The Good News!

The United States and other first world countries are so concerned with pollution of all the packaging we put around our food and other non biodegradable products that we throw into the garbage that it has become a multi-billion dollar business. We spend millions of tax dollars on just advertising alone to tell us what to do with our garbage! They tell us we will all die if we do not put our pop bottles in the right container. Have we gone a little overboard? Is this what we should be focusing on all the time? And do we recycle because we are rule followers or because it’s the right thing to do? Mm.

Jesus, as always, gives us a better perspective about cleanliness and garbage.

Mark 7, The Message

The Source of Your Pollution
7 1-4 The Pharisees, along with some religion scholars who had come from Jerusalem, gathered around him. They noticed that some of his disciples weren’t being careful with ritual washings before meals. The Pharisees—Jews in general, in fact—would never eat a meal without going through the motions of a ritual hand-washing, with an especially vigorous scrubbing if they had just come from the market (to say nothing of the scourings they’d give jugs and pots and pans).

5 The Pharisees and religion scholars asked, “Why do your disciples flout the rules, showing up at meals without washing their hands?”

6-8 Jesus answered, “Isaiah was right about frauds like you, hit the bull’s-eye in fact:

These people make a big show of saying the right thing,
but their heart isn’t in it.
They act like they are worshiping me,
but they don’t mean it.
They just use me as a cover
for teaching whatever suits their fancy,
Ditching God’s command
and taking up the latest fads.”

9-13 He went on, “Well, good for you. You get rid of God’s command so you won’t be inconvenienced in following the religious fashions! Moses said, ‘Respect your father and mother,’ and, ‘Anyone denouncing father or mother should be killed.’ But you weasel out of that by saying that it’s perfectly acceptable to say to father or mother, ‘Gift! What I owed you I’ve given as a gift to God,’ thus relieving yourselves of obligation to father or mother. You scratch out God’s Word and scrawl a whim in its place. You do a lot of things like this.”

14-15 Jesus called the crowd together again and said, “Listen now, all of you—take this to heart. It’s not what you swallow that pollutes your life; it’s what you vomit—that’s the real pollution.”

17 When he was back home after being with the crowd, his disciples said, “We don’t get it. Put it in plain language.”

18-19 Jesus said, “Are you being willfully stupid? Don’t you see that what you swallow can’t contaminate you? It doesn’t enter your heart but your stomach, works its way through the intestines, and is finally flushed.” (That took care of dietary quibbling; Jesus was saying that all foods are fit to eat.)

20-23 He went on: “It’s what comes out of a person that pollutes: obscenities, lusts, thefts, murders, adulteries, greed, depravity, deceptive dealings, carousing, mean looks, slander, arrogance, foolishness—all these are vomit from the heart. There is the source of your pollution.”

The real source of pollution…verbal vomit. We do it every day. What else is coming from our hearts? Time to repent.

Dear Heavenly Father, Cleanse my heart, Wash me white as snow. Remove all the impurities, pollution, and offensive trash from my heart. Make me holy and clean before You this morning. Renew my spirit. Now send me back into the world to represent You in the most excellent way…with unconditional love in my heart. Love never fails. In Jesus Name, Amen. I believe.