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Sermon
The Gospel of Matthew

Handwashing, Hypocrisy, and the Heart

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January 25, 2026
Matthew 15:1-20
Nick Whitehead

Pride & Humility

Killing Sin & Holiness

Transcript

0:15Well good morning. It is good to gather together and worship our God. If you are new, my name is Nick Whitehead. I serve here as the pastor for global Outreach. I'd be eager to engage with you or welcome you after the service. So please come forward. I'd love to meet with you. Uh, keep your Bibles open to Matthew 15. We're gonna be looking at God's word and asking him to speak to us. So let me pray now to that end, father in heaven, let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight. Oh Lord, my rock and my redeemer, for your glory. For the edification of these hearers, I ask in the name of Jesus, amen.

1:02The Miriam Webster dictionary defines a hypocrite as a person whose behavior contradicts their stated beliefs or feelings. A person whose behavior contradicts their stated beliefs. So with this definition in mind, I imagine that we have all had our moments big or small, in which we've done something that contradicted our own standard. Have you ever condemned the fast food industry and then snuck over to McDonald's on your lunch break? Have you ever been deeply offended when you found out someone was talking behind your back only to gossip about someone else later? Have you ever shouted at your kids to stop shouting?

1:50Yeah, You have kids. The questions could go on, we'd get a lot more yas. And the point is this, we all believe better than we behave in a certain sense. We all manifest moments of hypocrisy in which our behaviors and beliefs are inconsistent. And we most commonly think of hypocrisy in relation to religion, right? We think of a hypocrite as someone who preaches a set of religious standards and yet fails to adhere to those themselves. But if we go back to the original meaning of this Greek word, I think we actually find a simpler definition that informs our passage. This morning in ancient Greece, a hypocrite was an actor.

2:42It was a stage performer. It referred to someone who was pretending to be someone they weren't in a theater act. And unlike most of the movie actors today, these actors would actually wear physical masks over their faces to hide their own identity. You've probably seen these when you talk about the Greek tragedies and comedies, right? You see the frowny face and the smiley face on the masks. Over time, this word hypocrite though took on an extended meaning, referring not just to an actor on a stage, but to anyone who wore a figurative mask and pretended to be something they were not. So at its core, what a hypocrite is is it's a pretender.

3:27It is someone who puts on a public performance that is at odds with their true motivations. And this I think is the main question that our text is confronting us with this morning. Are you a pretender? Have any of us walked into this sanctuary this morning pretending to be virtuous, pious near to God when our hearts are in fact far from him? Does our outward performance masquerade our internal disposition? In our text this morning, Jesus is trying to teach his followers that what matters most is not their external practices but their internal passions. Briefly put, the main point of this text and this sermon is the heart, not the hand.

4:17Defiles a man the heart, not the hand. Defiles a man handwashing without heart washing is just hypocrisy. And to see this, we're gonna work through our text in two main sections verses one through nine. We will see how hypocrisy defiles true worship. And then in verses 10 through 20, we will see how the heart defiles, man. So look together at this first section with me, Matthew 15, one through nine, hypocrisy defiles worship. And I'm gonna reread the first verses just to climb into the context of this narrative. Verse one. Then the Pharisees scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and they said, why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders for they do not wash their hands when they eat?

5:12Now, if you remember in our series, Jesus has just fed 5,000 people with a snack lunch. He's just walked trampled upon stormy waters. He has healed all the sick in a region by the mere fringe of his garment. And these religious leaders come all the way from Jerusalem and they have a concern about what? Hand washing, hand washing. And we sort of wonder, is this worth it, gentlemen? I mean, you have traveled 70 to 80 miles on foot. This is a multiple day journey. You're the top dog religious leaders of the Jewish system. You're coming from the spiritual center of Israel. And what is the great accusation that you bring to Jesus?

6:01You'd think that in light of the miracles, perhaps they'd come with an accusation of blasphemy or maybe that Jesus is practicing witchcraft or magic or sorcery or maybe again that he's demon possessed. But no, no, the accusation this time is actually not even directly at him, but at his disciples who eat without washing their hands, these guys are missing something clearly to us and they accuse the disciples of breaking the tradition of the elders. Now, what are these traditions? These are oral traditions that held a lot of weight among the Jews. They referred to the cumulative oral teaching of the best of Israel's teachers in which they interpreted and applied Old Testament law.

6:49So later in the second century, these oral traditions would be organized, compiled, written down in what is called the mishna. And these commentaries provided hundreds of que answers to questions about how a Jew was to follow God's holy law. So when these pharisees ask, why do you disciples break the traditions, what they virtually intend to say is why do they break God's law? Because they equate the two. And the specific tradition that the Pharisees accused the disciples of breaking is to eat with unwashed hands. Now, just to be clear, these traditions are not concerned with hygiene but with moral purity.

7:33Okay? Hand washing before meals today is a great idea for hygienic reasons. I say to you, not the Lord, keep washing your hands before you eat. That's a good health practice. But the traditions of the elders are not concerned with that 22nd rule. For sanitary reasons, they are concerned with moral purity. It's about right standing before God. And what we see develop by the second century in the Micah are 22 paragraphs worth thousands of words devoted just to hand washing. This commentary will detail things like how much water you need, what kinds of wa vessels you can use, what kind of water you can use, who can do the washing, and even the proper manner in which to pour out the water onto your hands.

8:22Believe it or not, if you're wondering if it's okay for your baboon to pour the water on your fingers, the mishna makes it clear. Monkeys are approved dispensers of the water. That is how detailed these get. And you ask, where in the world do these scribes and Pharisees get this level of detail? Because when we go back and explore the Old Testament, we find that the only laws related to hand washing were for the priests prior to their service in the temple or before eating the sacrificial food of the temple. For example, we see in Exodus 30, Aaron and his sons, the priests are given this requirement when they go into the attentive meeting or when they come near the altar to minister to burn a food offering to the Lord.

9:09They shall wash with water so that they may not die. They shall wash their hands and their feet so that they may not die. The principle that required hand washing, what that was, that these men were gonna be entering the holy place of God to serve as mediators between impure people and a perfect God. But the Jewish scribes and rabbis begin to extend this principle so that it begins to apply not just to the priests, but to everyone. And not just to the holy temple, but to every instance of food consumption. So in a manner of speaking, God's law was that no one crossed a line and the Jewish leaders built a railing 30 feet behind that line and they required everyone to stay behind the railing so that no one would even get close to the line.

10:00That's legalism. Those are manmade rules. Unless we think the disciples may actually have been in the wrong for eating with unwashed hands, let me remind you that our sinless savior did the same In Luke's gospel, he records an event in which Jesus does not wash his hands before eating with a Pharisee. So in verses one and two, Jesus listens to this ac, ac accusation this accusing question of the Pharisees. And then in verse three and a very classic rabbinical style, he responds to their question with another question. Look what it says, verse three. Jesus says, why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?

10:45So Jesus does two things in this question. The first is that he just openly accuses the Pharisees of breaking the commandments of God. This is quite an aggressive accusation and it certainly would've offended them, which we're gonna see it did that as as we see later in our text. But Jesus also does something else with this question. He uses the question to reframe the entire conversation. So instead of addressing the handwashing, which is what their question is about, he uses his counter question to tactfully distinguish the tradition of the elders from the law of God. Jesus puts handwashing to the side and presents the real issue.

11:25Do the oral traditions of the Pharisees have authority over the word of God? And Jesus doesn't even give them time to respond. Instead, he continues with an example of how they have elevated their own traditions above God's actual command. So look at verses four through six. Jesus goes on, for God commanded honor your father and your mother and whoever reviles father and mother must surely die. But you say, if anyone tells his father or his mother, what you would've gained from me is given to God. He need not honor his father. So for the sake of your tradition, you have made void the word of God.

12:07So Jesus is contrasting what God has commanded with what the Pharisees say. And specifically he's pitting the fifth commandment. Honor your father and mother against the PSA tradition of thou offerings. So on the one hand, God has clearly commanded that children are to honor their parents. Jesus is citing text verbatim from Exodus 20. And honoring your parents looks different depending on your age. So as a young child, you obey them respectfully. You submit to them immediately, no question. But honoring your parents when you are in your middle age looks like providing for them and caring for them as they age.

12:48But the Pharisees had developed a workaround to get out of providing for their parents. So in order to get outta this responsibility, they actually twist Old Testament teaching on vow keeping. So I'll give you an example of an Old Testament text regarding vows that they might have twisted. So numbers 30 verse two says this, if a man vows a vow to the Lord or swears in oath to bind himself by a pledge, he shall not break his word. He shall do according to all that proceeds out of his mouth. And with a command like that in mind, they established a practice called Corbin in which one could pledge their assets to the temple as offerings to God.

13:34And if they vowed these assets to be given to the temple at their death, then they could not be transferred to anyone else. So what the Pharisees would do is they would pledge their couch and their cow and their savings account to God when they die. And all these things they would still make use of in their life. But when their parents who are aging and in need financially came to them, they would simply say, sorry, mom, sorry dad. I vowed those to the Lord. My cow, my couch, it's his and I'm obligated to keep my vow. So because of their greed, they had developed an interpretation of the law that would justify dishonoring their parents.

14:17They found a way to ply, adhere to the letter of the law while ignoring the spirit of the law. And Jesus calls us out in verse six. For the sake of your tradition, you have made void the word of God. These Pharisees are undermining and invalidating the authority of God's word by their tradition. And in verse seven, Jesus describes them with one word, hypocrites, you hypocrites. This is the first time Matthew records the Pharisees calling Jesus this, but it will not, or Jesus calling them this, but it will not be the last. In Matthew 23, Jesus will offer up two pictures that illustrate the Pharisees hypocrisy.

15:07You don't have to turn there but just listen. He says to the Pharisees in Matthew 23, you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they're full of greed and self-indulgence. Little confession here, when I wash plates by hand at my home, I kind of just rinse the outsides and I deep scrub the insides 'cause that's what really got dirty. But Jesus is saying here, hypocrisy is to do the act exact opposite. It's to make sure the outside of your dishes are sparkling clean while the inside remains covered. And grime Jesus gives another image in Matthew 23 calling the Pharisees whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncles.

15:57He says, the Pharisees appear righteous on the outside, but within they're full of lawlessness. What Jesus is essentially saying to them is, you are fakes, you are frauds, you are pretenders. You are not actually what you appear to be. You put on a public performance of love for God while your true motivation is your love of self. So Jesus words for them is hypocrites. His prophecy for them is Isaiah 29 13, which we see in verses seven through nine. Look there. Jesus says, well did Isaiah prophesy of you when he said this. People honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. In vain do they worship me?

16:45Teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. Jesus is accusing these Jewish leaders of being just like the Jews in Isaiah's day, who violated the principles of scripture to preserve their external traditions. And here Isaiah provides two characteristics of hypocrites. First hypocrites displace a religion of the heart with a religion of form. Okay, this is verse eight. They open up their mouths. They speak truth about God without actually loving him. They sing songs, but their hearts are far from him. They pray in the small group meeting or in family worship, but never in the silence of their own souls.

17:28They pretend to praise God only when it gets them to praise of men. And here I just paused to say, brothers and sisters, we all need help in this. But pray especially for your pastors in this, our job is to be lead worshipers of this people. Our our job is a very public ministry. We we lead in song, we lead in prayer, we lead in worship, we lead in love of the scriptures. It's a very visible ministry and we don't want to do any of this without genuine love for God. And so I just ask you to pray. Pray for us. We want to do this out of a genuine delight in the Lord and not for the approval of men.

18:09And we are praying for you as well as we come and gather. These are fueling to our worship to be together. And we don't wanna displace genuine worship by trying to just please each other. So would the Lord draw us near to him in worship? Now the second characteristic, the first is dis, the hypocrites displace a religion of the heart with a religion of form. The second characteristic, according to Isaiah of hypocrites is that they teach commandments of their own invention as if they were doctrines from God. So this is verse nine, and this is legalism. This is very dangerous. Isaiah calls this vain worship because they're following manmade rules and not the law of God.

18:53And multiple places in scripture, God condemns those who add to God's word. One of our other pastors reflecting on this text this week, he just drew out how easy it is for us to fall into this same trap. He said, it doesn't take long for a genuinely wise idea to turn into a really good idea, to turn into the best idea, to turn into the only way to do something. And if anyone does it differently, they're unfaithful. How easy it is to begin teaching commandments of our own invention as if they were doctrines from God. And here's what, here's what I think is at the root of hypocrisy and legalism.

19:38It's a desire to use religiosity to garner the praise of men. We make up a law of our own invention that goes beyond biblical ordinance, not to exalt God, but to exalt ourselves, to build our own kingdom. And then we adhere to a law of our own invention instead of the law of God. And when we do that, who are we really worshiping? So in these first nine verses, Jesus is saying hypocrisy, defiles true worship, hypocrisy, slays genuine praise because it disguises the worship of self as worship of God. Hypocrites are pretenders. They don't love God, but they want others to think they do. They perform with their lips and with their laws while their hearts are far from him.

20:33And this brings us to the second portion of this text verses 10 through 20, where we see how the heart, not the hands defile the man. So let's look at that section together. Jesus will turn from the Pharisees to now explain to the crowds and to his disciples, what is the source of true defilement verses 10 11. And Jesus called the people to him and said to them, hear and understand. It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a person. Now Jesus is going to give a fuller explanation of this proverb in just a few verses, but notice first that the disciples don't immediately ask what this means, rather they have a different concern.

21:21Okay, look at verse 12. The disciples come and they said to him, do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying? The disciples in this moment are more concerned with what the Pharisees are thinking than the great truth that Jesus has just delivered to them. They seem to be greatly concerned with the approval of these religious leaders. Perhaps they're feeling the shame of not measuring up to their standards. And so they're concerned. They're concerned that their rabbi has now offended these Pharisees. The hand washing offended them, the rabbis offending them. Is Jesus concerned with offending the Pharisees? No.

22:04In response to the disciples question, he provides two images to warn the disciples of the danger of holding the Pharisees in high esteem and falling trapped to their legalism and its burdens. Verses 13 and 14, Jesus says, every plant that my heavenly father has not planted will be rooted up. Let them alone their blind guides. And if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit. So the first image is that of a plant being rooted up. And all throughout the Old Testament, Israel is referred to as God's planting. They're called oaks of righteousness. They're called a vineyard of the Lord. But when Israel is fruitless, when they don't yield what accords with God's word, they prove that they do not belong to the Father.

22:54And so he uproot them. Isaiah five is one place that depicts this uprooting of Israel, the Lord says in Isaiah five, and now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will remove its hedge and it shall be devoured. I will break down its wall and it shall be trampled down. I will make it a waste. It shall not be pruned or hod and bris and thorns shall grow up. I'll also command the clouds that they reign, no rain upon it. And the simple point of this first image is that Jesus is saying the Pharisees do not truly belong to the people of God. They are not his planting. The second image Jesus provides to dissuade his followers from being concerned with the Pharisees is to compare them to blind guides.

23:42And this is not meant to cast shade on the physically blind, but it is an oxymoron. It's designed to highlight the dangerous leadership of the Pharisees. If someone who can't see attempts to lead, others who can't see, they will both fall into the pit. The Pharisees are blind, they have no true spiritual sight, and they will lead their followers not just into a pit, but into the very flames of hell. Again, Matthew 23, Jesus declares woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites for you travel across sea and land to make a single convert. And when he becomes a convert, you make him twice as much the child of hell as yourselves.

24:29So these images serve to warn the concerned disciples who are feeling the temptations to conform to the legalism and traditions of the Pharisees. And Jesus says, leave them alone. They're headed towards destruction, have nothing to do with them. And this sort of awakens Peter, I think, and the rest of the disciples. And Peter gets back on track and he steps forward in verse 15 as the spokesman for these disciples. And he says, okay, explain the parable to us. He wants a fuller explanation of what we saw in verse 11 where Jesus says, it's not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out.

25:08And so Jesus finally explains this saying about what defiles a person first he clarifies what cannot defile. He asks the rhetorical question in verse 17, look there. Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth, passes into the stomach and is expelled? And the point Jesus is making is that what you eat cannot defile you because it doesn't stay in you. The biological image is a little graphic here, but I think it gets the point across. Okay, my my daughter swallowed a coin not too long ago, and the advice from many was, be sure to check the toilet. And she goes, okay. And the assumption being the body has a way of getting rid of such things, right?

25:53You eat a little bit of dirt, you eat a little bit of a worm, half of a worm and an apple, or you eat with unwashed hands and you might get sick, it might harm your body, but these external physical factors will not make you morally unclean. They will be expelled. You are not defiled by what enters your mouth. Now Jesus here is primarily arguing against the extra extra biblical regulations of the Pharisees. But some of you are thinking now about the Old Testament laws, the dietary laws, the food laws. You're thinking of Leviticus 11 or Deuteronomy 14 where God prohibited the Jews from eating certain animals maintenance.

26:36That's what Sam Crabtree always says. Got a little maintenance here, right here. When you drop it though, you all see you the thing fall. So God says, eating these animals will defile them. He says that plain and clear in the Old Testament. So how can Jesus now say, don't worry about the food, don't worry about what goes into your mouth. It can't actually defile you. We we, we have to ask what has changed the dietary laws of the old covenant were given to Israel to set them apart from the surrounding nations as God's holy people. So God says, in order to set you apart from the nations, to distinguish you, to make you holy, I'm going to actually have you eat differently than everyone else.

27:25But the new covenant transforms how God's people relate to the nations. And so it also fulfills the purpose of the food laws. When Christ ushers in the new covenant, the mission of God's people shifts from setting themselves apart from the nations to actually going into the nations to call them into the family of God. And so the diet of God's people is also transformed because it serves as a picture of how God's people are to relate to the Gentiles. So you all know the story of Peter in Acts 10 with the vision of the sheet filled with all kinds of unclean animals. It's the same animals listed in these Old Testament regulations.

28:08And God in that vision commands Peter to eat of them. Peter refuses to eat what is unclean. And God says three times what God has made clean do not call common. Peter then wakes up from this dream. He is called to go to the house of a gentile, a centurion named Cornelius. And just before he preaches the gospel to these gentiles, he says this, in Acts 10, truly, I understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation, anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. And then Peter preaches the gospel. Holy Spirit falls on the Gentiles. They're saved, they're baptized into the people of God.

28:54And Peter's takeaway from this vision is that God and making these unclean foods clean was providing a picture of how unclean Gentiles would be included into the holy people of God. Not by the meeting some external requirement of the law, some food restriction, but by fearing God and believing the gospel in their hearts. And Jesus is radically insinuating in our text that food does not make someone unclean. In fact, in this same account, in Mark's gospel, mark will explain with a little parent parenthetical comment saying, thus Jesus declared all foods clean. And again, by making all foods clean, Jesus is pointing to the fact that the Gentiles are to be included in among the people of God.

29:44And we're gonna see this next week as Jesus recognizes a Canaanite woman's faith as genuine. So we look forward to seeing that unfold. But Jesus here is the better interpreter of the law. He's the fulfillment of the old covenant. And he's saying a man is not defiled. He's not made him pure or unclean by what enters his mouth. So then we ask, what does defile a person look at? Verse 18, Jesus explains, but what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart? And this defiles a person, Jesus is saying loud and clear. You are not defiled by external factors. You are not what you eat. Rather you are defiled by what comes out of you and what comes out of you.

30:31Find its source in the heart. Your heart defiles you, your purity before God does not hinge on ad adherence to external rituals. It hinges ultimately on your internal passions. But don't think Jesus doesn't really care then about what we do with our bodies and our hands as long as our hearts are pure. This is not a heart versus hands thing, it's a heart into hands thing Jesus is highlighting here, the directional flow of the defilement. Defilement does not happen from the outside in, but from the inside out. This is why he goes on in verse 19 to say, for out of the heart, come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness slander.

31:26These are what defile a person. Jesus is concerned about what people produce on the outside, but these things don't defile a man, they prove a man is already defiled. Jesus is insisting that true religion, true worship, mu must first deal with the internal nature of a man for from his heart flow, all other things. And so with this, Jesus finally gets back to the original issue of handwashing. Took a long detour here, but we look at the end of verse 20 circles back and he says, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone. It is the heart, not the hands that defile a man. And when we begin to focus more on the external forms of religion than on the inward state of our hearts before God, we become susceptible to the subtle temptations of hypocrisy and legalism.

32:23We can be lured into invalidating the word of God for the sake of our manmade traditions. I wanna move us into application here, and I just wanna start by giving a little bit of a warning. The temptation, even as we talk about hypocrisy and legalism, is to begin to point fingers at others who we think are being hypocrites or others who are laying the burden of manmade laws on our backs. But even that inclination resembles the Pharisees who come to Jesus pointing fingers at the disciples saying, why do they break tradition? So what I'd encourage you this morning is to just allow this text to work on you.

33:09This is a hard and challenging word from Jesus, and I just want us to examine ourselves by it rather than use it to identify the hypocrites out there. And so I have three applications for you. First be honest before God. Jesus's overarching emphasis is the heart who can see your heart. I can't see your heart person sitting next to you. Can't see your heart. God sees it. And so I encourage you, be honest before the Lord, as you examine your heart this morning, ask yourself, am I pretending? Do I act one way on the outside to gain the approval of men while my heart is far from God? Do I pretend to praise God to get praise from men?

33:59A lot of us here at the North Church, we live in this Christian bubble, this, these are people. This is our community and we spend a lot of time in this place and in these circles, and we know what each other likes and what each other approves of and what makes others think well of us. But we must check our hearts that we might not use the things of God to get glory for ourselves. Second, application, guard yourself of legalism. The Pharisees problem was that they had developed their own system, code of conduct, so to speak, uh, an interpretation of scripture that had a higher authority in their lives than God's actual word.

34:41But what's important to be aware of is that our manmade wisdom principles can have a tendency to slowly morph into legislation that we hold over ourselves and over others as if it was divine. And we must work really hard to be a Bible people, okay? Who consistently hold our own standards up to the standards of scripture. And we seek to reform our own traditions to accord increasingly with God's word, his revelation. But at its at its core, Jesus is showing us that legalism is a heart issue, right? Legalism seeks to turn worship into something we do for God to gain his favor. It is yet another attempt by our hearts to try to grab power and control and manipulate.

35:31But true worship, worship from the heart is a recognition of our own insufficiency, and it's merely a response to the all sufficient grace of God. Which brings me to the final application, which is let us go to Christ for heart cleansing. And you may have noticed that this text really doesn't find a positive resolution, okay? Jesus just kind of ends with, uh, the heart defiles a person. And we're just sort of left thinking what actually purifies a heart. I mean, we're thinking of Jeremiah 17. The heart is deceitful above all things. It's desperately sick. And we're just wondering if the human heart indeed is defiled and that's what defiles us, then how do we cleanse it so that we might not be worship frauds?

36:23And the answer I think is very simple. If you are seeing the hypocrisy of your own heart, whether it's for a lifetime or for a moment, if you've fallen to pretend praise, repent and ask Christ to give you a heart of genuine worship, revel in him. Revel in his mercy, which is standing by ready again of fresh this morning. You can't conjure up this genuine worship. You can't make yourself love him. But Jesus can do this in you. He can do this hard work through his word and through his spirit, both initially through salvation and in an ongoing sanctifying way as he recenters our attention towards him.

37:06Earlier in the sermon I mentioned that by fulfilling the Old Testament dietary restrictions, Jesus ushers in the new covenant, he has fulfilled the external rituals of the law. And he now writes the law on your hearts. This is how the prophets Ezekiel and Jeremiah spoke of the new Covenant Day. On that day, God would give his people new clean hearts from the greatest to the least. He would forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more. And so if you're trusting holy in Christ today and not in the external works of the flesh, Christ has accomplished this for you by his death, by his resurrection, and his law is now written on your hearts.

37:47It's not being pressed onto you from the outside begging for your external conformity. You've already been transformed. And now obedience and worship just can freely flow out of the wellspring of God's heart work in you. So may we again and again return to this disposition, brothers and sisters, a heart of worship. May we drop our masks on the floor, leave them out at the door. Stop performing before men recognize our own insufficiency and worship Christ for His all sufficient grace that we may carry out our worship all for him, not for us. Let's pray together, not to us Lord, not to us, but to your name.

38:38Be glory. We plead with the psalmist. Create in me a clean heart, oh God, renew a right spirit within me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation. It's all about you, Jesus. Would you make us all about you? Jesus, from the heart? We ask in His name. Amen.

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Sermon Text

Matthew 15:1-20

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