Wash Your Hands

Introduction

Good morning and welcome!

And for those joining us online this morning a hearty welcome to you as well!

This morning if you will start turning in your Bibles to Matthew 15.

And if you watched the “Sunday School” service from yesterday, you will know that the passage for our sermon this morning comes from the same material as we studied in Sunday School.

As I was preparing for the Sunday School, the Lord was also telling me to pay close attention because this is what I would be preaching about this morning as well.

And the subject we will be discussing this morning has to do with cleanliness and as the sermon title says, “Washing our hands.”

Which is something that hopefully we have all, always done, but in recent months we have heard a great deal about washing our hands.

We have been told to wash our hands for a minimum of 20 seconds and they say to scrub them well while singing the Happy Birthday song.

Really get in there and scrub between the fingers, fingernails, front, back.

Get those hands good and clean.

To the point that it almost becomes more of a ritual rather than just something that we should all be doing.

And that in essence is the same concept that the Jews we will be talking about this morning originally had in mind when they first instituted their laws concerning handwashing and cleanliness.

It all started as a very practical exercises in being clean and warding off diseases.

However, the Jewish leaders and people did what people do, they changed it from something God broadly told them to keep them as disease free as possible to a religious ritual and practice.

Something that they set up all kinds of rules and regulations about.

And something that if you did not do everything exactly as they said to do it and do it all “their way” then you were considered ungodly, unclean, and undeserving of God and God’s blessing on your life.

It was transformed into this religious ritual rooted in nothing more than a means gaining power and control over the Jewish people.

And that tradition continued for centuries and no one rocked the boat too much—mainly because they didn’t have the power to do so—until Jesus came along.

And of course Jesus comes along and calls them out for their hypocrisy and the whole thing causes quite a stir.

So, that’s sort of the gist of the backstory a bit, but this morning we are going to look at Matthew 15, the first 20 verses.

And as we do so, I want us to think about tradition versus transformation.

And man’s manipulation of God’s law and what God’s law actually says.

So, that’s where we are going and like I said we will be covering the first 20 verses, but we are going to start out with verses 16-20, in which Jesus says this . . .

Scripture Focus

Matthew 15:16–20 NIV - Anglicised

“Are you still so dull?” Jesus asked them. “Don’t you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man ‘unclean’. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what make a man ‘unclean’; but eating with unwashed hands does not make him ‘unclean’.”

Why Don’t They Wash Their Hands?

Now, what I read there was the main point that Jesus was getting to, but I want us to back up a bit and look at how Jesus came to this conclusion.

The passage starts out in verse one this way . . .

Matthew 15:1–2 NIV - Anglicised

Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked, “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don’t wash their hands before they eat!”

So, all of this is going to start out here with a discussion about handwashing of all things.

Which on the surface looks like something that we would think would be a no brainer.

You are getting ready to sit down for a good meal, what do you make sure of?

That your hands are clean because you don’t want to go putting a lot of dirt and grime in your mouth with your food, right?

Well, like I said earlier that was the original intent of Moses when God told him to tell the Israelites to wash their hands, but over time, they had transformed this into much more than just washing their hands.

They had turned this whole thing into a ceremonial religious tradition.

It went from washing your hands to get them clean to rules about howl long do you wash your hands for?

What kind of water and basin do you use?

What sort of soap do you use, if any?

How you actually go about washing the hands?

All of these things that became part of their religious tradition, and what was going on was that Jesus’ disciples were not following the tradition.

It wasn’t that they were not washing their hands at all, they were just not doing it the way the Jewish tradition said they should with regard to the ceremonial aspects of it.

So, the Pharisees see a point of where they could go on the attack and they try to discredit Jesus and his disciples because they were not following the “traditions of the elders.”

And we also have a tendency to react the same way when we encounter other Christians who are not following the “traditions of the elders” also.

When people are not doing things the way we have “always done it.”

Maybe their music is different.

Maybe they are using a different version of the English translation of the Bible.

Maybe their worship services are arranged differently.

Maybe they dress differently.

There are 1000 unwritten “traditions of the elders” in every single church that well-meaning Christians violate every single day.

And they are ostracized and attacked for it.

The vast majority of what we like to call “church hurt” which is just a fancy way of saying, somebody was not acting like a Christian toward someone else, stems from somebody violating the “traditions of the elders” and somebody else thinking they are the “church rule” judge taking it upon themselves to let them know about it.

And the Church, particularly here in the United States is in a place we have got to cut that stuff out.

The Church in the United States is NOT growing and in many places is in decline.

And the reason for it is because people are so stuck in the “traditions of the elders” and so unwilling to change, they feel threatened by anything different and they would rather close the doors rather than change.

And conducting traditional same old same old services week after week is not the mission of the Church.

The mission of the Church is to reach the community it is in with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Meaning that we have to be flexible and aware of the society around us and reach the society around us with the Gospel in a way they can understand.

We can’t expect people to come in here and just “conform” to the way we do things, we have to show them how the message of Jesus Christ applies to their life and adjust our delivery of the message—and notice I said delivery of the message because the message of repentance and hope found in Jesus Christ never changes.

But how we deliver that message so people can understand it and apply it needs to be adaptive to the community surrounding us.

That is how we reach the community.

And what we need to do is evaluate what we do and how we do it and make sure that we are keeping the main thing the main thing and not being bogged down solely with the “traditions of the elders,” which is what our Pharisee friends were doing.

So, Jesus calls them out on it.

He says this . . .

Matthew 15:3–6 NIV - Anglicised

Jesus replied, “And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said, ‘Honour your father and mother’ and ‘Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.’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,’ he is not to ‘honour his father’ with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition.

Now we could spend a great deal of time on this, but for our purposes this morning, I want to just briefly explain what is going on here.

They are accusing Jesus and His disciples of breaking the “traditions of the elders” and Jesus is coming back on them with what is really important, “the command of God.”

And which do you think is more important, traditions or God’s commands?

And Jesus is telling them that they are violating the very commands of God for the sake of keeping their traditions, which in itself is scandalous.

And I am sure that it is infuriating to them.

I have seen this type of behavior play out in our modern church world.

Someone is so rooted in their traditions and then they get called out about how their tradition is not only wrong but also violates God’s Word, and boy they get madder than a hornet.

And I can just imagine these Pharisees stewing over this.

But Jesus gives them the example of the 4th commandment to Honor your Father and Mother.

And he is telling them that they have developed a tradition that violates this command.

And what he is talking about here is the Jews had a tradition where a person could vow that upon their death all of their wealth and possessions would go to their synagogue.

And if they made this vow, then it would release them from any obligation to care for their aging parents.

However, so long as they lived they could enjoy and do with their wealth and possessions whatever they wanted, just whatever was left wen to the synagogue.

And many of the Jewish rulers took this vow and and accumulated great wealth, while their parents basically wasted away and died in poverty.

It was simply greed.

And Jesus calls them out on it.

You Hypocrites

In fact he tells them this . . .

Matthew 15:7–9 NIV - Anglicised

You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you: “ ‘These people honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.’”

In other words he is calling the “actors” and “pretenders.”

They were only pretending to worship and serve God.

They were only pretending to love God.

It was all a show and all an act.

Translate that to our terms and our day, they were only “playing church.”

They knew all the right words and right traditions.

They could check everything off the box, but their hearts were so far from God.

They did not know what a true relationship with God actually looked like so they had to substitute this with rules and traditions.

And they got so bent out of shape when someone violated their rules and traditions because that exposed how fake they actually were.

And the damage that does to the Church is horrible.

I would rather people be in here the most vile and outspoken atheist in the world, than a bunch of people running around acting like their traditions are going to get them to heaven.

Because the atheist is authentic in who they really are and there is hope.

The hypocrites are deceitful liars that others around them see through their lies and all they do is ruin the true witness of the Church.

And what we need to be doing is evaluating whether our heart is near or far from God.

Because that is what is going to make all of the difference in the world.

I’ve said it many times, nobody cares what we say—they care about what they see in us.

And our heart is what exposes that.

Jesus explains it to us well and I am going to read it all and just sum it up.

He say . . .

Matthew 15:10–20 NIV - Anglicised

Jesus called the crowd to him and said, “Listen and understand. 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’.” Then the disciples came to him and asked, “Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this?” He replied, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots. Leave them; they are blind guides. If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit.” Peter said, “Explain the parable to us.” “Are you still so dull?” Jesus asked them. “Don’t you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man ‘unclean’. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what make a man ‘unclean’; but eating with unwashed hands does not make him ‘unclean’.”

Altar/Challenge

To sum it all up, who cares about the “traditions of the elders?”

It is just like the food we eat, it is just food.

It is good for nourishment—just like many of the traditions are.

But in the grand scheme of things, have nothing to do with our salvation or our relationship with Jesus Christ.

That is why there are so many different traditions but yet everyone who comes to Jesus through faith is promised salvation and eternal life.

Don’t get so hung up on the traditions but rather worry about what is in our heart.

Because what is in our heart comes out of our mouth and by extension our actions and how we live our lives.

And that is what determines whether or not we are “unclean” or “defiled.”

Tradition can’t do that, only an examination of the heart that is demonstrated by our actions.

Which means what we really need to be doing is examining our heart and determining whether our heart is right with God or not.

And this isn’t just something that people who have never accepted Jesus Christ have to do, we all need to do it, at regular intervals.

Because things of life and things of this world have a tendency to deceive us and to drag us down.

So we have to all constantly evaluate and examine where we are with God, right now, not yesterday or last week, but today right now.

Are we where we need to be?

Are we where we want to be?

If the answer is “no” then we need to be doing something about it.

Are we willing to do that today?

We have an altar here, for those watching online you can make an altar wherever you are.

But the main thing is praying and giving everything over to God.

Can we do that today right now?