Religion is a thing that specially comes in between the conscience and God. Now what God is working is to bring the conscience to Himself, without religion or anything else between. Until that is done, nothing is done. God is dealing with realities. He detects that which is in the heart, in order that He may make known complete forgiveness, that there may be entire and eternal removal of everything that would mar our fellowship (see Heb. 9 and 10). This is grace. Nothing is more simple, though the heart of man is insensible to it. God may use man as an instrument in effecting this; but the object of the preacher of the gospel is to bring the conscience of the sinner and God immediately into contact. If his notion stop short of that, it is only setting them in opposition. We may merely like the truth, but that is all nothing; if a man is not brought to God, if he be not in conscience standing in the presence of God, he is brought no nearer than he was before; he has only got, so to speak, further from God, for he has more between his conscience and God.
Now it is this that is shown out in Matt. 15:1-281Then came to Jesus scribes and Pharisees, which were of Jerusalem, saying, 2Why do thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? for they wash not their hands when they eat bread. 3But he answered and said unto them, Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition? 4For God commanded, saying, Honor thy father and mother: and, He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death. 5But ye say, Whosoever shall say to his father or his mother, It is a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me; 6And 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. 7Ye hypocrites, well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying, 8This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoreth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me. 9But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. 10And he called the multitude, and said unto them, Hear, and understand: 11Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man. 12Then came his disciples, and said unto him, Knowest thou that the Pharisees were offended, after they heard this saying? 13But he answered and said, Every plant, which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up. 14Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch. 15Then answered Peter and said unto him, Declare unto us this parable. 16And Jesus said, Are ye also yet without understanding? 17Do not ye yet understand, that whatsoever entereth in at the mouth goeth into the belly, and is cast out into the draught? 18But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man. 19For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies: 20These are the things which defile a man: but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man. 21Then Jesus went thence, and departed into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon. 22And, behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts, and cried unto him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou Son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil. 23But he answered her not a word. And his disciples came and besought him, saying, Send her away; for she crieth after us. 24But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. 25Then came she and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me. 26But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs. 27And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters' table. 28Then Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour. (Matthew 15:1‑28); we have the whole history of the feelings of the heart of man, until the Lord brings it down to the place of faith-I say down, because it is brought to the confession of its own nothingness, to say, I am a dog. And then the Lord says, "Great is thy faith." We shall never find great faith in a man's soul if he does not confess that he is a sinner, having no title to anything at all.
"Then came to Jesus scribes and Pharisees, which were of Jerusalem." v. 1. The scribes were persons learned in the law, and the Pharisees were religionists of the sect most esteemed in religion; as Paul says, "After the most straitest sect of our religion I lived a Pharisee" (Acts 26:55Which knew me from the beginning, if they would testify, that after the most straitest sect of our religion I lived a Pharisee. (Acts 26:5)); and they were "of Jerusalem," the very center of God's polity, so that everything that could give the weight of authority to "religion" was there.
And they do come with authority; they say to Jesus, "Why do Thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? for they wash not their hands when they eat bread." v. 2. But Jesus puts both scribes and Pharisees and their tradition in direct contact with God. He says to them, "Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition?" v. 3. He does not go round about and battle the question of this tradition; it might be right enough in some sense; at all events it was reputable in the eyes of man, sanctioned by the learning of the scribes as well as by the religiousness of the Pharisees, and comely in Jerusalem. But He says, You are flying in the face of God by your tradition! He at once closes the point, dropping elders and all besides. Man may plead tradition, the authority of antiquity and the like, but the fact is, he does so but to clothe himself with it. To the Pharisees, this tradition was the tradition of the elders; but to Christ, it was "ye" and "your" tradition. He takes hold of them. They were using it to accredit themselves unto men, not to lay the conscience bare before God. Religiousness and ceremonial holiness accredit us with men, but faith lays us bare before God.
Then He goes on: "For God commanded, saying, Honor thy father and mother: and, He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death. But ye say" (it was their tradition that said it, but He substitutes "ye"), "Whosoever" (no matter who, or how he says it) "shall say to his father or his mother, It is a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by 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." vv. 4-6. It was for their profit; it matters not whether it was money or something else; religion is always turned to a selfish end in man's use of it. He clothes himself with it in order that he may give himself weight before men.
And now the Lord thus sets the condition of the whole people before them: "Ye hypocrites, well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying, This people draweth nigh unto Me with their mouth" (they were not sinners, in the common sense of the word; that is, irreligious, without any profession of thought about God. Quite the contrary, the thing stated of them here is, "This people draweth nigh unto Me"), "and
honoreth Me with their lips; but their heart is far from Me." It was not the sincerity of conscience, and yet the Lord could use the expression, “draweth nigh." "But," He adds, "in vain do they worship Me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men." (vv. 8, 9.) All this religion and religiousness is at once disposed of. There might be the semblance of what was according to God in the washing of hands, for the Lord Himself uses water as the emblem of purity; but it was to answer their own ends, and the Lord says that, whatever it was, it was a commandment of men- that was all. And it was in vain. There is a worship which is worshiping of God in vain.
It is thus that Christ disposed entirely of what may be called "religion"; God's order, God's commandments, God's will, have been set aside by man in his drawing nigh in his own way to God. If he thinks to draw nigh with his heart, such as it is, what would be the consequence? This the Lord goes on to show. And here we see the awful character of religion without the conscience before God. "Out of the heart," He says, "proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts. false witness, blasphemies." These are what come out of the heart. Man may talk of drawing nigh to God with the heart, but with what kind of heart? How can he draw nigh when "out of the heart" proceed all these things? There is the difficulty. If man will speak of drawing nigh to God, if he will have his forms of religion, his scribes and Pharisees, his Jerusalem, what is it all? Just what the Lord said; the drawing nigh with the mouth, the honoring with the lip, but with heart far from God. Religious forms, the intricacies of ceremony and tradition, even though in the abstract according to the truth of God, are to our hearts now what Jerusalem was to these Pharisees. All that was known of God, all that God had revealed, and He had revealed much in the figures of the law, foreshadowing better things, was there; but the flesh cannot be bettered by ordinances; and if it was a question of drawing nigh to God, while the heart was what it was, and while the whole character of their religion was that of self, Jerusalem was nothing whatever but a blind to the consciences of men.
Have not millions been going on in the same way, with additional truth, no doubt? They may have liked the truth Christianity has introduced, because it had no power in the conscience and on the heart; yet in principle it was the same thing. The craft and lie of Satan is to take all these things, and to say that a man can draw nigh to God through them, while with his heart he does not. This has ordinarily been Satan's way; he acts more by subtlety, and upon the ground of the truth of God, than by open and simple lie. Religion is the thing he uses, and what meets it in the heart of man is the supposition (after all, clearly hypocrisy) that man can approach God, put off God with these things, when in truth he is merely seeking to satisfy his own conscience. Satan's lulling conscience asleep through forms of religion, is a very different thing from God's awakening the conscience by the power of truth. There may be the form of truth, and that much insisted on; but where God has not awakened the conscience, religiousness and religion are only put between the conscience and God to hide from God.
Having spoken of religion in the flesh-the heart's religion, as well as of its sin-the Lord now takes up what the heart itself is.
"And He called the multitude, and said unto them, Hear, and understand: not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man." vv. 10, 11. There is deep instruction here. One might have begun and have argued with a man about Jerusalem until the end of time, using the most specious arguments, such as that it was God who had established Jerusalem, it was God who had set up the sacrifices (for the sacrifices were in themselves, as to form, true), and the like; and there we might have stood. The Lord sets all this aside. He calls up the "multitude"-no matter who or what they might be (we find it stated, chapter 9:36, that they were "as sheep having no shepherd") -and He addresses Himself directly and completely to what is within. He passes by all that which Satan had known how to use to the blinding of the conscience, and He goes at once to the root of the matter-to this fact: You know that what comes out of the heart is not of God. The Lord addresses Himself to the conscience. If the conscience had been before God, they could not have concealed this truth from themselves. They did not require Pharisees for that; they did not require scribes for that; their own hearts could answer it. The conscience of the simplest man, though hitherto led by ten thousand evil Pharisees, when it is before God, can understand that it is that which cometh out of a man, that which is himself, that defileth a man.
"Then came His disciples, and said unto Him, Knowest Thou that the Pharisees were offended, after they heard this saying?" v. 12. No wonder! all man's system of Pharisaism is good for nothing, when it comes to be a simple question about why all this evil goes out of the heart of man. No wonder, therefore, they were offended. Man has persuaded himself into the belief that he is not so really lost to what is good as God says he is, and that all this attention to ceremonial observances and the externals of religion is very holy and excellent. But, as it is explained here by our blessed Lord, both leaders and led are "blind"- a simple thing, as the prophet expresses it. "The leaders of this people cause them to err; and they that are led of them are destroyed." Isa. 9:1616For the leaders of this people cause them to err; and they that are led of them are destroyed. (Isaiah 9:16). "But He answered and said, Every plant, which My heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up." v. 13. There may be the "form of godliness," but if it is not of the Father, if not planted of God, it will be rooted up. God must have realities for eternity, and therefore nothing is eternal that God has not planted. "Let them alone"-a terrible saying, a terrible thing to hear the Lord of love uttering such a word as that. And I do not know that it is ever said about any but religious people. We never hear that lip of love saying, "Let them alone," or words of the kind, to any but hypocrites; He does not say so to the poor Gentile woman mentioned in the after part of the chapter, though her circumstances were those of the greatest evil. If He must put the heart of such a one to trial, He will do it; but He does not so speak. "Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch." v. 14. Jesus must be occupied with "the poor of the flock," so He turns and feeds the multitude.
"Then answered Peter and said unto Him, Declare unto us this parable. And Jesus said, Are ye also yet without understanding?" vv. 15, 16. We see here a hankering after hearing something new, instead of the conscience before God-a step lower clown, so to speak, of Pharisaism. He is their "Rabbi." They are looking at Him in this character and, therefore, their conscience not being in the presence of God, they cannot understand such a simple thing-the simplest thing that can be-that it is not that which goeth into the mouth, but that which cometh out of the mouth that defileth a man.
And what else proceeds out of the heart? Why, really, when we come to the heart of man, it is like what we have in Deut. 28 about the law of God. When the details are entered into there, where are the tribes for blessing? We read only of the curse. "No doubt," people say, "bad things come out of the heart of man; but are there not good things also?" There is not a word about them here. "Out of the heart proceed" the evil things mentioned, and these are what God sees. It is not that we are denying that there are amiabilities of nature and the like; there are, but then we see them in irrational animals, as well as in man, with this difference: that there is no pride in the heart of the former about them, while there is in the heart of man. What man is morally in the sight of God is the question. Here the Lord closes with man. We have his history traced down from the scribes and Pharisees to what he is in himself. He is seen, in all the comeliness of "religion," to be completely setting aside the commandments of God; and it ends in the sad catalog of what comes "out of the heart."