About this sermon
The Pharisees asked why Jesus’ disciples broke the tradition of the elders, and Jesus answered that they broke God’s commandment for the sake of their tradition. Adding rules to God’s law tells God he forgot something, and treating his commands as suggestions takes away from it. Scripture is sufficient as the only rule of life, and believers repent of every way they have added to it or set it aside.
Sermon transcript
Or is it lacking? Is it defective? Is it in need of editing or improvement or addition by somebody in order for it to be able to instruct us as a rule of life? Do you believe the Word of God is sufficient as a guide and rule of life? That is the question in our mind as we prepare to read Matthew chapter 15 verses 1 through 9.
But first, let’s go to Lord in prayer. Would you pray with me? Heavenly Father, Lord, we confess that this is your word. This is your word written. It has been inspired as the Holy Spirit carried along men to record these words. And so, since the Holy Spirit is the ultimate author of scripture, we ask that the spirit would be present to illumine these pages, these words, Lord, reveal them to our hearts and our minds. Lord, cause us to love the words of life that you have contained here. Lord, help us to understand your word as powerful. as perfect and as sufficient. And so this we pray in Jesus name. Amen. Matthew chapter 15. We’ll be looking at verses one through nine here. Now the word of the Lord.
Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat. He answered them. And why do you break the commandment 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 his mother, what you have gained from me is given to God, he need not honor his father. 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. The grass withers and the flower fades, but this the word of our Lord endures forever.
Have you ever noticed that the popular time for checking the instructions is usually after we’ve already assembled them improperly? That seems to be the time that we think that maybe the manufacturer has something to say about how something should be put together. And how often do we, in our lives, fall into error? And that’s the time that we want to consult the instruction of the manufacturer’s instructions.
That’s a time that we become, in a sense, like the Pharisees. The Pharisees are often a misunderstood group within Scripture, and our view of their faults may be a little bit off. You see, the description I’ve heard over and over again, because sometimes I would I would ask, especially when I was teaching youth, what was the error of the Pharisees? What did they have wrong? And usually I would hear some response within that time that was, you know, the Pharisees took the law too seriously.
That was definitely not the error of the Pharisees. It was not that they took the law too seriously. In fact, Jesus shows us the exact opposite. The Pharisees didn’t take the law of God seriously enough. Just as we can’t be said to take the directions very seriously if we don’t consult them in building or we think that we can subtract or add to them. Now that’s an irony because of the Pharisees and legalism. We tend to think that they had earned the reputation for being really concerned about the law, but in fact they weren’t.
They had a low view. This is a first description, a main feature that you’re going to see here as we explore this text. And one of the main features of the Pharisees and the lawyers of the law is that they think that God’s law is such a low bar that they themselves can accomplish it of their own. power. That’s the first fault that you’re going to see here. It’s such a low bar that they can accomplish it of their own volition.
That, in fact, was an error, we remember, of the rich young ruler when asked about, have you kept the commandments of God? And as he’s listing off all the commandments of God, he thinks, yeah, I’ve got those down. And he perhaps has forgotten about the other 600 plus editions of the Torah that have explained exactly how you keep all these laws. But, but one of their main features of their error was, was thinking that they have their own power could keep the law and that could give them a right standing before God.
But we were reminded that Paul has told us why, in fact, would Jesus have died. Galatians 2, 21 is the death of Christ, then in vain, if we can fulfill the law for our righteousness. But that’s not the only error that they make. They make this second main error, and that is that they missed that the law was something that was supposed to be their pattern of life.
The Word of God was to be their only rule of life. Now, the Pharisees would agree at first when you said, is the Bible the rule of life? And they would say, yes, it is my rule of life. But they would disagree if you asked, is it your only? Of life. Is it the only rule of your life? Because the Pharisees had a habit of adding to and subtracting from God’s word.
And we should be reminded of the fact that they didn’t read their Bibles very well when they were doing this, because Deuteronomy 4.2 warns, what you shall not add to the word that I commanded you, nor take away from it, that you may keep the commandments of the Lord, your God, that I command you.
But both of those are in view. In this passage in Matthew 15, the Pharisees commit both of these errors of adding to and taking away from God’s law. How have they added to it? Look with me first at verse 2. In verse 2, they ask, Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders?
For they do not wash their hands when they eat. Now, perhaps the first time you ever encountered this passage, you may have had a question here of what’s going on. Is there some sort of wrong thing in washing your hands before you eat? No. In fact, what’s going on here is the disciples are not unhygienic. It is not the problem of, I saw a news story once that said up to a third of men do not wash their hands after going to the washroom. This is not a warrant for you to have that as an excuse when somebody says you should wash your hands and say you’re just being a Pharisee. No, it’s not talking about hygiene here. It’s talking about a particular religious ritual that the Pharisees would engage in. In fact, we have from Mark 7, it tells us that there’s more washing rituals involved with the Pharisees.
They would like to wash their copper pots in this certain ritual and even their couches that they sat on using this ritual. And there’s some other sources that suggest to us it may have been a washing ritual in which you took water, and then you poured it twice over your right hand and made sure that the water dripped down to your fingertips and then took the water and washed your left hand twice, pouring it over, making sure that the water dripped down to your fingertips. If you didn’t do it in the right order or if the water dripped back onto your arm, you had to repeat the washing ritual again. You’d have to redo it or else you were considered unclean in order to eat.
This ritual is nowhere in the Bible. It is something the Pharisees made up. They had an additional rule that you can see these other Pharisees were saying. if your disciples don’t do this. In Luke, there’s a parallel passage in which Jesus purposely doesn’t do this when he goes into a Pharisee’s home in another town. This apparently was something that he loved to use as an illustration and a teaching element. But what they said is if you did not do that, you are unclean. In a sense, you are not holy. So what were the Pharisees doing? They had added something extra to God’s law that said that you must do this or you’re not holy. They thought that they could define what holiness was.
Now, last I checked, there’s only one who is referred to as holy, holy, holy within scripture, and that is God himself. He defines by his character and by his revealed will what holiness is, not us and not the Pharisees. And Jesus, you can tell, is upset in this setting, in this exchange, because this is actually serious blasphemy masquerading as being holier than thou. Because God’s law is holy. Romans 7, 12 tells us that. And it’s holy because God is holy. And it’s a reflection of his character when he reveals it to us. And when you make your own law and you say, no, this is the measurement of holiness, that in fact is perverse.
It tries to be holier than God. It’s saying that I can come up with a holier law than what God has done. And do we see that at the root of it, to add to God’s law, to add to the principles there is to tell God that he forgot something. he left something out. There was something important that he missed. And it’s a good thing that God has me to perfect his holy law. The blasphemy there is odious to Christ. Let me ask you though, is the Word of God enough? Is it sufficient as a rule of your life? Or do you have to add to it? Do you have to help it along?
Because if you do, then you are setting up yourself as a standard of holiness, not God. In fact, you are saying that you could be holier than God. And this is what is happening when we add to the Word of God. And in fact, Jesus is going to reveal that the tradition holding of the Pharisees isn’t about greater holiness really at its heart. At its heart, it’s about something much more sinister. If you look at verses 3 through 6, he has this description here that perhaps requires a little bit of aid.
He says, he answered to them, why do you break the commandment 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 his mother, what you 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. What is Jesus talking about here? Well, starting in verse three to six, he’s actually talking about a certain tradition that the Pharisees had, a certain tradition that they made up. Mark gives us the word for this tradition. It’s called Corban. What is, what is Corbin? This is a tradition. He actually says it in Mark 7 a little differently.
If a, if a man tells his father or mother, whatever you would have gained from me is Corbin, that is given to God. What is this? This is an odd little tradition that the Pharisees came up with that means that if your parents ask you for help in their old age, they can’t support themselves, or they need extra help, and then it wouldn’t really be paying for their house, but it would be paying for their food, or something of that nature, that you should help them unless something is korban, that is designated as given to God. In other words, you can say, I know you need this food, but this is given to God. Or I know you need this money, but it’s, it’s given to God.
Now, part of the evil here was there was another way in which you can go back on your Corbin if a need came up. And so a parent could ask for help. You could say, oh, Corbin. In other words, not it. I don’t have to help. And then later, you can say, oh, but this need came up. I really need a new leather-bound copy of the tour or whatever it was that they wanted to spend their money on. They could go back on it because they had a need that came up. What was Corbin then?
It was an additional tradition that the Pharisees came up with, which seemed to be an addition, but actually ended up being a subtraction from God’s word. It took out honor your father and mother in exchange and instead honored this man-made tradition that allowed them a technicality to get out of honoring their father and their mother. You know, the Pharisees became famous for doing this a lot.
They had little technicalities that got them away from honoring the Sabbath. They got away with not fasting or with tithing because there were technicalities in their man-made traditions that got them out of God’s law from doing that. You see, it didn’t really help them to make these fences around the law. It didn’t really help them to have these additions because their heart was in the wrong place. Their heart was hard and selfish and proud. And these traditions actually became ways of having a rebellion against God all the while looking as if they were holy, looking as if they were very religious and pious when inside they were not.
That’s why in other places Jesus will talk about the washing of the outside of the bowl while the inside is filthy, or whitewashed tombs. A whitewashed tomb looks really great on the outside, but what is inside but death? Jesus knew it was a heart problem. He knew that was what the problem with the Pharisees was. There really wasn’t a problem with this hand-washing tradition that they came up with. But that wasn’t the issue. The issue was their heart. And Jesus wasn’t going to submit to their version of holiness because Jesus himself was the Word of God made flesh. He knew what God needed for and required for holiness.
Not the Pharisees. Now, as you look at this passage, as we try to make application for our lives, it seems really easy to condemn the Pharisees, doesn’t it? The minute you say the word Pharisee, you say they’re the bad guys in the text, right? They have the black hats. They’re the villains. Sometimes it’s harder when we see the Pharisees in the text to wonder if sometimes we act like the Pharisees. And that’s what we have to ask ourselves. Is there ways in which we have, we have acted like the Pharisees?
Do you believe that the word of God is sufficient and the only rule of life or is it insufficient? Does it require some additions? Is it perhaps too strict in certain matters and it needs an editor? And I would come along and make those edits. How do we do that? How do we add to and take away, become like the Pharisees where we don’t take God’s law seriously, but we make up our own and we take that very seriously. How does that happen to us? How do we first take away from the law? I think that becomes a little bit more obvious of how we take away from the law. We just ignore certain parts that we don’t like.
I remember once I was driving to the church to teach some youth in my assistant pastor days, and I nearly drove off the road listening to a sermon on the radio because I thought I should be, you know, it’s the Lord’s Day, I should be listening to a sermon as I was driving, but the pastor read the text and he says, and God has three suggestions from this text for you in your life. I thought, when has God ever had a suggestion for us in our life? God has commands. And when we take God’s law, when we take his commands and suggestions, we have begun to take away from God’s law. We have not recognized it as our rule of life.
And that could be in many different areas. For perhaps a lot of young people, the temptation could be to take that command and not be unequally yoked. We can take that as a suggestion rather than a command when we enter into marriage. Perhaps when we enter into new jobs, we can take the command for God’s tithes and offerings as a suggestion and not necessarily a command. I actually, when I first entered into a marriage, my wife was the one who had to convince me that in fact I was treating God’s word in terms of tithes and offerings as a suggestion rather than a command. And it’s good that we are not unequally yoked so we can have our spouses convict us on some of those things. Perhaps it’s for many of us in this culture, the command to not neglect meeting together. Many of these we see as suggestions. I can be a Christian without doing these things. I don’t need to honor God’s law here or there because it’s merely a suggestion. That’s how we take away from God’s law. But how do we add to God’s law?
You know, a few years ago I did a search. I just thought it would be interesting to type into Google something along the lines of, if you’re a Christian, you will not dot, dot, dot, and just see what came up. And it was interesting to see how many web pages that people had devoted to these topics. There were people saying that you cannot be a Christian and watch any movies whatsoever.
Eat any meat. Practice counseling. Watch Star Wars. Dance. My kids are in trouble there. They’re six and under. Whenever they hear music, they start dancing. Play cards of any sort. Drink caffeine. I’m in trouble there. I had caffeine on the way over. Watch any cartoons.
You cannot be a Christian and celebrate Christmas, one page said, and one said, you cannot be a Christian and not celebrate Christmas. So it’s very confusing here. Now, any one of these may be wise or unwise for somebody in any circumstance. Good for your health or not. Good for temptation, bad in terms of there’s a temptation there you want to avoid. But to lay it down as a rule for all people in all times without scriptural warrant is to add to God’s law, to have our own particular preferences. become our law of what is holy and righteous.
And we should hear Paul’s question in Colossians 2.20 when that is happening, when he asks, why do you submit to regulations? Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch, referring to things that all perish as they’re used according to human precepts and teaching. We’re not talking about God’s law. They’re human rules. These have indeed an appearance of wisdom and promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.
And that was the problem. The Pharisees actually were some of the biggest indulgers of their flesh, of their pride, of their sin. But they looked on the outside like a clean bowl with filth inside. That was the problem there. There was a taking away from God’s law, even sometimes by addition. Now, to conclude this matter.
To conclude in looking at this text and what this has for us, we have to ask again, is the Bible our only rule for life? Is it sufficient? Because when you’re asking, is the word of God sufficient for me written? We’re also really asking the question, is Christ sufficient? He is the Word of God made flesh, and we have the Word of God written here. If the Word of God is insufficient, are we saying that about Christ?
Are we unsure if His holiness is really enough for us or it needs adding to? If we are adding to God’s law or taking away in any way trying to correct it, then we need to be humble. Taking issue with God’s law as not complete enough or in need of editing is a sin of pride and needs to be confessed before God.
Because we need to come to a place in which we can say with a psalmist what sometimes feels hard to say in Psalm 119, I love your law. How do we, why do we love God’s law? Because it reveals his commandment of love. And what is God but love? He is revealing his nature in his law. And for us to say that is insufficient is to say God’s nature is insufficient. Now we need to say, I love your law because we love our Lord.
We love our savior. We love his salvation and we love his word and we can neither improve it by adding to it nor improve it by taking away from it. We can never be holier than him. We can never be more loving than him, more merciful or even more enjoyable. because the law summarizes loving God and loving our neighbor. And we can’t love the law until we believe the gospel that Jesus fulfilled that law for us. He loved us. He pitied us. He carried a cross, a payment for us. And so we say Christ is sufficient. His word is sufficient. It needs neither addition nor an editor.
Would you pray with me? Heavenly Father, help us to confess that you are sufficient in your word. Lord, we confess that Christ was sufficient, that he is a better measure of holiness than we could ever be. Lord, if there is wisdom or kindness that we must have in our life as a guide, Lord, help us to do that, but not to use it as our measure of holiness for others. Lord, I pray that you would convict us of sin. The ways in which we may have taken your word as suggestion, or ways in which we thought it was insufficient and thought it needed us to add to it. Lord, forgive us of these sins, cause us to turn from them and repent by the work of your Holy Spirit.
And so we pray these things in the name of the one who sent the Spirit, Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Amen. We will sing as our hymn, our final hymn, number 80. you take your hymnals and turn to number 80. It’s how firm a foundation you Saints of the Lord. Would you stand as we sing this as our final hymn.
The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.