Matthew 15:1-20
“Declare unto us this parable!” This petition falls from Peter’s lips, as he hears the Lord discourse in this chapter on that which surpassed his comprehension. It is truly a model prayer, the style of which we might all well imitate. Montgomery has well said —
“Prayer is the soul’s sincere desire,
Uttered, or unexpressed.”
Peter sincerely desired to understand the parable, and in the simplest language sought it. For brevity and directness this prayer, for such it is, cannot be surpassed, though it reminds one of the prophet’s prayer, “Lord, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see” (2 Kings 6:17). Both Elisha and Peter remember to whom they are speaking, and waste no words. They know exactly what they want, and they each say just that to the Lord, and stop. This is real prayer. Any more would be mere verbiage, to be deplored and deprecated, no matter from whose lips.
It would be a widespread blessing if this were borne in mind by those whose voices are heard in prayer, whether in the household, the assembly, the prayer-meeting, or the preaching-room. Long prayers are a mistake, and an evidence of weakness, in all these scenes. In the closet, where no eye sees, and no ear hears but God’s, there would appear to be no restriction in Scripture. But in public long prayers are only referred to, to be condemned.
There is a remarkable word from the pen of Solomon which bears on this subject, “Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God.... Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter anything before God: for God is in heaven, and thou upon earth: therefore let thy words be few” (Eccl. 5:1-2).
Peter was heeding this counsel as he simply says to the Lord, “Declare unto us this parable.” How refreshing is the brevity and directness of his prayer. Observe, too, that he gets his request straightway.
What led to Peter’s prayer is instructive. The Pharisees had challenged the Lord’s disciples for eating with unwashen hands. Jesus replies that God is looking at the heart, not the hands — at the inside, not the outside. The Jew, full of externals and tradition — as men are, alas! today, too — were using God’s name, and, under pretense of piety, actually sinking lower in its use than the laws of natural conscience.
Hear the Lord’s charge. God commanded, saying, “Honor thy father and mother: and, he that curseth father or mother, let him die the death. But ye say, Whosoever shall say to his father or his mother, It is a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me; and honor not his father or his mother, he shall be free. Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition” (vss. 4-6). For a child to neglect his parents under appearance of devoting to Clod — in temple sacrifice, I presume, the priest bettering thereby — what was due to them, was held to be all right. They had only to cry, “Corban,” that is, “It is a gift,” and the parent might be forgotten. The Lord calls them “hypocrites,” and quotes Isaiah’s solemn verdict, “This people draweth nigh to me with their month, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me.”
Thereon the Lord calls the multitude, saying, “Hear, and understand, Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the month, this defileth a man.” He has done with Judaism, and the truth comes out that man is lost.
With this the Pharisees are highly offended, and on the disciples informing the Lord thereof, He adds, “Every plant, which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up.” There must be a new life from God, not an attempt to improve the old; that day had gone by. “Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.” Such was the state of Israel’s leaders at the moment. Utterly blind, they knew not Jesus, nor their own need, and their state and their end is thus tersely described. Fancy “the blind leading the blind.” Can anything more sad be conceived? Yet has it its counterpart today, when Romanism and Ritualism, with their blind leaders, are leading a blindfold host to the ditch, the means by which blind leaders guide their blinded followers being nothing but the exhumed and refurbished paraphernalia of a defunct Judaism, which had its death-knell sounded by the Lord in this chapter, its death-blow dealt by God at the cross, and its funeral executed when the Romans swept temple, altar, sacrifices, and earthly priesthood all away at the destruction of Jerusalem.
Christianity is a system of another order. Its spring is in the last Adam, not the first. Its center and circumference is Christ Himself personally. His love, His work, His blood, His sacrifice, yea, Himself — all that He has, and is, are its Alpha and Omega. Now it is no longer the blind leading the blind, nor even the seeing leading the blind, but the seeing leading the seeing.
But this light had not then fully shone, so one can understand Peter saying, “Declare unto us this parable.” That he should call plain truth a “parable,” that is, “a dark saying,” is strange, but to him, as yet full of hopes in the first man, the doctrine of the Lord doubtless sounded strange, and was evidently unpalatable. The Lord’s answer only revealed to him his own moral blindness, as He says, “Are ye also yet without understanding,” &c. He shows that all is a question of what man is in himself. The spring — the heart — is hopelessly corrupt, hence the streams can only be of the same sort. “Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies: these are the things which defile a man: but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man.” Man must be born again of water and the Spirit. Until a new life is brought in, all is useless.
What scandalized the self-righteous Pharisee, and appeared unintelligible to the disciples, was the truth, the simple truth, as to the heart of man, as God knows and reads that heart.
If Christ’s witness be true — and it is true — it is all over with you, my respectable, religious, moral, and possibly self-righteous, reader. Your life may be splendidly clean outwardly, but your heart is corrupt in the essence of its being. You may possibly deny the most of the charge that verse 19 brings — and one is thankful to hear it — but will you venture to say that from your heart — your heart, mind — an evil thought never sprung? You tremble to assert that. You well may. God’s verdict has rung out, “All have sinned.” But, thank God, He also tells us His remedy. The ruin of my heart is met by the love of His heart. For my sin He gave His Son, and Scripture sweetly affirms, “The blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanseth us from all sin.”
I am very thankful, therefore, for Peter’s prayer and its answer. It is an immense thing to know the truth, the worst about oneself. There is nothing so simple or satisfactory as the truth, when it is known. It puts one in right relation with God, and all else. Jesus is the truth, and He brings it out here most solemnly, but does not stop there. He is full of grace, too, so His death conies in later to meet the ruin that He has unfolded here. Still, I repeat, it is a great thing to know the whole truth about one’s state, and Peter’s prayer is what leads up to it here. The day of outward forms is past; man is utterly lost, and needs a new life. How he gets it is revealed elsewhere.