Jesus Judges Pharisees and Teachers of the Law

Take Every Passage to Prayer - Volume 2, The Gospels
^{Friday July 26, 2024}

Matthew 15:1-20, Mark 7:1-23, John 7:1

Father, I want a pure heart. Please cleanse my heart through the working of Your Holy Spirit as I study Your Word.  I want to obey Your commands motivated by my love for You. Help me not to be a hypocrite. Help me to practice what I preach. I also ask that You help me not to fear what men can do to me. Instead, help me to fear You. Please forgive me for the times that I have been deliberately ignorant of Your ways. My "stupidity" was not because of a mental deficiency. It was because of my refusal to learn Your ways. Give me a heart that is eager to learn and apply Your truths. Amen.

Father, as I wrote about in “Jesus Charged With Having Unclean Hands”, Jesus was accused of not washing His hands before eating (Luke 11:38). He responded with the “five woes”. Some time has passed since that discussion. Jesus has calmed the storm, sent demons into a herd of 2,000 pigs, brought a dead girl back to life, and sent out His disciples on a missionary journey.

Every move of Jesus and His disciples was still being scrutinized by the Pharisees and teachers of the law who had come up north from Jerusalem. They watched the disciples eat a meal without first washing up. While we in America today might think of that as merely “gross”, the Pharisees and teachers of the law saw that as moral decadence, akin to the disciples having relations with harlots.

The text tells us that the Pharisees and teachers of the law were obsessed with cleanliness. They had to continuously clean themselves as well as their dishes and utensils. What explains this behavior? They felt the guilt of sin on one hand but also sought to cleanse themselves of sin by their own effort on the other. We are still doing this today. We know we are guilty of sin, and we invent every kind of religion, philosophy, or wokeness imaginable to cleanse ourselves. We ignore the only way of salvation – Jesus Christ.

When confronted, Jesus challenged these men on their self-righteous and “holier-than-thou” spirit.

“Why do you disobey the Ten Commandments by dishonoring your mother and father?” Jesus asked.

It was considered righteous in that culture for adult children to provide for their elderly parents when their parents were no longer able to support themselves financially. However, the Pharisees and teachers of the law believed that such money is better spent as a gift to God and the work of the temple. As a result of their decision, many elderly people were in financial distress.

Jesus replied, “And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? (NIV).”

Father, this is what we do in our rebellion from You today. We discard Your commands and replace them with our own. For example, You tell us in Exodus 20:14 not to commit adultery. However, we say that we are “enlightened”, and we now know better than Moses. We say it is alright to have sex outside of marriage.

Jesus reminded the Pharisees and teachers of the law that their actions deserved death. In Exodus 21:17 and Leviticus 20:9, You declared:

“Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death (NIV).”

The Hebrew word for curses is ?????. According to the Blue Letter Bible, this word is used to describe the act of rendering someone insignificant. It describes making someone despised and dishonored within society. These Pharisees and teachers of the law are essentially humiliating their parents by leaving them in a pitiable and needy state within society.

Jesus aptly calls them hypocrites. They are accusing Jesus of violating a cultural tradition while they themselves are violating the commandments of God. Jesus recites Isaiah 29:13:

These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is based on merely human rules they have been taught. (NIV).

Father, Jesus took the occasion to teach the gathered crowd what defilement really means. It is not that which goes into a person’s mouth that defiles them. It is what comes out of their mouth that defiles them because what comes out of their mouth comes from their rebellious heart.

1. Defilement is our rebellious heart. We want to be our own god. We want to do as we please. We want to make our own plans and define what is right and wrong for ourselves. We don’t want to answer to You or to follow Your commands.
2. Behavior is merely symptomatic of that defilement. We do what we do and say what we say because of the rebellion in our hearts. Jesus told us that we commit murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, and slander because we have first rebelled from You in our hearts.

Father, many people might read Jesus’ list of rebellious behaviors and claim they are innocent before Him because they haven’t committed any of these sins. Therefore, their hearts must be pure. However, in accordance with Matthew 5:21-30, we need to look at this list from a different perspective.

Who among us is not guilty of at least a few, if not all, of the sinful attitudes in the second column? Therefore, our hearts are defiled. We can be the most respected and honored citizens in our community, praised for our goodness. However, in our hearts we have all of these sinful desires. You would see only the defilement of our souls. Similarly, a righteous and God-fearing man could ingest something truly disgusting but You would see only the righteousness of his heart. What he ingested did not defile him, even if it made him violently ill.

The disciples have “fear of man” issues. They are afraid of the trouble that the Pharisees and teachers of the law could bring to them. They didn’t want to be persecuted or ostracized. They didn’t want to be “cancelled”, losing their livelihoods, or suffering arrest because Jesus offended the powerful and influential people of the land.

“Jesus, be careful what you are saying! It is offending the rich and powerful Pharisees!”

Jesus responded (paraphrased):

“Exactly. That was my intent. They are spiritually blind. They are not rooted in the Father’s ways. The Father did not plant them into your life as authority figures. Their alleged authority and influence will be taken away from them by the Father. Anyone who follows them will also fall into the pit (???????, a ditch). They will have challenges that they cannot escape from.”

The text informs us that Jesus departed from the crowd and went into a house with His disciples. They asked Him to explain what He had said. Jesus asked the disciples, “Are you still so dull (????????, stupid, unintelligent)?”

According to Matthew 5:22, Jesus said that anyone who calls another stupid (????, raca, empty-headed) can be taken to court but anyone who calls another a fool deserves hell. How is it that Jesus can call His disciples stupid or foolish? Did Jesus violate His own teaching?

Father, I have two perspectives on this:

1. Jesus is making a claim between the lines here that He alone has the authority to be the Judge. It is wrong for everyone else to judge their neighbor so harshly. A person who calls his neighbor “stupid” or “foolish” is claiming to have authority that belongs only to You, Father, and Your Son, Jesus.
2. There are those who are born with mental deficiencies. I am confident our compassionate Jesus is not belittling them by suggesting His disciples are like the mentally handicapped. Instead, I believe Jesus is referring to intentional stupidity. There is an attitude of the human heart that doesn’t want to learn Biblical truths and, therefore, intentionally keeps itself ignorant of God’s ways. Jesus isn’t saying His disciples are intellectually challenged. He is saying they are deliberately choosing not to learn the lessons He is teaching because they don’t want to walk godly lives. It is like a man who has dirt all over his body and Jesus calls him out for never showering. It is not as though the man can’t shower. It’s that the man chose not to.

The text concludes with the statement that Jesus avoided Judea because there were plots there to kill Jesus before His appointed death on the cross. There were still lives for Him to touch. Similarly, You help us stay clear of those things that could end our life before our appointed hour. If You still have a purpose for us tomorrow, there is nothing that can kill us today. Amen.