow the religious guidance and teaching of the Pharisees. If they were to follow these Pharisees and heed their teaching, they would be taken further away from God not brought closer to God. In fact, they would be heading toward spiritual ruin.

So now having addressed the Pharisees and having addressed the crowd and His disciples in these first 14 verses, Jesus faces one more interaction in this section of Matthew 15:15-20. It says, “Peter said to Him, explain the parable to us. Jesus said, are you still lacking in understanding also? Do you not understand that everything that goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is eliminated? But the things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart and those defile the man. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders. These are the things which defile the man, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile the man.” Perhaps not surprisingly, going back to verse 15, it is Peter who speaks up and Peter here is seeking an explanation. He says, explain the parable to us. Specifically what he wants is an explanation of what Jesus has said in that revolutionary statement back in verse 11.

Now again before we rush to judging Peter as being slow-witted or dense, we have to just understand and grasp and take in how revolutionary and how radical Jesus' statement was back in verse 11. We're sitting here in a sanctuary hearing these words as I speak them to you as we see them on the page, but this was all happening real time for Peter. He was trying to process this as fast as he could, and it was a revolutionary turn of events. And Peter had it ingrained in his mind, like a good Jewish boy in his time, that defilement and uncleanness are caused by the things we touch, are around, and put into our bodies. So he was slower to soak in the magnitude of what Jesus is saying here. But Jesus, as we get to verse 16, you see He really did expect Peter to have gotten it by then. It says, “Jesus said, are you still lacking in understanding also?” The “also” here is really significant because it does show that Peter is the spokesperson for the group. He is not the only one who is not getting it. He's not the only one who needs further clarification about all that is happening in front of his eyes. But Jesus' question, the way it is phrased here, shows that He clearly expected that those who were closest to Him should have picked up already on the meaning of what He said back in verse 11. Remember these disciples have been with Jesus for some time up to this point. They had witnessed and heard His teaching over an extended period of time at this point. And by this time, they should have had greater understanding than what they appeared to have had at this point.

Nevertheless, because He is gracious and merciful, Jesus provides this explanation in verse 17. He says, “Do you not understand that everything that goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is eliminated?” That is a very simple, relatable explanation, everything we eat goes into our mouth, into our stomach, is eventually eliminated. The word here for eliminated literally means into the latrine. I won't reserve further comment on that. But then look at the contrast that Jesus sets up here in verse 18. It says, “But the things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart and those defile the man.” As He has already said in verse 11 Jesus here again is saying that it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles a person. And why is that? Well, because the things that come out of our mouths come ultimately from where? Our hearts. And what does Jeremiah 17:9 and other places testify to? “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick. Who can understand it?” Jesus builds on this verse and that idea in verse 19 saying, “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders.” The word “for” in verse 19 links back to verse 18. And again, the issue is the heart. “Out of the heart,” He says, come all of these things. Evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders.

Note that He starts on His list there in verse 19 with “evil thoughts,” which of course can lead to all sorts of evil deeds. This makes sense that Jesus is teaching in this logical order because He has already taught it is a mind sin, it is an emotional sin, it is a heart sin long before it is a physical act. And He also says that murder has that same root of hatred in the heart long before it is a physical act. It is out of the heart, to use the word here in verse 19.

And then Matthew here recording Jesus' words, then lists this series of sins that come out of the heart—murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders. Notably Matthew here has arranged, if you noted, in the order in which they were originally listed by God in the Ten Commandments, showing that Matthew or Levi was a good Jewish boy, following his Jewish heritage. Now this is not obviously a complete list of all sins that defile because there are many more sins that defile and all sin is lawlessness, rather this is a sample of the evils that proceed from the human heart. What Jesus is showing His followers here is that to follow the example of the Pharisees in managing what goes into your body is actually a waste of time and energy. Far more important is to watch one's heart to avoid not only doing and speaking evil things but thinking evil things. Those are the things, our Lord would say here, that truly defile a person.

Taking it back to what I said at the beginning about really I think the entire point of this periscope, this section of Scripture, the Lord rejects hypocritical traditionalism, and the Lord requires genuine heart-level worship. In fact, that's what our Lord says in the last verse here, in verse 20. He says, “These are the things which defile the man, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile the man.” It's not external practices detached from faith that need to change, instead it's the inner person that needs to change. The heart must change through faith.

Now in a room of this size I would venture to guess that there are going to be some people in the room here that are finding themselves a bit rebuked by this text. That maybe you find that you are like the Pharisees. You are religious, you are compliant, you are dutiful, but if you are honest with yourself you are doing so from a place of cold formalism. You have attended church, you've been a part of a church, you've served the church, you've even given to the church, but if you are really honest with yourself you aren't approaching the Lord with a heart of humble faith. If that describes you this morning, you don't need to wash up. That's what our text is saying. You don't need to clean up on the outside. You don't need to spit shine an otherwise sin-polluted life. No, what you need to do is repent and seek forgiveness from God for not giving Him the worship that He is due. You need to beg God that the grace of Jesus Christ would stir your soul and cause you to walk in a new manner. Now the Pharisees, of course, they altogether rejected Christ. They were totally blind so they rejected Him and we know ultimately they killed Him. Now there may be some in this room who like the Pharisees are not just spiritually lukewarm, but spiritually blind. You are not just spiritually tepid, you are spiritually deceived, meaning you don't know the Lord at all. You don't have to remain in that state, if I'm describing you. In fact, all you need to do is trust exclusively in the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross to save your soul and He will give you eyes to see and a heart to obey. He will grant you eternal life and give you the ability to give Him the worship that He is due. If you are in that second group, my plea to you is that you would trust in Jesus Christ today. Commit your life to Him and fervently follow Him all the days of your life.

Well, we've seen this morning an instance of Jesus flagging false worship with the Pharisees. In tonight's message we're going to be back in Matthew 15 to see a text where Jesus finds a faithful worshiper. I hope you will join us as we continue on in the study this Lord's day.

Will you pray with me. Our gracious God, we thank You so much for this morning where we can gather in this building with Your people, worshiping You in song, in giving, in fellowship, in prayer and through the teaching and ministry of the Word. I ask this morning that You would cause the truth that is in this text to sink deeply into the hearts of all who hear my voice, that there would be those who are affirmed in the genuine heart-level faith that they have as demonstrated by a life of faithfulness to You. I pray for those who might be in a state of being lukewarm, that You would stir them up and rekindle their affections afresh and help them to honor You faithfully through true heart-level worship. And for those here today who don't know You, who perhaps are deceived or open in their rebellion and unbelief, I pray that today would be the day of salvation as they bow their knee to Jesus Christ, repent and believe in His Gospel and are granted and given eternal life. We love You and thank you for this day. In Jesus' name, amen.