The Parable Explained Apr 2
Mark 7:17 When He had entered a house away from the crowd, His disciples asked Him concerning the parable. 18 So He said to them, “Are you thus without understanding also? Do you not perceive that whatever enters a man from outside cannot defile him, 19 because it does not enter his heart but his stomach, and is eliminated, thus purifying all foods?”
The disciples have been thoroughly steeped in the doctrine of their time period in Israel. The teachings of the Pharisees are the religious law of the land, just as the edicts and laws of Herod and Pilate are the secular law of their respective jurisdictions.
Note that there is no Old Testament law regarding the washing of hands before eating. Aaron and the priests were to wash their hands and feet in the laver before entering the tabernacle in Ex. 30:17-21. The Pharisees had developed the tradition of handwashing before eating on their own, raising a reasonable health practice to a mandatory law from God.
Jesus knows the commandments of men well, and He also knows the Commandments of God. By knowing both, He can properly break the manmade law in order to properly keep the divine law.
The disciples are often uncomfortable with the direction of Jesus’ statements. In this example, Jesus is destroying the law substituted by the Pharisees for God’s law. This is a dangerous course.
Jesus again uses an explanation of a parable to teach the disciples – and us – how to differentiate between the spiritual laws that are to govern our existence versus the attempts by mankind to establish an alternative set of laws that destroy divine Law, leaving us in an uncertain state of chaos.
What Defiles? Apr 3
Mark 7:20 And He said, “What comes out of a man, that defiles a man. 21 For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, 22 thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness. 23 All these evil things come from within and defile a man.”
Continuing His explanation of the parable, Jesus explains defilement as flowing from the inside to the outside.
Jesus reminds them that anything that enters the body through the mouth is processed in the stomach and eliminated. There is no effect on the heart, the character of a person.
Defilement is a state of character unrelated to what physically is on or passes through the body. It is a state of being profane, a willful disobedience to the word of God, making it of no effect.
The religious leaders’ primary concern is with ceremonial impurity, the outer trappings of religiosity. Jesus’ primary concern is moral impurity, the uncleanness of the heart.
The mind originates thoughts, and that is good, unless we believe them without verifying their physical and spiritual realities. Great minds have developed racism, enslavement, torture, etc. as appropriate approaches to life in this world.
Jesus cites a long list of works of the flesh that proceed from within human beings. These exist regardless of whether there are external trappings of purity.
An external washing, or an animal sacrifice to offset a sin, is to no effect if the heart remains hardened toward God and His creation. Violation of the lives and things He has created gives the lie to these external acts.
Mere restraint from breaking the laws enumerated by God to Moses is not sufficient, as Jesus explains in detail in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5-7). The intent of the heart is the key. If adultery, murder, blasphemy, etc. are still occurring in word or in mind, the effect is the same as if the physical deed has been committed.
Is it true? Is it kind? And is it necessary? These are 3 questions to ask oneself before speaking or taking action. We must take every thought captive and examine its purity before releasing it. (2 Cor. 10:5)
Throw It to the Dogs Apr 4
Mark 7:24 From there He arose and went to the region of Tyre and Sidon. And He entered a house and wanted no one to know it, but He could not be hidden. 25 For a woman whose young daughter had an unclean spirit heard about Him, and she came and fell at His feet. 26 The woman was a Greek, a Syro-Phoenician by birth, and she kept asking Him to cast the demon out of her daughter. 27 But Jesus said to her, “Let the children be filled first, for it is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the little dogs.”
Matthew 15:21-28 gives more detail than Mark. The crux of the story is the similar in both, but Mark clarifies Jesus’ abrupt response to her request.
This region had been given to the tribe of Asher, and then became part of Samaria. Syria-Phoenicia is now a land of Greek speaking Gentiles. Jesus enters the house of a supporter to avoid crowds even here.
A woman of the area has been following Jesus and continues in her supplication to free her daughter of an unclean spirit. She falls prostrate at His feet, reducing herself to the lowest of His supplicants, asking Him to cast the demon from her child.
Mark includes a clause at the beginning of Jesus’ response that helps us to understand that He is not denying the woman because she is a Gentile, nor is His abruptness a symptom of human weariness. Jesus says, “Let the children be filled first….”
There is an order to things. In Matthew 15:24, Jesus says, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” In Mark, Jesus says only that He was sent first to the children of Israel. The implication of saying “first” is that there is also a “second.” He is not closing the door on the request.
Jesus is stating that He is not bound by the constraints of a chosen people to the exclusion of humanity. That the children of Israel are the first to receive restoration, harmony, and peace with God and one another, is not to deny the same benefit to others.
Jesus sought first the children of Israel as citizens of the Kingdom of God. All others would be added in due time.
Crumbs Apr 5
Mark 7:28 And she answered and said to Him, “Yes, Lord, yet even the little dogs under the table eat from the children’s crumbs.”
29 Then He said to her, “For this saying go your way; the demon has gone out of your daughter.”
30 And when she had come to her house, she found the demon gone out, and her daughter lying on the bed.
The Gentile woman perceives the same picture that Jesus has created. Jesus is in the business of creating. Each of us must be in the business of perceiving, as the Gentile woman is doing.
She places herself and her daughter beneath the table. This is an important image for us. A new perspective is required as we find we are not the one richly robed and ready to feast.
The woman is not offended at the order of things. That the table is set for others is of no consequence if she and her daughter will be receiving gifts from the same bounty. There is more on the table than all of mankind can consume.
Are we offended at the present order of things?
Our world looks like disorder. This woman’s world looks like disorder. The Romans rule over Gentile and Jew with equal harshness. The favored race receives no favor as far as she could see.
Until Jesus comes. God’s people are the first recipients of a new manna from heaven, a new bread of life. And the bread is laid upon the table for the children. And the dogs of the family wait patiently below.
Well, yes, there is an occasional whimper, a paw placed on the leg, a reminder to those above from those beneath the table. Hungry. Waiting. Expectant.
Jesus acknowledges her request, and tells her “…the demon has gone out of your daughter.”
We love a happy ending, that persistence is rewarded. And we wonder at our own unanswered requests.
Billions of requests go up each day, the slot machine handle pulled hoping for three apples. Just one apple beneath the table would be enough. Maybe.
Speech and Hearing Apr 6
Mark 7:31 Again, departing from the region of Tyre and Sidon, He came through the midst of the region of Decapolis to the Sea of Galilee. 32 Then they brought to Him one who was deaf and had an impediment in his speech, and they begged Him to put His hand on him.
Jesus travels back to the east side of the Sea of Galilee, to the Decapolis (Ten Cities). These cities had been established for Greek settlement after Alexander the Great conquered the land. The Greek population felt more aligned to Rome and celebrated when Rome ended Israel’s brief independence in 63 BC.
All of this history is to say that the region was by no means Jewish. As with his experience with the Gadarenes (Feb 23-26), Jesus is in a Gentile territory not receptive to people of Israel.
A man is brought to Jesus who is deaf and has an impediment of speech. The Greek for impediment of speech is a compound word meaning “hardly talk.” Those who are born deaf have an almost impossible task in learning to talk since they cannot determine how other people make sounds or know what sounds they are making.
Figuratively, Jesus is with people of the Greek religion of gods and goddesses. They have never heard the truth of their own identity and would not be able to speak the truth of the nature of the world or of themselves.
Until we are aware of our identity and our place in relation to God, other people, and the world, we are unable to hear truth and therefore unable to speak truth. Everything that enters through our ears is interpreted based on a lack of understanding, and our speech reflects this lack.
Be Opened Apr 7
Mark 7:33 And He took him aside from the multitude, and put His fingers in his ears, and He spat and touched his tongue. 34 Then, looking up to heaven, He sighed, and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.”
35 Immediately his ears were opened, and the impediment of his tongue was loosed, and he spoke plainly.
Jesus pulls the man from among the people who have brought him, literally, setting the man apart from the crowd. Such are those whom Jesus has chosen and made whole.
The sigh in verse 34 may be related to this, or to the predicament of disease in a world that is not whole. It is the audible if not palpable grief that Jesus feels, His compassion expressed.
If the man could have heard, Jesus might have said, “I will open your ears and loosen your tongue to speak by praying to My Father in heaven.” Because the man is deaf, Jesus performs the words rather than speaks them, thus letting the man know the method of healing step by step.
The man is healed of deafness and muteness. The miraculous nature of the healing is compounded by the immediate ability to speak. As with the man who had been lame for 38 years but did not have to learn how to use his legs again, the mute man is able to speak without a lengthy therapy and re-education on speech.
He Has Done All Things Well Apr 8
Mark 7:36 Then He commanded them that they should tell no one; but the more He commanded them, the more widely they proclaimed it. 37 And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, “He has done all things well. He makes both the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.”
Jesus tells the man freed of a demon in the region of the Gadarenes not to follow Him but to return home and tell his friends. Here, the healed man’s friends are with him and already are aware of the miracle. There is no need to spread the news beyond those who know the man.
Second hand news is less reliable, third hand even less reliable, and the truth becomes more remote with each retelling. Those predisposed toward this good news enlarge upon it, and those who see Jesus as bad news enlarge upon the negative view.
Miracles are not the news but are simply a confirmation of the Good News.
Jesus did not come to show His works. He came to spread the Good News about God. When God is seen in the light of this Good News, truth is restored in the form of harmony between God and mankind, and between mankind and the rest of Creation.
He does not want people to reach their conclusions from retold tales of a miracle rather than from the life changing experience of an encounter with the spiritual world.
A tidal wave of retold stories becomes rumors and unfocused stories. The Good News, the point of Jesus’ mission, gets lost in the sensational events. This is about God. It is about life in the kingdom of God now, while living on earth. Follow Jesus and find it has been here all along.
Next day
Mark 7:17 When He had entered a house away from the crowd, His disciples asked Him concerning the parable. 18 So He said to them, “Are you thus without understanding also? Do you not perceive that whatever enters a man from outside cannot defile him, 19 because it does not enter his heart but his stomach, and is eliminated, thus purifying all foods?”
The disciples have been thoroughly steeped in the doctrine of their time period in Israel. The teachings of the Pharisees are the religious law of the land, just as the edicts and laws of Herod and Pilate are the secular law of their respective jurisdictions.
Note that there is no Old Testament law regarding the washing of hands before eating. Aaron and the priests were to wash their hands and feet in the laver before entering the tabernacle in Ex. 30:17-21. The Pharisees had developed the tradition of handwashing before eating on their own, raising a reasonable health practice to a mandatory law from God.
Jesus knows the commandments of men well, and He also knows the Commandments of God. By knowing both, He can properly break the manmade law in order to properly keep the divine law.
The disciples are often uncomfortable with the direction of Jesus’ statements. In this example, Jesus is destroying the law substituted by the Pharisees for God’s law. This is a dangerous course.
Jesus again uses an explanation of a parable to teach the disciples – and us – how to differentiate between the spiritual laws that are to govern our existence versus the attempts by mankind to establish an alternative set of laws that destroy divine Law, leaving us in an uncertain state of chaos.
What Defiles? Apr 3
Mark 7:20 And He said, “What comes out of a man, that defiles a man. 21 For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, 22 thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness. 23 All these evil things come from within and defile a man.”
Continuing His explanation of the parable, Jesus explains defilement as flowing from the inside to the outside.
Jesus reminds them that anything that enters the body through the mouth is processed in the stomach and eliminated. There is no effect on the heart, the character of a person.
Defilement is a state of character unrelated to what physically is on or passes through the body. It is a state of being profane, a willful disobedience to the word of God, making it of no effect.
The religious leaders’ primary concern is with ceremonial impurity, the outer trappings of religiosity. Jesus’ primary concern is moral impurity, the uncleanness of the heart.
The mind originates thoughts, and that is good, unless we believe them without verifying their physical and spiritual realities. Great minds have developed racism, enslavement, torture, etc. as appropriate approaches to life in this world.
Jesus cites a long list of works of the flesh that proceed from within human beings. These exist regardless of whether there are external trappings of purity.
An external washing, or an animal sacrifice to offset a sin, is to no effect if the heart remains hardened toward God and His creation. Violation of the lives and things He has created gives the lie to these external acts.
Mere restraint from breaking the laws enumerated by God to Moses is not sufficient, as Jesus explains in detail in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5-7). The intent of the heart is the key. If adultery, murder, blasphemy, etc. are still occurring in word or in mind, the effect is the same as if the physical deed has been committed.
Is it true? Is it kind? And is it necessary? These are 3 questions to ask oneself before speaking or taking action. We must take every thought captive and examine its purity before releasing it. (2 Cor. 10:5)
Throw It to the Dogs Apr 4
Mark 7:24 From there He arose and went to the region of Tyre and Sidon. And He entered a house and wanted no one to know it, but He could not be hidden. 25 For a woman whose young daughter had an unclean spirit heard about Him, and she came and fell at His feet. 26 The woman was a Greek, a Syro-Phoenician by birth, and she kept asking Him to cast the demon out of her daughter. 27 But Jesus said to her, “Let the children be filled first, for it is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the little dogs.”
Matthew 15:21-28 gives more detail than Mark. The crux of the story is the similar in both, but Mark clarifies Jesus’ abrupt response to her request.
This region had been given to the tribe of Asher, and then became part of Samaria. Syria-Phoenicia is now a land of Greek speaking Gentiles. Jesus enters the house of a supporter to avoid crowds even here.
A woman of the area has been following Jesus and continues in her supplication to free her daughter of an unclean spirit. She falls prostrate at His feet, reducing herself to the lowest of His supplicants, asking Him to cast the demon from her child.
Mark includes a clause at the beginning of Jesus’ response that helps us to understand that He is not denying the woman because she is a Gentile, nor is His abruptness a symptom of human weariness. Jesus says, “Let the children be filled first….”
There is an order to things. In Matthew 15:24, Jesus says, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” In Mark, Jesus says only that He was sent first to the children of Israel. The implication of saying “first” is that there is also a “second.” He is not closing the door on the request.
Jesus is stating that He is not bound by the constraints of a chosen people to the exclusion of humanity. That the children of Israel are the first to receive restoration, harmony, and peace with God and one another, is not to deny the same benefit to others.
Jesus sought first the children of Israel as citizens of the Kingdom of God. All others would be added in due time.
Crumbs Apr 5
Mark 7:28 And she answered and said to Him, “Yes, Lord, yet even the little dogs under the table eat from the children’s crumbs.”
29 Then He said to her, “For this saying go your way; the demon has gone out of your daughter.”
30 And when she had come to her house, she found the demon gone out, and her daughter lying on the bed.
The Gentile woman perceives the same picture that Jesus has created. Jesus is in the business of creating. Each of us must be in the business of perceiving, as the Gentile woman is doing.
She places herself and her daughter beneath the table. This is an important image for us. A new perspective is required as we find we are not the one richly robed and ready to feast.
The woman is not offended at the order of things. That the table is set for others is of no consequence if she and her daughter will be receiving gifts from the same bounty. There is more on the table than all of mankind can consume.
Are we offended at the present order of things?
Our world looks like disorder. This woman’s world looks like disorder. The Romans rule over Gentile and Jew with equal harshness. The favored race receives no favor as far as she could see.
Until Jesus comes. God’s people are the first recipients of a new manna from heaven, a new bread of life. And the bread is laid upon the table for the children. And the dogs of the family wait patiently below.
Well, yes, there is an occasional whimper, a paw placed on the leg, a reminder to those above from those beneath the table. Hungry. Waiting. Expectant.
Jesus acknowledges her request, and tells her “…the demon has gone out of your daughter.”
We love a happy ending, that persistence is rewarded. And we wonder at our own unanswered requests.
Billions of requests go up each day, the slot machine handle pulled hoping for three apples. Just one apple beneath the table would be enough. Maybe.
Speech and Hearing Apr 6
Mark 7:31 Again, departing from the region of Tyre and Sidon, He came through the midst of the region of Decapolis to the Sea of Galilee. 32 Then they brought to Him one who was deaf and had an impediment in his speech, and they begged Him to put His hand on him.
Jesus travels back to the east side of the Sea of Galilee, to the Decapolis (Ten Cities). These cities had been established for Greek settlement after Alexander the Great conquered the land. The Greek population felt more aligned to Rome and celebrated when Rome ended Israel’s brief independence in 63 BC.
All of this history is to say that the region was by no means Jewish. As with his experience with the Gadarenes (Feb 23-26), Jesus is in a Gentile territory not receptive to people of Israel.
A man is brought to Jesus who is deaf and has an impediment of speech. The Greek for impediment of speech is a compound word meaning “hardly talk.” Those who are born deaf have an almost impossible task in learning to talk since they cannot determine how other people make sounds or know what sounds they are making.
Figuratively, Jesus is with people of the Greek religion of gods and goddesses. They have never heard the truth of their own identity and would not be able to speak the truth of the nature of the world or of themselves.
Until we are aware of our identity and our place in relation to God, other people, and the world, we are unable to hear truth and therefore unable to speak truth. Everything that enters through our ears is interpreted based on a lack of understanding, and our speech reflects this lack.
Be Opened Apr 7
Mark 7:33 And He took him aside from the multitude, and put His fingers in his ears, and He spat and touched his tongue. 34 Then, looking up to heaven, He sighed, and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.”
35 Immediately his ears were opened, and the impediment of his tongue was loosed, and he spoke plainly.
Jesus pulls the man from among the people who have brought him, literally, setting the man apart from the crowd. Such are those whom Jesus has chosen and made whole.
The sigh in verse 34 may be related to this, or to the predicament of disease in a world that is not whole. It is the audible if not palpable grief that Jesus feels, His compassion expressed.
If the man could have heard, Jesus might have said, “I will open your ears and loosen your tongue to speak by praying to My Father in heaven.” Because the man is deaf, Jesus performs the words rather than speaks them, thus letting the man know the method of healing step by step.
The man is healed of deafness and muteness. The miraculous nature of the healing is compounded by the immediate ability to speak. As with the man who had been lame for 38 years but did not have to learn how to use his legs again, the mute man is able to speak without a lengthy therapy and re-education on speech.
He Has Done All Things Well Apr 8
Mark 7:36 Then He commanded them that they should tell no one; but the more He commanded them, the more widely they proclaimed it. 37 And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, “He has done all things well. He makes both the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.”
Jesus tells the man freed of a demon in the region of the Gadarenes not to follow Him but to return home and tell his friends. Here, the healed man’s friends are with him and already are aware of the miracle. There is no need to spread the news beyond those who know the man.
Second hand news is less reliable, third hand even less reliable, and the truth becomes more remote with each retelling. Those predisposed toward this good news enlarge upon it, and those who see Jesus as bad news enlarge upon the negative view.
Miracles are not the news but are simply a confirmation of the Good News.
Jesus did not come to show His works. He came to spread the Good News about God. When God is seen in the light of this Good News, truth is restored in the form of harmony between God and mankind, and between mankind and the rest of Creation.
He does not want people to reach their conclusions from retold tales of a miracle rather than from the life changing experience of an encounter with the spiritual world.
A tidal wave of retold stories becomes rumors and unfocused stories. The Good News, the point of Jesus’ mission, gets lost in the sensational events. This is about God. It is about life in the kingdom of God now, while living on earth. Follow Jesus and find it has been here all along.
Next day
