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Matthew 15:1-28 portrays Jesus, the King of kings, as the Lord of the heart. Tune in to see Jesus confront Pharisees and Scribes, but commend an ‘unclean’ gentile woman. #gulp
Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, �But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.
In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we�re called by the Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.
Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.
Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth and we welcome you to the show. Why is it called No Compromise Radio? I have no idea. No, just kidding. It started off with �I�m not going to compromise.
And I don�t like it when people do, so I�m going to talk about it. Then the more I understood my own self-righteousness and my own failings, I thought, �Well, let�s make it No Compromise Radio because let�s talk about Jesus, the only man who never compromised, and let�s talk about Him regularly.
�I always do the things that are pleasing to the Father is what Jesus said, and it was true. �This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. The Father said that about the Son. And then also, let�s talk a lot about Christ�s work, that is, even the pinnacle of His work, His death on a cross.
So we talk about how He never compromised, that�s representation, as He was doing this and living, keeping the law, fulfilling the law. And then His substitutionary work, because none of the attributes of God were compromised at Calvary.
And then in light of that, I don�t want to compromise. How about that? That is No Compromise Radio. I am No Compromise Radio. Remember the What�s Up Doc movie with Ryan O�Neill and Barbra Streisand? One guy says, �I am you.
Quit saying that! Every Christmas we watch that as a family. Could be the funniest movie ever. Quit saying that! �I am you. Don�t you know the definition of propriety? We�re talking about Jesus in Matthew 15.
That�s where we left off last time. Remember Jesus is after the Pharisees and the scribes who think that cleanliness before God can be determined by them, i .e. tradition, elevated over Scripture. And then they don�t even have to really do things with a hard attitude toward God.
That�s what we were looking at last time in Matthew 15. Jesus rebuked them and said, �This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.
And they were trying to, that is the scribes and Pharisees, and in this particular case listed as Pharisees and scribes, they did all kinds of things with money instead of giving it to their parents.
They pronounced it as Corban. They needed to say, �This is given to God. And now they�re not going to care for their parents. And they are exposed by Jesus, these Pharisees and scribes, as hypocrites.
And they only do things externally is problem one. Problem two, it�s just human tradition. You just make this stuff up. Therefore, Jesus is now in verse 10 going to get to the real issue. And the reason why we�re doing this little mini-series here is because the world is filled of full of people who can�t be offended anymore.
They can�t be told anything without them personally taking offense. And I disagree, that hurt my feelings. We are weak as a society. We are infantile as a society. We are just immature. I don�t mean there aren�t godly ladies.
There are. And I think of very strong godly ladies like even my wife. But now the men in society and the women in society are acting like immature girls. And I don�t mean girls as male, female. I mean girls like 10, 10 years old.
That�s how people are acting. I think that a lot of men are effeminate. That�s true. But let�s not have the godly ladies take any blame for that and say, �Well, being feminine is the problem. That�s not the problem.
The problem is it�s an immature femininity found in men and an immature femininity found in women, to be honest. That�s our society. You can�t tell me. And maybe even that makes you offended. I don�t know.
What does Jesus do? Well, whatever he does is right. That�s the first thing. I mean, I talk to my students about this a lot when it comes to preaching. If your view of expository preaching excludes Jesus and his preaching as not the right thing to do, then your definition of expository preaching ought to change.
I think we get established from Isaiah 59 and 61 when Jesus opens up the scrolls or they�re opened up and handed to him in Luke 4. It probably was sequential. There�s probably something to be said for that that we can say, �Probably Jesus had that in mind.
Just kind of this next section of scripture that he talked about. He comes into the synagogue on that designed day that happened to be talking about the Messiah. But if you have your definition of expository preaching, talking about authorial intent, I think that�s going to be easier for you to prove that Jesus, when he was preaching, he was all about the author�s intent.
Well, now when it comes to Jesus and what he does, what he says to these men is going to be offensive. Some would call it maybe hate speech. This is offensive. Yet, he�s trying to tell the truth. Well, he�s not trying to tell the truth.
He�s telling the truth and he�s trying to show them their own hearts. That�s what�s going on here. For you in particular, dear listener, when you evangelize, people are going to be upset. I was in Santa Cruz not that long ago.
I don�t like the man�s style of preaching. It was a sign up there, Romans 1, 19 -21, �There are no such thing as atheists. Prove me wrong. I didn�t really like the approach. It�s just already aggressive enough, standing on a little soapbox with a little speaker.
When I was standing there, somebody threw two eggs at him in a car as it drove by. Others were yelling and things like that, but it�s offensive when you talk about sin. To his credit, he did talk about sin and the Savior, so that was good.
What was I doing that night? I wasn�t up evangelizing, so I can criticize what he�s doing, but I was actually going to go see a movie with my family, which there�s nothing wrong with. It was a Bethany Hamilton movie, too, with some Bible verses.
I like that one scene, remember, when Bethany Hamilton spoke in front of President Obama, and she was just preaching away. I�m not for women preachers or anything like that, but in that culture of our past president for those eight years, there wasn�t a whole lot of talk about sin and Jesus, at least from what I saw on TV.
But go, Bethany. Jesus, whatever he does here, just remember, it�s going to be the right thing. He�s going to expose the real heart issue. Remember because hypocrisy is going to be externals, and then I don�t care about my heart.
That�s not how God wants to be worshiped. So for all of us, myself included, as we think through this, how do we worship God? What is it like to have heart worship, and that heart worship, of course, is tied to the Word.
We just can�t have, like, emotive stuff. We do whatever we want. No. There�s a prescribed way to worship. Matthew 15, 10, �And he called the people to him and said to them, �Hear and understand. It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth that defiles a person.
They didn�t wash their hands rightly. They got that weird demon on them. Now you take your hands that have weird uncleanliness demon stuff, you pick up the food and put it in your mouth, and in goes the uncleanness, in goes the demon, or whatever.
What goes into the mouth, right? Dirty food from dirty hands. And he�s not talking about, you know, some kind of weird food. I think you can see the connection. �He called the people to him and said, �By the way, Mark records it this way.
After he called the multitude to him again, he began saying to them, �Listen to me, all of you, and understand. Pay attention. This is important. There�s a deeper issue of defilement. It�s not just a surface thing.
It�s a corruption thing. It�s a depravity thing. This runs deep, deeply. What did the Pharisees say? Well, it�s all about unclean hands. Jesus contradicts them. He says the opposite. That�s not true. I�m after purified hearts and your extra rules of kosher stuff.
I don�t really care about. Remember Psalm 24, �Who may ascend the hill of the Lord, who may stand in his holy place, he who has clean hands and a pure heart. You�re just going to get the dirt off? Is that what he wants?
Clean hands? If you want to worship the Lord and ascend the holy place, you just need to have clean hands. Clean plate club, clean hands club. Verse 12, Matthew 15, �Then the disciples came and said to him, �Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying
Did you know that? You think Jesus knew that? I think probably Jesus knew that because that�s what Jesus was trying to do. He�s trying to show them their heart. That�s the whole point of this. Heart, heart, heart, heart.
Look at this section in Matthew 15. See how many times you find the word heart. He's trying to expose their heart. If you think, well, he's not being too nice. Is this speaking the truth in love? I think so.
You can't argue with this. They�re offended, he answered. With more offense. Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up. The Father never planted these Pharisees and they�re going to be dug up.
Verse 14, I mean it gets worse. Let them alone. I mean, could those be the worst words ever? They say, you know, in a marriage if you want to know what�s the worst, not if your spouse is mad at you. I mean, if they�re mad at you, they care, but if they just say, I don�t care, let them alone, whatever.
Let them alone? Can you imagine Jesus saying that? Let alone to your own devices, to your own ways of self-salvation, your own ways of trying to get rid of sin off your back and out of your mind and off your heart.
And does the blind lead the blind? Both will fall into the pit. Because just a second ago, he�s, I forgot the words, they are blind guides. Let them alone, they�re blind guides. Just let them go. How about, that�s even worse maybe.
They�re blind guides and now just let them go? Well, they�re just going to keep walking off the cliff. Peter said to him, explain this parable, explain the parable to us. And he said, are you also still without understanding?
Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is expelled? So you�ve got dirty hands because you didn�t clean things off the right way or some weird demons on your hands or whatever ceremonial washings and all the things that the Jews required as leaders that don�t have anything to do with the Bible.
This is all going deeper. We want to talk about the heart. We want to talk about the issues of the heart. If you eat some weird food, that�s not what he�s talking about, but if you eat food with dirty hands that weren�t washed according to tradition, it goes in the stomach and comes out.
That doesn�t do anything. But there�s something in there that doesn�t come out. But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart and this defiles a person. You can�t get rid of your own dirty heart.
And by the way, I know you�ve got a dirty heart because what comes out of your mouth tells me what�s in your heart. It�s connected. And Jesus now gives a reason for what he said, for the real root source of the problem, the fountain.
For out of the heart come, and by the way, I think these things were in the hearts of the Pharisees and scribes. They�re certainly in my heart and yours. Evil thoughts. They had evil thoughts about Jesus for certain.
Murder. They wanted to kill him and did. Adultery. Who knows what was going on behind the scenes with these people. I think you can probably make a good correlation that if it�s not physical, it�s mental.
Looking at ladies. Sexual immorality. Theft. They were stealing people�s money, right? Corban. Stealing even their parents� money. False witness. They�re saying things about God that�s not true. Slander.
Every one of these things. You can probably tie directly to those leaders. These are what defile a person. It�s a heart issue, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone. When you look at the Ten Commandments, you see a lot of these things, do you not?
Excuse me. So sorry about that. Maybe I ate something that defiled me. I just had to push mute there for a second. Hopefully it�s not muted now. Wow. Adultery. Fornications. So sexual sin. False witnesses.
All this stuff. That�s coming out of your heart. That�s how we know you need a new heart. You need to be a new creation. You need to be regenerated. I mean, if your view of sin is, you know, you just did some boo-boos, then maybe you don�t need a new heart.
But if you�ve got a right view of sin, a biblical view of sin, innermost being as defiled and depraved and wicked, then something else is going to have to happen. By the way, Mark 7 gives us some extra words of Jesus here, because it does not go into his heart, but into his stomach and is eliminated.
And then here�s the parathenical statement, and you can all rejoice for this. �Thus he declared all foods clean. By the way, you know, Seventh-day Adventist and all their food laws and everything else, that�s my verse for them.
He declared all foods clean. Except cheese, except butter, except meat. Ellen G. White said, �Don�t give your kids eggs. Don�t give your kid cheese. How can ministers eat meat? Well, here�s the answer.
Jesus has nothing to say about Levitical food laws in Leviticus 11 and other places. He�s not saying, �Don�t do what the Bible says. But he�s saying what? Sin comes from the heart. You�re trying to do all these things that the Pharisees say with traditions.
That�s not the issue. The issue isn�t food. The issue is, what about obeying God and His Word? Just these little traditions that you make up aren�t going to cleanse you. As a matter of fact, look at the leaders.
They�re blind guys. This is not working. All foods are clean, but all hearts are what? Unclean. That�s the point. That�s the point. You think food is the problem? You think hands are the problem? The problem has a source.
The food isn�t the problem. Hands are the problem in the sense that they�re connected to the heart and they do what the heart desires. But it�s an internal issue. That�s the thing. And they proceed from within heart, mind, will, conscience, memory, understanding, mental faculties.
That�s the problem. Why were these Pharisees so mad? Because they thought their traditions and their food laws and their own self-righteousness was enough to put a patch on themselves so that they would be right before God.
And that�s what happens with religion and with traditions. You then begin to think you can actually live up to them, and that�s called self-righteousness. Instead of saying to Jesus, �You�re right. You�re right.
Help. You�re right. You�re the Lord. Have mercy. You�re right. You�re the son of David. When you evangelize people and you talk about sin and you say, �Yes, in fact, I�m this way too, but so are you.
I mean, they get mad. Who are you to tell me? I think about my grandma and how I was evangelizing grandpa, and she freaked because we�re getting to the heart of the issue, and people don�t want to recognize how wicked they are.
I mean, remember that old show title, �Something Wicked This Way Comes. Maybe that�s from Shakespeare. I�m proving my ignorance. It must be Shakespeare or something like that. Tolstoy. I always say, �Think to myself.
This is how I do things compared to the Lord. Lord is happy to do things through weak people who aren�t the somebodies of the world. First Corinthians 1. If I was going to try to make me the pastor and create a machine super-pastor, I would have had my mom as Hebrew, my dad Greek.
I could have learned both languages growing up. I could have lived on a farm when we would have been sheep herders. Do you herd sheep? Sheep tenders? Shepherds? I would have learned a lot about sheep.
Probably lived in the Middle East for a while, so I could think in an Eastern way. I probably would have been not born in Nebraska, like these 11 guys following Jesus in Galilee. I mean, come on. I would have wanted to be the guy from the city, right?
The big city. Oh, I guess that�s Judas. So anyway, aren�t you glad, dear listeners, that in spite of who we are and our backgrounds and everything else, the Lord can use us anyway? I�m thrilled by that.
I�m happy. Even if I can�t pronounce certain words, even if I don�t know about, who knows what, Shakespeare and learned Hebrew two or three times, forgot all four. Some words in Hebrew I still remember, Olam, right?
I remember certain words, but not as many as I wish I could. Anyway, you can go to Israel with us, by the way. You don�t have to know any Hebrew to go. You can just, you know, here�s one word, lo, l-o means no.
That�s an easy one. Some words you probably know, but anyway, you can go with us November. I hope to put out some info, but it will be February 2021, probably the last 10 days. We want to have an extension to Rome, because then you can learn about Rome too.
Anyway, you�re evangelizing, you get to the Bible, you look at sin through the lens of God�s law, and people don�t like it. I mean, yes, if God�s drawing, we�re going to get there soon enough, but lots of people just act this way, right?
And they�re not crying out for mercy. They�re not crying out with confession. They�re not crying out with admission. This is all true. God exposes the heart. Jesus, the great heart surgeon, he exposes all this, and what do people do?
They make excuses, and they usually make it through religion. These people don�t think they need salvation, right? That�s what self-righteousness does. It is not those who are well who need a physician, but those who are sick.
I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. That�s what Jesus said. You don�t see Jesus flattering these people. You see him offending them. Their pride and their desire for preeminence and their own self-righteousness has so blinded them that they think they�re good.
They think Jesus is the problem. I mean, the one man who perfectly lived and obeyed the law, people killed, right? That�s how that�s going to work out. And for you, when it comes to your evangelism, you�re going to deal with a lot of self-righteous people.
I know self-righteousness when I see it, when I am it, when I are it. You bristle when people tell you things that contradict your own self-righteousness and your own way you�ve got figured out how to stand before God.
People don�t like that at all. That�s why Spurgeon said the greatest enemy to human souls is the self-righteous spirit which makes men look to themselves for salvation. Self-righteousness exclaims, �I will not be saved in God�s way.
I will make a new road to heaven. I will not bow before God�s grace. I will not accept the atonement which God has wrought out in the person of Jesus. I will be my own Redeemer. I will enter heaven by my own strength and glorify my own merits.
You think God�s happy with that kind of self-righteousness? No. You�re going to be on the receiving end of, yes, eternal judgment, but temporal, offensive, blasting speech offensive to you, loving from the Savior to say, �Listen, you�ve got cancer.
It�s a spiritual cancer. Well, we�re going to look more at this next time, where in Matthew 15 we�re talking about Jesus exposing hearts, and when we preach the gospel and we�re talking about the law so they need the good news, people aren�t going to like it.
Unless, of course, the Father�s drawing. We�re going to talk about that, too, because you�re going to see a tie-in with the woman who is in the next section of Scripture. My name is Mike Abendroth. No Compromise Radio.
You can write me, Mike, at NoCompromiseRadio .com, or you can go to the NoCompromiseRadio .com if you want to order the Sexual Fidelity Book or a cheap version of Things That Go Bump in the Church.
No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible-teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God�s Word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.
Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We�re right on Route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.