WWUTT 2031 Teaching as Doctrines the Commands of Men (Matthew 15:1-14)

Jesus said to the Pharisees, well did Isaiah prophesy of you. These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. And they teach as doctrines the commands of men. When we understand the text.

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Here once again is Pastor Gabe.

Matthew 15:1-14 and the Tradition of the Elders

Thank you, Becky. In our study of the gospel of Matthew, we are on to chapter 15 this week. And I'm gonna start here by reading verses one through 14 out of the Legacy Standard Bible. Hear the word of the Lord.

Then some 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 when they eat bread. And he answered and said to them, why do you yourselves transgress the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?

For God said, honor your father and mother and he who speaks evil of father or mother is to be put to death. But you say, whoever says to his father or mother, whatever you might benefit from me as given to God, he need not honor his father.

And by this, you invalidated the word of God for the sake of your tradition, you hypocrites. Rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you. This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far away from me.

But in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commands of men. After Jesus called the crowd to him, he said to them, hear and understand, it is not what enters into the mouth that defiles the man, but what proceeds out of the mouth, this defiles the man.

Then the disciples came and said to him, do you not know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this statement? But he answered and said, every plant which my heavenly father did not plant shall be uprooted.

Let them alone, they are blind guides of the blind. And if a blind man guides a blind man, both will fall into a pit. So just to recap briefly, what we had previously read, coming into chapter 15, we see a very compassionate side of Christ.

Of course, we've seen a compassion from Jesus throughout Matthew's gospel, but we see him mourn over the death of John the Baptist in chapter 14, yet he had sympathy on the people and he fed the 5 ,000 as he also taught them.

Jesus walks on the sea to his disciples. He has compassion for Peter and allows him to step out of the boat onto the water. When Peter sinks, he lifts him up and puts him into the boat and the disciples worship him.

And then Jesus goes about the area continuing to heal the sick and they desire that they could just touch the fringe of his garment. And as many as touched Christ were healed. So we see that Jesus has taught and healed.

That seems to be the gist of chapter 14. And the people listen to what it is that Jesus says, what he says, and they clamor after him. They follow after him. They want to be near him because they know that he can heal them.

And so the Pharisees are seeing this. They're seeing all the attention that Jesus is getting. And Jesus, of course, calls out the Pharisees as being false teachers. So the Pharisees start devising plans, perhaps to expose Jesus before the people that Jesus doesn't really care for the teaching, which they claim to be the teaching of God.

The Pharisees will say that whatever it is that they teach, that is what God requires of us. Jesus exposes it here as being the doctrines of man, not the doctrines of God. But the Pharisees aim seems to be, if we can show the people that Jesus doesn't care about what it is that God has said, then maybe the people will see as we have been telling them that this man is not really from God.

So what we have here in this section of chapter 15, verses one through 14, we have verses one through nine is this confrontation between Jesus and the Pharisees. Verses 10 and 11, Jesus addresses the crowd.

And then in verses 12 to 14, he addresses his own disciples. So you have the Pharisees, then the crowd, then the disciples. In this particular section, the Pharisees and scribes come to Jesus from Jerusalem, and they say to him, why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders?

For they do not wash their hands when they eat bread. Now, the Pharisees are establishing here that the elders are the authority. They are the ones who are the keepers of God's law. We follow God's law, we teach God's law.

So what we say comes from God. If you wanna be a godly person, if you wanna have eternal life, you must follow what we say and you must do what we do. Now, of course, the commands that they make up, they're easier commands than what God says in his law.

They're commands that they think they're pretty good at. So if I can follow these commands, then I show myself to be holy. And then the people are gonna admire me for my piety. So this law that the elders have come up with, the tradition as they say it here, is that they wash their hands before they eat bread.

Now, this is not a matter of like, you know, a parent telling their kid, go wash your hands before you eat supper. That's a good thing to do. I tell my kids to wash up before they even grab the silverware and set the table because I don't want my silverware to be handled by dirty hands.

That's a sanitary measure. And it's perfectly okay for us to be doing that. That's not what the Pharisees were teaching here. When they are saying that you gotta wash your hands before you eat your bread, they're tying that to holiness.

You've heard the saying, cleanliness is next to godliness, right? Well, that's certainly true in a spiritual sense. But just because you wash your hands does not make you closer to God. Although this is the way that the Pharisees were teaching it.

Washing your hands is ceremonial cleanliness. It is a spiritual cleanliness. You must do this before you eat your bread because if you eat defiled bread, you've defiled your body and therefore you have done something unclean or unholy before God.

That's the way that the Pharisees were tying these things together. So it was not following the law in any particular way. We do read about washings in the law, but that's not what the Pharisees are concerned with here.

It's like they're taking those laws about washings, like the ceremonial washings that the priests had to do, for example, before they sacrificed or even after they sacrifice having to cleanse themselves.

And now they're applying that to the very way that you are supposed to eat your bread. If you don't wash your hands first, then you've done something sinful. Now, if my kids don't wash their hands before they eat, have they done something sinful?

Well, they have in the sense that they didn't obey mom and dad. If I told them to wash up before supper and they don't do it now they've disobeyed, but that's a different matter. That's breaking the command to honor your father and your mother or children obey your parents in the Lord for this is right, as said in Ephesians 6.

So that's where they would have gone wrong. It's not that not washing their hands has somehow made them unholy or sinful before God. So here the Pharisees, again, they're tying that practice into something godly.

And they're just making this up. They're not even concerned with what the law says about it. They've made up their own law that they're imposing upon the people to have to follow. And they're trying to expose Jesus according to their tradition.

Of course, they're playing by their own rules here, not by what the scripture says, but they're trying to expose Jesus and his disciples to the people as being somewhat unclean. Why are you following after this man who's unclean?

He does not have the favor of God with him for he does not keep the tradition of the elders. But Jesus as wise as he is, because of course he is the God man, he answers and says to them, why do you yourselves transgress the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?

And I just love how his response there does not even try to pander to the question that they have asked. He's not gonna play by their rules. Instead, he's gonna challenge them. You wanna try to expose me for being unholy?

Let me instead expose you. That's the way that Jesus is coming about this. But the basis for his rebuke of the Pharisees is the law of God. The basis for the Pharisees rebuke of Jesus and his disciples was their own law.

Jesus is referring to God's law. For God said, verse four, honor your father and mother. And he who speaks evil of father or mother is to be put to death. But you say, whoever says to his father or mother, whatever you might benefit from me is given to God.

He need not honor his father. And by this, you have invalidated the word of God for the sake of your tradition. So Jesus points out what the law actually says and that the Pharisees are not following it.

Instead, the Pharisees teach people that they need to take what belongs to their parents and give it to the temple, give it to God. And then by doing that, that is truly honoring their father and mother.

They've taken what belonged to their parents and they leave them essentially destitute. And then that person has no responsibility for their mother or father. For the Pharisees have taught the people that they need not honor the father.

And by this, Jesus says, you have invalidated the word of God for the sake of your tradition, giving to the temple or washing your hands or whatever else it might be, the things that these Pharisees do, adding to the law and claiming authority by their tradition.

There are many religious practices, denominations that do this very thing. In fact, the two that are easiest to point to would be the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church, both of which, or I might say Greek Orthodox, but both of which rely heavily on church tradition, heavily on tradition.

In fact, that the tradition has more authority than the scriptures do. For the things that they teach like the worship of Mary, transubstantiation, where you have the bread that transforms into the body of Christ, the cup that transforms into the blood of Christ, all of this is being added to the scripture.

It's not something that the scripture actually says. To say that you are saved by faith and works. And if someone says that you are justified by faith alone, then he has an anthema. That's part of the Catholic catechism.

So they will claim that their tradition is superior. In fact, it is by their tradition that we've even come about the books of the Bible that we have, that the church has the authority to decide the Bible.

Rather, the reality is the Bible defines the church, not the church defines the Bible. But this is the way that both the Roman Catholics and the Greek Orthodox would claim. They both claim that they gave the Bible to the church, that they have the true ties back to the apostolic roots.

And so it's through their tradition that you can truly find yourself to be holy or in a right place before God. Sounds exactly like the Pharisees here saying that it is our tradition that you must honor.

It is the tradition that you must follow. But Jesus points exactly to the law and how the Pharisees are not keeping it. In fact, have changed it and are deliberately disobeying it and teaching others to disobey it.

So Jesus says, you hypocrites. And of course, of course they're hypocrites because they were trying to expose Jesus as being the one who is unholy when the reality is they are the ones who are unholy.

Rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you, Jesus says. This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far away from me. But in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commands of men. Now we've been through this section before in our study of the book of Isaiah when we went through chapter 29.

That's where the citation is from. Isaiah 29, beginning in verse nine. Astonish yourselves and be astonished. Blind yourselves and be blind. They become drunk, but not with wine. They stagger, but not with strong drink.

For Yahweh has poured over you a spirit of deep sleep. He has shut your eyes, the prophets, and he has covered your heads, the seers. The entire vision will be to you like the words of a sealed book, which when they give it to the one who is literate saying, please read this, he will say, I cannot for it is sealed.

Then the book will be given to the one who does not know how to read a book saying, please read this and he will say, I do not know how to read a book. Then the Lord said, because this people draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but they remove their hearts far from me and their fear of me is in the command of men learned by rote.

Therefore behold, I will once again deal marvelously with this people, wondrously marvelous, and the wisdom of their wise men will perish and the discernment of their discerning men will be hidden. So there are people that will clamor for some kind of an answer, but they do not have a heart that is for God.

So God will hide the answer from them. He will blind their eyes, he will stop up their ears. So seeing they will not see and hearing they will not be able to hear. They honor God with their lips. They will say Christianese things the way we might put it today, but in their hearts, they're not really for God.

They fear men or they are in vain, pursuing things of themselves rather than worshiping the Lord. And so as Isaiah had said this of the people during his time and so Jesus says of the Pharisees during his time, in vain do they worship me teaching as doctrines, the commands of men.

So teaching as doctrines or claiming that these things are of God or are good for making a person godly and yet they are not of God at all. They are the traditions of men so that they honor themselves with their words rather than honoring the Lord according to his word.

This is as if to say God's wisdom is not enough for us. His law is not good enough. I need to help God a little bit because his law it's incomplete. So let me come up with some commands that'll help kind of finish out God's wisdom for him.

Let me kind of think God's thoughts for God. That's the arrogance by which the Pharisees do this sort of a thing. And it will always lead a person to disobey God every single time. It doesn't lead to deeper obedience because the Pharisees make up these new laws and they add to the law.

It doesn't make them more obedient. It makes them disobedient because even those laws of God, they don't follow. They follow their own tradition and fancy themselves as righteous because they're able to keep their own rules when the reality is they're not even able to do that.

As Paul exposes that in Romans 2, you hypocrite, you who pass judgment on another and yet you do the same things. We can't even follow our own standards of righteousness that we place upon everybody else.

We can't keep our own standards, let alone God's standard. God could judge us on just our own standard on judgment day. We wouldn't be able to pass our own test. So you have these Pharisees that are teaching his doctrines, claiming that they are the teaching of God, but they are instead the commands of men.

Let us be careful lest we add to God's word. It's a very, very easy thing to do. It's easier to do than you might think. In fact, you could probably reflect upon some occasions when you added a law to God's law and thought that you were being pious or holy, you thought that you were interpreting the law rightly and making an application of it and therefore your application, you were carrying that over and saying, no, this is what God has commanded when the reality is that you were actually adding to God's law.

And you know the scripture says, do not add to it and do not take away from it. Paul rebukes these very kinds of teachers in 1 Timothy chapter one, where he says desiring to be teachers of the law, yet they do not understand what they're saying or the things about which they make their confident assertions.

They might sound like they know what they're talking about, again, dressing it up with all kinds of Christian ease, but are these people who add to the law, are their hearts really for God or do they worship God in vain?

It's empty worship for it's not really for the Lord. It is self-righteousness. And so after Jesus confronts the Pharisees here, verses one through nine, he says to the crowd, Jesus called the crowd to him and he said to them, hear and understand, it is not what enters into the mouth that defiles the man, but what proceeds out of the mouth, this defiles the man.

Now this very thing that Jesus has said to the people here, this undoes what the Pharisees were teaching about washing your hands before you eat. For if you don't do that, you defile your bread, which defiles your body, which makes you defiled before God.

And Jesus is saying that what goes into the mouth is not what defiles the man, it's what comes out of him. And that is an indictment against the Pharisees because what's coming out of their mouths, stuff that's contrary to God's word.

They're even encouraging people to break God's law by saying you don't have to honor your father. If as long as you take what belongs to your father and your mother and you give it back to God, and then you've caused them to be obedient before God and you have no further obligation to your parents beyond that.

Well, they have twisted God's word and have taught people to deliberately disobey it. So Jesus saying to the people, what goes into your mouth is not gonna make you unclean, it's what comes out, just like what was coming out of the mouths of the Pharisees.

And then after Jesus addresses the people, his disciples say to him, verse 12, they came and said to him, do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this statement? But he answered and said, every plant which my heavenly father did not plant shall be uprooted.

And once again, I love Jesus' response to the disciples here. Just like he wasn't gonna play the Pharisees game, he wasn't gonna play along with what the disciples were attempting to draw Jesus' attention to.

Hey, careful, you're making the Pharisees offended. And Jesus just straight up says, every plant which my heavenly father did not plant shall be uprooted. You know, this goes all the way back to chapter 13 when we were reading the parables, these very agrarian parables, like about a sower in a field and the wheat and the tares and some of those parables that had to do with farming, these pictures that Jesus was painting about the kingdom of God.

And so he uses a very similar metaphor here with regard to plants. Every plant which my heavenly father did not plant shall be uprooted, just like going back to the wheat and the tares. The tares were not sown in the field by the father.

The tares were sown by the devil and the devil's workers. Those that my father did not plant, they're gonna be uprooted. Let them alone, Jesus says in verse 14, they are blind guides of the blind. And if a blind man guides a blind man, both will fall into a pit.

Now, what does Jesus mean by this when he says to his disciples, let them alone? Jesus is basically telling them, don't tell them to repent. Don't go after the Pharisees and call them to repentance because these things have already been said to them.

And they're gonna go right on calling Jesus a servant of Beelzebul, like we had seen earlier in Matthew's gospel. There's no helping them. Their hearts are too far from God. Jesus can make that determination because he knows what is in the heart of man.

So he can say, no matter what you do, you're not gonna be able to persuade these Pharisees. So let them be. They're blind guides and whoever follows after them is blind and the blind leading the blind, they're just gonna fall into a pit together.

This is like something that Paul shared with Timothy in 2 Timothy 4 .3. He said that the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires.

So those who are already blind are gonna go after blind guides because they heap up for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires. And those false teachers will help the false followers further their condemnation and the followers help the false teachers further their own condemnation.

It's this vicious cycle. And it is only by the grace of God that we have been broken free from the bondage of false teaching and sin and our self-righteousness and have been broken over our sin and we turn to Christ for the forgiveness of our sins.

And as a result, we wear his righteousness. It is only Jesus Christ that rescues us from false teaching by showing us the truth. For as it said in Romans 10 .17, faith comes by hearing and hearing through the word of Christ.

We will read further about what's in the heart of man. Jesus rightly reading what is in the heart of the Pharisees here. And then we're gonna hear further about what's in the heart of man in the next section of Matthew 15, which we will consider tomorrow.

Let's finish here with prayer. Heavenly father, I pray that we would be convicted of heart, that we would not go after our own commands and call them the law of God, thinking that we're doing something righteous, we're doing something good, we're even making people's lives better because we need to help God in his wisdom a little bit by making these applications and inventing laws that are not actually in God's word.

May that be far from our minds. May we be more careful in our right handling of the word of truth. For Peter says in 2 Peter 3 .16, that there are ignorant and unstable men who twist the scriptures to their own destruction.

May that not be us, may we be wise, may we be in subjection to what it is that we read in God's word, not trying to make God's word subject to us, but we're subject to God's word and help us to follow it and obey it and then help one another in this walk of righteousness that we are in by the guidance of Christ our savior.

It's in Jesus name that we pray, amen.

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