The Heart of the Matter

February 19

In today’s Bible reading from Matthew 15, Jesus gets to the heart of the matter with the Pharisees: the matter of their heart. They weren’t just caught up with the rigid details of the Law of Moses. They were completely ignoring it in favor of their own traditions. This was serious.

While pretending to honor God’s Law, the Pharisees had set their own beliefs and practices above it—violating the first of the Ten Commandments: “You shall have no other gods besides Me.” (Exodus 20:3) They were completely in the weeds and, worse, leading others into them.

This blatant idolatry and false religion earned the Pharisees Jesus’ scorn and THE most infamous title for fake believers not only in Scripture, but in all of history: Hypocrites. As Jesus began correcting them, He took the Pharisees to a verse they would have known by heart. Quoting Isaiah 29:13, He said:

The Lord said: These people approach me with their speeches to honor me with lip-service, yet their hearts are far from me, and human rules direct their worship of me. (Isaiah 29:13, CSB)

The word “hypocrite” doesn’t appear in the English language until the thirteenth century, but the concept of hypocrisy is as old as time. A hypocrite is someone who speaks out of both sides of his mouth. He says one thing, but does something different. He pretends to be something he isn’t. He’s inauthentic, insincere… a poser.

The word that Jesus uses here in the original Greek, from where we get the English word “hypocrite,” refers to an actor in a Greek play. Jesus told the Pharisees they were nothing but actors putting on one big religious show, and God was not buying it. He could see right through it and their masks! He could see their hearts, and Jesus warned the crowd that what a person says reveals what is in his heart. (Matthew 15:11, 18-19)

By placing their own religious traditions above God’s Law, the Jewish leaders made God’s Word completely void for them—of no effect. They had built an entire system that was nothing but a massive roadblock to them knowing God and anyone who followed them. (Matthew 15:6) In a few days, we’ll watch Jesus confront the Pharisees again, and expose how their crooked teaching made their followers worse hypocrites than them. (Matthew 23:15) No wonder Jesus was so angry!

But what do we begin to take away from all of this? That God hates hypocrisy? That’s a start. An even more important takeaway, though, is that God loves hypocrites—enough to tell them about their hypocrisy because He doesn’t want them to miss Him or cause others to do so.

Still, a third takeaway here isn’t hypocrisy but authenticity—the authenticity of Jesus. He shows Himself as the real deal. He shows the Pharisees, the crowd, and us what it looks like to radically pursue God in relationship. And, He urges us follow His footsteps.

Application

It’s easy to read this story, and shake our heads at the Pharisees. But how often do we make the same mistake they did: Setting our personal beliefs, traditions, or preferences above God’s Word? If we want a genuine relationship with God, the first rule is that He is first—what He wants, what glorifies Him, what builds His Kingdom—not ours.

Jesus says that eternal life is about knowing God and being known by Him. (Matthew 7:21–23; John 17:3) If asked to describe the Bible, I would say that the Bible is the story of God’s relentless pursuit of His people in a covenant relationship. As we read through the New Testament this year, we’re only looking at the second part of that story. There is so much more foundation in the Old Testament.

The Bible is not sixty-six completely separate stories. It’s sixty-six parts coming together to form one complete picture, one perfect story. Reading through the New Testament is a great goal. While reading through the New Testament is deeply engaging, it’s still only part of the story. Let me encourage you to read through the entire Bible in chronological order in the future.

I say chronological order, referring to the order in which things actually happened—not as they were arranged in our Bibles. Seeing things in the actual order they happened helps us to see the progressive revelation of God pursuing His people across time—despite their flaws, immaturity, sin, rebellion, and, yes, their hypocrisy.

But this application isn’t just about them. It’s about you and me, how God pursues us, and how He does that despite us having the same problems, including hypocrisy. What God has always desired from us is honesty and humility, and when we approach Him with these—not with man-made traditions and religious games—we will always find Him waiting to receive us, help us, comfort us, and lift us up from His Throne of Grace. (Hebrews 4:16; James 4:8-10)

© Copyright 2026 Craig Beaman