Matthew 15:1-20

Last week we got to see another incredible miracle happen as Jesus walked across the water and had Peter come out and join Him. We talked about what faith was, that faith is the God given gift that allows us to see the truth that our eyes aren’t able to see. Peter saw that truth in Jesus, Peter had that faith, he had enough faith to step out of a perfectly fine boat and out onto the waters of the sea with Jesus. But Peter was just a guy like anyone of us, and he saw the wind and the waves, he saw how crazy this situation was, and he allowed his eyes seeing these physical issues to overwhelm his faith in God’s power, and he began to sink.

 

Thankfully Jesus didn’t let Peter sink, Jesus knew Peter was still growing in his faith, just like we are. Our faith isn’t perfect, Peter’s wasn’t either, but hopefully we’re pursuing growth, hopefully we’re abiding, hopefully we’re getting closer in relationship to the Lord. He’s got us in our weakness and that’s great to know, but hopefully we grow in faith so that when a step out of the boat kind of moment comes in our life, we’ll step out of the boat and follow Jesus.

 

That’s where we were and what we talked about last week, but today let’s get started into Matthew 15.

 

 

The end of chapter 14 had said that they made it to the other side of the sea and Jesus had started healing all of the people that were brought to Him in the region. And then … the scribes and the pharisees show up once again. Some think that this may have been a different group of scribes and pharisees, since it specifically says that these ones came from Jerusalem, but regardless they start coming with weird stuff too like the previous batch of these guys. And their big question for Jesus in this moment comes in verse 2:

 

Read Matthew 15:2

 

So, what’s the deal with this question? Are they trying to say that the disciples are just dirty, and they aren’t washing their hands before eating? Is that what’s going on here?

 

That’s actually not what is going on here. These guys aren’t coming with a bad hygiene issue. If you remember when we talked about these scribes and pharisees, we talked about how they were making up their own crazy rules to apparently try to like supplement God’s law in some way. As if it needed that. I guess if they could make it stricter and harder, then they would feel holier or something because of it. But this was just people doing weird people stuff and had nothing to do with God’s plan and God’s words.

 

And that’s what makes this moment kind of crazy, because they aren’t challenging Jesus and His disciples based on God’s word, they are trying to challenge them based on these weird rules that people have made up. And so, one of those rules was that you had to go through an extensive ceremonial washing before you could eat. It wasn’t just simple good hygiene practice; it was like a little ceremony that you had to perform.

 

And even in saying “perform” it makes me think of the word hypocrite, which as we have talked about, is the same word that was used for actor, which is exactly what these people are doing. They aren’t doing what’s necessary, they’re putting on a show.

 

And so, Jesus comes back at them. They’re making accusations against His disciples and Jesus ends up leveling an accusation right back towards them in verse 3.

 

Read Matthew 15:3

 

This is a really strong response; this probably took these guys back for a minute. These guys were probably like, what in the world did this guy just say to US!? Jesus just told them that they were sinning against the commandments of God, because of their traditions. Their traditions told them to do this stuff, but that wasn’t in line with the heart and the commands of God, and even worse they were bringing their issues to other people now. Accusing them of stuff that has no bearing and no backing in God’s Word. And so, Jesus is like, you guys are the ones sinning in this situation. And then Jesus gives them another example of God’s command, versus their traditions, in the next few verses.

 

Read Matthew 15:4-6

 

The ten commandments in Exodus 20 tell us to honor our father and mother. It doesn’t give exceptions, it doesn’t say only if they are great parents, it doesn’t have any clauses to give you an out from the command. It says honor your father and mother. But Jesus gives a particular example situation in verse 5, that had been going on apparently, that really undermines the heart and obedience to the true law. It might be kind of hard to grasp from the wording here, but what had been going on, is that people understood the honor your father and mother part, but then someone’s parents would end up in need, maybe needing some money or resources assistance that the child was in fact able to provide, but the people had come up with this really dumb loophole to get around this situation.

 

The child would basically just make the claim that, “oh I can’t give you any of this, because I intend these things to be a gift to God”. And so, you can’t have any of it. But the child doesn’t have any intention of giving their stuff away, they just rattled off some traditional loophole to get out of helping out their parents. That’s why Jesus says in verse 6 that you have made God’s commandments of no effect, by overruling them with these ridiculous traditions. And so, Jesus calls them out again, and calls them HYPOCRITES! in verse 7, and even points out one of Isaiah’s prophecies as being about them. Let’s read the prophecy in verses 8 and 9.

 

 

This is Jesus quoting from Isaiah 29. And let’s really pay attention to what Jesus is saying here because this is important. Jesus is quoting this to these guys standing right in front of Him at that moment, He quotes this because this is what He sees in them. But I think we need to stop and check ourselves against this truth from Jesus as well.

 

So, what’s Jesus saying here?

 

He’s saying that these guys are all talk, that they are all lip service, that the walk doesn’t match the talk. He speaks of people that are saying things that sound good, that it seems like they honor God from the words coming out of their mouth, but then the problem comes. The words are there, but the heart isn’t. The worship is there, but the worship isn’t real. The teaching is there, but teaching men’s ideas and not God’s commands.

 

Jesus was calling it all out. But where are we at on these things?

 

Let’s go look at another passage together in 1 John.

 

 

John starts out here and is like, we actually know what real love looks like, because Jesus showed it to us. And then he’s like, and if you have all this stuff, and aren’t willing to help your brother out, then how is that real love, how is Jesus’ love inside of you? How does the love of God abide in us if we are going to act like that? This is like that example that Jesus gave in Matthew 15. Parents struggling, parents in need, child has the resources, but child is like, “I’m just going to give this to God” and so you aren’t going to get anything for your needs, but they’re straight lying to their parents and God. God showed us what real love looks like, what His love looks like, and it doesn’t look like that.

 

So, John follows it up in verse 18 and says, don’t let our love just be words and our tongue moving, but let our love be in action and in truth. And he’s like, if that’s there, if that real love, is really there, then that should bring assurance or should put our hearts at rest knowing that God’s love actually being there, His love inside of us, is evidence THAT WE’RE HIS.

 

And finally verse 20, so if our heart is messed up, then our heart knows that it is messed up, and God is greater than our heart and knows all things, so of course He knows the condition that our heart is in. At the end of the day, we might fake it really well, but not well enough, because He knows. And that’s what is happening to these guys back in Matthew 15.

 

God is standing right in front of them, God knows what is going on, and God is calling it out.

 

And so back in Matthew 15, in verse 10, Jesus calls all people all around to come on over, and says listen and understand what we see in verse 11:

 

 

Basically, you guys are all worried about someone not going through some manmade hand washing ceremony before they eat, but you need to be worried about the crazy things coming out of your mouth. Because the fact of the matter is that some of it was just plain wrong, and likely most of it, wasn’t backed up by actions, or the good fruit of living out the truth. It’s like what Jesus talked about back in Matthew 12.

 

 

We could be like, “but they’re just words!” But Jesus points something really important out in verse 34, He says “For out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.” He’s saying that there may be these words coming out, that are seemingly “just words”, but the words are a product of what’s really on the inside. And that’s why Jesus addressed these guys and gathered all the people together in Matthew 15 to teach this extremely important lesson, words are easy, but words need to be backed up by action, and maybe sometimes words are taken lightly, but words are a tell about what’s going on inside of a person.

 

Stop worrying about the made-up rules about dirty hands and worry about where your heart is. Jesus was still loving all of these people through a hard lesson time, but not everybody takes a hard lesson well and we see that in verse 12 back in Matthew 15.

 

Read Matthew 15:12

 

The disciples come over to Jesus and are like “Do you know that you offended them?“. I’m sure Jesus knew that He had offended them. I’m sure He knew that they would be offended before He even said the words. But that doesn’t at all mean that the words shouldn’t have been said. The truth needed to be said and the truth needed to be heard, the offended part is the choice of the listener, these guys didn’t like what Jesus had to say, didn’t like that He challenged their traditions, didn’t like that this was spreading to the people of the area, and so once again, these guys were offended by the truth.

 

We live in very easily offended times these days and that has caused a lot of people to back away from holding the line on the truth of the Bible. But at the end of the day, it says what it says, and it’s God’s word. There are parts that definitely need to be understood in the context of history, because culture changes, it changes all the time, but there are core truths throughout all of scripture that don’t change, and the reality is that some of those truths will be taken offensively by people.

 

That doesn’t mean that we set out to offend people, some people do that and even claim to be acting in God’s name, but offensiveness is not a goal, that would be ridiculous. What we need to do is share the truth in love regardless and just know that the truth is going to rub some people the wrong way. It always has and it’s been a pretty regular thing for Jesus. Jesus’ goal wasn’t to offend these guys, that shouldn’t be our goal either, but sometimes the truth does that, simply because it is the truth.

 

But let me read Jesus’ response and the rest of these verses and we’ll close with this out.

 

Read Matthew 15:13-20

 

Jesus goes on to explain Himself further about the things going into and out of our mouths. He hits them with some real simply biology in verse 17, that you eat something, it ends up in your stomach, and then it gets passed out of the body. Grade school level biology. Jesus is creating contrast here. Like you guys being worried about dirty hands, dirty food, and this hand washing ceremony is so much of a lesser issue than the things coming out of the mouth from the roots of a corrupted heart, speaking evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, lies, slander. Jesus is like THESE THINGS ARE THE REAL PROBLEM, not the hand washing ceremony.

 

But this situation is the result of people that have been leading people towards the wrong goals and in the wrong ways and that’s what we need to be careful of. Jesus was bringing correction in this moment to steer people back to following God and not just the ways of other people.

 

All of us need to be careful of that. All of us need to take stock and make sure that the principles that we are basing our life on, are God’s principles, God’s truth, Jesus’ example, these are the things that matter. If people have influenced our way of living away from those things, then the people influence needs to go. Look at verse 14 one more time. Let me read this.

 

 

Jesus regards these people with their traditions and their trying to lead people in these ways as “blind guides”. And Jesus says that if other really spiritually blind people follow these spiritually blind leaders, then both of them are going to fall into a pit. There’s no real way to spin falling into a pit as a good thing. It’s like leading people right over the edge of a cliff. I don’t want anyone here to fall off the cliff or fall into the pit.

 

So, I will encourage you always, go back to the source, get more familiar with the Word, study it, let’s talk about if you have questions. I might not have the answer right off the bat, but we can sit down and get into it together. But this truth needs to be our bottom line, NOT MY WORDS, GOD’s WORDS, I can mess up, I can misspeak, I’m just a person, He’s God. There’s a lot of people out there saying all types of crazy stuff and acting like it’s from God, but a lot of these people are spiritually blind, but their mouth is still working, they can talk up a storm, but they’re talking people right off the cliff and into the pit. And so, we need to be careful and be grounded in the truth. I actually want to go look at one more passage together:

 

 

Look, as we have been talking about this morning. Let’s not be people that just pay God lip service. Let’s not be people that just talk, but don’t walk. Let’s not be people that just sing songs, but don’t worship. Let’s not be people that follow the words of other people and ignore the words of God. Let’s not be a people that are just stuck with our traditions. Even if that’s what our families have believed, even if that’s where other churches and leaders have led us, even if that’s what we may want to do, because it sounds easier and maybe I don’t want to change. It’s time to lay all of that down and walk in the truth.

 

Paul told the church in Colossians to BEWARE of all of these things. I’m going to continue that same warning today. There is so much out there that pretends to be the truth; but isn’t. We need to start and end with scripture alone and we need to be walking it, not just talking it.