Have you ever heard somebody let somebody else “have it” and feel a sense of glee over it? Ever seen someone let a bully “have it” and felt a sense of awed relief that bordered on giddiness?
I can remember an incident back in my early youth when a bully who had been picking on a friend of mine and me for what seemed like forever finally got his comeuppance…and it delighted me more than if I had gotten the Roy Rogers matching six-shooters for Christmas that I had wanted for like forever.
In the text we are studying today, Jesus has just done to the Pharisees what was done to that bully so long ago in my own life – He has publicly put them to shame. He has done this because they are bullies. They are guilty of misappropriation and misapplication of the Law of God and for weighing down God’s children with burdens they themselves won’t lift a finger to help them carry, then for harshly judging those very same people for their inability to carry that burden.
Jesus has just chastised them in front of crowds of the common people for distorting the Law of God and writing their own laws, then foisting them on the people they were supposed to lead in love.
When Jesus turned away from the Pharisees who had come with a plan to disparage Him in front of the crowds, He speaks directly to the crowd and in full hearing of the Pharisees. And the people cannot help but feel a bit delighted.
The Pharisees were respected, but they were feared, also. A ruling by the Pharisees against a person could get them expelled from the synagogue. Re member the significance of that? The Jews were not allowed to conduct business or to have anything else to do with one who had been expelled from the synagogue.
Have you ever been on the receiving end of a much-deserved, public lesson in humility? I assure you; I have. It is the most uncomfortable feeling in the world! How about you? Perhaps that shows the tendency in our hearts toward being Pharisees ourselves, hm? Something to think about.
At any rate, Jesus turns to the multitude – which we learned before means a very great number of people, probably in the thousands – and talks about the Pharisees, yet indirectly. His intention is not to talk about them, per se, it just happens by proxy.
What He is addressing, really, is the error in their reasoning and their understanding about why God had given the regulations about cleanliness and purity in the first place. To the Pharisees, the externals were the issue. To God – to Jesus – it was the internals that were the issue. The externals were merely the sign of what was going on inside of a person.
This is, of course, where we can so easily get confused, too. The problem with the Pharisees is that they, being the studious students of the Law that they were, should have known better. Just as we, as serious students and disciples of Jesus Christ and His teachings, should know better. Yet, we so often do not.
The externals are so much easier to judge, are they not? Go back with me, if you will, to a passage that we have looked at before. We find it in 1 Samuel 16:7: “But the LORD said to Samuel, ‘Do not look at his appearance or at the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.’"
The context of this is when God sends the prophet Samuel to the house of Jesse in Bethlehem to anoint the one who would be the next king of Israel after Saul was gone. Samuel looks at the very strong and handsome eldest son of Jesse and thinks to himself, “Surely the Lord’s anointed is before Him (verse 6).”
By all outward appearances, Eliab was the perfect choice. Samuel, God’s prophet and the one man in the country who would be most likely to know the mind and heart of God, was far from it at this point.
In our passage today, Jesus brings this message home in a deeper and more personal way. He publicly castigates the Pharisees, then turns to the people around Him and says, in essence, “What you put into your mouth isn’t what matters. This is what really matters – what comes out of your mouth.” He explains this a little later, but He gives a very clear summary of which perspective is right from God’s point of view.
This is a clear and direct contradiction of a great deal of the lifestyle and teaching of the Pharisees. They had to be beside themselves.
I find the disciples’ response to this rather remarkable. They have been with Jesus for quite a while now. They have been witness to never-before-seen miracles by the droves. They have seen Him heal thousands of people, walk on water, cast out demons, still storms, raise the dead, and stand toe-to-toe with the Scribes and Pharisees and make them back down. Yet, here they are, still trapped in their old mind-set of being intimidated by the Pharisees.
How is it that they are still trapped by their old ways of thinking? Probably the same reasons we get trapped in our ways of thinking – neither they nor we have truly relinquished our hold on our views because they make us feel secure. Those familiar views are, after all, the gauge by which we have lived at least somewhat successfully for quite a while – maybe even most of our lives.
Jesus challenges us to look at things from His perspective, to look at things through the lens of heaven, to let go of the fence around the Law of God and grab hold instead of the heart of the Law of God.
That, after all, is the heart of the matter. It is the heart of the matter in the passage we are studying today and the heart of the matter in living the Christian life.
So, back to the disciples’ response to Jesus when He said, "Not what enters into the mouth defiles the man, but what proceeds out of the mouth, this defiles the man (verse 11)."
Verse 12: “Then the disciples came and said to Him, ‘Do You know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this statement?’" My first instinct when I read this is, “SO? So what if they were offended?”
And, “Did He know? Of course He knew. Do you think He did anything that wasn’t intentional and purposeful? Do you think that Jesus didn’t know what was in the hearts and minds of the Pharisees?”
But, as I said, they were falling back on their life-long habit of being exceedingly influenced by what the Pharisees thought and said and did. But, as Jesus says in response, “they are blind guides.” They cannot see the truth, for they are too filled with their own pompousness and with their malice toward people they are supposed to be leading.
Did Jesus foresee that the Pharisees would be offended and “caused to stumble”? No doubt He did. But, the feelings for those who were ruling it over others were really of no consideration to Jesus. Jesus really never liked bullies you see. He still doesn’t. He was and is more concerned with the truth with our feelings, and He is more concerned that those who were seeking real guidance get what they seek.
Why do you think people paid so close attention to what the Pharisees said and did? Because they had established themselves as the experts on what it meant to be Jewish. Since these people in this story here were all Jewish, then it was in their best interests to know how to live and behave. They wanted to have God’s favor, they wanted live lives that glorified God and that demonstrated that they had a right standing with Him.
The Pharisees were the loudest the longest about what was righteous and holy and about what made a person clean or unclean. Anything said loud enough and often enough long enough becomes the new truth to the audience. But they had completely missed the whole point of it all.
Jesus cuts through all of that and makes it clear that these men have set themselves up as experts, but God is not at all convinced. That is what He means when He says, "Every plant which My heavenly Father did not plant shall be rooted up (verse 13).” There will come a day when false doctrine and false teaching will no longer be tolerated, and God will tear it out by the roots.
The beginning of verse 14, I find rather interesting: "Let them alone…” The Greek here is aphiēmi, and carries with it the idea of walking away and leaving someone behind. It is used when speaking of divorce, of abandoning someone in a hurry, it is used when the man the Good Samaritan found had been beaten by robbers and left (aphiēmi) half dead.
This word aphiēmi is used most often with regards to forgiveness, as in Matthew 9:2, “And they brought to Him a paralytic lying on a bed. Seeing their faith, Jesus said to the paralytic, ‘Take courage, son; your sins are forgiven.’" In that story, the once paralytic man got up and literally walked away from his sins.
What do you think Jesus is telling His disciples and those who are listening here? I am convinced that, taken in the full context of our study today and what we studied last time, He is telling them to “Forget what you have heard from the Pharisees these many years. They do not know what they are talking about. They are far from the heart of God and they will lead you away from God instead of to Him. Do not go down the path they are following for they will lead you into sure destruction. Walk away; forget them; ignore them; divorce yourself completely from them.”
This seems quite a strong declaration, I know, but take a look at what follows this in verses 15-20. Jesus is going to speak the clear and unadulterated truth about this matter, completely contradicting the teaching of the Pharisees that had prevailed for the last several hundred years.
Now, it would be easy to say, “That same thing happens today, doesn’t it?” Within the Church today, there are many who want to re-write the Scriptures and attempt to cause them to say some things that they do not say. Jesus was dealing with something quite different. He was dealing with things that had been added to – things that had even replaced – the Scriptures themselves.
There is some of this happening in the world today, but not nearly as much as one might think. Jesus was setting people free from legalism that had nothing to do with the heart of God or the heart of His Word. Jesus very clearly says, “It is not what goes into your mouth that makes you polluted and corrupts you; it is what comes out of your mouth that does so. What goes into your mouth gets flushed down the toilet. What comes out of your mouth flows out of your own heart.”
He then goes on to list the kinds of things that make a person unclean and corrupt in the sight of God, if not always of man. The list here is shorter than the list in the corresponding text of Mark 7:21-22, which you have heard me refer to in the past as “Jesus’ short-list”.
Let’s look at this list here in Matthew for a moment. What do you see? The very first thing on the list is “evil thoughts.” Well, that covers a lot of ground, wouldn’t you say? What would you say falls into this category?
Let’s talk about “evil thoughts” for a moment or two. This is where all sin begins, after all – in our minds. Jesus’ brother James speaks of this in James 1:14, when he says, “But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust.”
Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 10:5, that we have the God-given responsibility and ability to control our thinking and bring it under the control of Jesus Christ. “We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.”
The motivations of our heart are what give rise to our thinking. If there is evil in our hearts, then our musings will be inclined that way also. The troubling part of this is, we can rationalize and justify our thinking and it will appear acceptable to us, if not necessarily appropriate. When we ask, “can I get away with it?” instead of, “Is this something that Jesus Himself would do or be involved with?” then we are being carried away by our own lusts. And it all begins in our minds.
When those things take hold, the other things that Jesus names soon easily follow. When He uses the word “murders”, He is not simply speaking of physically taking the life of another. Remember that Jesus has very clearly taught us that that level of murder begins with hatred and animosity toward someone else.
Go back for a moment to the Sermon on the Mount. Go back to Matthew 5:21-22. What do you remember about this passage from when we studied it? Do you remember that Jesus was talking about the motivations of our heart making us just as guilty as the physical acts itself? When we look at someone else – and this is as hard a truth for me to hear as it is for you – with contempt and disgust, we are assassinating that person’s character, even if it is only in our hearts.
What does that do? That puts us in direct opposition to how God sees that person. And don’t forget, Jesus said, “He who is not with Me is against Me (Matthew 12:30).” 1 John 3:15 says, “Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer; and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.”
Those internal dialogues we have with ourselves about and against other people are the spring-board for doing evil to them. And, lest we forget, anytime we sin against God we also usually sin against another person as well.
Let’s go on. The next two actually go together; “adulteries, fornications”. Look back again at Matthew 5:27-28: "You have heard that it was said, ’YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT ADULTERY’; but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”
Adultery, by simple definition, is the unfaithfulness of any married person to the marriage bed. Fornication, by simple definition, is sexual relations outside of marriage. The interesting thing about the Greek word translated “fornication” here and which is translated as “immorality” or “sexual immorality” in other passages, is porneia, which is where we get our word “pornography” from.
Next, we have “thefts”. Now, we all know that taking something that belongs to someone else without permission is stealing and that it is wrong. Perhaps we don’t really understand why it is such a big deal, why Jesus would put it on His “short-list”.
Can we be guilty of theft without physically taking something that belongs to someone else? Can we commit a sin in our hearts and minds even though we haven’t acted out on it? Of course we can, just as we saw a few minutes ago when we looked at the “already committed adultery with her in his heart.”
God owns everything. He distributes to us as He wills. He knows who can handle what, and He knows who will use what He has given them for His glory and who will not. He also knows what His plans are for us. We do not. When we have a deep desire for what He has given to someone else, two things happen within us.
First, we question God’s goodness and love, doubting that He is giving us what is good and fair and right for us. We are, in essence, saying that God is not good or gracious or merciful or loving or just or all-knowing. He is simply “wrong”; unfair and mean.
The second thing that happens within us is that we question God’s sovereignty and holiness. He should not give to someone else what we feel He should have given to us. Or, that person has no business having what He has given them because they do not deserve it, or I deserve it more, or they are going to just waste it and not do the good with it that I would. You see where this is going.
Having a wrong view of God and His character is unbelief – we either believe what God has said about Himself, what He has revealed to us about Himself in the Scriptures – or we do not. Instead of thankfulness and gratefulness for His love and tender mercies, we become angry at Him and bitter towards others.
There is another area where we can be guilty of “thefts”, and it is one we don’t often consider. That is the area of denying someone what is there due. Romans 13:7 tells us, “Give to all what is their right: taxes to him whose they are, payment to him whose right it is, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor is to be given (BBE).”
Whether it be taxes or a consistently high work ethic or punctuality or respect or honor or whatever it is that a person is due, if we do not give and give it willingly, then we are guilty of thievery.
That takes us to the last two evils that flow from the heart of man: “false witness” and “slanders”. “False witness” seems obvious, doesn’t it? It would be telling lies about someone else. Yet, it is more than that.
We are called to be witnesses to the world for Jesus Christ. We are called to be witnesses of the Truth. When our hearts are flowing with the sinfulness thus described, there comes with that a taint to what we say. There comes with it a certain twisting and bending of the truth.
The tendency comes to minimize evil, to be tolerant and accepting of what God has called evil and unacceptable. The lines become blurry for us as to what the Truth really is and how we are to live it out.
Recently, I was convicted by a statement of David’s in Psalm 101:3; “I will set no wicked thing before my eyes. I have hated the work of those who turn aside; it shall not hold on to me (MKJV).”
Should the things that God hates – the things that God says are evil, the things that God says no child of His should have any part of – should those things be used by me as entertainment? Should I sit enraptured by those things in movies and television programs?
Should I smile at and find pleasure in watching things that grieve God, things that He came and died to provide forgiveness for? No – I no longer can do that with a clear conscience. Doing so is living a false witness, it is calling evil good and good evil, and God has clearly warned against that. In Isaiah 5:20, He says, “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness; Who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!”
“Woe” is that word of warning that means, “agonizing torment is yours!” Does that put me with Christ, or against Him? Does that make me one who gathers, or one who scatters? Does that make me one who lives and speak the truth, or one who lives a lie and bears false witness?
The last of the list is “slanders”. Asking, “Have you ever,” at this point is a stupid question, I imagine, so let me ask this: “How long has it been since you said something – even in you own mind – that was critical, judgmental, reproachful, contemptuous, scornful, disrespectful, rude, impious or irreverent toward God or toward someone else?”
If you think about this for a moment, you will easily see, I am sure, how this ties this list together. To “slander” is to insult, malign, smear, disparage, denigrate, belittle, mock, ridicule. The word used here is the word that is translated “blasphemy” in the New Testament.
To speak contemptuously against someone created in the image of God is to speak contemptuously against God; to speak judgmentally against someone who will one day answer to God and not to us is to be blasphemous in our appraising of our own standing before God; to insult, malign, smear or disparage one for whom Jesus Christ personally died is to insult the One who made that sacrifice and malign the reputation of the One Who came to be the Servant of us all; to smear the name of another is to smear the name of the Savior that they wear as we do, and to disparage the character of one of God’s children is to be disparaging of the one to Whom that child belongs.
How are we doing?
We dare not put ourselves in a place where what we speak in our hearts and what comes out of our mouths is anything but what we are admonished in Ephesians 4:29: “Let not any unwholesome word go out of your mouth, but only what is good for building up in respect to the need at hand, that it may give grace to the ones hearing.”
Jesus concludes His lecture with these words: "These are the things which defile the man; but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile the man (verse 20)." He simply reinforces the gist of what He is saying. If they remember nothing else, may they at least remember that God is interested in what comes out of their hearts and mouths, not what they eat or how they eat it.
Nature hates a vacuum. If we are going to have Jesus cleanse and purify our hearts, what will the short-list be replaced by?
Instead of thinking evil we will follow the admonition of Paul in Philippians 4:8 (CEV): “Finally, my friends, keep your minds on whatever is true, pure, right, holy, friendly, and proper. Don’t ever stop thinking about what is truly worthwhile and worthy of praise.”
Instead of murders – character assassinations whether spoken or not – we speak gracious, affirming things about and to others. Colossians 4:6 says, “Let your speech always be with grace, as though seasoned with salt, so that you will know how you should respond to each person.”
Instead of adulteries and fornications, our lives will be marked by a purity and modesty that some might say borders on prudishness, for Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians 6:18-20, “Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.”
Instead of even wanting to have what another has, trust God, submit to His sovereignty and grace, be deeply grateful for what you have and celebrate with others the good fortune that God has given them. This is what Paul means in 1 Corinthians 12:26 when he says, “And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it.”
And, instead of a witnessing that is false, instead of slandering another – again, even if it is in our own mind – we are to speak “the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ, (Ephesians 4:15).”
As Jesus also said, “The mouth speaks that which overfills the heart (Matthew 12:34).”
Some things are far more important than ritual, for more important than form, for more important than formula. Living as Jesus lived, loving as Jesus loved – that’s what discipleship is about, and that’s what we are here for.
Let’s pray.
