Matthew 15.18 (NIV)
There are
many property programmes on the TV, either about buying a house in the
countryside, buying a house abroad in
Yet another had dry rot. The seller of the
house with dry rot tried to conceal the problem he even had a report from a specialist company
that said the cause of the damp was the damp proof course.
When
I bought the property it cost me £1500 to employ a specialist company to treat
the affected area. They had to strip all the woodwork and plaster round the
area of the dry rot and replace it.” [1]
The
writer reminds us:
“You need to have the
knowledge to know whether any of these problems are fundamental ....”
In
Matthew chapter 15, we find a discussion between Jesus and the teachers of the
law about the washing of hands. The teachers of the law ask Jesus why His
disciples did not wash their hands following the traditional rituals laid down
over centuries by generations of teachers of the law.............
There
are two parts to Jesus’ answer to the teachers of the law...........
and
this morning, we join the discussion at verse 10 as the second part opens
where
Jesus calls the crowds to Himself, and says:
Listen and understand
- it is not what goes into a person’s mouth that makes him ritually unclean:
rather what comes out of it makes him unclean
and
while this discussion began with a question about washing hands according to
tradition, as we listen to what Jesus says, we discover that what He says, has
to do with fundamentals, what Jesus has to say goes to the heart of the matter,
in what He has to say Jesus speaks about the human condition............
What does that mean ?
Jesus speaks about the human
condition............ ?
Well, the discussion began
with the teachers of the law asking why the disciples didn’t wash their hands according to the old
traditions.
Jesus’ answer is this: that
it’s not omitting to wash hands according to the old tradition that makes a
person unclean........ what makes a person unclean is what is in the human
heart...........
What is in the human heart ?
Jesus says: from the heart come the evil ideas which
lead a person to kill, commit adultery and do other immoral things; to rob, to
lie, to slander others........ These are the things that make a person unclean.
And here Jesus speaks of the
realities of the human condition - washing hands is useless because it doesn’t
get to the core of the matter, the human condition, the human heart. What is
unclean is not the hands, but the human heart itself, and what comes out of the
human heart, murder, theft, and (all) other immoral things. This is what makes
a human being unclean, says Jesus - and it has nothing to do with washing or
not washing our hands. The property developer we heard about at the beginning
of the sermon said this about buying a
property: “You need to look beyond the appearance and be coldly
analytical.“ Here in Matthew’s gospel Jesus looks beyond appearance, uncovers the dry rot in the human heart, the
reality of the human heart and its sinfulness.
I suppose you can anticipate
what many might say: This a very
pessimistic view of human heart isn’t it ? The Word of Jesus is, remember, “from the heart come the evil ideas which
lead a person to kill, commit adultery and do other immoral things; to rob, to
lie, to slander others........ These are the things that make a person unclean.”
Well, let’s leave aside the question whether or not this is a pessimistic
view, and ask another – is this an accurate view of human life ?
Surely, you only have to watch
TV or read the newspapers to see the misery, suffering, death, destruction that
sweeps across the earth, the corruption of leaders, the corruption of minds,
the evil that disturbs and torments human life.
You only have to watch TV to see the reality of the human heart, and to
see how far we are from God as a world………..
And if we know ourselves at all, we know that this is what our own hearts
are like, flawed, sinful……….
In fact the Bible itself is clear, about this. You know, one of the striking things about the men and women we meet in the Bible is that without exception, they are sinful………. Real men and women, like ourselves………..
Abraham, that great commanding figure, journeying in old age from
his homeland, in wonderful faith, waiting faithfully for God’s promises to
unfold…….. we find him lying to the
Egyptian king, about who he is, who is wife is, where he has come from.
Elijah – the great prophet of the Lord, moving in the power of God,
at
King David – warrior, leader, general, songwriter, King in Israel’s
golden age, involved in the murder of an innocent man, and guilty of
adultery………
The Word of the Lord declares
to Isaiah: These people honour me with
their lips but their hearts are far from me.
(Is. 29.13). The men and women we meet in the Bible are sinful………. that
is, they are like us !
And when this world rejected
Jesus Christ, God’s only Son,
nailing him to a cross on
does that not show us once and
for all the darkness of the human heart ?
Why are human beings,
men and women, who are capable of
great love, great self sacrifice, capable even of praise and worship of
the living God, yet capable of
unfaithfulness, betrayal, lying, and all the rest ? In what Jesus tells us
we discover that it is because of what is in the human heart. Where the
living God should have been life for us, at the very centre of life, where we should have lived life loving God
with all our heart soul mind and strength, we have turned our backs on
Him, rejected full, and abundant life
Jesus teaches us, that the
root of the problem lies in the sinful human heart
So - we need something that
will touch our inner core, our inner being,
something that will touch the
heart, cleanse the heart, renew the heart itself, and something
that is real.
What is the remedy for this heart of ours ? for our human condition ?
Well, the Bible shows us human life in its sinfulness - but declares
to us what God has done, and is doing
and will do for us.
First, the New Testament
proclaims
that God has sent His own Son
among us,
that Jesus Christ has come
among us:
“ God did not send His Son
into the world to condemn the world but
to save the world through Him…! says
John 3.17
All through the gospels we see
Jesus, pure in heart, the sinless One among men and women. He knows exactly what men and women are
like, for says John’s gospel, He sees all the secrets of the human heart,
He knows the wickedness, the hypocrisy, the sinfulness of those whose company
He keeps, but listen - Jesus says: I
have not come to call the righteous, but sinners. Listen to those Words once again,
and listen with gladness, this is why Jesus came, He says: I have not come to call the righteous, but
sinners ! This is a true saying,
writes Paul in 1 Timothy 1 to be
completely accepted and believed, Christ Jesus came into the world to save
sinners !
What is the remedy for this heart of ours ? for our human condition ?
First, the New Testament
proclaims
that Jesus Christ has come
among us:
And second, the New Testament declares, God has acted
decisively to save us, to redeem us, at the Cross. There the sin and guilt that
burdens our hearts is dealt with once and for all. For at the Cross, our sin
was laid on Jesus Christ, God ‘made Him who knew no sin to be sin’ for us. There
the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world took away our sin. To put
it in other words, at the Cross, Jesus has taken the sin of the human heart,
all human hearts, the sin of the world upon Himself, and has taken it away once
and for all. So we are forgiven, the New Testament proclaims, brought into the
presence of the Holy God - we are redeemed.
Once again, What is the remedy for this heart of ours,
this sinful heart of ours ? for our human condition ?
In the great message of Romans
it is this:
God has shown us how much He
loves us -
it was while we were yet sinners that Christ died for us !
AMEN