1. "One seems to love the sign of marriage. The other seems to embody marriage by loving the spouse that he's married to."

2. "The human heart is so evil that we can even use commands of God for evil ends and purposes. We can even take things that appear to be honoring to the Lord and do them really for our own self-serving ends. All the while looking religious and respectable. That's a pretty sophisticated level of evil. That seems pretty natural to the human heart."

3. "Jesus was teaching the people who would follow Him that purity was not, did not consist in eating the right food, but rather in eating food for the right reason."

4. "My friend, if you think you're basically okay, you will never be okay with God. Your only hope is to begin to know the truth."

5. "There is no good news if you don't first hear the bad."

6. "However much we may need to guard ourselves from sinful circumstances outside of us, we need to guard ourselves even more from sinful desires within us."

7. "If you're not willing to offend the right people in public teaching, you shouldn't be teaching. When you're in a fallen world, that doesn't mean anything I say that's stupid and offensive is thereby baptized and sanctified. But offense is part of the necessary work of true teaching in a fallen world."

8. "Religions and philosophies which think the fundamental answers are in what we do have fundamentally failed to grasp what Jesus teaches here. That it is who we are. It is what we love. That is our deepest problem."

9. "As long as there is a holy God in whose image we've been made and against whom we have sinned, our most basic identity will never be as a victim. More fundamental to who we are than one who has been sinned against, we are all sinners who have sinned against an all and only good God."

10. "Even if we are staggered at the enormity of the evil in our own hearts, we are even more stunned by the depth of your love for us in Christ."

Observation Questions

1. In Matthew 15:1-2, who came to Jesus from Jerusalem, and what specific accusation did they bring against His disciples?

2. According to Matthew 15:3-6, what Old Testament commandment did Jesus cite, and how did He say the Pharisees were breaking it through their tradition about "Corban" (dedicating something to God)?

3. In Matthew 15:7-9, what prophecy from Isaiah did Jesus quote, and what two contrasts does it highlight about the Pharisees' worship?

4. What revolutionary statement did Jesus make to the crowds in Matthew 15:10-11 about what does and does not defile a person?

5. In Matthew 15:13-14, how did Jesus describe the Pharisees when His disciples expressed concern about offending them, and what warning did He give about following them?

6. According to Matthew 15:18-19, what specific evils did Jesus say proceed from the heart and defile a person?

Interpretation Questions

1. Why is Jesus' distinction between "the tradition of the elders" (v. 2) and "the commandment of God" (v. 3) so significant for understanding true religion and proper spiritual authority?

2. How does Jesus' teaching in verse 11 about defilement coming from within rather than from external foods represent a fundamental shift in understanding the nature of sin and holiness?

3. What does Jesus mean when He says in verse 13 that "every plant that My heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up," and what does this reveal about the spiritual legitimacy of the Pharisees' leadership?

4. Why does Jesus connect the heart so directly to moral defilement in verses 18-20, and how does this teaching challenge both religious externalism and the modern belief that humans are basically good inside?

5. How does Jesus' teaching here help us understand the relationship between the ceremonial laws of the Old Testament (like food laws) and the moral law (like honoring parents), and why is this distinction important for Christians today?

Application Questions

1. The Pharisees used religious traditions and even God's commands to avoid more difficult obligations like caring for aging parents. In what ways might you be tempted to use "spiritual" activities or excuses to avoid relational responsibilities God has given you—whether toward family, neighbors, or fellow church members?

2. Jesus taught that defilement comes from within, not from external circumstances. When you sin in speech or action, how often do you blame external factors (stress, other people's behavior, your upbringing) rather than acknowledging that the problem originates in your own heart? What would change if you took full responsibility?

3. The sermon emphasized cultivating friendships where people tell you honest truth about your life (Proverbs 24:26). Do you have relationships where someone knows you well enough to lovingly confront you? What steps could you take this week to invite that kind of honest feedback?

4. Jesus listed specific sins that come from the heart: evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, and slander. Which of these categories (including their root attitudes like hatred, lust, covetousness, or deception) do you most need to confess and ask God to change in your heart?

5. The sermon contrasted loving the "sign" of something (like Tom and his wedding ring) versus loving the substance (like Bill and his wife Betty). In your own spiritual life, are there religious practices or symbols you focus on while neglecting the relationship with God they are meant to represent? What would it look like to shift your focus to the substance this week?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Isaiah 29:9-16 — This passage, which Jesus quoted in Matthew 15:8-9, provides the fuller context of God's indictment against those who honor Him with their lips while their hearts are far from Him.

2. Mark 7:1-23 — Mark's parallel account of this same encounter includes the explanatory note that Jesus declared all foods clean, helping clarify the implications of Jesus' teaching about defilement.

3. Acts 10:9-35 — This passage shows Peter receiving a vision from God that further clarified Jesus' teaching about clean and unclean foods, preparing him to bring the gospel to the Gentile Cornelius.

4. Jeremiah 17:5-10 — This passage describes the deceitfulness of the human heart and God's searching of hearts and minds, reinforcing Jesus' teaching about the source of moral defilement.

5. Matthew 23:23-28 — In this later teaching, Jesus expands on His critique of the Pharisees, emphasizing the "weightier matters of the law" and condemning those who clean the outside of the cup while being full of greed and self-indulgence within.

Sermon Main Topics

I. Illustration: Two Kinds of Love for Marriage—Tom Loves the Sign, Bill Loves the Spouse

II. Confrontation About Authority: Jesus Rebukes the Pharisees for Elevating Human Tradition Over God's Word (Matthew 15:1-9)

III. Confusion About Sin: Jesus Teaches the Crowds That Defilement Comes from Within, Not from External Foods (Matthew 15:10-11)

IV. Confession About Ourselves: Jesus Explains to the Disciples That Evil Proceeds from the Heart (Matthew 15:12-20)

V. Application: We Need Forgiveness and a New Heart That Only Jesus Can Give

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Detailed Sermon Outline

Tom and Bill both love marriage, but in different ways.

Tom loves marriage, and you can tell it, by the way, he's always talking about it. He extols its virtues, makes a big deal of special days. You can especially tell by how Tom loves his wedding ring. The ring always draws attention. It's probably polished and shined every day.

He's always ready to give a lecture on what it stands for: one circle going on and on, together as a whole, completed as one. Tom shows his wedding ring off by making it prominent. In countless ways, so much it's just become effortless. It's part of who Tom is. He's incorporated it even into his good morning greeting with a kind of hand wave, pause, a look over at his ring, a smile, and a look back at the person he's greeting.

He's incorporated it into his conversation. When he's being thoughtful, he'll often hold it up and say something like, I wonder what this topic, whatever they're discussing, would mean for my marriage. Well, everyone around the office knows that Tom loves his wedding ring. They can all tell you the story of how he found it, where he was, and how lucky he feels to have gotten it.

And then there's Bill.

Bill is like Tom in that he loves marriage. But it's also kind of different than Tom. Bill has a wedding ring, but it doesn't stand out. I guess no one has ever heard Bill talk about it. He doesn't talk about his ring at all, really.

But he does talk about Betty, his wife of 40 years. He sings her praises again and again. He makes a big deal of her birthday and their anniversary. Everybody knows that Bill loves Betty. People comment on it.

There's not a day that goes by, even when he's traveling, that he's not praying for Betty and talking to her and finding out about her day and how she is. He's always ready to talk to others too about Betty when he's making decisions. It's common for him to say something like, I wonder what Betty would think of this. Everyone around the office knows that Bill loves Betty. They can all tell you the story of how they met and where they were and how lucky Bill feels to have married Betty.

Now I wonder if you can sense something of the difference between those two marriage loves.

One seems to love the sign of marriage. The other seems to embody marriage by loving the spouse that he's married to.

I think that's something of the difference that the disciples of Jesus must have been learning as they watched their rabbi Jesus interact with the official religious leaders of the day.

These leaders were all about the signs of their religion. They were about the worship at the temple. They were about the circumcision, the Sabbath, the keeping of the kosher food laws, along with a hundred other traditions and practices. Jesus seemed radically different than that. It was as if He was about what all those symbols pointed to.

So they were about religious ceremonies. Jesus was about knowing and obeying God. They were about keeping kosher. Jesus was about being morally holy. They were about religion.

Jesus was about love. Love for others so radical that it could only flow from a fundamental love for God. And from that love for God would flow a love for every other creature made in His image.

This is where we find ourselves this morning in Matthew chapter 15. Jesus and His disciples had just had a most remarkable couple of days recorded in chapter 14. Unparalleled miracles of food provided in the wilderness and delivering His people through the dangers of the sea, as He had brought them out in this true Exodus, out from under the dominion of sin and death and darkness. That had been symbolized as He had not only saved the 5,000 and then His own disciples on the sea, but then He also spent a day healing the sick.

What attention do you think would have come to Jesus because of all of this activity?

Well, enough attention that His miracles had brought Jesus to the notice of the national religious leaders. So some boys came down from headquarters to check Jesus out. We read about this in our passage for this morning, Matthew chapter 15, beginning at verse 1. You'll find it on page 820 of the Bible's provided. Listen now as I read about this encounter.

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 when they eat. He answered them, 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.

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 as doctrines the commandments of men.

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, this defiles a person.

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

He answered, Every plant that My heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up. Let them alone. They are blind guides. And if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit. But Peter said to him, 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? But whatever 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.

Well, look at this in order of the three audiences. That Jesus is addressing. First, when He's talking to the Pharisees, they're in verses 1 to 9.

And then when He calls the public to Him, in verses 10 and 11, and addresses the crowds, the people.

And then from verses 12 to 20, when the disciples come to Him, and He's talking to the disciples. And what we'll find is a confrontation about authority. With the Pharisees, some confusion about sin that Jesus clears up with the people, and then a confession really about ourselves that Jesus leads the disciples to understand. I pray that as we work through this passage, your faith in God and His Word will grow, even as you come to understand more about the nature of sin and even of your own heart. So let's dig in, all right?

Number one, confrontation about authority. Look again there at the beginning of the passage there in chapter 15, verse 1. 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 when they eat.' He answered them, '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, 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 as doctrines the the commandments of men.

The mention of Jerusalem is unusual. Jerusalem has not been seen much in Matthew's gospel to this point. It's mentioned back in chapter 2 a couple of times when the wise men go there, it's 30 years earlier. And then it's mentioned as the place where the people were coming out to be baptized by John the Baptist. And then in chapter 4, saying that great crowds were coming from there to hear the teaching of Jesus when His public ministry began.

But now here in chapter 15 verse 1, Jerusalem is the place from which these religious inquisitors came to test Jesus. We can easily imagine the scene. The religious leaders came to Jesus from Jerusalem. That's all Matthew tells us here. I wonder, was this a kind of official inquiry?

Why all of a sudden do they come from Jerusalem? Crowds have been coming, but never before in the gospel is it mentioned that religious leaders had come from Jerusalem specifically to see Jesus. Now, of course, true religious leaders should have known of the miracles Jesus had just performed and the significance of those miracles. But who knows what these teachers specifically had heard or what they were thinking? It's telling that they came though with a question and that that question seemed like an accusation.

But interesting, it's about a practice that is not mentioned in the Old Testament. It's not a biblical practice. You see it right there?

You got it right. The Pharisees were concerned. They were upset because the disciples weren't washing their hands before they ate. But their concern was not like yours or mine about kids coming to the table before they'd wash their hands. Their concern wasn't hygiene, it was holiness.

From what we can tell, this was a tradition which seemed to develop around the time of the exile several hundred years earlier. They bring this concern to Jesus Like an accusation, Jesus then in verse 3 sharply answered their criticism with a much more fundamental criticism of their treatment of God's commandments. And he actually quotes from Exodus 20 and Exodus 21. You see, even in this, Jesus is teaching these religious leaders what should have been their concern. Their concern should have been with what God had revealed in His Word, with what God had instructed us about.

There were many things He could talk about from the things that God was concerned about, that God cared about, that God loved. That's what they should have been concerned about. And even by raising this criticism of them, Jesus is teaching them that. He summarizes His criticism of these religious teachers there in verse 7 by openly calling them hypocrites. And he cites another Scripture, this time from Isaiah.

Now so far in Jesus' teaching in Matthew's Gospel, Jesus has used the word hypocrite, but it's really just been an unnamed kind of type of a religious person in the Sermon on the Mount. It's the example that's to be avoided. It's the kind of people who have much bigger problems than you, but come to talk to you about your problem. That's what Jesus calls a hypocrite. Well, in Jesus' last week in Jerusalem, he will talk about hypocrites a lot more.

In Matthew 23 and 24, he will blast the Pharisees publicly, repeatedly denouncing them as hypocrites. In fact, in Matthew 24, we find that Jesus says hypocrisy will characterize the inhabitants of hell.

But since the religious teachers had come all this way from Jerusalem, Jesus figured that they should be confronted over their elevation of the commandments of men over the commandments of God. Such disrespect to God and His Word was always bad, but it was especially bad from those who were passing them off as teachers of God's Word.

The problem Jesus was confronting here showed itself in different ways. There were these traditions of men which were eclipsing the clear instruction of the Word of God. But these Pharisees we see throughout the Gospels were very clever. They could even use God's Word itself, God's rules, in a way that was a misuse, really a manipulation, to use a divine command in a self-serving, sinful way. Effectively to protect them from other divine commands.

So using kind of easier one to protect them from obeying a more difficult one. Like thinking keeping kosher food laws allowed you maybe then to ignore the Ten Commandments in these certain situations. Well Jesus taught that lesser matters should be ordered according to greater matters, not vice versa. You don't try to order things for your immediate convenience You try to see what does God care about, and you make those the weightier matters. That which you give your time and best effort to.

Jesus would be most clear about that a little later in Matthew 23. This is good enough for you to turn over there. Maybe even put this down as a cross-reference. Matthew 23, verse 23, He's in the middle of denouncing the scribes and Pharisees as hypocrites. And he says here in verse 23 of chapter 23, Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faithfulness.

These you ought to have done without neglecting the others.

You see, when they were wanting to use the commandments as a smorgasbord to pick and choose from at their own convenience, Jesus was clearly saying, Look, these are weightier than these, and you of all people should know that and recognize that, and you should be careful to do that, and that's no excuse for ignoring these others. So He's not scared to have a matter of perspective inside the Law saying some things are more important. That's no dishonoring to God who's the author of all of them. That's what Jesus Himself teaches very clearly here in Matthew 23. But they seem to have no sense of moral perspective.

And as I reflect on the example of the Pharisees, I'm struck that the human heart is so evil that we can even use commands of God for evil ends and purposes. We can even take things that appear to be honoring to the Lord and do them really for our own self-serving ends. All the while looking religious and respectable.

That's a pretty sophisticated level of evil. That seems pretty natural to the human heart.

I think that's why Jesus delivers this severe condemnation when He quotes Isaiah 29, He dismisses their worship as worthless because they've replaced the authority of God's Word with their own.

My Christian brother or sister, are you ever tempted not to do something that you should do? Maybe at work and give some pious excuse.

Do you use your time at work in a way that would please both the Lord and your boss?

Can you do that? Are you confident you can do that? That would be good to pray about. Ask the Lord to show you the truth about your own life and practices. We don't want to fall into the error of the Roman church, which raises human traditions to equal authority to Scripture.

We want to work to have more affection and piety and reverence for what we read in the Bible than other practices that just seem normal to us, like meeting at 10:30. As opposed to 11 or 11:30. We wanna have devotion to the things of God that he has revealed. That's why we work hard as a church to have our public times together taken up with those things that God commands us to do. So we don't just sit around and spitball ideas.

We're like, Hey, what'd be fun to do this coming Sunday morning? Well, you know, we haven't had a Jello fight in a while. That'll get their attention. I mean, we could do that. I'm sure we could craft it somehow to the glory of God.

But what we do instead is we do those things that God has commanded his people to do when they gather. And we do those things every week because he has told us to do them. And to make sure that we don't substitute that with other things, we try to keep having sermons like this one that are taken from Scripture where we don't go with a certain agenda that we're trying to forward, oh, this would be a good, text of Scripture to say this, rather we're just going through Matthew and whatever there is, we're gonna faithfully try to study and understand and give it to you. And if we're in one book for a long time that has one emphasis, some people might think, well this church just emphasizes this or this. Well, hang on for two or three years.

We go around through different parts of the Bible and we try to reproduce What God emphasizes in His Word in our church. We do it imperfectly, but that's what we're trying to do. So we mean to have the right authority, the Word of God. But Jesus goes on from confronting the religious leaders about having the wrong authority, to talk to the crowds in general about a common confusion about sin. And this is number two, this confusion about sin.

Look at there, verses 10 and 11.

Matthew, chapter 15, verses 10 and 11, 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, this defiles a person.

Okay, Jesus wanted people to be understanding sin better than these hypocritical teachers had been understanding sin.

So Jesus conveys one of the most revolutionary ideas in all the gospels right here in verse 11. If you're going to underline the most shocking verse to the first century Jew in Matthew's gospel, maybe in all four gospels, it's this verse. Along with its parallel in Mark's gospel, which in Mark's gospel, Mark even adds a little parenthesis afterwards saying, By this all foods were declared clean so that nobody would miss it. Mark added that at the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit did not so inspire Matthew to add that parenthesis.

So in Matthew we just have this statement of Jesus. But it is a bald statement that seems to fly against what God had revealed in Leviticus 10 and 11 and other places in the Old Testament, things that had built the Jewish identity. This was an amazing statement that Jesus made in verse 11. Look at it again. It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth.

This defiles a person. You see with their religious teachers, what looked like a pious fulfillment of religious law was actually an evasion laid out in God's law. This is what the traditions had come to, said Jesus. Instead of protecting the laws, the religious teachers like these scribes and Pharisees had plundered them. They had hollowed them out.

They had left the word standing, but they had completely defeated the point and purpose of them. That was what the Pharisees' attempt to protect the law had done in their zeal for their own traditions. Even among God's laws, some were more convenient to keep than others, and some were more important. We see those tools of understanding even laying around in the Old Testament. Remember when Saul offered a sacrifice?

And Samuel comes up to him in 1 Samuel 15, and he says that God desired obedience rather than sacrifice. Ah, two things commanded by God, but a clear priority of one over the other. Sounds very much like the prophet Hosea in Hosea 6:6 when Hosea says that mercy is better than sacrifice. Again, sacrifice gets the short end of the stick. It's not that sacrifice is bad, but mercy is even better.

So you see in the Scriptures of the Hebrews there were tools there to understand that there were moral priorities that should shape their reasoning. But never had it been put as sharply and clearly and sweepingly as Jesus puts it here. So here in verse 11, Jesus redefines for them the nature of defilement. And when you redefine the nature of defilement, the negative, you're redefining the positive, the nature of purity. What is the holiness?

What is the good that you're going for? Such redefining of defilement for the average Jew would be so revolutionary because it would affect them every day and several times a day. Whereas if you're just talking about circumcision, you're talking about something that happens once to half the people. If you're just talking about an annual festival of the temple, that Jesus is replacing, that's an annual festival, it happens once. It's not unimportant, but it just happens once.

Even if you're talking about the kind of wedding ring of God's people, the Sabbath. The Sabbath happened once a week. But friends, the food laws, God in His wisdom knowing if He wanted to separate His people from the other nations of the earth, He would give them certain food laws, so that several times a day they would have to be separated off from others. He knew that by giving them those food laws, he would accomplish the building of an ethnically separate group of people specifically to be preparing them for the coming of his Messiah. Unlike the mere human traditions that Jesus was confronting in the Pharisees' priorities, here Jesus makes a division in God's own law that He had given to the nation of Israel, a division that Christians would come to call the moral law and the ceremonial law.

So the food laws that are in God's law in Leviticus 10 and 11 and elsewhere, those food laws Jesus clearly places in the ceremonial category, not in the weightier moral category. So when defilement is talked about in the Old Testament, it's interesting. It's not really associated with food. It's associated with sexual sin or idolatrous worship. Here Jesus clearly was teaching the people that ceremonial defilement was not the same as moral defilement.

Now consider how fundamental this is for us knowing what we should do. The fact that some truths are more important than other truths.

We just read that in Jesus' teaching in Matthew 23, didn't we? The weightier matters of the Law. It's not that anything we do as Christians is unimportant to God. No. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10:31, Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God.

Friend, our motive in eating, rather than what ceremonial category the food is in, Our motive is what pleases God.

It is Jesus who here begins to declare one of the most important changes between the national ethnic covenant God had made with Israel and the international spiritual new covenant as Jesus called it, that God was establishing with his people through Jesus. And this is why Paul could later write in Romans 14, I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself, but it is unclean for anyone who thinks it is unclean. As Paul advised Timothy in 1 Timothy 4, everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving. You see, Jesus is teaching the people who would follow Him that purity was not to eat the right food, but to eat food for the right reason. Let me say that again.

Jesus was teaching the people who would follow Him that purity was not, did not consist in eating the right food, but rather in eating food for the right reason. So these food laws in the Old Testament were useful for the time when God was building a people ethnically distinct from the rest of the world to be taught His moral law in preparation for the coming of the Messiah. But now that the Messiah had come and God was wanting his people to go and preach to the nations, he didn't want his food separating them anymore. The time for that kind of ethnic separation was over. So God would later give Peter a vision which would clarify that and make that point to him again.

Because even though Mark says in that parenthesis that that's what Jesus meant by this statement, Peter did not seem to get it. Even after he preaches the sermon at Pentecost. He did not seem to get it. Even after the Samaritans were coming to Christ, he did not seem to get it. So when he's in Joppa, he has this vision in Acts chapter 10.

Three times the Lord lifts down this sheet full of unclean food. And what did he say? Don't say that anything I've made is unclean. Nothing I've created is unclean. And why was he teaching him that?

Because he wanted him to go to Cornelius' house. Because he had the Gentile Cornelius sending him messengers even then while those visions were happening, so that he would go and tell him the good news. So Peter would go from Joppa, where Jonah had fled, from the worldwide mission. God was not missing a beat. He had Jonah there for a reason in Joppa.

Jonah kind of did what he asked at Nineveh. But God was going to make sure this worldwide mission went on. And just to make a point, I think he had Peter at Joppa. When He gave him that vision.

Friend, have you thought that religion was mainly about observing some external rituals, kind of like Tom and his devotion to his wedding ring?

Jesus here says that it isn't so. He is concerned with the inside of you. And note that that concern isn't like the concern of some of our Some of our secular friends, and you can see this in weddings, you can see this in funerals, you can see this in just normal church services if you go. Some of our secular friends are all about how good we all are innately. How much would you need to let our own inner selves shine out?

Well that may pass for Christianity in some misled and misleading churches, But it cannot for anyone who seriously studies what Jesus teaches. Jesus is against that teaching. So it doesn't matter if you heard that from someone who calls himself a Christian and is a pastor of a Christian church. That is anti-Christ doctrine. It's an anti-Christ church that celebrates that doctrine.

Because Jesus is so clear in what he teaches. Jesus says that what's inside us is so bad that it defiles us. Again, in the Old Testament that defile is a very serious category. It's about sexual immorality and worshiping the wrong God. Jesus is saying that series of bad stuff is what's inside us.

That's what characterizes us. He says that however much we may need to guard ourselves from sinful circumstances outside of us, we need to guard ourselves even more from sinful desires within us.

So my Christian brother and sister, I wonder, do you spend any time examining your own heart?

Or do you just assume if you feel something, it must be okay? Well, even if it's not okay, at least it's who I am. Well, that's just where I am. Or do you assume that if you desire something, so long as it's not obvious to you how it would hurt someone else, that your desires must be fine, almost sanctified in the sense by the mere fact that you have them, the kind of God don't make no junk idea. Many are happy to refer to God as in some sense our Creator.

They're happy to take some version of Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. But then they skip everything in the Bible from Genesis 3 to Revelation 20. They don't want to hear anything about a fall or anything about a redemption because you only need a redemption if you have a fall. So creation fine, and then new creation and we're done, we're out of here. Well the whole Bible in between there is the story of something that happened, the fall of man and God's redemption by sending His only Son out of His love for us.

Friends, that's what the Bible is about. Part of the fallenness of this world is our own personal fallenness. And we need to realize this, and we need to take honest measure of our own moral mixedness. If you would ever be a Christian, you must start here. My friend, if you think you're basically okay, you will never be okay with God.

Your only hope is to begin to know the truth. And the truth is that you not your parents who messed you up, not some horrible circumstance, it's truly horrible that happened, but you, with your moral responsibility that you have, that you have sinned against God, and that you are no exception to how Jesus describes the heart here, and that your only hope is to be forgiven by God. For that moral evil, for that sin against him and against others, and then to be given a new heart. And that's what happens by God the Holy Spirit's work. As you hear the news that there is a Savior who has died for sinners, who has paid the sacrifice for sinners, who has substituted himself, taking God's wrath on himself that we deserved, then If we will hear that call and turn from our sins and trust in Him.

Friends, then we can know a newness of life that is all over the New Testament, full of the fruit of the Spirit. But not until we begin by seriously engaging with how bad we are by nature. There is no good news if you don't first hear the bad.

I wonder if you have a good sense of the distinction that Jesus is making here.

Very simply, He's teaching us that it's not what we eat that would make us unacceptable to Him, but what we say. Not what comes in, but what comes out. Not what we eat, but what we say.

That is, it isn't so much that we bring the wrong stuff from outside of us into us, as that we ourselves are already wrong inside and that semblance comes out of us. And I know that can be hard to see sometimes, because I have a lot of non-Christian family who do a lot of good things, and that's not what we're talking about. We understand non-Christians can do great things. I was just listening to Mozart this last week. Now I'm listening to Beethoven.

I don't think either one of them claimed to be Christians. I'm loving their music. You know, I think they did good stuff. But we're not surprised by that because everybody's made the image of God. So non-Christian friend, when you do something good, that doesn't confuse us as Christians at all.

We don't think, oh, non-Christian's bad, Christian's good. No, we think, oh, humanity bad, you know, but also good made in the image of God, Christians and non-Christians. The difference is we think that we've seen something of the truth of our own badness, and that's why we've turned to God for the Savior, for Jesus Christ. And friends, that's what we want you to do. Pray that God would help you to understand this.

My Christian friend, pray that you can get good friends who help you think well about your own heart and life. You remember Proverbs 24:26? You're going to want to underline this one, just Proverbs 24:26. Whoever gives an honest answer kisses the lips. Whoever gives an honest answer kisses the lips.

What the writer is saying is that it is a great gift of affection to tell someone the truth. As long as you're just telling your friend what they want to hear, you're really not much good to them. But when you will tell them honestly what they need to hear, that is true love. That's true affection. That's true honor and esteem.

That's the kind of friends you want to cultivate. You want to find friends like that who know God's Word and who you let get to know your life so that they can honestly help apply God's Word to your life. That's how you'll work to see the truth about your own heart more. Pray for us as a church that we can be truly humble in admission of our sins and joyful in our reliance on God alone for our salvation. Pray that God help us to see these truths about religion and about our own sins and about His full provision for us in Christ.

We must understand sin rightly if we would ever come to find salvation.

In the third section of our passage, Jesus' teaching calls for us to make a confession about ourselves. This is number three, confession about ourselves. Look again, starting in verse 12.

Then the disciples came to Him and said to Him, 'Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying?' He answered, 'Every plant that My heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up. Let them alone. They are blind guides. And if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit. But Peter said to Him, Explain the parable to us.

And He said, Are you still without understanding? 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.

I don't know about you, but I'm struck by what the disciples didn't know. How they didn't understand that Jesus knew how the Pharisees would hear His teaching. They thought that He might be lacking that. Maybe He wouldn't have spoken so sharply. So they seem to be concerned, like, oh Jesus, did you realize you really offended them?

Hey, if you're not willing to offend the right people in public teaching, you shouldn't be teaching. When you're in a fallen world, that doesn't mean anything I say that's stupid and offensive is thereby baptized and sanctified. But it does mean if you stand here for 10 years and you never see me offending anyone, not like I'm trying to offend, but you know that the things I'm saying that are true and biblical If you do offend people, then I'm pretty much a false teacher and you should fire me. Friends, offense is part of the necessary work of true teaching in a fallen world. So when Jesus here said this, He knew He would offend the Pharisees, but He had something much more important to warn them about.

So Jesus here was warning His disciples about these religious teachers. He's saying, Unlike the nation of Israel, these were not planted by God. I think he's using the image of Israel as a vineyard of the Lord in Isaiah 5. He's saying, Look, God didn't plant these leaders. He's saying they are illegitimate, that these Pharisees are not really of God.

They were not going around trying to protect God's sheep and gather His sheep. Now this might have been hard for the disciples to believe. Jesus was asking them to believe Him, and they had been following for a couple of years now. Maybe. Rather than these national religious leaders.

And maybe that's, he senses some reluctance on their part, and that's why in 14 he just speaks so strongly there, Leave them alone. Leave them alone. Look, I realize these people are attractive to you and they're dangerous to you. So just trust me. Leave them alone.

Jesus warned against these guides as both unqualified and ill-fated. Continuing on in their way would lead to spiritual disaster. Now, I am curious. If you're here today and this just happens to be the Sunday you turned up at church, you're not normally at church, I'm wondering what you think Jesus is concerned about here. I mean, would it really matter if his disciples followed the teaching of the Pharisees?

Was there anything really at stake? Is the spiritual world real? Did Jesus have any real insight into it? Jesus here is suggesting that all spiritual outcomes are not good, but that spiritual matters may end disastrously. I wonder how you imagine that could ever be in your case.

For you. Could you imagine something being spiritually Disastrous? What would that be?

Meanwhile, Peter is still puzzling on this bombshell that Jesus had just dropped back up in verse 11. And Peter asks Jesus to explain this parable. He says parable there. He's just referring to the saying in verse 11. And you can tell by how Jesus answers it.

He's explaining it, saying in verse 11. Isn't it interesting again, it's Peter who's asking for the explanation.

He seems to have a really hard time with this point, given the fact that years later, He would have to have this clarified for him in that dream in Acts 10. Anyway, in verse 16, Jesus again criticized the disciples for their lack of understanding, and he's not just criticizing Peter there. That you in verse 16 is in the plural. He's criticizing the disciples. I think they were all listening.

Peter must have been speaking for all of them. And then in verse 17, Jesus rather just repeats what he just said up in verse 11. He just adds to the first half the phrase, passes into the stomach and is expelled. So he just further explains his logic there. And then in the second half of verse 11, he adds that phrase in verse 18, But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart.

It's interesting, throughout our passage, the heart is taken as the seat of the the essence of our character, our loves. We might use the word mind today. And then Jesus expands it further in verse 19. And then in verse 20, He wraps it back around to contrast it with the Pharisees' professed concern for the disciples not washing their hands.

Again, I wonder what you think about this picture of the human heart. You think that we're really sinful? This sinful? Remember Jeremiah 17 verse 9, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick. Who can understand it?

As one character in Marilyn Robinson's novel, Gilead, says, I've always liked the phrase nursing a grudge because many people are tender of their resentments as of the thing nearest their hearts.

Jesus shows us that we've been made morally responsible and accountable beings. As long as there is a holy God in whose image we've been made and against whom we have sinned, our most basic identity will never be as a victim, more fundamental to who we are than one who has been sinned against. We are all sinners who have sinned against an all and only good God.

And the nature of our evil is so much tied up with who we are as people that it is even presented as coming from our very own heart. Look at that list in verse 19, evil thoughts.

Murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. Finally, it seems evil has to do with what we want, with what we desire, with what we love.

That makes sense, doesn't it? Because God's image in us, in part, is our ability to give and to receive love. They have relationships like God who's a real being and who really speaks, really hears, really loves. Friends, this is why most solutions to our deepest problems fail. They have too shallow a view of us.

Religions and philosophies which think the fundamental answers are in what we do, have fundamentally failed to grasp what Jesus teaches here. That it is who we are. It is what we love. That is our deepest problem.

Look at that sad expansion in verse 19. It begins with those evil thoughts which we know that we have, and then come the violations of all these commandments. And why? Well, because we don't love others as we should. We read in 1 John 3:15 that he who hates his brother is a murderer.

We can understand something of that, can't we? Our carnal hearts give us adulteries and other sexual immoralities that we desire, coveting and greed that ends up in stealing. And on and on we could go in tracing out the roots of our lying to the object of our loving. And how can such a basic problem ever be changed if we are so inherently and fundamentally depraved, exporters of evil? I'll tell you how.

It's what Jesus said. We must be born again. We need a new heart. We need forgiveness and a new life. If we would follow Jesus, we must confess our own sinfulness and pray for Him to save and sanctify us.

We need a new heart and only Jesus can give us that. Friend, in the 1920s, J. Gresham Machen observed that, quote, During the past century, a profound spiritual change has been produced in the whole thought and life of the world. No less a change than the substitution of paganism for Christianity as the dominant principle of life. We are not here using paganism as a term of reproach. Ancient Greece was pagan, but it was glorious.

What we mean by paganism is a view of life which finds its ideal simply in a healthy and harmonious and joyous development of exciting human faculties. Such an ideal is the exact opposite of Christianity, which is the religion of the broken heart.

Friends, the truth about the heart is at the very core of real Christianity, the substance more than just a sign.

I hope you have a sense of how much better the substance is over the sign. Marriage is over the wedding ring. A relationship of loving reliance on God rather than religious rituals. We try to minimize our wrong allegiances to our own self-made traditions by constantly putting ourselves in the fresh stream of God's Word like we're doing right now, or by our own private study of God's Word. Friends, these have been tremendous truths we've considered today.

We've just scratched the surface of applications we could make of them. Ceremonial cleansing, ritual purity was part of the system of sacrifices and temple worship that was fulfilled in Christ. And so the parts of this system, the foreshadowings, were now to fall away. What need for a lamb slain annually since the Lamb of God had now come? What need for a temple now that the Word of God Himself had come and tabernacled among us and was sending His own Spirit to live in us, His church as His living temple?

What need for ritual cleansings when by faith we could be truly cleansed as we've sung about? By Christ's own blood.

I hope, too, that you've not taken offense like these religious leaders did. We have to confess that our lips do not always reflect what we want to be true of our hearts. I can't tell you how many times I've been told there are hypocrites in the church. And I don't usually respond, but I will tell you what I think.

Where better for them to be? You hypocrite, you're welcome here. You may not be a member if you're a hypocrite. Or we'll try to work on helping that hypocrisy decline. But friends, Christianity is the religion of the broken heart.

What about yourself? What religion do you follow? Pagan self-satisfaction and self-worship. That's what's popular today. Read every title of Joel Osteen's published books, every one of them.

It's pagan self-satisfaction.

That religion or the brokenhearted worship of God and relying on Him alone for the salvation from the judgment that you so richly deserve.

Have you understood what is wrong religion, wrong worship, wrong Christianity this morning? But it's real definition. And what is the purity that you need? Friends, it's a lot more than just washing your hands. Let me mention in closing a couple of things you need.

Number one, you need to be forgiven for all the evil that you have already committed against God and others. That's why moral reformation is never enough. It completely acts as if the past is fiction when the past is very, very real. And number two, you need a new heart. Only Jesus can give you forgiveness and only Jesus can give you a new heart.

Let's pray together.

Friends, let's just take a moment of quietness for reflection in where we felt challenged or instructed. Ask the Holy Spirit to show these things to you in the quietness of this moment.

Lord, even if we are staggered at the enormity of the evil in our own hearts, we are even more stunned by the depth of youf love for us in Christ.

Lord, teach us what it means to rely not on ourselves, but on youn. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.