408: Jesus Calls 'em Out Hard | +Quigg Lawrence

Introduction

All right, friends, we're in Matthew 15. Let me just start with a kernel of truth from Matthew 15. Jesus said,

Why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?

And later skipping down to somebody says,

So for the sake of your tradition, you have made void the word of God, you hypocrites.

Father, we pray as we come to your word that you would speak to us by your Spirit, open our ears, open our hearts, help us to engage the Word of God as it engages us. In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, amen.

Well, I think you guys are in luck. There's no water up here, which means I either have to preach short or raspy. So, there you go.

Today, we're going to talk some about traditions. They're good traditions and they're bad traditions. Praise the Lord. That's a good tradition right there. Good traditions. Okay, so our family has some. You may think they're stupid. Excuse me—dumb. We're not supposed to say the word stupid, you knelt it. We have some traditions in our family and you may think they're hick, but we do them anyway. And we love having traditions because they make our family what it is, and it's passed down generation upon generation upon generation.

Here are a few. When you drive, when you're in the car, and you cross a state line, what do you do? Raise your feet and touch something blue. The rest of y’all are missing out. This is so fun, and it's so fun when you do it and there's no blue readily available in your car. So there you go. Cross the line, raise your feet, touch blue.

Here's another one. I don't know how I started this, but with the grandkids and we have a bunch of them. I keep a thing of whipped cream in our refrigerator and if they come up to me, they march up shoulders back and they give me a salute and say, Campbell Gray Imhoff reporting for duty, sir. Then he gets a double squirt of cream. So Camp did it, you know, Emmy, Sage, Roe. Next thing you know, little Mary, Mary Mac comes up goes, duty, doody. And now Winnie’s going, Doody. And they get their thing of cream.

So, that's a little tradition in our house. How about this, you're walking down the sidewalk and you see a crack, what do you do? Over. Step over, because if you step on a crack, break your mother's back. We don't want to do that.

How about this? One tradition is we have family meals. Probably not as many as in 1960, but we like having family meals. We like having Sunday lunch. It's not just that God will like us better. It's just an awesome tradition to be a family unit, to be a family unit.

I remember Jack Sale, one of the guys that helped lead our church for years. He said, you know, I grew up poor. My dad was a shoe salesman. He died when I was 12, and we didn't have much money. We lived in Washington, DC, and so we would not eat very well during the week. We'd save our money and we would pray, and then every Sunday, we'd have a roast. We'd cook it in the oven, we'd go to church and pray the Lord would show us somebody to invite.

Awesome tradition.

How about this? I learned this in Franklin County. When you're in Franklin County and a hearse comes by, can you say hearse? Not an ambulance, but a hearse. Look that line up. Not an ambulance, but a hearse. What do they do in Franklin County in small towns? They pull off the road and if they're on the sidewalk, some of them even do this.

Man, I love that. I love that respect.

Here's another one. It's opening day of hunting season. What do you do? Well, if you're in the rural counties, they don't even have school on opening day, which I think is awesome. Great job, teachers. But here, you know, in the big suburb, I just tell kids, hey, pastor gives you a mulligan, take the day off, go hunting. Okay, so there you go. If you actually are in fact hunting.

Here's one more tradition. It's Thanksgiving Day, you stuff your face with so much food that you're in a food coma, the tryptophan is running out your ears, and you can barely stay awake, but there's something you do after that meal other than sleep. What is it? Football. Okay. Yeah, obviously.

But before the night goes, the whole family gathers around the screen and we watch an old movie. You know it as Elf. That's a good guess. Elf. Elf. Oh yeah, we watch Elf.

So, let me just say there are a lot of good traditions. I don't know what your family traditions are. I hope you have some. Hope you have some good ones. If you don't have one, maybe start with this. How about having family dinner four or five nights a week for a starter? Start small, maybe three or four nights a week. Have family dinner, and put down the devil's device right here, which I'm glued to, right? Put it down, turn it off, enjoy that fellowship.

Do you ever say prayers with your family at meals? That's a tradition. And we say it, we hold hands usually, and then when you get to the end of the prayer, what do you do? We squeeze. We squeeze three times—Father, Son, Holy Spirit. It's a tradition.

Hopefully, you have some great traditions. But those great traditions are not what Jesus is talking about as he nails the Pharisees. That's not what he's talking about. He's all for good traditions. What he's against is bad religion, bad religious traditions.

But before we dive in, what's the context? What's been going on in Matthew 13 and 14? We kind of want to know what's been going on, so we know when we open it up, we won't not have a clue.

First thing is, Jesus was teaching his disciples through parables. Even the simplest mind can understand a parable, and so can the advanced PhD. That's why Jesus taught in parables—that it's for everyone. You open up a kingdom truth through a parable. He was teaching the disciples through parables.

Number two, how to go in his hometown? Not so good. Coming out of seminary, I had two job offers. One in Kilmarnock, which I'd never heard of. The other one was in Goochin County, my home church. I really wanted to go back home, but then I read that scripture says,

a prophet is not without honor except in his own hometown.

I thought, I'll skip that one, sir. I went on to Kilmarnock and met my wife. So, that was a good choice.

So, Jesus teaching in parables, he's rejected in his own hometown.

Then, game on. Herod kills the one who had announced the coming of Messiah. John the Baptist was beheaded. It's getting serious. They're being threatened. The kingdom is advancing.

You see the evil one using Herod; he kills John the Baptist. And then the fourth thing that happens right before this passage is Jesus does three miracles. Three. One is, well, he did a lot, but this one says,

he fed the 5,000 with a little boy's lunch.

That's pretty cool. Number two, he walks on water. There are only two people in recorded history that have walked on water. The first being Jesus. Yeah, you know that one, right? The second one being—and actually there was a third one, me.

I was in a catamaran in the Chesapeake Bay, and the stinging nettles were so thick. It looked like pea soup. And I don't know if you know about stinging nettles, they're not your friend. And if you hit the water and you—they're all over the water—you don't want to stay in the water.

When our catamaran turned over, I literally walked on the water and got that boat back up so I didn't have to stay being stung by nettles.

Okay, so, parables, rejection in the hometown, Herod kills John the Baptist, Jesus does the three miracles.

Now, turn. If you've got a Bible or a phone, I want you to go to Matthew 15. It says,

The Pharisees and the scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem.

What a nice opening line. But it's so nice. It's almost a throwaway line, like you almost don't hear it. Except for it's expressing something that's very important. The religious scribes and the Pharisees went 70 to 80 miles. They were walking, y'all.

Now, how many miles would you reckon some old guy in a robe could walk in a day—not putting himself out too much? What do you think?

Yeah, 12 maybe. So if they're walking 70 miles, 70 divided by twelve, six or seven days, they walked six or seven days to go nail Jesus. That's just one way.

You see the religious spirit? You see how intense they serve their God? They're willing to make a two-week trip to go and accuse the Messiah, the savior of the world. They left Jerusalem and they came to Jesus, and, you know, they're trying to basically, they're accusing him, but they're using his disciples as an entree.

Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? In other words, hey, Jesus, like we know there's a written word, but there's also this oral tradition, and your disciples are breaking it. You're basically, that's not good. That's terrible. You're a bad person for letting your disciples do that.

And it says they do not wash their hands when they eat. They do not wash their hands when they eat. And so they're trying to nail Jesus for his disciples not following the tradition of the elders.

You see, there's what God said—his word. And then there are all these other things that they added on. That's the thing about rule keepers. There's never enough rules. It's like running, like you're a piece of Velcro running through the woods. And if you have Velcro running through the woods, everything adheres to you. And that's the way it is with a religionist. He never met a rule he didn't like. He may not keep them—rule upon rule upon rule, who can remember them all?

And so Jesus, when they accused him, knew that the washing of hands really was for the priest as they went into the tent of meeting. And only for them. That's all God said. When the priests go in there, they should wash their hands and their feet, actually, is what it says. But it wasn't beyond that circle.

That's what religion is. That's what legalists do. They take something that is a command for one person and expand it and apply it to everyone and make it the law.

And so Jesus basically goes, okay, you want to debate with the inventor of debate? You? You want to use your human logic against the guy who invented logic? You want to use your human words to try to catch me? I invented words.

So what did Jesus say back to them? He throws it back on because, why do you guys break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?

You can imagine that's a punch in the nose to the Pharisees.

Why do y'all break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?

And now Jesus gives an example. He says this,

For God commanded, honor your father and mother.

Where does that come from? Kids, can I just tell you a secret? Like, this is the combination to the lock. It's the combination to the lock. Honor and respect your parents, and life will go a lot better for you than if you prick against the goats, right?

It's a novel concept. It's counterintuitive. But if you honor your father and mother, the Lord says it will go well with you. And so maybe we could try that.

Jesus says,

Why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? Honor your father and mother.

And then he quotes another scripture:

Whoever reviles father and mother must surely die.

And then, in verse five, Jesus says, but in other words, that's what the word says:

Honor your father and mother, don’t revile your parents.

But you guys are doing something else because of all your rules and traditions that God never spoke. What were they doing? They found out a scam.

It's a scam. So, what they figured out is there's a word called Korban, and that means an offering dedicated to the Lord. And again, it's not in scripture that I could find, but it was a tradition. And what they said, hey, young people, if you have lots of money or possessions or land or something very valuable to you, you can just Korban—Korban. You can make it dedicated to God, dedicated to the temple, and thereby you're free not to give that property or money to take care of your old mom and dad. That's wicked.

You know, as a guy 65 with some heart issues, I wonder, like, who's going to take care of me when I get old? Who's more importantly, who's going to take care of Miss Annette?

Thankfully, our kids get it. They understand that it's a child's honor to take care of the people that took care of them. But the Jews are saying, nope, don't have to, just consider that dedicated to God, keep your hands off my stuff.

What's really ironic—and not funny, but not funny—is that so often when they would do that, cheating their parents and making null and void the word of God, they would never actually give it to the temple or to God; they just said they were going to do it. Thereby, they got to keep it for themselves.

And so, Jesus is pointing out this gross hypocrisy. He says,

For the sake of your tradition, you've made void the word of God.

You hypocrites. I don't know what your picture of Jesus is. I watched all those little movies and videos on TV when I was a kid. Jesus always spoke with a British accent. He was always about a buck forty-five weight. He was wispy, and he was nice.

And I think the word that I would use is namby-pamby. Now, for anybody 50, you're like, I've never heard that word in my life. Google it. Namby Pamby. It came from a poem in the 1730s or something. But that word isn't meant for a guy who's just really nice and soft and didn't want to offend anybody.

Jesus isn't like that. He's loving. Yes. But he's not a namby-pamby. He's a man. He has courage. He speaks truth. And he's nailing them right here. Not to be mean, because he wants them to come out of their deception. And he said, You hypocrites, you're a bunch of fakes.

He said,

Well did Isaiah prophesy?

So in Isaiah 29, Isaiah seven hundred years before this, had said this—God had spoken through Isaiah. This is what he said:

These people honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.

[Isaiah 29:13]

You know the big change I've seen in forty years? I was counting up this week, I've been to almost a hundred different churches in my life. That's a lot. Some of that as a bishop, some as a young Christian trying to figure out what church I wanted to go to. About a hundred different churches.

And the change from when I was a kid is most everybody sang in church. They understood what the Bible says: bring a sacrifice of praise. We don't sing because we think we're great singers or we're not great singers. We sing because God is worthy of our praise.

And yet, in our generation, I mean, Isaiah is nailing him for praising God, but then their hearts are far from him. In our day, we're not even praising him. Most of us, we're not even singing to him.

It's the wax museum. I want to invite you out of the wax museum and just try. And if you're a bad singer, awesome. You got plenty of company here. Make a joyful noise.

Isaiah says,

These people honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.

You know, every week when we do the confession, I want to say, search me and try me. Search me, try me. Oh, and the Lord doesn't wait around. He does it real quick. And he brings to mind the things that are grievous to him—ways that I'm deceived or I don't see or I've been unkind or I've been un-Christlike.

And he brings this to mind not to push my face down in dirt, but so I can experience freedom, that I can repent of those things and experience freedom.

Isaiah says,

These people honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. In vain do they worship me.

In vain. And they teach as doctrines the commandments of men.

Jesus Calls "em Out Hard

Alright, let me give you the clothes if I can find it in my notes. Let's go here.

Put your thinking caps on. The people Isaiah called out for vain worship, for being hypocrites. Memo, they're all dead. They're all gone. So while that passage was awesome in his day for those people, they're not around for that passage to be awesome to them anymore.

How about the Pharisees? The ones Jesus was nailing, the scribes and the Pharisees—they're all dead. And so, those words, while certainly they were important in the day to the Pharisees, much like to the people that Isaiah was speaking to, they're all dead.

And so, the conclusion I have is that these words—they're not just for those people—they're for us. They're for us.

So, do you understand the main points Jesus is teaching you this morning? Not them, you.

Four things:

1. Be a faithful disciple, not a religious fault-finder. There's no fun in being religious. I hate the term. People say, you're religious. I'm like, I hope I'm not. I want to be a faithful man of God, not a religious person.

2. Weed your own garden. Wouldn't that be insane? Like, if your garden was filled with weeds to go to your neighbor's house and pull the weeds out of his garden while your garden's being overtaken. And yet, that's what we do in terms of morality.

3. Ask the Lord to say, search me, try me. If there's any offensive way in me, remove it and lead me in your everlasting way. So, the focus is not on finding bad in others but on asking, Lord, you search me and try me.

4. Last thing is this: traditions can be good, but not if we use religious traditions to make void the word of God. Not if we make religious traditions to be void of the word of God.

Conclusion

Now, here's the closing question. What traditions or practices do you have that are making null and void the word of God?

What traditions do you have—especially religious traditions—that are making null and void the word of God?

See, as I thought this week, I thought, you know what? In 2024, I see people talking about fundamentalism and legalism. Honestly, I don't—I just don't see much of it. I don't see people stacking rule upon rule upon rule. I don't see that.

What I see is people substituting the word of God, making the word of God null and void because of secular traditions. And so, not to pick on anybody but I'm picking myself. Decide you want to have relations outside the covenant of marriage and everybody else is doing it, so, I’mma do it too. I'm free in Christ. Let's just do it.

See, you're making null and void the word of God to satisfy your flesh. It's a secular thing creeping in. What other ways? How about this? The Lord calls us to corporate worship. Jesus, as was his custom, Paul, as was his custom, went to the synagogue. And yet, culture says, hey, go once or twice a month. That's good. God's, you know, God's a God of love. He doesn't judge, but he's called us to this.

So, we're making null and void the word of God. Look at all these empty seats. You know why? Because the secular society says, you don't need to go to church every week. You don't need to do it. Oh, it's all legalism. It's not legalism. It's life. It's a gift.

And we need to be careful not to let the secular world make null and void the word of God. How about this? God is generous, and he has an open hand to us. He does. What do you have that you haven't received? You came buck naked from your mom and you're leaving buck naked. Everything you have is a gift of God.

And so, God just watches to see, hey, man, what can you do with my stuff? You got an open hand or a tight hand? I hope he has you with an open hand. If it's not, then that's a secular world saying, keep your hands closed, be your own provider, be your own God.

Last one is this—and it hits hard—because you know it's easy to do that. Oh, well, actually, I missed one. Look out for the widow and the orphan. Scripture's clear. But how many people, even in the church—good God-fearing Christian people—are looking out for the widow and the orphan? We don't do it. We make null and void the word of God because we are busy and we don't have time to mess with it.

Last one is this: our tongue—gossip and salty language. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. You know, I pray every week. Lord, please forgive me for thinking murder over somebody, for speaking ill of somebody. Should both fresh water and salt water come out of the same fountain? Oh heavens, no. And yet, my tongue is filled with gossip and slander. It's also filled with cussing, but I don't call it cussing because I just call it salty language.

Because see, look, I'm a hunter, I'm a good old boy. And we do salty language. And so, it's no longer a bad word. It's just a salty word. So, I do what I want to do.

Friend, what is it for you? What is it? What tradition has been passed down to you that you're clinging to so hard it even makes null and void the word of God?

Today might be a great day to confess it and have new life in Christ. Amen and amen.