Matthew 14:34-15:20 - Kingdom Faith or Mere Tradition?

We study through books of the Bible here at the village chapel, and today is no different.

If you'd like a paper copy to follow along with, hold your hand up and someone will get it to you.

So we're going to continue our study this morning of the Gospel of Matthew, what we call the King and His Kingdom.

And we're about halfway through the Gospel.

Yeah.

It's a good journey.

And if you'll remember, over the last couple of weeks we saw Jesus feeding the 5,000, which realistically, as I think Malcolm Geit talked on that, didn't he?

Realistically, that was about 15,000 people, once you include women and children.

And then last week Pastor Jim led us through the passage where Jesus is up on the mountaintop praying by himself.

He sends the disciples on ahead out onto the Sea of Galilee in a boat.

And then during the middle of the night, in the middle of the storm, he comes walking on the water to them.

And today we're going to pick up where that left off, the end of chapter 14 and the first 20 verses of chapter 15.

And we're going to join Jesus and the disciples as they land the boat, kind of on the northwest corner of the Sea of Galilee, in a farming region called Geneseret.

And some scribes and Pharisees make the trip up from Jerusalem to confront Jesus and his disciples about the way they have been breaking the Pharisees' traditions.

And we're going to see that Jesus sharply contrasts the way that they talk about traditions and the commandments of God.

And three short conversations follow between Jesus and the Pharisees, the crowds, and then his disciples.

And all of those conversations point to what Jesus is talking about, where he's emphasizing there's a difference between what's going on on the outside and what's going on on the inside as it relates to matters of faith and the condition of our hearts.

And to help us frame the context of the conversation between Jesus and the Pharisees, I'd like to pull the camera, the focus of the camera lens, way out and just take a look at the law of God for a second.

Why was it given?

What does it mean for us?

Does it matter?

Has anyone seen The Rings of Power yet on Amazon?

Show of hands?

Woo! So for those of you who don't know what it is, it's a prequel to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

It's set in the second age of Middle Earth, a thousand or two thousand years before The Hobbit.

And uh it's really good, and evidently$715 million will make a really good TV series.

But it is really good, and we've been watching it, and so I'm just kind of in a prequel state of mind this morning.

Uh at the prequel to where our story is, where we find ourselves in our passage.

Here's the prequel to this and to Jesus interacting with the Pharisees about God's law, God's word, and the traditions of the Pharisees.

Man, from the very beginning, God created us out of love.

He created us to flourish and to live in perfect shalom, that perfect relationship with him, with each other, with creation.

We're created to flourish.

That is God's purpose.

That was his purpose for us in the beginning, and it still is that same purpose that we would live a rich life with him and with each other.

Well, as we know, then came the fall.

Paradise was lost.

But immediately God began the plan of redemption, right?

With a capital R, the relentless pursuit of grace.

And part of that plan that we read in the Old Testament is the calling of Abraham, the birth of the nation Israel, and Moses leading the nation of Israel out of bondage, God delivering that nation out of bondage, and it is the story of redemption in the Old Testament.

It shapes Israel's concept of what redemption is, and it provides a template for both the Old Testament and the New Testament believer about redemption, and it points forward to the redemption of all mankind by Jesus Christ.

And part of this prequel at the foot of Mount Sinai, as God is giving Moses the law that starts with the Ten Commandments, here's the very first sentence of those commandments.

I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.

So the law and the covenant doesn't start with a command or a demand.

It starts with redemption.

That's where the law and the covenant starts.

With God, provision always precedes obligation.

God didn't give the law to the Israelites while they were still in bondage with the demand that, okay, here's the deal.

If you perfectly live up to the law, then and only then am I going to rescue and redeem you.

Nope.

He gave them redemption first, and then gave them the law.

Christopher Wright says this in his new book, The Old Testament, in seven sentences.

The law is not a burden imposed by God as a condition of righteousness and salvation.

The law is the gift of God to people already redeemed in order to enable them to go on living within the sphere of his blessing.

Isn't that good?

The law is not a burden imposed by God as a condition of righteousness.

It's a gift to people already redeemed.

That's so important that we look at the law that way.

God gave us the law not to enslave us, but to give us a framework for our flourishing.

That is God's plan all along for our flourishing.

That's why the psalmist in Psalm 19 can say, the law of the Lord is perfect, refreshing the soul.

The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart.

And what does that look like for us, you know, some 2,000 years after the resurrection?

What does God want from us?

What does God want for us?

In their book Being Human, Reynold Macaulay and Jerem Barrys, they put it like this: Sanctification, becoming holy, then, is essentially an affirmation of life.

The whole purpose of the Christian life is the recovery of the original image of God.

In other words, the recovery of the kind of human expression which God intended Adam and Eve to have before the fall.

Isn't that good?

God is passionately for us.

He is always moving towards us, ahead of us, behind us, in order to bring us life.

His desire for us has not changed.

It is for redemption, it is for flourishing.

Well, let's pray, church, and then we'll read our text.

Show us your ways, oh God.

Teach us your paths.

Guide us in your truth and teach us.

For you are God, our Savior, and our hope is in you all the day long.

Jesus' name.

Amen.

Well, okay, so here we are, Matthew chapter 14, verses start at verse 34, and we're going to go through verse 20 of chapter 15.

Matthew 14 · chapter mention

So verse 34, and when they had crossed over, they came to land at Genesaret, and when the men of that place recognized him, Jesus, they sent around to all that region and brought to him all who were sick, and implored him that they might only touch the fringe of his garment, and as many touched it were made well.

I love that this little percopee, this little tiny bit, is included in this week's passage because it gives us such a great scope of Jesus' ministry, how great his compassion is towards those who are hurting, who are sick, who need healing.

And it's a great contrast that we're fixing to see with the Pharisees and how they regard those who they consider unclean.

So the boat lands.

People start recognizing Jesus almost immediately.

He's been up there, he's been in Capernaum, chapters 8 and 9.

We read a lot about all of the miracles that he was performing up there.

And so they recognize him, and man, they are spreading the word.

It says they they spread the word to all the region, and they brought all that needed healing to Jesus.

They were begging to touch his garment, and they must have heard the story of the lady in chapter 9 who had that issue with that chronic issue of blood flow that just touched the edge of Jesus' garment and was made whole.

If I can just get my dad there, he'll be healed.

Phew.

And just imagine that scene.

Hearing that Jesus is there and running pill-mill to your house or your friend's house or your mom's house and grabbing them and bringing them to Jesus, just touching the hem of his garment, and they're healed.

Unless you think this is a little bit of hyperbole, remember this is Matthew talking.

This is the accountant, the numbers guy.

This is an accurate recounting of what happened there.

So on to verse 1 of chapter 15.

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

And that could be read, transgress the tradition of the elders, for they do not wash their hands when they eat.

So these Pharisees that are confronting Jesus, they are not local yokels.

These are the big guns, the big dogs from HQ down in Jerusalem, right?

It's about a 70 or 80-mile trip.

So this is intentional.

This is serious.

Jesus and his disciples, they've been gathering grain on the Sabbath.

They've been eating with unclean people, with tax collectors and sinners.

Jesus has been healing on the Sabbath, and now they're eating their burgers and fries without washing their hands.

Something's got to be done here.

Unless you think, you know, memory of your mom, every time you sat down at the table, did you wash your hands?

This is not about that.

It's not hygiene, although wash your hands before you eat.

It's a good idea.

But the Pharisees, they didn't know about germ theory.

That's not what this was.

This was taking a previous ritual for priests, incorporating it into their traditions, and demanding that people just adhere to their traditions.

That's what's going on here.

And the way they accused the disciples of transgressing or breaking their traditions, they're elevating their traditions to an equal footing with the Word of God.

Not something you want to do when you're actually talking to the actual Word of God.

Well, verses 3 through 6.

Jesus answered them, and he says, And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?

For God commanded, honor your father and your mother, and whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.

But you say, if anyone tells his father or his mother, what you would have gained from me is given to God, he need not honor his father.

So for the sake of your tradition, you have made void the word of God.

Well, in fine Socratic form, Jesus answers their question with a question, but then he also does a little Socratic jujitsu, and he really turns the table because he takes the conversation, pulls it away from this thing about washing hands, and he really gets to the heart of the matter really quickly with them.

He brings up the fifth commandment.

Honor your father and mother.

And and what was going on with the Pharisees at this time, Mark talks about it in his description of this in his gospel.

There was this tradition called Corban, where you could take some of your wealth, some of your possessions, some of your money, and call it dedicated to the service of God.

Well, then if your parents needed help, you could say, Mom and Dad, man, I'd love to help, but I actually can't because I don't have any money.

And Jesus is really angry about this.

Because what's going on for their own selfish purposes, they're dishonoring their mom and dad.

Jesus knows that they've abused the word of God for their tradition.

So verse 7, you hypocrites, well did Isaiah prophesy of you when he said, This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.

In vain do they worship me, teaching his doctrines the commandments of men.

Man, even in Isaiah, the heart, the condition of the heart.

That's what God is looking at.

Jesus calls them hypocrites, and that word in the Greek it means a play actor, pretending.

Jesus is saying to the Pharisees from Jerusalem, he's saying, You guys are phonies.

You're just pretending to be holy.

He is getting in their faces.

And you can imagine that the crowd at this point is stunned that Jesus is doing this with the Pharisees.

Verses 10 through 12.

So Jesus calls the people to him and he said to them, Hear and understand, it's not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a person.

Then the disciples came and said to him, Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying?

So Jesus is already bringing this back to the condition of the heart, telling the crowd with the Pharisees present, that, man, it's not washing your hands, it's not the outside that makes you unclean.

It's the condition of your heart that reveals whether you are clean or unclean.

And you've got to think that the disciples are cringing at this moment because they know who those disciples are.

You can just imagine telling Jesus, like, shh, shh, shh, those are the guys from HQ.

Are you crazy?

Don't offend them.

But they're missing the point that God is looking for the heart that is yielded and given to Him.

He's not looking for religious behavior.

And I love Jesus' response here, verse 13.

He answers them and he says, Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up.

Let them alone.

They're blind guides.

And if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit.

Ah.

And Peter says, verse 16, but Peter said to him, Explain the parable to us.

And he said, Are you also still without understanding?

Man, you've got to love Peter.

Brash, loud.

He's always, man, he's the first one to step right out of the boat, isn't he?

Literally and figuratively.

Can't help himself.

And I've got to think by Jesus' response, this is where the faceplant emoji was invented.

Right here, Jesus looks at Peter.

You know, and if this is a movie, Peter asks him the question, and Jesus turns from looking at Peter and looks right at the camera and says, You got to be kidding me.

Well, so what does he tell Peter?

He says, Bro, how can you be so dim?

Okay, let me give you an anatomy lesson here.

Verse 17.

Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is expelled?

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

For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.

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

And I love in what is this, verse 19, where Jesus is describing that what comes out of our mouth is what makes us unclean.

He's just quoting commandments six through nine here.

You shall not commit murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness.

And I love it that he worded it this way because he's doing a couple things here, just in a couple of sentences.

Man, he's reminding us of the gift of the law, of the Ten Commandments.

And he's driving home the fact that those Ten Commandments, they're not about external behavior.

The law never was about external behavior, it's about the condition of our hearts and how we live when our heart is rightly related to God.

What a good passage.

So I've got a couple of points here this week that I've been thinking about in relation to this passage.

And I think the first is Jesus doesn't want us to confuse tradition and faith, the traditions of men and the word of God.

In other words, man, keep the main thing the main thing.

I love, I love traditions.

I come from a family that we were all about traditions growing up, just goofy little things.

And man, traditions, they bond us, right, as friends, as couples, as families, as a church body.

They're a great way to mark years and seasons.

And part of the intimacy of shared life together, growing together, is having transitions, traditions that develop over time.

Most of us celebrate a holiday every winter that I heard a pastor this week call the Festival of the Incarnation.

In other words, Christmas.

But I love I love Christmas.

I love the sacred and I love the cultural, secular, traditional part of it.

I just love the tradition and the meaning.

So, quick show of hands here.

Speaking of Christmas and tradition.

Oh, by the way, Christmas falls on a Sunday this year.

And so we'll have a couple of Christmas Eve services on Saturday night, and then we're going to have one 11 o'clock, is that right?

We're going to have an 11 o'clock service Christmas morning.

Come in your PJs.

Don't come in your PJs.

I didn't say that, sorry.

So a quick show of hands here.

For those of us that give gifts at Christmas time, who opens gifts on Christmas Eve?

Anybody?

A few?

Yeah.

Good.

Impressive.

And who waits until Christmas morning?

Ah, yeah.

Gosh.

I'm actually impressed.

Who's actually like unwrapped a present under the tree and taken a look and then wrapped it back up so nobody would know?

Ah, I love the honesty.

Oh, that's so good.

So I love it.

Thank you for your honesty.

We actually have a tradition at our house.

We'll open one small gift Christmas Eve and then we wait for the rest till Christmas morning.

But here's the deal.

I mean, even though, gosh, that tradition is lovely, isn't it?

And it's important and it has meaning to our families, it's not a biblical mandate.

The universe is not going to stop operating if you decided to do it differently this year, even though you might say you don't know my family.

But really, it's not a biblical mandate, is it?

It's a tradition.

And here's another thought I had about this this week.

Isn't it interesting that some people who are not even believers still celebrate tradition?

And sadly, what they've done, they've made the tradition the main thing.

And they're not celebrating the main thing.

And that reminds me a bit of the Pharisees, right?

Who said that they loved the law, but they only embraced the performance of the law rather than the heart of the law.

Michael Green says it this way in his commentary on Matthew it is this totally different attitude to worship that separates the Pharisees from Jesus.

Both believed in the prior grace of God.

But the Pharisees' response to this was a passion for detailed precision in worship.

For Jesus, it meant loving obedience, resulting in an intimate relationship with God, whom he called Abba, dear daddy.

For the Pharisees, it was possible to honor God if the services were properly rendered.

And for Jesus, it was impossible unless people's hearts were turned to God.

Let us not persuade ourselves that this attitude to worship, which characterizes the Pharisees, died in the first century.

It is alive and well in many a parish church and chapel.

It's good stuff.

When we make technique or the form of our worship an idol, we begin to think that if we just perform a certain way, we've done our duty, and either God cannot ask more of us, or God owes us.

Blessing, favor, you name it.

You know, and at the outset, legalism kind of looks heroic.

Looks kind of more holy, like, you ask me to tithe 10%, I tithe 15%.

If you ask me to pray 30 minutes a day, I pray an hour a day.

But the result of that, I don't pray an hour a day.

Wish I did.

But the result of that is our faith becomes a checklist, right?

And then when we checked off all the little tasks, then at that point we think, okay, God, you can't ask any more of me today.

I'm on my own time now, I'm off the clock.

Or we get a little grumpy if somebody doesn't recognize us for our holiness, or if God asks us to do something in addition to what we've got on our checklist.

And then we can also fall into the trap of forgetting that we daily live by God's strength and grace.

Right?

If my faith is just a checklist of things, I can I check that list off and I feel a little more holy and a little more in control.

I'm managing my life correctly, I don't need any help.

That's the problem with technique-based religion.

It kind of eliminates the personal relationship with God.

There's a difference between tradition and traditionalism.

Yaroslav Pelikin says it like this.

I think, Jim, you might have just said this a couple of weeks ago, but it fits today.

Tradition is the living faith of those now dead.

It's a living faith.

But traditionalism is the dead faith of those still living.

I absolutely love the way we worship here at TVC.

Man, I love the prayer.

I love the curated prayer and then the way we finish with the Lord's Prayer.

I love the calls to worship that we do, the creeds.

Man, Tommy and the music team, they do such a good job with worship, and I just love the way we worship with everybody sitting in the corner.

And I dearly love teaching through books of the Bible.

Gosh, I love all of this.

But you know, these are just forms of our faith.

It's just a way of doing church.

It's not the way.

I think I think it's God honoring, and I think it's theologically sound, and I think we try to offer a gift of excellence to the Lord, but it's just a form of worship.

You know, there's other churches that have other ways of doing it.

They're different than the way we do it here, but they're no less theologically sound.

And man, we can make an idol out of thinking that our way of doing it, our tradition, is the way, you know, and all of a sudden we start looking at people that do it another way, it's like, eh, whatever, they're not great.

Or even worse, I think they're getting it wrong.

And the form of our faith should always point to the object of our faith, Jesus.

No matter what the form looks like, is it pointing to Jesus?

Because we can so easily slide into legalism and performance and tradition, here's the second point that I think is really important to take from today.

Jesus wants us to understand the importance of the condition of our own hearts.

Man, you guys, the heart of the matter is the heart of the matter.

One result of our dependence on technology is we get into this habit of thinking that some technique is always going to solve our problems.

We are connoisseurs of the life hack, aren't we?

I mean, there's always some book or podcast or app to download, some top 10 life hacks for a better whatever, you know, five steps to a flatter stomach, which I could really use, a bigger bank account, a better quiet time, rocking spiritual gifts, right?

But the issue is the issue of the life hack approaches, it's not what's out there that's the issue.

The issue is what's inside, what's in here, our heart.

That is the issue.

And I know that that's my issue.

The issue is not external performance, the issue is a heart issue.

One of our professors at Covenant is Dan Doriani, and he says this unless the heart is right, holiness is impossible.

Without love for God, the quest for holiness becomes legalistic.

It substitutes human tradition for God's law, and it substitutes human effort for God's grace.

Man, we need God's grace.

Jesus wants for us and from us, he wants a heart transformation, not behavior modification.

Behavior is the result of the condition of our hearts, right?

I'll say that again.

Behavior is the result of the condition of our hearts.

Sin is a condition of the heart long before it's an action of the mind or the body.

And therefore, we need to get changed, healed, transformed from the inside out, not the outside in.

Jesus wants to do just that by giving us a new heart.

JC Rile says this the heart is the principal thing in the relation of husband and wife, of friend and friend, of parent and child.

The heart must be the principal point to which we attend in all the relations between God and our souls.

What is the first thing we need in order to be Christians?

A new heart.

What is the sacrifice God asks us to bring to Him?

Psalms 51, a broken and a contrite heart.

What is the true circumcision from Romans?

The circumcision of the heart.

What is genuine obedience?

To obey from the heart.

The condition of the heart, you guys, that's the thing.

In spite of all we've done in our lives, in spite of all we've left undone, Jesus loves us.

In spite of who we are, in spite of who we aren't, in spite of who we never will be, Jesus loves us.

The Bible teaches us that while we were yet far off, Jesus loves us.

That is exceptionally good news, isn't it?

The most important thing is the condition of our hearts.

And yet, no matter the condition of our hearts, God loves us.

We're not graded on our performance before Jesus decides whether or not He's going to love us.

That doesn't even enter in.

I love the way Tim Keller expresses this idea.

Religion says, I obey, therefore I am accepted.

That's what the Pharisees were doing.

But Christianity says, I am accepted and therefore I obey.

Just like God didn't demand that the Israelites obey before he redeemed them.

Isn't it amazing that he does the same thing with us?

He loves us and accepts us before we even obey.

Our obedience is just a response, not in order to get him to love us.

With God, provision always precedes obligation.

We're loved and accepted before we come to Christ.

We're loved and accepted after we come to Christ.

And there's nothing that you can do today that's going to get God to love you any more than he already does.

And even better news is there is nothing, nothing that you can do today that's going to cause God to love you any less than he already does.

God is passionately for you.

He is passionately for you.

So man, I say come to Jesus and ask him for a new heart.

Even if you asked him just yesterday or maybe already this morning, and already you're back again saying, Oh, Jesus, give me a new heart.

Man, he's going to give you a new heart, and he's going to put his spirit in you to give you both the desire and the ability to lovingly obey him.

And if you fall, ask him for forgiveness.

He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

His mercies are new every morning.

Come to Jesus.

Amen.

Let's pray, church.

Jesus, you are altogether lovely.

Thank you for this new way of living that tells us we don't have to perform for you in order to be loved by you.

You have done all the work needed, all the performance necessary.

Thank you for the new heart you give us, the new life.

Thank you for your relentless pursuit of us.

Thank you for not letting go of us.

We love you and we pray this in your name.

Amen.