1 Spiritual Blind Spots Matthew 15:1-20 New Bibles – Pg 974 Intro

Spiritual Blind Spots Matthew 15:1-20 New Bibles – pg 974 Intro One of the hardest things about learning to drive is identifying blind spots. There are places around your vehicle that you just can’t see. More than 800,000 blind spot accidents a year, usually as a vehicle moves into this mysterious zone and disappears just as you go to change lanes. Drivers adapt by learning to turn their heads rather than rely on their mirrors. Car makers have adapted in several ways. Adding curved sections to mirrors that give a distorted view but at least you can see that there is a blob coming up on your side Radar sensors that alert you to vehicles in your blind spots with flashing lights or audible sounds. Some cars will even gently nudge you back if you are approaching a car in your blind spot. On other cars the steering wheel shakes a little to warn you. We’ll encounter some people in Matthew 15 with some serious spiritual blind spots. From our perspective looking in, it seems so obvious. But that’s the way blind spots work. Other can see it but we can’t see it ourselves. This blind spot had to do with elevating their religious tradition over God’s Word. They end up overlooking the miracle working Messiah and violating God’s commandments in their blindness. There’s a warning for each of us about the danger of raising the form of religious tradition over the substance of God’s Word. 1. A Hollow Accusation: Your Disciples Violate Our Traditions (15:1-2) a. This incident follows the events of chapter 14 but we don’t know how closely. i. We know from John’s account of this period in John 6 that the Passover was near so many people were on the road traveling to Jerusalem, perhaps making this normally quiet, agricultural region on the western side of the sea of Galilee busier than usual. ii. This would have been Jesus’ third Passover since His ministry began, about a year before His final Passover with His disciples in the Upper Room. iii. This is the halfway point of Matthew’s gospel but about 2/3’s of the way through His 3 year public ministry. iv. Another way to locate this passage in the flow of the book is to remember that Matthew’s gospel is divided into 5 sections with an additional intro and conclusion. Each of the five sections contains narrative and one larger teaching. We are in the 4th section that began with the end of chapter 13 and will run through the beginning of chapter 19. b. The Pharisees and scribes came on a special mission to see Jesus of more than 80 miles on foot. i. Jesus was on an agricultural plain that was on the western shore of the sea of Galilee. 1 ii. In chapter 14 Jesus had fed 5,000 people, walked on water, and healed people who merely touched the fringe of his clothing. What is the appropriate question to ask someone like this? Who are you? How can I follow you? iii. Instead they launch an accusation against His disciples for not washing their hands. c. Notice their accusation – this breaks the tradition of the elders. What is that referring to? i. During the captivity in Babylon 500 years before Jesus was born the scribes began to assemble the various books of scripture and comment on them, especially those that seemed unclear. Their comments and interpretations grew and accumulated until they carried more weight even than scripture. d. Ceremonial hand washing was a practice that had taken on serious weight by this point. i. It was required of priests that they wash their hands not prior to eating but prior to serving in the tabernacle and later in the temple. 1. Exodus 30:20 when they enter the tent of meeting, they shall wash with water, so that they will not die; or when they approach the altar to minister, by offering up in smoke a fire sacrifice to the LORD. ii. In the oral tradition of the elders it was expanded to include all faithful Israelites whenever they ate a meal. iii. When the oral tradition was written down in the Mishnah the section on hand washing was over 4,000 words long. It included rules on how much water must be used, how it should be poured, how it should be allowed to drip off the hands. iv. It had become so important that one rabbi taught it was better to walk 4 miles out of the way to find water than to eat with unwashed hands. Another rabbi supposedly used the small ration of water he was given while in prison to wash his hands rather than drink because he would rather die than transgress the tradition. v. Mark includes a note on this because he is writing to a largely Greek audience whereas Matthew was writing to a largely Jewish audience so they would have already understood this. 1. Mark 7:3-4 (For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they carefully wash their hands, thus observing the traditions of the elders; 4 and when they come from the market place, they do not eat unless they cleanse themselves; and there are many other things which they have received in order to observe, such as the washing of cups and pitchers and copper pots.) e. Video this week by John Crist, a Christian comedian on the rules regarding praying for food i. Do you need to pray over chips and salsa at a restaurant or only your main course? What about a salad? His conclusion, if the salad is part of your meal then you must pray over it. If it is part of your appetizer course, it’s not necessary. What about soup? If it’s in a bowl then it’s a part of your meal. If it’s in a cup, no need to lift it up. 2. A Devastating Counter: Your Traditions Violate God’s Commandments (15:3-9) a. He didn’t answer their question directly. Common technique for Jesus. 2 i. Look at verse 3 to see what he did. He basically dismissed their question as irrelevant by asking a much more important counter question. b. You say they break the tradition of the elders. Why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? i. He takes it in a very different direction than hand washing and meals. His point is much bigger than that. c. The practice of declaring your wealth and possessions “corban” i. God’s Word clearly says to honor your parents. Part of that includes providing for them when they are old. 1. No retirement plans, nursing homes, pensions, or social security. 2. If children didn’t care for their aging parents, no one else would. ii. God takes the command to honor parents so seriously that under the Old Testament whoever spoke evil (literally “curses”) his father or mother was to be put to death. 1. I imagine youth group would be a little smaller if that was still in effect today! iii. They had developed a tradition that they could declare their possessions as “corban” – dedicated to God – to be given to the temple upon their death. 1. Because a vow to God was not to be violated according to Numbers 30:2, they could not use those possessions to help their parents. 2. Numbers 30:2 "If a man makes a vow to the LORD, or takes an oath to bind himself with a binding obligation, he shall not violate his word; he shall do according to all that proceeds out of his mouth. 3. That’s why Jesus says their tradition makes it so he is not to honor his father or his mother – it would be a violation of the vow. 4. “Sorry, mom and dad, I’d love to help you out, but all this money is Corban.” 5. However, there was a significant loophole. While they were in his he could still use it on himself! d. They invalidate God’s Word for their tradition. e. Hypocrites! i. Hypocrites because they claimed devotion to God but used that as an excuse to avoid doing the very things that God commands – caring for parents. Carson – their religious tradition took precedence over God’s revealed will. ii. He applies Isaiah to them – even says Isaiah said this about you – 1. Each case the warning was to the Jews from Jerusalem who were characterized by outside ritual. iii. Their worship had become worthless (vain) because it wasn’t from the heart. f. Are traditions wrong? Should we not have traditions? 3 i. Every church has their own traditions – some are more steeped in older traditions than others, but every church has them. ii. Example – Order of service on a Sunday morning is fairly consistent here – there is a “tradition” – 4 songs, prayer, sermon, 1 song to close with offering at the same time. What if we sang 1 song at the beginning and 4 at the end? What if we prayed longer or at different parts of the service? What if we followed the Russian style and had multiple shorter sermons instead of 1 longer sermon? iii. Every Christian community has to apply the word of God to situations in real life, and thus traditions inevitably develop from this undertaking. (Odonnel quoting Garland) iv. Question is not “does this church hold to certain traditions or not?” Rather, the question is, does this church hold to certain traditions that contradict Scripture or oppose the authority of the Word of God? (Odonnel) v.

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