TRANSCRIPT

What Defiles Us Is Not What Goes Inside Us, But Comes From Inside Us (Mark 7:1-23)
A Sermon by Elise Beatrice - Wednesday 30 April 2025

Okay, we’re reading Mark 7-1-23.

“7 One day some Pharisees and teachers of religious law arrived from Jerusalem to see Jesus. 2 They noticed that some of His disciples failed to follow the Jewish ritual of hand washing before eating. 3 (The Jews, especially the Pharisees, do not eat until they have poured water over their cupped hands, as required by their ancient traditions.4 Similarly, they don’t eat anything from the market until they immerse their hands in water. This is but one of many traditions they have clung to—such as their ceremonial washing of cups, pitchers, and kettles.) 5 So the Pharisees and teachers of religious law asked him, “Why don’t your disciples follow our age-old tradition? They eat without first performing the hand-washing ceremony.”
6 Jesus replied, “You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you, for he wrote,
‘These people honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me.
7 Their worship is a farce, for they teach man-made ideas as commands from God.’ 8 For you ignore God’s law and substitute your own tradition.”
9 Then He said, “You skillfully sidestep God’s law in order to hold on to your own tradition. 10 For instance, Moses gave you this law from God: ‘Honor your father and mother,’ and ‘Anyone who speaks disrespectfully of father or mother must be put to death.’ 11 But you say it is all right for people to say to their parents, ‘Sorry, I can’t help you. For I have vowed to give to God what I would have given to you.’ 12 In this way, you let them disregard their needy parents. 13 And so you cancel the word of God in order to hand down your own tradition. And this is only one example among many others.” 
“14 Then Jesus called to the crowd to come and hear. “All of you listen,” He said, “and try to understand. 15 It’s not what goes into your body that defiles you; you are defiled by what comes from your heart.”
17 Then Jesus went into a house to get away from the crowd, and His disciples asked Him what He meant by the parable he had just used. 18 “Don’t you understand either?” He asked. “Can’t you see that the food you put into your body cannot defile you? 19 Food doesn’t go into your heart, but only passes through the stomach and then goes into the sewer.” (By saying this, He declared that every kind of food is acceptable in God’s eyes.) 20 And then he added, “It is what comes from inside that defiles you. 21 For from within, out of a person’s heart, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, 22 adultery, greed, wickedness, deceit, lustful desires, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness. 23 All these vile things come from within; they are what defile you.” 


These are the Pharisees here fussing over hand-washing. Their ceremonial tradition of hand-washing has become more important to them than the moral law of God. They treasure their traditions, but as for the Commandments of God, they ignore them. And now, they’re acting like they are doing what is right, and the disciples of Christ are not doing what is right. But Christ is bringing this to their attention and also to our attention to understand that what sends us to hell is not the fact that we have not washed our hands. Nobody is going to go to hell because they did not wash their hands or pour water over their hands before they ate. 

Though they wash their hands properly, pour water on their hands in marketplaces to show that they respect that ceremonial law, they will go to hell, and the disciples who ate without washing their hands will be in Heaven. 
So the Lord is saying, ‘You hypocrites, you fuss over something that is less important, but as for what indeed saves souls, like, “Children, honour your parents, honour your father and your mother so that you may live long..., given to Moses by God, you cause the children to disobey it.”  
So, this Commandment teaches us to treat our parents right, to not dishonour our parents who gave birth to us. This Commandment is about bringing children to respect their father and mother. So the Lord is saying to them, ‘Yes, for something  which is important, which failing to obey is spiritual death, you are taking it lightly, and you are teaching children that they can tell their parents, “‘Sorry, I can’t help you, because what I could have given you, I have vowed to give it to God instead.’ So you can let your needy parents die of hunger or neglect because you have something you could give to save them, but you are claiming you want to give that to God instead.” 
The Lord Jesus said in Matthew 5:23-25, 
“If you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.”

God hates hypocrisy. So, if a family member is suffering in your home, and you’re neglecting them, but you have this money you must give to the church, but you’re neglecting those who are in your home, that is not what God says.

If you neglect your neighbour whom you see suffering but want to give whatever you would have given to help them to God instead, God won’t welcome that. If you love God with all your heart, mind and soul, you should obey the Commandments of God and show love in situations where love needs to be shown. But the Pharisees instead taught children to dishonour their parents. 

So the Lord Jesus is pointing out to them, “Don’t you realise that what goes in your mouth is not what defiles your body?” 
 In fact, what defiles our bodies is sin. It is what comes from our hearts. 
The Scripture says, “Do not trust your heart; your heart can deceive you.” 
If you are not in the Lord, there can be sinful desires in your heart. The devil brought those desires, and you have welcomed them and stored them in your heart, and once they are in your heart, your heart becomes like a pot in which you cook your food. So our hearts are like pots. And if you welcome all the sinful desires from the devil and store them in your heart, your heart is cooking all those evil thoughts and fermenting and reeking of evil. And once it is fermented, your heart is impure, your intentions are evil, and it produces only the evil fruit like murder, theft, adultery, greed, wickedness, deceit, lustful desires, envy, slander, pride, sexual immorality, and foolishness. Because, indeed, that is what the heart is cooking up. But how do those things come to be in your heart?
You have desired them based on what the devil has exposed before your eyes. Once the devil places temptation before you, by accepting them, they enter your heart and they become a part of you. The same way that God puts inspiration in our hearts because when we are in the Lord, God is pouring inspiration, like this one, I’m speaking to you, in our hearts. It is God putting all those things in my heart so that I can speak; it comes out of my mouth, and whoever is hearing this inspiration, and if they’re listening, it will bless them, and they will do what God is saying. The same way that demons are polluting people’s hearts with sinful desires: fantasy, selfishness, pride, murder, with all those things, with haughtiness, and many people’s bodies are polluted by those demons, and they live in them and pollute their hearts with all those sins. So, every time they’re speaking about something that is put there by demons, it is coming out of their hearts, and whoever is hearing that is evilly affected by that because it becomes infectious.  

So, the evil desires you have in your heart colour every single thing that you do. If your heart is polluted by evil, and your intentions are all evil, it is because of what it’s cooking up in your heart. Your heart has become a pot, and you’re cooking all those things in your heart just like you cook your soup in your pot, and if the soup that you cook is tasty, people love it and eat it. But if what you’re cooking in your pot is evil, everyone who loves evil will love it, and they’d welcome it, and they’d be affected and nourished by evil continuously. And that’s what the heart can do.
When Father God says in Genesis 6:5, in the time of the flood, they were evil continually, and every thought of their hearts was evil. God sees people in their hearts and sees that their intentions are all evil because it is what they have polluted their hearts with.
And the Lord Jesus is saying, “It is not what goes in that defiles us, but what comes out from our hearts. All these vile things come from within; they are what defiles us.“ 
However, when we eat food, it goes in and then goes out from the other side; it does not stay in us to ferment our hearts. Food is not sinful; it is not sin to defile our bodies. The only things that defile our bodies are sins, the deeds of the darkness. But the Pharisees cancelled the word of God for the sake of their own tradition, causing children to dishonour their parents. 
And the Lord Jesus said in Matthew 15:7-9,
“7 You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you, for he wrote, 8 ‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me. 9 Their worship is a farce, for they teach man-made ideas as commands from God.’”
In fact, those Pharisees posed as those who knew the Scriptures, as the servants of God, including some high priests, yet they worshipped God with their lips, and their hearts were far from God because they were not obeying God’s Commandments, and now, they were before the Son of God. Jesus was referring to Himself when He said, ‘These people honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me.’ 
If the Pharisees’ hearts were not far from God, they would have recognised that Christ was sent by God and that He was God, and the Son of God. But because only their lips worshipped God, they did not have His Holy Spirit with them to remind them of that Truth every faithful servant of God, who remains truthful to the teachings of God, has.  
Moses had God’s Holy Spirit in Him, and God was also speaking to Him directly, and could not teach wrong because of the help of the Holy Spirit. The same with the disciples of Christ, and the same with all the prophets of the Lord, and all the devoted servants of the Lord of even today in this broken generation, for it is the Holy Spirit of God who helps us to speak the truth as the Lord taught it, without compromise.  

Yes. The same demons who deceived the Pharisees in the past are the same demons deceiving many today. So, we listen to God. If the Lord sets the law like “Children, honour your parents,” you should honour your parents. Even if people like the Pharisees teach you to go against that, and you dishonour your parents and tell them, “Sorry, I can’t help you” when they need your help, you are doing it all wrong, and by doing so, you are killing yourself spiritually. You are killing yourself spiritually every time you are disobeying God’s moral law. So, we are speaking about sin here, not about washing hands. It is good to wash your hands for hygiene reasons. But your salvation depends on your obedience to the words of God. 
The Pharisees rebuke people for not following their ritual of handwashing before eating, like it’s the most important thing. However, when it comes to the moral law that saves people spiritually and sends them to Heaven instead of hell, they are keeping people away from Heaven, and this is why the Lord Jesus also says, “You stand at the door and you block the door of Heaven, and you won’t let people in, and you yourself won’t enter it.” 
There are plenty of hypocrites nowadays in churches, and they’re doing the same; they stand there in front of the door of Heaven, they replace God, they won’t let people in, but they can’t enter it themselves because of their sins. They prevent them from seeing Christ.  
Matthew 23:13-14 applies to the hypocrites of today. God helped me understand this by giving me a dream about a church leader, and the Lord pointed out this verse to help me know that was their problem. So, this is a gracious Lord here reaching out to rescue even the hypocrites, but will they listen? That is always the question. 


Thank You, Lord Jesus, for Your grace. Lord, You are amazing forever. 
Thank You, Father God. Thank You, God, for Your peace, for Your joy and Your light and Your salvation. 
Lord, we bless You for being so good to us and for being good always.  
I count on You, always, Lord, and I bless You forever. 
Father, please hear my prayer, in the name of Your Son, Jesus,  Amen.