“Are you still so dull?” Jesus asked them.”
– Matthew 15:16
Hi James and Ellen,
Your dad, ma and you in a little over two weeks are going to travel from where you live in Newark, Delaware to where your grandmaa and grandpaa live in Gainesville, Georgia. One of the reasons why you are going to make this trip to the house where your grandmaa and grandpaa are living is so that you can celebrate Thanksgiving Day with your grandmaa, grandpaa, Uncle Chris and Aunt Lynn. Your Uncle Chris and Aunt Lynn are also living in Gainesville. Before you go back to your home in Newark, you will help your grandmaa decorate the Christmas tree that your grandmaa and grandpaa have. You will also celebrate while you are at the house where your grandmaa and grandpaa are living an early Christmas with your grandmaa, grandpaa, dad, ma, Uncle Chris and Aunt Lynn. Getting together with your dad’s family over Thanksgiving Day and to celebrate an early Christmas has become a tradition for your dad’s family to do. Do you think that a family having traditions is a good thing? Are you okay with always having on Thanksgiving Day turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes with gravy, corn, green bean casserole, sweet potato casserole, your grandmaa’s green Jello salad, rolls, green and black olives and pickles for the Thanksgiving Day meal? Are you okay with always praying before everyone begins to eat the Thanksgiving Day meal? Are you okay with always exchanging Christmas presents? Are you okay with always going to a weekly church service? Are you okay with always having music sung or played during a church service? What do you think that Jesus would say to you about celebrating a Thanksgiving Day each year, about eating the same food every Thanksgiving Day, about praying before a every meal, about remembering Jesus’ day of birth each year, about exchanging gifts every year, about going to a church meeting each week and about having music played and sung during each Sunday church service? Matthew – in his Matthew Book, candidly recounts in Matthew 15 what Jesus said to a group of Pharisees and Jew rabbis who had confronted His disciples for not having washed their hands before they ate. Washing hands before eating had become an oral tradition that the Jew people group’s guys and gals – who are still God’s specially chosen guys and gals, were to obey per meticulous rules and regulations overkill that Jew rabbis had established to guide or govern the daily lives of God’s specially chosen guys and gals. Have you ever been called a hypocrite? A hypocrite is a guy, gal or kid who does perceived righteous acts publicly to put on a show of how he or she thinks that a Christ-follower guy, gal or kid should live and act – thinking that following a set of rules and regulations will be his or her ticket to an eternity of hope, versus always loving, respecting and honoring – beginning with his or her dad and ma, that a Christ-follower guy, gal and kid is mandated by God to always sincerely and openly convey doing. Because Jesus could always ‘see past’ the exterior actions and words of the Pharisees and Jew rabbis, Jesus called these guys hypocrites to their face which per Matthew offended them.
Do you think that Jesus really cared that He had offended Pharisees and Jew rabbis when He called them hypocrites? How do you think that Jesus’ disciples really felt after what Jesus said in verse 16 to them ““Are you still so dull?” Jesus asked them.’” How would you like to have a kid – or a guy or gal, tell you that you are dull? Jesus essentially was telling His disciples that they were thinking stupidly. Peter – who may have been ascribed by Jesus’ other eleven disciples to be their spokesman, had just asked Jesus to explain how He knew that the Pharisees and Jewish rabbis – who Jesus had just identified as hypocrites, had been offended by the name that Jesus had just labeled them. Jesus had just quoted what Isaiah wrote around 700 years earlier that guys and gals would with their lips honor and worship Him but their hearts would follow the teachings and rules dreamed up by guys. Jesus at this time was challenging the lifestyle laws that the Jew rabbis had conjured up regarding what they had determined was ‘unclean’ to eat by telling them that what was not ‘clean’ was really what was emanating out of their mouths. The interaction that Jesus had with His disciples after this had Jesus explaining to them that the plants that had been planted by God – His Heavenly Father, would one day be pulled up by their roots and thrown into a pit. Jesus told His disciples to just leave these plants alone as their guides – who your grandpaa believes Jesus is referring to as being the Pharisees and Jew rabbis, are blind and that these blind Pharisee and Jew rabbi guides will along with their blind followers fall into the pit of perdition which is hell. After Jesus tells His disciples that they are dullards, Jesus went on to name some ‘unclean’ stuff that guys, gals and kids spew out of their mouths which originate in and from their hearts such as evil thoughts, threats, lies, etc. Jesus used common sense to explain why what goes into a mouth is not ‘unclean’ by saying that what goes into a mouth will go to the stomach and then ultimately out of the body.
Do you think of yourselves as pragmatics? How would you describe Jesus – especially after how He spoke to some Pharisees and Jew rabbis and then to His disciples? Do you always parse the words that your say so that you do not offend or do you go around telling other kids – or guys and gals, that they are hypocrites, dim-witted and blind – like Jesus did? The next thing that Jesus did was to show unconditional benevolence towards His disciples.
Matthew 15 (1108)