Today’s reading is Matthew 15.
After explaining to the apostles that He wasn’t all that concerned about how offended the Pharisees were, they still didn’t understand what He taught. They call it a parable. However, it doesn’t seem like much of a parable to me. That is, Jesus isn’t telling a story about mouths that actually refers to some other thing. He’s really talking about mouths. He really is talking about the kind of things we put in our mouths and the kind of things that come out of our mouths. He is talking about food and speech.
What goes into our mouths does not affect our hearts. It doesn’t matter what we eat, our heart is not defiled. Food goes to the stomach, not the heart. Even if there were cleanliness laws that Jesus was maintaining in His covenant, it wouldn’t work like the Pharisees claimed it did. As far as our heart is concerned spiritually, what we eat doesn’t impact our heart.
But what we say does impact our heart. Or rather, what we say and what we do shows our heart has been impacted. Evil thoughts defile us. Evil words defile us. Murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander all defile us. These things start in the heart and then come out in the speech and behavior.
The key is to keep our hearts pure. This is not new with Jesus. Proverbs 4:23 says, “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life” (ESV). As we piece this together, we realize it is not what goes into our mouths that defiles us, rather it is what goes in our ears and eyes. It is what we see and what we listen to. It is what our minds meditate upon. As Jesus had said in Matthew 6:22, the eye is the lamp of the body. We have to keep our eye clear and clean and pure. Otherwise our whole body will be dark and defiled.
In a day and age when entertainment runs everything, when we are constantly listening to music, watching tv, seeing movies, we need to take Jesus’s warning seriously. The heart sends forth the springs of life. Keep it pure. Protect it. Don’t think you can defile it with what you watch and listen to while somehow keeping your life pure. You can try. But you will fail.
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Discuss the Following Questions with Your Family
- What are your initial reactions to the chapter and the written devo above?
- Why does what goes into our mouths not defile us?
- Why does what comes out of our mouths defile us?
- How can we protect our heart and our mouths?
- What do you think we should pray for and about in light of this chapter and today’s post?
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