Podcast: Behind the Scenes: Small Things, Big Impact; Clean and Unclean (Mat 15:1-20)

Good day, and welcome to North Raw United Methodist Church Behind the Scenes Podcast, where we sit down weekly and talk about this week's scripture and sermon.

My name is Kevin Van Hall.

I serve as your host and moderator.

And joining me today is Laura Johnson, one of our senior pastors here.

Hi, Laura.

Hey, Kevin.

Good to have you.

Thanks for coming in and talking with me today.

Great to be here.

Well, thanks.

I'm glad you're enjoying it.

I hope everyone out there is enjoying it.

I enjoy our time together as well.

And we're going to just continue talking about uh small things having big impacts.

Now, this series is, we're right in the heart of it, in the middle of it.

I had a guest speaker this past week, talked about the Jesus walking on the water and how Peter wants to join Jesus.

Jesus is like, sure, come on ahead.

And before we last time we talked, we were talking about Jesus feeding the 5,000.

So we're heavy into Matthew right now, and we're finding the little things that are making big impacts.

And we're going to continue pretty much right along without skipping a beep.

We went go right from Jesus on the water to uh clean and unclean, and we're going to be in Matthew chapter 15.

Matthew 15 · chapter mention

So this is going to be an opportunity for us in this podcast to sit down, talk a little bit.

I'm going to ask some tough questions like uh this part doesn't make sense to me.

And I'd like to have you explain it if you could.

So that's where we are today.

But too much farther along, and we're going to forget to pray, so why don't we stop and pause for prayer?

Let's pray.

Oh Lord, we ask that you would open our hearts and minds to hear you speaking through the scriptures today, that you would guide our conversation, that we would all be enriched by this discussion.

In Christ's name we pray.

Amen.

Amen.

So let's set the stage.

We said we're in uh Matthew.

Jesus fed the five thousand.

Uh they leave, uh, he sends them away, he goes out to meet them, and walks across the water.

But let's skip ahead to that, and where they are now is they come ashore.

So that's right.

They've come ashore, and what's important to remember is that Jesus has been doing all these miracles among his followers and his fans, and here he's gonna have a showdown with those that he disagrees with, especially the Pharisees.

And what's good to know is that the Pharisees have already decided that he is their full-on enemy, and they're already starting to plot his demise.

And so this isn't a harmless interchange.

This is ratcheting up what Jesus is is trying to communicate to the people who are watching, but also kind of ratcheting up the this complex disagreement between the religious leaders and Jesus.

Right.

So they're trying to find fault with Jesus and his disciples, and uh they find something very minor that they call out, and Jesus puts, turns it around and says, No, you're completely wrong, and actually throws it hard in their face.

Um you might say it shames them a little bit.

Um That's right.

I told Kevin before we started recording that this is spicy Jesus.

This is when Jesus gets a little attitude.

He's probably tired from being up all night walking on water, but that's right.

Exactly.

He just doesn't want to put up with it.

Uh you see him lose the patience with the Pharisees.

He even loses his patience, I think, a little bit with the disciples.

At least that's what we get from Matthew.

Again, we're trying to understand exactly what's going on.

I think Matthew wants us to understand that as well.

That's right.

And puts it in this way.

So we're going to be reading um you'll see it as we read exactly what's going on.

Uh chapter 15, verses 1 through 20.

Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders?

For they do not wash their hands before they eat.

He answered them, And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?

For God said, Honor your father and your mother, and whoever speaks ill evil of father or mother must surely die.

But you say that whoever tells father or mother, Whatever support you might have had from me is given to God, then that person need not honor the father.

So for the sake of your tradition you make void the word of God, you hypocrites.

Isaiah prophesied rightly about you when he said, This people honors me with their lips, but their heart are far from me.

In vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.

Then he called the crowd to him and said to them, Listen and understand.

It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles.

Then the disciples approached and said to him, Do you know what the Pharisee do you know that the Pharisees took offense when they heard what you said?

He answered, Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted.

Let them alone.

They are blind guides of the blind.

And if one blind person guides another, both will fall into a pit.

But Peter said to him, Explain this parable to us.

Then he said, Are you also still without understanding?

Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach and goes out into the sewer?

But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles.

For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander.

These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile.

Well, there's the strong encounter that we talked about.

My uh New International Version says unclean.

So we talks about I'm sure they're saying sin and thinking of sin defiles you, makes you unclean.

Unclean uh works for me when I'm thinking of uh walking into my mother's house.

For anybody who walks into my house, my wife is gonna say you go wash your hands.

Uh COVID, uh disease, flu, cold, dirt, whatever it is, go wash your hands, don't touch anything.

We're not gonna eat until you wash your hands.

That might be mom's rule, but that might not necessarily be God's rule.

That's right.

And they get that a little confused, do they not?

Well, I I think it's also you go to some houses and you have to take your shoes off before you can go into the house, right?

Like we all have our customs in our house.

And so I think it's first, it's important to notice that the Pharisees are not washing hands because they know about germs and hygiene.

That's not what's going on here.

And Jesus is not advocating poor hygiene.

Um, the issue at stake here is the Pharisees' approach to holiness, to clean versus unclean, and Jesus' approach to holiness are two different things.

And so if you think about the ancient Jewish faith, there was this big concern about how can we be holy as God is holy?

And the way that we can be holy is through these rituals that help train our heart to be faithful to God, to love God, to honor God.

Um, and so the idea was that the people needed to maintain these these proper rituals, to protect themselves from impurities, things that would put a barrier between them and God of unholiness.

And so the Pharisees have, and a lot of the um, let me back up, a lot of the Old Testament biblical laws were meant to help people maintain that sense of holiness.

And so that became a very big part of the practice is how to maintain these these biblical laws, the old the Ten Commandments, which is what Jesus cites in later on when he's talking about the evil intentions, but also all the other Levitical codes.

And those were really generally agreed upon that those were important to practice to maintain holiness before God.

The Pharisees were uh so in those days there were different types of religious leaders.

There were the the people that in Jerusalem, the the priests in the temple.

A lot of them were Sadducees.

They were the ones who had the religious training, the theological education, they had the prestige of being a priest in the temple, right?

The Pharisees were more of like the populist movement of religious leaders.

They were the local preachers that did not go to seminary.

They were trained by other preachers.

Um and so they didn't have this prestige of these high and mighty high priests, but they were very popular and very well respected by the people of the day.

And what they did was they held the scriptures very highly, but alongside the scriptures, they held what was called the oral tradition or the tradition of the elders.

And that was the written words, the laws, the rules of rabbis that had been passed down from generation to generation to generation.

And they held those as highly as they held the law in the Bible.

And so the ritual hand washing that the Pharisees are mad about, Jesus' disciples not doing, was not a biblical code in Leviticus.

That was not at all a practice in the, that was not required by the scripture, but it was by their tradition of the elders.

And so they're holding Jesus to their standard of what they see as how to maintain holiness by following these rabbis' rules.

And Jesus is like, no, no, no, no, no, no.

You're missing the point here.

The point is not to live a life of rule keeping, the point is to live a life that makes your heart be fully faithful and honest before God.

So exactly.

So he calls them out on them and calls them hypocrites.

They're trying to um corner him and and uh say you're unclean, your disciples are unclean, and he's like, You're unclean.

Um That's right.

You what you talk about is is is unclean.

And then he calls out their actions, which so the commandments about honor your mother and your father.

And he goes in and he says, Uh, what help otherwise would have received me is a gift devoted to God.

It is not to honor his father with it.

Explain, can you explain that a little bit how that's not what that means?

What he's saying there?

So the best I can understand it, which may develop more before I preach it, but the best I can understand it right now is that there um was a practice called Corbin.

And it was the practice where somebody who owned property could dedicate that property to the temple as like a uh something set aside for the priests for God's use.

They had access to it during their own lifetime, but they couldn't then leave it to their family or let someone else in their family use it.

Um, and so what I believe Jesus is saying here is when people make Corbin and they offer a house or a piece of property to the temple, and then suddenly their mother or father becomes destitute and needs a place to stay, or needs fund needs the their their son to sell that property in order to help them survive.

The Pharisees' tradition says that once a corbin is made, once that oath has been made, nothing can break it.

And so the person who made that oath can't take the property back and sell it and provide for their parents.

And Jesus is saying, Do you see the hypocrisy there?

Like your own traditions is impeding people's ability to fulfill the law.

So he's pointing out again their hypocrisy.

Again, exactly.

So, and that's not the one and only instance in the gospels.

There's quite a few.

Absolutely.

And even um later on, saw after Saul's conversion, Paul, when he goes and preaches throughout the church and the Dysporia and goes to the temples, and he's running into other Jewish the traditions seem to trump in Paul tries to convince everybody that Jesus stopped that.

That goes away with Jesus.

That's right.

But that's not exactly where he leads um Peter to explain how anything that is not planted by my father is going to get uprooted, and Peter doesn't understand this.

So, and he asks for an explanation.

He really doesn't explain this parable.

He goes on and explains what he said previously, which is not a parable at all, is it?

That's right.

That's right.

What what comes in your mouth goes out the other end, and but words that come out reminds me of the song Don Henley, I love his lyrics.

He said, uh sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can break your heart.

And we think that words can't.

And they can.

They have so much power.

And and it's not just the words that come out of your mouth, it's the thoughts and it's what's in your heart.

Uh we were talking earlier about uh so much division that's going on um right now as far as how much we should be loving our neighbor, and and w we're not.

I saw a billboard one time outside of church that says, stop walking around with a mouth full of scripture and uh and a heart full of hate.

Pretty much the exact same thing as what Jesus is saying.

That is that is what Jesus is trying to communicate.

And if you notice, there's three movements in this passage.

So first, he speaks directly to the Pharisees, and he's just trying to get them to see their hypocrisy.

He's just trying to help get them to notice that they're holding the tradition that they've been handed on from their elders higher than the commands of scripture and and that and that in their practice of trying to be holy has everything to do with following all the right rules and not about where their heart is or how they can help people's heart get right with God.

And so he starts with the Pharisees and then he moves to the crowds.

So there's crowds watching.

And remember, the crowds loved the Pharisees.

They were a very popular movement of leaders in that day and age.

And so Jesus is trying to win them over to his side.

He's trying to help them see the um Pharisees' hypocrisy and also understand that it's not what, it's not if you're washing your hands.

That's not what proves that you're holy.

It's the words that come out of your mouth because that shows what's happening in your heart.

Your words and your deeds reflect the health of your heart.

And that's what he tells the crowds.

And then it gets even more granular to the disciples, and and they're like, tell us what all this means, as if it's not obvious, but maybe their minds are still spinning from walking on water and they haven't been able to wrap their heads around anything yet.

I don't know.

Exactly.

And his instead of drawing into long details, he's like, just quit worrying around the Pharisees.

He's like, You've offended them.

You're not listening to the lesson I'm trying to teach you.

Stop worrying about the Pharisees.

That's not the issue.

That's right.

They're gonna fall off the cliff because they don't know where they're going or what they're doing.

And if you keep following them, you will too.

Basically the blind leads to the blind.

That's right.

And he's gonna keep offending them.

I think he's probably trying to get them to stop caring because it's gonna keep happening.

True.

Exactly.

Yeah.

It goes throughout.

That's right.

And so they don't understand why Jesus they they get hung up on them.

Obviously, they're very hung up on the Pharisees as well.

They've looked up to them this whole time before Jesus.

That's right.

And they can't stop looking up to them.

That's right.

And that's Jesus is trying to pull their attention back in.

Uh no, you're not getting, or are you so you're not getting what I'm saying?

You're too busy worried about them.

That's right.

That's right.

And and in a lot of ways, Jesus is chang I mean, it would be challenging for the disciples because Jesus is is changing the focus of what they've been hearing from the Pharisees or other local preachers.

And Jesus is is trying to redirect them a different way.

And that's always jarring when you hear a new interpretation or or or a challenge of something that you've always believed to be true.

And so that's probably part of the disciples' reaction is they're probably a little bit shocked or jarred of like, oh my gosh, you're talking to the Pharisees like that.

Well, y'all Jesus' entire ministry is is shock.

Yeah.

Shock and all.

Yeah.

I mean, just go back in Matthew in the very beginning, uh just go back to Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes, and he's turning stuff upside down.

Absolutely.

You know, blessed are you those who are in me in in in weep and are poor in spirit.

And you're like, Well, what?

Wait a minute.

I don't understand this.

And the Beatitudes, um, he sits there and says, if you've go, if you're already angered at your brother, you've already sinned.

If you're already lusting after another person, another woman, or something, and haven't even acted on it, you've already sinned.

Right.

So he's trying to get you to stop thinking that it's okay as long as I don't do it, right?

Maybe he's just saying, no, I s that's not right at all.

Right.

Because every action, every word flows from the state of your heart.

So it that's why the state of your heart matters so much.

I think another way Jesus shocked them was when he said, It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles.

These were people that believed in very strict dietary codes that that had been passed down since the days of wilderness wanderings, right?

Of these Levitical dietary laws.

And so Jesus here is saying, that's not really what defiles you.

It's what's happening in your heart.

He's not tossing out the dietary codes.

He does in Mark, which is interesting.

Mark as a gospel was written for a primary Gentile audience.

Matthew is written for a primary audience who were Jewish who converted to Christianity.

And so he doesn't throw out the dietary codes.

He just says they're not, they're not the priority.

The priority is how your heart is with God.

Yeah.

And well, and we know the in Acts, Peter sees the vision and it's like, no, whatever God makes is don't call it unclean.

Right.

See, that word comes out again.

Exactly.

It's don't don't call what a unclean and move forward.

That's right.

So there's a little bit of hint of what's to come here as well.

And and it's not about washing your hands, although, yeah, it's not such a bad idea to be watching your phone.

Definitely wash your hands before you eat.

But we're not telling everybody, don't wash your hands, it's okay.

This is not a medical textbook.

No, we're just looking at the different metaphors.

Um, and Jesus tries to so often he tries to offend the hair um the Pharisees without them knowing it or without directly calling them out by using metaphors and stories.

In this instance, he flat out calls them out.

There's no dancing around it in this one at all.

Like you said.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

And he's and and he's very direct with the crowds and with his disciples of don't like and he even says elsewhere in the scriptures, like, don't do what they do like do as they say, not as they do.

Because they weren't living in such a way that the ritual hand washing, it did not make them holy.

Their actions were what made them holy, and their actions were not contributing to holiness within them, if that makes sense.

It does.

Yeah.

It does.

And we it's on over and over and over again how the uh law was made wasn't made to burden everybody and hold everyone back.

And Jesus tries to explain that throughout.

And it seems like everyone finally gets it in the end.

Um do we get it?

Yeah.

I mean, d d does the current church give so pride itself much in tradition and dogma that is created.

That do we hold people back?

Are we not doing I mean, is there I can't think of anything that comes to instance, but that's how denominations have been created, is because we humans have disagreed over different points of our theological doctrines that you know we've we've created over the millennia with the Holy Spirit working within us, and we've disagreed over them and we've split over it.

And sometimes I think we we do hold the little T tradition as more important than the big T tradition.

So, like one example would be baptism.

Some churches are like, you can only baptize adults, and if you're not baptizing the adult, your baptism doesn't count.

Whereas the Methodists are like, we baptize anybody and we'll accept any baptism.

But that's like one way that that the tradition has been a dividing line between us that we feel like the there's only one way to do it that leads to holiness, and the other ways don't work.

Um and so I think there's lots of ways that we do this as Christians.

Oh, I can I can think of, yeah, and it just came to mind as the sacraments, how the uh acts of the sacraments, how the Catholics look at uh being a previous Catholic, uh look at the sacraments versus the Methodist tradition of looking at the sacraments, the seven sacraments and then to the three.

That's right.

Uh looking at communion.

That's right.

So these certain traditions that we we do or we practice are supposed to bring us closer to God, not supposed to separate us from One another.

We're not supposed to be our way to God.

Like the the way for us to be holy is not through practicing baptism a certain way or communion a certain way or any of the different rituals that are important because they help us connect with God, but they're not what make us holy.

What makes us holy is have we given our heart to God?

And it's the Holy Spirit working within us to make us more like Jesus.

And the only way we can tell that is through the actions and the words that we say.

Well, you see, so often uh modern day churches, uh non-denominational churches in particular, um gone to all musical, much more different format than a to traditional worship service.

Some people like that's not a worship service.

Is it defined anywhere exactly what a worship service has to be?

Depends on who you ask.

Exactly.

As to what tradition or what uh leader or follower that you're you're watching, and Jesus uh cautions us about that.

If you're following that person and whatever he says in the traditions that he says so much, then you're really not following Jesus or God.

You're following that individual.

That's right.

We get that warning here.

Listen, leave them alone.

If they want to go do that, the blind's gonna fall off the cliff, they're gonna be uprooted.

Yep.

They're not following the word of God in the instance that Jesus gives is the commandment about honoring your mother and your father.

That's right.

That's right.

Do you see anything else in here might be talking about on Sunday?

Well, so he in verse 19, he has his list of the evil intentions that come out of a heart, which is um a lot of it, like two-thirds of it, echo the Ten Commandments.

Murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander, that this is what defiles a person.

And I think it's interesting.

What I'm pondering is like what are the evil intentions?

And if you ask any church or any Christian, what they define as evil intentions would differ from Christian to Christian and church to church.

Um and I think that's an interesting, interesting thing of sometimes it's easier to say what the good actions and words look like than it is to define the evil ones.

So I'm just pondering that.

I don't have any answers there.

But and if you look throughout scriptures, there's all there's all sorts of different lists of the evil things we should avoid, and they're all a little bit different, which I find very interesting.

But the good lists that we should aim for don't vary at all.

It's love, it's peace, it's patience, it's kindness, it's generosity.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, Jesus was asked who is your neighbor, and Jesus goes into a long saying and he talks about basically love your neighbor, love God.

I love uh 13th Corinthians.

Well, what is love?

You say love your neighbor, you define your neighbor will define love.

That's right.

And uh Paul gives us an excellent uh definition of love.

That's right.

Good things.

That's right.

I think it's easier sometimes, especially in American Christianity, we've built so much of our tradition, the lower T tradition of churches, based on if you're a Christian, you can't do this, you can't do this, you can't do this, you can't do this.

And I think a more productive approach in today's world is uh if you're a Christian, here's what here's what you do do.

Here's you you you live a life of love, you live a life of service.

Like having the positive outlook, I think, is more effective in today's world than listing all the things that you can't do.

Yeah, Jesus tells us that quit quit getting hung up on the traditions and uh worry about what's in your heart.

What's in your heart?

That's right.

That's right.

Well, I look forward to the uh sermon on Sunday about this, uh clean and unclean.

Like you said, there's quite a few little uh tidbits in here.

We talked about small things making big impacts.

What's the small thing in here that you see that's gonna make a big impact?

Well, I think it's it's the words.

It's what I mean, he's he's talking about how what comes out of your mouth is what defiles a person.

And so the words that we speak, sometimes we speak in anger, sometimes we speak in judgment.

Um, but those words we speak, they may not feel big to us, but they might have a big impact on others, either in positive ways or in negative ways.

And so just paying attention to the power of our own language and noticing the words that we speak come from our heart.

And so what do the words tell us about the state of our heart?

Excellent.

True, excellent point.

Excellent, love it.

Yeah.

Little little words you don't think are um gonna hurt anybody or mean anything, but they actually can.

Yeah, absolutely.

Both ways.

That's right.

That's right.

Good or bad.

That's right.

So all right.

Well, Laura, well, thank you so much for uh joining me today.

Love uh this we continue um the small things, big impact.

So Kevin will be here uh speaking with me next week.

So I invite everyone to come back and hear what Kevin has to say as we continue on this uh journey of small things, big impact.

We'll still be in Matthew.

Correct.

And just moving on further further on down the line the of what comes next.

So and it might be the Canaanite woman.

I don't remember, honestly.

So how the faith of just one simple structure.

Yeah.

Well, we're gonna sign off though.

Uh please join us again then next week.

And uh, like I said, when Kevin joins us again.

So until then, may the love of Christ be with you always.

So goodbye, everyone.

Bye.