Deceitful Hearts.  Matthew 15:10-20

 

What we are looking at now is the basic teaching that we learn from Jesus here: that we are born with deceitful hearts but that there is a divine solution, which begins with regeneration. The basic issue that we see in the first nine verses of this chapter is an issue related to authority. The scribes and Pharisees come up from Jerusalem to challenge Jesus and they are going to use His disciples as leverage against Him. The disciples have not been observed to have washed their hands according to the Pharisaical ritual laws of cleansing and are assumed to have been in violation of God's Law. It is an example of how man often substitutes his own stands, ideas and concepts of righteousness and religion for what God says. And so the focal point of the first nine versus is the conflict between the revelation of God and the tradition of the elders or the traditions of man. So we have that conflict with religion—religion always seeks to gain God's blessing on the basis of the works of righteousness that man does—and the relationship that Jesus is talking about with God that is based upon God's grace. God is the one who provides us with the righteousness necessary for salvation. This goes back to the Old Testament. The foundational example comes from Abraham in Genesis 15:6 where God said that Abraham believed Him and it was imputed to him as righteousness.   

 

What has happened in the episode previous to this is that Jesus had fed the 5000. He is training the disciples to understand that He is the one who provides nourishment and feeding, and that they will eventually be going out to serve Him and to proclaim the gospel throughout the world. They needed to understand that the sufficiency isn't in them; the sufficiency is in Christ. He is the one who would provide the feeding. But in a more practical level as they are passing out the food, what happens? They are not washing their hands. Word of this would have gotten back to the Pharisees and they bring this as a charge against Jesus.

 

Now the Pharisees are coming up from Jerusalem, the ultimate seat of their authority, to challenge Jesus with that disobedience, and they think they have Him over a barrel. They challenge Jesus because the disciples haven't washed their hands. What the Pharisees had done was to construct a system of additional laws beyond the 613 commandments of the Mosaic Law to protect the Law itself from being broken, but these additional laws were elevated above the authority of Scripture. As we have previously seen, the only washing mentioned in the Torah was the washing of the priests' hand and feet when they would go in to serve in the tabernacle and later in the temple. But the Pharisees had added all of these extensive mandates on top of that in order to make sure that the people are cleansed. All of these additional laws had become quite burdensome.        

 

In Jesus' response to them over their challenge that the disciples weren't washing their hands was to ask why they are transgressing the commandment of God? Notice both here and in Mark chapter seven the emphasis is on the commandment of God versus their tradition. Jesus makes the issue clear: You are transgressing what God said to do and you are putting in its place what man has said to do. In Matthew 15:7 He calls the hypocrites because they are putting on the mask of being heavily devoted to God but in reality what they are doing is turning against God and doing their own thing.

 

The problem here is first of all a problem of authority, and second it is a misunderstanding of righteousness. In Isaiah 64:6 Isaiah says all of our righteousnesses are as filthy rags. Four times in that passage Isaiah emphasizes that he is part of the group and it includes everyone: no one does that which is right. Ecclesiastes 7:20 makes the observation that there is not a just man on the earth who does good and does not sin. So there is the emphasis on the universality of sin. Then in the New Testament Paul writes to Titus and says, "Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saves us by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit". 

 

So as Jesus confronts them He calls them hypocrites. This is not a concept that is going to endear Him to them any more than what He has already taught and said, and He quotes from Isaiah 29:13 NASB "Because this people draw near with their words And honor Me with their lip service, But they remove their hearts far from Me É" This introduces a major element of teaching in this section and that is the problem with the heart. Matthew 15:9, ÔBUT IN VAIN DO THEY WORSHIP ME, TEACHING AS DOCTRINES THE PRECEPTS OF MEN.ÕÓ Their worship is empty. A lot of people today think that if you come with a sincere heart you can worship God, and they don't understand the principles in both the Old and New Testaments related to cleansing, and the importance of dealing with sin first before you can have a relationship with God. Teaching the doctrines of men is the authority issue. Isaiah 29:13 says they gave lip service to God. Their lips said the right thing, they went to the festivals and celebrated the feast days, they recited the prayers, they sang the psalms and brought the sacrifices, but their heart wasn't in it. They were not devoted to the Lord. Deuteronomy says that we are to worship the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength; but they are simply going through the motions. Their feet went to the right place and their hands gave the right gifts, their lips said the right things, but their heart was wrong. Jeremiah says that the heart is deceitful and wicked above all things. The heart has to be fixed, and the only way to fix the heart is through regeneration (Titus 3:5, 6).

 

What we saw in this last time from Jeremiah chapter two where God was indicting Israel because they have turned away from Him as the source of life and turned towards cisterns that they had hewn out themselves. He is the one who offers the water that springs to eternal life but they turn to their own ability to construct their own cisterns that will hold water and it falls apart in the long run. We learn from this that God cares about what we do and why we do it. So many people get confused about this. We want to do the right thing but we want to do it our way. But God cares that a right thing should be done in a right way. It needs to be done for the right reason and it needs to be done the right way, the way that God says it should be done. So God is looking for those who will serve Him with a whole heart. This was the indictment that Samuel brought against the first God-anointed king of Israel, Saul. Samuel said that Saul was rejected by God because God wanted a king who would serve Him with his whole heart, a king who would be after His own heart. Saul was replaced by David and several times David was said to be a man after God's own heart. He was devoted to God. Even though David failed many times, as we all do, the basic sum total of David's life, God's bottom line evaluation of David's life was that he was "a man after my own heart".

 

That gives us great encouragement because like David we all sin. We are all so aware that we are all fallen, flawed and corrupted because of sin; yet, if our focus is on the Lord and we recover from sin by the use of 1 John 1:9 and we walk by the Spirit, then it demonstrates that our heart is focused on the Lord. Many times in Scripture the emphasis is on this heart attitude that we desire to serve the Lord.

 

We have looked at Jeremiah 2:13 NASB "For My people have committed two evils: They have forsaken Me, The fountain of living waters, To hew for themselves cisterns, Broken cisterns That can hold no water." They turned away from God; they rejected Him. He is identified as the fountain of living waters. Their second problem was, they hewed themselves cisterns. This is a metaphorical way to talk about the fact that they have constructed other religious systems, other ways, to find life, happiness and meaning in life. So the problem that we run into again and again is that people define their relationship with God in terms of what they do—I go to church, I read my Bible every day, I give money to the church; that's how I know that I am a believer. Some define their relationship with God in terms of what they know. They have memorized a lot of Scripture; they have taken a lot of notes in Bible class and have fifteen 3-inch binders on all of their notes that they have taken through the years in Bible class. Other people define their relationship with God in terms of how much they give, how generous they are, and how much time they spend volunteering to help in the church. But these are not the criteria that God uses to measure our relationship with Him.

 

The issue for the heart, as we see from the Law, is that we are to love the Lord with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, and with all our strength. This is repeated in the Gospels. God is to occupy our thinking overwhelmingly. We are to be saturated with the Word. This is part of what it means to walk by means of the Holy Spirit.

 

The Pharisees have rejected that and are focused on what others have said. They are impressed with their own learning and with some of their leaders who have contributed greatly to the understanding of the Law, and they have reached that point where instead of studying the Torah itself they are studying what their rabbis have said about it. That has been elevated to the same level as the authority of Scripture.                     

 

Matthew 15:10 NASB "After Jesus called the crowd to Him, He said to them, 'Hear and understand É" A little time has gone by since the confrontation with the Pharisees. He says to the crowd, "Listen and pay attention". The word there to understand is the Greek word SUNIEMI, which certainly has the idea of understanding but it is a little more than that. It has the idea of "think about". The idea is to fully comprehend, analyze, think about, and let what Jesus has said transform the way we think. Think about it analytically and personally in terms of the way it transforms the way we think. Jesus says to listen and think about what it is that I am saying.  

 

Matthew 15:11 NASB Ò{It is} not what enters into the mouth {that} defiles the man, but what proceeds out of the mouth, this defiles the man.Ó This is stated as a universal principle, and when we look down to verse 15, Peter says, ÒExplain the parable to us.Ó He calls this a parable. The Greek word PARABOLE is a little bit broader term than our word parable and it can also include concepts related to universal sayings, proverbs and things of that nature. What He is saying is that it is not what goes into the man (what they eat) that defiles a man. What we learn from other passages of Scripture is that eating, and eating that which was forbidden in terms of the dietary law in the Torah, was designed to teach something about spiritual truth. The foods that were prohibited had something to do with that which represented death. That which was related to death, which was the penalty for sin, rendered a person unclean according to the Law. So it was teaching something. It wasn't that there was something inherently wrong with the food. It was to teach that sin permeates everything in creation. Jesus is making the point that it is not really what you eat that defiles, it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles a man. The word for defile, KOINOO, is a cognate to KOINONIA, the verb for fellowship. KOINOO has to do with that which is common or profane, and it came to refer to that which would defile somebody. It wasn't holy; it wasn't set apart to God. KOINONIA has to do with that which we have in common and comes to mean fellowship. When we are defiled it breaks fellowship.     

 

Matthew 15:12 NASB "Then the disciples came and said to Him, 'Do You know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this statement?'Ó It sounds like they have subscribed to political correctness. You need to be concerned about this, they are the rich and powerful and might make life miserable for us, even kills us. The word "offended" is the Greek word SKANDALIZO, a word that means to cause someone to stumble or to offend them.  

 

Matthew 15:13 NASB "But He answered and said, 'Every plant which My heavenly Father did not plant shall be uprooted. [14] ' 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'.Ó To understand what Jesus is saying here we have to look at the broader context. In Matthew chapter thirteen Jesus gave seven different parables, beginning with the parable of the soils. In the parable of the soils Jesus is represented as the one sowing the seed, and then there are four different responses to the gospel. The first one is where the seed is snatched away by the birds and it doesn't take root. That represents those who do not respond to the gospel at all. Then there are three different responses and those three different kinds of soil are all positive responses to the gospel. The rocky soil believes but it doesn't last long. He is still saved, the seed is germinated and sprouts, and it shows that there is new life there. So the parable of the soils focuses on the response to the gospel. It is all the same seed and it produces those four responses.

 

The second parable is the interesting one, the parable of the tares and the wheat. The tares were a type of plant called darnel which looked like wheat. The enemy came and sowed a different seed in the field which grew up at the same time with the wheat, looked like wheat, and if you tried to root it out of the ground while the plants were growing the wheat would be pulled out also and it would destroy the crop. Jesus said you wait until the end of the age when there would be a judgment and God would sort out the difference between the tares and the wheat. That is what He is talking about here—'Every plant which My heavenly Father did not plant shall be uprooted'. They are the tares. They are going to get their judgment eventually; God will take care of that. Just relax, they are just leaders of the blind, and if the blind lead the blind they both end up in the ditch. So don't be concerned about their reaction, their hostility.        

 

Matthew 15:15 NASB "Peter said to Him, ÒExplain the parable to us.Ó Help us to understand what it is that you are saying. Mark doesn't mention Peter by name; he just says that the disciples asked this. It is believed that Mark's Gospel was written from Peter's account, so there is no mention of Peter. 

 

Matthew 15:16 NASB "Jesus said, 'Are you still lacking in understanding also?'" In English that is ambiguous because we use the same word for both second person singular and second person plural. This is a second person plural in the Greek. "Are you all still without understanding?" He uses the noun form of the verb He used in verse 10, meaning to hear and understand. So they handed comprehended the meaning of What Jesus had said.  

 

Matthew 15:17 NASB ÒDo you not understand that everything that goes into the mouth passes into the stomach, and is eliminated?" The Greek is a little more graphic than that: whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and goes out into the latrine. In other words, it is not important. It just goes through your system.

 

Matthew 15:18 NASB ÒBut the things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and those defile the man." What defiles us comes from that corruption that is within us. [19] ÒFor out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders. [20] These are the things which defile the man; but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile the man.Ó

 

The concept of defile comes back to that which corrupts and destroys the relationship with God. But as these different sins are listed and identified they go back to the Ten Commandments. When we looked at the beginning of this chapter the first time we talked about the fact that God is the authority, and the first four commandments of the ten focus on God. Then we get into the list of various sins that are listed, and we have the same things here. Evil thoughts are listed here as just as much as what defiles a person as actions. Mental attitude sins often precede overt sins and are more destructive. Murder is then mentioned, the sixth commandment. Then there is the mention of adultery and fornication, the seventh commandment. Then theft is the eighth commandment. False witness and slanders is the ninth commandment. These things come out of the heart, out of man's nature because man is corrupt. So we see that even in the New Testament there is the recognition that the Old Testament emphasizes that basic corruption of man and that man's problem is a heart problem.

 

The word "heart" is used only a few times literally in the Old Testament (Exodus 28:30; 2 Samuel 18:14; 2 Kings 9:24) but primarily it is used to refer to something that is at the center of something. For example, Exodus 15:8 talks about the heart of the sea, i.e. the center of the sea. Deuteronomy 4:11 speaks of the heart of heaven. That would be a way of referring to the throne of God, the center of heaven. So the idea and metaphor of heart is not related to the cardiological function of a heart, it is related to something at the center of something, and it is used to refer to human beings.

 

Human beings are composed of three parts: body, soul and human spirit. When Adam was created he had body, soul and spirit. Hebrews 4:12 says that the Word of God divides the soul from the spirit, so there is a clear distinction even though in other passages the terms soul and spirit may be used synonymously. The soul is described as the heart of man. This is the command center, the control center for every one of us, and if we are regenerate, are saved, we trust in Christ; then we also have the spirit. We are born without it; we are spiritually dead, but we become spiritually alive at the instant of salvation. We are now able to have a relationship with God.

 

The sin nature is our enemy. We often talk about the fact that the Christian has three enemies: the world, the flesh, and the devil. The word and the devil are external. Satan is the chief angel that fell and led one third of the other angels in rebellion against God, and 1 Peter 5 says that he is going about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. He is an external threat, an external enemy. How should we treat enemies? We want to destroy the enemy; we want to remove them so that they have nothing to do with us. The way Satan primarily influences us is through the various religious and philosophical systems in human history. In all of these different systems we become influenced because they appeal to our sin nature. They are on the outside. There are various philosophical systems that seek to construct reality as if it exists apart from God. These appeal to people's sin nature. The worst enemy that we face is our sin nature; it is inside of us, and it constantly influences us and is a source of corruption. The first thing to remember about the sin nature is that it corrupts our being. It is probably seated in the flesh (it is called that in the Bible many times) but it influences our soul and our thinking (1 Corinthians 15:42—the body is sown in corruption but is raised in incorruption; v. 53, "this corruptible", i.e. the body). Romans 6:6 refers to the sin nature as the body of sin. Paul says, Knowing this, that our old man (everything we were before we were saved, not the sin nature) was crucified with Him, that the body of sin (something distinct from the old man) might be done away with—talking about our sin nature—that we should no longer be slaves of sin. We are supposed to do away with that. It is a constant battle throughout the Christian life to not yield to the sin nature.

 

In Romans 7:5, 18, 25 Paul gives more accounting of the use of the sin nature in relation to the flesh. "For while we were in the flesh, the sinful passions, which were {aroused} by the Law, were at work in the members of our body to bear fruit for death." So the flesh is related to the sin nature. "For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good {is} not." That is the corruption of the sin nature. "Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin."

 

Romans 8:8 NASB "and those who are in the flesh cannot please God". The marching orders for the Christian life: Galatians 5:16 NASB "But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. [17] For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh É" So this identifies the source of the conflict after salvation. We are constantly in this battle.

 

1.          The first thing we note is that we are in this body of corruption and we are always going to fight this battle, even though as believers we are regenerate. We have been freed from the tyranny of the sin nature; we haven't been freed from the presence of the sin nature.

2.          It is called the sin nature because it represents the essential corruption due to sin. The word "nature" simply refers to the orientation, the corruption of our entire being. It is our capacity to rebel against God. The sin nature itself influences our soul. It is the source of temptation but it is not the source of sin.

3.          Since we are born spiritually dead we have no orientation to God or the things of God (1 Corinthians 2:14). The unbeliever can't understand the things of God because he is spiritually dead.

4.          The sin nature is the source of temptation but not the source of sin. Adam sinned but he didn't have a sin nature. In Adam's sin we see that there is an external source of temptation (Eve) but he didn't have a sin nature. His volition acted upon that temptation, so volition is the source of our sin. Adam sinned in the garden by choosing to disobey God. Therefore all sin, whether it is mental, verbal or overt, has its source in our volition.  James 1:14, 15 NASB " But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death." When we choose to yield to that desire it gives birth to sin. It is not a sin to be tempted. We are tempted all kinds of ways everyday, but saying no means we don't sin.

5.          The core of the sin nature is an orientation to self versus orientation to God. We have to recognize that since only God can satisfy the longings of the human soul when we are sinning we are engaged in a substitution for God. In Ecclesiastes 3:11 NASB "É He has also set eternity in their heart." Every human being has a desire for God. But the corrupt, sinful heart is set against God, and the spiritually dead person seeks to fill that vacuum with the things of life. Our basic orientation is arrogance. We start with self-absorption because that is the orientation of our sin nature, and this leads to self-indulgence. The more we focus on Me and what I need, the more we are going to indulge it. The more we indulge it the more we justify it in self-justification, and the more we are engaged in self-justification the more we are engaged in deceitfulness, and what we are doing then is elevating ourselves to be the ultimate authority in our lives, and that is self-deification. Arrogance then, is the basic orientation of the human heart, and because there is a God-shaped vacuum there, there is a desire to fill it with anything that will give our life meaning, understanding and significance. Whenever we look to anything other than God for meaning and happiness and significance it is idolatry.

6.          Ephesians 4:22 NASB "that, in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit" We are driven by these lusts. At the core of our sin nature we have these lust patterns that drive us in different directions. What is at the root of our lust patterns? It is pride, arrogance. What is the solution to lust problems? It is a relationship with God. The solution is always toward God, and that is the problem that the Pharisees had. They had rejected the authority of God, so they were not humble. They had been elevating themselves and they were involved in self-promotion. They had created an idol out of their tradition as opposed to being submissive to God. We learn that these lust patterns are inherently deceitful. They deceive us into thinking they really give us pleasure and that they really provide meaning in life. Whatever lust it is, it convinces us that that is the path to happiness and stability.

7.          Lust becomes the foundation for all sin. Titus 3:3 NASB "For we also once were foolish ourselves, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another." The idea is that the sins that are listed here are the result of serving our lust patterns and our pleasures.

8.          Lust becomes the link between the sin nature inside each of us and the external world system. 1 John 2:16 NASB "For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world."   

 

Solution: We have to know the Word of God. We have to know what has been provided for us by the Lord Jesus Christ through His death, burial and resurrection. The sin is paid for. And we have to implement that in our daily spiritual life. Romans 6:3 NASB "Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death?" The baptism by means of the Holy Spirit breaks the power of the sin nature, so now you can say no to temptation. We have been freed from sin, so we need to make decisions that are consistent with what we know. Romans 6:11, 12 NASB "Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts". Romans 13:14 NASB "But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh in regard to {its} lusts." Figure out where your areas of weakness are in terms of your sin nature and don't go there.  

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