Defilement

He went on: “What comes out of a person is what defiles them. For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile a person.”  (Mark 7:20-23, NASB)

Jesus had just finished a discussion with some Pharisees, who had wondered why His disciples were eating with unwashed hands.   Jesus called them hypocrites, since they obeyed man’s traditions instead of God’s commandments.  He then got into a discussion with the people.  The passage above is Jesus explaining further to His disciples. 

Jesus tells His  disciples that they should guard their hearts because out of the hearts come defilement.  He then gives us a laundry list of the sins that defile us.  My heart is the home of the Holy Spirit.  I pray every day for God to renew my heart and my soul and my mind so that I will be wholly and totally devoted to Him.  I pray to the Holy Spirit to help me not to defile His Temple so that He will find complete and total rest and comfort here with me. 
In this season of Lent we should all resolve to guard our hearts.  From our hearts come true defilement.  

Our daughter Meredith Cooper is visiting Sue and me this week.  She posed an interesting question yesterday.  She was reading from the Torah and she said that when the Israelites were wandering through the Sinai wilderness they were required to make grain offerings.  She wondered where they got their grain.  I took a few hours to think and then I got on the computer.  It seems to me that when God gives us a command He also gives us the means to carry it out.  God must have led the Israelites to a place where they could harvest grain.  God also commanded them to observe the Passover in which they had to eat unleavened bread so they had to have gotten their grain from somewhere.