Matthew 15 -- What Pharisees Try To Do Even Today

God really didn’t like what the Pharisees had done to hijack His people’s hearts.  “They’d developed traditions that had been handed down, allegedly (according to the rabbis) from Moses to the elders as oral law.  It had eventually been written down and called the Mishnah.  They’d made it more important and more authoritative than the original law of Moses,” my commentary noted.

 

“Jesus let them know that they were breaking God’s law by practicing their traditions … Jesus made it clear that obedience to tradition made a person disobedient to the Word of God, and this proved the tradition to be false … Tradition deals with ritual, while God’s truth deals with reality.  Tradition brings empty words to the lips, but truth penetrates the heart and changes the life.  Actually, tradition robs a person of the power of the Word of God … God wants us to give Him our hearts, and not just our lip service.  We believe in the heart, love from the heart, sing from the heart, obey from the heart, and give from the heart.” 

 

If our worship is simply lip service and doesn’t come from the heart, we might as well not even have shown up!

 

My commentary wrapped up this chapter with six spiritual lessons:

 

(1)    The enemies of truth are often religious people who live according to man’s traditions.  Satan often uses religion to blind the mind of sinners to the simple truths of God’s Word.

(2)    We must beware of any religious system that gives us an excuse to sin and disobey God’s Word.

(3)    We must also beware of worship that comes from the lips only, and not from the heart.

(4)    If we major on the inner man, the outer man will be what God wants it to be.  True holiness comes from within.

(5)    It is difficult to break free of tradition.  There is something in us that wants to hold to the past and make no changes.

(6)    We dare not limit Christ to any one nation or people.  The gospel came ‘to the Jews first’, but today is for all men in all nations.

 

Father, the Pharisees were trying to create or manufacture holiness through actions that did not change the heart.  True holiness only comes from You when our hearts have connected with You and are not set on being about us.  It can’t be contrived or forced upon us.  Keep that from happening and open our hearts to true worship of the One who loves us just as we are, but Who also wants to make us more like Himself.

 

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford