Are You Planted by the Father?

So the Lord pivots. He’s having a conversation with the Pharisees. He rebukes them and deals with them. And as I at least envision it in my mind, he pivots from them. He turns from them and speaks then to the multitude, which really burns them up. Because that was the thing that really got the goat of the Pharisees and scribes, is they were envious of the influence that the Lord Jesus had over the people.

Because the common people loved Christ. Mark says that the common people listened to him gladly. And so when they saw that, and here’s what the Lord’s doing. He’s undermining their influence with the people. He’s undermining their authority on purpose. He’s not being nice. Can I say that again? Jesus is not being nice to the Pharisees. How many of you think that’s right? You better raise your hand.

He’s doing it. It’s right. It’s right because he’s doing it. That was a trick question. It was a trick question. He’s not being nice to the Pharisees because they are, as we saw last Sunday, what they are doing is undermining the truth that He is teaching them. They are putting at risk the souls of the people who follow them. We’ll see that today as well. So He pivots to the congregation, verse number 11, to the people and the multitude.

He says this to them, hear and understand, not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man, but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man. Then came his disciples and said unto him, knowest thou that the Pharisees. They’re afraid that Jesus... What will they think of us if you speak that plainly, that bluntly? What will they think? That might make us look bad.

Listen, and I dare not put myself in the place of Christ. Of course, everything Christ spoke was true and right, and the way He spoke it was perfect and impeccable in every way. So I’m not saying that for myself. However, if the truth spoken in love causes people offense, then so be it. That should not be an excessive fear of ours that the truth spoken in the right tone and attitude and manner in love bothers people.

Sometimes the truth is designed by God Himself to grate on and irritate those who have set themselves against that truth. So the concern of the disciples is a concern that you often see in churches, in preachers, and it drives what they say and what they don’t say and all that kind of thing. We should be like our Lord. We should be like our Lord. We say the truth.

We say it in the right spirit, in the parable. And Jesus said, Are ye also yet without understanding? Do not ye yet understand that whatsoever entereth in at the mouth goeth into the belly and is cast out into the draft? But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forthile the man.

So the context of this is the Lord is dealing not with food regulations as found in Leviticus. He’s dealing with the tradition that the elders of the Jews had established in mostly in the Talmud, which is the primary document they’re talking about that said that you had to wash your hands in certain ways when you did certain things before you ate. That is the thing the Lord is dealing with.

And He directly overturns it. He speaks and just totally contradicts what they have been taught. And He does so unashamedly. Let’s pray together. Father in Heaven, we thank You for the chance to study Your Word this morning, as well as for the opportunity to memorialize, Lord, Your death upon the cross, Your body broken, Your blood shed for us in your supper. And Lord, we pray as we study your word here now for the next little while, we pray that you would incline our hearts to what it says and you would help our hearts to be tender and receptive.

Lord, guide me to speak what you’d have me to speak according to your word and in the spirit that you would have me speak it just as you did in this example as well before us. So Lord, bless our time in your word. May your people grow. And Lord, if there’s someone among us who has not been planted by God, open the eyes and the heart of that person.

For we ask in Jesus’ name, amen. I’d like to draw your attention to verse number 13. The disciples were concerned in verse 12 that the Lord Jesus had offended the Pharisees. In other words, they were overly concerned with the opinions of the scribes and Pharisees. And I just want to tell you, from verse number 13 and verse number 14, the Lord basically marks them off. He just says, let them alone.

Let them alone. Which is to say, why are you concerned with what they think? You do not need to be meddling with those people. I mean, I tell you, they weren’t just people who were slightly off base or had missed the mark. No, these people were enemies of the cross of Christ that are criticizing. But notice how it came about. It came about with them picking at little things.

That’s what you see at the beginning, right? Just picking at the practice of the disciples and thereby picking at the Lord Jesus, criticizing here and there, trying to undermine his influence, trying to make sure people don’t listen to him or fewer people would listen to him. And the Lord says very plainly in verse 13, every plant which my father hath not planted shall be rooted up. That’s quite an indictment of them.

But if you go back up to verse number 10, notice what he says to the multitude. He says, hear and understand, not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man, but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man. So listen carefully to what he’s saying. Now I know literally and strictly speaking he’s referring to whatever grime or dirt or germs or whatever might be on the hands, which is their concern.

The concern is you went to the market, you went here, you went there dealing in profane things, that is things that weren’t holy, and you used your hands as we all do, and then you came home and you ate, and that defilement, those unholy things, as the Pharisees would describe it, then you are now putting them in your body by means of your hands when you’re eating.

And so that has defiled them. That’s the idea that the Pharisees and scribes are pushing. But there’s a greater truth here. And I think this is exactly what the Lord Jesus is getting at. They’re talking about ceremonial defilement, which that wasn’t defiling. What they were doing, eating with unwashed hands, was not scriptural. So they could come home from the market and they could eat. I don’t recommend that.

I say you wash your hands. After I shake all your hands, I get my hand sanitizer. And so does Miss York does too. That’s our thing, our hand sanitizer thing. Mostly because I don’t want to get sick, right? And I know you don’t either. But there’s nothing unscriptural about not washing your hands before you eat. And that’s exactly what they were claiming. But the Lord is pointing out a greater truth, a spiritual truth that they were missing.

And that’s what he says in verse 10 and 11. Because he says, Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth man, but that which cometh out of the mouth this defileth the man. There’s a tendency in us, there’s a tendency in us for us to lay blame. Now think about what he’s saying here. For us to lay blame upon our outward circumstances, lay blame, we blame the outward things that are happening in our life.

We blame all of our failures or our lack of obedience to the Lord and our lack of following His Word faithfully. We blame that on all of these other things that are on the outside of us. We often have a tendency to do that. In the same way. In other words, they were saying, you’re defiled because of those things you put into your body. And that’s what we do on a spiritual level.

We say, the reason why I’m not following the Lord as I should, the reason why I’m sinning against God, the reason why I have trouble with this thing is not found in me. The reason is actually found in all of these things around me that are coming into me and influencing me and causing me to be in this condition. We think the outside is the problem, but the Lord says that the problem is on the inside.

That’s what he’s saying here. Because he says, but that which cometh out of the man. From where does that come? That comes from the inside and goes out. The problem is what is on the inside, not as what on the outside. Not as what is on the outside. But there’s another thing in here, which is this subtle assumption. And the Pharisees kind of hinted at this. If you think about it, what they thought is, if you put these dirty things into your body, you’re defiling something that’s clean, your body.

So there’s a default understanding, a default assumption, that I’m clean, and I’m introducing defilement, I’m introducing dirt and grime into something that’s clean. And the Lord says the very opposite. The Lord says, actually, inwardly, we are not clean. We are not clean at all. The Bible actually says that inwardly, we are all, and actually uses this term, as an unclean thing. We are all that. And you know this verse, Jeremiah 17 verse 9.

Listen to this verse. The heart, where’s the heart? Is that on the inside of us or the outside of us? It’s on the inside of us. The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? I the Lord, verse number 10goes on to say this. I, the Lord, search the heart. I try the reins. That’s the inside. That’s the Lord saying, I’m the one who’s peering through the closet of the heart of man.

Each and every man. God knows exactly what’s in there. He is the one that searches it. And he is the only one that has the ability to search it. And you know what? His word has the ability to search and prick and get through to the heart as well. But I do not. And nor do you. He says, I try the reins. Now listen to what he says.

Even to give every man according to his ways and according to the fruit of his doings. So here’s what the Lord’s saying. He’s saying, I know what’s in the heart of man. And I am searching through the heart of man to give him according to his ways. Not his thoughts, but his ways. You know what he’s doing? He’s connecting what’s inside of a man to what is on the outside of a man.

But he’s starting on the inside of a man. He’s starting on the inside. And that’s exactly what the Lord is saying here. There’s another way in Psalm 5 verse number 9 says this. In fact, I would like you to go there if you would. Go to Psalm 5. Psalm 5 and verse number 9. Psalm 5 verse 9. Now in this passage, verse number 8 says, Lead me, O Lord, in thy righteousness because of mine enemies.

Make thy way straight before my face. Now he’s referring specifically to his enemies. You see that in verse 8. Look at verse number 9. For there is no faithfulness in their mouth. Notice he’s referring to his enemies now, David’s enemies. Their inward part is very wickedness. It is wickedness itself. This is not a New Testament doctrine. This is a Bible doctrine. What is it saying? It is saying, the scripture is saying that the inward part of man is very wickedness.

Wickedness itself. It goes on to say their throat is an open sepulcher. What’s an open sepulcher? An open tomb. So it’s open and you see inside and what’s inside? Abominations, death, filth, evil. Right? That’s the throat. That’s the visual. This is how the Lord is describing, David is describing his enemies. Now look, if you would, at Romans chapter number 3.

Verse 10. You’re going to see Psalm 5 verse 9in just a minute. Just hold that in your mind. Romans chapter 3 verse 10 says this. As it is written, so this is a quotation from the Old Testament, There is none righteous, no, not one. There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable.

There is none that doeth good, no, not one. Are we talking about everybody or Are we talking about everybody? We’re talking about every single living human being. Okay? So here’s what he does. Paul, he’s borrowing from several passages of Scripture in the Old Testament, but he’s not describing David’s enemies anymore. He’s borrowing that language and describing mankind. Their throat is an open sepulcher. So going back to Matthew chapter 15, here’s the point.

The Pharisees had this idea that man was clean and the outside was going to defile him. The Lord Jesus says, oh no. The problem is on the inside. Man is dirty. He is very wickedness inwardly. He’s not clean. And so when we lay blame for our sin and our faults and our failures and our lack of faithfulness and our everything that we do upon outward things like the Pharisees were doing, we have missed something about ourselves.

The problem is inside of us. It’s easy to blame things like influences and things like friends, the school you might go to or the music you listen to or the TV or the internet or social media. Is it not easy to blame those things? And it’s also easy to blame them. Parents, it’s easy to blame those things and just take them away. But does that do anything to change the inside which is the source of the problem?

It does nothing ., that is not to say that you should not be careful of those influences because they are influences, and they can be extremely harmful. But the extreme is to say, well, the problem is there. No, the problem is here. The problem is inside of us. You know, there are people that use the Internet. There are people that use, there are people that, can you believe this, that watch TV that don’t sin against God.

You know that? There are people that listen to music and go to a public school that still walk with God. Can you believe this? You know why? It’s the inside. It’s the inside. You can blame those things. You can take them away. You can lock them in a room and it doesn’t change the inside. The heart that is right with God inwardly is very resilient against evil influences because they will depart from them.

They will depart. That heart will cause that person to depart from evil influences. But keeping evil influences from people alone will not produce hearts that are right with God, no matter how much you restrict it. There is no, it is no substitute, even though the outside might appear better because those evil influences aren’t there. Parents, be careful. Do not make this miscalculation about your kids. Don’t do it.

Your primary concern, first and foremost above every other thing, although influences are an important part of that, the first thing is your kids’ hearts. That’s what you’ve got to be paying attention to. My son Proverbs says give me thine heart. Give me thine heart. We have to start with the heart. Let’s look at verse 12. Then came we’ve already read verse 12. The disciples came said to him knowest thou that the Pharisees were offended after they heard this say?

And he answered and said every plant which my heavenly Father hath not planted shall be rooted up. You know, I thought immediately about my, well, not immediately, after I pondered it, I thought about, and I got myself in trouble last time I did this, Brother Andrew, but I thought about my flower bed. Those of you that have planted flower beds know that you plant the bed and you mulch it and everything like that, and you plant your shrubs and you plant your flowers or whatever plants you have, but it is never, there is never a case in which that is all that ever pops up.

Am I right or am I wrong? In other words, there are many, many plants that have not been planted by the master thereof that continually pop up. Are there not? We call them weeds, right? And what do we do with weeds? We root them up. Because they’re not the plants that we have planted on purpose. And this is what I think of when I think of this verse.

But I also thought about every plant which my heavenly Father hath not planted. So there are plants in the Lord’s flower garden that somebody put there, but it wasn’t God. Well, that’s scary. And not only that, it says, every plant which my heavenly Father hath not planted. That also tells us that the Lord is in the business of planting things, planting plants. And in order for a plant to be found in the Lord’s garden, he himself is the one that had to plant it there.

In other words, if you and I are going to be found before the Lord with eternal life, if we are going to have eternal life, you know how it starts? It starts with God’s work in us first and foremost. It’s not a matter of a preacher or a church or a religion. That’s not how it gets started. It gets started with the God of heaven invading this temporal world and injecting himself into your life to make you understand and see that you are without hope and you are without righteousness and you are full of sin And your inward man is very wickedness like we just read in Psalms 5.

And he teaches you this by his own work and leads you, like the Bible says, to the Savior. That’s a work of God. That’s not you shaking the preacher’s hand or getting baptized. No, that’s not. That’s a work of God that God does with each and every plant that He plants. It starts with the work of God. But what do we find? We find people in the garden of God that are not of His planting.

This is the principle of imposters. And as I read it, I thought to myself, again? As we’ve gone through Matthew, there are no less than four other instances in our study of Matthew where this same principle has been repeated. Let me remind you of them. Matthew 7, 22. You remember? Many shall say unto me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not done many wonderful works? In thy name cast out devils.

You remember that verse? The Lord says, depart from me, I never knew you. You know what that is? A description of the judgment of the imposter. The plant in the garden of God that the Lord did not put there. That will be rooted up. And that verse, he does that. Not only that, parable of the wheat and the tares. How did the tares get in God’s field?

It wasn’t the Lord that put them there. And what does the Lord do eventually? They’re rooted up and burned. The parable of the leaven, something that was not intended to go into the bread, here is now going into the bread and is spreading throughout the bread. An imposter. The parable of the net, Matthew 13. They draw the net and what do we find? Not just fish, all kinds of things that are not useful.

And they’re cast out. This is the fifth time. This is the fifth time the Lord says the same thing in a different way. Here again is another chance that the Lord provides to you and to me to examine ourselves. Whether we are a plant of God or whether we are a weed in His kingdom. This is not something I would repeatedly talk about over and over and over in the study of Matthew.

But this is what the text is talking about. The Lord is saying this of the Pharisees. They think they’re in the garden of God and they think that God is pleased with them, but they’re not. God did not put them there. And there are many who look and act like the plants of God, but they are not. And they exist in the garden of God, if you will.

That’s why the Lord tells us to examine ourselves whether we’re in the faith. Is Christ in you truly? Are you truly a child of God? Do you have eternal life? Do you know it for certain? This is something the Lord is repeating because He knows that they exist. People who sit in pews but are not the planting of God. And the Lord is warning you. He’s warning you.

Examine yourself. Examine yourself. Do not ignore the doubt and questions. Deal with those things. You might find yourself in the garden of God. You might find yourself as an imposter. But even for an imposter, there’s hope. Because an imposter can come to God and say, Lord, I’ve been an imposter. But I want to be a true planting of God. That’s what happened to me and some of you in this room as well.

Jude chapter 1, only one chapter, verse 12 says this. These are your spots, are spots in your feast of charity. When they feast with you, feeding themselves without fear. Notice what it says. Now they’re in the church now. This is what it’s saying. They’re in the church. Clouds they are without water, carried about of winds. Trees whose fruit withereth, without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots.

This is speaking of people in the church in Jude 12. Plucked up. You see that same thing? Plucked up here. You see it in Matthew 15. So there are absolutely elements among the people of God that are not supposed to be there. And those imposters are placed there by someone other than God. And it should be then no surprise to us when we see the evil of those imposters, the evil of those elements appear and they mar the garden of God.

Right? Plants that aren’t supposed to be there mar the flowers and the shrubs that are supposed to be there. They harm the name of Christ because that’s what they profess. And just because there are imposters that are not supposed to be there does not mean that the real and the true doesn’t exist. It certainly does exist. The plants that God has planted, where does that put you?

Let’s look at verse 14. The Lord says, Let them alone. They be blind leaders of the blind. Speaking of the Pharisees now, the Pharisees and the scribes are the blind, and they’re leading the people who follow them, the blind. They’re both blind. Both shall fall into the ditch. Both shall fall into the ditch. Look if you would at John chapter 9 real quick. John chapter 9 verse 40.

Because the Lord had a conversation with the Pharisees similar to this. John 9 verse 40. The Bible says this. And some of the, well verse 39 to pick up the context. Jesus said, For judgment I am come into this world, that they which see might not, might, let me start over here. That they which see not might see, and that they which see might be made blind.

And some of the Pharisees which were with him heard these words and said unto him, here again, they’re offended again. Are we blind also? Jesus said unto them, if ye were blind, ye should have no sin. But now ye say, we see. Therefore your sin remaineth. So did the Pharisees consider themselves to be blind? No. So Jesus says, leave them alone. Don’t you even worry about what they think.

These be blind leaders of the blind. The Pharisees didn’t know that they were blind though. They thought that they could see. And I thought about, but I really, I don’t have a whole lot of compassion on the Pharisees. Maybe I should, but I don’t really. But I do have compassion on those who followed them. And I thought about, I thought about myself. I thought about those of us who have any kind of leadership or influence over another as a parent, as a boss.

Any kind, you know, in a spiritual capacity, in a flesh and blood capacity. Those poor people, they were blind themselves, but they would be led in trusting in someone who was leading them who was also blind, but they didn’t know they were blind. The one following didn’t know that their leader was blind, but the end result is the same. It goes into the ditch. And how can you and I, how can we lead our families if we ourselves are blind?

How can we lead our families in the way of the Lord and the will of God and the way of righteousness if we ourselves are not walking in that way? We cannot. You know what the result will be? This is the tragic result, is that those little feet behind us are going to fall into the same ditch that we fall into. And that’s tragic.

Look at verse 15. Then answered Peter and said unto him, Declare unto us this parable. And Jesus said, Are ye also yet without understanding? Do not yet understand that whatsoever entereth in at the mouth goeth into the belly and is cast out into the draft. The draft is just a sewer, a toilet. But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart and they defile the man.

For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. These are the things which defile a man, but to eat with unwashed hands defileth not a man. Just a few points and we’re finished. External sins, like you read in verse 19, have their source in the heart. Murder comes from hate. Theft from covetousness. Slander comes of envy. Disrespect comes of contempt. Adultery and fornication come out of lust.

And the list goes on and on and on and on. Every sin that we exhibit on the outside where people can see starts first in the heart. If it starts first in the heart and the origin and source is the heart, that should be our target, should it not? That should be what we’re primarily concerned about, not just the exterior. You see, what we do is we like to imagine that we’re good people on the inside.

We just make mistakes, and I’ve said this before. But the Lord Jesus is saying the exact opposite. We imagine we’re good people, we think we’re good people on the inside, but we just make mistakes on the outside, but the Lord is now, brother, sister in Christ, listen, when you have sin in your life, when you have something in your life that is not pleasing to God, and you’re guilty of that thing, you don’t need to just be concerned with the fact that you did that thing, or worse yet, the fact that someone saw you do that thing.

The thing that should alarm you and me more than anything else should be the source of that thing. Why did I do that thing? What is in my heart that produced that on the outside? And that is the thing we must target. That is the thing we must deal with. Not just the individual acts of sin. You see, the individual, but is that not what we do?

If we can get by with something or we can do it in such a way that it looks excusable or justified, it makes it okay. But the Lord’s looking at the heart. And that’s where it’s coming out of. Even if it appears to others justifiable. Or reasonable. Or whatever.

The Lord wants us to cleanse the heart first. Not just the action. And here’s the thing. And I’m finished. The cleansing of the heart is the part that is most related to God himself. How can you cleanse your heart? You might be able to stop doing a thing, but you can’t cleanse your heart on your own. God is the cleanser of the heart. So by the Lord Jesus saying this, he’s saying, you’ve got to come to me to have a heart that’s clean.

You might be able to clean up the outside and put rules and restrictions and all those things, and those all might have function and utility in some cases, but the only one that can cleanse the heart is the Lord Jesus Christ and His blood. That is it. You must come to Him and confess to Him not only the deed, but the source and the defilement inside that has produced the deed.

So it’s not just a matter of confessing the fornication. It’s confessing, Lord, this wicked lust in my heart. Lord, I took this thing. No, it’s the covetousness that is in my heart and in my thoughts. Oh Lord, I slandered and gossiped. No, it’s the envy and the jealousy that’s inside, Lord. That’s got to get fixed. That’s got to be cleaned up or else I’ll keep doing it.

This is why the Lord, He always makes it so that we must come to Him. That’s the only way we’ll be cleansed. Inside. So I ask you, do you need cleansing? First of all, are you one of God’s plants? Or are you a weed, an imposter in his garden? Number two, are you paying in your own life and in the life of those that you lead? Are you leading them with your attention placed on the inside where the Lord says all of this outside stuff comes from are you dealing with that or are you just concerned with the way it appears and you know looking the part would you pray with me