God the Uprooter of Sects.
I. The disciples needed this lesson, that they might not be startled by the fading away of much which had seemed to them fair and vigorous, but still more that they might understand what there was in the Jewish soil which could not be rooted out what there was that would spread its fibres more widely, genially, and send out higher branches wherein the fowls of the air might dwell. The sect of the Pharisees, our Lord says, His heavenly Father had notplanted. The disciples of Jesus learnt gradually from His lips that they were called and chosen out to preach to their own countrymen that the Son of David and the Son of Abraham had come to bind together in one publicans and sinners Jews, Galileans, Samaritans. With this message they were to go forth, with this Gospel to Jews and Gentiles. As they bore it, they soon discovered that the natural and necessary antagonists of it were the sects; that Sadducees and Pharisees hated it equally; that they saw in it the destruction of the sect-principle; that they felt they could only maintain even a temporary ascendency by fighting with this rival as for life and death. Then, when they found how mighty this sect-principle was, and what numbers were pledged to it, they must have recollected the words which had been spoken to them: "Every plant, which My heavenly Father has not planted, shall be rooted out."
II. There is a plant in your heart and mine which our heavenly Father has not planted, and which must be rooted out. It is that same plant of self-seeking, of opinionativeness, of party-spirit, which has shed its poison over the Church and over the world. It springs in us from that same root of unbelief in One who is the head of us all, whose life is the common life of all, out of which all sects and parties have proceeded; from that root of pride which has led to the amazing delusion that God has not called us to be His servants and children, but that we are taking Him to be our Lord and Father. If once by His grace we are delivered from that presumption, we shall not doubt that He has taken care of His own name and His own kingdom in this earth of ours, however ignorantly His creatures have been setting themselves to defend and exalt one or the other.
F. D. Maurice, Sermons,vol. iv., p. 1.
References: Matthew 15:13. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. vii., No. 423; Preacher's Monthly,vol. vi., p. 48. Matthew 15:14. Archbishop Benson, Boy Life: Sundays in Wellington College,p. 67. Matthew 15:16. T. Arnold, Sermons,vol. v., p. 63.Matthew 15:19. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xiii., No. 732; Homiletic Quarterly,vol. v., p. 461; H.W. Bellows, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxxii., p. 125.Matthew 15:21-28. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. i., p. 58, vol. vi., p. 143; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. ii., p. 98; Preacher's Monthly,vol. iii., p. 297; T. Birkett Dover, The Ministry of Mercy,p. 148; J. Wells, Bible Children,p. 213; Phillips Brooks, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxxi., p. 312; G. Macdonald, Miracles of our Lord,p. 130. Matthew 15:21-31. Parker, Inner Life of Christ,vol. ii., p. 331.