The heart of the problem is the problem of the heart!

Matthew 15:1-2,10-14

Pharisees and religion scholars came to Jesus all the way from Jerusalem, criticizing, “Why do your disciples play fast and loose with the rules?” He then called the crowd together and said, “Listen, and take this to heart. It’s not what you swallow that pollutes your life, but what you vomit up.” Later his disciples came and told him, “Did you know how upset the Pharisees were when they heard what you said?” Jesus shrugged it off. “Every tree that wasn’t planted by my Father in heaven will be pulled up by its roots. Forget them. They are blind men leading blind men. When a blind man leads a blind man, they both end up in the ditch.”

Food for thought!

“Listen, and take this to heart. It’s not what you swallow that pollutes your life, but what you vomit up.” 

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. Jesus  was always arguing with the so called religious experts about different aspects of the religious traditions, rules and laws. He  showed how secondary are religious ceremonies; He  showed how rigid adherence to the religious traditions, rules and laws can actually 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.

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.  Jesus is saying that the heart of the problem is the problem of the heart.

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. Every outward act of sin is preceded by an inward act of choice; therefore the evil thought from which the evil action comes is in the heart like obscenities, lusts, thefts, murders, adulteries, greed, depravity, deceptive dealings, carousing, mean looks, slander, arrogance, foolishness-- all these are vomit from the heart.