Mark 7 — He Goes After the Heart

Today’s Passage: Mark 7

Some Pharisees come down from Jerusalem, and the thing they choose to fight about is unwashed hands. Jesus answers them with the prophet Isaiah and with a question that cuts to the bone, showing how a rule handed down by men had been used to cancel a plain command of God. The trouble, He says, was never on the outside of a person at all. What makes a life unclean comes up out of the heart. Then the scene changes twice over. A mother from Phoenicia will not stop begging Him for her daughter, and away in the Decapolis a man who cannot hear is brought to Him and goes home able both to hear and to speak. These are not three separate lessons stitched together. They are one diagnosis, and then the only Lord who can open what no amount of washing ever could.

As you read, hold this: He goes after the heart, not the hands.

Mark 7:1–13 (BSB)

¹ Then the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus, ² and they saw some of His disciples eating with hands that were defiled—that is, unwashed. ³ Now in holding to the tradition of the elders, the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat until they wash their hands ceremonially. ⁴ And on returning from the market, they do not eat unless they wash. And there are many other traditions for them to observe, including the washing of cups, pitchers, kettles, and couches for dining. ⁵ So the Pharisees and scribes questioned Jesus: “Why do Your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders? Instead, they eat with defiled hands.” ⁶ Jesus answered them, “Isaiah prophesied correctly about you hypocrites, as it is written:

‘These people honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me. ⁷ They worship Me in vain; they teach as doctrine the precepts of men.’

⁸ You have disregarded the commandment of God to keep the tradition of men.” ⁹ He went on to say, “You neatly set aside the command of God to maintain your own tradition. ¹⁰ For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’ and ‘Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.’ ¹¹ But you say that if a man says to his father or mother, ‘Whatever you would have received from me is Corban’ (that is, a gift devoted to God), ¹² he is no longer permitted to do anything for his father or mother. ¹³ Thus you nullify the word of God by the tradition you have handed down. And you do so in many such matters.”

The experts from Jerusalem gather to inspect, and the charge they bring is unwashed hands. Jesus takes the case somewhere they did not expect, straight to the heart. He reaches back for Isaiah, who had named this very sickness long ago: people whose lips draw near while their hearts stay far off, teaching the rules of men as though they were the commandments of God. Then He holds up Corban as the proof of it, showing how a human tradition had been used to cancel what Moses plainly commanded. “You neatly set aside the command of God,” He tells them, and the word is devastating, for they had grown skilled at finding religious ways around God’s own word. He is not against what is old simply for being old. He is against anything that muffles the voice of God. The hands, all along, were never the problem.

Mark 7:14–23 (BSB)

¹⁴ Once again Jesus called the crowd to Him and said, “All of you, listen to Me and understand: ¹⁵ Nothing that enters a man from the outside can defile him; but the things that come out of a man, these are what defile him.” ¹⁷ After Jesus had left the crowd and gone into the house, His disciples inquired about the parable. ¹⁸ “Are you still so dull?” He asked. “Do you not understand? Nothing that enters a man from the outside can defile him, ¹⁹ because it does not enter his heart, but it goes into the stomach and then is eliminated.” (Thus all foods are clean.) ²⁰ He continued: “What comes out of a man, that is what defiles him. ²¹ For from within the hearts of men come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, ²² greed, wickedness, deceit, debauchery, envy, slander, arrogance, and foolishness. ²³ All these evils come from within, and these are what defile a man.”

He teaches the crowd in the open and then explains it to the disciples once they are inside the house. Food, He says, passes into the stomach and out again; it never touches the place where a person is truly clean or unclean. Mark adds a quiet line that lands like thunder, that with these words Jesus was declaring all foods clean. Then comes the real list, and it is a searching one, an inventory of the human heart that leaves no one room to feel above it: evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, and all the rest. These are the things that come out of a person, and these are what defile. No washing of the hands can scrub a heart, and that is the whole point. A dirty cup was never the trouble. A dirty heart is, and only the gospel, not one more basin of water, is deep enough to reach it.

Mark 7:24–30 (BSB)

²⁴ Jesus left that place and went to the region of Tyre. Not wanting anyone to know He was there, He entered a house, but was unable to escape their notice. ²⁵ Instead, a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit soon heard about Jesus, and she came and fell at His feet. ²⁶ Now she was a Greek woman of Syrophoenician origin, and she kept asking Jesus to drive the demon out of her daughter. ²⁷ “First let the children have their fill,” He said. “For it is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.” ²⁸ “Yes, Lord,” she replied, “even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” ²⁹ Then Jesus told her, “Because of this answer, you may go. The demon has left your daughter.” ³⁰ And she went home and found her child lying on the bed, and the demon was gone.

He slips away into Gentile country hoping for quiet, and need finds Him anyway. A Gentile mother has heard about Him, and she will not stop asking Him to free her daughter. His words about the children’s bread and the dogs are not a closed door but a test, drawing out what is already in her, for Israel was given the first place at the table and not the only place. And her answer is faith itself, a heart clinging to Him. Yes, Lord, she says, and even so there is bread enough in the crumbs that fall. At a single word from Him the demon is gone and the girl is well. Mark sets this story here on purpose, right after the teaching about the heart. True cleanness turns out to be faith that holds fast to Jesus, and not the right bloodline or a spotless record of ritual. Her hands had never been washed. Her heart had.

Mark 7:31–37 (BSB)

³¹ Then Jesus left the region of Tyre and went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee and into the region of the Decapolis. ³² Some people brought to Him a man who was deaf and hardly able to speak, and they begged Jesus to place His hand on him. ³³ So Jesus took him aside privately, away from the crowd, and put His fingers into the man’s ears. Then He spit and touched the man’s tongue. ³⁴ And looking up to heaven, He sighed deeply and said to him, “Ephphatha!” (which means, “Be opened!”). ³⁵ Immediately the man’s ears were opened and his tongue was released, and he began to speak plainly. ³⁶ Jesus ordered them not to tell anyone. But the more He ordered them, the more widely they proclaimed it. ³⁷ The people were utterly astonished and said, “He has done all things well! He makes even the deaf hear and the mute speak!”

The road runs from Tyre through Sidon down to the Decapolis, Gentile country once again. Friends bring a man who cannot hear and can barely make himself understood, and they beg Jesus to lay a hand on him. Jesus draws him away from the crowd, treating him as a person and not a spectacle, touches his ears and his tongue, looks up to heaven, sighs, and commands, Be opened! Hearing comes back, and clear speech with it. The crowd cannot hold its tongue: He has done all things well. The One who goes after the heart is the same One who opens deaf ears to hear and loosens silent tongues to confess Him, and no washing ever did anything like that.