What Makes a Man Clean?
Matthew 15:1-20
Harry Stoliker
June 21, 2009 EBC
What Makes a Man Clean?
Jesus is up north in Galilee in His Galilean Ministry. Soon
he will begin his journey south to Judea, specifically to Jerusalem
to face his crucifixion. The theme of this morning's
sermon is purity or cleanness. This was a very big issue
to the Jews. Ceremonial purity was on the level of an 'idol'
to the religious leaders of the day. It had become more important in itself
than the ultimate reality it pointed to. Jesus had been challenging
this religious idol of the Pharisees in many ways. We saw in Chapters 8-9
how Jesus actually touched a man with leprosy! That would have excluded
you from worship in the OT for a period of time. He also had been in contact
with 'unclean Gentiles'; visited a Gentile territory
with its herd of unclean pigs and its unclean demons.
He had been touched by a woman with a flow of blood and he had touched
a dead body. His social contacts with tax collectors and
sinners also put him in unclean condition.
Now, here in Chap. 15 we are again talking about some kind of violation by Jesus
and his disciples in regard to ritual cleanness. We can see that this
issue is right at the heart of Jesus' ministry. Why did Jesus so
often challenge and push the envelope of what was the
religious standard for ritual purity? It might seem like the Pharisees are complaining
about a trivial issue when they come all the way up from Jerusalem
to confront Jesus that His disciples weren't washing their hands before they ate!
Can't you imagine this? What is up with these religious leaders that
they would hunt Jesus down to complain that his disciples weren't
washing their hands before dinner??? What's going on is that the Pharisees in that
day went into 'hyper-space' on the OT law. They took
an OT requirement that was designed to teach an ultimate spiritual truth
and turned it into a man-made idol that had no resemblance
to God's original idea.
In the OT law, the principle was that in order to participate in the life and
worship of God's holy people, a person must avoid "defilement"
which might arise through eating or drinking unclean food, through
unclean bodily conditions, or through contact with unclean things
or unclean people. Any such defilement must be purified by prescribed
rituals and by the passage of periods of time before
a person could be readmitted to the community and its worship. (France)
What God was saying through these purity laws was that He was holy and men are
sinful. Men have to do some serious thinking about how to approach a Holy
God! This is all pointing toward the only way any man can approach God,
through Jesus Christ the Pure One. Let's follow the text to see what Jesus says
about this.
Let me walk you through a short outline of this passage so you can
see the flow of the drama:
V.1-6 Pharisees Exposed; V.7-9 Isaiah Fulfilled; V.10-14 Pharisees
Offended; V.15-20 Dull Disciples
I. V.1-6 Pharisees Exposed;
A. I don't think the Pharisees were expecting or ready for Jesus' answer
to their question in V.3 "He answered them, "And why do you break the commandment
of God for the sake of your tradition? They wanted Jesus to respect
the 'tradition of the elders', not further challenge it. There
was nothing in the OT about disciples washing their hands before eating.
"The OT said the priests were required to wash their
hands and feet prior to performing their duties. The Pharisees made this a matter
of ceremonial purity and, in their desire to meticulously avoid any
possibility of becoming unclean, applied it to all Israelites."
ESVSB.
B. The 'tradition of the elders' was the oral interpretation
of the Law of Moses by the rabbis. It was called the Oral Torah. At the end of
the 2nd century all this oral tradition was written down
into a book called the Mishnah. It was a sort of case by case description
of how the rabbis settled disputes about the application of the Law of Moses.
C. Jesus turns the table on them and gets to a far more serious issue
of why they are so torqued about the breaking of their man made traditions
while at the same time not being upset at all about how they themselves
broke the very commandment of God . Matthew 15:3 "He answered
them, "And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?"
Isn't that so much like us! We get so bent out of shape
when our kids or someone in the church breaks a rule that we made,
but we are not near as concerned when we break a law God himself made.
D. Somehow, the Pharisaic intention to protect against violations
of God's law became the very system that grievously broke God's law.
What's the lesson here? There's no way to keep God's
law without having the power and presence of the Holy Spirit in your
life. So, if you try to raise kids or live the Christian life without
the Holy Spirit, you are going to do the same sort of thing they did.
You are going to require conformity to laws you come up with,
while at the same time breaking laws that the Sovereign God has made
and spelled out in His Word.
E. Without the work and ministry of the Holy Spirit in our lives,
we will inevitably be legalists. Hypocritical ones at that. Always
chasing people around yelling at them for minor things,
like not washing their hands before dinner, while we break the clear, huge commands
of God without being conscious stricken.
F. What command did they break? V.4 They didn't honor
their parents, the 5th commandment. God wants us to honor
our parents by speaking highly of them rather than cursing them and
taking care of them financially in their old age when needed. This
is a good message to hear on Father's Day, isn't it dads!? These Pharisees
had invented a way to get around taking care of their parents in their old age.
How did they do it? They made a vow that all their finances were
dedicated or designated to go to the temple treasury, so their parents
were out of luck, so to speak. Anything dedicated in this way was
out of reach for any other people who might have had a claim
on it. The kicker is that certain rabbinic discussions showed that the
owner still somehow had control over his resources. So, the human vow
trumped the command of God.
G. This amounted to religious pretense. Pretending to be holy and
covering up evil, selfish desires with shallow religiosity.
Other religiously shallow people would look and say, "Wow, look
how dedicated to God old Jacob is! That's impressive! He's so
dedicated to the temple that he can't even help his parents!"
H. Now, what should be happening in our hearts as we hear these things?
We should be humbled and crying out to God: "Search me, O God,
to see if there is in my any of this religious pretense! Am I a Pharisee
in any way in my life? This is not beyond me. Am I fooling myself
in any way, have I deceived myself into thinking I can con you Father with
my selfish desires, and break your laws without it damaging me? Save me
from self-deception, Father!"
V. 6 "Thus you nullify the Word of God for the sake of your tradition."
II. V.7-9 Isaiah Fulfilled
A. Isaiah rebuked the people of his day in a way that aptly applied
to the Pharisees of Jesus day. Matthew 15:7-9 "You hypocrites! Well
did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said: 8 " 'This people honors
me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; 9
in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of
men.' "
B. For it to be true worship, your heart has to be close to God,
submitted to God, in love with God. Otherwise it is just lip-service religion.
People get very skilled at lip-service religion. People get very
skilled at the externals while hiding what's going on inside
their hearts from everyone else. True worship flows out of what's
inside your heart. It is there that we must honor God,
not just with our lips.
C. The Pharisees were disturbed because the hands of
Jesus' disciples were unclean; Jesus is disturbed because the hearts
and worship of the Pharisees was unclean. Clean worship comes from a clean
heart. As you sit here in worship today, is your heart clean?
That means are you focused on the Cross of Jesus, the work of Jesus,
the righteousness of Jesus, the glory of Jesus, the
forgiveness and mercy of Jesus, the really important things, rather
than judging people for not keeping certain rules and requirements
that you have set up for them!
III. V.10-14 Pharisees Offended
A. Next, Jesus calls the crowd to himself and tells them a parable
about how a man is made clean. The disciples realize –
probably by the facial expressions and body language of the Pharisees
that they were offended, insulted and indignant. The Greek word can
be translated "scandalized!" They realized that Jesus was directly contradicting
the 'teaching of the elders' in the minds of the crowd.
B. Authority was at issue. Jesus was exerting His own Divine Authority
as the Ultimate, True Interpreterof Torah. The disciples try to
inform Jesus of something they didn't think he was aware
of. Reminds me of a cute but powerful quip I like to say to people: "Has it ever
occurred to you that nothing ever occurs to God!" Jesus was surely aware
of their personal offense at His action.
C. He tells his disciples to leave the Pharisees, because they were
plants His Father hadn't planted, they would be pulled up by the
roots, blind guides of blind men. This is an incredibly
strong statement! Remember now, they were the popularly recognized authorities
on what righteousness was all about! In effect he was saying: "Give
up on them!" It is very much like what we read in Romans 1:24
"Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring
of their bodies among themselves." Hagner: "It would
be hard to find a more vivid image of lostness, hopelessness, and futility."
IV. V.15-20 Dull Disciples
A. This last section comes about because Peter asks Jesus to interpret the parable
about what goes into a man and what comes out of a man. Jesus says: "You guys
still don't get it!?" Then he tells them how a man is defiled and unclean
in God's estimation in V.19-20 "For out of the heart come evil thoughts,
murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. 20
These are what defile a person. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile
anyone."
B. The evil is already inside every man from birth. We are born sinners
and we go downhill from there! The heart is already full of all sorts
of evil and corruption. The real question is how does a man get his
heart cleaned, not how will eating with dirty hands make it unclean.
The Pharisees had it all backwards. They thought a man could become unclean;
actually the question is how can a man become clean! This is where
the gospel of Jesus Christ comes in.
C. "What can wash my sin away; nothing but the blood of Jesus!" God
is the one who washes hearts from all these vile, dirty, unclean things that are
naturally in there. Ezekiel 36:25-27 "I will sprinkle clean
water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and
from all your idols I will cleanse you. 26 And I will give
you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove
the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.
27 And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to
walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules."
APPLICATION: Don't be a hypocrite! Don't say you know and love
Jesus without drawing near to Him with your heart and soul.
Without yielding control of everything about you to Him. A hypocrite
wants people to think that he is something he really isn't. God sees our
hearts. A hypocrite is more concerned with trying
to make others conform to his phony standard of righteousness than
he is in cutting all phoniness out of his own heart.
All true believers must flee to Christ the gift of righteousness that
comes because Jesus gave his life for us, to take away
all our uncleanness before God.
Let's pray,
H.