"And Understand What I Say"

Mark 7:14-23

14 Jesus called the crowd together again and said, "Listen now, all of you-- and understand what I say. 15 It's not what you swallow that pollutes your life; it's what you vomit-- that's the real pollution." 17 When he was back home after being with the crowd, his disciples said, "We don't get it. Put it in plain language." 18 Jesus said, "Are you being willfully stupid? Don't you see that what you swallow can't contaminate you? 19 It doesn't enter your heart but your stomach, works its way through the intestines, and is finally flushed." (That took care of dietary quibbling; Jesus was saying that all foods are fit to eat.) 20 He went on: "It's what comes out of a person that pollutes: 21 obscenities, lusts, thefts, murders, adulteries, 22 greed, depravity, deceptive dealings, carousing, mean looks, slander, arrogance, foolishness-- 23 all these are vomit from the heart. There is the source of your pollution."

Food for thought!

Although it may not seem so now, this passage, when it was first spoken, was like a bomb shell; it was the most revolutionary thing Jesus had ever said. If you followed well, in the last days Jesus has been arguing with the so called religious experts about different aspects of the religious traditions, rules and laws. He has shown how secondary are religious ceremonies; He has shown how rigid adherence to the religious traditions, rules and laws can sometimes mean disobedience to the law of God. But here he says something more startling yet. He declares that nothing that goes into a man can possibly defile him, for it is received only into his body which rids itself of it in the normal, physical way.

No wonder the disciples couldn't understand a word. The Gospel says that "When he was back home after being with the crowd, his disciples said, 'We don't get it. Put it in plain language.'" In effect Jesus was saying that things cannot be either unclean or clean in any real religious sense of the term. Only persons can be really defiled; and what defiles a person is his own actions, which are the product of his own heart.

This was new doctrine and shatteringly new doctrine. With one sweeping pronouncement Jesus declared that uncleanness has nothing to do with what a man takes into his body but everything to do with what comes out of his heart. All the things Jesus mentioned begin and happen in the human heart.

He begins with evil designs. Every outward act of sin is preceded by an inward act of choice; therefore Jesus begins with the evil thought from which the evil action comes: obscenities, lusts, thefts, murders, adulteries, greed, depravity, deceptive dealings, carousing, mean looks, slander, arrogance, foolishness-- all these are vomit from the heart. There, in the human heart, is the source of our pollution and evil.