Wednesday after the Seventh Sunday after Trinity Sunday
Posted on July 26, 2023 by under
Scripture: St. Matthew 15:10-20 (NKJV)
15:10 When He had called the multitude to Himself, He said to them, “Hear and understand: 11 Not what goes into the mouth defiles a man; but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man.”
12 Then His disciples came and said to Him, “Do You know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying?”
13 But He answered and said, “Every plant which My heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted. 14 Let them alone. They are blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind leads the blind, both will fall into a ditch.”
15 Then Peter answered and said to Him, “Explain this parable to us.”
16 So Jesus said, “Are you also still without understanding? 17 Do you not yet understand that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and is eliminated? 18 But those things which proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and they defile a man. 19 For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. 20 These are the things which defile a man, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile a man.”
Devotion
Jesus chides the hypocrisy of the Pharisees even further. They were so concerned with the outward keeping of the Law that they couldn’t see what the Law’s primary purpose was. They would have great arguments about how to make its precepts more able to be followed by them in a way they could prove they had been following. God’s distinguishing between animals for them to eat and sacrifice, as well as which ones to avoid, was no more physically necessary than the command for Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit of the tree in the midst of the garden. The thing eaten wouldn’t necessarily defile a person, but that which springs from the heart would.
Our culture has become very invested in the heart. Except for a short and ever-diminishing list of gross crimes, whatever a person wants or feels is automatically considered good. Yet, the God who created mankind and called His creation good tells us what the reality of the fallen world is: “out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies.” There is no equivocation in Jesus’ words. While these things may manifest themselves in differing degrees of sinful words and actions, they are all the product of every fallen human’s heart. Only being the Father’s planting, being firmly rooted by faith in Christ Jesus, are we not plucked up, but kept for the joy of Heaven.
Prayer: O God, Whose never-failing Providence ordereth all things both in heaven and earth: We humbly beseech Thee to put away from us all hurtful things, and to give us those things which be profitable for us; through Jesus Christ, Thy Son, our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, ever One God, world without end. Amen.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
