Talk Is Cheap

Matthew 15:1-20
By Harold Dinsmore, M.Div.
© 2007 Harold Dinsmore

(Read the passage at the beginning). Ever here these words? Talk is cheap?  Put your money where your mouth is?  Back up what you say?  Well, this is basically what Jesus was saying the day he was speaking with the Pharisees.  Our passages context has to do with the Pharisees and the religious leaders questioning Jesus about his disciples eating grain without first washing their hands.  Now, Jesus was not saying washing your hands before you eat is wrong.   But what he was commenting on was the tradition of the elders in verse 2.  “The Pharisees were sticklers of the law.  However the stress in their particular interpretation of the Law was ethical and not theological.”[1]  They were of the belief that they were the only correct people within the Jewish belief system that possessed the correct interpretation of the Law.  In fact, they were so “convinced that they had the right interpretation of the Torah, they claimed that the tradition of the elders, came from Moses on Mt. Sinai.”[2]