I am so sorry but blogging yesterday. Dulla reminded me twice. I was so busy yesterday that put off doing blog until late last night. Of course I fell a sleep while typing it. Instead of my own reflection, I read great commentary on the passage that I'd like to share with you.
What makes a person unclean or unfit to offer God acceptable worship? The Jews went to great pains to ensure that their worship would conform to the instructions which God gave to Moses on Mount Sinai. God's call to his people was a call to holiness: "be holy, for I am holy" (Leviticus 11:44; 19:2). In their zeal for holiness many elders developed elaborate traditions which became a burden for the people to carry out in their everyday lives. The Scribes and Pharisees were upset with Jesus because he allowed his disciples to break with their ritual traditions by eating with unclean hands. They sent a delegation all the way from Jerusalem to Galilee to bring their accusation in a face-to-face confrontation with Jesus. Jesus dealt with their accusation by going to the heart of the matter -- by looking at God's intention and purpose for the commandments. Jesus gave an example of how their use of ritual tradition excused them from fulfilling the commandment to honor one's father and mother. If someone wanted to avoid the duty of financially providing for their parents in old age or sickness they could say that their money or goods were an offering "given over to God" and thus exempt from any claim of charity or duty to help others. They broke God's law to fulfull a law of their own making. Jesus explained that they void God's command because they allowed their hearts and minds to be clouded by their own notions of religion.
Jesus accused them specifically of two things. First of hypocrisy. Like actors, who put on a show, they appear to obey God's word in their external practices while they inwardly harbor evil desires and intentions. Secondly, he accused them of abandoning God's word by substituting their own arguments and ingenious interpretations for what God requires. They listened to clever arguments rather than to God's word. Jesus refers them to the prophecy of Isaiah (29:31) where the prophet accuses the people of his day for honoring God with their lips while their hearts went astray because of disobedience to God's laws.
Jesus shocked the religious sensibilities of the Jews by declaring that nothing which "goes into the mouth defiles a person" (Matt. 15:10). This statement meant that all the ritual food laws of the Old Testament were now canceled. God gave these laws to teach his people of the old covenant the importance of offering right sacrifice and worship to God with a clean conscience. Ritual purification was intended to show people the necessity of being not just outwardly clean, but inwardly clean and holy in thought as well as in deed. Jesus points his listeners to the source of true defilement -- evil desires which come from inside a person's innermost being. Sin does not just happen. It first springs from the innermost recesses of our thoughts and intentions, from the secret desires which only the individual soul can conceive. This is precisely why Jesus came to free sinful men and women deceived by the glamor of sin and enslaved by its seductive powers.
God in his mercy freely offers us pardon, healing, and grace for overcoming sin and evil in our lives. But to receive God's mercy and help, we must admit our faults and ask for God's pardon. "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:8-9). Only God can change our hearts and make them clean and whole through the power of the Holy Spirit. Like a physician who probes the wound before treating it, God through his Word and Spirit first brings our sinful intentions and deeds into the light of our conscience that we may recognize them for what they are and call upon his mercy and grace for pardon and healing. Ask the Lord to cleanse you with the purifying fire of his Holy Spirit.
"Lord, let the fire of your Holy Spirit cleanse my mind and my heart that I may love you purely and serve you worthily."
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3 comments:
Kwijung, thanks for posting the commentary. It gave a familiar theme a new potency. The importance of your inward heart over your outward acts is what's so familiar but today, it brought to light how much emphasis I put on my outward acts, accomplishments, and habits. I realized how great my desire is for the rewards that come with the outward part of life. Yet, I forget or overlook the fact that these things I so highly regard mean nothing without a right relationship with God. I have even convinced myself that a "good" outward lifestyle would also be pleasing to God while failing to see God's deep desire for me to seek Him above everything else.
I'm sure you've heard this verse many times as well:
But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Matt 6:33
I'm sure it spoke to you as it has to me but today, it has a new, more penetrating ring to it.
As I evaluate my inner most thoughts and desires, I see pride. It's been so well hidden within me that it took all these years to really face it.
i happen to be reading from Proverbs 13 yesterday and found:
"2 A man shall eat well by the fruit of his mouth,
But the soul of the unfaithful feeds on violence.
3 He who guards his mouth preserves his life,
But he who opens wide his lips shall have destruction."
it seems that what comes out of our mouths can expose the intentions of our hearts, bring people to ruin... or we can also choose to bless and do good
thanks kwijung for your reflection. what an important passage this is! surely these verses are so key to understanding our sin. we think of the evil "outside" influences in the world as the things that corrupt us, but Jesus states clearly that "what goes into a man does not make him "unclean". He says that it is the things that come out of the heart that make us "unclean". we don't need the evils of the world to make us even more corrupt than we are. it seems that we are quite corrupt enough without any outside influences!
we think the pharisees strange for equating hand-washing with right living before God, but we do the exact same thing, with our church-going and titheing and good-work-doing. Jesus states that nothing that enters a man can make him unclean. similarly there is not one thing we can do to makes ourselves clean, no matter how many good works we do. the heart itself is corrupt and "desperately wicked" and unless God intervenes with a miraculous work of regeneration, we are in the exact same position as the worst unbeliever on earth. how desperate is our situation apart from the Lord!
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