Defiled Hearts: The EVIL of Religion. Matthew 15:1-20

In the first twenty verses of chapter fifteen the focus is really on defiled hearts. That is part of the topic of religion. Jesus is really contrasting the religion of the Pharisees which represents human attempts to please God—to somehow impress God with our own morality, our own righteousness, our own obedience, our own actions, and that in many ways we can do things God wants us to do but if we do the right thing for the wrong reasons then the result has no spiritual value. It is wood, hay and straw; it is nothing but human good, and it has no eternal value. It is only when we as believers are walking in the light of the grace of God in dependence upon God the Holy Spirit, walking in the truth of God's Word, energized by the Holy Spirit that we are able to produce that which has eternal value. The greatest danger that is presented to true spirituality throughout human history is the danger of human effort, human works, which grows out of arrogance. Our arrogance just seeps into every area of our thinking, and that is because, as the Scripture says, we have defiled hearts, a major heart defect that we are born with, and that is known in theology as Adam's original sin. We are born corrupt. We sin because we are sinners. That is such an important concept to think through and it is one of those little statements that people like to use to get people thinking: Do we sin because we are sinners or are we sinners because we sin? A lot of people think that we are sinners because we sin, but that is not what the Scripture teaches. The Bible teaches that we sin because we are sinners. We are born sinners; we are born corrupt; we are born spiritually dead; we are born separated from God. Therefore, all that we can produce—even that which has relative value, that which is moral and ethical—comes from a corrupt root, "our vile heart", as the Scripture says.

This gets at the very root of what Jesus is emphasizing in this particular section. We see the circumstances and situation set up in the first verse. The Pharisees who once again are using the disciples as a sort of bully stick to beat Jesus with in the next verse confront Jesus. And then in verse three He answers their challenge. He does so in an extremely sophisticated way as He turns the tables on them in the way in which they used the Law of Moses. As a result of that the disciples will point out that He really angered them, really offended them.

He begins the address the multitude in verse ten. In doing so He makes the proverbial statement that fits within the concept of a parable in verse 11 which reads, “{It is} not what enters into the mouth {that} defiles the man, but what proceeds out of the mouth, this defiles the man”. Peter is going to come back in verse fifteen and say: “Explain the parable to us.” Often we think about a parable as a longer story but the idea of a parable can also include in the meaning of the Greek word not just a parable but also a proverbial statement, a universal principle. Peter needs to have this explained. In between there is a question from the disciples. They want to inform Jesus that He has really offended the Pharisees. Then at the end Jesus explains the significance of the statement in verse eleven. So this is really a section that has its twenty verses but it has to be dealt with as a whole, otherwise if we break it down too much we lose the sense of what is going on here.

Just to cover the last three verses of chapter fourteen very briefly this is another one of those general statements in Matthew—we find them in the other Gospels as well—where a summary is given of what is happening with Jesus' ministry. We saw that the disciples were crossing the Sea of Galilee at night and the storm came up. They were spending all of their energy just trying to make headway and were not getting anywhere, and in the early hours of the morning Jesus came walking to them on the water. Peter walked out to Jesus but was distracted by the waves, overwhelmed and began to sink. He cried out to the Lord to save him, Jesus rapidly reaches out and grabs him and together they walk back to the boat. That is where we left it last time, with their recognition that He is the Son of God. Then Matthew inserts this summary:

Matthew 14:34 ^NASB "When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret. [35] And when the men of that place recognized Him, they sent {word} into all that surrounding district and brought to Him all who were sick …" This was the location of the next event. When people learned that He was there the Word spread like wildfire. People began to come to Him and to bring those who were sick. "… [36] and they implored Him that they might just touch the fringe of His cloak; and as many as touched {it} were cured." That is the faith that they demonstrated.

We are within the section where Jesus is training the twelve, and He is training them to be true disciples of Him. We see that this foreshadows some of the miracles that take place within the book of Acts. But we see the faith that is demonstrated here and that is what Jesus wants the disciples to see—to understand the faith that is present and that the spiritual life is going to be based on a walk by faith and not by sight.

Matthew 15:1 ^NASB "Then some Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said …" I would guess that Jesus is still at Genneserat. Now there is a delegation of scribes and Pharisees who come up from Jerusalem. This is significant. There were two different groups. The Pharisees had their origin after the Jews returned to Judea from the Babylonian captivity. Their thinking was that if the people had a clear knowledge of the Law then they wouldn't make the mistakes that they had before. Hosea 4:6 indicted the people because God said: "My people perish for a lack of knowledge". So that first generation wanted to make sure that the people understood the truth. But after that generation of the Sopherim passed away a second generation came up and said it was not just enough for us to teach the Law.

You always enter into error in the history of Christianity when you start thinking that there is something else other than the Bible that will help us solve problems. We have seen over the last three hundred years since the rise of the Enlightenment that the world teaches that you can find absolute, eternal truth apart from the Word of God. So we have the rise of modern science although originally the founders of modern science were all creationists. They were Bible believers. There has this same kind of problem throughout history in the interpretation of almost anything, but we are talking about the Bible and this is what happened coming out of the Babylonian captivity. The Pharisees, the more conservative of the three religious groups, were trying to add something that wasn't part of the original text of Scripture. It was the idea that of we add something it will prevent sin. It is a rejection of the sufficiency of Scripture and a rejection of the total authority of Scripture because now what they are going to do is add human thinking and human ideas to the revelation of God and thus are diluting and destroying the revelation of God.

So the idea of that second generation of Sopherim was that to protect the Law by building a fence around it, and that they could take statements of Scripture and add to them in order to prevent people from violating the original mandate in the Scripture. The principle was that a Sopher could come up with new principles of application, and one Sopher could disagree with another Sopher but they couldn't disagree with the original 613 commandments. This process of building a fence around the Law started around 400 BC and ended about 30 BC. It was the basis of rabbinical interpretation that characterized the thinking of the Pharisees and it became known as the tradition of the fathers. That is what is used here in the text. So they are using a principle outside of Scripture to interpret Scripture.

There was a second group of rabbis that came along after that, about the time of Christ, called the Tannaim, a term that meant teachers, who built on the work of the Sopherim and said that while there was a fence around the Law there were a lot of gaps in the fence and that they needed to build a second fence around the Law. They added an additional set of these principles and traditions that were even more complex. This was one of the things that characterized Judaism at the time of Christ. For example, the Scriptures taught that you weren't to work on the Sabbath. If we read in the Mishna we see that they had added to that and in order to avoid work on the Sabbath you couldn't dance, couldn't walk more than 3000 meters, couldn't light anything (a candle), etc. But the Bible only says you shouldn't work; it doesn't define that.

The other group that is mentioned is the scribes who were responsible for copying the Law. Most scribes would have the entire Torah memorized and would know an exact location in the text. They were the experts in the minutia of the Law and it was their responsibility to teach the people the Law, and whenever there was a dispute it was to the scribes that you would go in order to understand or learn the exact interpretation of Torah. There were scribes who worked with the Sadducees, so they weren't all conservative.

These scribes and Pharisees came down to the Galilee area from Jerusalem. This is significant because they were sent out by the authorities in Jerusalem and are going to interrogate Jesus. The question they ask: Matthew 15:2 ^NASB “Why do Your disciples break the tradition of the elders? …" Notice they are not asking: "Why do your disciples transgress the Word of God?" That would be the correct question, because the authority is the Word of God; it is not the authority of the elders. But in religion the authority is always in something else. This happens within Christianity a lot. We have legalistic fundamentalists who have their traditions, their ideas of how Scripture ought to be applied, and they can relate to almost any area of life. They say, "This is the way this has to be done." Then there are other denominations within Christianity like Roman Catholics and Greek Orthodox and in those two traditions the ultimate authority isn't the Bible alone, it is the Bible plus tradition. What happens in those traditions is the same thing that happened in the traditions of the Pharisees: you end up studying what the church fathers wrote, what the popes have said, and you quit studying the Bible.

"… For they do not wash their hands when they eat bread.” This was typical of the Pharisees to try to use the actions of the disciples to attack Jesus. They have been antagonistic to Jesus for some time. For example, in Matthew 9:34 at the beginning of their opposition, they began to think that Jesus cast out demons by the ruler of demons. That is before Matthew chapter twelve. In Matthew 12:14 we are told that after Jesus healed the man with the withered hand they went out and plotted against Him so that they could destroy Him. Then a few verses later in Matthew 12:24 we realize what they came up with: "This man casts out demons only by Beelzebul the ruler of the demons.” In Matthew 9:11 when Jesus was having a banquet with Matthew in his home the Pharisees said to His disciples: "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?" They start accusing Jesus of not following the Law; He is not holy enough! Then in Matthew 12:2 they attack Jesus through the behavior of the disciples: "Look, Your disciples do what is not lawful to do on a Sabbath.” They were eating grain on the Sabbath.

Here in chapter fifteen not washing the hands isn't about hygiene, just as the dietary laws were not about health. The Laws of Moses were about teaching the principles of being spiritually clean versus being unclean. So ritual cleanness and ritual uncleanness were designed to teach these particular spiritual principles. Under the teaching of Pharisaical theology they took the washing of hands to an extreme level. In fact, there is a whole section in the Mishna that goes through all the details and all the many different ways for washing. They were focusing on the externals of the Law and not the internals of the Law. It is interesting that in the 613 commandments in the Mosaic Law there is only one regulation related to hand washing! When the priest or the high priest (not the people) went into the tabernacle or the temple he used to go and wash his hands and wash his feet. That is the only hand washing listed in the Mosaic Law.

Under religion people are trying to work their way to God. They are trying to impress God with their own righteousness, their own spiritual cleanliness. But what the Scripture teaches is completely different. Isaiah 64:6 ^NASB "For all of us have become like one who is unclean, And all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment …" Notice that Isaiah includes himself in the group. We are all unclean; not ritually but because we are born with the corruption of sin. The word there for righteousness in the Hebrew is tsedeqa, a critical word in modern Judaism. Modern Judaism is really a development out of Pharisaism because the Pharisees managed to survive the destruction of the temple and were the ones who because if their systems of conservatism approaching the Scripture came together and reorganized so that Judaism could survive after the destruction of the temple. Part of Pharisaical theology which becomes a critical element in rabbinical theology is the performance of good/charitable deeds, serving people.

"… And all of us wither like a leaf, And our iniquities, like the wind, take us away." Away from what? Away from God! We are all separated from God because of sin. But God has solved that problem. Titus 3:5 ^NASB "He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit." The physical cleansing, the washing of the hands, is a picture of something in the spiritual realm which is an act that only God can perform, which is the cleansing of the soul of the unbeliever from the stain of sin. We are washed clean from sin, metaphorically. We have a change that takes place in relation to our soul, our heart, as we will see in this passage.

Jesus confronts these Pharisees. Matthew 15:3 ^NASB "And He answered and said to them, 'Why do you yourselves transgress the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?'" He is so sophisticated here. He is just going to skewer them on what they have done in relation to a prime commandment of Scripture. There are really two sections of the Ten Commandments. The first section is honoring God; the second has to do with honoring people—loving God; loving one another. What Jesus does is go to the commandment: Matthew 15:4 “For God said, ‘HONOR YOUR FATHER AND MOTHER,’ and, ‘HE WHO SPEAKS EVIL OF FATHER OR MOTHER IS TO BE PUT TO DEATH.’" He takes these two commandments, one from Exodus 20 and the other from Exodus 31, and talks to them about how they are abusing that.

The Ten Commandments, regardless of their religious significance, have had an impact on the legal thinking in the development of jurisprudence in the history of western civilization because of the impact of Judaism and Christianity. It is really the Old Testament (the Jewish, Hebrew Scriptures) that defines freedom and liberty. That is the foundation for the concept of liberty and freedom in western civilization.

The first four commandments talk about God. But in the last six commandments, the first one is: Exodus 20:12 ^NASB “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be prolonged in the land which the LORD your God gives you." Paul said this is the first commandment with a promise. The promise is that you will live a long time. It's not that there is something mystical or magic in obeying your parents, but if we get over into Deuteronomy chapter twenty-one we find that if a son or daughter is rebellious, if they dishonor their parents, then it is a capital offense and they are to be stoned in the public square. That is why if you obey your parents you will live a long life. Then there are "You shall not murder, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal, you shall not be a false witness against your neighbor, and you shall not covet your neighbor's house." What the Pharisees were doing when Jesus confronted them with this was that they had twisted the Law to avoid having to honor their parents.

Matthew 15:5 ^NAB “But you say, ‘Whoever says to {his} father or mother, “Whatever I have that would help you has been given {to God,}” In other words, their parents are destitute and need some help financially. But you say, well rather than giving my money to you (because I'm cheap) I'm going to dedicate everything I have to the temple. They could do that, and they didn't have to give it up at that point, they could still use it all they wanted to but nobody else could use it. Then when they died it would all go to the temple. And what Jesus says is [6] "And {by this} you invalidated the word of God for the sake of your tradition."

This is what happens. Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism takes the tradition of the fathers and it becomes their authority over the Word of God. Legalists take their customs, their ideas, and make them as authoritative as the Word of God.

The indictment from Jesus: Matthew 15:7 ^NASB “You hypocrites, rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you: [8] ‘THIS PEOPLE HONORS ME WITH THEIR LIPS, BUT THEIR HEART IS FAR AWAY FROM ME." It is a heart defect. They are willingly sacrificing at that time in Isaiah, going through all of the motions, but they are doing a right thing in the wrong way. The wrong way is that their heart isn't in it. They are not trusting in God; they are just going through the externals.

Deuteronomy 6:5 ^NASB “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might." What does it mean in the Bible when it talks about heart. The primary use is metaphorical. It refers to that which is at the center or the core of something, and then that is transferred over to the individual. It's what is in your core, what is in your soul; that is what is important. So it is a synonym for the soul, and we are to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, all of our soul.

Jeremiah 17:9 says that our basic problem is: ^NASB “The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick; Who can understand it?" At the very core of our being we are antagonistic to God and we deceive ourselves into thinking we are doing well and we are actually violating the authority of God.

Then Jesus says: Matthew 15:10 ^NASB  "After Jesus called the crowd to Him, He said to them, 'Hear and understand'." Jesus says that the solution here is to listen and understand. What He is talking about is paying attention to the Word of God. That needs to be their authority. What is interesting in Scripture is that when the Word says to hear, biblically hearing means to respond and do what you are told to do. Hearing isn't just listening or having auditory nerves stimulated, it is understanding, comprehending and performing the command. It is not that the Pharisees didn't in some sense know or hear what was being commanded; they weren't obeying it. So when God says you are not listening, He doesn't mean you are not listening or that you are ignorant; He means you are not obeying.

Jesus here is addressing the crowds and He tells them that they are to listen to this particular proverb: Matthew 15:11 ^NASB “{It is} not what enters into the mouth {that} defiles the man, but what proceeds out of the mouth, this defiles the man.” In other words, it is not the external observance of the Law, it is that heart orientation, the orientation of soul to God that is what matters.

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