This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

I want to welcome you back to day two of our Look Through Matthew chapter 15.
We're talking this week about some barriers that you and I can set up that keep
people from hearing the good news, that keep people from seeing that the good
news is good news for them. Yesterday we talked about tradition, not just the
Pharisees from the past, but ours that we struggle with even now.

Today we look at the barrier of self-righteousness. Listen to what happened
beginning in verse 10. Jesus called the crowd to him and said, "Listen and
understand.

What goes into a man's mouth does not make him unclean, but what comes out of
his mouth, that's what makes him unclean. " Then the disciples came to him and
asked, "Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this? "
Jesus replied, "Every plant that my Heavenly Father has not planted will be
pulled up by the roots.

They are blind guides. If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a
pit. " Peter said, "Explain this parable to us.

Are you still so dull? " Jesus asked them, "Don't you see that whatever enters
the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body, but the things that
come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man unclean. For out
of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft,
false testimony, slander.

These are what make a man unclean, but eating with unwashed hands does not make
him unclean. " Jesus is talking about this barrier of self-righteousness that
the Pharisees had set up. They had just come to Jesus and blamed him for not
letting his disciples, challenging his disciples to wash hands in the same way
as they washed their hands.

Again, a legalistic requirement that they'd added to the law. Jesus says,
"You're missing it. You think somehow you can be pure by what you do on the
outside, but purity comes from the inside out.

" The way the Pharisees ran their lives, they had a kind of purity, a kind of
righteousness that obviously put them on a level which no one else could reach.
They washed hands on a level no one else could reach. They wore a kind of
clothing that no one else wore.

They walked about like no one else walked about. They were expressing a
righteousness which essentially said to most people, "We have arrived and you
can't. Maybe a few of you can, but most of you can't.

" The truth is, we have to be careful of the same thing today. We have to be
careful of expressing a kind of righteousness through our lives that tells
others that they have no chance at all of faith or no chance at all at growth.
When a brand new person comes into our church or comes into one of your groups
and you're part of that, maybe you've been a Christian for 20, 30 years, you
have to realize that they see all that growth that's happened in your life for
those 20 years.

All you see are the problems you still have maybe or the sins and temptations
you still struggle with, but from the outside, all they see are, "Wow, they are
at a level so high above where I am, I could never reach there. " The thought
comes in, "I could never be saved," or if they're saved, "I could never be a
growing Christian. " In these verses, Jesus' teaching about the barrier of
self-righteousness with the Pharisees, they help you and I to come to grips with
some things, some truths we have to be aware of to help new people understand
that growth is for all of us.

Let's look at four specific truths in this. Truth number one is, you got to make
it clear that purity is about the inside, not the outside. Just keep making that
clear.

Talk about your own heart, not what you see on the outside. The Bible says that
the heart of the problem is a problem of the heart. That's the root problem.

The problem isn't your tongue. You might have a sarcastic tongue or sharp
tongue, an angry tongue, a filthy tongue, a defensive tongue, a boasting tongue,
but the problem isn't the tongue. All that's being revealed through your tongue
is what's in your heart.

A judgmental tongue is evidence of a guilty heart. An overactive tongue is
evidence of an unsettled heart. A boasting tongue is evidence of an insecure
heart.

A bitter tongue is evidence of a resentful heart. A biting tongue is evidence of
an angry heart. It's what's inside that's coming out.

Your heart is being given away by what you say. Your mouth betrays what you are
really like. Now I know we say, "Well, I didn't mean it.

I just said that in anger. It's not really me. I don't know why I said it is not
like me.

" But the truth is, we have to admit, it is us because in our anger, the mask,
the layers are pulled away and you see what is really in your heart. When
someone says something to you like, "Hey, could you drop what you're doing and
help me with the groceries? " and you feel the selfishness rise up in your
heart, "I'm not going to do that.

" What's in your heart comes out. Your mood changes very quickly in those
moments when your selfishness is tested. So when you and I are talking to new
believers, people new in the church, we have to be careful to say often, "We all
have problems with the heart.

" And without Jesus, there is no purity because I can't do enough things on the
outside to make myself pure because it starts in the heart. So here's the second
thing you do. The second thing you do is you refuse to make external practices
the standard for being a good Christian.

Jesus, remember, he said, "I didn't come to abolish the law but to fulfill it. "
So we're not talking about doing away with the law, doing away with what God
said to do, but you don't make external practices the standard for being a good
Christian. You keep looking to the heart.

Listen, this might shock you, but the sins that you commit, they express the
impurity of your heart, and you cannot become more pure by refusing to commit
those sins. You cannot become more pure by stopping this sin. You cannot become
more pure by engaging in some religious practice.

That's expecting that what I do on the outside is going to make me pure on the
inside. It never works. Oh, maybe for a while, maybe for a week or a month or
even a few years.

But purity is a matter of the heart, and you can only become more pure by Jesus
purifying your heart. So that's where you live. That's where you stand.

You don't make some external rule the standard by which you measure this is a
good Christian or not. Now, this has happened down through the years where we
made these external rules. For years, it was said that Christians, for instance,
they couldn't play cards.

Why? In the beginning, it was because the only place that cards were being
played were in these gambling clubs where Christians wouldn't want to be because
of the atmosphere that was there. But then you could play cards at home.

Was that okay? Well, Christians said, "No, that's not okay for many years. "
They had somehow made some external rule a standard for being a good Christian.

They'd lost the reason behind it. That can often happen, and that's something we
have to be careful of. I have a practice in my life, my own life, of not going
to R-rated movies.

Why? Because every time I've been to one, there's something I shouldn't have
seen. So I just decided years and years ago not to go to R-rated movies.

Am I going to say to any Christian who goes to an R-rated movie, "Oh, there must
be something wrong with you? You don't meet my standard, my external practice
standard. " There's nothing in the Bible that says you can't go to such and such
a movie.

Each of us have to be evaluated before the Lord. I have to be evaluated. You
have to be evaluated.

For us to make external practices the standard for being a good Christian, it's
one of the most dangerous things we can do with self-righteousness. Here's the
third thing to do with this issue of self-righteousness. Number three, Jesus
teaches us here to stop worrying about offending the legalist, the person who is
self-righteous.

The disciples come and they say, "Jesus, did you know the Pharisees were
offended at that? " Jesus says, "Good, almost. I'm glad they were offended.

" The truth is, those who are legalistic in their thinking, who want to impose
their rules on you, they use their spirit of being offended to try to control
you. When that doesn't work, they'll try to use criticism to control you. Now,
you and I, the scripture says very clearly, we've got to be concerned about the
weak in faith, the brand new person in faith.

Don't offend them in any way. But the person who's been a Christian for a long
time and is trying to control you by acting like they're offended, Jesus says,
"Don't be concerned about them. " Because those who are caught up in legalism,
they're not about commitment.

They're about control. In the end, they want to control you. It does something
for them, something ugly for them, that makes them feel stronger or wiser or
whatever.

They're not about commitment. They're about control. So don't worry about
offending those people.

Don't worry about their criticisms. They will come as you are living out the
life of Christ. And then there's a fourth thing that Jesus teaches us to do
here.

And that is, if we're going to break down this barrier of self-righteousness,
you've got to become a healthy model of living a pure life. Sometimes people try
to break down the barrier of self-righteousness by acting unrighteous. Like
somehow, I'm going to get closer to the unbeliever by acting like I'm almost a
sinner or talking in these words that are almost swear words or maybe throwing a
swear word in or two.

Like somehow that's going to get me closer to that person. But that's not a
model of anything. People need models of healthy spirituality.

Jesus said about the Pharisees, they are blind guides. They're acting without
seeing. They're talking without knowing.

And because of that, they're leading people into a pit just like they're going
into a pit. What we need are guides that are walking by faith. What we need are
people who have the humility to say, "I'm still struggling.

My heart is still struggling to come closer to the Lord. I'm still struggling
with temptation and sin in my life. But in that struggle, I found Jesus to be
faithful.

And in that struggle, I found that when I trust Jesus, he does provide a way
out. In that struggle, I found that he loves me through it all. In that
struggle, I found that you can be growing in life.

So become a healthy, humble model of living a pure life. That's one of the
greatest ways that you break down this barrier of self-righteousness. I want God
to use me that way.

I want God to use you that way. So let's pray together before we end today that
he would do that. Jesus, we ask you to do through our lives what we cannot do on
ourselves.

We don't want to be prideful. We don't want to be self-righteous. We want to be
humble.

We want to express your righteousness in our lives. We want to be people who,
from the heart, are sharing with others how we're growing and what you're doing.
Lord, if you could today, through our lives, just encourage one another, the
person in their faith, as we share what we're going through, as we share what
we've struggled through, as we share how you've been faithful to us, Lord, that
would bring us great joy.

And so we pray that that would happen. Through our lives today, would you help
us to encourage one other person in their faith? We pray this in your name.

Amen. Tomorrow we're going to talk together about dealing with the barrier of a
narrow vision.