Matthews 15:1–20
In an intense confrontation with those who have begun to execute a plot to destroy Him, Jesus moves quickly to the eternal and true distinction between righteousness and unrighteousness.
I. We find that the Pharisees and scribes (specialized teachers of the law) begin to take an aggressive posture toward Jesus and His disciples.
A. This arises from their determination solidified in 12:10, 14 [Mark 3:6; Luke 6:11].
These self-inflated religious leaders had been left speechless and publicly discredited by Jesus for their lack of knowledge and perception concerning matters of biblical truth and human kindness. No crime was greater in their opinion, so they began actively to plot a scheme as to how they could manipulate a situation to accuse Him of a crime worthy of death.
B. Meanwhile Jesus had rapidly increased in esteem with the people through miracles of compassion and mercy (Matthew 14:13–36).
The Pharisees and scribes make a clumsy attempt to have Jesus speak heresy in a public forum. They accused His disciples of a minor infraction of their expansions of the written law, enhanced by supposed oral interpretations from Moses that had been preserved. Many believed that the words of the scribes were more consistently weighty and determinative of moral conduct than the written law. Hand-washing was so important that one rabbi taught, “It is better to go four miles to water than to incur guilt by neglecting hand-washing” [Broadus Commentary, 333]. It seemed self-evident to them that a successful charge of ignoring their tradition would discredit the teaching of Jesus and make Him susceptible to a charge of blasphemous disregard of moral teaching.
II. Jesus responded with immediate confrontation against their teaching that puts God’s law in subjection to their tradition (3–6).
A. Jesus, without hesitation, pointed to their transgression of the commandment of God.
Because they considered the importance of maintaining the oral tradition as more thoroughly weighty and of greater moral clarity than the written text, they had come to prefer it. They supposed that it teased out the implications of the written law of God in a way that would assure a more consistent obedience to the full expectation of Yahweh for His people. In so doing, they had meandered into certain stringent rules that actually violated the plain meaning of the text. Jesus points this out.
B. Jesus will look more closely at the hand-washing issue later, but now He brings immediate emphasis to the issue of Scripture as opposed to human tradition.
Knowing their tradition as well as they know it, Jesus gives a pungent example of the principle of tradition contradicting Scripture at the point of a clear life-and-death commandment. He refers to Exodus 20:12 and 21:17. One is the command and the other is the penalty for violation of the command. It is highlighted by the words, “God said,” in order to show the contrast between human contrivance and divine authority. Parents were extensions of the authority of God in the life of the children. Paul sets this forth as a matter of honor to God—“Children, obey your parents as you would obey the Lord. This is a matter of righteousness” (Ephesians 6:1–—3 my translation).
C. Now Jesus refers to their extrapolations of tradition that put them in violation of the command.
Needy parents could not expect to benefit from something that a child had designated as “Corban,” that is, a gift for the Lord, based loosely on Leviticus 27:9. The scribes valued their concept of making a vow of some possession as a gift that would eliminate a necessary outlet of help to parents. Their tradition included a contrivance that would eliminate the necessity of honoring and caring for parents and resulted in an invalidation of the word of God (6).
III. Jesus points to Isaiah as prophesying about heartless worship and human standards usurping divine authority (7–9).
A. In light of their love of their tradition and lack of true reverence for the revelation of God, Jesus called them “hypocrites.)
They wore a face that was false; it made them appear to be one thing when really they were another. Their feigned religiosity and punctiliar piety that found ways to contravene divine revelation showed that their hearts were at odds with true worship and honor of God.
B. This reality led Jesus to apply Isaiah’s words to Jerusalem.
They have lost the ability to read and understand plain language and therefore invent their own rules (Isaiah 29:11–13). What was true of Jerusalem then, is true of its supposed religious authorities now. They gave lip-service to religion but no heart-obedience to God’s real words. They preferred their extrapolation of a relative situation to the absolute moral code of the commandments. Jesus’ words in 5:17–20 certainly are in mind here as Jesus points to the Pharisees’ instruction to put a tradition before the law of God.
IV. Jesus gave a quick summary of the way in which the religious authorities had hidden true worship by reversing its requirements (10, 11).
They had created a piety out of external actions concerning eating food with hands not washed according to the ceremonial rules. Much more important—in fact, exclusively important—is how one’s speech reveals the devotion or alienation of the heart. He would explain this in more detail to His disciples privately.
V. The disciples worried concern brings out a revelation of Jesus’ eternal perspective (12–14). [cf Matthew 13:24–27, 37–40].
A. The disciples want a conversation with Jesus about this rather revealing confrontation and ask a clumsy and naïve question: “Do you know the Pharisees were offended when they heard that statement?” How could He not know.
Not only does He know the hearts of all men, He had publicly and with intense clarity revealed their hypocrisy and laid bare their purposeful lack of conformity to the Word of God. Offended?! These were the religious authorities whose incompetence and false teaching had been exposed. Not only were they offended, they were embarrassed as frauds in front of the people.
B. Jesus now stated with great clarity that these are plants that have not been planted by the Father.
He brings to mind the parables of chapter 13. These are the tares sown by an enemy, the devil, not the good seed sown by the Son of Man. These are stumbling blocks that will be thrown into a furnace of fire (13:25, 39, 41). The Father and the Son of Man operate under the same covenantal arrangement so that those given by the Father to the Son in eternity are kept by the Son for salvation (John 17:9–11; 20–24). Thus both Father and Son are the planters of the good seed that will be protected until the end time and placed in the presence of their gracious, covenantal triune God.
C. Those whose spiritual state is one of blindness and dominance by the prince of the power of the air and remain in that condition will in the end fall under divine judgment.
Those rescued from this state of universal spiritual blindness by effectual grace are those planted by the Father.
D Jesus teaches without any hint of apology for the sovereign disposal of all men from the beginning of redemptive operations until the end.
He does not struggle with any sense of contradiction between unfettered divine sovereignty and full culpable human responsibility for sin. No basis of tension between absolute justice and full dependence on grace established before the foundation of the world enters this discussion. When Paul considers it, he proposed an objector saying, “Why does He find fault? For who resists His will?” Paul’s reply simply states the obvious distance between the eternally existent, omnipotent God and the creature that exists only for the glory of the Creator: “On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, ‘Why did you make me like this?’ will it?” (Romans 9:19, 20). The perfect moral congruity between human responsibility and unexceptionable divine sovereignty does not perplex Jesus in the least.
VI. Jesus contrasts humanly-contrived religion with true righteousness (15–20).
A. Peter’s request for explanation prompts Jesus to point out to them their lack of attention to specific teaching and his interaction with the religious formalists (Matthew 5:21–30; 6:16–18; 7:15–20; 12:33–37).
The necessity of spiritual congruity between the heart and the law should have sunk into their souls by now. Twice Jesus points to their lack of understanding (16, 17).
B. Now He expanded His short didactic sentence of verse 11.
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- Observation of dietary instructions has nothing to do with true knowledge, worship, and reverence for God. Such rules were important for establishing the Jewish nation as a peculiar people in possession of the covenant, law, and messianic promise. That its external requirements had nothing to do with true faith is seen in its being set aside during the post-resurrection, apostolic period of instruction and inclusion of the Gentiles (Romans 14). These things do not need spiritual exorcism but only a visit to the privy.
- The words coming from the mouth—not the food that goes into it—more clearly express the hearts and the dominant thought life of a person. Of course, words can be used deceitfully and hypocritically, but even that soon becomes a revelation of the heart. We will give an account for every vain word we speak—lies, profanity, gossip, destructive criticism, selfish boasting, irreverence, and a host of other sorts of verbal malfeasance.
- Jesus listed how the heart is the origin of every violation of the second table of the commandments (19). If we so despise and violate those who are made in God’s image, then our violation of every aspect of the first table is obvious and even more consequential for eternal assignment.
- Jesus summed up the proposition to be affirmed as a result of this conflict initiated by the Pharisees and pursued willingly and aggressively by Him. These internal heart-matters concerning God’s revelation of true love and righteousness constitute the real issue of pure and undefiled religion, not the merely external practice of non-moral issues. James summarized the issue: “But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desire and enticed. Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death. … Of His own will He brought us forth by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of first-fruits of His creatures” (James 1:14, 15, 18 NKJV).
POEM
Religious formalists confronted Jesus concerning their tradition.
Jesus knew their intent and He knew what Scripture meant.
He knew their heart and their spiritual condition.
Humanly contrived ceremonies are useless, but God’s law is true.
If God’s law you break for your tradition’s sake,
God’s pure vengeance is due.
Long ago Isaiah knew that hypocrites would rise,
Who use their lips for human moral quips,
With hearts uncircumcised.
They feign to worship by contrived commands,
But they have no heart that love and faith impart,
And in judgment cannot stand.
Not of the Father’s planting, they are spiritually blind.
Replete with religious talk and an ostentatious walk,
They retain a proud, worldly, and self-centered mind.
At eternal peril follow them, for finally they wail and weep.
Blind leaders stumble and fall, with followers who blindly heed their call;
As tares they are sown, as tares shall angels reap.
Hearts of corruption produce heartless religion of manmade expectation.
The law’s true holiness and purity is unfelt by hearts of iniquity.
Eternal wrath their destination.
“Like the rest” were those gracious souls that now glory in their adoption.
No longer slaves to Satan and sin, but Sons of God by change within,
They are purified by the hope of final redemption.
