Again Jesus called the crowd to him and said, “Listen to me, everyone, and understand this.

Mark 7:14-15 and 17-23

14 Again Jesus called the crowd to him and said, “Listen to me, everyone, and understand this. 15 Nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them.” 17 After he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about this parable. 18 “Are you so dull?” he asked. “Don’t you see that nothing that enters a person from the outside can defile them? 19 For it doesn’t go into their heart but into their stomach, and then out of the body.” (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean.)

20 He went on: “What comes out of a person is what defiles them. 21 For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, 22 adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. 23 All these evils come from inside and defile a person.”

Today’s title is “Hands Clean or Hearts Clean”

One of the most popular ways to hire people is through interviews. It is the most widely used technique to examine and screen people. Have you ever interviewed people? What do you want to find out about the interviewees? How did you go about it? The interviewers will look at different things of the interviewees such as how they look, how they talk, and their accomplishments and abilities. But the experienced interviewers know the ultimate things that show who the interviewees are not such visible outward things. What’s really important in knowing who the people are lies inside of the people. We may broadly call it “hearts”. The human Heart is the invisible root and seat of thoughts, ideas, convictions, or emotions that underlie people’s behaviors and lifestyles. But such hearts are mostly invisible to human eyes. So people tend to guess what’s in the invisible hearts of the people through what they can see. That seems highly practical. But it has many loopholes and can be misleading. Still many people stubbornly stick to such outward observation of the people. Jewish society highly emphasized washing hands. There is nothing wrong with washing hands frequently. But they added too much religious significance to it. The religious leaders were very particular about it. They even said that if anyone eats food with unclean hands, the food will defile them. In fact, this was what they accused the disciples of Jesus of. On the other hand, Jesus saw what was in the hearts of those religious leaders who criticized the disciples. They wanted to reject the power and glory of God that was powerfully manifested through Jesus. Jesus confronted them with a quote from the prophecies of Isiah. “‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules (Isaiah 29:13). Obviously, Heart clean is much more crucial than hands clean. Proverbs 4:23 says “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it” ). But it can be so easily defiled. That's why you have to guard it. So what should we guard more, our hands or our hearts? The answer is obvious. But we are often misleading and are misled like those who accuse the Lord. How about you? Are you trying to be heart-clean or hand-clean ?