[Note: This sermon expounds Matthew 15:10–20. Note that this passage was studied slightly out of order — the Syrophoenician woman passage (Matthew 15:21–28) was studied on the previous occasion, and this section backtracks to the earlier passage. Delivered 29 July 1979, Montreal.]
We continue our study of the Lord's teaching in Matthew chapter 15. Those who have been with us will know that we actually studied Matthew 15:21–28 on the previous occasion — the faith of the Syrophoenician woman — and today we go back slightly to Matthew 15, verses 10 to 20. "And Jesus called the people to him and said to them, 'Hear and understand: not what goes into the mouth defiles a man, but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man.' Then the disciples came and said to him, 'Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying?' Jesus answered, 'Every plant which my heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up. Let them alone; they are blind guides.' But Peter said to him, 'Explain the parable to us.' And Jesus said, 'Are you also still without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and so passes on? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a man. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a man. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile a man.'"
If I were to ask you, what is the root problem of mankind? I wonder what your answer would be. Some say man does not go to church often enough; others say he needs more faith, more religion. But religion is everywhere. Just last week I was in the United States, and I went into a bookshop — a great weakness of mine, and Paul's too, since even in jail in Rome he told Timothy to bring his books. Looking under the section for religion, I found not Christian books but Zen Buddhism, Sufism, mysticism, and even the Greek gods being revived. There are more books on transcendental meditation in American bookshops than on Christianity. I wonder what is going on. The fact is that people have turned away from the church in their search for a solution — and I tell you, the church is to blame. Unless you diagnose the problem correctly and profoundly, you cannot give accurate answers.
What is the problem? If it is a lack of science and engineering, then more technology will solve it. But the world does not get better with more technology. In the days when I was interested in military science, I designed many weapons as a young man of seventeen or eighteen. Helmets of the type now in use, amphibious vehicles, high-terrain vehicles with balloon tyres, rapid-fire machine guns — these designs have all since become reality. I could have gone into military science or engineering. But the world does not get any better through these inventions. Oppenheimer, the great physicist, was so tormented by his contribution to nuclear physics and thus to the atomic bomb that he could hardly forgive himself. Science cannot cure the problem, because the problem is not technical.
Nor is the answer psychology or psychiatry. Today more people go to the psychiatrist than to the pastor — and I do not blame them. The only real difference is that the psychiatrist charges thirty dollars for half an hour and the pastor charges nothing, so people feel the psychiatrist's advice must be worth more. Too often the pastor's counsel is worth nothing, and that assessment is too often correct. We give cheap answers to serious problems. The Pharisees offered their own diagnosis: the world needs more religion — more ceremonies, more washing of pots, more going to the temple, more prayer. But if more religion is the answer, what is wrong with transcendental meditation or Zen Buddhism? They are also religion. Every non-Christian says: all religion is the same; it all tells you to be good. So long as you go to some place of worship, what does it matter which one? We have no answer to that objection unless we diagnose the problem at a deeper level.
The Lord Jesus here gives the correct diagnosis. The problem is not external — it is the heart. Verse 18: "What comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a man. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander." Is your newspaper not full of exactly these things every day? The problem lies in the heart of man, and until something is done about the heart, we will never solve the problem. Engineering cannot do anything to the heart. Medicine can give a physical heart transplant, but it does nothing for the spiritual heart. This is why I have several friends who studied medicine and gave it up to preach the gospel: they knew that medicine does not reach the root of the problem.
Can meditation change the heart? Meditation is very good — I have no quarrel with it. But meditation does not give you a new heart. Buddhism teaches you to be moral, to be kind. But it does nothing to stop evil thoughts from coming. It is no use telling a man whose heart produces evil thoughts that he should not have evil thoughts. He already knows that. You must find a solution, not merely give good advice. A doctor who tells a sick man "you shouldn't be sick" is not practising medicine. Good advice never solves the problem of a diseased heart.
Now let me turn to the question of what the church typically offers as a solution. Too often it amounts to: are you saved? And then four steps or five laws, presented in such a way that the person is not even sure what it means to be saved. Does the person understand that what is being offered involves a change of heart? I fear not. And if the person does not understand this, then the steps, whatever they may be, amount to nothing more than adding a new religious option to an unchanged life. The real question is: how does believing in Jesus change a man's heart? If we cannot answer that precisely, we have not yet arrived at the real diagnosis. But before we answer that question, we must diagnose the problem still more carefully — because too much of what passes for theology on this point is genuinely confused.
Systematic theology typically says: man's problem is that he has an evil nature, inherited from Adam. But this answer creates more problems than it solves. How can committing one sin produce a nature? What is the causal connection between the act and the nature? And if Adam had an evil nature before he sinned, then God created him with an evil nature — which is unacceptable. If he did not have an evil nature before he sinned, then the evil nature came from the sin; but then the act produced the nature, and we have explained nothing. This is the chicken-and-egg problem that too much systematic theology ignores. Augustine himself, the great church father — whom I have read and respect greatly — proposed that the solution to original sin was baptism, and this is where infant baptism comes from: the notion that unbaptised babies go to hell. Did the Lord Jesus ever say that? Of course not. Wrong diagnosis; wrong solution. The blind following the blind, all falling into the same ditch.
The real answer, which is not philosophically complicated at all, is this: we are self-centred, as Adam was. This is natural, and it is not necessarily evil. Do not place the label of evil on self-preservation. Without self-interest you would stick your hand in the fire and not pull it back. Without concern for yourself you would not call out for help when drowning. Even the desire to be saved is a form of self-interest: you want to be saved because you care about your eternal welfare. There is nothing wrong with this. What is wrong is not self-preservation itself, but the way we go about it — when we pursue our own welfare at the expense of others, by means that violate the commandment of God. Hitler, for example — whether sincerely or in a twisted way — seemed to believe that the Jews threatened the existence of the German people. His atrocities were an act of self-preservation, criminally and monstrously wrong in its method. Similarly at Jonestown: those people clearly believed something, and in pursuing their self-preservation they followed a blind guide straight into the ditch. The solution is not to remove self-interest, but to put God at the centre of it — to pursue our true and eternal welfare by his way rather than our own.
That is why the only way to have spiritual perception and clarity — how not to be blind and follow a blind guide — is to be clean. If there is any sin in your life, your spiritual vision becomes blurred. This is not true for engineering or physics; you can still think clearly about those things with a sinful heart. But when it comes to spiritual things, the most intelligent and educated person will speak the most incredible nonsense if he is not clean. I have talked with brilliant, highly educated people whose mouths have dropped open with what they say about spiritual things. That is because spiritual clarity requires purity of heart. This is exactly what happened to Paul: when he repented and Ananias laid hands on him, the scales fell from his eyes — physically and spiritually. He could see clearly. That is why I am so concerned about those in training: your spiritual equipment does not depend on your years of study, but on the purity of your heart before God.
# The Root of Man's Problem — Matthew 15:10–20 (Part B) — Being Common Versus Holy; What Comes Out Defiles; The Extraordinary Life
[Note: This is Part B of the sermon on Matthew 15:10–20, continuing directly from Part A. Delivered 29 July 1979, Montreal.]
I say to those in training: your equipment for serving the Lord does not lie in the depth of your knowledge of the Bible alone, and it certainly does not lie in the number of years you spent in seminary. It depends on purity of heart. Purity of heart is what gives you spiritual insight — sharp as a razor — that enables you to discern what the real problem is and what the real issues are. You can see things with incredible clarity not because you are brilliant, but because you are clean. Try it and see. Go before God and ask him to cleanse your heart. As David says in Psalm 51:10: "Create in me a clean heart, O God." I cannot create a clean heart, but God can create one within me. When you have asked God to create a clean heart within you, how clearly you can discern all things. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2: "The spiritual man discerns all things." Where are the spiritual men today? God, give us spiritual men in this generation. That is what we desperately need. We have seminary graduates by the hundreds every year, and I have yet to see one — and I apologize for saying it so frankly — who contributes something markedly to the life of the church. What we need is purity of heart.
Adam's problem was not that there was something evil in his original nature. Nothing was wrong with the desire to become wise. Nothing wrong in Eve's desire as well. But she went about it the wrong way. She tried to bypass God instead of putting God at the centre. If you are doing that today, you are in trouble. Either God is the way to your true welfare, or you will choose another way — Zen Buddhism, Phariseeism, hand washing, or any of a dozen religious substitutes. They are all attempts at self-preservation by bypassing God. The solution is to put God at the centre: Lord, by your grace I will do your will, because I trust your wisdom and your way.
Now let us look more closely at this word "defile." Verse 18: "What comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a man." The Greek word translated "defile" — koinos — basically means to be common. That is all it means. To be defiled is to be common. Now what is the spiritual lesson in that? Being common is itself, as a Christian, a failure. The Israelites were not to be common; they were to be extraordinary. God's people are to be extraordinary in the world. If you are common — indistinguishable from the people around you — you have failed the calling to which you have been called. Leviticus 11, the great chapter on cleanliness, closes twice with the same exhortation: "Be holy as I am holy." And Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 4:7: "God has not called us to uncleanness but to holiness." The other side of defile — of being common — is to be holy. There is a whole army of pastors who would put me in the dock for preaching holiness as essential to salvation, but I make no apology: it is what God requires of his people in the Old Testament, let alone the New.
Now the second question about this verse is more subtle. Why is it that what comes out of a man defiles him? Surely if the heart is unclean, the person is defiled whether or not anything comes out of their mouth. Could you avoid defilement simply by never speaking? What a solution — a very large plaster applied to your mouth and you are no longer defiled! Heh. But notice what the Lord Jesus says: it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles. Why? Because when you speak, someone else has to hear you. Your words affect the next person. The evil of sin, contrary to so much systematic theology, is not a thing that you have inside yourself regardless of others. The evil of sin lies precisely in this: it affects other people, what you say and what you do. God is concerned with how you affect other people. Do you understand this? I find it very hard for most people to understand, because we think we live our own lives and it is nobody else's business.
But no man lives to himself. I am my brother's keeper. In Matthew 25, the Lord Jesus says: "I was hungry and you did not feed me, I was in prison and you did not visit me, I was naked and you did not clothe me." You said that is not your problem. But God says it is your problem. We will be judged not merely by hidden sin in our hearts, but by our works — by how we did or did not affect the people around us. That is why God expected Israel to be extraordinary: when God changed their lives and made them holy, they were to affect the nations around them in a very definite and positive way. They were to be the light. Consider what happens in a power cut: you cannot eat, you cannot study, you cannot find your way around. We are to be the light of the world; our extraordinary life is to affect people in ways that point them to God.
That is why I say to those who are going out to serve the Lord: do not ask, have I organized a mass evangelistic campaign? That is not the solution. Mass evangelism does not solve the problem. The small number of people who genuinely turn to the Lord through such campaigns are people who would have come in any case if they had seen your light shining. The task is simply this: go out there and be extraordinary. People's lives change by looking at an extraordinary life. The Lord Jesus himself organized no mass meeting. Because his life was so extraordinary, people were drawn to him like a magnet. Do not try to be clever and outwit God. Do things God's way. God did not ask us to organize this and that; he said, go and be my people in this world.
How can you be extraordinary? It comes back to this: purity of heart. And how do you become pure in heart? By letting God create a clean heart within you. We have dealt with the fundamental problem of mankind — the fundamental problem of your life — in this passage. Unless you have not only heard but truly understood, you now know that what is essential is to let God create a clean heart in you; to turn away from every form of evil; to let God make you pure. Then what will happen? Then you will be planted by God — for the Lord Jesus says that every plant which his heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up. You will have spiritual clarity of sight; you will not be among the blind who follow the blind. Your life will be extraordinary. You will have solved the fundamental problem of man — and then when you have solved it in your own life, you will be able to go out and help solve the problem in the lives of those around you. Isn't it wonderful to know both the problem and the answer? No doctor is in so fortunate a position — most diseases he can only treat symptomatically. But we know what is the problem and we know what is the solution. And I say to those in training: you are in a most extraordinary position. Go out there and know the problem, know the solution, and live it.