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I really know nothing about cyber security attacks, but they do fascinate me. This week, I was talking with a man in our church who was explaining how sometimes they are carried out. He is a government contractor who coordinates with our defenses in order to protect our nation from high-level cybersecurity attacks. He said that often—when there is a large-scale attack coming from one direction and they have to allocate a lot of resources in order to protect our country from that attack—it’s easy to become blind to what is coming from a different direction.
He said, often—while everyone’s attention is focused over here—there is a tiny little packet inserted over there that just sits there. It doesn’t do anything for a long time, kind of like a Trojan horse. It appears pure, innocent, welcomed. But then slowly, persistently, patiently, it begins discovering and compromising credentials, stealing data and intelligence. It does it so slowly as not to draw any attention until it is able to accomplish its mission.
He said one of the biggest challenges when you have that kind of massive assault coming from one direction is that it directs all the attention of these cybersecurity experts and can easily blind you to this much more subtle—yet often lethal—tiny attack. Jesus is warning us of something like this. Nothing to do with cybersecurity. The link, though, is in the blindness. This can blind you to that. It’s about attention management: directing all our attention to this, which to us seems so big, can blind us to this.
In Matthew 15, where we are as we journey through the gospel of Matthew (and I would encourage you to turn there if you’re not there already, Matthew 15), Jesus is warning us of a very specific version of this kind of attention management. He’s talking about the danger of becoming so enamored with the traditions of men that we become blind to what is even more important: the Word of God.
I want to give a quick qualification: Jesus is pretty hard on the traditions of men for an obvious reason, as we’ll see. He does not, nor does the Bible, view all tradition as bad. Actually, tradition plays a significant role and can be good.
G.K. Chesterton gets on this in his classic book, Orthodoxy, when he says,
“Tradition means giving a vote to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead.”
He goes on to write,
“Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.”
It’s a good word, especially in our culture, where we tend as a culture to have the view “if it’s old, it’s bad. If it’s new, it is good.” We are often blinded to the narcissism of our own cultural moment, thinking, “this is best just because it is now,” which is perhaps wrong.
In Matthew 15, the opposite problem is occurring. Jesus is addressing a specific kind of blindness. He calls these Pharisees and scribes hypocrites, but the hypocrisy he’s dealing with here is narrowly defined as “when we are blinded to God’s Word by man’s word,” when man’s word seems so big to us (in this case, the traditions of men) that we are blindfolded to what God is saying. Another way to say that is we can’t see what matters because we are so focused on what doesn’t matter nearly as much.
Yuval Noah Harari, in his best-selling book (which I’m not a fan of) called 21 Lessons, begins the book this way (his first sentence, worth the price of the book):
“In a world deluged by irrelevant information, clarity is power.”
In a world deluged by irrelevant information, clarity is power. That’s what Jesus is doing for us this morning. Our minds can be drawn to this deluge of, in this case, irrelevant information, and we can become blind to what is vital, so Jesus is bringing clarity. The way he’s going to do that is he’s going to tell us two things that are not the main thing and one thing that is the main thing.
Let’s first start with what isn’t the main thing.
The first example he addresses, which is the primary one here, is purifying your hands. Purifying your hands. Verse 10:
“And he called the people to him and he said to them, ‘Hear and understand: it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person” (Matthew 15:10-11).
Here, Jesus is explicitly answering the Pharisees’ original question from back in verse two when they asked,
“Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat.”
The short answer Jesus gives is, “It’s not the main thing.” It doesn’t properly identify the direction of defilement. It actually flips it and gets it wrong. Dirty hands don’t make dirty hearts. You’ve got it backwards.
Now, quick qualifier: Kids, Jesus is pro-hand washing when we’re talking about germs. They’re not talking about terms. They’re talking about defiling your heart spiritually because you didn’t go through a ceremonial hand washing. Jesus said that’s not how it works. You’re missing the primary threat. So what’s not the main thing, firstly, is purifying your hands.
Secondly, placating your critics. Placating your critics is not the main thing. Verse 12:
“Then the disciples came and said to him, ‘Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying?’” (Matthew 15:12)
This is not surprising. Think about what the Pharisees had done to them by Jesus. We saw this last week. Jesus accused them of,
1. breaking the commandment of God (verse 3).
2. elevating their tradition above God’s word (verses 4-6)
3. And then worshiping with words but not hearts, as hypocrites (verses 7-9).
That’s devastating. You think, okay, Jesus kind of blew them out of the water, and now he’s going to dial it back and placate them, right? No, he’s actually going to ratchet it up. Look at the two images he gives next to communicate why the disciples should not view these religious leaders and their concerns as the main thing. Verse 13, look for the two images:
“He answered, ‘Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up. Let them alone; they are blind guides. And if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into the pit” (Matthew 15:13-14).
Okay, help me out. What are the two images? First image is what? Plants. He is saying they’re like rogue plants that need to be uprooted. In spite of all their religious knowledge and the significant role they play in society, they will be displaced.
What’s the second image? Guides. Yeah, guides. He is saying they’re blind guides who will lead into the pit. When you are following a leader who cannot see, you are in danger, as well as the leader.
Jesus says to the disciples, who are all uptight about the fact that “They’re offended! We need to be concerned!” Jesus says, “Let them alone.” That’s the primary command here. As Charles Quarles points out, this command begins with a verb that is the same verb we saw back in 13:30, in the parable of the wheat and the weeds. Do you remember that one?
An enemy planted weeds, and the workers came to the farmer and said, “Should we tear out the wheat as it emerges?” The farmer said, “No, no, no. You’ll pull out both. Let them grow until the harvest.”
“Let both grow together until the harvest” (Matthew 13:30).
That command, leave both to grow together, then the wheat will go into the barn and the weeds will go under the fire — Jesus is saying the same thing in chapter 15. The Pharisees and the scribes and their obsession with the traditions of men rather than the word of God, that’s getting the disciples all uptight, can only be responded to very simply by, “Leave them alone.” That’s not the main thing.
As a sidebar, those are words you never want spoken over you by God. “Leave them alone.” Those are terrifying words. “He wants something so badly, we’ll just let him have it.” In this case, they desire to be blind guides that have both chosen and been judged with blindness. How do we know that?
If you remember, last week we pointed out that Jesus is quoting (in verses eight and nine) from Isaiah 29. In that same passage, Isaiah 29:9 (which would be right before the part Jesus quotes from), God says this of the leaders,
“Astonish yourselves and be astonished; blind yourselves and be blind!”
In other words, God is saying, your lack of vision is both self-inflicted and sovereignly induced. You chose it, and you’ve been judged by it.
Now, back in Matthew 15:14, in light of that, “Let them alone.” Let them alone. It’s amazing that God will say of human beings, “They want something so badly, let them have it.” It’s often called, theologically, God’s “passive judgment.” It’s when we desire something so much, so strongly—even though God has warned us of that—he says, “Okay, have at it.”
I’ve prayed several times, I’ve told the Lord, “When I pray like that and say, ‘I want this no matter what,’ whether I pray it or not, please don’t hear that prayer.” Never let me alone. Convict me, dog me, hunt me, track me down because you never want God to say of you, “Let him alone.”
So what isn’t the main thing? Purifying hands and placating critics. So you notice what Jesus is doing: They’re all enamored with this over here (the traditions of men, the leaders are offended), and now Jesus is going to pull us back to the main thing.
What is the main thing? What really matters? What must you not miss?
Peter asks for this, representing the 12, in verse 15 when he says,
“‘Explain the parable to us.’ And [Jesus] said, ‘Are you also still without understanding?’” (Matthew 15:15b-16)
The parable was back in verse 11, the idea that what goes in doesn’t defile, it’s what comes out. And now Jesus is once again shocked by their cognitive traffic jam. Things are not making sense to them, so he provides clarification. And he gets really earthy, like potty talk. Look at verse 17:
“Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is expelled?” (Matthew 15:17)
He is saying, if you fail to keep the Pharisees’ ceremonial handwashings, and you eat some food that is ceremonially defiled, it is going to go in, be digested, and end up in the toilet. Verse 18:
“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 does not defile anyone” (Matthew 15:18-20).
Do you see what Jesus just did? This is not the main thing; this is the main thing. He’s contrasting what goes in the mouth with what comes out of the mouth because it comes out of the heart. He describes here three categories of heart-produced evil. Look at those in verse 19.
All the words in this list are plural and are what Smyth calls “plural of abstract subjects.” You don’t need to remember that; it just implies that there are many ways to commit each of these evil categories. Let me give you an example from the last one, slander.
Slander can come in the form of blasphemy, where we revile against God. It can come in the form of defamation, where we are harming a fellow image bearer’s reputation. It could come in the form of evil speaking, insulting, or many other forms.
“These are what defile a person. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone” (Matthew 15:20).
Jesus, again, is leading us from what is not the main thing (purifying your hands, placating your critics) to what is the main thing.
It’s all about the heart.
It’s about your heart, our hearts in the presence of God. We could call this covenantal cardiology. That’s the main thing. Why?
Many of us have an extremely scrawny view of the heart. If you get it from Disney, it’s going to be anemic. Many Americans view the heart primarily through a romantic lens or an emotional lens (which can be part of it), but the Bible’s view of the heart is far more sophisticated and comprehensive.
I think it would be helpful—if Jesus is saying he’s getting us toward what really matters, to understand what he means by “the heart”—to do a quick introduction to a theology of the heart. What is the Bible talking about when it talks about the heart? I want to say five things that we have to understand about our hearts.
1. Our heart is who you really are.
It is your true identity. The heart is the real you. It’s your control center. Three things about that:
This past spring, if you remember, when we were in Matthew 12:33-37, I had an apple tree on the stage in the old auditorium, if you remember. We talked about the fact that the heart, like a tree, produces either good fruit or bad fruit. It’s like a tree.
He also likened it to a treasure chest where we keep our valuables. If you want to know what somebody values, follow what they value, and you’ll find their heart. Matthew 6:21, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Your heart is like a tree and a treasure chest.
Culpable and Vulnerable. What is culpable? It means countable, responsible. What does vulnerable mean? Susceptible to harm. So my heart can be both villain and victim. I can hurt people from the heart, and I can be hurt. This is why people often use the expression “hurt people, hurt people.”
Proverbs 4:23, “Keep your heart [guard your heart] with all vigilance—” Why? Because it’s vulnerable. “…for from it flow the springs of life.”
You see both in one verse: Your heart is vulnerable to being hurt and capable of hurting. Everything you do flows from your heart, and it can be harmed.
One more thought about that first point:
Often in secular psychology, human beings are treated like donuts: All around us is what really matters. It’s what someone did to you, how they treated you, what they didn’t do for you— all the influences of the heart, which are significant, and the Bible talks a lot about that. But what is at times missed is the middle. We’re not donuts. There is an active heart there. We are choosing, feeling, thinking. We can be harmed, and we can harm. Your heart is who you really are.
2. Our heart is beautifully designed and sinfully broken.
Beautifully designed and sinfully broke. You’ll feel the tension in many passages. I’ll just give one example of this tension:
Ecclesiastes 3:11, “He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.”
Eternity in a heart.
We are made in the image of God, and we have an insatiable desire for more than now. We are wired for more. As Augustine began his confessions, he said, “You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they—” What? “…find rest in you.”
What might keep us from experiencing that? One thing is we’re finite, we’re limited. Two, we’re fallen. Our hearts are not neutral.
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9)
“Transgression speaks to the wicked deep in his heart; there is no fear of God before his eyes.” (Psalm 36:1)
Apart from the grace of Christ, we tend to identify sin as our truest self, deep in our hearts. That’s who I am. And we envision life apart from God. Your heart is beautifully designed and sinfully broken.
3. Our heart is transplanted when you repent and believe.
Your heart is transplanted or replaced when you repent and believe. This is one of the big differences between religion and the gospel of Jesus. Religion works from outside in. “If you can do enough good, you might become a good person.” The gospel of Jesus knows that will never work, and so we are transformed from the inside out.
“…because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified [declared right with God], and with the mouth, one confesses and is saved.” (Romans 10:9-10)
From heart to mouth to life, this is in fulfillment of the prophets who predicted.
“And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them. And they shall be my people, and I will be their God.” (Ezekiel 11:19-20)
Your heart is transplanted when you repent and believe.
4. Our heart as a believer continues to grow as a holy dwelling place.
Grow, like we talked about last week, means our heart expands rather than constricts. Sin will suck the life out of our hearts and shrink it. But when we believe and receive this heart transplant, the Spirit of Jesus enters into our hearts.
“And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’ So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.” (Galatians 4:6-7)
“God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” (Romans 5:5)
But we don’t stop there! We continue to grow in our experience of his stabilizing presence. This is why Paul prayed for the Ephesian believers.
“For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love,” (Ephesians 3:14-17)
He’s praying that for Christians, Christians who have Christ.
That word dwell means to move from being a guest or a sojourner, to being home, to belonging, to becoming a covenantal resident, Christ dwelling in our hearts. Your heart as a believer continues to grow as a holy dwelling place.
5. Our heart can be deceived or hardened, so we encourage one another.
When Jesus focuses on the heart as the main thing, it might be tempting for us to turn this into something very individualistic and hyperintrospective, where we’re just obsessed with this heart. But the Bible doesn’t go there. It says, yeah, the heart’s the main thing. That’s where he begins to transform us, and that will come out into the way we think and live and love and serve, all the way to the nations. However, as Hebrews 3:12 says, we can’t do this alone.
“Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today,’ that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” (Hebrews 3:12-13)
An encouraging community of faith is a key antidote to prevent our hearts from shriveling up and hardening. Isolation is the key ingredient to deception. We need each other. This means daily, weekly, regularly— we are living and loving in community.
Jack Miller, who was a pastor, missionary, church planter, professor, mentored a lot of people who have had a huge impact (like Tim Keller and others)— he wrote years ago:
“A pastor really needs to be broken before God every day, or he will break up the church of God with his willfulness or let it slip into spiritual death through his sloth.” (Jack Miller)
It’s true. That means our hearts, who we really are, that are being transformed by the indwelling Christ, can—if we turn our focus away from what matters to what doesn’t matter—can begin to harden. In the end, a pastor can lead a church toward death through his willfulness or sloth.
You could put in there “a father” in that same quotation. A father really needs to be broken before God every day, or he will break up his family with his willfulness or let it slip into spiritual death through his sloth. A mom, a husband, a wife, a college student, a teenager.
This is why we get alone with God each morning and do heart work. What we’re doing is we’re shifting from this huge message in our culture, “THIS IS THE MAIN THING!” And God is saying, “No, it’s not the main thing. Seek first my kingdom. I will add all these things to you, but give me your heart. Let’s start here.” Otherwise, even in our desire to help, we will hurt. We will do more harm than good.
The Bible gives us beautiful promises to pray. Like,
“Create in me a clean—” [What?] “…heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me” (Psalm 51:10).
Create in me a clean heart. Isn’t that stunning that God says, “Pray that to me and I’ll do it!” Through Jesus, your heart can be clean. The Lord is near the brokenhearted.
Did you come in today with a heart that feels shattered? Through sin or sorrow, God is near. He moves toward the brokenhearted.
“A broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise” (Psalm 51:17).
He will not. This is true as individuals, this is true as a church. Ian Harber warns us that we, as a church, can do the same thing Jesus was confronting the Pharisees and the scribes for. We can begin to go through the motions. Our traditions may look different, but that same kind of mindset can become us if we’re not careful. Listen to how Ian warns us.
“The performative church [that is, the church that’s lost sight of the main thing and is merely going through the motions] organizes itself around its own survival and well-being rather than the worship of God and the formation of his people. The life of the church is explainable without God. By making the church the main character of the story, God himself is inadvertently pushed out of the church and the lives of its congregants. God has left the building, and no one has realized it yet.” (Ian Harber)
God save us from this. But God’s Spirit speaks to us through his Word to call us away from performance, into reality. Let’s pray.
Father, there are countless messages, thoughts, words that flood our minds every day that are not what is most important. Thank you for speaking to our hearts today. Thank you for the way you convict us of sin. You tell us, “I have something better.” Thank you for the way you wash us with the grace of Jesus. Thank you for his death, burial, and resurrection, paying for all of our sins. Unite our hearts to fear your name. Please, this morning, convict us of those straggling, strained thoughts that take us toward things that don’t matter. Divide our hearts, please. Create in us a clean heart, oh God. We pray in Jesus’s name, amen.
