Through My Bible Yr 2 – March 6

Matthew 15

Clean and Unclean

¹Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked, ²“Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don’t wash their hands before they eat!”

³Jesus replied, “And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? ⁴For God said, ‘Honor your father and mother’^[a] and ‘Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.’^[b]5But you say that if a man says to his father or mother, ‘Whatever help you might otherwise have received from me is a gift devoted to God,’ ⁶he is not to ‘honor his father^[c]‘ with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition. ⁷You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you:
⁸” ‘These people honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
⁹They worship me in vain;
their teachings are but rules taught by men.’^[d]”

¹⁰Jesus called the crowd to him and said, “Listen and understand. ¹¹What goes into a man’s mouth does not make him ‘unclean,’ but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him ‘unclean.’ ”

¹²Then the disciples came to him and asked, “Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this?”

¹³He replied, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots. ¹⁴Leave them; they are blind guides.^[e]If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit.”

¹⁵Peter said, “Explain the parable to us.”

¹⁶“Are you still so dull?” Jesus asked them. ¹⁷“Don’t you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? ¹⁸But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man ‘unclean.’ ¹⁹For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. ²⁰These are what make a man ‘unclean’; but eating with unwashed hands does not make him ‘unclean.’ ”

Footnotes:

1. Matthew 15:4 Exodus 20:12; Deut. 5:16
2. Matthew 15:4 Exodus 21:17; Lev. 20:9
3. Matthew 15:6 Some manuscripts father or his mother
4. Matthew 15:9 Isaiah 29:13
5. Matthew 15:14 Some manuscripts guides of the blind

Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright©1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.