June 27, 2004 - Lesson: Matthew 15.10-20

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INTRODUCTION:

1. They are blind.

1. They are not only blind, but they are the blind leading the blind.

2. Their blindness will result in great tragedy.

3. They are blind guides, leading the blind.

1. They will both fall into the ditch.

2. This is not your average ditch.

3. It is really a cistern, a rather deep hole, from which it is very difficult to extricate yourself.

MAIN BODY:

1. The plight of the Pharisees is a wonder to behold and learn from.

   1. They can see, but not see.

   2. Are they like this starfish? ⁽¹⁾

   There once was a starfish that lived in the ocean.
   "Pardon me," he said to the whale. "Could you tell me where I can find the sea?"
   "You're already in the sea," replied the whale. "It's all around you."
   "This?" replied the starfish. "This is just the ocean. I'm looking for the sea."
   The frustrated starfish swam away to continue searching for the sea.
   "Look no further," yelled the wise old whale after him. "Seaing is a matter of seeing!"

   3. They are blind, but they are facing the "light."

      1. Why can't they see the light?

      Perhaps a poem, "Revelation," William T. Joyner may help:

      I used to wonder
      why God had trouble
      with revelation,
      Why couldn't he
      make himself known
      with such dramatic power
      that none could disbelieve?

      Then one day
      I tried it.
      An agnostic
      strained to see me
      through the thick filter
      of his doubt,
      but he could not.

      Over and over
      he said,
      'Prove that you have worth:
      then I will believe.'
      But I knew that he would not--
      even if I turned stones to bread,
      walked on water,
      and rose from the dead.

      I was trapped
      by doubt,
      And could reveal
      no more of myself
      than the other was willing to accept

      Then I knew
      why God had trouble
      with revelation.

      2. Here is a people who are surrounded by light, but live in darkness.

         1. As Jesus said, it not what you eat, or how you eat it.

         2. What goes in is not more important than what comes out.

         3. What's their problem, anyway?

         1. Their blindness is a result of their environment.

         2. The Pharisees live, move breath exist in a polluted environment.

         3. Pollution is not something that happens immediately.

         4. It is a gradual degeneration of the moral senses.

When Sam came to church you needed an oxygen mask, temporary breathing apparatus.

He had been employed as the caretaker of the local dump.

At first he smelt clean and he was clean.

You cannot be clean living at the dump.

Over time his cleanliness and odor deteriorated.

He smelt of burning garbage.

He stank, literally.

He had become so used to the stench that he could no longer smell it.

3. The environment of the Pharisees is polluted not by what they eat, but by the way they eat it.

4. The environment of the Pharisees is polluted by a pollution of the mind, the heat, the very center of their being, their beliefs, their understanding of God and the ways in which God works.

   1. They became confused about what it was that God approved.

   2. They became blinded to that of which God disapproved.

   3. They no longer could tell the difference between what was acceptable and what was not.

   4. It was not eating with unwashed hands that was the problem.

   5. Jesus said in verse 17:

   ¹⁷Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach, and goes out into the sewer?

   6. In verses 18-20 Jesus cuts deep to the heart of the problem, and the nature of the Pharisee's polluted state:

      Jesus said: ¹⁸But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles. ¹⁹For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. ²⁰These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile."

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2. We have to be very cautious here, because it is so easy to condemn, and it is so easy to fall into the same situation with the same circumstances as did the Pharisees.

   1. The life of the Pharisee is dependent on rules.

   2. The life of the Pharisee is dependent on a certain structure.

   3. The life of the Pharisee is ordered.

   4. It is very easy to desire this kind of life protected from the necessity of doing the hard and laborious work of thought.

   5. Look around you and you will become sensitve to people who think and act their way.

1. It has been written:

Waking up, opening your eyes to the possibilities of life, can be an intimidating experience. Humans, like all creatures, seek the comfortable and the familiar, even when it is a limited, constricting existence. A study of congenital cataract patients provides a dramatic example of this tendency. After eye-opening surgery these people who had been blind all their lives could suddenly see. While some embraced this freedom with fervor, others were overwhelmed by their new vision of the world. Some voluntarily closed their eyes, pretending to be blind again. Others were nearly driven mad by what seemed like a never-ending bombardment of images assaulting their brains, and threatened to tear out their eyes. Seeing their own faces and the faces of loved ones was also a shock - imagine suddenly finding out you don't look at all like you thought you did. Also consider how painful it would be seeing sorrow, rage, worry and indifference for the first time. Seeing is difficult, both on physical and spiritual levels. For all its deprivation, blindness can be a familiar and comforting way to "get by."

2. So we look at our own personal exterior and interior environment.

1. What does a productive environment require.

2. You notice I did not say a clean environment.

3. Not in this world will our environment, either inner or outer ever be free from pollution.

4. We can only, with the help of the Holy Spirit, beat it back.

It is like trimming a hedge.

You have to keep trimming or it will grow wild and take over the terrain.

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3. So what do we need.

1. A constructive environment requires determination.

   Charles Shulz caught the need so clearly in one of the earliest Charlie Brown cartoon strips

FRAME 1
Peppermint Patty and Lucy are talking.
P: "Charlie Brown is an easy going sort of fellow, isn't he?"
Charlie Brown enters the frame

FRAME 2
L: "I'll say he is...Good ol' Charlie Brown."
P: "He seems to get along with everybody."
Charlie Brown is beaming.

FRAME 3
L: "Nobody hates him."
P: "Everybody likes him...
Charlie Brown is really beaming.

FRAME 4
P: "What a wishy-washy character."
Charlie Brown's face falls, and his mouth is turned down with despair.

2. You try to be liked by everybody and wind up being like by no one.

3. Lloyd Ogilvie, former chaplain of the U.S. Senate, tells the following story in his Autobiography of God ⁽²⁾ that helps us to understand determination as shrewdness.

I had a good visit with one of America's most successful businessmen on a cross-country flight recently. He had risen from a very humble background to immense wealth. I asked him the secret of his success. His response was very interesting.

Shrewdness! was his one-word reply.

I was shocked by his frankness.

He went on to say that he spent every waking hour thinking, scheming, planning, developing and putting deals together. In it all he had tried to be completely honest in all his affairs!

I couldn't help but admire his single-mindedness. He knew what he wanted and left nothing to chance. He worked hard to achieve his goals. All the power of his intellect, the strength of his seemingly limitless energies, the determination of his iron will and the resources of his calculated discernment of people were employed to accomplish his goal

Later, Ogilvie mused what could happen if the people of God put the same sort of shrewdness to work for the kingdom of God.

3. Wishy-Washiness invites pollution.

2. A constructive environment requires optimism.

Comedian and actor Martin Short ⁽³⁾

In his second year at college, [Martin] Short lived at home, helping to care for his sick father. When my dad died at the end of my sophomore year, I stopped and took stock of my life, he recalled. There was this real sense that my childhood was officially over. I decided that I wanted to be an actor. I knew I was loved as a kid. The thing you can always rely on, your core person, comes from your family's attention and love. When my mother got sick, and I'd see her fight to survive, it gave me an early view of bravery and what life was about. I was able to prepare for it. Your mother dies, and you're 18, and you face a choice. Are you going to take drugs? Become a drunk? Or are you going to try to become more spiritual? Why not go with the thing that seems more positive?

He thought a moment. Why do I tend to be optimistic? he asked. Because the alternative is just crushing to my soul.

1. It is isn't it?

2. Pessimism invites pollution.

3. A constructive environment requires decisiveness.

Saul Bellow has a marvelous short story entitled "Leaving the Yellow House." ⁽⁴⁾

It's the tale of Hattie Simmons Waggoner, an elderly woman who lived alone in a house that she inherited. It was all she had and was everything to her. The woman who willed it to Hattie was now dead.

All Hattie's family was gone. She had no children or husband. Living alone and becoming increasingly frail, she turned in on herself and turned also to drinking too much. She, of course, knew that she had to make a change. She could not continue in that big rambling house. She had to go somewhere else, to leave the house (that's one of the meanings of the title "Leaving the Yellow House"), and she had to leave it to someone in her will. That's the other meaning of the story's title. She knew this, but for years did nothing about it.

Then, one day, driving while drunk, she had a minor traffic accident. Her arm was broken. Her license was taken away. She recovered, but the arm was slow to heal. Friends came to tell her that she had to leave, had to get out -- still she couldn't. One night, thinking that she'd finally come to a decision, she sat down and began to write a will:

"I, Harriet Simmons Waggoner, being of sound mind and not knowing what may be in store for me at the age of 72 (born 1885), living alone at Sego Desert Lake, instruct my lawyer, Harold Claiborne, Paiute County Court Building, to draw my last will and testament upon the following terms."

She lifted her pencil from the page, thought a bit, took a drink, realized that she spent all her life waiting. She thought to herself, I was waiting, thinking, "Youth is terrible, frightening. I will wait it out. And men? Men are cruel and strong. They want things I haven't got to give."

Then she turned again to write the will:

"Upon the following terms .... Because I have suffered much. Because I only lately received what I have to give away .... It is too soon! Too soon! ... Even though by my own fault I have put myself into this position. And I am not ready to give up on this. No, not yet. And so I'll tell you what, I leave this property, land, house, garden, water rights, to Hattie Simmons Waggoner. Me! I realize this is bad and wrong. Not possible. Yet it is the only thing I really wish to do, so may God have mercy on my soul."

In her hour of extremity and need, all she could think to do was to try insanely to leave the house to herself, to perpetuate a tragic situation. She could not accept and would not choose the decision that was forcing itself upon her. She could not leave the house.

1. Perhaps, like Hattie Waggoner, we have avoided the decision in front of us for too long.

2. Perhaps we have reached the point now where the decision can be avoided further only at our peril and at the expense of hurting others.

3. That's the first temptation we face when decisions enter our lives -- we will try to wait them out; we will wait too long.

4. Indecisiveness, wavering, hesitancy, waiting invites pollution.

CONCLUSION

1. The darkened, damaging, destructive pollution of the Pharisees stands in the presence of the Light of the World and does not overcome it.

2. Which would you rather have?

1. Glen Martin, Beyond the Rat Race (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1995), 165-166.

2. Lloyd John Ogilvie, Autobiography of God (Glendale, Calif.: GL Regal Books, 1979), 199.

3. Dotson Rader, When you're funny, you're blessed, Parade, January 23, 2000, 5.

4. Michael Scrogin, Practical Guide to Christian Living (Valley Forge: Judson Press, 1985), 14-15.

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