THURSDAY
Yesterday we began looking at Matthew 15:1-20 and Jesus’ teaching that humans are defiled, not by unclean foods or eating with unclean hands (i.e., ceremonial holiness laws), but by the evil in their hearts and the resulting words and actions that flow from their hearts.
First, a word on what is meant by “heart.” In the biblical framework, the heart is the center of the whole inner life. It is the seat of the will. It is from the heart that humans’ longings and desires are produced. It is where God lives by his Spirit (Rom. 5:5; 2 Cor. 1:22). It’s unfortunate that when we read “heart” today we tend to only think “the seat of the emotions and sentimentalism.” Depending on the context, the Bible uses “heart” in all the ways mentioned above.
Matthew 15:1–20 1 Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked, 2 “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don’t wash their hands before they eat!” 3 Jesus replied, “And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? 4 For God said, ‘Honor your father and mother’ and ‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.’ 5 But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is ‘devoted to God,’ 6 they are not to ‘honor their father or mother’ with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition. 7 You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you: 8 “ ‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. 9 They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules.’” 10 Jesus called the crowd to him and said, “Listen and understand. 11 What goes into someone’s mouth does not defile them, but what comes out of their mouth, that is what defiles them.” 12 Then the disciples came to him and asked, “Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this?” 13 He replied, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots. 14 Leave them; they are blind guides. If the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit.” 15 Peter said, “Explain the parable to us.” 16 “Are you still so dull?” Jesus asked them. 17 “Don’t you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? 18 But the things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them. 19 For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. 20 These are what defile a person; but eating with unwashed hands does not defile them.”
This violation of the Pharisees (following their manmade rules and violating the rules of God) reveals a wicked heart. Jesus calls them hypocrites who do the same things Isaiah prophesied against.
When we take the prophecy of Isaiah in vv. 8-9 and the teaching of Jesus in vv. 16-20 together, we land on the word integrity. One can honor God with words, while their will does not desire him. This is called hypocrisy. The Pharisees were worshipping God in vain because their teachings were merely human rules and their hearts were not oriented towards God. Jesus expounds further that this is what defiles a person. People are unclean because of the wickedness in their hearts, not because they ate an unclean food or without following proper ceremonial procedure.
Our goal is alignment between our heart and our mouth—our will and our words. When we find ourselves speaking good things (praise to God, encouragement to others, kind and loving words, etc.) we should ask if this truly aligns with what is in our heart of if we are faking it. If we are faking it, that will eventually be revealed in the things we say. We can’t hide our true nature forever. If we are speaking evil things (slander, lies, gossip, etc.), we should be incredibly alarmed. We should search our hearts and ask God to search our hearts to see if this is a genuine reflection of the evil in there. It’s unlikely that our evil words are feigning a truly good heart. Our hearts are originally predisposed to evil (Rom. 3:10-18; Jer. 17:9). Even if we find that the evil words we are speaking are not a true depiction of what’s in our hearts, they reveal a distorted will that desires something else above God (i.e., acceptance from others or vain self-promotion).
This passage, along with the entire Old Testament, reveals the frightening proposition (when viewed only through ourselves) but glorious truth (when viewed through gospel of Christ) that law is not enough to curb the wickedness of the human heart. We will always find a loophole. We need a new heart! Again, this is terrifying when we think of it in ourselves. Transforming our heart sounds impossible compared to following a few rules. It is! But thanks be to God, who gives us a new heart in the glorious gospel. He even transforms our hearts by placing his Spirit within us to walk in all of his statutes.
Ezekiel 36:26–27 26 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. 27 And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.
Dallas Willard begins his wonderful book Renovation of the Heart by saying, “We live from our heart.” This is simply an abbreviated way of saying what Proverbs 4:23 says, “everything you do flows from [your heart].” Willard goes on to say, “Our life and how we find the world now and in the future is, almost totally, a simple result of what we have become in the depths of our being…From there we see our world and interpret reality. From there we make our choices, break forth into action, try to change our world. We live from our depths—most of which we do not understand.”
He goes on. “Accordingly, the greatest need you and I have—the greatest need of collective humanity—is renovation of our heart. That spiritual place within us from which outlook, choices, and actions come has been formed by a world away from God. Now it must be transformed. Indeed, the only hope of humanity lies in the fact that, as our spiritual dimension has been formed, so it also can be transformed.”
Willard, Dallas. Renovation of the Heart: Putting On the Character of Christ (p. 14). The Navigators. Kindle Edition.
This process of renovating our hearts begins at conversion, and the Holy Spirit continues it throughout our life with Christ.
Reflection
In your spiritual formation, do you pay enough attention to your heart or are you too focused on externals? For example, if you lash out a lot and say hurtful things when you’re angry, do you focus your attention on trying not to say hurtful things when you’re angry or do you reflect on what may be in your heart that is causing you to lose your temper and say hurtful things? The former is dealing with symptoms. The latter is dealing with the root cause of the issue.