Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadWilliam Burkitt Notes and Observations - Matthew 15:7 - 15:7
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Our Saviour reproves the hypocritical Pharisees for the same things:
1. That they preferred human traditions before the divine precepts.
2. That by their human traditions they made void the worship of God. It is God's undoubted prerogative to prescribe all the parts of his own worship; and whoever presumes to add thereunto, they worship him in vain.
Our Saviour farther shews, that all this proceeded from the insincerity of their hearts: This people honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.
Whence learn, 1. That the removing the heart far from God in worship, is a great sin, and an high degree of hypocrisy.
2. That whatever outward shew and profession of religion men make, if their hearts be not right with God, and what they do proceeds not from an inward principle of love and obedience to God, they are under the reign and power of hypocrisy. Ye hypocrites, in vain do ye worship me.
Learn, 3. That we must not be forward, from Christ's example, to pronounce men hypocrites; because we have neither that authority nor knowledge of the heart which Christ had, to authorize us so to do.
Christ here called the Pharisees hypocrites,
1. Because they placed holiness and religion in ceremonies of human invention.
2. Because being so superstitiously careful to avoid bodily pollutions, they left their hearts within; full of hypocrisy and iniquity.