I admit it – I played with paper dolls as a young boy. I guess I got them from my sisters – we may have even played them together. But I remember thinking it was pretty cool that you could take this people, cut out different clothes and hair and stuff for them and make them into anything you wanted them to be.
I wish life was that easy. I wish you could change who you were just by reaching into the closet, cutting out a new personality and attach it to your life. In fact, many of us do that very thing. The problem with paper dolls is those little tabs that you fold over to put on the outfit don’t hold very well.
With us, the external things we attach to ourselves – attitudes, words, rules, and affectations – are just that: attachments. They are not us – and they are not what God really wants us to be.
The Pharisees were just such people – to the extreme. They thought that they could create an external and very arbitrary environment in which they appeared to have it all together – and that somehow that outside attachment would mean they were righteous inside too. Not so.
They come to Jesus – using a false logic to think that their traditions – the paper doll clothes – were more important than the character of God. Jesus has something else in store for them – and for us.
15:1 Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem
This is not the first delegation of official religious leaders to come investigate Jesus. It’s a little different this time in that the group comes from Jerusalem – the seat of religious power.
The group is made up of Pharisees – who were the most powerful political party and who strongly advocated for strict adherence to God’s law as revealed to them. And the “teachers of the law” who were professionals at looking at God’s law and interpreting its application for the people.
and asked, 2 "Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don’t wash their hands before they eat!"
Now I want to put all mothers out there at ease – what we’re not talking about here is whether or not you wash your hands before dinner. This is much much more than that – what we’re talking about here is religious tradition versus godly holiness – and its at the heart of what Matthew’s trying to get across to us in this first part of chapter 15.
First – what is this thing about washing hands? It wasn’t to make your hands clean of germs or dirt – it was instead a type of ceremonial cleanness. This tradition said that you had to wash your hands and arms in just such a way in order to cleanse you from defilements you may have come in contact with.
The Pharisees were big on tradition. In fact, it was their assertion that oral traditions had been handed down all the way from Moses. In a sense, these traditions were like sermons on the Word of God that they had at that point. The ideas were finally written down in the years before Christ and called The Talmud. You may have heard about it before.
Now I’m all for interpreting the Word – we do it every week here at Living Waters. The difference is – I’m only giving you some guidance on how to apply the Word to your life. The Pharisees felt that the traditions they had were equal to the Word. It’s always dangerous when you mix up your interpretation of the Word with the Word itself.
3 Jesus replied, "And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? 4 For God said, ’Honor your father and mother’ and ’Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.’ 5 But you say that if a man says to his father or mother, ’Whatever help you might otherwise have received from me is a gift devoted to God,’ 6 he is not to ’honor his father’ with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition.
What was happening was that the Pharisees found some amazing loopholes in the law – one of which was contributing support to their religion and then withholding from their own parents. It is using one aspect of God’s law to nullify another – and worse yet, it allows them to look like they are following God’s character when in fact they are not. Jesus uses a very strong word for them:
7 You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you:
8 "’These people honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
9 They worship me in vain;
their teachings are but rules taught by men.’"
Jesus calls them “hypocrites.” The Greek word is very close: hupokrites and is a word they used for a stage actor. In those days the characters in plays didn’t use makeup to take on another character, but large masks that hid their faces and mechanical devices that changed their voices.
You can know a good actor by how differently from their real selves they can be. Dustin Hoffman is a good example. An actor is not really the part they play – and Jesus is saying you Pharisees are playing a part – looking like you are following God, when in fact under the mask you are doing the opposite.
Jesus wants to drive the point home – and He does it by answering the Pharisees question – not to the Pharisees, but to the people.
10 Jesus called the crowd to him and said, "Listen and understand. 11 What goes into a man’s mouth does not make him ’unclean,’ but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him ’unclean.’"
12 Then the disciples came to him and asked, "Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this?"
13 He replied, "Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots. 14 Leave them; they are blind guides. If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit."
15 Peter said, "Explain the parable to us."
16 "Are you still so dull?" Jesus asked them. 17 "Don’t you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? 18 But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man ’unclean.’ 19 For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. 20 These are what make a man ’unclean’; but eating with unwashed hands does not make him ’unclean.’"
They, and we, often get the mistaken idea that because we look good on the outside we are good on the inside. It’s simply not true. That logic leads to the false conclusion that defilement involves things like whether or not you wash your hands. And we take it a step farther by suggesting that if we just look like we are following God then we are following God. BUT the reason external things don’t defile us is that we are already defiled on the inside. Outside things only exacerbate an unrighteous existence that is already in place.
What I’m talking about is the flesh – not our hearts. Those of us who have given our lives to the Lord Jesus Christ have new hearts – but the old flesh still remains. And we are left to battle that flesh daily – and we fight the world system around us, and the enemy, Satan. Sometimes in order to make the battle easier we invent external rules to guide us – thinking we can find victory that way.
Listen to John Eldredge in “Wild At Heart”. “What is the enemy Scripture calls ‘the world’? Is it drinking and dancing and smoking? Is it going to the movies or playing cards? That is a shallow and ridiculous approach to holiness. It numbs us to the fact that good and evil are much more serious.”
We can’t simply glom onto God’s values our own interpretations that become like law. We cannot create traditions – like washing hands, to make us think we are holy. We need to look deep inside, not on the outside, to see if we are becoming like God.
Righteousness is an internal matter – but how often do we try to make it an external one.
We love rules – rules give us a guidebook to follow and they tell us when we are doing well or poorly. I was a Boy Scout – and I loved earning merit badges. I would earn a swimming badge and a hiking badge and a basket weaving badge – and then my Mom would sew them onto a sash I wore over my shoulder to every meeting. All the other boys would wear the same sash and we could easily compare how far we’d come in earning our Eagle rank by just looking at the number of merit badges on our sashes.
External righteousness is like that. We act a certain way, we avoid certain activities and places, we listen to certain music and not others, we develop the right lingo and the right phrasing and, voila! We feel more like a “good” Christian.
What happens are two dangerous things:
1. We tend to create traditions on the outside that give us an external and false feeling of righteousness
2. We ignore what’s happening to us on the inside: an internal reality of depravity that continues to bring forth unrighteousness.
An example of this is Ananias and Sapphira – found in Acts chapter 5. Barnabas, the son of encouragement had just sold a piece of property and given all the proceeds to the church. Ananias and Sapphira also sold a piece of land but lied about the price they received – claiming that they were giving all the proceeds to the church but in reality holding back some for themselves.
This isn’t a lesson about whether or not you should sell property and give it to the church – but it’s a lesson on internal versus external righteousness. Externally it appeared that Ananias and Sapphira were just as righteous as Barnabas – but internally greed and conspiracy and deceit were controlling their actions.
Both of them fell down dead before the Lord while Barnabas went on to accomplish great things for the Lord. He had a character on the inside that was expressed in doing the right things on the outside. The consequence of a righteousness that we glue on ourselves is death at worst – and even at best doesn’t result in a righteous character.
So how do we go about not taking on ourselves an external false righteousness, but instead grow up an internal real righteousness?
First, it comes from understanding the principal of opposites. They say in marriage that opposites attract – but elsewhere in the creation opposites repel. You know, oil and water, hot and cold, light and dark – well there is a spiritual set of opposites as well: grace and law.
Law says: here are a set of rules to follow – if you follow them perfectly then you are righteous. The problem with this is that none of us can follow them perfectly, and so we all fail.
Grace on the other hand, says that while you can’t follow the law, Jesus will fulfill that law and then extend that perfection to us as a gift – even though we don’t deserve it.
Once we accept this grace we must not then try to make ourselves perfect by following a set of rules, instead we need to follow a Savior.
Practically it involves two steps – the first is found in the book of Philippians 3:4-11
This is Paul speaking:
If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: 5 circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; 6 as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless. 7 But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8 What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ-the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. 10 I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.
So step one is to consider all the good in me as “loss” or “rubbish” compared with knowing Jesus. We’re no longer “too cool for school” in our own eyes – we instead trust in Him to be righteousness for us.
I want to quote from John Eldredge, author of “Wild At Heart”. He says: “The false self, our plan for redemption, seems so right to us. It shields us from pain and secures us a little love and admiration. But the false self is a lie.”
We must put off the mask by considering ourselves loss and Christ our gain.
Step two involves an interior transformation. Jesus said: “out of the heart” flow all kinds of wickedness. If instead of yielding ourselves to the natural wickedness in us we yield more to the Spirit of God in us – something different happens.
John 7:38 Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him."
We need to consciously believe in the Lord and trust in Him and ask Him to fill us daily with the Holy Spirit and then let that Holy Spirit character out – not the character of our former selves.
We do that in this way: Romans 6:13-14
Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. 14 For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace.
We need to let the Lord play us as an instrument. When I was younger I played the trumpet – but every once in a while I would take up the French Horn. I love the French Horn because it is so easy to control. You can practically play a whole scale without moving your fingers – and it makes a beautiful sound (at least when others play it!).
I want to let the Lord so control my thoughts, my intentions, my aspirations, my tongue, and my actions – by ceding control to His Spirit in me – that I’m like a French Horn in His hands – He can play whatever tune He desires.
It involves not letting sin play us for a fool, but letting God play us as a force.
So what will it be? Will we be paper dolls that get dressed up in whatever outfit we feel will be the most impressive to those around us? Or will we be French Horns, yielded to the master musician’s ands – allowing a beautiful tune to play out of our lives?
And look how simple it is: those who “believe” will have the Spirit “flow” from within him. Believe in Jesus and let His Spirit do the work of making you as holy on the outside as He is making you on the inside.
