Father, we’re gathered here this morning to bask in that truth. Lord, the devil does his best to hide it from us.

But Lord, all things are well with us. Well with our soul because You have called us Your own and You have made us Your own in Jesus. So we pray that, Lord, we would know that and our hearts full well this morning and it would inform every thought, every deed, every action. Lord, we would truly have our rest in Christ and so then live fully for Him. So we say thank You for that grace. Thank You, Lord, that You won’t turn us away, Lord.

We pray You’d prepare our ears, our eyes this morning to see and hear from Your Word, God. We pray that You would do a work in us. I pray You’d take our tithe, our offering, whether we bring our tithe here physically or we give online, I pray You would take what You have given us, Lord, and we pray that You would give us and as we give it back to You, You would multiply it. Lord, use it. Use us for Your kingdom and for Your name’s sake, Lord. We just love You and we bless in the name of Jesus. Pray all that in His name. Amen.

Well, good morning. It’s good to be with you. It’s good to see you. I’m grateful we have our nursery going today for the first time in, I don’t know, over a year. So thanks to Elaine and Sarah for doing that this first week. And it helps our parents pay attention and be able to, you know, listen to the service. Love kids, but, you know, when they’re so small, you just want to shove them in a closet when you’re trying to pay attention. You shouldn’t do that, though.

But thankful to them. We’re going to be back in Matthew.

My wife’s shaking her head. Don’t shove kids in closets. We’re going to be in Matthew chapter 15.

Picking up right where we left off in Matthew’s Gospel here.

Matthew chapter 15.

Matthew 15. It says, Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they don’t wash their hands when they eat. And He answered them, And why do you break the commandments of God for the sake of your tradition? For God commanded, Honor your father and your mother, and whoever reviles father or mother must surely die. But you say, If anyone tells his father or mother what you would have gained from me is given to God. He need not honor his father. So for the sake of your tradition, you have made void the Word of God. You hypocrites, well did Isaiah prophesy of you when he said, This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.

In the early 20th century, there was a famous, famous comedian actor. His name was W.C. Fields. He was a staunch atheist, agnostic. He famously said, I spent half my money on women and gambling and alcohol and the other half I wasted. So that was just the kind of person that he was. And on his deathbed, a good friend came in to see him. And his friend came in, shocked, to see W.C. Fields. W.C. Fields thumbing through a Bible. And he said, What are you doing thumbing through a Bible? And he looked back at his friend and said, Looking for loopholes. Looking for loopholes.

What is a loophole? The dictionary would define it as a means of escape. Think about that when you hear about taxes. Such and such billionaires using such and such a loophole to get out of perhaps what they’re supposed to pay or what’s right to pay. But what we’re going to see this morning in this passage in chapter 15 is there are no loopholes in God’s Word. And the reality is the Pharisees, they’re not the first ones to attempt to find a loophole with God’s Word. Man, the heart of man, has been looking for loopholes ever since Adam and Eve did in the garden. God said, Do this. And they looked for a loophole. How can I stay in the right? How can I do what I want to do and not get in trouble? How can I be me and make God happy? Is that a possible thing to do? It’s not. Our hearts are constantly looking to God and protect their own way. And so Jesus addresses that. He exposes the heart of man for what it is. But He’s a good doctor in that He doesn’t just give us a diagnosis of what’s wrong. Jesus also gives the remedy for the heart of man.

So these Pharisees and these scribes, they come up from Jerusalem. That’s the holy city where the temple is. And they come all the way up to Bumkin country in Galilee to see Jesus and His disciples. And the Pharisees, and we’ve seen them many times in Matthew’s Gospel so far, they’re determined to play the role of antagonists to Jesus. Despite His supernatural wisdom and knowledge and power, they want to be His enemies. Christ doesn’t want to be theirs, but they’re determined to be His.

Now what were Pharisees? Pharisees were a religious sect. And they started as sort of to say we’re the people who can really teach and interpret the law. The written law that God gave Moses on the mountain. But that’s not all that the Pharisees did. The Pharisees really loved and championed the oral law. Well, what was the oral law? Well, the oral law called the Talmud, and Jews to this day cherish it. The Talmud is a commentary on the written law. So hey, what if we had, after prophets stopped coming from God, what if there was this commentary that helped the people know how to obey the written law? Okay. So the Talmud has the Mishnah. And the Mishnah will teach you about agricultural regulations, feasts and festival keeping. One, two, three. Categories called women. And it deals with engagements and divorce and marriage and these things. Damages, corporal punishment, rights and wrongs between people and society, consecrated things and purifications. The second half of the Talmud is called the Gemara and it deals with an analysis of the Mishnah. Traditions, biblical interpretations, stories and digressions. And you think, okay, well that’s great, right? Help people know how to apply, God’s written word with this oral law. The problem is this. It went from being a good thing to being a bad thing. Because one rule became another rule and another rule became another rule until you had this incredibly complex system of do’s and don’ts that most normal people couldn’t even help to wrap their minds around, much less memorize, much less obey. So you would only be a Pharisee if you would dare try to say you know it all and you could keep it all. These ancestral laws became far more important than the very Word of God, at least to the Pharisees in Jesus’ time. And so these experts in truth, they come to fool Jesus the carpenter and his ragtag team of disciples. They come to really let Jesus and the people know who’s really close to God.

But Jesus isn’t so easily duped. He turns around and says, their question on its head. And when Jesus does it, He exposes the heart of the matter. And really what He does is He exposes their heart. He exposes their heart.

Now, was there a command in the Old Testament in God’s law for people to wash their hands before they eat? Like they’re talking about. There was not. In Exodus, it tells the priests they should do certain ritual hand washings before they serve in the temple, but that’s it. This was very much so a rule that they had cooked up. They had a very complex system of hand washings and purifications over and over again unless they were accidentally somehow unclean. So Jesus says, but why do you break God’s actual commandments for your made-up traditions? He asks the question with the question. And the example He uses from the law are parents, which makes sense because parents are important. If you work through the Old Testament, even the New, the Bible is fraught with examples of God saying you had better honor, you had better love, you had better take care of your parents. Exodus 21 says if you dishonor your parents, you will die. If you are found to be dishonoring to parents, you would be put to death. And Paul reminds us in Ephesians 6 that honoring your parents, it’s the first commandment that comes with a promise. God promised long life to those who honored their parents. So let’s grab this please. If God’s Word says something explicitly over and overly again,

it must be reflecting God’s heart. And if God’s Word says, you should be taking care of your parents and honoring them, it must be enormously important to God’s heart that we do that. But Jesus says, look what you people have done. You’ve created a loophole. Now how did they create this loophole? What they did was they said, there’s this thing called Corban, it’s an offering. And when it comes time when mom and dad are old or they can’t take care of themselves, what you do is say, no, all this stuff I would have used to care for you in your old age, that’s dedicated to God, see? That belongs to Him. That’s an offering to Him. One commentator noted, there’s no records of anyone ever actually making sure that that stuff was taken to the temple. So sorry mom and dad, I want to honor God, so I can’t give you all of my possessions and my money that would have gone towards taking care of you.

Jesus says, see what you’ve done? You’ve nullified the written Word of God. Which means you’ve rejected the heart of God.

And friends, I think that poses a real question for you and I this morning. And it’s a great question to ask yourself all the time. It’s a great question to ask yourself at the beginning of the new year. Am I zealous to know the Word of God? Because I believe when I know the Word of God, I’m getting close to the heart of God. See? I think many people today are satisfied with religion of a kind. They’ll check yes on a survey when they’re asked if they’re a Christian. They have some shadowy idea of who Jesus was. And perhaps He’s this good figure we should all attain to be like Him. And they’ll grace a church at Christmas and Easter. But it’s not why their heart beats. To know God’s Word. To have a life informed by God. To know His heart.

I dare say and hate to say that many more people are tucked inside the walls of the church. They know the lingo. They’ve heard 10,000 sermons. That’s largely the end of their Christian experience. In the real practice of their life, you wouldn’t know them from a pagan, from an atheist, when the cashier has a bad attitude with them. Or they have poor service at the restaurant or how they handle themselves in a heated, debate at work. Or their home life is altogether void of the teachings of the Scriptures to their children. They would never dare tie the one penny more than 10%. Because, you know, the Bible doesn’t really say that for New Testament Christians anyway. So, they’re lucky I give the 10. They are captains of the bare minimum. They are truly church goers. Then there is that type that altogether, loves the idea of spirituality. But they’re not so comfortable with everything the Bible says. You know, because times change and shouldn’t the Bible change? You know, it would fit a lot of people’s lives and agendas if the Bible could just be a little more flexible. I mean, Christ is the right way for me, but God is love and He’s not the right way for everyone. And yes, the Bible clearly says male and female, He created them, but, if He wants to be a she and she wants to be a he-she, who knows oneself better than oneself? After all, God is love and He’ll love me the way I am. You hear it said. And as far as suffering goes, well, God’s a God of happiness. He wants me to be happy. He wants me to be healthy, wealthy and wise. God wants to bless me. I can find a lot of preachers really that want me to know that about God. He just wants to bless me. And it’s just a few profiles of a great many different people who have their version of Jesus.

But you know, Jesus one time said something really hard to a group of people. He said, hey, if you want to follow me, you better eat my flesh and drink my blood. And Jesus lost a lot of disciples because He said that hard thing. And He wasn’t willing to bend on it. And Jesus said to His disciples, do you want to leave me too?

And Peter gave the response that we must give. Where else can we go, Lord? You have the words of eternal life.

Friends, if we are not Bible-believing Christians, I want to say I don’t think that we’re Christians at all. Because it’s in God’s Word straight from the page that we find God’s heart. But, so do we love hearing it and knowing it and say I’m not willing to alter it when it’s tough. In fact, I’m going to let the hard parts of Scripture have their way to soften the tough parts in me so that I look more like Christ. I want God’s Word to rearrange and reshape me and further enlarge my heart so I’m prepared for my calling, my heavenly calling. Because isn’t that the great end of Matthew’s Gospel? If we’ve been in Matthew’s Gospel two years and we don’t know what’s going on, we don’t get that’s the great end is God’s kingdom alive and at work in me. We’re missing the point altogether. The kingdom caused me to totally repent of who I am and fully surrender to all of who God is. Would Jesus be satisfied to have citizens in His kingdom with partial devotion? Would Christ spill His blood to save some or most of our souls, sharing the rest of it with Satan? Would the Father be contented to have children who perform service in superficial obedience like the Pharisees? You know the answer to those questions. And so you must ask that question of yourself in all sincerity. Do I love God’s heart? If I do, I’m going to love His Word, all of it, and it’s unadulterated from the page form. And if I want a different Jesus, you know what you have when you have a modified Jesus? You have no Jesus. You have an invention of your own mind that in fact looks a lot like Jesus. Like you, it serves your own sinful, selfish whims and desires. So have all of Christ or have none of Him. He’ll have all or none of you. We should be like a fish out of water or a bird with clipped wings if we can’t get to God through His Word. We should have that kind of hunger for it. I think if we’re going to call ourselves a gospel people, we’ve got to call ourselves a Word-saturated people. And you may be hearing that and thinking, well, man, I’m not always on a spiritual high. I’ll be honest. Okay, I’ll be honest with you. Neither am I.

And the temptation is to do this. I need to slow down. I need to just take a break. I need something of sabbatical. And that’s the very thing the enemy would have you do. You’re no less thirsty because you don’t realize it. You’re no less hungry because you don’t realize it. Friends, it’s in those seasons we must push through and realize, man, I need God’s Word because I’m in a dry season. I’m in a dark valley and I need God’s Word. I need to push through. I need God to give me Word. I need Christ to fortify me. I’m not content to know Christ a little bit. I’m not content to just drag my feet through this dry season or this valley. Lord, build me up and send me out. Let me not slow down in the race. I need that sword of the Spirit to be wielded to fight against evil. I need that in my life. You need that in your life.

What do we mean ultimately then when we say the Word of God?

Well, we mean Jesus. That’s what we mean. Why did the Pharisees hate Jesus? Because they hated God’s Word.

The Word of God, Moses’ law, the prophets, that’s God’s Word. They already hated it. That’s why they had the traditions they loved more. Jesus is the last and final greatest Word God would ever speak. So of course they would hate Him too.

Friends, we need to sit under our Master’s teaching, preaching, sit under Jesus, and grow deeper and deeper into who He is, into His heart. If we love Jesus, we’re going to love His Word.

I don’t know why, but, well, I do know why. A friend shared a video with me once. They’re terribly interesting. If you get on YouTube, people will take these old, ruined, broken things and they’ll restore them. I watched one recently. It was an axe head from the Civil War era. And it looked like a clump of dirt. You thought, what is he going to do with that? But by the time he cleans it and purifies it, it’s this beautiful, amazing thing again. But sometimes they’ll use sandblasters. Have you ever seen a sandblaster? It’s so cool. It’s like this really rusty, awful-looking wrench. And you start moving that sandblaster down that wrench, and it’s beautiful again. And it’s amazing. And that’s what you and I need with the Word every day. I’ve got the devil, and I’ve got the world and everything it wants me to think and believe in. I’ve got the… I’ve got my own inventions that I come up with in my sinful flesh. And I need God’s Word to come like a sandblaster. Like, nope, that was bad. Let’s get rid of that. Oh, nope, let’s take that off. Sometimes it hurts, too. But I need it if I am to stay pure, if I am to stay faithful to the heart of God through the Word of God.

Are you a Bible-believing Christian?

Friends, if we’re Christians driven by emotion, we surely will not be Bible-believing Christians. And if we’re Christians driven by… an overly rational, overly intellectual mind, we will not be Bible-believing Christians. There’s nothing wrong with emotions. There’s nothing wrong with intellect. But when we set those above what’s on the page, our flesh will say, you know, I feel different than this. You know, flood the whole earth. That doesn’t… No, the whole earth couldn’t have been flooded. And it’s one little block after another you start chipping away. So I want to say the same thing to this. I said last week when we were looking in Hebrews, and it’s this. We need together to grow up into the Word. Sunday should be a valuable time for you. Not because you want to see this face. Not because you want to see Chase. Not because you want to see anybody. But you want to encounter the living God through the Word. You should desire family worship times. You should desire times when you can open the Word with your heart. You should desire to get on the internet right now and log in and pray with us and study the Bible when we do that because God is speaking through His Word to you. He wants you to know more of His heart. Are you doing everything you can do to get to His Word so He can speak to you? And what do you say? Well, I hear what you’re saying, but I don’t even know where to start. Repentance is the best place to start. Lord, I haven’t been doing what’s right. I repent and I’m going in a different direction and I want to know You now in Your Word. And if that’s you, like, I don’t even know where to start with the Bible. I’ve never had a good relationship with the Bible. Let’s talk about that. There are a million devotional plans. I just started a new one with my family for this year. So there are things out there to assist you. God wants you to get near to Him and His Word. Do you want to get that near to Him?

I want to read the rest of this passage, 10 through 20, because it’s 1 John. It’s not a unit of thought. In verse 10, it says, And He called the people to Him and said to them, Hear and understand. It’s not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth. This defiles a person. Then the disciples came and said to Him, Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying? He answered, Every plan that my Heavenly Father has not planned and will be rooted up. Let them alone. They are blind guides. And if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit. But Peter said to Him, Explain the parable to us. And He said, Are you also still without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is expelled? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart. And this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts and murder and adultery and sexual murder. And immorality and theft and false witness and slander. These are what defile a person. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile a person.

Jesus would have us do what they’re not willing to do. What did He say to the people? He said, Hear and understand. It’s a plea. You can hear a lot of things. And the Pharisees heard a lot of things. But Jesus is saying, Hear and understand. He would have us attach our very, very souls to His words and find life in them. Something that these intellects, something these supposedly spiritual giants couldn’t do. And if He had not riled them up already with what He had said, He’s done it now. He has turned their religion on its head. It was ultra important for them not to touch the wrong thing. I don’t want to be unclean before God. Did the law say you shouldn’t touch dead bodies? Or dead carcasses of animals? Or not eat certain foods? It said that, yes. But stacked on rule, stacked on rule, became the very means of righteousness for them. If I can follow all these rules about how I’ve interpreted this, then that must mean I have religious fidelity before God. But here’s what they’re missing and we cannot miss. The law of Moses was given not to make you righteous. The law of Moses was given to keep your heart in check because you are not righteous. Your heart is not righteous.

So see the point Jesus is making and His disciples didn’t even totally get it. He’s offending their Jewish sensibilities. Like, whoa, hold on, what now? Unclean, we know about all these rules and laws. Are you serious, Jesus? I mean, He’s got to re-explain it to them.

Uncleanness, unrighteousness, defilement, it has its source in your heart. It has its source in your heart. Eating a cow or eating a pig, that doesn’t make you unclean.

Your actions and the words you let come out of your mouth and the thoughts in your head, the attitudes of your heart, these things are what make you unclean in God’s eyes. Why? Because they reflect your heart. And be sure of it, God sees and knows the true state of your heart. And that’s what you will be judged on, friend. Amen. If these things are so, I think Jesus’ exhortation to us is very simple.

Be zealous to guard your heart.

Guard your heart. Silly rules won’t do it. But you know, the reality is, if you try your very hardest to obey the Bible, that won’t do it. Look at what the Lord says in Genesis.

Chapter 6, verse 5. It says, The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was what? It was evil continually.

So what’s that tell us? It says, I don’t even have it in me for me to even obey God’s Word. My heart’s this fountain, and it just keeps bubbling up more evil. My heart’s this factory, and it keeps pushing out more wickedness. You can only, you can only cover the true state of yourself so long. Think about those Pharisees, for all their rule keeping and rule making and their complex code of ethics and their fasting and their praying. Who they really were came out in the end. Stephen the martyr nails them to the wall right before he’s stoned. He says in Acts 7, 51, You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised and hardened ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit, as your fathers did so to you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute and they killed? You killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One, whom you have now betrayed, and you murdered Him. You’re murderers. For everything they thought they were in holiness and righteousness, Stephen said, you’re just murderers.

You see, what your heart and my heart needs is not reform. You don’t need to be reformed. You can’t be reformed. What you and I need this morning is to be reformed. Is to be reborn. That’s what we need. You need a new heart. You need a new mind. You need a whole new life.

If the law of Moses could have done it, it would have done it by now. What you and I need is the Gospel. You know? Because the Gospel says, Jesus, He had a perfectly clean mind and a perfectly pure heart and perfect actions and thoughts and deeds. And that perfect Jesus, He atoned for all my bad, bad thoughts and bad words and slander and hate and every sin of my heart. And if I place my faith in Him, His Spirit will rebirth me in Him to give me a new heart and a new mind that can please God.

Ezekiel prophesied it long before. 36.26, he says, And I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh and I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statue and be careful to obey my rules. You shall dwell in the land that I gave your fathers and you shall be my people and I will be your God and I will deliver you, here it is, from all your uncleannesses. See how only Jesus can do this? Only Jesus can make us clean. Only Jesus can make us pure.

I wish that we could just see, I don’t wish, I pray it and trust that God would do it, help us see our great need for Jesus. Eyes to truly behold His beauty as a Savior, a merciful high priest as we talked about last week that can and will take away all of our sin and make us new and right. Do you see your need for Christ to give you a new heart? A new heart.

The psalmist says, Psalm 139,

Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me. Know my thoughts. And see if there be any grievous way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. How do I know that I have a new heart?

Because I can’t stand it when I start acting like I’ve got the old one.

Lord, I see that attitude in me coming up again. Lord, I’m struggling with those lustful thoughts. Lord, I find myself awfully greedy and wanting more stuff all the time. Lord, I’m slow in prayer lately. I can’t take it, Lord, because it’s not who You’ve reborn me to be. It’s someone I’m not. And I’m coming to God like the psalmist says, Lord, search me, know me, sift out those impurities, grow me up more and more, make me more and more. Make me new. Make me new. See, only God’s Word can do this. Which is to say, only Jesus can do this. We love Hebrews 4.12. That’s one of those Bible verses you learn as a kid. For the Word of God, it’s living, it’s active, it’s sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the vision of soul and spirit and joints and marrow. It discerns the thoughts and intentions of the heart. It’s great. Wow, we love that about God’s Word. But here’s what we don’t realize. If we don’t actually let the Word do that in us, if I’m not letting God’s Word run like a knife to actually separate out and show the depths of my depravity, my ugliness, I’m not letting God’s Word have the full of me.

Here’s what the Word of God will become to me. It says, No creature is hidden from His sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account. If I do not surrender to the fullness of the Word, that Word will be, it will be a great terror and dread to me on judgment day. It will judge me for not obeying it.

And that’s a terrible thought and it should frighten you. And it should move you to see God’s grace and that He’s preaching the Gospel to you now that Christ would be your salvation from it.

Is Christ your friend or your foe? He would desire to be your friend. He would desire the Father to love you more than He would love you. Have you as a child not your judge? Have you surrendered to the Word? Jesus says to us this morning, hear and understand. Don’t just hear that. Hear it. Understand it. Let God have His way with you.

Imagine if you were at work one day and a co-worker came in a little late and he said, oh, I’m sorry, I was at the doctor’s office a little late and you said, oh, is everything alright? Oh, yeah, fine. Just had to check up the oncologist. The oncologist? Everything’s alright? Oh, yeah. What would you see an oncologist for? No, I have cancer. You’re not alright? You have cancer. Yeah, but he said it was just in one part of my body.

We do that same thing with sin all the time. Here, Jesus, I’m giving you some things, but I’m not surrendering the whole thing. Friends, that’s not helpful. It goes, Jesus will have the whole or He’ll have the none. Are we offering up our full selves, surrendering our full selves to the Word of God? It’s not just some porn. They’re not just some dirty comments. It’s not some greed. It’s not some anger. It’s not some lust. It’s not some hate. It’s what will condemn you to hell.

And lest you think I’m saying you better attain perfection in this life like God is. He says, look, you had better get it together before judgment day.

No, Christ is my perfection. You know, every time I sin, what I do is I look at the cross and I say, thank you, Jesus, that you’re my righteousness. You’ve not only covered that sin, you’re giving me the power to move on in victory over it. And the Father doesn’t look down and see my old heart. He looks down and He sees my new heart. And He sees what I will be in glory someday. Sanctification. That’s what we’re talking about. Does your heart desire to be further and further sanctified, made holy like Christ, till you are with Christ, perfect in glory?

So that’s the question I think this passage asks us. Do we love God’s heart?

And what does your heart love?

Both questions need to have the same answer. Jesus. If I love God’s heart, that means I love Jesus. What does my heart love? Let it be Jesus. Let it be Jesus. Yes, the heart of man is a wicked, broken, corrupt thing, but Christ has come to give us His heart, to give us a new heart, to bring us back to God again. And you know, if our hearts really reflect Christ’s heart and we have the heart of God within us, we’re not just going to know all that. It’s going to make its way down in our life and we together as the church, we’re going to reflect that and show, show the greatness and glory of God and the grace of His Gospel and how we are a changed, different people.

I just want to read Proverbs, just this verse here to close us out. I think it’s just really good. It just speaks right into what we’ve been talking about here. Proverbs 4.23. It says, Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flows the springs of life. Put away from you crooked speech, and put devious talk far from you. Let your eyes look directly forward and your gaze be straight before you. Ponder the path of your feet, and all your ways will be sure. Do not swerve to the right or to the left. Turn your foot away from evil. Let’s pray.