Isaiah 56:3-7 - Homiletics

Outward defects and defilements no hindrance to full communion in the Church of God.

In the infancy of humanity, and with a people so carnal as the Israelites, it was necessary to teach the great doctrines of purity and holiness by a material symbolism. Hence the multitude of regulations in the Law concerning defects, blemishes, sources of outward defilement, methods of removing defilements, clean and unclean meats, and the like. God strove to train his people by these out ward shows to the recognition of the eternal distinction between inward purity and impurity, and to a proper sense of the fact that impurity is an utter disqualification for communion with him and with his Church. But these distinctions were never intended to be lasting." Our Lord himself declared to his disciples, "Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man Those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies: these are the things which defile a man; but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man" ( Matthew 15:11-20 ). It was long before the Jews could fully understand this doctrine, or believe that the Levitical Law on all points of external defilement was absolutely done away (see Acts 10:9-35 ; Acts 11:3-18 ; Acts 15:5-20 ; 1 Corinthians 8:4-13 ). There was at first a great objection to receive any Gentiles into the Christian Church, and many miracles had to be wrought to overcome it. There was, after this, a line of separation drawn, and a claim set up by those of the favoured nation to form a higher grade than the Gentile Christians, with whom they refused to eat ( Galatians 2:11-14 ). So persistent is the spirit of formalism, that, notwithstanding our Lord's teaching and that of his apostles, it was centuries before the Church was wholly freed from dissension and difficulty in this matter.