Sermon 7-2-17 Pastor Ray Lorthioir Trinity Lutheran Church W. Hempstead, NY Based on Matthew, Chapter 15 Blind Guides Versus Great Faith Today, Jesus is going to teach us the difference between religion that is from God and religion that is from men from the sinful human heart. Matthew 15:1-9, 1 Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked, 2 Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don't wash their hands before they eat! 3 Jesus replied, And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? 4 For God said, Honor your father and mother and Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death. 5 But you say that if a man says to his father or mother, Whatever help you might otherwise have received from me is a gift devoted to God, 6 he is not to honor his father with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition. 7 You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you: 8 These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. 9 They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men. Judaism says that Israel received two laws from Yahweh at Mount Sinai. One is the law written in the Torah. The other is the oral law not written down but passed from generation to generation by faithful memorization. As the centuries went on much was added to the oral law. Finally, it was so enlarged that there was fear it would be forgotten. Therefore, beginning about 200A.D. it was written down in what is known as the Mishnah. Beginning about 500A.D. another written work, the Gemara, was added to produce what is known as the Talmud. The Gemara is an elucidation of the Mishnah and includes additional writings that expound broadly on the Hebrew Bible. Unfortunately for present Rabbinic Israel, the old oral law in the form of the Talmud is their chief source of religious life and not the Torah and the prophets. Jesus took on the issue of the oral law in this incident. According to the oral law, eating with unwashed hands made a person unrighteous that is sinful and unclean in the eyes of Yahweh. To my knowledge the written law says no such thing. So, the Pharisees criticized rabbi Jesus demanding to know why He did not discipline His disciples according to the oral law and make them wash their hands before eating. Instead of answering, Jesus demanded of them why they let the oral law override clear sections of the written law in this case the command to honor father and mother. We tend to think of God s commandment to honor father and mother as a command only for childhood. But this command is far greater. It lasts for as long as mother and father are alive. 1
And there comes a time in life when age makes it difficult for people to support themselves. According to this commandment, therefore, it is the duty of children to support their parents in old age. Now, in our society government has partially taken over the role of dutiful children through social security and medicare. Employers also have taken over the role by offering retirement benefits as part of their salary packages. Finally, individuals themselves make investments during their working years to cover their needs in old age. Consequently under our present social structure children don t have to think as much about supporting their parents in old age. But God s commandment to honor father and mother still stands. And in the time of Jesus it was absolutely necessary. Ageing parents had no social security except their children. Now, in the oral law, some kind of provision had been devised by which people could take an oath and dedicate their estate to Yahweh. The rabbis then determined that the oath superseded the command to honor mother and father in their old age. Jesus the giver of the Torah, almighty God the Son challenged this ruling and revealed it for what it was a clever means by which people could avoid the full intention of God s written command. And to prove His point, Jesus used a criticism that He Himself had leveled against Israel through the prophet Isaiah six hundred years earlier. It s a criticism that reverberates to this day because of original sin. Indeed, it comes with being a sinner. We honor Yahweh with our lips while our hearts and minds are busily calculating how to skate along the edge of the law doing just enough to be within God s law while still being able to do as we please. We do just enough to honor God while mostly honoring ourselves and our own ways in life. This is how the sinful nature absolutely corrupts us all. It entirely destroys our relationship with our Creator God, and the Law is powerless to remake the sinful nature. All the Law can do is condemn us because of our sinful nature. On the other hand, Messiah came to crucify and put to death the sinful nature with all of its works and ways. In its place Messiah came to give us a new nature His own divine, glorious, perfect nature. Thus, we can be baptized into Christ. This new righteous nature will not be fully revealed on this earth until we are resurrected upon the return of Jesus. Likewise, the old nature will not be fully destroyed until we die or Jesus returns whichever comes first. But in the meantime we are justified by the righteousness of Christ. Yahweh can call us righteous because we have asked for and received forgiveness of sin in Jesus, and we have His divine righteousness as a free gift, to the praise of His glory. All this must be believed through Yahweh s gift of faith. And so in this life the believer in Jesus is in a constant struggle between the old nature and the new. Thus, St. Paul exhorts us in Ephesians 4:1, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. By the precious grace of God and faith in that grace, true Christians honor God not only with their mouths but with their way of life because a righteousness dwells within them who is Messiah Jesus. Therefore, let us have the true religion of God and not our own religions. Matthew 15:10-11, 10 Jesus called the crowd to him and said, Listen and understand. 11 What goes into a man's mouth does not make him unclean, but 2
what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him unclean. This is a parable, and again we ll let Jesus tell us what it means as He will do in a few verses. Matthew 15:12-14, 12 Then the disciples came to him and asked, Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this? 13 He replied, Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots. 14 Leave them; they are blind guides. If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit. The Pharisees were offended at Jesus because they refused all the proofs that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, especially when He used His office of the prophet equal to Moses, fulfilling the prophecy of Deuteronomy 18. Therefore, concerning the Pharisees, Jesus used another agriculture parable comparing plants to teachers. He promised that every teacher that Yahweh has not established every teacher of human religion will be uprooted like a plant. On the other hand, every teacher Yahweh has established a teacher of His religion will be fruitful and produce. And then, Jesus used another parable this one an absurd oxymoron to urge His disciples to leave the teaching of the Pharisees. What is a blind guide? There is no such thing. The blind can t be guides. They need a guide. Because the Pharisees could only take offense at Jesus and refused to recognize who He is, they made themselves blind. And, being blind to the Messiah standing right in front of them they could guide no one to Messiah. They could lead no one to the salvation in Messiah. That s why God would root them up. Now we return to the stomach parable. Matthew 15:15-20, 15 Peter said, Explain the parable to us. 16 Are you still so dull? Jesus asked them. 17 Don't you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? 18 But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man unclean. 19 For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. 20 These are what make a man unclean ; but eating with unwashed hands does not make him unclean. The focal point of the parable is the human mouth. Food going in does not make a person unclean. It s what is spoken what comes out that makes us unclean. This is because what is spoken proceeds from the sinful nature. Mark s gospel has a commentary about this parable that Matthew lacks. Mark 7:19, (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean. ) Yahweh imposed food laws upon Israel at Mount Sinai. By doing so, Yahweh set them apart from the other nations. The Israelites identity as Yahweh s people was partly established by the foods they were to call unclean before God and were not to eat. But now that Messiah Jesus had come, He would forge a new identity for Israel as Messiah s people. No longer would their identity be established by laws about foods. Instead, Israel would be established by the new nature the new righteousness in Messiah come from God. Consequently, Israel s new identity would be exhibited by righteous words that come out of the mouth from a clean heart and the deeds proceeding from a clean heart, and not by the eating of clean foods. Therefore, with this parable, Jesus defined a great spiritual problem. The human heart and will are connected to the mouth. We speak what we desire. But what we desire is evil. Our words and actions reveal the hidden rebellion and evil desires of 3
the sinful nature. Uncleanness before God comes from the heart, and not from anything outside of us anything from our environment. Indeed, most of the people in the environment around us can be evil, we can even be raised in an evil environment, but we can t blame either of these sources for our personal evil. It comes solely from within us, from our own hearts. Therefore, Messiah came that the sinful nature might be crucified with Him unto death and that we might rise with Him with a new nature. And although Jesus crucifixion took place outside of us on the hill called Golgatha, and likewise His resurrection took place at the garden tomb, the net effect of His work is on the inside of us. As Paul puts it in 2 Corinthians 5:17-18, 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ. And speaking of Paul, Paul was a Pharisee, and as an unbelieving Pharisee he could lead no one to Messiah because he himself was blind to Messiah. But the Lord had mercy on Paul and revealed Jesus to him. Thus, Paul ended his life as a seeing guide for many even for us and for those who will come after us. Matthew 15:21-28, 21 Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. 22 A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is suffering terribly from demonpossession. 23 Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us. 24 He answered, I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel. 25 The woman came and knelt before him. Lord, help me! she said. 26 He replied, It is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to their dogs. 27 Yes, Lord, she said, but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table. 28 Then Jesus answered, Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted. And her daughter was healed from that very hour. Just last week we saw Jesus return for the second time to the gentile territory on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee called Gennesaret. There they begged Jesus to heal their sick. When they did so, He recognized their faith and rewarded them. So we know Jesus was not adverse to gentiles. And several weeks ago we saw Jesus say in Matthew 11:21, Woe to you, Korazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! If the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But now Jesus had gone up to Tyre and Sidon. And here was a Canaanite woman repentantly approaching Jesus with a great need. But, Jesus refused her request because she was a gentile. Thus, Jesus brought the historic contempt of Jews for gentiles into play. When Yahweh had allowed the Jews to return home from the Babylonian Captivity about 500B.C., Nehemiah and Ezra the priest worked hard to instill a Jewish identity within God s people so to prevent God s wrath from falling on Jerusalem ever again. Israelite men were not to marry foreign women. They were not to do business on the Sabbath. They were not to have anything to do with foreign gods and foreign cultures. They were to remain true to their Jewish identity or be cast out of Israel. Nehemiah and Ezra succeeded so spectacularly that in Jesus time Jews could live anywhere in the world and still maintain their identity as Yahweh s people. They could live in the midst of gentiles and not fall prey to their gods or their customs. 4
The people who lived near Jews knew these things, and were aware of the contempt for gentiles culturally instilled in the Jewish persona. Now, the title the Canaanite woman called Jesus was the same title that two Israelite blind men had used in Matthew chapter 9, Son of David. This tells us two things. First, she knew Jewish teaching on Messiah. It looks like she was a believing gentile. Second, she used the title in the sense of repentance before Messiah. In response to the title you would think Jesus would have granted her request. But no. And, even when this woman knelt before Jesus calling Him Lord, He insulted her with a parable comparing her to a dog something that Jews regularly called gentiles. It s almost like Jesus was toying with her. However, she was undeterred. Nimble of mind she used another parable about dogs right back at Jesus. When the Canaanite woman compared herself to a dog eating the scraps from a Jewish table, it s clear she knew the prophecies from Old Testament Scripture concerning Messiah s relationship with the gentiles. Apparently, she was so confident in God s Word that she stuck with her repentance and request in the face of apparent Jewish contempt. This woman s interaction with Jesus is a lesson for all gentiles of every time. In Romans 11 Paul used a parable to demonstrate gentile status before God. He said that we are like branches from a wild olive tree grafted into a domestic olive tree. The root of the domestic tree is the salvation promises given by Yahweh to the believing patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The faith of the patriarchs will always be the holy root of God s people. And it is into this root that believing gentiles can be unnaturally grafted through the Messiah. Judging by her doggy parable, it s clear that the Canaanite woman believed this and believed that Jesus is Messiah. Thus, He blessed her and granted her request. And because she is in the gospel accounts she will be remembered for all time as a woman of faith in Jesus. Matthew 15:29-31, 29 Jesus left there and went along the Sea of Galilee. Then he went up on a mountainside and sat down. 30 Great crowds came to him, bringing the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute and many others, and laid them at his feet; and he healed them. 31 The people were amazed when they saw the mute speaking, the crippled made well, the lame walking and the blind seeing. And they praised the God of Israel. The mute, the crippled and the blind as we ve seen before, this is an important list. We read in Isaiah 35:4-6, 4 say to those with fearful hearts, Be strong, do not fear; your God will come, he will come with vengeance; with divine retribution he will come to save you. 5 Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. 6 Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy. Healing the mute, crippled and blind is the prophesied proper work of Messiah the work by which anyone can identify the rightful Messiah. And verse 30 quietly tells us that Jesus healed all other conditions as well. Thus, the people were rightly amazed. Notice that the people praised the God of Israel for these healings, which was proper. However, remember last week that the disciples worshipped Jesus after He walked on water and again calmed the wind and waves. This crowd hadn t gotten to that point yet. 5
Matthew 15:32-39, 32 Jesus called his disciples to him and said, I have compassion for these people; they have already been with me three days and have nothing to eat. I do not want to send them away hungry, or they may collapse on the way. 33 His disciples answered, Where could we get enough bread in this remote place to feed such a crowd? 34 How many loaves do you have? Jesus asked. Seven, they replied, and a few small fish. 35 He told the crowd to sit down on the ground. 36 Then he took the seven loaves and the fish, and when he had given thanks, he broke them and gave them to the disciples, and they in turn to the people. 37 They all ate and were satisfied. Afterward the disciples picked up seven basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over. 38 The number of those who ate was four thousand, besides women and children. 39 After Jesus had sent the crowd away, he got into the boat and went to the vicinity of Magadan. Chapter 15 ends with a repeat of the feeding miracle we saw last week in chapter 14. Again, this miracle replicated the miracle that the prophet Elisha performed in 2Kings 4:42-44. By performing this miracle Jesus again met the criteria for Messiah. And so the gospel of Matthew is now approaching a great double climax in the earthly ministry of Jesus. In chapter 16 Jesus will ask His disciples, who do you say I am? And in chapter 17 Jesus will reveal His divinity to three of the Apostles on the Mount of the Transfiguration. Stay tuned. Amen. All Bible verses are from the NIV. 6