June 20
From the desk of Pastor Ben

Great Faith Is Rightly Directed

“Son of David; my daughter is cruelly demon-possessed.” (Matthew 15:22b)

When poet John Greenleaf Whittier wrote, “The steps of faith fall on the seeming void and find the rock beneath,” he proved himself to be a better poet than theologian. Whittier’s kind of faith shows it does not understand that great faith — the genuine variety — must focus on the right object. Whittier’s faith is basically faith in faith — in other words, no faith at all.

For faith to have real power, and thus be great faith, it must be like the Canaanite woman’s and rest on a trustworthy object, namely the Lord, the Son of David. Even though she was a Gentile, she reverently addressed Jesus as her sovereign and all-powerful Lord. Her approach to Christ followed the same worshipful and trusting attitude of the leper who met Jesus after the Sermon on the Mount “and bowed down before Him, and said, ‘Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean’” (Matthew 8:2).

Compared to the irreverent treatment the Jewish leaders gave Jesus, He must have been encouraged by this Gentile woman’s respect and submission. And she came with that attitude in spite of not fully grasping the significance of Jesus’ lordship and messiah-ship.

The woman loved her daughter more than herself, and when the girl became demon-possessed, the woman came to the only source of help she believed to be adequate. By appealing to our Lord, she renounced her pagan religion, culture, and family and affirmed His superiority over those things. As the believers at Thessalonica did, she “turned to God from idols to serve a living and true God”
(1 Thessalonians 1:9).

Ask Yourself:
Do you know someone closely who makes his spiritual appeals in heaven’s general direction, but not to the One who made heaven and earth? Make their condition a matter of specific prayer, and ask God for opportunities to encourage them in setting their faith on the right course.

From the desk of Pastor Ben

Great Faith Is Repentant

A Canaanite woman from that region came out and began to cry out, saying, “Have mercy on me, Lord.”         (Matthew 15:22a)

This woman’s faith was certainly great, not because it was stronger or better than the faith of those Jews who believed in Jesus, but because it derived from so little light. Her faith turned her away from pagan idolatry and immorality and toward God, which is the essence of repentance. The woman’s plea to Jesus, rather than being a demand, is further demonstration of her repentant attitude and acknowledgement that she was unworthy of His gracious mercy.

God declared Himself to the Israelites as “compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin” (Exodus 34:6-7a).

Saving faith always involves repentance that derives from a deep and earnest sense of unworthiness and spiritual inability. Charles Spurgeon wrote:

“Repentance is the inseparable companion of faith. All the while that we walk by faith and not by sight, the tear of repentance glitters in the eye of faith. That is not true repentance which does not come of faith in Jesus, and that is not true faith in Jesus which does not come by repentance. . . . Faith and repentance are but two spokes in the same wheel, two handles of the same plow. Repentance has been well described as a heart broken for sin and from sin, and it may equally well be spoken of as turning and returning.”

Ask Yourself:
How have you experienced the mercy of God, not only in salvation but also in the regular workings of life? Looking back, where would you be if not for His mercy reaching down to give you hope and a future? Worship Him today for this undeserved gift, still active and in force.

June 18
From the desk of Pastor Ben

The Defilement Principle Described

“For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts,  false witness, slanders. These are the things which defile the man; but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile the man.”         (Matthew 15:19-20)

Jesus here continues using the figure of eating to explain the principle of defilement. In the gospel of Mark, Jesus adds that food “does not go into man’s heart” (Mark 7:19). Food and drink are only physical, so they can effect only the physical. They can’t defile the inner person, represented by the heart, because the physical and spiritual are qualitatively different — of different realms. Outward ceremonial practices can’t cleanse a person spiritually; neither can failure to observe them defile a person spiritually. All the ceremonially clean sings, prescribed sacrifices, and special observances in the Old Testament never did more than picture spiritual cleansing.

Jesus rightly observes that the heart represents the inner person — his or her thoughts, attitudes, desires, loyalties, and motives. Therefore, what defiles is heart attitudes, like “evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders.” A person commits sin when he wants to, whether or not he ever actually carries it out in action — and therefore he is defiled in God’s sight. Paul writes this: “To the pure, all things are pure; but to those who are defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure, but both their mind and their conscience are defiled. They profess to know God, but by their deeds they deny Him” (Titus 1:15-16a).

The things that defile us come from an unclean see heart, not from hands that might be unwashed. Therefore we always need the Lord and His Spirit to cleanse our hearts. When we have a pure heart — undefined inside — we will see God (Matthew 5:8).

Ask Yourself:
Part of what causes sin to keep coming out of us is that we allow our minds to dwell on things that foster it. What is God calling you to radically eliminate from your life in order to cut off much of sin’s supply to your heart?

From the desk of Pastor Ben

Hypocrisy and Defilement

But He answered and said, “Every plant which My Heavenly Father did not plant shall be uprooted. Let the alone; they are blind guides of the blind. And if a blind man guides a blind man, both will fall into a pit.”         (Matthew 15:13-14)

Our Lord’s most frequent charge against the Jewish leaders concerned their hypocrisy, a sin that was so reprehensible and removed them so far from His kingdom that He told His disciples, “Let them alone.” In other words, Jesus was saying, “Stay away from them and have nothing to do with them.” That command echoed God’s statement about the idolatrous Ephraim: “Let him alone” (Hosea 4:17) — words that signified abandonment to divine judgment.

It is dangerous to hang around anyone resolutely opposed to the gospel. Even witnessing to them must happen with the utmost of caution, as it were “snatching them out of the fire” (Jude 23) and being careful not to become contaminated in the process. Christians should not even listen to “the opposing arguments of what is falsely called knowledge” (1 Timothy 6:20).

Jesus did not even waste His time debating the scribes and Pharisees. Whenever he responded to or confronted them, He simply corrected their doctrinal errors and condemned their spiritual and moral wickedness.

Believers must not engage or confront the severest of hypocrites trying to weed out of the church those who seem to be weeds. Our discernment is imperfect and could inadvertently uproot some good plants (believers) with the bad (hypocrites) (Matthew 13:29). We should not want to take ultimate judgment into our own hands, because we are not qualified and the time is not at hand. God’s truth will eventually expose hypocrites.

Ask Yourself:
It may go against our compassionate sides to hear Jesus speaking in this way, but what is the wisdom behind taking this cautious approach toward those who hold such disdain and hatred for the gospel? Why is this a better way to show ultimate compassion toward those who are spiritually resistant?

From the desk of Pastor Ben

The Principle of Spiritual Defilement – Part 2

After Jesus called the crowd to Him, He said to them, “Hear and understand. It is not what enters into the mouth that defiles the man, but what proceeds out of the mouth, this defiles the man.”        (Matthew 15:10-11)

Keeping ritual and tradition demands no repentance and fleeing from sin; rather, it permits people to flaunt religious symbols while holding on to their sins. Tradition involves style over substance, places works ahead of faith, and ends up being empty and hypocritical.

The Jews and their leaders not only failed to embrace the spiritual truths represented by ritual, but they added hundreds, may be thousands more rituals and traditions. The more these representations multiplied, the more people trusted in them and the less they trusted in God. So, when Jesus came among His countrymen, they were so entangled with their understandings of defilement and morality and so far from Scriptural reality that they crucified Him.

Even Jewish believers in the early church had a lot of difficulty in forsaking their former mindset concerning traditions and what was clean and unclean. Peter needed a divine vision, repeated 3 times, and a special demonstration of the Spirit’s power to convince him that all foods and people are accepted by God (Acts 10:1-33). Paul gives us a fitting summary:    “If you have died with Christ . . .why, as if you were living in the world, do you submit yourself to decrees, such as, ‘Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch!” . . .in accordance with the commandments and teachings of men? These are matters which have, to be sure, the appearance of wisdom in self-made religion . . .but are of no value against fleshly indulgence.” (Colossians 2:20-23)

Ask Yourself:
What have you noticed about those who treat their religious practices with superstitious caution, as though they were good-luck charms meant to ward off any harm that might come their way? What do they misunderstand most about God by exercising their faith in this way?

From the desk of Pastor Ben

The Principle of Spiritual Defilement – Part 1

After Jesus called the crowd to Him, He said to them, “Hear  and understand. It is not what enters into the mouth that defiles the man, but what proceeds out of the mouth, this defiles the man.”         (Matthew 15:10-11)

As He had done previously, Jesus based this illustration on His hearers’ everyday experiences. Spiritual defilement concerns what’s on the inside, not the outside. That’s why Jesus told the people — and He tells us — that no spiritual defilement results from what a person eats. Hand washing before eating has nothing to do with making us morally undefined. The crucial thing is the sinful heart, which eventually sends evil out of the mouth to defile the person.

Jesus’ words should not have shocked His Jewish audience. Like the Sermon on the Mount, these were not new truths but simply reinforcements of what the Word always taught. Likely, almost everyone in the crowd knew the story of God’s choosing David to replace Saul as Israel’s king. As Samuel considered all of Jesse’s sons, he thought Eliab, the oldest, would surely be the new king. But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look at his appearance or at the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7).

Jesus is concerned with what a person thinks and does, not just what they say. He simply echoes here the principles God declared to Moses: “What does the Lord your God require from you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways and love Him, and to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. . . . So circumcise your heart” (Deuteronomy 10:12, 16).

Ask Yourself:
As you gauge the condition of your heart, what pleases you? We’re often asked to be honest about our sin, to admit its presence and defilement. And we do. But what are the areas where Christ is indeed purifying you, gaining victory over long-held positions of sin and resistance?

From the desk of Pastor Ben

Jesus Condemns Unbiblical Tradition

You hypocrites, rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you: “This people honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far away from Me. But in vain do they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.”     (Matthew15:7-9)

Righteously indignant at the Jews’ foolish adherence to traditions, Jesus compared those leaders to the hypocrites of Isaiah’s day (see Isaiah 29:13). And what identifies those hypocrites certainly applies to those of today.

Satan has no greater allies than hypocrites disguised as God’s people. And those false disciples have no greater ally than human tradition, because they can follow it mindlessly, without any real conviction, sincerity, or integrity. Traditions require no faith, trust, or dependence on God. Furthermore, they appeal to the pride and self-righteousness of the flesh.

Because of the nature of earthly religious traditions, people can easily substitute them for genuine worship and obedience. Therefore it becomes easy for people to give mere lip service to God while their rituals and ceremonies take them further from Him.

We can worship God in spirit and in truth (John 4:24) only if we have hearts cleansed from sin and made righteous by Him. God has always offered such hearts to all who repent and trust Him: “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you, and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances” (Ezekiel 36:26-27). Unless that transformation occurs for you, your righteousness will not exceed the superficial righteousness of the Jewish leaders, and you won’t enter God’s kingdom (Matthew 5:20).

Ask Yourself:
Pray today that God would expose any hypocrisy that has been able to go undetected in your life, having become so ingrained and routine. Want nothing other than full, grateful, generous devotion to the Lord Jesus Christ, letting His righteousness flow from your submitted heart.

From the desk of Pastor Ben

Confrontation Over Tradition

Then some Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, “Why do Your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat bread.”         (Matthew 15:1-2)

The Jewish leaders who confronted Jesus did not hide the fact that they considered His offense to be against “the tradition of the elders” rather than God’s law. For them, such human tradition was actually superior to Scripture as a reliable guide to God’s will and purpose. It was not, but in the very same way, a lot of different church groups have long looked to church dogma & teachings of their denomination to interpret Scripture, and they trust those things more than they do the Bible.

Sadly, the unconverted rabbis (“elders”) efforts to use traditions to protect the law, actually undermined it. Instead of pointing the people to true worship from pure hearts, the rabbis led them to serve God by human means from unchanged hearts. Scripture became hidden behind a wall of tradition and thus was obscured and distorted rather than clarified and applied toward righteous ends.

Christ and the apostles did not adhere to the many man-made Jewish traditions, and the one here about washing hands was just representative of many that could have been cited. Washing their hands had nothing to do with personal hygiene but instead, referred to ceremonial washing. God had instituted such washings as part of the covenant with Moses, but such ceremonies were never to be more than outward examples of inward spiritual truths. God’s Word never elevated them as having any merit or blessing in themselves. Instead, the Word itself always has priority in teaching us the truths of salvation, practical holiness, and obedience to the Lord’s commands.

Ask Yourself:
What are our reasons for engaging in outward practices that have no effect on our hearts or lifestyle? How empty does it feel when Christian worship or service becomes little more than going through the motions? How does God desire to rescue us from that?

From the desk of Pastor Ben

Jesus The Compassionate Healer

“When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret. And when the men of that place recognized Him, they sent word into all that surrounding district and brought to Him all who were sick; and they implored Him that they might just touch the fringe of His cloak; and as many as touched it were cured.”
                            (Matthew 14:34-36)

Jesus and the disciples probably intended to spend considerable time just by themselves in the beautiful, agricultural area of Gennesaret. But the people of that area sidetracked their plans by bringing many of their sick to Jesus. Obviously, there were still many with afflictions in that vicinity, even though the Lord had healed many before.

Confidence in Jesus’ miracle powers was now so high that “they implored him that they might just touch the fringe of His cloak.” Because such a touch healed the woman with the bleeding (Matthew 9:20), people who heard about it assumed anyone could be healed in exactly the same way. Whatever the case, the Lord had compassion on the crowds and honored the expressions of faith by healing everyone who touched His cloak.

As many people today who look to God only for their selfish needs and desires, most of the crowds wanted little to do with Jesus after the healings. It grieved Jesus that they wanted nothing more from Him than physical blessings. But because they didn’t want a full spiritual meal, He still gave them pieces of bread. Even though they cared nothing for spiritual help, Jesus nevertheless granted them physical healings. In the face of the people’s ungrateful self-centeredness and superficiality, the Lord still graciously showed them the compassionate heart of God.

Ask Yourself:
What are some of the common graces God showers on even those who want nothing of His salvation or simply ignore the fact that He is present around them? Why would God continue to extend life and blessing to those who reject or belittle His impact on their lives?

From the desk of Pastor Ben

Right Reaction of the Twelve

Jesus said to the twelve, “You do not want to go away also, do you?” Simon Peter answered Him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life. We have believed and have come to know that You are the Holy One of God.”
                                (John 6:67-69)

The false disciples’ defection from Jesus, was an opportunity for Jesus to contrast that with the Twelve’s faith. Peter here, as many other times, acted as their spokesman (John 13:36-37; Matthew 14:28; Mark 11:21; Luke 5:8). His declaration of faith reminds us of his notable confession of Jesus as the Messiah: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16). Whereas the crowd wanted to accept Jesus only as some sort of second Moses who could supply the people’s material needs, the apostles believed in the true Messiah and Savior from sin. Whom else could they turn to, because only He has (and has) the “words of eternal life” (John 6:63)?

After Jesus dismissed Judas Iscariot the night of the Last Supper, He told the other 11 of their being chosen for salvation: “You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give to you” (John 15:16). Christ’s sovereign choice of the apostles — to salvation and to being apostles — showed them that any pride they may have had was ring.

Peter’s wonderful affirmation in this passage contains 2 expressions of authentic disciples: saving faith (“we have believed”) and faithfulness (“Lord, to whom shall we go?”). The initial faith of such disciples always results in ongoing commitment and loyalty to Jesus Christ.

Ask Yourself:
Where else have you gone at times, hoping to find something more exciting and satisfying than you’ve found Christ to be? Why, after so many failed attempts to get our needs met, do we feel the need to keep searching? Only Jesus is sure to be enough for us.