Hand Washing Can Get Out of Hand
Note: This sermon was preached at First Free Wichita in 2021.
Introduction: It was ten years ago today, August 1, 2011, that I retired as Lead Pastor here at First Free. Which also means that today is Pastor Josh’s tenth anniversary as our pastor. He is still on study leave but I am sure he would be encouraged to receive notes of gratitude from many of you for the fine ministry he has carried on over this past decade.
The opening paragraph in our Scripture text today, Matthew 15:1-2, introduces us to a very relevant topic—that of hand washing:
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 when they eat.”
When I last preached on this text more than 13 years ago I opened the sermon with the following observation: “It’s flu season and people are paying a lot of attention to hand washing. I Googled the topic, ‘the importance of hand washing,’ and found 400,000 entries!” Well, just for fun I Googled “hand washing” yesterday and found 6 billion, 890 million entries (I didn’t believe it so I even took a screen shot)! After reading each one of these entries I came to the conclusion that handwashing has become an absolute obsession in our society.
The CDC, that eminent protector of public health which has gained the confidence of all Americans over this past year, has the following on their website:
Follow these five steps every time.
- Wet your hands with clean, running water (warm or cold), turn off the tap, and apply soap.
- Lather your hands by rubbing them together with the soap. Lather the backs of your hands, between your fingers, and under your nails.
- Scrub your hands for at least 20 seconds. Need a timer? Hum the “Happy Birthday” song from beginning to end twice.
- Rinse your hands well under clean, running water.
- Dry your hands using a clean towel or air dry them.
In case you’re worried you might be humming “Happy Birthday” a little too fast, you can now purchase a Handwashing timer that sticks right to your sink. It’s called WashClock and it only costs $19.95 plus shipping and handling. You can get 50% off if you buy a twelve-pack, which I suppose would be wise if you have twelve sinks in your house! The ad says, “The replaceable coin cell battery in the WashClock lasts up to 7,000 hand washes. You’ll probably replace your sink before you need to replace the battery!” And if you’re my age you have even less reason to be concerned about replacing the battery!
However, believe it or not, today’s hygienic police are rank amateurs compared to the religious police in Jesus’ day! Alfred Edersheim in his classic book on The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, spends nearly four pages describing the hand washing rules and regulations of first-century Pharisees. Water jars were available at every meal. The minimum amount of water to be used was enough to fill one and a half egg shells. 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 then drop off, because the water was now itself unclean. The process was repeated with hands held downward. And finally, each hand was cleansed by being rubbed with the fist of the other.
A strict Jew would do this before every meal and, in addition, between every course in every meal. The value of hand washing was held so high that one rabbi insisted that “whosoever has his abode in the land of Israel and eats his common food with washed hands may rest assured that he shall obtain eternal life.” And a certain rabbi who was imprisoned and given a small ration of water used it to wash his hands before eating rather than to drink it, claiming he would rather die from thirst than transgress the tradition.[i]
Now believe it or not, this Jewish practice of handwashing had almost nothing to do with good hygiene. It was not germs they feared but Gentiles, or anything a Gentile had touched, or any kind of food that was not Kosher.
Now with that as an introduction to our topic today, I want us to read Matt 15:1-20. If you are able, please stand for the reading of God’s Word.
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.’
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.” This is the Word of the Lord.
Our passage opens with the time connective, “Then.” We don’t know how much time had passed since the miracle of the Feeding of the 5000 or the amazing healings mentioned at the very end of chapter 14, but news of these events had clearly made it back to Jerusalem. The religious leaders of Israel didn’t normally bother much with backwater areas like Galilee (it was viewed sort of like flyover country), but they decide that an official challenge must be made to Jesus before His popularity gets out of hand and spreads south. So a delegation of ecclesiastical heavyweights is sent from Jerusalem up to Galilee.
These visiting religious leaders come to Jesus and ask a question, not for information but as an accusation, “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat.””
The religious leaders confront Jesus for violating their religious traditions. (1-2)
Their charge is leveled against Jesus’ disciples, rather than against Jesus Himself, but that is irrelevant. Since they are His disciples, He is viewed as responsible for their behavior. In fact, as their teacher He is deemed even guiltier than they.
The failure to follow the prescribed handwashing was viewed as no minor offense in Judaism because the traditions of the elders were viewed as the authoritative interpretations of the Law of Moses by the best minds of Judaism. These time-tested and universally accepted views were recorded in the Talmud and the Mishnah, which were like official commentaries on the OT.
Now the fact that the religious leaders accuse Jesus of violating their traditions, rather than the Scriptures themselves, doesn’t seem to embarrass them at all, because they actually consider their traditions to be the equal of, perhaps even superior to the Scripture. Their reasoning is not unlike those today who claim with one breath that the Bible is authoritative but also hold that the Church or some religious figure has the only infallible interpretation of the Scriptures.
It’s easy for us to spot this problem in Mormonism or Roman Catholicism, because they readily admit to accepting a dual religious authority–the Scriptures and the Church. Take Rome’s celibacy of the priesthood, for example. Celibacy is a good thing (Paul made that clear in 1 Cor. 7), but there is no hint in Scripture that it is a necessary thing for clergy. Yet the celibacy of the priesthood is such a strong tradition in the Catholic Church that it has been maintained despite the fact that it contributes to a chronic shortage of priests, and it undoubtedly contributes significantly to the sexual scandals that have overwhelmed the church.
Aren’t you glad we evangelicals don’t have any traditions that we elevate above the Scriptures? Or do we? We claim to have only one authority–the Word of God–but in practice, I wonder if we, too, sometimes cheat a little.
Some of you know the name of Marvin Rosenthal. Dr. Rosenthal was the founder of a ministry called Friends of Israel and the editor of a great magazine called Israel My Glory. He is a godly man, a fine biblical scholar, and a great evangelist. A little over 30 years ago (1990) Dr. Rosenthal came to the conclusion through his study of prophecy that the Church would go through most of the Tribulation period, and he published a book to that effect, entitled The Pre-Wrath Rapture of the Church.
But he soon discovered that he was messing with the traditions of the elders bigtime. You see, for much of the 20th century American evangelicals largely held the view that the church would be secretly raptured before the Great Tribulation. Many here in this audience have held that view, and some still do, having been influenced by the Scofield Bible, Hal Lindsay’s Late Great Planet Earth, and Tim LaHaye’s Left Behind Series. As with many ideas we grow up with, if they are never seriously challenged, we tend to treat them as absolute truth.
But the Bible is simply not that clear on the time of the Rapture, and that should be obvious when we see godly evangelical scholars holding widely different views on the subject. Our pastors and theologians don’t have differing views on the deity of Christ or the virgin birth or the resurrection, but they do on the time of the rapture. That should be at least a hint to us that the rapture might fall into the category of a “tradition of the elders” rather than an explicit teaching of the Bible.
Please understand that by calling the pre-trib rapture a tradition, I’m not saying it is necessarily wrong. But traditions should not be held with the same dogmatism we attach to absolute truth. And we probably should not break fellowship with others over our traditions. But that’s what happened to Dr. Rosenthal. Though he was the founder and President of Friends of Israel, the governing Board fired him for questioning the pre-trib rapture! (He was cancelled even before Cancel Culture arrived!).
I personally see little difference between what that board did to Dr. Rosenthal and what the Pharisees were trying to do to Jesus. Whenever our cherished views become more important to us than the clear teaching of the Word of God itself, the church gets into trouble!
Another example may bring this issue even a little closer to home. For generations there was a “tradition of the elders” in most evangelical churches that intermarriage between the races was unwise, if not immoral, especially between Black and White. I was pastoring here forty years ago and we were looking for a summer intern. Our own seminary didn’t have anybody available, but a student at Dallas Theological Seminary heard about the opening and applied.
I brought Carlton Harris’ resume to the elders and they were pleased. Even when I told them he was Black they were fine with it. In fact, they thought it might be a healthy thing for this predominantly white church to have a Black intern. But then I told them he was married to a blonde Mennonite girl whom he had met at Dallas Bible College. Suddenly their enthusiasm waned a bit!
But Carl Johnson, our Elder chair at the time, wisely suggested we all go home and study the issue from the Scriptures and return the next week to share what we found. When the elders met again each man said, “I can find nothing in the Bible that speaks against intermarriage unless it’s between a believer and an unbeliever; we should proceed.” We did, and Carlton and Carol joined our staff for the summer. A couple of families left the church, but Carlton did a great job, the church prospered, and we were able to launch Carlton on a very effective ministry career. (BTW, a month ago the Evangelical Free Church of America announced that Carlton Harris has been selected as the new Executive Vice President of National Ministries, the second highest position in our denomination!)
Sometimes traditions are positive, sometimes neutral, and sometimes harmful, but they should never be considered as authoritative as the Word of God. I encourage us to examine our viewpoints, our actions, even our own church traditions to consider how many of them truly have a biblical basis.
Now instead of defending His disciples’ failure to wash their hands against this challenge of the Pharisees, which we might have expected Him to do, Jesus turns the tables, confronting them with a much more serious charge:[ii]
Jesus confronts the religious leaders for violating the commandments of God. (3-9)
He asks, “And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?” This isn’t mere “whataboutism? Jesus isn’t saying, “OK, my disciples have screwed up but what about you?” There is no moral equivalence between His disciples’ actions and theirs. Jesus is saying, “You accuse Me and my disciples of breaking your traditions, but you are breaking the commandments of God in order to preserve your traditions!”
To justify His accusation against them Jesus quotes the Fifth Commandment from Exodus 20:12: “Honor your father and your mother.” So serious is a violation of this commandment that the death penalty is leveled by God against anyone who violates it: ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’
That’s what God says. What do the traditions of the elders say? Verse 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 nothonor his father.’ So for the sake of your tradition, you have made void the word of God.”
What’s going on here? Well, one of the traditions of the elders was that a person could dedicate all his possessions to the temple, to be paid upon death, by designating them as Corban (this term, meaning “given to God,” is actually used in Mark’s account of this confrontation, Mark 7:11). Funds or property so designated could not be transferred to anyone else, not even one’s parents, but they could still be used for one’s own benefit while still alive.[iii]
This tradition of Corban could possibly demonstrate a generous spirit. But more often it was used to avoid family responsibility, and thus it was evil. It was actually false piety which nullified the commandment of God!
Jesus then turns from criticizing the religious leaders’ actions to denouncing their character: 7 “You hypocrites!” Jesus always seemed to reserve His most blistering condemnation for those who practiced hypocrisy, who pretended to be something they were not. Do you know the origin of the term hypocrite? It comes from two Greek words, hupo and krino, meaning “to speak from down under.” It was a term from the theater where people wore masks to play parts; they had to speak from down under the mask. A hypocrite is someone who wears a mask and who isn’t who he portrays himself to be. In another place Jesus called the Pharisees whitewashed tombs. No matter how much paint you put on a tomb, it’s still a place of death.
Then Jesus quotes the prophet Isaiah:,
8 “‘This people honors me with their lips,
but their heart is far from me.
Is that ever a problem for us? Do we ever honor the Lord with our lips while our hearts are far from Him? Think about our musical worship. How often do we simply go through the motions, mouthing words while we’re thinking about dinner or the stock market or the afternoon football game? How often do we get upset about a tune we don’t like or the tempo or the volume at the very same time we are singing words like, “It’s all about you, Jesus”?
Isaiah continues,
9 in vain do they worship me,
teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’
What an indictment! Teaching as divine truth what are mere human ideas and traditions!
This may be as good a time as any to put my Sermon in a sentence: Keeping the commandments of God should always take precedence over human traditions.
Jesus is finished with the religious leaders, for now. It’s time for Him to apply the truth to the lives of those who are teachable. The Pharisees are not teachable; they have committed the unpardonable sin, attributing the work of the Holy Spirit to Satan (12:22-37); they are apostates, bent on killing Him. But there are two groups for which there is still some hope–the crowd and the disciples. So Jesus turns first to the crowd and offers them a universal principle.
Jesus offers the crowd a universal principle: Spiritual defilement is an internal matter, not external. (10-11)
I assume the crowd in verse 10 has been witnessing this conflict between Jesus and the religious leaders. So He uses the opportunity to teach a very important and profound truth that grows directly out of the handwashing controversy. He says, “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.”
This term “defile,” or as translated in the NIV, “to make unclean” addressed a major issue for a first-century Jew. If you didn’t stay “clean” by washing your hands, avoiding certain foods, avoiding certain people, and by keeping a long list of rules and regulations, you couldn’t attend the Temple, your friends might shun you, your business would decline as clients dropped you, and your reputation would suffer.
Please try to grasp how absolutely revolutionary Jesus’ words here must have sounded to people who were taught all their lives that their eternal destiny hinged upon eating kosher food, and eating it with clean hands!
Jesus says that what goes into your mouth does not impact your standing with Him. Think about the implications of that for us today: Eating with unwashed hands might give you germs, but it can’t make you ungodly. Eating saturated fats and white flour and sugar may make you obese, but it can’t make you unholy. Drinking wine in moderation can hurt your reputation in some Christian circles, but it can’t make you a spiritual loser. Chewing tobacco will turn your teeth yellow and make your breath stink, but it won’t keep you out of heaven. (In fact, Billy Sunday was once asked that very question, “Can you chew tobacco and still go to heaven? He responded, “Of course, but you’ll have to go to hell to spit.”) The point of our passage is that there may be good reasons for abstaining from certain dietary practices or keeping certain rules and regulations, or even washing your hands, but all those activities are essentially irrelevant to one’s eternal destiny.[iv]
Well, if a person isn’t defiled by unwashed hands or by the food and beverage he puts into his mouth, what is it that defiles him? Jesus states clearly that it’s what comes out of his mouth–the words he speaks, the attitudes he reveals, the hatred he expresses, the jealousy he shows, the racism he exhibits–these are the things that defile a person. These are the things that interfere with a right relationship with God.
That’s the lesson Jesus offers to the crowd. But He reserves His most detailed and pointed applications of truth for His disciples in verses 12-20.
Jesus offers His disciples three critical principles for godly living. (12-20)
Principle #1. Don’t go to the spiritually blind for guidance. (12-14) While Jesus is talking to the crowd, the disciples come up to Him and ask (verse 12): “Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying?” I believe this is a subtle way of saying, “Jesus, we’ve got a public relations problem here. Do you know you really rubbed the Pharisees the wrong way when you challenged them like that and called them hypocrites? Do you think you could tone it down a bit and be a bit more diplomatic? It might make life a little easier for all of us!”
But Jesus doesn’t back down an inch. He meant to offend the Pharisees. Self-righteous people are always offended when one points out their inability to please God by their own efforts. In fact, He goes further; He tells His disciples, “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.”
The metaphors here are stunning. Yet blind guides are exactly what the Pharisees and teachers of the law are. What a devastating description of people who prided themselves on their spiritual enlightenment! They offer themselves as spiritual guides but they don’t have the foggiest idea where they’re going. Jesus makes it clear that His disciples are to abandon the religious establishment and follow Him instead.
I believe the message for us today is this: When seeking spiritual guidance, don’t go to the health/wealth preachers, to Dr. Phil or Oprah, to self-help books or Scientology, or talking heads on TV. Go to the Word of God.
The second principle is similar to what he already communicated to the Pharisees.
Principle #2: Because food is physical, it cannot cause spiritual or moral pollution. (15-18) In verse 15 Peter says to Jesus, “Explain the parable to us.” What parable? The term sometimes refers to a pithy story and at other times simply to a hard saying. Peter is probably referring to the hard saying about food being unable to defile a person. Having been taught all his life to stay away from certain foods, he doesn’t quite grasp what Jesus is saying.[v] So Jesus explains, 17 Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is expelled?” Eating food is simply a matter of biological processes: intake, mastication, digestion, elimination. So how can it defile a person? Mark concludes from these words that “Jesus declared all foods ‘clean.’” (Mark 7:19)
Yes, there was a time when God put restrictions on the diet of His people. It was for their health during the Wilderness Wanderings and to keep them distinct from the pagans surrounding them, but with the coming of Christ the dietary and ceremonial requirements of the Law were fulfilled and no longer applicable.
In fact, nothing is clearer in the NT than the fact that NT Christians can eat anything they want. In 1 Timothy 4 Paul describes certain false teachers who teach people
“… to abstain from certain foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and who know the truth. For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, because it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer.” (1 Timothy 4:1-5)
The bottom line is, if you can thank God for it, you can eat it![vi]
Diet doesn’t determine one’s spiritual standing with God. Food doesn’t defile. There is no biblical basis for requiring a vegan or vegetarian diet. Rather what defiles, what turns people into spiritual wrecks, is what comes out of their hearts and mouths.
The third principle is this:
Principle #3. Spiritual defilement is due to heart disease, not failure to wash one’s hands. (19-20) To make sure the disciples don’t misunderstand what He means, Jesus gives them a sample list of the kinds of things that defile a person: evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. Do you notice that he speaks here of violations of the 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th Commandments, in that order![vii] It’s these things, all launched by evil thoughts, that make a person “unclean” or unspiritual, NOT eating with hands one has failed to wash ceremonially in just the right way!
Conclusion: What does God want us to take away from this profound dialogue? It’s so easy for us to think of hypocrites who are pursuing an external, legalistic religious faith. We can even identify entire religions or denominations which we would characterize this way, perhaps justifiably.
However, I can’t help but think that God would rather have us look inside to see if there are ways in which we are nullifying the word of God for the sake of our traditions. Are we judging others on the basis of external issues that really don’t amount to a hill of beans eternally? Are we washing our hands raw, figuratively speaking, while spewing all kinds of defilement around us? Friends, don’t try to come to God with clean hands only. Come to Him and ask for a clean heart, which He will grant when you repent of your sin and put your full faith in the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross.
The Lord’s Table. In a moment we’re going to gather at the Lord’s Table for a simple meal designed to help us remember Jesus’ death and resurrection. Here especially we are exhorted to examine ourselves, first to see if we are in the Faith, but then to make sure we are not eating and drinking in an unworthy manner. That doesn’t mean we need to be without sin, because then none of us could participate. But I think it means that we come with sin confessed and an open heart to receive God’s mercy.
I am reminded of an action Pilate took before turning Jesus over to the crowd to be crucified. He called for a basin, washed his hands, and then declared, “I am innocent of this man’s blood.” Friends, don’t think you can ever achieve innocence in the sight of God by washing your hands; it can only happen through a radical heart change that comes about when the blood of Jesus cleanses you from all sin.
Let’s pray. Father, we are so focused on dirt and germs and viruses. We diligently wash our hands, we put on masks, we get ourselves vaccinated, we distance ourselves from others, all hoping to avoid illness that at worst can only kill the body, all the while we so often ignore the virus of sin that is so much more dangerous and can actually kill the soul.
Thank you, Father, for providing a solution to our sin in the blood of Jesus. We joyfully come to this simple meal to celebrate His sacrifice on the Cross. Thank you for the bread that represents His body which was broken in our behalf, and the cup that represents His blood that was shed because of our sin and for our forgiveness. Help us to receive these elements with gratitude and joy. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Tags:
Tradition
Legalism
Hypocrisy
Spiritual defilement
[i]. John MacArthur, Matthew 8-15, 453.
[ii] Why did Jesus not keep this particular tradition of hand washing? Is it because He was an iconoclast, just looking for opportunities to stick a finger in the eyes of the Pharisees? No, I don’t think so. He didn’t keep the tradition because there was nothing in God’s Word requiring it. And he knew the tradition placed emphasis upon the external rather than the internal. But in addition, this confrontation provided a profound teaching opportunity.
[iii] Craig Blomberg, Matthew, 238.
[iv] This is the same point Paul made so clearly in Col. 2: If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations— 21 “Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch” 22 (referring to things that all perish as they are used)—according to human precepts and teachings? 23 These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.
[v] Jesus responds to all of them, “Are you (plural) also still without understanding?”
[vi] In Romans 14:2ff Paul addresses the issue of vegetarianism vs. an unrestricted diet. He says,
“One man’s faith allows him to eat everything, but another man, whose faith is weak eats only vegetables. (Notice that the one who restricts his diet for spiritual reasons is the weaker brother!). The man who eats everything must not look down on him who does not, and the man who does not eat everything must not condemn the man who does, for God has accepted him.”
[vii] Mark, in his account adds other items: greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, arrogance, and even folly (Mark 7:22).