Matthew 15 verse 10. Jesus called the disciples, or called the people to him, and said to them, hear and understand. It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of a mouth. That's what defiles someone. The disciples came and said to him, do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard you say that?

Jesus answered, every plants that my heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up. Let them alone. They are blind guides and if the blind lead the blinds both will fall into a pit. But Peter said to him, 'Explain the parable to us.' And Jesus 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, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander, these are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands, that doesn't defile anyone. This is the word of God and I pray that he would seal it in your hearts. There was a 2018 journal article in a journal called Nature Communications, which I think is a Chinese journal, but it's brought into English through Harvard University. They ran what has been now described as a definitive article on teaching blind people how to understand color. So they did a study, and I'll spare you the science part of it, but it involves which lobes of your brain are activated when you think of different concepts, and they did a study to find out what the most effective way to teach blind people color is.

Again, skipping the science parts, I'll bring you the fun part. The fun part is in the middle of the study where they describe the most effective ways to describe every color, and some of them are linked to video clips of them describing to blind people colors in this way: Blue. The color blue is like the taste of blueberries. Do you buy that? I think it works.

Red is the color of heat burning and blood. Green is happy, but sometimes disgusting. And the green one is linked to a video of like a 12 year old blind kid who's like: Wait, so you're telling me green is rotten and grass and zombie and vegetables and boogers? Yes, that's what we're telling you. The blue one, by the way, is linked to a video of this guy who's a philosophy professor in blind and he he says, you're telling me that ice cubes and the sky are the same color?

How do seeing people even live? And he says, wait, water is clear and the ocean is blue. I'm staying blind. Pink, this one is from the 12 year old, pink is unicorns exploding in your mouth. Yellow, and this one is back to the study, actually, this yellow is my favorite one.

Yellow is the sound a cardboard box makes tumbling down a hill. I think that works. Now, the journal article concludes by saying the best way to explain colors to blind people is to involve their other senses. I want you to know I paid $18 to read that journal article. The best way to explain to blind people is without using sight.

Thank you Harvard University. The actual conclusion of the study says that there are implications for seeing people in this because we too need people to explain abstract concepts to us. And so it's best to do it involving concrete things that we all understand. And to give some examples, The best way to explain soccer is to explain two teams, feet, soccer ball, no hands. Or I'm not gonna read you all these, but one of them they used was capitalism, money controlled by individuals, profit, good.

I'm actually very happy with that definition right there. That made me think, if you were to explain Judaism at the time of Jesus and use this definition, you wouldn't be far off. One God, Israel are his people, don't touch unclean things. For the 95% of us that weren't raised Jewish, it's very difficult for us to understand the nature of the kosher system as it relates to food in Israel, especially during the life of Jesus. Everything in the life of Jesus was divided up into clean and unclean.

If you've been to Israel today, you've gotten just a shadow of this, it's still ongoing today. You know, the kitchens often have two sinks, two refrigerators and everything, dairy and meat stores separately. There's a complex way of washing your hands a lot of the the kosher kitchens have. You don't generally serve meat with breakfast because that's a dairy meal, and you don't serve dairy with dinner because that's a meat meal kind of thing. There are way more restrictions and implications to the dietary laws in the culture system than even that.

During the life of Jesus, understand everything was split into the category of clean versus unclean. They didn't use the language of worldview, but it was their worldview. They had lenses on their eyes and everything was categorized clean or unclean, pure and impure. Now these restrictions were developed from the written law, the Torah. Leviticus tells you fish are clean as long as they have fins.

Animals that chew, cut, and have hooves, they're clean, you can eat those. Pigs are out. That comes from Leviticus chapter 11. There's so many more of these details and we looked at last week verses one through nine, describe how the Jews created this written, this oral law to go along with the written Torah. It's the Bible, the Old Testament, the Torah itself, that describes clean and unclean foods.

But the Jews then engage with this through a whole complex system of oral tradition, which was passed down and it was called the oral tradition, but it was actually written down and those were the rules they used to navigate what the Torah commanded about holiness. Most obvious example is this relates to food. The Old Testament tells you not to boil a goat in her mother's milk. Alright? Now I'll tell you this, nobody knows what that prohibition means.

Even Jewish scholars, Jews would look at that prohibition, say we don't know what that means. It's from that prohibition that you get the complex restrictions about not mixing meat and dairy in meals. Because you don't know what it means, so it's best to keep meat and dairy separate from each other. That's and then you get even more restrictions about how you store one versus the other, how you wash one versus the other, how you wash your hands in between going from one to the other. There's a whole massive restriction that organizes every part of your food life around a rule you don't understand to keep you from accidentally violating it.

They did that with every area of the written law. So when I say it's hard for us that weren't raised in this environment to understand what's happening here, this is what I'm talking about. It's not just wash your hands before you eat, grader, it's not about that. It's about the complex way you view the world with these oral traditions passed down for thousands of years to regulate how you engage with food without defiling yourself. And they were honestly using the oral law to circumvent the written law, and that's what Jesus looked at last week.

The commandment says honor your father and your mother. Leviticus 21, I mean, sorry, Exodus 21 says that if you cut off your father and your mother, if you reject them, if you abandon them, then you are worthy of death. This is repeated in the New Testament, Timothy five, whoever doesn't care for his his family is worse than an unbeliever. And so the Jews receive the commandment and say honor father and mother. They receive Exodus 21, meet my parents' needs, but then they develop this oral tradition around it that Jesus engages with back in verse four and five of chapter 15, where all my parents are in need, I have this money to give them, but I pronounce Corbin on it.

I say it's devoted to the Lord and now I don't have to give it to them. Sorry mom, I had stuff for you but it's dedicated to the Lord and the benefit of the Corben system is that I get to keep it. And so by their oral tradition they circumvented and nullified the written revealed word of God. And Jesus destroyed that last week, remember? Dismantles it.

He says, if you are elevating your own religious authority and your own tradition, your history, the authority of your church, or whatever, over the word of God, then your worship is vain. That's the word he uses. You're just spinning your wheels. You think you're worshiping God, but because you're worshiping him through the authority of your church and your traditions and your rituals that are passed down, your worship is meaningless. You're just spinning wheels.

Jesus obliterates the written obliterates the oral law that it didn't pass down. Now you can imagine the Pharisees response to this. They're immediately going to, of all, be opposed to Jesus, but then they're going to engage with it at this level. Okay, you've gotten rid of the oral law. What about the written law, Jesus?

Don't you understand that all of our oral traditions about washings and dietary restrictions, they're coming from our desire to be obedient to the written law, to the Torah itself. Dismantling the verbal law, the tradition of the elders is what it's called in verse two, that was easy. What about the written law? And here Jesus addresses that point head on. Listen to the sentence carefully because it's the main point.

Jesus shows that the battle for purity takes place in the heart, not in the hands. Affections, in what you love, not in what you do or what you eat. Godliness is seen in your motives, and godliness comes from the inside out, not the outside in. Three times in this brief passage Jesus tells you what kind of things defile you. Three times in this passage Jesus tells you what kind of things don't defile you.

So six times he makes some statement about that. I won't go through all six of them, I'll just give you the main points. Things you touch don't defile you. If you touch something unclean, it does not make you unclean. Do you know what makes you unclean?

Your heart. You're a sinner, not because of even what you do. You're a sinner because of who you are. It's your heart that is messed up, not the food you eat. And that is something that is blazingly obvious over all of scripture.

Holiness is not about what you eat and even about what you do. Holiness is about who you love. Your sin is about your heart. Your heart is broken. And so that's it's obvious in the Bible.

And if you can't see that in the scriptures, you are spiritually blind. And so if you're here this morning and you're spiritually blind, I have an eye chart to help you. Can you see your own sin? That's the most basic question this text is challenging you with. Sin is what you are.

It's who you are. It's not what you eat. You are not a sinner because your food is defiled, you are a sinner because your heart is defiled. Obviously, if the water jug is dirty, what comes out of it will be dirty, how much more so with people? If your heart is dirty, what comes out of your heart will be dirty, that's the point.

You are sinful and this is all over scripture, the overflow of the heart is what the mouth speaks. Genesis six verse five says it this way, Yahweh saw the wickedness of man was great on the earth and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. This is the kind of passage that people developed the doctrine of total depravity from. Total depravity doesn't mean everything you do is only sinful to the maximalist extent, but it does mean that everything you do is tainted by sin in every aspect of it. We always operate with mixed motives, our best actions are tainted by sin, because our heart is tainted by sin and it corrupts everything.

Notice the maximalist language in this verse. There's at least four maximal phrases in it. The wickedness of man was great. Every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. Moses is maximizing your skin, your your sin, and he's doing that through looking at your life.

Looking into your heart and saying your heart is corrupted. Notice that phrase, thoughts of his heart. Your heart is corrupted, there's not wiggle room there. You come into this world with your factory setting as sin. Because of Adam's sin you're born corrupted and broken.

Your heart is what is broken. And some people will argue with this and say, no, no, I'm generally a good person, I'm basically a good person, I try to do what's right. I live according to my heart. People say that so often. You know, when the Bible uses that expression, it's always negative.

It's astonishing to me that modern day Americans use that expression, and they assume it's positive. Like, I'm just listening to my heart. You've got to follow your heart. Now, when everybody does what is right in their own eyes, that is bad news bears in the Bible, not good. But today, we say it as if it's good.

I'm living according to my heart. And listen to me, that's the problem. The problem is your heart. Yes, you're always trying to do what's right according to your heart. That's why you are a sinner, because your heart is broken.

Jeremiah 17 verse nine says it this way, The heart is more deceitful than everything else. Also, it's desperately sick. Who can understand it? You can't navigate your own affections in your heart because your heart is broken. Ephesians two:one moves beyond that kind of language to say your heart is deceitful and wicked and dead is the language in Ephesians two.

John's favorite word to describe your heart is dark, darkness. The scripture paints a picture of mankind's heart that is wicked, only evil continually, deceitful, sick, dead and dark. That's the full picture. And to miss that point by hiding behind rituals and saying, no, I'm actually a good person because I've kept my food separate and I wash my hands in this way, and I don't put grain on the Sabbath, and I don't walk further than, you know, this distance on the Sabbath, I don't carry more than a fig on the Sabbath, therefore I'm actually righteous is to miss the point of the law entirely. You're a sinner because of your heart.

I once had, not once, several times I've had people try to convince me that it actually is not a sin to cuss or to swear because the the words you're saying those are just sound waves and sound waves aren't sinful, sound waves aren't offensive to God, and I'll grant you the point, the sound waves are not offensive to God, but sound waves can reflect sin not because of the vocabulary, but because of the heart that's behind them. The kind of heart that makes those words is where the problem is. Your speech represents the overflow of your heart. That is what defiles you. Not food that you put in you, but words that come out of you reveal your sin.

And Jesus makes this point over and over again, verse 11, it's not what goes into a mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth. This defiles a person, and he's not saying that your speech retroactively makes you unclean. No, he's saying your speech reveals that you present tense are unclean. Verse 12. You know, the Pharisees were offended when they heard this.

Oh no. Not the Pharisees. Jesus offended the Pharisees. No kidding. He told them their whole oral tradition was void.

Obviously they're gonna be offended by that, they've built their whole status on these intricate rules and Jesus cancels all of them. Then he keeps going beyond that and talks about how the they're plants, verse 13, they're plants that God didn't plant. They're hogging the vineyard of Israel. God didn't plant them there. They're gonna be uprooted.

He's gonna circle back to that later on in Matthew's gospel. But now go down to verse 17, whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is expelled. Greek is even more terse than that. Greek is basically mouth, tummy, toilet. Three words.

Your food goes here, there, and out, and is washed away. How can you think that is what makes you a sinner? Touching a nightshade vegetable doesn't make you unclean. Loving sin makes you unclean. Being a sinner makes you unclean.

The physical does not contaminate the spiritual. You have to get that. You have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Not just because of things you've done, but because of who you are. You are a sinner.

And you have to see your own sinner. You will not have eyes to see the Savior. If you don't see your own sin, you're gonna look at Jesus and think, man, he's not washing his hands the right way, rather than seeing the one who can save you from your sin. The part of our eye chart is seeing your own sin. If you're having a hard time seeing your sin, go to the next line.

Look to the law. God gives you the law to help you see your sin. And that's where Jesus goes here. Verse 19, out of the heart come all kinds of evil thoughts, That's the catch all phrase. If you're stuck on this point that you're not a sinner because you try to do good things and you are by nature a good person and God knows you're a good person, Jesus gives you a thought experiment, a literal thought experiment.

Do you have evil thoughts? Have you ever thought evil things? Where did that come from? Those thoughts, those evil thoughts came from your heart. Now obviously the mind informs the heart, but the heart then and the affections fuel the mind.

You can't love what you don't know and so your knowledge informs what you love and how you love it, but your passions then, the the ethical reality of your heart, your moral compass in your heart, is what is then directing and dictating your thoughts. If you have evil thoughts, guess what that says about your heart? Well, you have an evil heart. And if you have an evil heart, guess what that says about you. And Jesus moves beyond this catch all phrase of evil thoughts.

He gets to some specifics. He's going to use the 10 Commandments here. He used the commandment last week, remember, to talk about how they use their oral laws to circumvent the commandment, so we've covered that one. Now he's into the commandment. Murder, he says.

That's the commandment. Evil thoughts, murder in verse 19. We've already covered this in the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus says, if you hate your neighbor or your brother you've committed murder in your heart. Now he doesn't mean that hating your neighbor is the same exact thing as murdering them, like if you hate your neighbor you deserve to be arrested and sent to jail. That's not what he's saying.

He's saying the seed that is behind the hatred of your neighbor is the same seed that is behind murder. The heart that murders is the same heart that hates its neighbor. The seed may germinate in a different way, but it's the same seed. Now, we as Americans have kind of borrowed from the the oral law tradition here to make up all these rules about what hatred is and what it isn't to excuse ourselves from this. Like I can call my neighbor dumb but I can't call him a fool kind of language.

But Jesus here undercuts that. Here's the best way to understand the Jewish version of hating your neighbor. Have you ever wished your neighbor would just move away? Like your life would be easier if he wasn't there? Have you ever thought that about one of your co workers or even somebody in your family?

Have you ever entertained the idea that you know what my life would be better without that person? That's the Jewish concept of hatred. That's what Jesus is talking about. The same seed, the same heart that says I wish that person was not in my life, my life would be better if they just went away, that same heart is the heart of murder. You want them dead.

Now, you're too sophisticated to say that. You wouldn't go actually murder your neighbor or your coworker that bugs you. But the heart that thinks I would be better without them, that's this sin that Jesus is talking about. That heart should be condemned by God. And he moves from the commandment to the one, adultery.

And we've covered this one earlier in the Sermon on the Mount as well. If you look at a woman with lust, you've committed adultery with her. Now he's not saying that lustful thoughts and adultery are the same thing, you know, lusting after somebody is not grounds for divorce whereas adultery is. There's differences between the two. The point is that they are the same seed Where you entertain sexual thoughts with somebody whom you're not married to, that is sexual impurity, that is adultery, that's the same seed that violates the Commandment.

Unless you think, oh but I can get around that because I have sexual thoughts but I'm not married or, you know, the sexually impure thoughts are not like actually about adultery, they're a different category. People do such games with that category of of sins that Jesus gives you another phrase after that. Notice it, adultery or sexual immorality. That's another big catch all phrase. Any impure thought sexually, Jesus says, are a violation of the commandment.

Despite whatever verbal gymnastics you play in your minds, they're violating the Commandment, which shows you to be condemned as a sinner. And people will again justify it. I can't help who I love as if that makes it okay. Does not make it okay, that's the problem is that you can't help it. You can't dictate who somebody loves in their heart, that's the problem, their heart is the problem, it's not the excuse.

He goes on from there to the commandment, theft in verse 19. Sexual morality and theft, that's the commandment. Stealing, taking something that's not yours, that you didn't pay for, including, you know, at work. You're paid for a job, you're paid to work eight hours a day, and you don't. You goof off some part of the day, you're not putting in honest days work.

That's theft. That's the commandment. Everybody does it. commandment. False witness, lying about somebody else, lying about something that's Have you ever lied?

So you see where Jesus is going here. If you've ever hated somebody, if you've ever committed adultery, you've ever lusted after somebody, if you've ever been lazy, if you've ever lied, you are condemned by the law. That's showing you what kind of person you are. How weird would it be for you to respond to that whole list and be like, yeah, but I wash my hands in the prescribed way according to the tradition that's been passed down for thousands of years. I would never eat dairy and meat together.

We're not talking about the food that goes into your mouth, we're talking about what is wrong in your heart. Slander. Did you say, 'Ah, false witness, that's a criminal offense.' You know, 'I haven't broken the commandment. Have you said something wicked about somebody else?' Jesus throws in that phrase. Notice how three of these laws, the ones that we're so good at, like, navigating yourselves out of, Jesus gives you catch all phrases after the commandment itself.

I would never wear false witness, I wasn't sworn in when I said it. Slander then, a violation of the commandment. By the way, the same list is in Mark's gospel. Mark includes coveting. Jesus says coveting, he goes through all 10 commandments, he goes to coveting.

It's not communicated here in Matthew, probably because Matthew is writing to a Jewish audience here and you know where it's going. Mark throws on the word coveting. So Jesus does include that also. If you wanted something that's not yours, it shows your sinful heart. Verse 20, this is what defiles a person.

Understand that's the function of the law, it's not the law doesn't make you a sinner, it reveals that you are a sinner. The law might provoke sin, you might say I don't even know what coveting is, and the law tells you not to covet and suddenly you can't stop coveting. The law is provoking sin but it's not making you sin. The source of the sin, the fountain of the sin is in your heart. It is the law that might provoke it.

It's the law that helps you recognize it, but the law in this sense, a very commonly used illustration which is so helpful, the law is just a mirror. It shows you what you really like. The law is your bathroom mirror. You get up in the morning, you look in the mirror, and you see what kind of damage was done last night. The law reveals to you, it doesn't flatter you, it reveals to you what you actually look like.

And along that lines, you do not brush your teeth with the bathroom mirror, you do not comb your hair with the bathroom mirror, you don't shave with the bathroom mirror, you don't wash your face with the bathroom mirror, the bathroom mirror reveals to you what you're like. That's what the law does. The law doesn't clean you, it doesn't brush your teeth and comb your hair, the law doesn't do that. The law just shows you straight up without flattery what kind of person you are. And so I would repeat, if you're here this morning and you have never come to terms with the reality of what kind of person you are, you can't see your own sin, then look to the law.

Go through the law like Jesus just did. Your conscience bears witness to you. Your conscience tells you it's wrong to lie, it's wrong to lust, it's wrong to steal, it's wrong to hate. You know those things. And do you do them even though you know they're wrong?

Then you're condemned by your own conduct. You're condemned. That's the way the Jews interacted with this. Like I said, they were offended by what Jesus was saying because they built this whole system around it. If the law is not supposed to make you clean, what is the law supposed to do?

Why does God give you the law? God gives you the law to point to the savior and this leads to our final point. If you can't see your sin because you're not looking through the law, you're not going to be able to see who the savior is. Israel to make them an ethnically and ethically distinct nation of people to prepare the way for the savior, because this is this is anticipating what the Pharisees would say. They would say God gave us the food laws.

Why would he give us those laws if we're not supposed to keep them? And the reason he gave them the laws was to prepare them for the savior. The the Israelites from Abraham, Isaac, Jacob were supposed to be distinct from the world. They were supposed to dress differently, eat differently, act differently than all the nations around them to guard the ethnic distinction for thousands of years so that when the savior comes, he comes in the line of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, David, and so there would be a people there to receive him. He doesn't come to the world, he comes to his own in the world.

That's why they're supposed to be different. And when Jesus comes to them, he's then fulfilling from the inside out what their laws commanded. So he fulfills the 10 Commandments, for example, by obeying them perfectly. Because he's fulfilled them, he completes them. So of all, with the oral tradition, remember he nullifies it.

That was verses one through nine, just blast holes in it, mocks it really, and destroys it. Now you're on to the written law. Does the Old Testament command them not to eat certain kinds of food? Yes, it does. And then Jesus here fulfills that and sets it aside.

Barring from Mark's encounter here, Mark chapter seven verse 19, at this point is where it's not recorded here in Matthew, but at this point Mark says, in saying this Jesus declared all foods to be clean. Jesus fulfilled the dietary laws in the Old Testament. They're all completed now because Jesus is there. All foods are compared to be clean. And at this point it's helpful to look at what Peter says.

Notice Jesus says, they're blind gods, don't argue with the Pharisees about what you can and can't eat. It's like arguing with a blind person about what the color blue looks like. You're just wasting words here. Does it really look like a blueberry taste? Who cares?

That's where Jesus is here with the Pharisees. Don't argue with the Pharisees about their understanding of the dairy and meat rules. Don't argue, they are blind. It's a blind person leading a blind person. If you saw a blind person going on the street and there's a group of other blind people behind them feeling their way, you would think, uh-oh, how is this gonna end?

With a pile of blind people is how it's gonna end. They can all fall into a pit, if not a literal pit, there's gonna be a heap of them on the ground. That's what Jesus says. It's not even a parable, it's an idiom, it's an expression. But Peter, ever eager Peter here in verse 15, remembers chapter 13 where it was good to ask this question and he's like, Lord, explain the parable to us.

Gotta love Peter. Call on me, Lord. The thing about the blind person, can you explain it to me? I mean, is it even a parable? I don't think so.

Jesus says Jesus makes Peter guess his decision to ask a question. Are you still without understanding? Jesus looks at Peter and says, You've got to be kidding me. The blind person in question, that's what you have a question about right now. How blind people have guides, that's your question.

You have to get beyond that and recognize the point of what Jesus is saying is that food does not defile you. All food is clean because Jesus is here. Now I draw attention to this because what happens a few years from now? Peter is in Caesarea Maritime, Hafa, which is modern day Tel Aviv, He's about to go preach the Gentiles and see Gentiles saved and baptized and all that. And Jesus gives him a vision of the sheet from heaven with all the food on it.

And do you remember what Peter says? It's amazing. Lord, nothing unclean has ever touched my lips. After this? I'm sorry, what?

Nothing unclean has ever touched your lips? Going in or going out, what are we talking about? Are you saying you've never sinned? Because that's what that would be the right way to use that phrase from this, but that's a lie. Of course, Peter has sinned.

He sinned all the time. He said dumb things all the time. Like, for example, verse 15, Nothing unclean has ever touched my lips. And so Jesus tells him, don't you call unclean what I have declared to be clean. Eat the pork, Peter, and then go preach to you Gentile.

Here in Matthew, verse 20, to eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone. You're not gonna get it said more directly than that. Now, I'm telling you, again, for 95% of you, that's a verse you probably haven't thought much of before, you've read it and you've moved on. But if you were raised in a Jewish household, a kosher household, with the two sinks and two food storages and all the restrictions and all the washings, if you're raised in a household, this is one of the more radical things Jesus has ever said. I mean that touches every meal, every moment of your life is touched by their rules, and Jesus says it does not mean anything.

All that you've been doing all your whole life, all of it doesn't mean a single thing. You're going through the motions, man, it doesn't work, it does not make you holy. And if you think it does make you holy, what's gonna happen is you're gonna keep your intricate set of washing and dietary rules, and all that, and then you're gonna have an encounter with Jesus. And you know what you're gonna do? You're gonna see the one who gives sight to the blind, and raises the dead, and who fulfills prophecy, and you're gonna look at him and say, but you're not washing your hands.

This is Matthew 12. You're gonna look at the one who heals the man with the withered hand on the Sabbath and say, Yes, but you guys plucked grain on your way over here. Because they can't see. Unless you think I'm just poking fun at Judaism or anything like that, I am most certainly not. You see the same tendencies even inside of massive groups of so called Christians that take their own church tradition and their own authority and elevated above the word of God.

And we'll even tell you the only way you know what the what the word of God is is because our church and our tradition and our authority gave it to you. That's the same thing you see here. When you start talking like that and thinking like that, it nullifies the gospel of its power. All your church authority and all your traditions are pointless. It robs the gospel of its power and it means you can't see your sin.

The Jews here thought that the rest of the world was unclean and that Jesus came. Who knows why? They rejected him, but do you understand Jesus did not come to make the rest of the world clean? He didn't come to make the rest of the world like Israel. He didn't come to make Israel like the rest of the world.

He came to save people by sanctifying them from the inside out. And by the way, the very next verse, guess what? Jesus' out of his drawer. These are his last words to them before he leaves. These are his last words to them before he leaves.

These These are his last words to them before he leaves. These things are pointless. I'm out. You see him in Lebanon next week. This is how Paul says in Colossians two, Therefore no one is to act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect of new moon or Sabbath or any of that.

These are shadows of what's to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. This isn't a Galilean fisherman who describes the Jewish rules that way. I mean, the shadow that's a this is a very almost condescending way to say it, isn't it? Like all your rules and regulations are shadow. It's not a Galilean fisherman, it's not a Gentile, this is Paul, a Pharisee from the tribe of Benjamin, He says, listen, shadows are cast by something.

Jesus is the one that cast the shadow, he's the substance. Shadows are cast by a mountain, Jesus is the mountain. Shadows are there to show you to look for the source, Jesus is the source. He fulfills the law from the inside out. Are you starting to see why they determined to murder Jesus?

Their whole life was spent building a sense of righteousness that Jesus nullifies, sets it aside. For you, ask yourself this basic question. Do you see yourself as a sinner deserving God's judgment? If not, go to the law. Let the law show you why you're a sinner and only then do you have the eyes to look to Jesus and see the Savior.

Lord, we're thankful that you have died to give us life. You died to fill the law, to make a way for salvation of life for those who don't have it. You nullify the righteousness of men by giving instead a righteousness from God that comes by faith, not by works. We're thankful for the righteousness of Christ. I pray for everyone here today who's never had their eyes spiritually open to see their own sin, to understand the power of the law, or to see the savior.

I pray today that they would lay their eyes and faith on you. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. And now for a parting word from pastor Jesse Johnson. If you have any questions about what you heard today or if you wanna learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, ibc.church.

If you want more information about the Master's Seminary or our location here in Washington DC, please go to tms.edu. Now if you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington DC area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel. I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service. But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church. Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.

Matthew 15 verse 10. Jesus called the disciples, or called the people to him, and said to them, hear and understand. It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of a mouth. That's what defiles someone. The disciples came and said to him, do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard you say that?

Jesus answered, every plants that my heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up. Let them alone. They are blind guides and if the blind lead the blinds both will fall into a pit. But Peter said to him, 'Explain the parable to us.' And Jesus 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, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander, these are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands, that doesn't defile anyone. This is the word of God and I pray that he would seal it in your hearts. There was a 2018 journal article in a journal called Nature Communications, which I think is a Chinese journal, but it's brought into English through Harvard University. They ran what has been now described as a definitive article on teaching blind people how to understand color. So they did a study, and I'll spare you the science part of it, but it involves which lobes of your brain are activated when you think of different concepts, and they did a study to find out what the most effective way to teach blind people color is.

Again, skipping the science parts, I'll bring you the fun part. The fun part is in the middle of the study where they describe the most effective ways to describe every color, and some of them are linked to video clips of them describing to blind people colors in this way: Blue. The color blue is like the taste of blueberries. Do you buy that? I think it works.

Red is the color of heat burning and blood. Green is happy, but sometimes disgusting. And the green one is linked to a video of like a 12 year old blind kid who's like: Wait, so you're telling me green is rotten and grass and zombie and vegetables and boogers? Yes, that's what we're telling you. The blue one, by the way, is linked to a video of this guy who's a philosophy professor in blind and he he says, you're telling me that ice cubes and the sky are the same color?

How do seeing people even live? And he says, wait, water is clear and the ocean is blue. I'm staying blind. Pink, this one is from the 12 year old, pink is unicorns exploding in your mouth. Yellow, and this one is back to the study, actually, this yellow is my favorite one.

Yellow is the sound a cardboard box makes tumbling down a hill. I think that works. Now, the journal article concludes by saying the best way to explain colors to blind people is to involve their other senses. I want you to know I paid $18 to read that journal article. The best way to explain to blind people is without using sight.

Thank you Harvard University. The actual conclusion of the study says that there are implications for seeing people in this because we too need people to explain abstract concepts to us. And so it's best to do it involving concrete things that we all understand. And to give some examples, The best way to explain soccer is to explain two teams, feet, soccer ball, no hands. Or I'm not gonna read you all these, but one of them they used was capitalism, money controlled by individuals, profit, good.

I'm actually very happy with that definition right there. That made me think, if you were to explain Judaism at the time of Jesus and use this definition, you wouldn't be far off. One God, Israel are his people, don't touch unclean things. For the 95% of us that weren't raised Jewish, it's very difficult for us to understand the nature of the kosher system as it relates to food in Israel, especially during the life of Jesus. Everything in the life of Jesus was divided up into clean and unclean.

If you've been to Israel today, you've gotten just a shadow of this, it's still ongoing today. You know, the kitchens often have two sinks, two refrigerators and everything, dairy and meat stores separately. There's a complex way of washing your hands a lot of the the kosher kitchens have. You don't generally serve meat with breakfast because that's a dairy meal, and you don't serve dairy with dinner because that's a meat meal kind of thing. There are way more restrictions and implications to the dietary laws in the culture system than even that.

During the life of Jesus, understand everything was split into the category of clean versus unclean. They didn't use the language of worldview, but it was their worldview. They had lenses on their eyes and everything was categorized clean or unclean, pure and impure. Now these restrictions were developed from the written law, the Torah. Leviticus tells you fish are clean as long as they have fins.

Animals that chew, cut, and have hooves, they're clean, you can eat those. Pigs are out. That comes from Leviticus chapter 11. There's so many more of these details and we looked at last week verses one through nine, describe how the Jews created this written, this oral law to go along with the written Torah. It's the Bible, the Old Testament, the Torah itself, that describes clean and unclean foods.

But the Jews then engage with this through a whole complex system of oral tradition, which was passed down and it was called the oral tradition, but it was actually written down and those were the rules they used to navigate what the Torah commanded about holiness. Most obvious example is this relates to food. The Old Testament tells you not to boil a goat in her mother's milk. Alright? Now I'll tell you this, nobody knows what that prohibition means.

Even Jewish scholars, Jews would look at that prohibition, say we don't know what that means. It's from that prohibition that you get the complex restrictions about not mixing meat and dairy in meals. Because you don't know what it means, so it's best to keep meat and dairy separate from each other. That's and then you get even more restrictions about how you store one versus the other, how you wash one versus the other, how you wash your hands in between going from one to the other. There's a whole massive restriction that organizes every part of your food life around a rule you don't understand to keep you from accidentally violating it.

They did that with every area of the written law. So when I say it's hard for us that weren't raised in this environment to understand what's happening here, this is what I'm talking about. It's not just wash your hands before you eat, grader, it's not about that. It's about the complex way you view the world with these oral traditions passed down for thousands of years to regulate how you engage with food without defiling yourself. And they were honestly using the oral law to circumvent the written law, and that's what Jesus looked at last week.

The commandment says honor your father and your mother. Leviticus 21, I mean, sorry, Exodus 21 says that if you cut off your father and your mother, if you reject them, if you abandon them, then you are worthy of death. This is repeated in the New Testament, Timothy five, whoever doesn't care for his his family is worse than an unbeliever. And so the Jews receive the commandment and say honor father and mother. They receive Exodus 21, meet my parents' needs, but then they develop this oral tradition around it that Jesus engages with back in verse four and five of chapter 15, where all my parents are in need, I have this money to give them, but I pronounce Corbin on it.

I say it's devoted to the Lord and now I don't have to give it to them. Sorry mom, I had stuff for you but it's dedicated to the Lord and the benefit of the Corben system is that I get to keep it. And so by their oral tradition they circumvented and nullified the written revealed word of God. And Jesus destroyed that last week, remember? Dismantles it.

He says, if you are elevating your own religious authority and your own tradition, your history, the authority of your church, or whatever, over the word of God, then your worship is vain. That's the word he uses. You're just spinning your wheels. You think you're worshiping God, but because you're worshiping him through the authority of your church and your traditions and your rituals that are passed down, your worship is meaningless. You're just spinning wheels.

Jesus obliterates the written obliterates the oral law that it didn't pass down. Now you can imagine the Pharisees response to this. They're immediately going to, of all, be opposed to Jesus, but then they're going to engage with it at this level. Okay, you've gotten rid of the oral law. What about the written law, Jesus?

Don't you understand that all of our oral traditions about washings and dietary restrictions, they're coming from our desire to be obedient to the written law, to the Torah itself. Dismantling the verbal law, the tradition of the elders is what it's called in verse two, that was easy. What about the written law? And here Jesus addresses that point head on. Listen to the sentence carefully because it's the main point.

Jesus shows that the battle for purity takes place in the heart, not in the hands. Affections, in what you love, not in what you do or what you eat. Godliness is seen in your motives, and godliness comes from the inside out, not the outside in. Three times in this brief passage Jesus tells you what kind of things defile you. Three times in this passage Jesus tells you what kind of things don't defile you.

So six times he makes some statement about that. I won't go through all six of them, I'll just give you the main points. Things you touch don't defile you. If you touch something unclean, it does not make you unclean. Do you know what makes you unclean?

Your heart. You're a sinner, not because of even what you do. You're a sinner because of who you are. It's your heart that is messed up, not the food you eat. And that is something that is blazingly obvious over all of scripture.

Holiness is not about what you eat and even about what you do. Holiness is about who you love. Your sin is about your heart. Your heart is broken. And so that's it's obvious in the Bible.

And if you can't see that in the scriptures, you are spiritually blind. And so if you're here this morning and you're spiritually blind, I have an eye chart to help you. Can you see your own sin? That's the most basic question this text is challenging you with. Sin is what you are.

It's who you are. It's not what you eat. You are not a sinner because your food is defiled, you are a sinner because your heart is defiled. Obviously, if the water jug is dirty, what comes out of it will be dirty, how much more so with people? If your heart is dirty, what comes out of your heart will be dirty, that's the point.

You are sinful and this is all over scripture, the overflow of the heart is what the mouth speaks. Genesis six verse five says it this way, Yahweh saw the wickedness of man was great on the earth and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. This is the kind of passage that people developed the doctrine of total depravity from. Total depravity doesn't mean everything you do is only sinful to the maximalist extent, but it does mean that everything you do is tainted by sin in every aspect of it. We always operate with mixed motives, our best actions are tainted by sin, because our heart is tainted by sin and it corrupts everything.

Notice the maximalist language in this verse. There's at least four maximal phrases in it. The wickedness of man was great. Every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. Moses is maximizing your skin, your your sin, and he's doing that through looking at your life.

Looking into your heart and saying your heart is corrupted. Notice that phrase, thoughts of his heart. Your heart is corrupted, there's not wiggle room there. You come into this world with your factory setting as sin. Because of Adam's sin you're born corrupted and broken.

Your heart is what is broken. And some people will argue with this and say, no, no, I'm generally a good person, I'm basically a good person, I try to do what's right. I live according to my heart. People say that so often. You know, when the Bible uses that expression, it's always negative.

It's astonishing to me that modern day Americans use that expression, and they assume it's positive. Like, I'm just listening to my heart. You've got to follow your heart. Now, when everybody does what is right in their own eyes, that is bad news bears in the Bible, not good. But today, we say it as if it's good.

I'm living according to my heart. And listen to me, that's the problem. The problem is your heart. Yes, you're always trying to do what's right according to your heart. That's why you are a sinner, because your heart is broken.

Jeremiah 17 verse nine says it this way, The heart is more deceitful than everything else. Also, it's desperately sick. Who can understand it? You can't navigate your own affections in your heart because your heart is broken. Ephesians two:one moves beyond that kind of language to say your heart is deceitful and wicked and dead is the language in Ephesians two.

John's favorite word to describe your heart is dark, darkness. The scripture paints a picture of mankind's heart that is wicked, only evil continually, deceitful, sick, dead and dark. That's the full picture. And to miss that point by hiding behind rituals and saying, no, I'm actually a good person because I've kept my food separate and I wash my hands in this way, and I don't put grain on the Sabbath, and I don't walk further than, you know, this distance on the Sabbath, I don't carry more than a fig on the Sabbath, therefore I'm actually righteous is to miss the point of the law entirely. You're a sinner because of your heart.

I once had, not once, several times I've had people try to convince me that it actually is not a sin to cuss or to swear because the the words you're saying those are just sound waves and sound waves aren't sinful, sound waves aren't offensive to God, and I'll grant you the point, the sound waves are not offensive to God, but sound waves can reflect sin not because of the vocabulary, but because of the heart that's behind them. The kind of heart that makes those words is where the problem is. Your speech represents the overflow of your heart. That is what defiles you. Not food that you put in you, but words that come out of you reveal your sin.

And Jesus makes this point over and over again, verse 11, it's not what goes into a mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth. This defiles a person, and he's not saying that your speech retroactively makes you unclean. No, he's saying your speech reveals that you present tense are unclean. Verse 12. You know, the Pharisees were offended when they heard this.

Oh no. Not the Pharisees. Jesus offended the Pharisees. No kidding. He told them their whole oral tradition was void.

Obviously they're gonna be offended by that, they've built their whole status on these intricate rules and Jesus cancels all of them. Then he keeps going beyond that and talks about how the they're plants, verse 13, they're plants that God didn't plant. They're hogging the vineyard of Israel. God didn't plant them there. They're gonna be uprooted.

He's gonna circle back to that later on in Matthew's gospel. But now go down to verse 17, whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is expelled. Greek is even more terse than that. Greek is basically mouth, tummy, toilet. Three words.

Your food goes here, there, and out, and is washed away. How can you think that is what makes you a sinner? Touching a nightshade vegetable doesn't make you unclean. Loving sin makes you unclean. Being a sinner makes you unclean.

The physical does not contaminate the spiritual. You have to get that. You have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Not just because of things you've done, but because of who you are. You are a sinner.

And you have to see your own sinner. You will not have eyes to see the Savior. If you don't see your own sin, you're gonna look at Jesus and think, man, he's not washing his hands the right way, rather than seeing the one who can save you from your sin. The part of our eye chart is seeing your own sin. If you're having a hard time seeing your sin, go to the next line.

Look to the law. God gives you the law to help you see your sin. And that's where Jesus goes here. Verse 19, out of the heart come all kinds of evil thoughts, That's the catch all phrase. If you're stuck on this point that you're not a sinner because you try to do good things and you are by nature a good person and God knows you're a good person, Jesus gives you a thought experiment, a literal thought experiment.

Do you have evil thoughts? Have you ever thought evil things? Where did that come from? Those thoughts, those evil thoughts came from your heart. Now obviously the mind informs the heart, but the heart then and the affections fuel the mind.

You can't love what you don't know and so your knowledge informs what you love and how you love it, but your passions then, the the ethical reality of your heart, your moral compass in your heart, is what is then directing and dictating your thoughts. If you have evil thoughts, guess what that says about your heart? Well, you have an evil heart. And if you have an evil heart, guess what that says about you. And Jesus moves beyond this catch all phrase of evil thoughts.

He gets to some specifics. He's going to use the 10 Commandments here. He used the commandment last week, remember, to talk about how they use their oral laws to circumvent the commandment, so we've covered that one. Now he's into the commandment. Murder, he says.

That's the commandment. Evil thoughts, murder in verse 19. We've already covered this in the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus says, if you hate your neighbor or your brother you've committed murder in your heart. Now he doesn't mean that hating your neighbor is the same exact thing as murdering them, like if you hate your neighbor you deserve to be arrested and sent to jail. That's not what he's saying.

He's saying the seed that is behind the hatred of your neighbor is the same seed that is behind murder. The heart that murders is the same heart that hates its neighbor. The seed may germinate in a different way, but it's the same seed. Now, we as Americans have kind of borrowed from the the oral law tradition here to make up all these rules about what hatred is and what it isn't to excuse ourselves from this. Like I can call my neighbor dumb but I can't call him a fool kind of language.

But Jesus here undercuts that. Here's the best way to understand the Jewish version of hating your neighbor. Have you ever wished your neighbor would just move away? Like your life would be easier if he wasn't there? Have you ever thought that about one of your co workers or even somebody in your family?

Have you ever entertained the idea that you know what my life would be better without that person? That's the Jewish concept of hatred. That's what Jesus is talking about. The same seed, the same heart that says I wish that person was not in my life, my life would be better if they just went away, that same heart is the heart of murder. You want them dead.

Now, you're too sophisticated to say that. You wouldn't go actually murder your neighbor or your coworker that bugs you. But the heart that thinks I would be better without them, that's this sin that Jesus is talking about. That heart should be condemned by God. And he moves from the commandment to the one, adultery.

And we've covered this one earlier in the Sermon on the Mount as well. If you look at a woman with lust, you've committed adultery with her. Now he's not saying that lustful thoughts and adultery are the same thing, you know, lusting after somebody is not grounds for divorce whereas adultery is. There's differences between the two. The point is that they are the same seed Where you entertain sexual thoughts with somebody whom you're not married to, that is sexual impurity, that is adultery, that's the same seed that violates the Commandment.

Unless you think, oh but I can get around that because I have sexual thoughts but I'm not married or, you know, the sexually impure thoughts are not like actually about adultery, they're a different category. People do such games with that category of of sins that Jesus gives you another phrase after that. Notice it, adultery or sexual immorality. That's another big catch all phrase. Any impure thought sexually, Jesus says, are a violation of the commandment.

Despite whatever verbal gymnastics you play in your minds, they're violating the Commandment, which shows you to be condemned as a sinner. And people will again justify it. I can't help who I love as if that makes it okay. Does not make it okay, that's the problem is that you can't help it. You can't dictate who somebody loves in their heart, that's the problem, their heart is the problem, it's not the excuse.

He goes on from there to the commandment, theft in verse 19. Sexual morality and theft, that's the commandment. Stealing, taking something that's not yours, that you didn't pay for, including, you know, at work. You're paid for a job, you're paid to work eight hours a day, and you don't. You goof off some part of the day, you're not putting in honest days work.

That's theft. That's the commandment. Everybody does it. commandment. False witness, lying about somebody else, lying about something that's Have you ever lied?

So you see where Jesus is going here. If you've ever hated somebody, if you've ever committed adultery, you've ever lusted after somebody, if you've ever been lazy, if you've ever lied, you are condemned by the law. That's showing you what kind of person you are. How weird would it be for you to respond to that whole list and be like, yeah, but I wash my hands in the prescribed way according to the tradition that's been passed down for thousands of years. I would never eat dairy and meat together.

We're not talking about the food that goes into your mouth, we're talking about what is wrong in your heart. Slander. Did you say, 'Ah, false witness, that's a criminal offense.' You know, 'I haven't broken the commandment. Have you said something wicked about somebody else?' Jesus throws in that phrase. Notice how three of these laws, the ones that we're so good at, like, navigating yourselves out of, Jesus gives you catch all phrases after the commandment itself.

I would never wear false witness, I wasn't sworn in when I said it. Slander then, a violation of the commandment. By the way, the same list is in Mark's gospel. Mark includes coveting. Jesus says coveting, he goes through all 10 commandments, he goes to coveting.

It's not communicated here in Matthew, probably because Matthew is writing to a Jewish audience here and you know where it's going. Mark throws on the word coveting. So Jesus does include that also. If you wanted something that's not yours, it shows your sinful heart. Verse 20, this is what defiles a person.

Understand that's the function of the law, it's not the law doesn't make you a sinner, it reveals that you are a sinner. The law might provoke sin, you might say I don't even know what coveting is, and the law tells you not to covet and suddenly you can't stop coveting. The law is provoking sin but it's not making you sin. The source of the sin, the fountain of the sin is in your heart. It is the law that might provoke it.

It's the law that helps you recognize it, but the law in this sense, a very commonly used illustration which is so helpful, the law is just a mirror. It shows you what you really like. The law is your bathroom mirror. You get up in the morning, you look in the mirror, and you see what kind of damage was done last night. The law reveals to you, it doesn't flatter you, it reveals to you what you actually look like.

And along that lines, you do not brush your teeth with the bathroom mirror, you do not comb your hair with the bathroom mirror, you don't shave with the bathroom mirror, you don't wash your face with the bathroom mirror, the bathroom mirror reveals to you what you're like. That's what the law does. The law doesn't clean you, it doesn't brush your teeth and comb your hair, the law doesn't do that. The law just shows you straight up without flattery what kind of person you are. And so I would repeat, if you're here this morning and you have never come to terms with the reality of what kind of person you are, you can't see your own sin, then look to the law.

Go through the law like Jesus just did. Your conscience bears witness to you. Your conscience tells you it's wrong to lie, it's wrong to lust, it's wrong to steal, it's wrong to hate. You know those things. And do you do them even though you know they're wrong?

Then you're condemned by your own conduct. You're condemned. That's the way the Jews interacted with this. Like I said, they were offended by what Jesus was saying because they built this whole system around it. If the law is not supposed to make you clean, what is the law supposed to do?

Why does God give you the law? God gives you the law to point to the savior and this leads to our final point. If you can't see your sin because you're not looking through the law, you're not going to be able to see who the savior is. Israel to make them an ethnically and ethically distinct nation of people to prepare the way for the savior, because this is this is anticipating what the Pharisees would say. They would say God gave us the food laws.

Why would he give us those laws if we're not supposed to keep them? And the reason he gave them the laws was to prepare them for the savior. The the Israelites from Abraham, Isaac, Jacob were supposed to be distinct from the world. They were supposed to dress differently, eat differently, act differently than all the nations around them to guard the ethnic distinction for thousands of years so that when the savior comes, he comes in the line of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, David, and so there would be a people there to receive him. He doesn't come to the world, he comes to his own in the world.

That's why they're supposed to be different. And when Jesus comes to them, he's then fulfilling from the inside out what their laws commanded. So he fulfills the 10 Commandments, for example, by obeying them perfectly. Because he's fulfilled them, he completes them. So of all, with the oral tradition, remember he nullifies it.

That was verses one through nine, just blast holes in it, mocks it really, and destroys it. Now you're on to the written law. Does the Old Testament command them not to eat certain kinds of food? Yes, it does. And then Jesus here fulfills that and sets it aside.

Barring from Mark's encounter here, Mark chapter seven verse 19, at this point is where it's not recorded here in Matthew, but at this point Mark says, in saying this Jesus declared all foods to be clean. Jesus fulfilled the dietary laws in the Old Testament. They're all completed now because Jesus is there. All foods are compared to be clean. And at this point it's helpful to look at what Peter says.

Notice Jesus says, they're blind gods, don't argue with the Pharisees about what you can and can't eat. It's like arguing with a blind person about what the color blue looks like. You're just wasting words here. Does it really look like a blueberry taste? Who cares?

That's where Jesus is here with the Pharisees. Don't argue with the Pharisees about their understanding of the dairy and meat rules. Don't argue, they are blind. It's a blind person leading a blind person. If you saw a blind person going on the street and there's a group of other blind people behind them feeling their way, you would think, uh-oh, how is this gonna end?

With a pile of blind people is how it's gonna end. They can all fall into a pit, if not a literal pit, there's gonna be a heap of them on the ground. That's what Jesus says. It's not even a parable, it's an idiom, it's an expression. But Peter, ever eager Peter here in verse 15, remembers chapter 13 where it was good to ask this question and he's like, Lord, explain the parable to us.

Gotta love Peter. Call on me, Lord. The thing about the blind person, can you explain it to me? I mean, is it even a parable? I don't think so.

Jesus says Jesus makes Peter guess his decision to ask a question. Are you still without understanding? Jesus looks at Peter and says, You've got to be kidding me. The blind person in question, that's what you have a question about right now. How blind people have guides, that's your question.

You have to get beyond that and recognize the point of what Jesus is saying is that food does not defile you. All food is clean because Jesus is here. Now I draw attention to this because what happens a few years from now? Peter is in Caesarea Maritime, Hafa, which is modern day Tel Aviv, He's about to go preach the Gentiles and see Gentiles saved and baptized and all that. And Jesus gives him a vision of the sheet from heaven with all the food on it.

And do you remember what Peter says? It's amazing. Lord, nothing unclean has ever touched my lips. After this? I'm sorry, what?

Nothing unclean has ever touched your lips? Going in or going out, what are we talking about? Are you saying you've never sinned? Because that's what that would be the right way to use that phrase from this, but that's a lie. Of course, Peter has sinned.

He sinned all the time. He said dumb things all the time. Like, for example, verse 15, Nothing unclean has ever touched my lips. And so Jesus tells him, don't you call unclean what I have declared to be clean. Eat the pork, Peter, and then go preach to you Gentile.

Here in Matthew, verse 20, to eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone. You're not gonna get it said more directly than that. Now, I'm telling you, again, for 95% of you, that's a verse you probably haven't thought much of before, you've read it and you've moved on. But if you were raised in a Jewish household, a kosher household, with the two sinks and two food storages and all the restrictions and all the washings, if you're raised in a household, this is one of the more radical things Jesus has ever said. I mean that touches every meal, every moment of your life is touched by their rules, and Jesus says it does not mean anything.

All that you've been doing all your whole life, all of it doesn't mean a single thing. You're going through the motions, man, it doesn't work, it does not make you holy. And if you think it does make you holy, what's gonna happen is you're gonna keep your intricate set of washing and dietary rules, and all that, and then you're gonna have an encounter with Jesus. And you know what you're gonna do? You're gonna see the one who gives sight to the blind, and raises the dead, and who fulfills prophecy, and you're gonna look at him and say, but you're not washing your hands.

This is Matthew 12. You're gonna look at the one who heals the man with the withered hand on the Sabbath and say, Yes, but you guys plucked grain on your way over here. Because they can't see. Unless you think I'm just poking fun at Judaism or anything like that, I am most certainly not. You see the same tendencies even inside of massive groups of so called Christians that take their own church tradition and their own authority and elevated above the word of God.

And we'll even tell you the only way you know what the what the word of God is is because our church and our tradition and our authority gave it to you. That's the same thing you see here. When you start talking like that and thinking like that, it nullifies the gospel of its power. All your church authority and all your traditions are pointless. It robs the gospel of its power and it means you can't see your sin.

The Jews here thought that the rest of the world was unclean and that Jesus came. Who knows why? They rejected him, but do you understand Jesus did not come to make the rest of the world clean? He didn't come to make the rest of the world like Israel. He didn't come to make Israel like the rest of the world.

He came to save people by sanctifying them from the inside out. And by the way, the very next verse, guess what? Jesus' out of his drawer. These are his last words to them before he leaves. These are his last words to them before he leaves.

These These are his last words to them before he leaves. These things are pointless. I'm out. You see him in Lebanon next week. This is how Paul says in Colossians two, Therefore no one is to act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect of new moon or Sabbath or any of that.

These are shadows of what's to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. This isn't a Galilean fisherman who describes the Jewish rules that way. I mean, the shadow that's a this is a very almost condescending way to say it, isn't it? Like all your rules and regulations are shadow. It's not a Galilean fisherman, it's not a Gentile, this is Paul, a Pharisee from the tribe of Benjamin, He says, listen, shadows are cast by something.

Jesus is the one that cast the shadow, he's the substance. Shadows are cast by a mountain, Jesus is the mountain. Shadows are there to show you to look for the source, Jesus is the source. He fulfills the law from the inside out. Are you starting to see why they determined to murder Jesus?

Their whole life was spent building a sense of righteousness that Jesus nullifies, sets it aside. For you, ask yourself this basic question. Do you see yourself as a sinner deserving God's judgment? If not, go to the law. Let the law show you why you're a sinner and only then do you have the eyes to look to Jesus and see the Savior.

Lord, we're thankful that you have died to give us life. You died to fill the law, to make a way for salvation of life for those who don't have it. You nullify the righteousness of men by giving instead a righteousness from God that comes by faith, not by works. We're thankful for the righteousness of Christ. I pray for everyone here today who's never had their eyes spiritually open to see their own sin, to understand the power of the law, or to see the savior.

I pray today that they would lay their eyes and faith on you. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. And now for a parting word from pastor Jesse Johnson. If you have any questions about what you heard today or if you wanna learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, ibc.church.

If you want more information about the Master's Seminary or our location here in Washington DC, please go to tms.edu. Now if you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington DC area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel. I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service. But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church. Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.