Sermon Tone Analysis

Date: 2022-06-26

Audience: Grass Valley Corps ONLINE

Title: Offending Pharisees

Text: Matthew 15:1-20

Proposition: God’s intent is fixed, but our methods aren’t

Purpose: Live out God’s intent, not your traditions

Grace and peace

Matthew 15:1-2

Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked, 2 “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders?

They don’t wash their hands before they eat!” [1]

There is a LOT here to understand.

Same story told by Mark in chapter 7. Slightly different because Mark is writing to more Gentile converts to Christianity, so he does a little more explaining about some of the details:

3 (The Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial washing, holding to the tradition of the elders.

4 When they come from the marketplace they do not eat unless they wash.

And they observe many other traditions, such as the washing of cups, pitchers and kettles.)

[2]

Matthew, writing to a more Jewish audience, doesn’t need to explain as much.

They are more familiar with who the Pharisees are.

We aren’t really either audience.

We don’t have any experience with Pharisees except what we hear in church.

Frankly, we tend to give them a lot of crap and very little credit.

Who Pharisees were

Who Sadducees were

Who scribes/teachers of Law were

Why group of Pharisees/teachers would be sent from Jerusalem to Galilee to Jesus

Thanks to Mark, we’ve had the had washing thing explained – ritual cleanliness.

Connected to Levitical laws for the priesthood, which Pharisees were trying to make everyone adhere to all the time.

Why asking Jesus about what his disciples were doing?

Because it could reflect on Jesus’ teaching.

Jesus responds to their questioning:

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’ r and ‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.’

s[3]

Honor = support/pay for in their old age

Failure to honor = curse (also, love or hate, and whoever you love more you love and who you love less you hate…)

Jesus isn’t done:

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’ r and ‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.’

s 5 But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is ‘devoted to God,’ 6 they are not to ‘honor their father or mother’ with it.

Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition.[4]

Corban = pledged to God.

Some would pledge that all they had would belong to God when they died.

Could keep using it while they were alive, but could also say, “I can’t help you with this – belongs to God.”

Word of God says “Honor father and mother,” Pharisee tradition says don’t have to do that, Jesus says, “You’re nullifying the word of God by following your tradition.”

More than that – this was about the way people had come to view an oath.

Unbreakable!

Couldn’t take back even if you realized you were wrong or that your oath had been foolish.

Why not?

Tradition tied it to honor and made it inviolate, where God allowed for mistakes and repentance and forgiveness.

Again: Tradition outweighing God

Jesus says: That should never happen.

In fact, goes further:

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 merely human rules.’

u” [5]

Ooh, snap!

Jesus is using a Jewish teaching technique popular in his time.

He begins his argument by citing an example which supports his point.

(You say I break tradition; I say your tradition breaks/ignores God’s command.)

Then he cites a mutually acceptable authority to back his position (in this case, the prophet Isaiah).

Next he’s going to make a point using an even more basic principle to show that there’s something more going on here than is immediately clear.

10 Jesus called the crowd to him and said, “Listen and understand.

11 What goes into someone’s mouth does not defile them, but what comes out of their mouth, that is what defiles them.”

[6]

We can look at that more in a moment, because the disciples are a little freaked out by what Jesus just said.

Let me go back to the main argument for a moment first.

Jesus just told these guys that the traditions which are the center of their religious identity have become more important to them than the things of God.

But these traditions didn’t come from out of nowhere!

What we are calling the traditions of the Pharisees are the interpretations of scripture passed down from generation to generation.

They are the way that they have always done things because they are the way that the great teachers of their past have said was the best way to live holy lives.

The example Jesus uses about caring for parents… That wasn’t brought about by someone trying to game the system – that was someone, with earnest intent, trying to decide if they should take this pool of resources that they had pledged to leave to God or the Temple or whatever and give some or all of them to meet the unexpected need of their aging parents.

Maybe a surprise medical bill, or perhaps dad broke his leg and couldn’t plant or harvest the crop that year.

Or maybe they had a debt get out of control and they lost their property and were going to be reduced to begging, but wasn’t that their fault and so was it right to take what had been promised to God to cover the cost?

Maybe the original problem had been discussed and God’s principles from scripture had been applied and in that circumstance the answer was no, don’t break this vow to meet that need.

Why is Jesus saying there is something wrong with that?

Once the ruling had been made, that’s just the way things were and they way they should be, right?

Did you know that there was a time when all hymns were sung in an atonal manner?

Just kind of a monotone chanting, usually of scripture verses or traditional prayers.

It was the way that things had been done for generations.

For many years these were sung in church only by professional, practiced choirs.

For centuries!

During the Reformation, certain edgy new congregations began to allow their people to sing along with parts of the liturgy.

Generally only unaccompanied – this was a serious business, after all.

People didn’t come to church to have fun or mess around!

Then the Revivalists came along, bringing emotionalism into their preaching and allowing it to leak into their music as well.

It took a whole church council in 1820 before the Church of England allowed hymns to be sung in church.

Why?

Because tradition said not to sing hymns in church.

In the 1970s there was controversy around whether guitars should be allowed.

After all, for a long time tradition had demanded that organs were the music of church.

Guitars were used to play that devil-based rock and roll, how DARE you allow them into your places of worship?

The Salvation Army, of course, had already had our edgy music moment.

We allowed people to play brass instruments and sing tradition songs of worship to the tune of old drinking songs.

It wasn’t terribly accepted at first, even among our own ranks, but the Founder had been quoted as saying, “Why should the devil have all the good music?” and it eventually won through.

We weren’t any quicker to let those guitars in though.

Tradition is usually something that was fine at a certain time, but which has been enshrined as holy, central, and untouchable.

Tradition tends to carry the weight of “We’ve always done it this way,” and the added weight of having been important to the elders, who then feel marginalized or rejected when you set aside their things.

Have you ever seen this?