1 Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, 2 “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat.”

Introduction

• A scribal lawyer asked Jesus the greatest commandment: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matt. 22:37).
• The heart of the great Shema (Deut. 6:4–5). The entire Pharisaical movement was built as an attempt to love God in the way Deuteronomy described.
• But the command forces us to confront the heart. What if we find only a flatness before God—or, to quote the old hymn, a proneness to wander?

Three directions

• Lower the bar. Knockoff worship that convinces us, as it did the Pharisees, that we are devoted. But the living God, a consuming fire, leaves us undone (Deut. 4:24; Heb. 12:29; Isa. 6:5)—in ways our little religiosities could never fathom.
• Follow your heart. Honest that love for God barely lives, they follow the heart Jeremiah called “deceitful above all things, and desperately sick” (Jer. 17:9).
• The gospel approach. The heart must be made new—a death and resurrection only possible through Jesus Christ. This is the approach I will champion today.

The backdrop

• Last study: the unclean touched his garment and were made well (14:34–36)—a reverse contagion.
• Then a delegation from Jerusalem, shocked that his disciples did not wash according to the tradition of the elders (2).
• Not hygiene but religion. The Pharisees wanted every home to be a little temple precinct (Exod. 30:17–21; Mark 7:3–4)—not biblical, per se, but meant to express a longing for the living God.

1. Incorrect Solution: Dead Devotion (1–9)

1 Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, 2 “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat.” 3 He answered them, “And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? 4 For God commanded, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’ 5 But you say, ‘If anyone tells his father or his mother, “What you would have gained from me is given to God,” 6 he need not honor his father.’ So for the sake of your tradition you have made void the word of God. 7 You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said: 8 “‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; 9 in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.'”

• They lowered the bar with traditions that looked like raising it, causing people to break the commandment of God (3). To Jesus, the book was supreme.

Voids God’s Word

• The fifth commandment: honor father and mother (4; Exod. 20:12; 21:17).
• Declare your home, goods or money Korban—”dedicated to God” (Mark 7:11)—then go on enjoying it while refusing to help your parents.
• Allegiance to the Lord outranks the family (Matt. 10:37), but there is an allegiance to the family that flows from an allegiance to the Lord.
• Not allegiance to God but allegiance to the self. Greed made void the word of God (6).
• “I love me so much.”

Hurts others

• “There is a devotion to God that hurts God because it hurts people.” —Frederick Dale Bruner
• Luther, Theses 43–46: indulgences drained money peasants needed for their families—a sixteenth-century Korban.
• Korban today:
  • A pastor neglecting his family for the sake of the ministry.
  • Generous giving to the church while aging parents or debts go unattended.
  • Serving at church to avoid a difficult marriage.
  • Trendy talk of self-care or a season of rest to avoid service of any kind.
  • One area of visible holiness—loudly championing accountability software—while neglecting the heart.
• Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1–11): giving for show—a New Testament Korban.
• We turn our own preferences into tests of people’s seriousness about God—schooling, Halloween, alcohol, Bible translations, worship style, politics, spiritual gifts.
• Legitimate matters of conviction and wisdom—but as requirements to prove your godliness, they are unbiblical and damaging (Rom. 14:1–4).

Hurts self (and God)

• For the first time in Matthew, Jesus calls them hypocrites to their faces (7). Hypokritēs: “actor”—Sepphoris, near Nazareth, seems to have had a theater.
• Play-acting a religious role as a cheap substitute for a real relationship with the great I AM.
• The Berlin Marathon influencer on a bike. She looked like an athlete, but someone else’s wheels did the work.
• Lips honoring, hearts light-years away (8–9; Isa. 29:13). We become incongruent with ourselves—to live in that dichotomized space is a terror.
• It grieves God, who paid so dearly for closeness with us. He does not meet us in pretense. Read the Psalms!
  • He looks for people who come with their brokenheartedness, warped heartedness, distracted heartedness and sin-loving heartedness—to be rescued and redeemed by the only one who can.

2. Problem: Defiling Hearts (10–20)

10 And he called the people to him and said to them, “Hear and understand: 11 it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person.” 12 Then the disciples came and said to him, “Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying?” 13 He answered, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up. 14 Let them alone; they are blind guides. And if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit.” 15 But Peter said to him, “Explain the parable to us.” 16 And he said, “Are you also still without understanding? 17 Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is expelled? 18 But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. 19 For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. 20 These are what defile a person. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone.”

Jesus relocates the problem

• The Shema began, “Hear, O Israel” (Deut. 6:4); Jesus began, “Hear and understand” (10).
• Staggering words for Israelites: contamination does not move from the outside in—it comes from the inside out (11).
• To quote a trope of scary movies, the call is coming from inside the house.
• The rusted undercarriage. The car looked fine until the pre-purchase inspection showed what was underneath. “I found a little water residue.”

His diagnosis offended

• Echoes the wheat and the weeds—both grow until the harvest (13; Matt. 13:24–30). God’s people are “the planting of the LORD” (Isa. 61:3).
• Let them alone (14): dead devotion will be among us until the harvest. Trying to eradicate it is counterproductive work.
• We still name error—Jesus just did. But he would rather we focus on being the real deal (Matt. 5:14–16).

The catalog of the heart

• What we eat goes to the sewer; what comes out proceeds from the heart (17–18)—our preexistent, defiled state.
• Peter’s vision (Acts 10:9–16): years later, Peter is still learning what this saying (15) means.
• The list follows the second half of the Ten Commandments, in order (19; Exod. 20:13–16).
• In Greek every item is plural. Not just one evil thought, but evil thoughts. Not just one murder, but murders.
• “Follow your heart” is not freedom; it is a sentence. The heart is the source of the problem.
• Why don’t your disciples wash? Because unwashed hands cannot defile them, the commandments of men cannot cleanse them, and it is their hearts which must become clean.
• Hezekiah’s Passover (2 Chron. 30:18–20). People ate while ceremonially unclean. Hezekiah prayed for “everyone who sets his heart to seek God,” and the Lord healed them.

3. Correct Solution: Heart Renovation

New covenant

• Jesus gives the diagnosis; the rest of Scripture gives the remedy.
• A new heart and a new spirit (Ezek. 36:26); his law written on our hearts (Jer. 31:33); born again (John 3:3)—”the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit” (Titus 3:5). The only washing that reaches the heart.
• The Spirit of his Son in our hearts cries, “Abba! Father!” (Gal. 4:6; Rom. 8:29). Only Christ’s work in us moves our hearts Godward.

The reverse catalog

• Evil thoughts renewed minds (Rom. 12:2; Phil. 4:8).
• Murders hatred and vengeance replaced with sacrificial love (Eph. 4:29; 1 John 3:16).
• Adultery and sexual immorality marital faithfulness and personal holiness (Heb. 13:4).
• Thefts honest labor and generous giving (Eph. 4:28).
• False witnesses and slanders truth spoken in love and celebration of others (Eph. 4:15).
• Surgical and confrontational—a splaying out of the internal before God, where he produces newness of heart (Ps. 51:17).

The process

• Like Luke Skywalker entering the cave on Dagobah, we must go into the dark of our depraved hearts so that God might renew us.
• “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!” (Ps. 139:23–24).
• Work out your salvation, for God works in you (Phil. 2:12–13). Renewal starts as his work alone but continues as we cooperate with his Spirit.
• His tools: the Word, the Spirit, confession, community, suffering and discipline.
• Confess the defilement within; behold the gap between Christ’s practice and ours; put off the old man and put on the new (Eph. 4:22–24).
• Make no provision for the flesh (Rom. 13:14). Feeding the flesh is like throwing a lit match into a tub of gasoline.
• We are changed from one degree of glory to another (2 Cor. 3:18; Phil. 1:6).

Conclusion: The Clean One Who Makes Clean

• Everyone longs to be clean, and everyone has a way to say, “I am clean.”
• Pilate washed his hands as a gesture of innocence, but his heart remained in a state of guilt (Matt. 27:24).
• Jesus is the reverse contagion: the unclean touch his garment and are made well (14:36). His holiness flows outward to us.
• His blood cleanses us from all sin (Heb. 1:3; 1 John 1:7; Isa. 6:6–7). We draw near “with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience” (Heb. 10:22).
• His hands were pierced so that our hearts could be cleansed. He still welcomes the unclean to come and touch him.
• Stop cleaning your life with dead devotion. Go to him: “Create in me a clean heart, O God” (Ps. 51:10).

Study Questions

Head (Knowledge, Facts, Understanding)

1. Why did the scribes and Pharisees care so much about handwashing (Matt. 15:1–2; Mark 7:3–4)? How did Jesus use the Korban practice (15:3–6; Mark 7:11) to show that their tradition made void the word of God?
2. According to Matthew 15:11 and 17–20, where does defilement come from? How does the list in verse 19 echo the second half of the Ten Commandments (Exod. 20:13–16)?

Heart (Feelings, Impressions, Desires)

1. Jesus quoted Isaiah: “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me” (15:8; Isa. 29:13). When have you felt a gap between your outward devotion and your inner life, and what was that like?
2. When you look within and find flatness, wandering, or only a flicker of love for God, which pull do you feel most—lowering the bar, following your heart, or the gospel approach of a heart made new? Why?

Hands (Actions, Commitments, Decisions, Beliefs)

1. What personal preferences have you turned into tests of other people’s seriousness about God (Rom. 14:1–4)? Is there a “modern Korban” in your own life you need to lay down?
2. Pray Psalm 139:23–24 this week. Which means of renewal—the Word, confession, Christian community, making no provision for the flesh (Rom. 13:14)—will you commit to as you cooperate with the Spirit (Phil. 2:12–13)?

Sources Used

• The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (ESV)
• Frederick Dale Bruner, Matthew: A Commentary, Volume 2—The Churchbook, Matthew 13–28
• D. A. Carson, Matthew
• R. T. France, The Gospel of Matthew
• Craig L. Blomberg, Matthew
• Craig S. Keener, A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew
• Michael J. Wilkins, Matthew
• Martin Luther, The Ninety-Five Theses
• Robert Robinson, “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing”