Today's Devotion

Monday, October 20, 2025 - Matt 15:1-20

In the name of + Jesus. Amen.

Now that Jesus has fulfilled the Old Covenant, He is establishing the New. The rules designed to separate Jews and Gentiles are no longer useful to the kingdom, as the New Covenant no longer places a barrier between nations. The prohibitions between “clean” and “unclean” in matters of food and people have reached their end in Christ. It is not an “end” in the sense of abolition, but an “end” as in fulfillment, in the end goal. For the laws of separation were needed when the chosen people were only the children of Israel (Jacob). But now, the children of Israel are all who confess the God of Israel who has come to earth to redeem all nations and bind them into a New Israel: the church.

The Pharisees have gone beyond the “commandment of God” of the Old Covenant, adding “traditions of men” to their own distorted parody of it. They created new rules for the sake of keeping them, and relaxed old laws for the sake of skirting them. And they claimed divine authority to impose them, and held others in contempt who did not keep them, or even know about them.

But Jesus really does have divine authority, and He uses it. Gone is the phony handwashing ritual made up by the Pharisees – whom Jesus calls “blind guides.” Gone are the Old Testament regulations concerning unclean foods. For what truly makes a man unclean is what “comes out of the mouth,” for what “proceeds from the heart” is what “defiles a person.”

What makes us unclean is not the eating of shrimp or bacon, but rather “evil thoughts, murder, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.” Notice that Jesus is loosely – but not slavishly – reciting the Ten Commandments. These are not Pharisaical rules to examine for loopholes; these are God’s uncompromising Word that is there to show us our sin: sin that Jesus came to atone for at the cross.

For no amount of handwashing can cleanse away sin. But the blood of Christ does. And it is given to us in baptism – not as mere washing “but the Word of God in and with the water… along with the faith which trusts this Word of God in the water.” To embrace the sins which the Ten Commandments prohibit, to despise the Word of God and the means by which Jesus comes to us, is what defiles us. “But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone.”

As usual, “the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying.” For they were more interested in “traditions of men” that they could create, change, and abolish by their own authority than to submit to “the commandment of God,” which not only shows us our sin, but more importantly, takes away our sin by Christ’s Word and authority.

Amen.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.