Reading Assignment: Matthew 15:1-20
Truth: Defilement comes from the heart.
Key verses: Matthew 15:18-19
There are three parts to this passage:
1. Washing
2. Corban
3. Defilement
Prayer Suggestion:
1. Ask the Lord to create in you a clean heart.
Transcript
Let's pray and we'll begin our time of morning devotions.
Our Father, we approach You with joy and thanksgiving in our hearts. Thank You that Your lovingkindnesses are new every morning. Great is Your faithfulness. You never change, and as Your word tells us, You are the Rock. You are the Rock upon which we stand. Everything else changes in this life, but You remain the same, and so does Your Son. Jesus Christ is indeed the same yesterday, today, and forever. And so, our Lord, we approach You with such peace and security in our hearts, because You are God and You are the same as You have always been. All of Your attributes and Your care for Your people remain unmoved. We stand secure in who You are this morning. We pray that You would continue to teach us and grant to us a growing wisdom by which we might become more and more conformed to Your likeness. Bless our time together now. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
The next passage to be read is Matthew 15:1-20, and the truth I want to highlight here comes near the end of that passage. In fact, the whole passage builds up to this one truth, which is this: Defilement comes from the heart. The key verses are found in 18-20 and there Jesus says these words, “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.” What Jesus shows us is that what defiles a human being is not things that we do externally, but it is the condition of our hearts. Our spiritual uncleanness resides within our hearts. Again, the whole story builds up to this truth. There are three parts to the story. First, there's the incident of washing that comes up in verses 1 and 2. Then Jesus gives the proper perspective of God on the matter of washing in verses 3 to 9. I would call this section Corban—I’ll explain what that is later. And then finally, in verses 10 through 20 Jesus explains what is defilement in the sight of God.
So, first the washing. The situation here is quite interesting. There are some scribes and Pharisees. These are Jewish religious leaders who come from Jerusalem. They travel a long ways to Galilee. The distance between Jerusalem and Galilee is about 70 miles or so. So they travel all this way. And they come to challenge Jesus about something really petty, about washing of hands. They asked the Lord, “Why do the disciples not wash their hands before they eat bread?” Now, this isn't about personal hygiene. This is actually about Jewish ceremonies. The religious leaders were confronting the disciples of not following their ceremonial rules for for cleansing before eating. These were rules not established by God in the Bible, but those that belonged to the tradition of the elders. Well, what was the tradition of the elders? This was a set of rules that the Pharisees taught, not from the Bible, but what they said came orally from the days of Moses. But there was no such a thing. These were rules made up by the Jewish religious leaders in prior generations that built up over time. The word of God is sufficient, because the Bible tells us so. It is enough to make us into men of God, equipped for every good work (2 Tim. 3:17). The Bible is enough to give us the wisdom we need for life and godliness. But the religious leaders believed everyone needed to follow these additional rules to be worthy of God.
Jesus then gave an answer to these challengers, but His answer did not directly address their question. He answered them by turning the table and asking them a rhetorical question. He asked them, “Why do you yourselves transgress the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?” He actually told them that they invalidated the word of God for the sake of their own rules. He then gave an example of Corban. This is the second part of the passage. Now, Corban literally means “given to God.” This referred to an evil idea that enabled the Jews to protect their assets from having to be used to take care of their parents. It was a way to declare that some of your money was specially “given to God.” It was basically a savings account, in that they could actually withdraw that money whenever they wanted. But by declaring the money as Corban, they essentially kept their parents from having any claim on it. This was awful. It was a despicable way to let their parents go impoverished without using the material blessings God had given them to provide for their parents. And all of this flew in the face of God's commandment that children are to honor their father and mother. This commandment of God from the Ten Commandments included taking care of parents when they were aged. Thus Jesus exposed how the scribes and the Pharisees upheld their own tradition and disregarded, even invalidated, the commandment of God.
He told them more. They honored God with their lips, but their heart was actually very far from God, because in the end, they have no interest in keeping the word of God. What this revealed was that God looks upon our hearts. He is most interested in whether we really love and uphold His word in our hearts, because this is what it means to honor God. Honoring God does not consist of just saying, praying, or singing the right things, even beautiful things, to God. He wants to see a heart of obedience to Him. And Jesus exposed this wickedness, this dishonor of God, that resided in the hearts of the religious leaders. They loved upholding their own traditions, but they had no interest in keeping the word of God.
Then Jesus explains the heart of the matter: defilement. This whole conversation started with the washing of hands and eating bread. Therefore, Jesus returns to this first issue and explains where true defilement comes from. Why talk about defilement at this point? Well, the Jews believed that if you didn’t follow certain rules (like the washing of hands before eating) you were defiled (or unclean). And defilement meant that you were unfit to worship God. This idea of defilement (or uncleanness) comes from the Old Testament, where God gave His rules by which the Jews were considered clean and allowed to come to the temple to worship God. But in the case of the Pharisees and the scribes, they came up with their own rules, not the rules of God, for determining their worthiness to worship God. One of those rules was this washing of hands. Well, Jesus now brings up this issue of washing of hands and defilement. And regarding this topic, He says this in verse 11, “It is not what enters into the mouth that defiles a man or makes someone unclean and unfit for worship. But it is what proceeds out of the mouth. This defiles the man.” This was revolutionary to the Jewish audience of Jesus's day. They should have known this from the Old Testament that God looks at the condition of men’s hearts. That is a truth that is seen in both the Old and the New Testament Scriptures. What Jesus specifically points out is that what food you put into your mouth is not what makes you unclean and unfit for worship. It is the condition of your heart. Moreover, the condition of your heart is expressed by that which comes out of your mouth. Jesus also explains what resides in the hearts of men. People speak out of their hearts. Jesus said that it is out of the heart that evil thoughts come out. That's in verse 19, which I read earlier. Then He elaborates on those evil thoughts. He mentions murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, and slanders. These are the things that come out of the mouth from the hearts of men. This is what makes a person unclean in the sight of God. What Jesus showed is that a clean heart is the greatest need of man. It isn't merely that we get rid of some bad habits (though external habits, too, can be very evil). But the source of that evil is the condition of our hearts. Jesus shows us here that what we need is a clean heart.
Now, let me ask us: Can we cleanse or purify our own hearts? The answer is no. In Jeremiah 13:23, there's a rhetorical question to prove this point: “Can the Ethiopian change his skin? Or can the leopard change his spots?” The answer to both of those questions is a firm no. Humans cannot change their own hearts. People cannot reform themselves by themselves. It is only by Christ, through his Holy Spirit, that people can change on the inside. By the way, this is the reason why everyone who believes in Christ stays close to the word of God. We understand our own sinfulness and the wickedness of our own hearts. And we understand that only God can change us deeply at the level of our hearts. There's a prayer from Psalm 51 where king David asks God for a new heart. He, too, recognized just how evil his own heart was. And he prays this in his repentance: “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.” He is asking God to do a work of creation inside of him, because he perceived that there was only wickedness in his own heart. He was asking God for a miracle like creation. In the same way He said, “Let there be light,” and there was light, so he was asking God to create in him a clean heart. When he says, “renew a steadfast spirit within me,” he means a change that will last. You know, sometimes we can become emotionally excited about something, and we think that is real change. But you know, real change is deeper than fleeting emotions, and a long lasting and a growing change is what king David prays for. You know, we can pray for the same thing. Jesus teaches us in the gospels that He has the power to truly free us from our sins (John 8:31-36). He has the power to give us a new heart. A new heart begins with confession of sin, the recognition that I have a diseased heart, that I am unclean on the inside, and thus I humble myself before God and I confess the wickedness of my heart before Him. It begins there, because it is there that we can receive the forgiveness of sins and have our conscience cleansed of all the wicked thoughts and affections in our hearts. And it is as we continually trust in Christ and depend on His word that God renews our minds and thus purifies our hearts.
So, in light of all it is, what can we pray for? Well, I think it's fairly obvious what we can pray for. We can pray that God would give us a clean heart, that He would even create within us a pure heart and a steadfast spirit, the right spirit that lasts. Jesus knows our real and profound problem. We need a clean heart. Keeping religious ceremonies are fine and dandy, but they don't change the heart. Jesus shows us that only God can change the wickedness of the human heart, and we can call out to God for this. God is truly interested in the condition of our hearts, and this is what we ought to seek and pray for.
Let me pray for us and we’ll wrap it up for today.
God, thank You. You are the great Physician who can diagnose our true spiritual condition, and You see us with a perfect vision the true condition and nature of our hearts. God, we need a clean heart. We need to be purified deep within us. We know there is a sinfulness, a deep sinful propensity, lodged in our hearts. You alone can do the operation and remove the disease from our hearts. We ask of You that You would do such a work within us as we continue to listen to Your word, as we continue to seek to have our mind renewed through Your word. Thank You that You are God, full of grace and power. You are able to remove the heart of stone and put in its place a heart of flesh. Thank You, our God, that You do this with each person whom You love, with each person who calls upon Your name. And I pray that that would be the never-ending cry of everyone here. I pray that each one here would call upon Your name and seek the work of Your Holy Spirit in us through Your word. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
All right, that's the lesson for today. Lord bless you all and have a wonderful day in the Lord. Goodbye.