#1277 Matthew 14 Part 4 A Word From The Religious Elite

 

34 And when they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret. 35 And when the men of that place recognized him, they sent around to all that region and brought to him all who were sick 36 and implored him that they might only touch the fringe of his garment. And as many as touched it were made well. Matthew 14: 34-36 ESV

15 Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, 2 “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat.” 3 He answered them, “And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? 4 For God commanded, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’ 5 But you say, ‘If anyone tells his father or his mother, “What you would have gained from me is given to God,” 6 he need not honor his father.’ So for the sake of your tradition you have made void the word of God. 7 You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said:

8 “‘This people honors me with their lips,

but their heart is far from me;

9 in vain do they worship me,

teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’” Matthew 15: 1-9 ESV

Matthew 14: 34-15: 9 The Big Guns

And when the men of that place recognized Him - Gennesaret is an area of farmland on the northwest side of the Sea of Galilee, which some called after this place, Lake Gennesaret. Jesus had been healing and teaching for quite sometime now, and so when He was recognized by the men of the place they called everyone from the towns in that region. What sick person wouldn't want to meet such a man?

That they might only touch the fringe of His garment - Perhaps they had heard of the woman with the blood disorder, but they are respectful none the less, in that they ask rather than stampeding Him. The gospels only record a small sampling of the miracles, but in the gospel of John we see that this is a norm in His ministry, that many were healed in these regions. They come rather boldly, knowing more than just a fancy or a hope, no, it is more than that, because they are surrounded by evidence. So called faith healers today have to stage things, get people worked up in a frenzy, a faith attached to feeling, and choosing those things that can be relieved by the power of suggestion. They make big claims, but can't support them, and they lay the responsibility for success or failure on the one pleading, begging for mercy, wanting to be made whole. Can Jesus heal? Yes. Will Jesus heal? He only does what He sees the Father doing, and so if it is the will of the Father then He will heal you. Charlatans today feel that they can make God do what they want, impose their will upon the Creator of the Universe. Their message is about honoring them, not God, and they worship something other than Him. They also conveniently forget that there is a much worse disease than our present physical afflictions, and that is a death without Christ, one which puts you into eternity wholly separated from the grace of God. They neglect the repentance which they do not find important, wanting men to follow them rather than be reconciled to God. 

…24This is the disciple who testifies to these things and who has written them down. And we know that his testimony is true. 25 There are many more things that Jesus did. If all of them were written down, I suppose that not even the world itself would have space for the books that would be written. John 21: 24-25

…20Suddenly a woman who had suffered from bleeding for twelve years came up behind Him and touched the fringe of His cloak. 21 She said to herself, “If only I touch His cloak, I will be healed.” 22Jesus turned and saw her. “Take courage, daughter,” He said, “your faith has healed you.” And the woman was cured from that very hour.… Matthew 9: 20-22

Pharisees and Scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem - These are the cream of the crop, the elite spiritual leaders of their day. They have called in the big guns to confront this Jesus. It's like a priest in the country calling for delegates and dignitaries from the Vatican in Rome. They were the experts on tradition, the enforcers and interpreters of their dogma, holding that their commentary was above God's actual intent. Just like the Roman Catholic Church, they will hold their traditions and teachings above the word of God. 

The sum of it is this. The Talmud says – here’s the key, and here’s where these guys were. Even though they were 200 years before the Mishnah was brought together with the Gemara, or before the Mishnah was even codified and written down, even though they’re before that, they still have all the stuff. They’re still trying to deal with all this material. And they had come to be so committed to it, listen to what the Talmud says, “The words of the scribes are more lovely than the words of the law.” The Talmud says, “It is a greater time to transgress the words of the school of Rabbi Hillel than the words of Scripture.” The Talmud says, “My son, attend to the words of the scribes more than the words of the law.”

So, you see, they were committed to a lot of traditional stuff, not the Word of God. They had ceremony and tradition as over against truth and righteousness. - J Mac

Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders - This is in reference to them not washing their hands before they eat. My wife and my mom are probably in agreement, hygiene is a good thing, and there are teachings in the Scripture about ceremonial washing, hygiene and so on, but that is not what this is about. Even if it were they would be straining at a gnat, but this is about their traditions, and even worse, traditions steeped in superstition, additions to God's law that do not rightly reflect the heart of God. It's also awesome, because this is your best accusation against the disciples and their Teacher? You are accusing me of not being superstitious, not being apostate, and accusing me of seeing the emperor in his observable, naked state, but you're mad when I point that out. I can totally live with that.

Now, he’s not talking about cleanliness. He’s not saying, “These guys haven’t washed their hands before they eat, and anybody knows you want to be clean before you put food in your mouth.” That is not the issue. They’re not accusing them of being uncouth; they’re accusing them of violating religious tradition. They believed, because this is what it taught in all of this material, that you had to go through ceremonial washings of your hands for two reasons. Reason number one was that if you had touched a Gentile that day, you’d been defiled, and there was a prescribed ceremony to detoxify your Gentile touch. See?

Secondly, the rabbis taught that there was a demon by the name of Shibtah. And Shibtah dwelt on people’s hands while they slept. And if they did not go through the ceremonial washings that eliminated him, they would pass him therefore to their food and into their bodies. Now, this became so important to them that Rabbi Ta’anith taught, quoting, “Whosoever has his abode in the land of Israel and eats his common food with rinsed hands may rest assured that he shall obtain eternal life.” They believed that you received eternal life by going through the ceremonial rinsing of your hands.

Now, granted, in the Old Testament, there were washings that God instituted in Exodus 19, before the people came before God. He had them wash all their garments. The priests in Leviticus 15, 16, and 17 had to wash themselves before, of course, they could carry out any rites of the priesthood. But those were outward symbols of an inward reality. They had long ago slain the reality, and now they had magnified the symbols and invented their own. Nowhere in any part of holy Scripture does God ever say to go through this kind of stuff, to rinse your hands in a ceremonial way to get rid of any Gentile influence or to drown or whatever the demon Shibtah so he won’t get in your body.

Edersheim, the great Jewish scholar, writes this, “Water jars were kept ready to be used before every meal. The minimum amount of water to be used was a quarter of a log” - which, by the way, is defined as enough to fill one-and-a-half eggshells. “The water was first poured on both hands, held with the fingers pointed upward. And it must run down the arm as far as the wrist and drop off from the wrist, for the water was now itself unclean, having touched the unclean hands. And if it ran down the fingers again, it would render them unclean. The process was repeated with the hands held in the downward direction, the fingers pointing down. And finally, each hand was cleansed with being rubbed with the fist of the other. And a strict Jew would do this before every meal and between every course in every meal.”

And Rabbi Ta’anith said, “If you do that, you’ll obtain eternal life.” And so, they did it. So, the Word of God was utterly submerged under their tradition. In fact, the story is told of the very famous Rabbi Akiba, who was put into prison. And his water ration was reduced, and he took what little water he was given to wash his hands before eating rather than to drink it, saying he would rather die than transgress the tradition of the elders. Another rabbi said, “It’s better to go four miles to get water than to incur guilt by neglecting hand rinsing before you eat. - J Mac

He answered them - Sadly, they think they are saying something, but now they will be corrected by the God they tell others they believe in, yet here He is and they don't recognize Him. What did you actually believe; who did you actually believe in?

Why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition - Not only have you added to God's laws, confused yourselves and your listeners, but you got it so wrong that your traditions actually oppose God's law and intent. You added to the letter, lost the Spirit of it, and are now in opposition to God's Word, which means you are opposing God. You're religious, but that won't save you. You are legalist, but in the worse sense, not because you follow God's law, but because you adhere to traditions that pervert it, and you think in these that you have eternal life, a righteousness pleasing to God. God wants those who worship in spirit and in truth, from the heart, not by way of outward show, not for the approval of men. Jesus is not telling them something new here either. God taught the same thing through His prophets, hundreds of years before Christ came. 

…12Or if the scroll is handed to one unable to read, he will say, “I cannot read.” 13Therefore the Lord said: “These people draw near to Me with their mouths and honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me. Their worship of Me is but rules taught by men. 14Therefore I will again confound these people with wonder upon wonder. The wisdom of the wise will vanish, and the intelligence of the intelligent will be hidden.”… Isaiah 29: 12-14

What you would have gained from me is given to God - This is confusing at first, but looking at the context of honoring father and mother, we understand that what they say is in contradiction to this. In other words, when the time came to care for those who had cared for them, who got them through their diapers, taught them, fed them, provided shelter to them, and loved them, they wanted a loop hole out of this. I watch children that are like vultures, and I have talked of this before, they watch and wait for their parents to die, like the man who wanted to follow Christ but was waiting to bury his parents so he could first receive his inheritance. I struggled with parts of this in my own life, not seeking an inheritance because there really wasn't one to speak of, but what to do about my dad and step mom when I received a call that they were not doing well and needed help. I barely knew them, was not raised by him, he was the kind of person who sought a wife that was more like a mother to him, and it was an awkward situation, but I did not want to violate God's law based upon my own preference or comforts. We took them in and my wife dedicated her life to taking care of my dad's wife, who he now resented for having Parkinson's and no longer being able to wait on him. It was the most bazaar period of my life, and a lot of stress on both my wife and kids. I came to admire my wife more and more, because these were people, who like the Pharisees, claimed to know God, yet were vile and openly so. Meagan cared for Ruth though regardless, all the way to her death, and after that she found chess clubs for my dad, took him to doctor's appointments, cooked his meals, and only to have him yell at her in disrespect. He asked me for keys to a car one day even though he can't drive, and he had the idea that he would just drive the 10 hours back to where he lived in North Carolina, and there was a part of me that just wanted to give him the keys, but I remembered this passage and others about honoring my father and mother. I knew he wouldn't make it more than a few exits on the highway, that he didn't have a driver's license, and was scared of his own shadow, so I had to stop, let go of my ego and take him to the hospital for evaluation. Ultimately, he said he didn't want to live with us so we found him a retirement home and moved him once again. I share this because we had to keep going back to the scripture rather than our feelings. There was nothing endearing about him, he's not a likable man, he lies incessantly, but he's a human being, made in the image of God, and God tells me to love even my enemies, to not wish nor steer them towards any ill will. The Pharisees were teaching a tradition that violated this, so that a man who had the means to help his elderly parents, could instead say, "these means are a gift to God, dedicated to something else, so I can't help you." They were willing to take, but wanted a loop hole when it came time to give, and though they said, "given to God", it was still actually available to their own use, for whatever they deemed fit. 

“This convenient declaration apparently left the property actually still at the disposal of the one who made the vow, but deprived his parents of any right to it.” (France)

ii. “Our Saviour here also let us know, that the fifth commandment obligeth children to relieve their parents in their necessity, and this is the sense of the term honour in other texts of Scripture.” (Poole)

You hypocrites, well did Isaiah prophesy of you - God was looking for true worshipers, and if we don't respect God's word enough to protect it from our wantonness, then we will twist it. If we don't read the Word, study it for the Author's intent, then we can't really worship God, or grow in our worship of Him. The Scriptures reveal His Holiness, His glory, His claim to the world as the Creator. The Scribes were hypocrites because they said they worshiped the Creator but put more weight on their own words and traditions, ignoring that the kind of relationship God wants is from the heart, and in truth. Note that Jesus is harder on these apostates than any other groups He encounters, yet we let such disregard for His word run rampant and unchallenged in the church today. If you don't point out the error and bring men back to the truth, then they see that you have heard, yet did not challenge, and so they continue on as those approved. 

More on this from Isaiah 29