Matthew 15

Today's passage is a mix of story and teaching, and since the story part is largely the same stuff as the last few chapters (healing, feeding multitudes, etc) I want to focus on the teaching part. Specifically, I am pondering the idea that "It is not what enters into the mouth that defiles the man, but what proceeds out of the mouth, this defiles the man.” (verse 11, NASB)

This stood in contrast to the arbitrary, man-made rules that many of the religious Jews in Jesus' time followed. The example here in Matthew 15 is of the disciples eating with dirty hands - which was a big no-no apparently in that time and place (and would likely be somewhat frowned upon here in our day as well). But what Jesus says is that isn't what you put in your body that makes us unclean in God's eyes... but instead what comes out of us in terms of words - and presumably thoughts and actions as well, from the context.

At the same time, we need to guard our hearts against letting in some things; not food, so much, but ideas and images of sinful behavior. Letting those into our lives is going to make us more likely to integrate wrong ideas into our lives, and then begin to have those things coming out in the forms that Jesus warned against.