Inside operation

Matthew 15:12 says, Then came his disciples, and said unto him, Knowest thou that the Pharisees were offended, after they heard this saying?

Jordan explains, “They’re saying to Christ, ‘You offended them!’ I love that! Hah! They got offended and they didn’t like to hear what He said. You know what He said? He said, ‘You see these birds out here, these religious leaders, the thing that’s wrong with them is they’ve got a wicked heart.’

“You know why that offended them. In verse 18 you see that list of things He’s giving you there? If you compare the things the Pharisees were doing in Mathew, Mark, Luke and John, you’ll see that Jesus Christ was reading their mind to them, because every one of those things you can find the Pharisee guilty of.

“Somebody said, ‘Where sin is cherished, truth is never relished.’ So they got all bent out of shape and He answered and said, ‘Every plant, which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up.
[14] Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.

“In other words, don’t worry about those religious leaders out there. God’s going to remove them. He’s going to root them up, take the kingdom from them and give it to the little flock.

“He’s saying, the nation is just blind out there, and if the blind lead the blind, both fall into the ditch. Proverbs 23:27 identifies the ditch: ‘For a whore is a deep ditch; and a strange woman is a narrow pit.
[28] She also lieth in wait as for a prey, and increaseth the transgressors among men.’

“Now you study the Book of Proverbs you’ll find out something real quick about that strange woman and that whore. Proverbs is not simply talking about some streetwalker down in the red light district. The strange woman and the whore he’s talking about has a spiritual connotation. That’s the lady of Revelation 17: ‘And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.’

“That’s the great strange woman and it’s the religious system of Baal worship. What He’s saying in Matthew 15 is, ‘Just don’t worry about those guys. God’s going to root them up, take the kingdom from them, give it to the little flock, and they’re all just going to go right on out there into that Antichrist religion that will take them right on into the tribulation and get them destroyed.’

“Religious tradition today will lead you to the same place. Religious tradition always amalgamates its participants with the religious system of the world, which is human viewpoint and tradition bound to Word of God, destroying the profit of the Word of God, and binding and seducing and deceiving followers into thinking they’re pleasing God by the tradition of their fathers.

“Verse 15-16 says, ‘Then answered Peter and said unto him, Declare unto us this parable. And Jesus said, Are ye also yet without understanding?’

“ ‘I mean, Pete, can’t you get anything straight?’ Where do you see back in verses 1-13 Jesus told them a parable?  You see a parable anywhere in there? There isn’t one. Peter thought he was speaking figuratively in a parable and He wasn’t. It’s literal! It’s real! It’s really the thing inside.

“Matthew 15 goes on, Do not ye yet understand, that whatsoever entereth in at the mouth goeth into the belly, and is cast out into the draught?
[18] But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man.
[19] For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies:
[20] These are the things which defile a man: but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man.

“He’s saying, ‘Don’t you see those things aren’t the problem? What’s the problem? Those things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart. They defile a man for out of the heart.’

“That passage’s the greatest statement in the Bible on the definition of human depravity.

“The problem is inherited, it’s from within and the reason that you’re a sinner is not that your mouth talks bad or your hands go do bad things; it’s because you’ve got a nature that produces that. And those things come from within you. They come naturally. You never had to have somebody teach you how to lie, did you?

“Now most every wicked thing you ever learned you learned from somebody just a little older from you, didn’t you? That’s the way the world operates. When a young man learns something wicked, he learns it from somebody just a little older than him. That’s why you have to be careful and guard your companion, and guard your associates. Because that’s the way the system operates. But you know something folks, they didn’t have to put the desire there; what they do is fine-tune your efforts a little bit, don’t they?

“By the way, that’s offensive to hear, isn’t it? In verse 12 it was offensive to the Pharisees. Do you know something folks, we live in a day where there’s one element to preaching that the average Christian can’t stand. It’s confrontational preaching. Preaching that confronts you with sin and wrong and righteousness and duty and when Paul says, ‘who we preach, warning every man,’ that word warning means to confront somebody with bad behavior with a view of changing their conduct and behavior.

“When you teach and admonish, that’s to counsel somebody with a view of changing their behavior toward what’s right and that’s an element that the human nature doesn’t want to hear. You don’t want a rebuke; the reprove.

“And the missing element in most preaching today in Bible-believing churches is that confrontational element that care-fronts you with the truth and with error and with sin and says, “That’s wrong! God forbid!’ You know who it offends? The old man. Your new man never got mad at it. He sits there and says, ‘Amen, brother! Amen!’ It’s the old man that wants to run things.

“The church at large walks in the flesh and that’s what’s you’re going to get. That’s what was happening in Matthew 15, and what you see in that passage is the nature, the basis, the reason for the opposition and rejection of Christ.

“The reason Israel rejected Christ was heart trouble. She had an evil, wicked heart of unbelief, and regardless of the testimony raised before her, she was not going to believe. That’s what the problem was. Bound by that wicked heart of unbelief.”