What is Clean & Unclean

Intro:

Last Week: Matthew 14:13-36

-       Jesus feeds the 5000

-       Jesus Walks on Water

-       Jesus Heals the Sick

Mighty deeds in the eyes of the Jews, clearly articulating who he was as the compassionate and powerful savior of His people. 

This Week: Matthew 15:1-39

-       1-2: The Pharisees and Scribes accuse Jesus’ followers of being ceremonially unclean

-       3-9: Jesus accuses the scribes and Pharisees of being unclean in the eyes of God.

-       10-20: Jesus teaches on what makes someone clean or unclean

-       21-31: Jesus Heals

-       32-39: Jesus Feeds

In our passage we will see that Jesus redefines what is clean and unclean. He challenges the Jewish thinking about who God is the God of. 

In our passage we will see a common theme: That Jesus is the savior of all people

Transition

-       So what do the Jews say makes us unclean?

-       And what really makes us unclean?

-       Please join me as we begin to answer these questions in verse 1 of Matthew 15.

Point 1: Sin Defiles (Matthew 15:1-20)

1)   At the outset of our passage we see some of the main antagonists in the Gospels: the scribes and the Pharisees. (1)

o  Constantly trying to find some way that they can discredit and defame Jesus and His disciples.

2)   “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat? (2)

a.    This is not about hygiene, this is about ceremonial cleanliness

b.    You have to understand a bit of history here to get the full effect.

                                         i.    The OT: do not such bodies, bodily fluids, etc. ..

1.     When God gave these commands, it was not about hygiene

2.    He was teaching Israel that He is holy, and pure

3.    And that they could not just approach Him whilly nilly, but had to approach him as clean!

                                       ii.    In an effort to keep ceremonial cleanliness

                                      iii.    So the Jewish leaders started to create even more rules above God’s law

                                      iv.    And you can kind of imagine why they would have made this law

1.     you are not supposed to touch a bodily fluid, or host of other things

2.    You’re not even supposed to touch someone who had

a.    We see this when the crowd was astonished that the unclean woman who touched Jesus robe in ___________ did not make Him unclean.

3.    So the Jewish rulers would say that you needed to wash your hands before eating

a.    Because if you are unclean on the outside you can fix that: you can wash your hands

b.    But if you are unclean on the inside, from touching your food with unclean hands, how are you supposed to clean yourself?!

4.    The line of thinking was that if you consumed unclean things they would forever be a part of you then!

c.     And so they looked to Jesus’ disciples and say to him:

                                         i.    Your disciples are now unclean and cannot worship God rightly! They are unclean before a holy God!

                                       ii.    Do they not respect the rules their forefathers have laid down for them to follow!

3)   To which Jesus responds “And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?” (3-9)

a.    Notice: He doesn’t even dignify their question with a response. 

b.    And then, before they can respond, He gives them an example of how they break the commandment of God

                                         i.    God says honor your father and mother

                                       ii.    But You Say if you give your money to God  then you need not support your parents in their old age. 

c.     “So for the sake of tradition you have made void the word of God (v 6).

                                         i.    The Scribes and Pharisees had taken their manmade traditions and laws and put them on a higher pedestal than God’s very word. 

                                       ii.    The power by which He created all things!

d.    And so Jesus says “you hypocrites”

                                         i.    And he quotes: Isaiah 29:13

e.    Break that down – v 8

                                         i.    They have a pretend holiness, a pretend religion!

                                       ii.    They are more interested in how they can keep some made up law than what their God has actually said!

                                      iii.    Their lips say one thing but their heart says another

                                      iv.    I know you have met someone like that. 

1.     They talk a good talk, even about being a Christian, but stick around them long enough and you see who they really are!

f.     Break that down – v 9

                                         i.    And so Jesus says IN VAIN do they worship Him

                                       ii.    For when you approach a holy God, you must do it on His terms! Not your own!

                                      iii.    For they “teach as doctrine the commandments of men”.

                                      iv.    Essentially, they stopped listening to God!

1.     They were like that punk in high-school!

2.    They were buried in their self-interest, rather than worshipping God how He said they should.

g.    Their “religion” was fake!

                                         i.    They cared more about how they worshipped than who they worshipped.

4)   So Jesus moves on to answer the concern at hand (10-20)

a.    He says of course “it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth”

                                         i.    For what passes into the mouth goes through the stomach and is expelled. 

1.     Oh Sure, depending on what you just had touched you probably wouldn’t want to eat without washing your hands

a.    But in some sense, it doesn’t really matter for it will eventually leave your body. 

2.    But the principle is that the unclean-ness will eventually leave you

                                       ii.    But what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person!

1.     For every evil thing comes from the heart, and eventually you find out who a person truly is.  

2.    Evil thoughts, deeds and words (19)

3.    In short, our sinful heart defiles us when we allow it to control how we behave as human beings!

b.    But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone

                                         i.    Doesn’t he make the whole discussion seem a little silly?

                                       ii.    They came to Jesus with a complaint that the disciples were disobeying the rules of men,

                                      iii.    And Jesus turns it on its head and accuses them of false worship and an ineffectual faith!

5)   If it is our sinful heart, and resulting sinful actions, that make us unclean and unfit to worship God; then what is it that can make us clean?

a.   For if it is not to wash our hands, then it must be something else!

b.    Simply put it is the work of Jesus on the cross that makes us clean before God!

Point 2: Jesus Cleans (Matthew 15:21-39)

1)     The sacrificial system was put in place for three reasons

                               i.    To make Jewish people clean before a holy God so that they could worship rightly

                             ii.    To teach them about their unworthiness to approach God

                            iii.    To foreshadow the coming of the Christ who would be the sacrifice once for all.

b.    When Christ died on the cross he shed His sin once for all of us to become clean before God. He gave us a new heart, and as Jesus said what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart. 

1.     If our hearts are made new in Jesus, then our actions will change as a result. 

2.    Our lives will be transformed. 

3.    We will be made clean to approach the throne of God forevermore!

c.     In Christ, we have the ability to approach God in a way that no one ever enjoyed in the OT

1.     As sons and daughters, wholly accepted in Christ Jesus

2)    Jesus Heals

a.    The daughter of the Canaanite woman becomes healed because of her faith in Jesus.

b.    She calls out to Him “Son of David”! A messianic term!

                                                   i.    Asks that he heals her daughter, to which he does as she asks, seeing her faith.

c.     In 29-31 Jesus heals many people,

                                                   i.    Lame, blind, crippled, mute, and many others

                                                 ii.    And they praised God for their healing

d.    The healing miracles that Jesus preforms in His ministry are precursors to the healing ministry he would ultimately preform on the cross

                                                   i.    Let me read to you from 1 Peter 2:21-25

                                                 ii.    Jesus healed a lot of people physically here on earth but he truly healed us, spiritually, when he died on that cross.

                                                iii.    “by his wounds you have been healed.”

3)    Jesus Satisfies

a.    He then moves on and in an almost identical way to His miracle last week, Jesus feeds 4000 men and their women and children. 

b.    And it says that they were satisfied because of Him.

c.     Psalm 103:1-5

4)   When I was reading the account of verses 21-39 I was subtly and consistently struck with one question that would not go away: why does it keep mentioning where Jesus was going to?

21 – “went away from there and withdrew to the district of Tyre & Sidon”

29 – “Jesus went on from there and walked beside the Sea of Galilee. And He went up on the mountain and sat down there”

39 – “He got into the boat and went to the region of Magadan”

a.    Why in the world was Matthew so specific about Jesus’ travel itinerary?

                                                   i.    Its almost like after someone goes on a 2 month journey to Europe and they come back with a picture book showing you exactly where they walked!

                                                 ii.    Then it became clear. 

                                                iii.    You see, to a non-1st-century-Jew those names mean very little. 

1.     If you were to look back to 14:34 you would note that Jesus started in Genessaret

2.    Tyre and Sidon (21) are significant because they were some of the major cities of the people called Canaanites. The long time adversaries of the Jews

3.    The side of the sea (29) that Jesus walked on the sat down on would have been east of Israel’s territory, a more desolate area.

4.    And Magadon (39) was in Jewish territory. 

                                                iv.    Jesus started in Jewish territory, by feeding the 5000 (last week) and then left to go to their ancient enemies territory. There he healed, and satisfied the needs of those people, and then he returned to Jewish territory. 

b.    The reason Matthew was so specific about Jesus’ travel itinerary is because he wanted to show that Jesus was teaching one of the most important lessons about his ministry to the disciples (who traveled with Him)

                                                   i.    Jesus is the Son of David, the Davidic Messiah, for ALL people. Not just the Jews.

                                                 ii.    Jesus was just rejected in His home town of Nazareth, whereas here they received Jesus, trusting in Him and praising God for Him. 

                                                iii.    It didn’t matter that they were not the people of God

1.     All that mattered was their response to Jesus!

c.     There is a reason that Jesus makes so seemingly a cruel remark to the Canaanite woman, calling her a “dog”. It is not because she is a woman but because of her heritage.

                                                   i.    You could almost see the disciple’s heads nodding, saying “ya why would he help you?”

                                                 ii.    And then she says “yes Lord, yet even the gods eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”

1.     She had faith that Jesus would heal her

                                                iii.    Jesus sees this faith and blesses her and heals her daughter for it. 

1.     Now I can just picture the disciples with their jaws dropped

d.    Jesus took them out there to show that His ministry was bigger than just the Jews, it was for the world. 

                                                   i.    Unfortunately, it took the Disciples until Acts 11:18 to figure this out! For when they heard that the non-Jews in Caesarea believed and were saved they glorified God!

Closing

-       As we pay specific and close attention to learn from God’s word we come away with so much. 

-       The Jewish leaders thought that to eat with unwashed hands made you unclean before a holy God. 

o  Today we may think that to wear this or sing that makes our worship of God unclean before a holy God.

-       We came away with the understanding that it our sin that makes us unclean before God.

-       And we came away with the understanding that we cannot wash our hands enough to make ourselves clean.

o  For the very problem of our sin holds us back from crying “Abba, Father” and approaching God with new hearts made in Christ Jesus. 

-       And we came away with the knowledge that the healing work of Jesus extends to all people. Even me. Even you. 

-       As we close out, please pray with me and then sing “There is a Fountain Filled with Blood”