Jesus confronts religious leaders who accuse his disciples of breaking tradition by not washing their hands before eating. He argues that their traditions sometimes undermine God's law, like allowing people to avoid caring for parents. Jesus teaches the crowd that what defiles a person comes from within, not external actions like hand washing. He explains that sinful intentions and actions from the heart are what make a person unclean.

1. Jesus’ Teaching on the Law
Matthew 15:1–11, 15–20

2. Background
Today’s lesson focuses on a confrontation Jesus had with scribes
and Pharisees over the meaning of the cleanness laws of the old
covenant. Debates regarding these laws were common in the first
century.
Since the religious authorities tried to pull Jesus into these sharp
debates, it is helpful to understand why they occurred in the first
place.

3. Background
The best way to understand debates of the first century AD
regarding God’s law is to remember the law’s complex history.
God first revealed His laws, through Moses, on Mount Sinai; the
recipients were the Israelites after their deliverance from bondage
in Egypt.
These laws were tailored to a people that God was bringing into
the Promised Land to live as free people.

4. Background
Each tribe and family had its own God-given land, and God’s law
showed them how to use their freedom to reflect His holiness and
justice.
But the passing of the centuries and the coming of kings saw the
Israelites refusing to live according to God’s laws, so He punished
them by handing them over to other nations.

5. Background
Since many of the laws delivered through Moses were directly
connected with life in the Promised Land free from foreign
domination, the first-century Jews struggled to know how to apply
such laws under Roman occupation.

6. Background
For example, the Sabbath laws stressed the need for everyone to
rest—whether slave or free, foreigner or native. Under the
Romans, however, the full application of Sabbath laws was not
always possible.
Therefore, the common people relied on the scribes and Pharisees
for interpretation and application of God’s law.

7. Background
Problems arose, however, when the religious authorities ended up
placing their interpretations on the same level as the laws
themselves.
Today’s text is an example of this. (Mark 7:1–23)

8. Matthew 15:1, 2
Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said,
‘Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they
do not wash their hands before they eat.’

9. Matthew 15:1, 2
Jesus’ is confronted by several Jewish leaders from Jerusalem.
The designation Pharisees means “the separated ones,” and they
are very strict in their interpretation and application of God’s law
(Acts 26:5). Scribes, who are often associated with Pharisees in
the New Testament, study and make copies of the law as their
occupation.

10. Matthew 15:1, 2
Scribes and Pharisees from there see themselves as the guardians
of proper religious instruction.
So when they hear about strange teaching coming out of the small
villages scattered about Palestine, they send envoys to gather
information and, if need be, set matters straight.

11. Matthew 15:1, 2
At the time of this text, Jesus already has had head-on collisions
with the religious authorities and they are already plotting to kill
Him (Matthew 12:14).
Their presence in this passage is ominous.

12. Matthew 15:1, 2
The Jewish leaders who wish to silence Jesus launch this particular
attack based on the power of the elders.
The elders being referred to are probably the religious authorities
back in Jerusalem; they are very careful to wash their hands
ritually before eating (Mark 7:3, 4).
It is likely that these elders and their predecessors have developed
this tradition out of genuine concern to uphold the cleanness laws
of the Old Testament.

13. Matthew 15:1, 2
The book of Leviticus places great emphasis on ritual purity or
cleanness, so the scribes and Pharisees are not without biblical
support.
Their problem is that the Scriptures do not require ritual hand-
washing before eating (Exodus 30:17–21; Leviticus 15:11).
Rather, this is a tradition above and beyond that of the Law of
Moses. The religious authorities also miss the point of the original
meaning of passages about ritual cleanness, as well.

14. Matthew 15:3–6
He answered them, ‘And why do you break the commandment of
God for the sake of your tradition? For God said, “Honor your
father and your mother,” and, “Whoever speaks evil of father or
mother must surely die.”
But you say that whoever tells father or mother, “Whatever
support you might have had from me is given to God”, then that
person need not honor the father. So, for the sake of your
tradition, you make void the word of God.

15. Matthew 15:3–6
Before setting the record straight on the issue of ritual cleanness
itself, Jesus confronts the larger problem of tradition.
Although these leaders present themselves as guardians of the
Law of Moses, their traditions sometimes end up undermining that
very law. Jesus is now putting this practice on trial.

16. Matthew 15:3–6
Jesus picks as His case study two interrelated laws that are
relatively clear-cut.
The command to honor one’s parents is stated in Exodus 20:12 and
Deuteronomy 5:16. The punishment of death for cursing one’s
parents is recorded in Leviticus 20:9.
Everyone would be nodding in agreement.

17. Matthew 15:3–6
Though these religious authorities pay lip service to God’s
command to honor parents, they also endorse a tradition that
accomplishes exactly the opposite.
Even we understand that the command to honor father and
mother originally also included the idea of seeing to the needs of
aging parents.

18. Matthew 15:3–6
But the teachers of the law provide a loophole that enables opting
out of this responsibility. In Mark 7:11, this loophole is called
Corban, which means “offering to God.”
This legal sleight of hand involves (1) dedicating some or all of
one’s income to God, thereby making it ineligible for nonreligious
use while (2) retaining possession of the money to provide for
one’s own needs.

19. Matthew 15:3–6
Since caring for parents can be classified as “nonreligious,” Corban
allows personal funds to be exempted from use in providing for
parents’ needs.

20. Matthew 15:3–6
The religious authorities apparently do not believe that caring for
parents was required by God, but Jesus disagrees. His rebuke here
is quite sharp.
Paul follows Jesus in this by rebuking those who do not provide
care for their own families. He even calls such care a way to show
“piety,” the neglect of which is worse than the offenses of infidels.

21. Matthew 15:3–6
1 Timothy 5:8
And whoever does not provide for relatives, and especially for
family members, has denied the faith and is worse than an
unbeliever.

22. Matthew 15:3-6
1 Timothy 5:8
And whoever does not provide for relatives, and especially for
family members, has denied the faith and is worse than an
unbeliever.

23. Matthew 15:7-9
You hypocrites! Isaiah prophesied rightly about you when he said:
“This people honors me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
teaching human precepts as doctrines.” ’

24. Matthew 15:7-9
Hypocrites are those who say one thing but do another. Their
words do not match their actions, and Jesus laying this charge at
their feet. No love was lost here.
The prophet Esaias (Isaiah) encountered their same mind-set in his
day, and the words he spoke in identifying this problem are
timeless.

25. Matthew 15:7-9
Jesus quotes from Isaiah 29:13, and the situation Isaiah faced in
the eighth century BC has parallels to that of the first century AD.
To begin with, this quotation is part of a prophecy beginning in
Isaiah 29:1, which addresses the people of Jerusalem specifically.

26. Matthew 15:7-9
In Isaiah’s day, they worshipped God with great pomp and
enthusiasm, but then they treated needy people unfairly in the
courts and failed to address their economic situation as the law
required (Isaiah 1:12–17).
This is the same hypocrisy of the scribes and Pharisees who teach
high principles yet neglect needy parents.

27. Matthew 15:7-9
Someone was convincing the Israelites that their sinful way of life
was acceptable. Someone was deceiving the people with
persuasive teachings that were deeply hypocritical.
Isaiah 28:7, 14 names these perpetrators as the rulers, priests, and
false prophets. Isaiah’s insights were relevant not only to His time
and place, but also to first-century Jerusalem and to us today.

28. Matthew 15:10, 11
Then he called the crowd to him and said to them, ‘Listen and
understand: it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a
person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles.’

29. Matthew 15:10, 11
Jesus addresses three groups in Matthew 15.
First, He engages His accusers: the scribes and Pharisees; His word
to them is one of judgment on their faulty teaching and example.
Now He turns to the wider crowd to set the record straight. In
verse 15, He will finish His teaching by addressing His most
immediate followers.

30. Matthew 15:10, 11
Jesus’ teaching is simple.
People are not clean or unclean in God’s eyes based on what
enters their bodies—by way of their hands or otherwise. If that
were the case, then only the wealthy could be consistently clean in
a legal way because many people do not have water to spare for
such purposes.

31. Matthew 15:10, 11
In reality, Old Testament purity laws seldom have to do with dirt.
Some purity laws have to do with blood primarily because life is in
the blood, making it sacred to God (Genesis 9:4).

32. Matthew 15:10, 11
Some purity laws did have to do with vessels that are set apart for
sacred purposes; because these are sacred, they cannot be
allowed to make contact with anything else (Leviticus 6:24–30).
Such laws are designed to create Israel to be a set-apart people
who take God’s holiness seriously and do not defile themselves
with the sins of their neighbors.

33. Matthew 15:10, 11
The concept of religious cleanness has to do with holiness, not dirt
1 Peter 3:21
And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you—not as a
removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good
conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,

34. Matthew 15:10, 11
God wants people to live holy lives so He can dwell among them;
when that happens, they will be shining examples to the world.
By focusing only on legal cleanliness before eating, the Pharisees
unfortunately miss the heart of purity.

35. Matthew 15:10, 11
Since the teaching coming from the mouths of the Pharisees is
wrong, they themselves are judged by Jesus to be a “generation of
vipers” and “evil” because “out of the abundance of the heart the
mouth speaks” (Matthew 12:34, 35).

36. Matthew 15:15-20
But Peter said to him, ‘Explain this parable to us.’
Then he said, ‘Are you also still without understanding? Do you not
see that whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach, and
goes out into the sewer? But what comes out of the mouth
proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles. For out of the
heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft,
false witness, slander. These are what defile a person, but to eat
with unwashed hands does not defile.’

37. Matthew 15:15-20
As is their custom, Jesus’ followers press Him to explain His
teaching (Matthew 13:36; Luke 8:9). They knew their necks hung
in the balance as well.

38. Matthew 15:15-20
Jesus’ followers appear to be slow learners.
But we should not look down our noses at them when a teaching
seems obvious to us today. They have been under the influence of
confused teaching about purity for a while.

39. Matthew 15:15-20
So Jesus begins with basic biology. To put it in modern terms,
whatever enters the body works its way through the digestive
system, and whatever the body finds useless leaves the body.
Jesus’ point is that everything that enters the human body leaves
the body without making a significant difference in the life of the
one who is eating.

40. Matthew 15:15-20
The right place to focus is the heart. Ancient Jews do not view the
heart as the primary place of their feelings; rather, they locate
feelings in the intestines, similar to how we use the word gut, as in
“I had a gut feeling.”

41. Matthew 15:15-20
For the ancient Jew, the heart is the intellectual seat. They refer to
the heart in the way we often refer to the mind or brain, although
they probably do not disconnect feelings from the intellect the way
moderns often do.
By heart Jesus likely refers to one’s inner disposition—what people
think, especially when they believe that no one else knows those
thoughts

42. Matthew 15:15-20
Someone who truly honors God seeks God’s heart. When a
person’s heart is in tune with God, the rest of his or her life will
reflect that fact (1 Timothy 1:5).
The state of a person’s heart prompts all his or her behaviors, and
Jesus lists several sinful actions that should be obvious in that
regard.
These things have nothing to do with whether or not people wash
their hands ceremonially before eating.

43. Conclusion
Believers have been entrusted by God with the good news of God’s
kingdom and we must be careful to pass this message along
faithfully.
We must humbly admit that we are prone to confuse important
information.

44. Conclusion
We must return to the Scriptures constantly to evaluate what we
hear, even from respected teachers. The Christians in Berea did
this for the apostle Paul (Acts 17:10, 11), and we should continue
to do so today.

45. Lessons
Finding fault with others can blind us from truth and compassion.
To ignore or negate God’s scriptures removes His promise and that
blessing from our lives.

46. Lessons
Elevating our opinions to the command of God rivals God and
separates us from Him.
A critical nature is often a symptom of an unhappy and frustrated
life.

47. Closing Thought
Let God’s Word purify you from the inside out.