Welcome to another message on all the parables of the Bible. We're in the 15th chapter of the Gospel according to Matthew. Gospel according to Matthew. We're talking about superstitions and traditions. Superstitious souls. Superstitious souls. The 15th chapter in verse number 1. Then from Jerusalem there came scribes and Pharisees and said, why do your disciples transgress and violate the rules handed down by the elders of the past? This is the Mishnah and the Talmud. This is what you know as the Mishnah and the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmud. Jerusalem Talmud wasn't quite in existence yet, but it will be. And it's the same thing as rewriting the Babylonian Talmud, which is the oldest one. This is what the Jews, when they were in Babylonian captivity, they got so sick of idolatry, but they were so superstitious. They're such superstitious souls that they began to worship the word and then the traditions even more than the word of God. Still, they're in idolatry and superstition. Superstitious souls. Why your disciples, your mathetes, your habitual learners transgress and violate the rules handed down by the elders of the past? For they do not practice ceremonially washing their hands before they eat. And he replied to them and said, Why also do you transgress and violate the commandment of God for the sake of the rules handed down to you by your forefathers and elders? For God commanded, Honor your father and your mother, and he who curses and reviles or speaks evil of or abuses or treats improperly his father or his mother, let him surely come to his end by death. Exodus 20 and verse 12, Deuteronomy 5 and 16, Exodus 21, 17 and Leviticus 20 and verse 9. But you say, if anyone tells his father or mother, what do you have gained from me? That is the money and whatever I have that I might be used for helping you. is already dedicated as a gift to God, then he is exempt and no longer under obligation to honor, help, and nurture his mother or his father. For the sake of your Mishnah and Talmud, your tradition, the rules handed down by your forefathers, you have set aside the very Word of God, depriving it of the force and authority and making it to none effect. you pretenders, you hypocrites. Admirably and truly did Isaiah prophesy of you when he said, this people draw near me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their heart holds off and is far away from me. Uselessly do they worship me, uselessly. In vain do they worship me, for they teach as doctrines, as truth, the commandments of men, Isaiah 29 and 32. And that's the whole story of Catholicism, isn't it? The whole story of the Mishnah and the Talmud. The whole story of Islam. As soon as the Hadith and the Koran of Muhammad, their traditions, what Muhammad practiced, what Muhammad said, The most perfect man that ever lived according to Islam. The most perfect man that ever lived was Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior and God of the universe. Not some ungodly man, some hellish man, some man steeped in the sins of humanity. Charles Taze Russell. Charles Taze Russell, the father of Jehovah Witnesses, is suffering in hell today, or Hades, for what he has done to the human race. So is Muhammad. So are all the popes. So is Mary Baker Annie. Christian science. So is Buddha. So it's all of these false religionists in the world today because they have led astray the mass of humanity away from God's Word and away from the Savior, the only Savior of the world. And Jesus called the people to Him and said to them, listen and grasp and comprehend this very thing. It is not what goes into the mouth of a man that makes him unclean and defiled, but what comes out of the mouth that makes a man unclean and defiles him. Then the disciples came and said to him, do you know that the Pharisees were displeased and offended and indignant when they heard you say this very thing? And he answered, every plant which my heavenly father has planted, not planted, will be torn up by the roots. and let them alone and disregard them. They are blind guides, teachers, and a blind man leads a blind man. Both fall into the ditch." Now let's go back and let's read what Mr. Lockyer says about these verses. Before we take up the next recognized parable, there are several small parables, germs, minor parables, which can group together from the above three chapters, from Matthew 15 through 18. And briefly consider, all the parables in parabolic illustration must be dealt with in the light of their immediate context. The parable on purity. And Jesus entered in the central period of his public ministry. Hostility toward him became more intense. The religious leaders, stung by his authoritative teaching and the result of that teaching as manifested in the lives of his disciples, sought to entangle him in his utterances. With blunt ruthlessness, he strove to rid God's ancient law of the manifold traditions that had been gathered around it, but the traditionalists fought hard for their traditionalism. Superstition. Superstitious souls. Those traditions had become nothing but superstition. Good luck charms, to which many had become slaves. The multiplicity of traditions proved how the Pharisees and scribes had misled, failed as interpreters of the law. One of these useless traditions Jesus had attacked concerning the eating of food with unwashed hands. Hence the question is, why do your disciples transgress traditions of the elders when they eat bread? form of such a question shows that they were already alarmed, not at any non-compliance with the original law of God, but with disobedience to their own manufactured superstitions, superstitious souls. The elders, the superstitious elders were taken up, not so much as with any law regarding cleanliness, but with the external ritual, rituals. God had plenty of laws concerning cleanliness there, but this one is a useless, superstitious rule. One foolish tradition was that a demon known as Shibta sat upon the hands of men as they slept. Muhammad said he had hundreds of rules for everything. There are rules for blowing your nose. And this is one of the rules for blowing your nose according to Mohammed now. We're going to talk about Shibta here. These people are superstitious souls. Mohammed was a superstitious soul in dark ages. He said that if a man slept at night, that the devil would come in and dwell in his sinuses. So in the morning when you get up, You take water and snuff it up your nose three times and blow your nose to get rid of the devil. Here's another superstitious soul. And here they are now. One foolish tradition was that a demon known as Shiptah sat upon the hands of men as they slept and care only washing was necessary or food eaten by demons visited at the hands would be contaminated. Superstitious souls. How foolish. Like a sharp arrow came the condemnation of Jesus, you have made void the word of God because of your superstitions. You hypocrites, having administered this deserved rebuke to his critics and foes, Jesus turned to the crowd and uttered a brief parable characterized by the greatest simplicity and one which the simplest in the audience could easily understand. How authoritative was his call? Hear and understand. Put it together. Then he told the people that physical organism deals with physical ailment. A physical organism deals with a physical ailment. And that it has no reference to moral cleanliness or defilement, nor to demons or superstitions. Not that which goes into the mouth defiles a man, but that which cometh out of the mouth and deviles a man. After Giza's cave, two further parabolic illustrations, Peter speaking for himself and others, ask for an understanding of the parable. Then in Matthew 15, 16 to 20, we have the Lord's explanation and exposition. Now let's go there. But Peter said to him, explain this proverb, this parable, this maxim to us. And he said, are you also even yet dull and ignorant without understanding and unable to put things together? Do you not see and understand that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the abdomen and so passes out into the place where it discharges and is disposed of in the outhouse? But that which comes out of the mouth comes from the heart. And this is what makes a man unclean and defiles him. For out of the heart of man comes evil thoughts, reasonings and disputant designs such as murder and adultery and sexual vice, theft and false witnessing, slander and irreverent speech. These are what makes a man unclean and defiles him. But eating with hands unwashed does not make him unclean or defile him. Shabta is imagination. Shabta is a superstition, not a reality. And going away from there, Jesus withdrew to the district of Tyre and Sidon. Now let's go on. We have the Lord's explanation and exposition, the sum of which is that food eaten with unwashed hands does not defile the body, but that false thinking and evil imagination defile not so much the body, but the very soul of man. The Savior attributes more importance to words than we do. Matthew 12, 37. and that all evils named usually employ the mouth. James, the Lord's brother, said that, did he not? Thoughts are hardened by being uttered. Murders are plotted through lips. Adulteries and fornication employ the seductive influences of flattering. Theft lies to hide its fault. False witness and blasphemies are preeminently sins of the mouth. The food we eat, whether washed, with washed or unwashed hands, goes not into the heart, but the belly. Anything in it unfit to build up the body is ejected. Have you ever got food poisoning? and your body starts, you start having diarrhea and vomiting, your body's getting rid of it. They had a lot of that problem back in these days. Viruses and things get into our bodies, usually through our hands and through our nose and colds and things, but we have a lot more viruses today fall in life form than they did back then because man is a lot worse now than he was even then. Such food may infect the body with disease but cannot affect the soul. A man can be smiling as he dies and goes into this world, from this world, that is, into the next. Sin is a polluting power of the heart. The unregenerate heart is the spring of evil thoughts. Seekers after a clean heart will not be neglect regarding the possession of a clean body. Such cleanliness is one of the best products of godliness. Now let's go on a little bit further. The parable of the unrooted plant, which we covered a few moments ago. We read it. It would seem as if the disciples felt that the Master had gone just a little bit too far in this far rebuke of the Pharisees for their empty and dangerous superstitions. Superstitious souls, aren't they? Superstitious souls. Their ritualism. Their superstition. Their superstition. The Pharisees were offended after they heard this saying. And Jesus meant them to be offended. because of their superstitious souls, their wicked hearts. Pharisees were and still are offended at true doctrine. The disciples, however, had to guard against giving too much heed to the popularity of the unpopularity of the truth. By every plant, we are to understand not the Pharisees, but their self-conceived superstitions and doctrines. Superstitious souls. Jesus is here teaching in parabolic form that every error that obscures the truth of God hurts the soul of man and will be rooted up. There is no God but Muhammad. He has no companion. He has no son. And Muhammad is his messenger. Some people believe that is the absolutely mark of the beast. in the book of Revelation. That damns people's souls. God has no companion. He has no son. Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one God. We are soul and spirit and body, corresponding to God's triune nature. When you take Mary and replace her with Jesus, that is blasphemy. That's corruption. That's superstition. I saw a man one time. This has got to be 40 years ago, because I'm old, see. I can talk about 50 and 60 years ago, and I can remember some of those things 70 years ago. I saw a man going down Edison Highway. I was at Quantico in Edison and he was coming to, well, Quantico in California and then Edison run together there. He went down there and I pulled around behind him and when he went by he had a statue of Mary and he's kissing it, kissing it, kissing it, kissing it, kissing it, kissing it. Set it on the dash, had a magnet, take it, kiss it, set it, kiss it, set it, kiss it. Superstitious souls. I see people kneeling at the Kabbah with Muhammad just like Muhammad told them to do. Washing their hands and their feet and their face before they go their superstition. Bowing down five times a day and mumbling they know not what in Arabic. Most Muslims don't even know Arabic, but they got to pray in Arabic because God only listens to Arabic. What a limited God. pray in the name of Yahshua. You got to say that just right. You got to observe the Sabbath, superstitious souls. Not eat this or not eat that, superstitious souls. Jesus is not God the Son, superstitious souls. Jesus is our Savior. He is God in the flesh. John 1.14, Kyle Logos sarks again, and the Word flesh he became, and the Jehovah flesh he became, and dwelt among us, and we beheld the glory, the glory of the only begotten Father, full of grace and truth. No man has seen God at any time, the only begotten God, the one being in the bosom of the Father, that one has led himself out. For God so loved the world that He sent His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting. For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might have life. For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. For if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, Believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you shall be saved. These are things that are not superstitions. This is fact. The others are superstitions. Matthew 15 and verse 14. Are you not impressed with the wide variety of our Lord's illustrations, how apt and striking they are? Here, for example, he uses the power of the body to reject its waste, rooting up trees, and a proverb to enforce his message with a critical tradition, the Pharisees and Mines that said, let them alone, meaning leave them unheeded for themselves, for theirs is teaching that blinds, blunts the heart, and following its end is disaster. The Master used this phrase of human affliction, and the accident must have impressed the disciples. Leaders of the blind was a phrase in common use in Jesus' time. The ideal of a rabbi's calling, Paul speaks of those teachers in Israel, as guide of the blind, a light to them which are in darkness, Romans 2 and 19. But Jesus exposed the state of recognized teachers as being the very reverse of the ideal. Their spiritual blindness was exaggerated by the fact that it was self-chosen. Their eyes have been closed by themselves, by rejection. by rejection. The last message, you know, was guilty souls. This one is superstitious souls. Were still unconscious of their blindness, they boasted that they saw. We see, John 9, 41, how often we say that there are none so blind as those who will not see. As for the blind leading the blind and both falling into a ditch, our Lord was here employing a well-known proverb. Giving it the character of a prophecy, He spoke of a parable unto them, Can the blind lead the blind? Shall they not both fall into the ditch? The ditch, as applied to the fate of the prejudiced blinded Pharisees, was an express simile of the tragedy overtaking them and those they had deluded prior to and during the terrible destruction of Jerusalem. Bitter sectarianism and wild dreams, and baseless hopes and bad zeal, the rejection of the truth which alone had power to save them, This was the issue which teachers and people alike were preparing for themselves and from which there was no escape. There is no escape from hell. There's no way out. There's no door out. Oh, Father, help us from our superstitious minds, from our condemnation As with Israel of old, so will the church today. Preachers blinded by modernism lead those who are blinded by the God of this world. There is nothing so pathetic in the physical realm as to see a man who is actually blind trying to lead another blind man. But in the religious realm, it is tragic. when those who profess to see the truth are blind to its realities, with their vaunted wisdom impress their spirituality-darkened minds with a perverted message." A perverted message. A wicked message. Let's go back and read something one more time. Thoughts are hardened by being uttered. Murders are plotted through lips. Adultery, fornication employ the seductive influences of flattery. Theft lies to hide its fault. False witness and blasphemies are preeminently sins of the mouth. These things we do. These things we live. These things we are if we do not trust in Christ. Jesus Christ is the only answer. He is the only answer to all man's evils. Men are evil to other men. Men, religious leaders, are blind and both fall into the ditch. Muhammad's in hell. Charles Tate Russell's in hell. Joseph Smith's in hell. Brigham Young's in hell. Mary Becker Eddy. Charles Tate Russell. They're suffering already a million deaths for those they have led astray. blind, leaders of the blind, superstitious souls. Our Heavenly Father, we ask you to forgive us. Create in us a new heart. Help us to glorify you with our lives. Help us to shun the things of this world and to love you with all our heart, all our mind and all our souls. Help us to hold you upon our mind. Help us, Father, to glorify you and forgive us for our failure. In Jesus' name we pray.