Being Fed: What's In Your Heart

Gracious and loving God, as we come before you this day, we long to be the faithful stewards of this world and all that you have given to us to care for. We know that our honest and faithful following of your Son is what will bring us into glory in our due time. So, we ask in the coming moments, help us to clear our minds to focus solely on your words for each of us this day, to filter out all that is going on around us so that we can clearly hear your voice in our ears, and most importantly to reorient our hearts upon You and Your Son so that we can live completely into the life you have in store for us, Amen.

Good morning, I pray all of you here and on Facebook are doing well, surviving in this crazy world, and most importantly, I pray that each of you hears a message of value to our lives in this world this morning. Today, we are studying a really hard passage and I am going to be brutally honest with you this morning. And instead of issuing my challenge for each of us at the end of our time this morning, I am going to give it to you here, right up front because it is vitally important for our lives of faith going forward…and that challenge is...

May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships

You all (many if not all) should recognize this phrase. It is the first line to my benediction every Sunday. I can remember when I stumbled across this benediction and how much it spoke to my heart…and also how long it took me to memorize every line and every word of it. I still have some Sundays where my mind criss-crosses the words or gets them out of order. Regardless as to how it comes out, these words say exactly what I think Jesus was trying to get across to his disciples and those gathered around him on the occasion that we are studying this morning.

I want to start us off in studying this passage with a little bit of stage setting and then delve into the passage and what I heard this week in the hopes that somewhere in what Matthew wrote, you can find a nugget of wisdom to use in your everyday lives...

Setting the Stage...

Over the last three weeks, we have actually been studying Jesus’ life through Matthew in a distinct order. Two weeks ago, we discovered the story of the feeding of the 5,000, where Jesus took 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish to feed them all to satisfaction. Then last week, we heard about Jesus praying in a solitary place and how our faith, like Peter who stepped out of the boat to walk on the Sea toward Jesus, relies upon us not giving into our fears and the physical world but rather upon trusting that Jesus stands beside us in all things.

Today’s story takes place in Gennesaret, on the other side of the Sea of Galilee from where Jesus fed the 5,000. The Sea of Galilee is approximately 5 miles wide and as we learned last week, the disciples had already gone about halfway across before Jesus appeared to them. So, when they arrived in Gennesaret, the people were already waiting for him on the shoreline. Among those gathered there that day are some Pharisees and teachers of the law. Remember, a Pharisee was someone who knew the Judaic laws around food, cleanliness, and all things related to the Temple. These were the so-called religious experts of their time. To liken them to someone today, they might be considered on the level of the Pope or the executive of any religious body today. They had the answers if you had the questions.

One last piece of background for us to understand this morning…and that relates to Jewish requirements for ritual cleanliness. Now, I just do not have time to cover them all but I do want to cover one thing so that we are all starting from the same point…when it comes to ritual cleanliness, the hands must be washed in a very certain way in order for them to be considered fully clean. Now, the caveat to this is that ritual cleanliness does not refer to actually washing the hands but rather rinsing them in a very specific way with a certain kind of water gathered in a very specific vessel, poured over the hands to a certain place on the arm and only out of one type of pitcher…you get the idea. In Jewish traditions, this ritual is about how it is done and the symbolic nature of the cleaning that matters. This is all to say that when it comes to the hands and eating, the hands must be pure before they touch pure food to be ingested.

Ok, so I fibbed, there is one other thing we need to cover…pure/clean versus impure/unclean foods. If you read the entirety of Leviticus in your Bible, you will be bombarded with all types of regulations about food and other things. To shorten that a bit, there are specific kinds of foods that you are allowed to eat and those are clean/pure foods. These are the only types of food that you can eat and according to Judaic customs and laws, merely touching something that you are not supposed to eat makes your whole body unclean and impure. There are all levels of repercussions for doing these things and there are still some Jewish sects that obey all these rules and regulations strictly. With the background out of the way, let’s jump into what Jesus is teaching us today...

People are unable to fulfil the law of God without divine grace

The really short of what Jesus says to those around him that day along the Sea of Galilee and to us, and this is the brutally honest part folks, is that it is not what we eat that makes us impure, it is what we say and do that makes us impure. Let me say that again…it is what we say and do that makes us impure. Let’s hear it again in Jesus’ words...

Matthew 15:17–19 NIV

“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 a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them. For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.

I get it, it is hard for me to say these words and probably even harder for us to hear them. But the truth often hurts the most. It is not what we eat or how clean our hands can be if what comes from our lips hurts other people, whether they are intended do so or not. If it leaves our lips, it cannot be taken back. The brutal hard truth is that we, in today’s society and world, can find very few people who do and say things that do not ultimately end up hurting someone else. I know I have said this before but it really is a phrase that has stuck in my heart this week...

Hurt People, hurt people...

When we are hurt by something someone says or does, that feeling of hurt causes us to do and say things to hurt others. It is in our nature, does it excuse it, absolutely not. But, the fact of the matter remains that Jesus wanted those around him to know that the Pharisees were trying to dictate what others said and did by relying upon the laws of the time or for us the rules that we think are hard and fast, never to be broken.

You see, in Jesus’ time, the religious leaders wanted and desired nothing more than to be the ultimate authority on all things that dictated how the people were to be with one another. We too have people like that in our lives…you know the ones I am speaking of…the ones who hear something once and figure it to be the rule or the only way things are to be. Now, I am not saying that we should all leave here today and break all the legal laws and rules that we have in place to keep us safe but sometimes, we need to remember that there are really only 10 rules that should dictate how we treat our fellow human beings…and Jesus uses those same rules in this teaching as well when he says...

Matthew 15:19 NKJV

For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies.

What Jesus says here come directly out of the 10 commands. These all correlate to the 6th through 9th commandments…AND they all relate to how we treat other people. Listen gang, in this world of today, we need to be doing better about how we treat one another. Jesus directs these statements directly to the Pharisees who are surrounding him but he could just as easily come in through our doors this morning and say the very same things to each one of us. We spend our days doing similar things without thinking about them and yes, each of us has done these things at some point in the last few weeks, whether we realize it or not. I cannot be 100% certain but the last time I checked, none of us are perfect. The good news is that we don’t have to be but I am not excusing the behaviors that have landed us in this predicament either. This world needs for us to be doing what we say we do.

Ethical conduct also depends on human obedience

What I really think Jesus is trying to get across to those around him is this very idea that we need to be better. I for one am grateful that I am not perfect because that means there is always room for improvement. I am also grateful that each day that I get up is like a clean slate, my heart is clean and pure without all kinds of ritual cleansing needed, but it is up to me to decide what I allow to escape from my heart through my words and actions in that day…again, I will issue my challenge that we all have discomfort with easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships so that we can all live deep within our hearts that should be focused, centered, and guided by God’s love and compassion for one another. I mean, think about it, if all that flows out of our lips and all that we do flows out of a deep sense of love and compassion for others, then there can be no room for the things that defile us and our good name of Christian…Amen.