Matthew 15

¹⁰ And he called the people to him and said to them, “Hear and understand: ¹¹ it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person.” ¹² Then the disciples came and said to him, “Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying?” ¹³ He answered, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up. ¹⁴ Let them alone; they are blind guides. And if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit.” ¹⁵ But Peter said to him, “Explain the parable to us.” ¹⁶ And he said, “Are you also still without understanding? ¹⁷ Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is expelled? ¹⁸ But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. ¹⁹ For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. ²⁰ These are what defile a person. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone.”

The Bible talks a lot about the heart. It is also part of common discourse among evangelical Christians. We talk about “inviting Jesus into your heart” and about “heart-felt worship” and “heart-felt prayer” etc. But do we know what the heart really is?

Dallas Willard, in his seminal book The Renovation of the Heart, has offered a fascinating definition of “heart.” He writes:

…“heart,” “spirit,” and “will” (or their equivalents) are words that refer to one and the same thing, the same fundamental component of the person. But they do so under different aspects. “Will” refers to that component’s power to initiate, to create, to bring about what did not exist before. “Spirit” refers to its fundamental nature as distinct and independent from physical reality. And “heart” refers to its position in the human being, as the center or core to which every other component of the self owes its proper functioning. But it is the same dimension of the human being that has all these features.[1]

The heart, then, is central. It is the command center of the human life. Our lives flow out of the reality of our hearts. In Matthew 15:10-20 Jesus stresses this reality over and against the Pharisees’ insistence on externals.

Our external actions do not defile us, rather they are evidences that we are defiled.

Our text begins with a fundamental assertion: that our external actions do not defile us, rather they are evidences that we are defiled.

¹⁰ And he called the people to him and said to them, “Hear and understand: ¹¹ it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person.”

Let us first return to the preceding verses to help set the context for what Jesus is doing here. Matthew 15 begins like this:

¹ 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.”

Here, in a nutshell, are the great emphases of the Pharisees and scribes: tradition and the externals of the law. We might say that here the washing of hands is symbolic of all the works-righteousness emphases of the religious elites of the day. They felt that holiness and righteousness were matters of keeping the rules, keeping the laws, keeping the traditions. So their great concerns were largely external: hand washing and keeping kosher and circumcision and the like. In other words, the religious leaders had a dominant outside-in view of holiness and righteousness: what you did could render you holy or unholy. They focused largely on visible actions.

But Jesus, in verses 10 and 11, does something most provocative. He turns the outside-in view around and argues rather that righteousness is an inside-out reality. Listen:

¹⁰ And he called the people to him and said to them, “Hear and understand: ¹¹ it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person.”

Do you see what Jesus is saying? The focus should not be outside-in but inside-out. In other words, righteousness or sinfulness is not imported with this or that behavior. Rather this or that behavior simply reveals the presence or absence of righteousness in the human heart. As we will see, “what comes out of the mouth” is a revelation. It is a revelation of the true condition of the human heart.

Properly understood, your actions do not defile you, rather, they simply reveal that you are already defiled.

Telling a lie does not make you a liar, rather, you told the lie because you are a liar!

Essence precedes action. We live out of who we really are inwardly.

You are not a sinner because you sin, you sin because you are a sinner.

We must get this right!

Jesus’s specific example of “what goes into the mouth” is a reference to the Jewish obsession with keeping kosher and obeying the food laws and avoiding unclean food. Here, Jesus is saying something shocking, as the disciples will acknowledge in the next verse. But what Jesus is saying is very important: no food can render a person righteous or unrighteous. Righteousness is not a matter of the plate, it is a matter of the heart. It is not what goes into the mouth that makes us unclean, it is what comes out of the mouth because what comes out of the mouth is what is already in our hearts.

Religion that focuses on policing the externals misses the reality of the source of these externals.

The disciples rightly observe that what Jesus is saying is very offensive to the traditional understanding of these matters, but Jesus is having none of it. Listen:

¹² Then the disciples came and said to him, “Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying?” ¹³ He answered, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up. ¹⁴ Let them alone; they are blind guides. And if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit.”

It is as if the disciples are saying “Jesus, surely you know that you are striking at the whole system of traditional religion!” and Jesus is saying “As well I should: the whole thing is corrupt and is doomed to collapse.”

Religion that focuses on policing the externals—what you wear, what you eat, etc.—inevitably misses the deeper matters, the matters of the heart. And inevitably such will collapse in on itself: “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up.” Such thinking and such religion is not of God. It will not stand. It will not last. Why? Because it fundamentally misses the point!

Religion that focuses on the externals also is too easy and allows us to deceive ourselves into thinking that we have fostered righteousness in ourselves and others when, in reality, we have done nothing of the sort. Dallas Willard writes:

Often what human beings do is so horrible that we can be excused, perhaps, for thinking that all that matters is stopping it. But this is an evasion of the real horror: the heart from which the terrible actions come. In both cases, it is who we are in our thoughts, feelings, dispositions, and choices—in the inner life—that counts. Profound transformation there is the only thing that can definitively conquer outward evil.[2]

Get the heart right, and the fruit will be right. Focus on the fruit alone, and you may just miss the heart.

We have all known people who followed the rules but inwardly seethed against them and the God who allegedly imposed them. Christian history is replete with people who did the right things outwardly but became the wrong things inwardly. To live with a disconnect between what you do and who you are is a great tragedy. But mark this: inevitably the heart will reveal itself, the heart will win out, for good or ill.

Who you are in your heart will eventually show up!

Jesus gives us heart-transformation, out of which good works can naturally flow.

If the religious leaders of the day botched this understanding of the heart, Jesus, of course, got it right. Jesus gives us heart-transformation, out of which good works naturally flow.

¹⁵ But Peter said to him, “Explain the parable to us.” ¹⁶ And he said, “Are you also still without understanding? ¹⁷ Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is expelled? ¹⁸ But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. ¹⁹ For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. ²⁰ These are what defile a person. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone.”

Peter asks for an interpretation and Jesus, perhaps sarcastically, breaks down the human digestive system for him! He goes back to basics. When you eat food it enters your body before it is ultimately expelled. But what comes out of the mouth reveals the true state of the heart. And when we look at the list of behaviors that Jesus gives us, it would appear that He does not have an overly optimistic view of the fruits of the human heart: evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.

John Calvin famously wrote in 1559 “hominis ingenium perpetuam, ut ita loquar, esse idolorum fabricam,” which roughly means, “the human heart is a perpetual idol factory.” The heart churns out idols and wickedness, and you cannot stop this by trying simply to regulate the idols it produces. Rather, the root of the problem must be addressed.

Whereas the Pharisees thought they could fix the problem of humanity be enforcing hand washing, Jesus knew that what was needed was for the old heart to be taken out and a new heart to be put in its place. In Ezekiel 11 the Lord God said that this is what would indeed happen.

¹⁷ Therefore say, ‘Thus says the Lord God: I will gather you from the peoples and assemble you out of the countries where you have been scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel.’ ¹⁸ And when they come there, they will remove from it all its detestable things and all its abominations. ¹⁹ 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, ²⁰ 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. ²¹ But as for those whose heart goes after their detestable things and their abominations, I will bring their deeds upon their own heads, declares the Lord God.”

Do you see? Our ability to “walk in [God’s] statutes and keep [his] rules and obey [him]” is dependent upon God “removing the heart of stone” and giving us “a heart of flesh” (v.19-20). On the contrary, the unredeemed heart will receive judgment: “I will bring their deeds upon their own heads.”

This prophecy of a new heart finds its fulfillment in the saving work of Jesus. In Ephesians 3, Paul speaks of Christ dwelling in our hearts.

¹⁴ For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, ¹⁵ from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, ¹⁶ that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, ¹⁷ so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, ¹⁸  may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, ¹⁹ and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Christ dwells in our hearts “through faith.” When we receive Him, He takes up residence there. It is Jesus that gives us a new heart and it is Jesus that dwells in the hearts of His people. J.C. Ryle writes:

What is the first thing we need in order to be Christians? A new heart. What is the sacrifice God asks us to bring to him? A broken and a contrite heart (Psalm 51:17). What is the true circumcision? The circumcision of the heart (Romans 2:29). What is genuine obedience? To obey from the heart. What is saving faith? To believe with the heart. Where ought Christ to dwell? To dwell in our hearts through faith (Ephesians 3:17).[3]

True transformation is from the inside-out, and only Christ can enter the chaos of our hearts and work that change. Anything short of this kind of transformation is just rearranging furniture on the deck of the Titanic.

Does Christ dwell in your heart? Have you received His grace by faith? Are you letting Him work His great work of transformation? I pray that He does and I pray that you have…and I know that He will!

 

[1] Willard, Dallas. Renovation of the Heart: Putting On the Character of Christ (Kindle Locations 489-493). NavPress. Kindle Edition.

[2] Willard, Dallas. Kindle Locations 383-386.

[3] Quoted in Platt, David. Exalting Jesus in Matthew (Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary). B&H Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.