More Confrontation with the Pharisees

In one paragraph

Pastor Ray walked through Matthew 15 and Mark 7, where the Pharisees confront Jesus about his disciples eating with unwashed hands. The sermon traced the back-and-forth between Jesus and his opponents, working through a long list of sins Jesus says actually defile a person, all of them sourced in the heart rather than in outward ritual. The service closed with communion. The confrontation starts...

Read together

1. John 7 opening context for the passage, after these things following John 6
2. Matthew 15:1-20 primary text for the sermon, confrontation with Pharisees over hand washing and what defiles a person
3. Mark 7:1-23 Mark's version of the same story, read through toward the end of the sermon
4. Isaiah 29:13 quoted by Jesus against the Pharisees: this people honors me with their lips but their heart is far away from me
5. Matthew 13:24-43 the parable of the wheat and tares, referenced when Jesus says every plant my Father did not plant will be uprooted
6. Luke 6:45 a good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks
7. Matthew 12:34 you brood of vipers, out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks, said to the Pharisees
8. Acts 10 Peter at the house of Cornelius, where all foods were declared clean
9. 1 Corinthians 11:23-25 on the night Jesus was betrayed he broke bread and took the cup, quoted during communion

Talk about it

1. Pastor Ray pointed out that the Pharisees were more concerned with keeping their own traditions than with keeping God's commandments, using the Corban example. Have you ever seen a church tradition or personal religious habit quietly take priority over what God actually asks of us? What did that look like?
2. Jesus told the disciples to leave the Pharisees alone, comparing them to blind guides leading the blind. When you encounter self-righteous or misguided religious behavior in others, how do you decide whether to speak up or to let it go?
3. Pastor Ray read through a long list of things Jesus said come out of the heart and defile a person, from evil thoughts and murder to deceit, envy, and pride. Which items on that list surprised you most as things Jesus named, and why?
4. Pastor Ray described blasphemy as switching right for wrong and wrong for right, calling what God disapproves right and exchanging the truth of God for a lie. Where do you see that pattern showing up, and how do you hold your ground on it without becoming the kind of proud, hard-hearted person Jesus was rebuking in this passage?
5. At the end of the sermon, Pastor Ray said that if you listened to that whole list and did not see yourself anywhere in it, you should not take communion. What does it do to you personally to sit with the idea that all of those things come from within your own heart, not from outside you?