Sermons
Look At Me
Sun, Dec 04, 2016
Teacher: Tom Blackford Series: Sunday Sermons - 2016 Scripture: Matthew 15
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Look at me, I’m Religious
Matthew 15
Intro:
Good morning.
I would like to share with you some humorous announcements that have appeared in church bulletins.
1. For those of you who have children and don't know it, we have a nursery downstairs.
2. During the absence of our pastor, we enjoyed the rare privilege of hearing a good sermon when J.F. Stubbs supplied our pulpit.
3. Remember in prayer the many who are sick of our church and community.
4. The ladies of the church have cast off clothes of every kind and they may be seen in the church basement on Friday afternoon.
5. Potluck supper today; prayer and medication to follow.
6. Weight Watchers will meet Tuesday at 7pm at the First Presbyterian Church. Please use the large double door at the side entrance.
7. Don't let worry kill you off - let the church help.
We are going to look at the parable of the ‘Ceremonial hypocrisy’ this morning which is found in Matthew 15. The parable I want to talk about is found in verses 10-11 but there is more to this situation. Before we go ahead and study this parable we need to do what every good Bible student should do, we need to read the whole text surrounding these parable so that we can understand what Jesus meant. Please turn in your Bibles to Matthew 15.
Has anybody ever said something to you that greatly offended you? Perhaps like that advertisement when the man and woman are in a shop and she’s trying on some new clothes and she asks her husband, “Do you think these jeans make me look fat?” and he says, “No dear, it’s your fat that makes you look fat.”
Sometimes it can happen just due to native language differences. I remember of an instance when a foreign student said to a friend of mine in front of his wife, “I think your wife eats too much,” suggesting that she was over weight. Now that would have offended me but let me tell you it offended my friend and his wife even more. Any sensible person knows that you never talk to a woman about being overweight, because to most people that’s a sensitive issue.
I. Let me ask you about this now, what about your religion? Has anyone ever said something to you that really offended your religious beliefs? That’s what happened here in Matthew 15; Jesus said something that truly offended the Jewish leaders. Matthew 15:12 - says, “Then came his disciples, and said unto him, Knowest thou that the Pharisees were offended, after they heard this saying?” [KJV]
A. Why were they offended? What did Jesus say to upset the Pharisees?
B. This argument between Jesus and the Pharisees and the experts in the Law, with which this chapter deals, is of tremendous importance.
C. Because what it does, is show the Jewish religion at its core. Jesus is exposing the very heart of the Jewish religion in this chapter. Let’s look.
D. Matthew 15:1-2 - “Then came to Jesus scribes and Pharisees, which were of Jerusalem, saying, Why do thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? for they wash not their hands when they eat bread."
II. What was this tradition and what was the spirit behind it? For the Jews at that time, the Law was made up of the Ten Commandments and the Pentateuch . It is true that the Pentateuch, the first five Books of the Old Testament, contains a certain number of detailed regulations and instructions.
A. However, in the matter of moral questions, what is laid down is a series of great moral principles, which a man must interpret and apply for himself, and for a while the Jews were content with that. Around the 4th or 5th century before Christ came along, there was a group of people, who became classed as legal experts, now we know them as the Scribes.
B. These guys weren’t content with great moral principles, Oh no. They had what can only be described as a passion for definition and detail. In other words, they wanted these great moral principles amplified, expanded, and broken down. They did it to the extent that they issued thousands upon thousands of little rules and regulations, which attempted to oversee every possible action and every possible situation in life.
C. Some Christians do that today, don’t they? We have a song, a prayer, a Bible reading, two more songs, the Lord’s Supper, the offering, a sermon, the invitation and then a final song and prayer to finish. If someone suggests, ‘Hey, lets just sing three songs today and do without a full thirty minute sermon’, some Christians would be offended.
D. If you go to France and partake of the Lord’s Supper with your brothers and sisters over there, you will find that they use real wine as an emblem for the blood of Jesus. I know many Christians here who wouldn’t partake of that because that would offend them.
E. What about Christians and alcohol? The Bible says we’re not to get drunk, so that means I can have a couple of beers and I’m not breaking God’s law… Does it? If you get upset with someone because they are a Christian and they are having a drink, then what you’re doing is amplifying your own little rules. The point I’m trying to make is that we try to find loopholes in God’s word to justify what we’re doing and we do it all the time.
III. There are two aspects of these scribal rules and regulations, which come out of the argument in Mathew 15 and one of them we have already read. Matthew 15:2 – “Why do thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? for they wash not their hands when they eat bread.”
A. The Scribes and the Pharisees accused Jesus’ disciples of eating with unclean hands. Certainly, I believe that everyone should wash their hands before having a meal for hygiene reasons, but that’s not what we’re dealing with here. They were accusing Jesus’ disciples of having ceremonially unclean hands.
B. Hands that weren’t fit for the service and worship of God. That’s what they meant when they said, “they wash not their hands.” To you and me that doesn’t seem like a big deal, but to a Jew, this was a big deal. This was the heart of their religious thinking; this was an offence and a breach of God’s Law in the Jewish mind.
IV. Let me take you on a trip through one of the many Jewish regulations. You see before every meal, after the meal if it included salt and I am told between every course of the meal, the hands had to be washed. We’re not talking about just rinsing your hands with water here; we’re talking about washing your hands in a certain way.
A. To begin with you’re hands had to be free from any sand or dirt, or gravel or any kind of substance. The water for washing had to be kept in a covered stone jar so that the water itself was clean in the ceremonial sense, and to make sure that it wasn’t used for anything else and that nothing had fallen into it or had been mixed in it.
B. To start with your hands were held with your fingertips pointing upwards and then the water was poured over them. The water must run at least down to you’re wrist. While you’re hands were still wet, each hand had to be cleaned with the other hand.
C. This meant that at this stage your hands were wet with water but that water was now itself unclean because it touched unclean hands. This is serious to a Jew but that’s just the beginning. Next you’re hands had to be held with you’re fingertips pointing downwards and the water had to be poured over them in such a way that it began at the wrists and ran off the fingertips. After that had been done, you’re hands were now classed as being clean. Remember you had to do that before the meal, possibly after and between every course of every meal.
D. If you failed to do this, in Jewish eyes, you wouldn’t be guilty of bad manners. You wouldn’t be guilty of being dirty in the hygienic sense but you were seen as unclean in the sight of God. If you were to eat bread with unclean hands, and pardon the expression, that was no better than excrement.
V. If the Romans put a Jewish rabbi in jail, he would use the water given to him for hand washing purposes rather than for drinking. There have been reports of some of these Jews almost dying of thirst.
A. We only dealt a little with hand washing here. You see before we can understand the parable we first need to understand why the Pharisees and the experts of the Law were so offended. Can you imagine all the other rules they had? Remember they had expanded the moral guidelines of God to include rules for every detail of human life.
B. On the Sabbath Day for example they had what they called the 39 Fathers. The 39 Melachot. 39 things they were prohibited from doing. They then broke these rules down into thousands of other little rules and that became the Jewish religion.
C. To the Pharisees and the Sadducees that was their religion. It was ritual, ceremonial, rules and regulations which they considered to be the essence of their service to God. You will see some of this in other religions today. This man-created religion they were following is why Jesus said to them in Matthew 23:23 – “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.” Jesus says that their religion consisted of a mass of taboos and rules and regulations.
VI. Folks, I know this seems more like a study than a sermon so far but if we really want to understand why Jesus spoke so many parables against the Jewish leaders, we first need to get inside the Jewish leaders minds. In Matthew 15:10-11 we find Jesus sharing the parable with the crowd. He says, “Hear, and understand: Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man.”
A. You see a thing might in the ordinary sense be completely clean and yet in the legal sense be unclean. This idea comes from Leviticus 11-15 and Numbers 19. For example, certain animals were classed as unclean. A woman after giving birth to a child was classed as unclean. A dead body was classed as unclean. Anybody who had became unclean and touched something else, made whatever they touched unclean.
B. A Gentile was unclean, food touched by a Gentile was unclean, and anything touched by a Gentile was unclean. In fact if a strict Jew came back from the market place, he would go home and wash in clean water to take away the contamination that he might have contacted when he was out.
C. We know that the Scribes made, from the Oral Law, the Mishnah as it was called. Let me give you an example of one of those rules. A hollow container made of pottery could contract uncleanness inside but not on the outside. In other words it doesn’t matter who or what touched the outside, but it does become a problem when the inside is involved. If it became unclean, it must be broken and no unbroken piece must remain in your house, which was big enough to hold enough oil to anoint the little toe.
D. I want to thank you for your patience so far this morning, but I really wanted to wade through this sample of the mad house of the Scribal Law with you, simply to show you what Jesus was dealing with.
VII. To the Scribes and the Pharisees, these rules and regulations were the essence of their religion. To observe them was to please God and to break them was to sin, this was their idea of goodness and service to God. We asked at the start of this sermon, why were the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law so offended?
A. They were offended because the very ground of their religion was being cut from underneath them. Think about it, if Jesus was right, which we know He is always right, then that meant that their whole theory of religion was wrong. They identified religion and pleasing God with the observing of rules and regulations. In our example of cleanliness it had to do with what a man ate, with how he washed his hands before he ate it.
B. That’s why Jesus said in Matthew 15:3-9 – “Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition? For God commanded, saying, Honour thy father and mother: and, He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death. But ye say, Whosoever shall say to his father or his mother, It is a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me; And honour not his father or his mother, he shall be free. Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition. Ye hypocrites, well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying, This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me. But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.”
C. Tradition says, “A man says to his father or mother, 'Whatever help you might otherwise have received from me is now a gift devoted to God,' he is not to 'honor his father or mother ' with it.” Jesus says, “'Honor your father and mother' ”
D. Let’s put it this way; Tradition says, “Be a good person and you’ll get into heaven.” The Bible says, “Believe, confess, repent, be baptized and remain faithful and you’ll get into heaven.”
E. How about; Tradition says, “You have to come to our bible class.” The Bible says, “God’s people will come together to study because they want too.” Do we see folks? Do we see the difference?
VIII. It’s with that in mind that He says in Matthew 15:13-14 – “Every plant, which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up. Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.”
A. Jesus says that the Pharisees were nothing but blind guides who had no idea of the ways of God, and that if people followed them, then all they could expect was to stray off the road and fall into a ditch.
B. Loved ones make no mistake, this hurt the Jews and it still hurts people today. That’s because people are still thinking outwardly, instead of wholeheartedly. Jesus identified religion with the state of a person’s heart and said quite bluntly that these Pharisees and Scribal regulations had nothing to do with religion.
C. Jesus says in Matthew 15:17-20 when He explains the parable to Peter and the others. – “Do not ye yet understand, that whatsoever entereth in at the mouth goeth into the belly, and is cast out into the draught? But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies: These are the things which defile a man: but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man.”
IX. God is at the heart of all religion, the question is, is God in the hearts of those who profess to follow Him? Let me give you a couple of things to think about before we close.
A. If religion consists of external regulations and observances, it has two things. First; It is far too easy.
B. It is much easier to do without certain foods and to wash our hands in a certain way than it is to love and forgive the unlovely and unlovable. It’s much easier to do that, than it is to help the needy at the cost of one’s own time and money and comfort and pleasure.
C. Let me tell you about a man from the city who bought a farm and his new neighbor who owned the farm next to his came to visit him, the man said to this neighbor, "Can you tell me where the property line runs between our farms?" The farmer looked him over and asked, "Are you talking owning or mowing?"
D. We judge people by the external things they do or don’t do. By the protocols, religious practices, or rites. We judge that way because we have still to learn the lesson that Jesus was trying to teach the Jewish leaders. We judge people by their church attendance, how much they give in the offering, how often they come to our Bible study.
E. Jesus teaches us that all those things are the externals in Christianity. These things are important and they are the means towards religion and being a Christian, but they are not religion and Christianity.
F. James 1:26 – “If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man's religion is vain.” Folks, we all need occasional reminders that our religion consists of personal relationships and in our attitude towards God and our fellowman.
G. Secondly; A religion that consists of external regulations and observances is very much misleading. Many people may live what they think is a faultless life based on externals, but they can have bitterness and the most evil thoughts within their hearts. That applies to those who would be shepherds as well. It applied to the teachers of the law in Jesus time.
H. Matthew 7:22-23 – “Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.”
I. Jesus clearly teaches us that all the outward observances in the world can not atone for a heart where pride, bitterness and lust dominate. You see the only thing that matters is the human heart. This is the religion of Jesus; this is our religion at its core. Matthew 5:8 - “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.”
J. We really need to learn this lesson because too many people are putting themselves on guilt trips because they can’t do this or can’t do that. Too many Christian are beating themselves up because they can’t get to every service. Too many Christians are dragging themselves down because they can’t physically help in certain areas.
X. Folks, what matters to God is not so much HOW we act, but WHY we act. Its not so much what we actually DO, but what is in our heart of hearts to do. We read in the minor prophets time and again of the people following the letter of the law but doing it for their own benefit and not for the love of their creator. God knows, He is not fooled yet we are reminded in John 3:16 - "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." We are saved because of Christ, not because of the external things we do.
A. The story goes that in a certain tribe chicken stealing became a problem. The chief said that if someone was caught stealing chickens “The offender would receive 10 lashes.” When the stealing continued, he raised it to 20 lashes. But still the chickens randomly disappeared. In anger the Chief raised the sentence to 100 lashes. The thief was finally caught, but the Chief faced a terrible dilemma. The thief was his own mother! When the day of penalty came, the whole tribe gathered.
B. Would the Chief's love override his justice? The crowd gasped when he ordered his mother to be tied to the whipping post. The Chief removed his shirt, revealing his powerful stature, and took the whip in hand. But he did not raise it to strike the first blow, he handed it to a strong, young warrior standing at his side. Slowly the Chief walked over to his mother and wrapped his massive arms around her in an engulfing embrace. Then he ordered the brave to give him the 100 lashes. That's what Jesus did for you and me. In love He became our substitute and died in our place to pay the penalty for all our sins. He overcame our inability to save ourselves by paying the price for our sins. His death bridged the gulf between God and man and made it possible for us to be reconciled to God and to be restored to fellowship with Him through faith in Christ and in His atoning death for us.
C. Luke 6:43-47 – "No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. Each tree is recognized by its own fruit. People do not pick figs from thorn bushes, or grapes from briers. The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks. "Why do you call me, 'Lord, Lord,' and do not do what I say? I will show you what he is like who comes to me and hears my words and puts them into practice. He is like a man which built an house, and digged deep, and laid the foundation on a rock: and when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently upon that house, and could not shake it: for it was founded upon a rock. But he that heareth, and doeth not, is like a man that without a foundation built an house upon the earth; against which the stream did beat vehemently, and immediately it fell; and the ruin of that house was great.”
D. Jesus says that no man can call himself a good man because he observes external rules and regulations. That’s because such teaching condemns every one of us, we are only good when our hearts are pure. When you think about it, that very fact alone should bring pride to an end.
CONCLUSION:
No Christian should ever stand in judgment of their fellow brother or sister and say, “I go to all the meetings and you don’t, look how religious I am.” “I’ve never missed a Sunday morning in over ten years, look how religious I am.”
When love reigns in our hearts, pride disappears. This is because our religion, at its core, is not about external rules and regulations. It is not about rules and rites, and every one of us can only say what that publican said in Luke 18:13 - “God be merciful to me a sinner.”
If you’re not a Christian today, let me give you a bit of advice. Quit trying to be good enough for Jesus before you come to Him, quit trying to get to perfection before you become a Christian, and quit trying to give up that sin in your life first before you become a Christian.
You are sitting among a group of sinners today who have already recognized that they will never be good enough. You have listened to a man speak who has learned that external perfections do not exist in Christianity;… it all to do with the heart. You’re sitting with people who are struggling with sin and will continue to struggle with sin the rest of their lives.
If you want to become a Christian, then just submit to His will and let Him clothe you with His righteousness. Then when God looks at you, He will see what He sees in the people around you, He will see a people who are spotless and blameless in His eyes.
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We learn from the New Testament how to be saved. We need to hear the word; believe in Jesus; repent of our sins; we must confess our belief that Jesus is the Son of God; and be baptized for the remission of our sins… If we follow these steps, the Lord adds us to His church.
Perhaps there is someone in the assembly today with the need to be buried with Christ in baptism. If you have never done these things, we urge you to do so today. If anyone has this need or desires the prayers of faithful Christians on their behalf, we encourage them to come forward while we stand and sing.
# 593
Reference Sermon
Mike Glover
Where and when we meet
Chardon, Ohio 44024