Mt. 15:10-20 “Will Smoking & Drinking Send You to Hell?”

Translation & Sermon by Nate Wilson for Christ The Redeemer Church, Manhattan KS, 23 Sept 2012

Translation

15:10 Then after summoning the crowd, He said to them, “Keep listening and understanding.

15:11 It is not the things which are entering into the mouth that profane the man, but rather the things proceeding out from the mouth; these profane the man.”

15:12 Then His disciples approached and said to Him, “Do you realize that when the Pharisees heard your word, they were scandalized?”

15:13 Then He, in answer, said, “Every plant which my Heavenly Father did not plant will be rooted out.

15:14 Leave them! Blind men are being trail-guides for blind men, but if a blind man guides a blind man, both will fall into a hole.”

15:15 Then in reply, Peter said to him, “Explain this parable to us.”

15:16 But Jesus said, “Are you yourselves also without understanding at this point?

15:17 Haven’t y’all figured out that everything that makes its way into the mouth makes room in the belly, then is expelled into a toilet?

15:18 But the things that make their way out of the mouth come out of the heart, and those things profane the man.

15:19 For out of the heart come evil rationalizations, murders, adulterous affairs, sexual immoralities, thefts, false testimonies, [and] blasphemy; 15:20 the things that profane the man are these. But to eat with unwashed hands does not profane the man.”

Introduction: “Good people don’t drink”

A couple of years ago my family invited some neighbors over for supper. They way they dressed and talked and the kinds of entertainment they engaged in were kinda different from us, so we were a little nervous as to whether we could make them comfortable in our home, but we really wanted to try and be good hosts. We made pizza and salad and bought Cokes to go with the meal, but after our neighbors arrived, it occurred to me that a lot of people like beer with their pizza.

 

When I was a teenager, I ran the Pizza Inn at Panama City Beach, Florida, over lunch hours one summer, and this neighbor reminded me a lot of the guys that would come in to the Pizza Inn for lunch, find out that I was too young to serve them beer with their pizza, and walk out in a huff to find another restaurant. So, in an effort to make our neighbors more comfortable as guests, I apologized that I didn’t have any beer to serve them, and I told them that if they liked beer with their pizza, they would be welcome to bring a beer over from their house. I must have read them wrong because they gave me a horrified look and said something like, “Oh no, we’re not like that; we’re good people, we don’t drink alcohol!” So that was a relief; they would be fine with our Cokes.

 

After a while, the woman disappeared and the guy asked for a bowl. When we brought him the bowl, he spit some brown stuff into it and produced a pack of chewing tobacco from his pocket. The wife came in the front door with a faint aroma of cigarette smoke. Apparently good people could smoke and chew, but they couldn’t drink beer! We grew to love these neighbors and we miss them now that they’ve moved away, but we still chuckle about that first evening together, and I suspect they do too.

 

Now, I don’t mean to imply that my neighbors were the same as the Pharisees, but they may have been influenced by religious teachers who were like the Pharisees. As you may remember from the first half of chapter 15, the Pharisees taught that their ceremonial tradition of rinsing hands before every meal was necessary to be right with God, even though it wasn’t in the Bible. They believed that if you didn’t wash your hands the right way before every meal, you deserved to die. Meanwhile, they had another tradition that you could verbally dedicate all you owned to God, and then you could keep using your things as your own, but you would be exempt from ever having to give to a family member in need. The handwashing ceremony was harmless, but the corban tradition was actually harmful to families. Furthermore, both traditions were actually idolatrous, because they elevated a rule made by a human being to the level of the commandments of God, as though some rabbi from a few thousand years ago could make up new rules about who goes to heaven and who goes to hell. This is the context in which Jesus offered this further teaching in vs.10-20:

Exposition

15:10 Then after summoning the crowd [multitude], He said to them, “Keep listening and understanding.

Και προσκαλεσαμενος τον οχλον ειπεν αυτοις Ακουετε και συνιετε

 

15:11 It is not the things which are entering into the mouth that profane the man, but rather the things proceeding out from the mouth; these profane the man.”

ου το εισερχομενον εις το στομα κοινοι τον ανθρωπον αλλα το εκπορευομενον εκ του στοματος τουτο κοινοι τον ανθρωπον

 

15:12 Then HisKJV disciples approached and said to Him, “Do you realize that when the Pharisees heard your [sayingKJV, statementNAS] wordlit, they were [shockedGoodspeed] scandalized?”

Τοτε προσελθοντες ‘οι μαθηται [αυτου[1]] ειπον[2] αυτω Οιδας ‘οτι ‘οι Φαρισαιοι ακουσαντες τον λογον εσκανδαλισθησαν;

 

15:13 Then He, in answer, said, “Every plant which my Heavenly Father did not plant will be rooted out [uprootedNAS].

‘Ο δε αποκριθεις ειπεν Πασα φυτεια ‘ην ουκ εφυτευσεν ‘ο πατηρ μου ‘ο ουρανιος εκριζωθησεται

 

15:14 Leave them! Blind men are being trail-guides for blind men, but if a blind man guides a blind man, both will fall into a hole.

αφετε αυτους ‘οδηγοι εισιν τυφλοι τυφλων-א,B τυφλος δε τυφλον εαν ‘οδηγη αμφοτεροι εις βοθυνον πεσουνται[4]

 

15:15 Then in reply, Peter said to him, “Explain [interpretEarle] this parable to us.”

Αποκριθεις δε ‘ο Πετρος ειπεν αυτω Φρασον[5] ‘ημιν την παραβολην [ταυτην[6]]

15:16 But Jesus said, “Are you yourselves also without understanding [yetKJV/stillNAS,NIV] at this point?

‘Ο δε [Ιησους[7]] ειπεν Ακμην[8] και ‘υμεις ασυνετοι εστε

 

15:17 Haven’t y’all figured out that everything that makes its way into the mouth makes room in the belly[9], then is expelled into a toilet[10]?

ου[πω[11]] νοειτε ‘οτι παν το εισπορευομενον εις το στομα εις την κοιλιαν χωρει και εις αφεδρωνα εκβαλλεται;

 

15:18 But the things that make their way out of the mouth come out of the heart, and those things profane the man.

τα δε εκπορευομενα εκ του στοματος εκ της καρδιας εξερχεται κακεινα[13] κοινοι τον ανθρωπον

 

15:19 For out of the heart come evil rationalizations, murders, adulterous affairs, sexual immoralities [fornicationsKJV], thefts, false testimonies, [and] blasphemy;

εκ γαρ της καρδιας[14] εξερχονται διαλογισμοι πονηροι φονοι μοιχειαι πορνειαι κλοπαι ψευδομαρτυριαι βλασφημιαι

 

15:20 the things that profane the man are these. But to eat with unwashed hands does not profane the man.”

ταυτα εστιν τα κοινουντα τον ανθρωπον το δε ανιπτοις χερσιν φαγειν ου κοινοι τον ανθρωπον

Conclusion

 


[1] Not in א, B, D, Θ, f13, but in Byzantine, Majority, Vulgate, Syraic, and Textus Receptus, following C, L, W and f1. It doesn’t change the meaning, since the context already indicates that these are Jesus’ disciples, and the definite article in front of “disciples” can carry the force of the genitive pronoun.

[2] B, D, Θ, f1, and f13 read this verb in the Present tense (λεγουσιν) instead of Aorist, which doesn’t make a difference since proper English does not have the convention that Greek does of allowing verbs in a historical account to be rendered in Present tense for vividness, even though it happened in the past.

[3] This might also be an oblique reference to the Parable of the Mustard Seed via Ezekiel’s Parable of the Cedar Tree and the Two Eagles: “and I will hang it on a lofty mountain of Israel: yea, I will plant it, and it shall put forth shoots, and shall bear fruit, and it shall be a great cedar: and every bird shall rest beneath it, even every fowl shall rest under its shadow: its branches shall be restored.” (Ezek. 17:23, Brenton)

[4] D, W, and Φ add the prefix “εμ-” to this verb, and Θ and f13 add the definite article ton to the preceding noun bothunon. The editors of the Byz., TR., and Critical texts have chosen to ignore these as aberrations, although they do not change the meaning.

[5] Only here and Job 6:24, and Job 12:8.

[6] Omitted in א, B, f1. Critical texts are divided over whether or not to include it. As in footnote #1, it is not necessary for the same reasons.

[7] Jesus’ name is not explicit in א, B, D, and Z, so it is not in the Critical editions and not in the Vulgate. It is implied by the context and is explicit in the Byz, Maj, and TR editions.

[8] Only here and in the apocryphal account of Esther 5:1. We get the word acme from it; it is a critical “point” in time or location or thought.

[9] Because the Greek word kolian is used for both stomach (as in Jonah in the fish’s belly 12:40) as well as a woman’s womb (19:12), I’ve chosen the English word “belly” which can also mean both things. I’ve also chosen to translate chorei more literally as “take up space/make room;” it makes for an interesting word picture when Jesus uses the same word later in Matthew 19:11-12 regarding “making room” for His word in our hearts.

[10] This Greek word literally means a secluded place where one sits. The only other NT reference is the parallel passage in Mark 7:19. It is found in the LXX only in Lev_12:2-5; Lev_15:19-33; and Eze_18:6, all of which refer to places where menstruating women stayed away from men. Cf. Jacob’s wife Rachel who feigned this condition by remaining seated and not greeting her father when he visited.

[11] Found in א, C, L, W, f1, Byz, Maj, and T.R. Generally translated “yet.”

[12] “…cast out into the draught.”

[13] This is a contraction of kai (“and”) and the neuter plural of the far demonstrative ekeinos (“those [things]”), it also seems to carry some emphatic-ness as well: (“themselves”).

[14] א and W omit from the previous exerchetai in the middle of v.18 to here. This could be easily explained as a copy error where the scribe copying the Sinaiticus looked away from his original to copy the first half of v.18, then his eyes landed on the exerchomai verb in v.19, and he copied on from there, not realizing that he missed the exerchomai phrase in v.18. The Washington uncial was copied about 100 years later, perhaps from the Sinaiticus, or perhaps it is a separate occurrence of the same homeoarchy error by another scribe? The omission is not in any of the modern Greek versions, but it does call the absolute accuracy of these two early manuscripts into question.

[15] Except that dolos (deceit) is used instead of pseudomarturiai (false witness).