Jesus Our Great Teacher
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2013 · 29 September 2013
Let's together examine Matthew 15 this evening to hear from Him who speaks through His Word. We are all very conscious today of the term 'pollution.' We see it on the internet, air pollution, mind pollution and environmental pollution. The word pollution is also a biblical word. In fact, the word 'defile' in the Bible is the same thing.
Matthew 15:10-20 says, “When He had called the multitude to Himself, He said to them, “Hear and understand: 11 Not what goes into the mouth defiles a man; but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man.” 12 Then His disciples came and said to Him, “Do You know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying?” 13 But He answered and said, “Every plant which My heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted. 14 Let them alone. They are blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind leads the blind, both will fall into a ditch.” 15 Then Peter answered and said to Him, “Explain this parable to us.” 16 So Jesus said, “Are you also still without understanding? 17 Do you not yet understand that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and is eliminated? 18 But those things which proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and they defile a man. 19 For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. 20 These are the things which defile a man, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile a man.”
Five times in that text we see the word 'defile.' The dictionary basically says that the word defile means 'to make impure, unclean, dirty, foul,' or 'to pollute.' Hundreds of times, God speaks to the issue of being polluted or defiled. In Psalm 119:1, the Bible says, "Blessed are the undefiled." In James 1:27, he calls for pure religion and undefiled.
Paul, in I Corinthians 3:16-17 says, "Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? 17 If anyone defiles the temple of God, God will destroy him. For the temple of God is holy, which temple you are." So we must understand what pollutes us and how to deal with it. Paul told in Ephesians 5:27 that the Lord wanted His church to be holy and without blemish.
There are three points here: first the principle stated, second the principle violated, and thirdly the principle articulated. Look at the principle stated in verses 10-11, “When He had called the multitude to Himself, He said to them, “Hear and understand: 11 Not what goes into the mouth defiles a man; but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man.”
The Pharisees had come to make Yesus look bad. Look at Matthew 15: 2-3, “Why do Your disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat bread. 3 He answered and said to them, “Why do you also transgress the commandment of God because of your tradition?” Then He pointed out that their traditions which just man- made rules so they wouldn't have to support their needy parents, which was commanded in the Scripture.
So instead of embarrassing and discrediting Jesus, they had been publicly shamed and discredited by the words of our Lord, who ended up in verses 7-9 by calling them hypocrites who are described by the prophet Isaiah and who worship God in an empty manner, substituting the Word of God for the traditions of men.
Jesus says, "Listen and understand." It is not difficult to understand, but since it is the opposite of everything they've ever heard of in their religion, He wants them to listen carefully and think it through. That brings us to verse 11, "Not what goes into the mouth defiles a man; but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man.” It is not so much a matter of understanding it as it is more a matter of accepting it.
Jesus is saying, "Defilement is an inside matter, not an outside matter." You see, the Pharisees had come along and said, "You have defiled Yourself by eating food that is defiled," and the Lord is saying that it isn't what goes in that defiles, but what comes out of your mouth is what defiles you. Jesus is saying that defilement is not a physical issue, but a spiritual one. It is not a ritual matter, but a moral one.
You have just seen Jesus crystallize in one statement the antithesis between Judaism and the truth. Frankly, they shouldn't have been so shocked that He would preach that the heart was the issue, because even in the Old Testament, in I Samuel 16:7 God says that man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart? Jesus says that; it's not what goes into your mouth, but what comes out of your heart that matters.
The parallel passage in Mark 7:15 says the same basic statement, but instead of saying, "That which comes out of the mouth," it says, "That which comes out of the man." In other words, the evil that is in us is not only demonstrated by what we say but also by what we do. The mouth is the more dominant revealer of our internal pollution. But really, it is a symbol of the whole man.
Mark adds just a small sentence at the end of Mark 7:19 that says, "Thus He declared all foods clean." Jesus is saying, "There are no more unclean foods, no more kosher, no more ceremonies, no more forbidden food. That all has passed and is over."
The Jews for their whole life have been following a prescribed diet based upon clean and unclean, not only that which was defined biblically, but that which was defined traditionally, and they had a massive amount of ceremonial stuff that they had to abide by in their diet and activities: eating, drinking, touching, and all these things. They were living by external rituals.
External rituals cannot change the heart and it cannot ever really deal with the inside of a person, therefore all religion apart from the truth is left with only externals. Every false religion is full of all kinds of rituals, and external issues. The heart is wretched, and the Pharisees were really wretched and filled with hate, desiring to murder Jesus.
Where did all this ceremony and ritual and washings and all the rest come from? It all started in the book of Leviticus; you'll find a long list of ceremonies that they were required to follow. There are animals they could and couldn't eat, birds they could and couldn't eat, things they could and couldn't touch, ways they could and couldn't cook and many features of clothing. These are the ceremonies of the Old Testament.
But notice: at no time in the Old Testament does it ever say that these things were sinful. So the Bible does not define these things as sins, but says that it made a person unfit to worship God. They had to follow whatever cleansing was necessary to prepare them physically to come into the presence of God. All this started in the Old Testament.
"Why?" Here's why. When God gave the Old Testament, it was in the early days of God's redemptive plan with His covenant people. Whenever you want to teach a child, you gave your children books full of pictures. So they started to learn the world through pictures. The Old Testament is also a book full of pictures, and the entire ceremonial system was like a set of pictures.
God was saying, "Do you see how you cannot come into God's presence to worship Him physically when you are ceremonially unclean? God wants you to come to worship Him spiritually only when your heart is pure." Do you see the picture? The whole ceremonial system is a picture of what God wants his people to be inside their hearts. Remember that circumcision doesn't save people, or save the Jews; circumcision was a physical sign that what tearing away had occurred in the flesh, God wanted to do in the heart.
That's why the prophet said, "Circumcise your heart." If God was concerned that we be clean on the outside, how much more was He concerned that we be clean on the inside. Sadly for Israel, they just focused on the pictures. So by the time of Jesus, instead of receiving the fullness of real spirituality, they were just adding more pictures and ceremonies to the ones given in the Bible. In fact, when the reality came, they killed Him.
In Matthew 23:4, Jesus says, "They bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers.” That is really the essence of Hebrews 9-10. We will never understand the book of Leviticus until we understand the commentary on Leviticus, which is Hebrews. Listen to some selected statements.
Hebrews 8:5 says that all of those ceremonies in the Old Testament are an example and a shadow of heavenly things. In Hebrews 9:9-10, it says that they were figures for the time then present, and that foods and drinks and various washings and fleshly ordinances were imposed until the time of reformation, which is the time of the arrival of the Messiah and the new covenant. Hebrews 10:1 says, “For the law, having a shadow of the good things to come, and not the very image of the things.”
That's why, Hebrews 10:22 summed up in this: "Let us draw near with a true heart, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water." In other words, God was after the spiritual cleansing. That's why Hebrews 6:1-2 says, "Leaving the principles of the doctrines of Christ.” That's talking about Judaism. "Let us leave the doctrine of 'washing,' and that's what it means.
In fact, Hebrews 5:12-6:8 is written to Jews who are sitting on the fence and won't abandon their ceremonialism. He's saying, "let us go on to perfection, not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God.” 'Perfection' in the book of Hebrews refers to salvation. He's saying to leave the washings, since they were only pictures and symbols, nothing more.
So what is the Lord saying in verse 11, “Not what goes into the mouth defiles a man; but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man.” It's one of the ways in which Jesus fulfilled Matthew 5:17, "I have not come to destroy the Law, but to fulfill it." In a very real sense, there are many ways He did that, and this was one of the ways, by abolishing the ceremonial system, by putting an end to the pictures, and by bringing the reality.
In the New Testament, we see this transition. Mark 7:19 says, "Thus He called all foods clean," and ended the system of ceremonial foods. So what really defiles? It says that things of our heart defile in verse 18. In Titus 1:15, it says unbelief defiles; in 1 Corinthians 8, idolatry defiles; in Hebrews 12, bitterness defiles; so these are all internal issues in the New Testament because the external picture has passed away.
An illustration of this is Acts 10. Peter went up onto his roof to pray, and the Lord put him in some kind of a trance. He was hungry, and we would have thought he would see a table spread with kosher food, but instead in his vision, Heaven opened and a big sheet came out with everything in it, four-footed beasts, wild beasts, creeping things and fowls of the air.
And a voice tells him, "Rise, Peter, kill and eat. Go for it, Peter; it's all for you." His reaction is, "Not so, Lord! For I have never eaten anything common or unclean.” But the voice tells him a second time, "What God has cleansed you must not call common.” That happened three times to get the message across.
Let us go back where now we see the principle violated in verse 12. Mark tells us that they had now moved to a house, very likely the house the Lord used to stay in Capernaum. They are inside, away from the crowd and away from the scribes and Pharisees. And now it's time to teach the disciples.
Verse 12, "Then His disciples came and said to Him, "Do You know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying?" They were trying to help the Lord out here. They were warning Him to be careful about what He says, or He could get them in a lot of trouble. But they did not understand how wrong the Pharisees really were.
The second thing we learn about hypocrites in verse 13 is that they are not only offended by the truth, but destined for judgment. Jesus says, "Every plant which My heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted." Remember the parable of the wheat and the tares, where God sowed the wheat, and the enemy, Satan, came and sowed the tares. This means that the ones that God doesn't plant will be rooted up, or judged.
Notice the beginning of verse 14, a very important statement. "Let them alone." That is a hard statement. What does that mean? It really can be translated, "Stay away from them." What does that mean? One, it's the staying away of judgment. Hosea 4:17 says, "Ephraim has joined idols; let him alone.”
Secondly, it's the staying away in terms of, "Don't you act as the judge." Remember how we saw that in the story of the wheat and the tares? They said in Matthew 13, "Should we rip the tares out?" And He said, "That's not your job; the angels will come in due time and do that. Your job is to proclaim the message of the Kingdom. We'll take care of the judgment. Don't try to rip them up.”
There is a third reason. Why? Because verse 14, hypocrites lead others to disaster. "They are blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind leads the blind, both will fall into a pit." The pit means Hell; they lead people to Hell, so stay away from them. Don't be close to them because they lead people to disaster.
Finally, the principle is articulated. Verse 15, they move into the house, and they're together, and Peter said, "Explain this parable to us." He's talking about the parable in verse 11, about the mouth and stuff going in and coming out. It wasn't that they couldn't understand what He meant, it was just that they couldn't accept it; Peter especially.
Verses 16-18, “So Jesus said, “Are you also still without understanding? 17 Do you not yet understand that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and is eliminated? 18 But those things which proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and they defile a man.” The cesspool is inside of you, and it is your heart.
Verse 19-20, "For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. 20 These are the things which defile a man, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile a man.”
If we're to be sure we avoid the defilement, we need a pure heart. Isn't that Matthew 5:8, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” So the prayer of every individual should be, "Lord, purify my heart."
How does He do that? Only one way can our hearts be purified, and that is by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ who purifies the heart and washes away the sin. In the terms of Ezekiel, He gives us a new heart. Every person needs that. Let us pray.