Listen and Understand

"Jesus called the crowd to Him and said. "Listen and understand. What goes into a man's mouth does not make him unclean, but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him unclean." Matthew 15:10-11

The Pharisees had become expert at making rules for the sake of rules. They had rules about the rules about their rules. You know what I mean. If not, just try to read the fine print on the back of the stuff you sign all the time. Legalism for the sake of rule-making is funny business. This is why the truth has to be kept simple. Well, it seems that the Pharisees had a boatload of rules about what people could eat and what they couldn't eat and when they could eat it and with whom they could eat it and how many times they had to wash their hands before and after they ate it whenever they ate it, with whom they ate it, depending on what it was.

At the bottom of such rules was the opportunity to purchase or have blessed a whole bunch of stuff that would make everything better. There were gifts that could be made to the temple and there were prayers that could be made. The religion of the day had become quite a circus. God forgive us if we still do this today. This is why Jesus eventually became so righteously angry that He tipped over the tables of the money-changers who hung out in the temple courtyard. His point here is that we are so concerned about what goes in a person's mouth that we aren't listening to what is coming out of our own mouths. Someone eating the 'wrong' thing at the 'wrong time' with the 'wrong people' was becoming an impossible game and the conversations about it were so incredibly judgmental and rude and over the top that the whole process was losing it's meaning. People were being led to believe one thing and do another.

Our lesson today is about not losing sight of the most important truths. People are more important that what they eat. How we treat people is far more important than what they eat. Or when they eat it or whomever they eat it with. Rules have a way way of becoming our rules and the more we micromanage them the further they get from whatever the simple truth was in the beginning that motivated them. Whether you are a rule maker or a rule keeper or a rule breaker, keep in mind that the rules should never trump the Truth itself. Then the truth is compromised by becoming what men say about rules. A word to the wise and a matter for the heart.

In Him,
Pastor Fred

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