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A Great Spiritual Check-up for Your Soul
The Gospel of Matthew
Matthew 15:1-20
Sermon by Rick Crandall
(Prepared August 4, 2022)
(Revised August 8, 2022 to say this was the 3rd year of Jesus' ministry)
BACKGROUND:
*Please open your Bibles to Matthew 15.
In the previous chapter, Jesus was working all kinds of amazing miracles.
But here the scribes and Pharisees showed up to accuse Jesus of sin.
Their petty accusation prompted a strong response from the Lord.
And in today's Scripture we will hear Jesus speak to the Pharisees, the crowd of people, and His own disciples.
But we can also hear Jesus speak to us, and that's great because it will help us examine our relationship with God.
Please think about this as we read Matthew 15:1-20.
MESSAGE:
*I always admired Zig Ziglar.
He was a very popular Christian author and motivational speaker from Texas.
Zig was hilarious, and he helped a lot of people with his positive messages based on Biblical truth.
One thing I remember Zig saying years ago is that from time to time "we need a check-up from the neck up, and we need to eliminate stinking thinking."
*We all need attitude checks from time to time, but more than that, we need spiritual check-ups.
That's why in 2 Corinthians 13:5, Paul gave this command to all Christians: "Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith.
Prove yourselves.
Do you not know yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you? unless indeed you are disqualified."
The Living Bible puts it this way: "Check up on yourselves.
Are you really Christians?
Do you pass the test?
Do you feel Christ's presence and power more and more within you?
Or are you just pretending to be Christians when actually you aren't at all?"
*We all need spiritual check-ups, and the Lord gives us a good one in today's Scripture.
It's a simple test with only four questions.
1. AND THE FIRST QUESTION IS: ARE YOU LISTENING TO THE LORD?
*The scribes and Pharisees certainly were not listening to Jesus.
We know this because they showed up with a petty complaint against the Lord's disciples.
And it's important for us to understand how evil these scribes and Pharisees were.
By this point Jesus was in the third year of His ministry.
And though the Lord had already worked countless miracles to prove that He was the promised Messiah, these scribes and Pharisees had totally rejected Him with murderous hatred.
*By Matthew 12, they were stalking Jesus, looking for any opportunity to accuse Him of breaking their laws.
In that chapter Jesus went into a synagogue and healed a man with a withered hand.
But it was on the Sabbath day, and that was against their man-made laws.
*Luke 6:11 tells us that on that day, the Pharisees were filled with rage to the point of madness.
And Mark 3:6 says they "went out and immediately plotted with the Herodians against Him, how they might destroy Him."
The Herodians were followers of Herod the Tetrarch, and normally they were the Pharisees' arch enemies.
But the Pharisees hated Jesus so much, they were working with their enemies to plot His death
*One reason why they hated Jesus was because He rejected the petty rules the Pharisees had added to God's Law.
There were thousands of these regulations, like their ungodly law against healing on the Sabbath Day.
*Back then, there were only a few thousand Pharisees, but they held religious and political power far greater than their numbers.
For over a hundred years they had basically been in charge of telling all the other Jews what was right and wrong.
Then this random, unschooled carpenter from Nazareth showed up, and rejected their precious traditions.
They couldn't stand it!
(1)
*But there was a bigger reason why the elite Jews hated Jesus, and it is because He rightly claimed to be God.
We can find the Lord's claim many times in the New Testament.
Think, for example, of the Lord's "I AM" statements in the Gospel of John.
Statements like: "I am the bread of life."
"I am the light of the world."
"I am the good shepherd."
*Jesus spoke these "I AM" statements as clear evidence that He is the LORD God of the Old Testament who spoke to Moses from the burning bush.
In Exodus 3:13-14:
13. . .
Moses said to God, "Indeed, when I come to the children of Israel and say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they say to me, 'What is His name?' what shall I say to them?''
14.
And God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM.''
And He said, "Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, 'I AM has sent me to you.'''
*That's who Jesus is!
Our crucified and risen Savior IS the eternal Son of God, the King of all Kings, and our only hope of salvation!
He had already backed up this claim by working thousands of miracles.
But instead of falling down before the Lord with humble faith and love, the Pharisees went to Him with arrogant self-righteousness and murderous hatred.
*This was the situation in Matthew 15:1-2, where "the scribes and Pharisees who were from Jerusalem came to Jesus, saying, 'Why do Your disciples transgress the tradition of the elders?
For they do not wash their hands when they eat bread.'''
*William MacDonald explained that this accusation wasn't about basic hygiene.
It's not like Jesus' disciples went around with filthy hands all the time.
Of course, they washed their hands.
But they weren't following the unnecessary, traditional washing rituals that had been set up by the Pharisees.
(2)
*Jesus quickly pointed out their blatant hypocrisy of judging other people, when their own sins were far greater.
The scribes and Pharisees had also found ways to justify their selfishness and sin.
Listen to the Lord in vs. 3-9:
3.
But He answered and said to them, "Why do you also transgress the commandment of God because of your tradition?
4. For God commanded, saying, 'Honor your father and your mother'; and, 'He who curses father or mother, let him be put to death.'
5.
But you say, 'Whoever says to his father or mother, "Whatever profit you might have received from me has been dedicated to the temple''
6. 'is released from honoring his father or mother.' "Thus you have made the commandment of God of no effect by your tradition.
7. Hypocrites!
Well did Isaiah prophesy about you, saying:
8. 'These people draw near to Me with their mouth, and honor Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me.
9.
And in vain they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.'''
*Here Jesus teaches us that we should honor God's commands over man's traditions.
And Jesus gave the example of their wicked tradition that allowed selfish, adult children to avoid taking care of their elderly parents.
*The Temple leaders had established an oath.
It's called "Corban" in Mark 7:11, and that word means "given" or "dedicated."
The oath worked like this: If your parents needed financial help, and you had plenty of money to help them.
But you were a greedy, ungrateful, selfish child, -- all you had to do was tell them your money was "Corban" or dedicated to the Temple, and you didn't have to give them a penny.
*Then you were basically free to use the money any way you wanted to as long as you didn't give it to your parents, and you were supposed to give it to the Temple in the end, but that part wasn't always enforced.
(2)
*That was their tradition, even though the Fifth Commandment clearly tells us to honor our parents.
And we should always put God's commands over man's traditions.
But the scribes and Pharisees weren't willing to listen to the Lord.
No wonder that in vs. 14 Jesus called the Pharisees "blind leaders of the blind."
They were pretending to follow God, while they were finding ways to make wrong things seem right.
*And in vs. 10-11, Jesus turn to the crowd to point them to true source of our sinfulness.
It's not the dirt on the outside, but the dirt on the inside.
All sin starts in our hearts.
And Jesus gave the example of our sinful words.
"He called the multitude and said to them, 'Hear and understand: Not what goes into the mouth defiles a man; but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man.'''
*Sadly, many in the crowd weren't willing to listen to Jesus either.
But what about us?
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