1 Some Pharisees and several teachers of the Law of Moses from Jerusalem came and gathered around Jesus. 2 They noticed that some of his disciples ate without first washing their hands.
3 The Pharisees and many other Jewish people obey the teachings of their ancestors. They always wash their hands in the proper way before eating. 4 None of them will eat anything they buy in the market until it is washed. They also follow a lot of other teachings, such as washing cups, pitchers, and bowls.
5 The Pharisees and teachers asked Jesus, “Why don’t your disciples obey what our ancestors taught us to do? Why do they eat without washing their hands?”
6 Jesus replied:
You are nothing but show-offs! The prophet Isaiah was right when he wrote that God had said,
“All of you praise me
with your words,
but you never really
think about me.
7 It is useless for you
to worship me,
when you teach rules
made up by humans.”
8 You disobey God’s commands in order to obey what humans have taught. 9 You are good at rejecting God’s commands so that you can follow your own teachings! 10 Didn’t Moses command you to respect your father and mother? Didn’t he tell you to put to death all who curse their parents? 11 But you let people get by without helping their parents when they should. You let them say that what they own has been offered to God. 12 You won’t let those people help their parents. 13 And you ignore God’s commands in order to follow your own teaching. You do a lot of other things that are just as bad.
14 Jesus called the crowd together again and said, “Pay attention and try to understand what I mean. 15-16 The food that you put into your mouth doesn’t make you unclean and unfit to worship God. The bad words that come out of your mouth are what make you unclean.”
17 After Jesus and his disciples had left the crowd and had gone into the house, they asked him what these sayings meant. 18 He answered, “Don’t you know what I am talking about by now? You surely know that the food you put into your mouth cannot make you unclean. 19 It doesn’t go into your heart, but into your stomach, and then out of your body.” By saying this, Jesus meant that all foods were fit to eat.
20 Then Jesus said:
What comes from your heart is what makes you unclean. 21 Out of your heart come evil thoughts, vulgar deeds, stealing, murder, 22 unfaithfulness in marriage, greed, meanness, deceit, indecency, envy, insults, pride, and foolishness. 23 All of these come from your heart, and they are what make you unfit to worship God.
Read Mark 7:1-23 in context and/or in other translations on BibleGateway.com!
During one of the times that the Pharisees challenged Jesus and His disciples, the issue was over food and hand-washing. While this may seem trivial for us today, imagine the person in your life who is the most obsessive about following the rules, and then multiply them by ten to get an idea of what these Pharisees were like. Not only did these Pharisees love rule following, they loved making up and carrying rules forward.
One such rule was washing your hands before you eat. On the surface, this sounds like a very practical and sanitary rule, but the Pharisees had elevated the idea of hand-washing and turned it into a salvation issue.
In Jesus’ response, He first challenges the foundation and the way these Pharisees were thinking before then dealing with the specific issue at hand. Jesus draws them to His main point by concluding with, “The food that you put into your mouth doesn’t make you unclean and unfit to worship God. The bad words that come out of your mouth are what make you unclean.” (v. 15-16)
This response shifts the focus away from physical food that goes into our mouths and towards what we let come out of our mouths. What we consume as a part of our diet is less important than our character and the attitude we display.
Our diets are important for our health, but they are not as important for our salvation. Instead, our salvation is based on God working in us and through us in ways that our food cannot do. Our diets simply help us live better and healthier in our current life.
God wants our attitude towards Him and others to be genuine, loving, helpful, and thoughtful – and all this has to do with what comes out of our mouths more than the food we put into our mouths.
This thought was inspired by studying the Walking With Jesus “Reflective Bible Study” package. To discover insights like this in your own study time, click here and give Reflective Bible Study a try today!
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