What defiles them

“What goes into someone’s mouth does not defile them, but what comes out of their mouth, that is what defiles them.” (Matthew 15:11)

 

This is called the era of the appearance for appearance principle. By the record of the Bible, such the tendency concerning the appearance has been existed like that even from the far past. To say the correct fact, it would be that human nature was like that from the origin. It is true the situation like that has become more prominently than before common in modern times. At the time of Jesus in the past, Pharisees and scribes had valued the tradition of elders. By the matter with that, they were pointed out by Jesus that they were hypocrites. One of the main problems pointed out by many prophets of the Old Testament was people’s actions of hypocrisy. People said they were serving God well, but their hearts were actually far from God.

 

Finding beauty, either from the inner or the outer, it is a valuable thing anyway. However, the inner beauty should be regarded more importantly than the appearance. Because by attaching great importance to the inner, humans can become more and more beautiful. On the other hand, if an appearance is valued and inner self is neglected, the life would have no choice but to be inclined to the path of vulgarity gradually. It is written in Genesis 6:2, “the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose.” Here ‘sons of God’ refers to God’s people with holy soul, and ‘daughters of humans’ refers to those living just for the desire of flesh. Sons of God had to be attracted to the fleshly beauty of women and they lost their beautiful soul.

In the case of SNS we use generally in these days, many people like and enjoy watching videos than images or literal messages. Even when listening to music, people enjoy listening to it by looking at with eyes, not with just sound. And certain singers appeared at music programs not only expose often their bodies to sexuality, but also show sexy figures and movements ordinarily in their dancing. In that way, as they focus on their appearances and try to look for a value, it may be produced several side effects related to it. For an instance, the side effects of facial plastic surgery make face ugly, and it also even causes the skin to rot. World-famous actor De** Mo*** had repeated the plastic surgery, but her appearance of face got ugly worse to see. She might become lose all of beauty and health after all.

A typical way of the most common for Satan to fool people is to let them value appearance and tradition. To say the conclusion first, it means that the object that people value in general the most can be the most dangerous. With this saying, it would had become pretty clear to you what to have to think of as a problem of danger. Pharisees and scribes pointed out that Jesus’ disciples did not wash their hands before eating. Then Jesus asked back as in Matthew 15:3, “And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition?” Jesus’ saying means that human tradition is important, but God’s law is much more important than the man’s rules. To say in the national laws, God’s law is like the Constitution and human tradition is only like up to the rules of general life. The Pharisees and the scribes were criticized for ignoring God’s law under the pretext of attaching importance to the tradition of general life. If so, it is real they’re much more bad thieves among all thieves, isn’t it? Does it make sense to steal other people’s things by robbing others to try to help them or for God? That’s exactly what the Pharisees and the scribes were behaviors doing wrong.

The story Jesus said is as follows. Bible says, “Respect your parents, and he who slanders his father or mother must be killed.” But some make excuses that “It cannot be given to the parents because it had been already offered to God.” It can’t be a problem if they offered it to God sincerely, or if they were in an inevitable situation to be offered to God. Here the point Jesus said was that they did not truly serve God, but made bad use of God’s holy name for greed. Not following God’s will is an act of false faith that comes from vain. To be sorry, not a little even among church people who putting forth Jesus faith do not believe in God in actuality.

 

The thing that goes into the mouth is food to eat. And what comes out of the mouth are words, coughs, vomit, and etc. Food enters the stomach from the mouth and the remainders come from backward. And food gives a pleasure to the palate and makes generate energy for the body through the process of movement. But what come out from mind and mouth are evil thoughts, murder, pornography, theft, lies, and slander, and etc. And all these make man’s soul dirty. Therefore after all, what we have to rule over importantly is the mind and the mouth, not such the sort of washing our hands.

 

(Written by Koonoh, Pastor of JDO Presbyterian Church in Korea, on August 8th 2021)