Do ye not perceive, that whatsoever thing from without entereth into the man.
The true source of defilement
Having rebuked the scribes and Pharisees, our Lord addressed the people, and laid down a great general principle (Mark 7:15), which His disciples asked Him to explain more fully. We are taught-
I. That mere external observances do not affect or change the moral state and character of man.
1. The statement that nothing from without defileth a man, must be taken in connection with what goes before, and then it becomes a principle, of which the Jews had much need to be told. All require to be told.
2. That mere outward observances cannot affect the moral nature, seems a very simple truth. Reason teaches it. The body may be affected by them, but not the soul; to influence the heart, means of a right class must be selected. Experience teaches it. Observation confirms it.
3. This principle requires in our day to be loudly proclaimed.
4. The more nearly the soul can come to God, irrespective of outward things, the better.
II. That the moral state and character of a man, is affected by that which cometh out of his heart.
1. The fountainhead of all that enters into human history and character, is the heart. Hence, the character of the moral law, the order of the Spirit’s work, the importance of the inspired precept, “Keep thine heart,” etc.
2. That which naturally proceeds from the heart proves that it is wholly depraved.
3. By these things, which proceed from the heart, is man defiled. Christ’s blood and spirit, alone can cleanse. (Expository Discourses.)
Spiritual defilement
I. The ceremonialism of the Pharisees denounced.
1. The undue importance they attached to outward observances.
2. The additions they made to the requirements of the law of Moses.
3. The Saviour’s discourse on this occasion was evidently intended to prepare the minds of the people for the total abolition of all ceremonial rites.
II. The ignorance of the disciples reproved. “And He saith unto them, Are ye so without understanding also?”
1. To us their dulness of apprehension appears strange and unaccountable.
2. In their ignorance we see the effect, not merely of inattention, but of prejudice and bigotry.
III. The depravity of human nature exhibited. We are shown-
1. The source of evil. It is in the heart.
2. The diversified streams of evil. “Adulteries, fornications, thefts, murders, covetousness,” etc.
3. The contaminating influence of evil. These are the things by which men are defiled. (Expository Outlines.)
Things from within
It is well known that rotten wood and glowworms make a glorious show in the night, and seem to be some excellent things; but when the day appears, they show what they are indeed-poor, despicable, and base creatures. Such is the vanity and sinfulness of all haughty, proud, high-minded persons, who, though now shining in the darkness of this world, through the greatness of their power, place, and height of their honour, when the Sun of Righteousness shall appear and manifest the secrets of all hearts, then they will be seen in their own proper colours. (Spencer.)
Out of the heart.-
The heart determines the life
The bowl runs as the bias inclines it; the ship moves as the rudder steers it; and the mind thinks according to the predominancy of vice or virtue in it. The heart of man is like the spring of the clock, which causes the wheels to move right or wrong, well or ill. If the heart once set forward for God, all the members will follow after; all the parts, like dutiful handmaids, in their places, will wait on their mistress. The heart is the great workhouse where all sin is wrought before it is exposed to open view. It is the mint where evil thoughts are coined, before they are current in our words or actions. It is the forge where all our evil works as well as words are hammered out. There is no sin but is dressed in the withdrawing room of the heart, before it appears on the stage of life. It is vain to go about an holy life till the heart be made holy. The pulse of the hand beats well or ill, according to the state of the heart. If the chinks of the ship are unstopped, it will be to no purpose to labour at the pump. When the water is foul at the bottom, no wonder that scum and filth appear at the top. There is no way to stop the issue of sin, but by drying up the matter that feeds it. (Swinnock.)
Natural corruption of the heart
That which AEsop said to his master, when he came into his garden and saw so many weeds in it, is applicable to the heart, His master asked him what was the reason that the weeds grew up so fast and the herbs thrived not? He answered, “The ground is natural mother to the weeds, but a stepmother to the herbs.” So the heart of man is natural mother to sin and corruption, but a stepmother to grace and goodness; and further than it is watered from heaven, and followed with a great deal of care and pains, it grows not. (Goodwin.)
The heart a storehouse of evil
Here is a piece of iron laid upon the anvil. The hammers are plied upon it lustily. A thousand sparks are scattered on every side. Suppose it possible to count each spark as it falls from the anvil; yet, who could guess the number of the unborn sparks that still lie latent and hidden in the mass of iron? Now, your sinful nature may be compared to that heated bar of iron. Temptations are the hammers; your sins are the sparks. If you could count them (which you cannot do), yet who could tell the multitude of unborn iniquities-eggs of sin that lie slumbering in your soul? You must know this before you can know the sinfulness of your nature. Our open sins are like the farmer’s little sample which he brings to market. There are granaries full at home. The iniquities that we see are like the weeds upon the surface soil, but I have been told, and indeed have seen the truth of it, that if you dig six feet into the earth and turn up fresh soil, there will be found in that soil six feet deep the seeds of the weeds indigenous to the land. And so we are not to think merely of the sins that grow on the surface, but if we could turn our heart up to its core and centre, we should find it is fully permeated with sin as every piece of putridity is with worms and rottenness. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
An evil heart
A certain little boy in Kansas, only eleven years old, strove hard to be a Christian. Once he stood watching Maggie paring the potatoes for dinner. Soon she pared an extra large one, which was very white and very nice on the outside, but when cut into pieces it showed itself to be hollow and black inside with dry rot. Instantly Willie exclaimed, “Why, Maggie, that potato isn’t a Christian.” “What do you mean?” asked Maggie. “Don’t you see it has a bad heart?” was the child’s reply. This little Kansas boy had learned enough of the religion of Jesus to know that however fair the outside may be, the natural heart is corrupt. (Baptist Messenger.)
Evil passions when restrained only by custom, law, or public opinion, and not by the grace and love of God, still merit condemnation
If men were shut up in cells, so that they could not commit that which their nature instigated them to do, yet, as before the Lord, seeing they would have been such sinners outwardly if they could have been, their hearts are judged to be no better than the hearts of those who found opportunity to sin and used it. A vicious horse is none the better tempered because the kicking straps prevent his dashing the carriage to atoms; and so a man is none the better really because the restraints of custom and Providence may prevent his carrying out that which he would prefer. Poor fallen human nature behind the bars of laws, and in the cage of fear of punishment, is none the less a fearful creature; should its master unlock the door we should soon see what it would be and do. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
No heart free from sin
Well-tempered spades turn up ill savoury soils even in vineyards. (Baily.)
The heart its own laboratory
We hear a great deal said in our day about the doctrine of environment. “Circumstances,” we are told, “make the man;” “Life is a modification of matter;” “Thinking is matter in motion;” “The brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile;” “The difference between a good man and a bad man is mainly a difference in molecular organization;” “The affections are of an eminently glandular nature;” “Not as a man thinketh in his heart, but as he eateth, so is he;” “Character is the aggregate of surroundings, the sum total of parents, nurse, place, time, air, light, food, etc.” Now this doctrine of environment is in a certain sense entirely true. The mind does not more certainly act on the body than the body on the mind. But the doctrine of environment means, or at least tends to mean, more than this. It tends to teach that sin is not so much a crime as a misfortune, not so much guilt as disease. Not so did the Galilean Master teach. “Hearken to Me, all of you, and understand: Nothing that goeth into a man from without can defile him; but the things that come out of him are what defile a man.” Here He is in direct issue with the materialism of the day. For man is something more than matter, or an organized group of molecules. Behind the visible of him there is the invisible. The heart is its own laboratory. Friend, overtaken in a sin, do not judge yourself too charitably. Don’t ascribe too much to outward circumstances. Recall the first Adam: he was in a garden, where every outward circumstance was for him; yet he fell. Recall the second Adam: He was in a desert, where every outward circumstance was against Him; yet He remained erect: the Devil failed to conquer Him, not because He was Divine, but because He was sinless. Don’t excuse yourself then too much by your “environment.” Man is not altogether an imbecile. True, “circumstances do make the man.” But they make him only in the sense and degree that he permits them to make him. You will find the most niggardly of men in the mansions of the rich, and the most generous of men in the cabins of the poor; the humblest of Christians in the palace, and the proudest of Pharisees in the cottage; saints in the dungeon, and villains in the Church. It is not so much the outward that tinges the inward as the inward that tinges the outward. It is for the man himself to say whether his own heart shall be a temple or a kennel. The great problem then is this: How shall a man use his “circumstances”? For just what he does with them-just what he does with his strength and time, and skill, and money, and imagination, and reason, and affections, just what the heart does with its opportunities-just this is the test of him. Do these opportunities, after passing through the laboratory of his heart, issue as blessings on the world? Then his heart is pure, Do they issue in moral blights? Then his heart is defiled. Not that these bad issues do of themselves defile the heart; but the heart being itself defiled, and sending forth issues of evil thoughts and deeds, these issues take on the impurities of the source from which they spring, marking its defilement, and aggravating its pollution by the very act of outflowing. These are the unclean things, which, coming out from within, defile the man. Keep thy heart, then, with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life and of death. Friend, are you disheartened by my Master’s doctrine? Don’t seek to remedy your case by merely altering your circumstances, or reforming your habits. You can’t purify a fountain by purifying its streams. Jesus Christ is the most radical of reformers. He does not say, “Change your circumstances, and you will change your character;” but He does say, “Change your heart, and you will be likely to change your circumstances.” (George Dana Boardman, D. D.)
Evil Thoughts.-
Source of evil thoughts
Notice how evil thoughts are by the Saviour said to be the first of the evil things which coming out of the heart defile. We should not, I think, have put evil thoughts amongst the things which come out of the heart, because we suppose them to be in the heart. But is not what the Saviour says true of that which He alone knows-the very nature and substance of the soul? In its very centre, or close to its centre, the evil has its root or fountain. The evil suggestion arises, and then the will or affection takes notice of it. If the will is right with God, it immediately puts out the evil thing as if it were a loathsome reptile, but if the will be not right with God, it harbours the first suggestion of evil, it cogitates it, thinks it over and over, dwells upon it in imagination, chews the food of the evil fancy, desires to do the evil deed, resolves to do it, and so has already done it in the heart. So that out of the heart, out of the unseen and unthinkable depths within, proceed the evil thoughts which become evil acts within before they are incarnated, as it were, in some evil deed without. (M. F. Sadler, M. A.)
Sinfulness of evil thoughts
Some please themselves in thoughts of sinful sports, or cheats, or unclean acts, and sit brooding on such cockatrice eggs with great delight. It is their meat and drink to roll these sugarplums under their tongues. Though they cannot sin outwardly, for want of strength of body or a fit opportunity, yet they act sin inwardly with great love and complacency. As players in a comedy, they act their parts in private, in order to a more exact performance of them in public. (Swinnock.)
Thoughts usually indicate character
Our thoughts are like the blossoms on a tree in the spring. You may see a tree in the spring all covered with blossoms, so that nothing else of it appears. Multitudes of them fall off and come to nothing. Ofttimes where there are most blossoms there is least fruit. But yet there is no fruit, be it of what sort it will, good or bad, but it comes in and from some of those blossoms. The mind of man is covered with thoughts as a tree with blossoms. Most of them fall off, vanish, and come to nothing, end in vanity; and sometimes where the mind does most abound with them there is the least fruit, the sap of the mind is wasted and consumed in them. Howbeit there is no fruit which actually we bring forth, be it good or bad, but it proceeds from some of these thoughts. Wherefore, ordinarily, these give the best and surest measure of the frame of men’s minds. “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.” In case of strong and violent temptations, the real frame of a man’s heart is not to be judged by the multiplicity of thoughts about any object, for whether they are from Satan’s suggestions, or from inward darkness, trouble, and horror, they will impose such a continual sense of themselves on the mind as shall engage all its thoughts about them; as when a man is in a storm at sea, the current of his thoughts runs quite another way than when he is in safety about his occasions. But ordinarily voluntary thoughts are the best measure and indication of the frame of our minds. As the nature of the soil is judged by the grass which it brings forth, so may the disposition of the heart by the predominancy of voluntary thoughts; they are the original acting of the soul, the way whereby the heart puts forth and empties the treasure that is in it, the waters that first rise and flow from that fountain. (J. Owes.)
Petrifying influence of evil thoughts
Anyone who has visited limestone eaves has noticed the stalactite pillars, sometimes large and massive, by which they were adorned and supported. They are nature’s masonry of solid rock, formed by her own slow, silent, mysterious process. The little drop of water percolates through the roof of the cave, and deposits its sediment, and another follows it, till the icicle of stone is formed: and finally reaching to the rock beneath, it becomes a solid pillar, a marble monument, which can only be rent down by the most powerful forces. But is there not going forward oftentimes in the caverns of the human heart a process as silent and effective, yet infinitely more momentous? There in the darkness that shrouds all from the view of the outward observer, each thought and feeling, as light and inconsiderate, perhaps, as the little drop of water, sinks downward into the soul, and deposits-yet in a form almost imperceptible-what we may call its sediment. And then another and another follows, till the traces of all combined become more manifest, and at length, if these thoughts and feelings are charged with the sediment of worldliness and worldly passion, they have reared within the spirit permanent and perhaps everlasting monuments of their effects. All around the walls of this spiritual cave stand in massive proportions the pillars of sinful inclinations and the props of iniquity, and only a convulsion like that which rends the solid globe can rend them from their place and shake their hold. Thus stealthily is the work done; mere fancies and desires and lusts unsuspiciously entertained, contribute silently but surely to the result. The heart is changed into an impregnable fortress of sin. The roof of its iniquity is sustained by marble pillars, and all the weight of reason and conscience and the Divine threatenings are powerless to lay it low in the dust of humility. Such is the power of those light fancies and imaginations and desires which enter the soul unobserved, and are slighted for their insignificance. They attract no notice. They utter no note of alarm. We might suppose that if left to themselves they would be absorbed in oblivion, and leave no trace behind. But they form the pillars of character. They sustain the soul under the pressure of all those solemn appeals to which it ought to yield. How impressive, then, the admonition, “Keep thy heart with all diligence”! Things which seem powerless and harmless may prove noxious beyond expression. The power of inveterate sin is from the silent flow of thought. Your habitual desires or fancies are shaping your eternal destiny. (American National Preacher.)
Evil thoughts not to be harboured
The best Christian’s heart here is like Solomon’s ships, which brought home not only gold and silver, but also apes and peacocks; it has not only spiritual and heavenly, but also vain and foolish thoughts. But these latter are there as a disease or poison in the body, the object of his grief and abhorrence, not of his love and complacency. Though we cannot keep vain thoughts from knocking at the door of our hearts, nor from entering in sometimes, yet we may forbear bidding them welcome, or giving them entertainment. “How long shall vain thoughts lodge within thee?” It is bad to let them sit down with us, though but for an hour, but it is worse to let them lie or lodge with us. It is better to receive the greatest thieves into our houses than vain thoughts into our hearts. John Huss, seeking to reclaim a very profane wretch, was told by him, that his giving way to wicked, wanton thoughts was the original of all those hideous births of impiety which he was guilty of in his life. Huss answered him, that although he could not keep evil thoughts from courting him, yet he might keep them Item marrying him; “as,” he added, “though I cannot keep the birds from flying over my head, yet I can keep them from building their nests in my hair.” (Swinnock.)
Importance of keeping the mind well employed
Man’s heart is like a millstone: pour in corn, and round it goes, bruising and grinding, and converting it into flour; whereas give it no corn, and then indeed the stone goes round, but only grinds itself away, and becomes ever thinner and smaller and narrower. Even as the heart of man requires to have always something to do; and happy is he who continually occupies it with good and holy thoughts, otherwise it may soon consume and waste itself by useless anxieties or wicked and carnal suggestions. When the millstones are not nicely adjusted, grain may indeed be poured in, but comes away only half ground or not ground at all. The same often happens with our heart when our devotion is not sufficiently earnest. On such occasions we read the finest texts without knowing what we have read, and pray without hearing our own prayers. The eye flits over the sacred page, the mouth pours forth the words, and clappers like a mill, but the heart meanwhile turns from one strange thought to another; and such reading and such prayer are more a useless form than a devotion acceptable to God. (Scriver.)
Good thoughts strangers
The thoughts of spiritual things are with many as guests that come into an inn and not like children that dwell in the house. (Dr. John Owen.)
Cure for evil thoughts
As the streams of a mighty river running into the ocean, so are the thoughts of a natural man, and through self they run into hell. It is a fond thing to set a dam before such a river to curb its streams. For a little space there may be a stop made, but it will quickly break down all obstacles, or overflow all its bounds. There is no way to divert its course, but only by providing other channels for its waters, and turning them there into. The mighty stream of the evil thoughts of men will admit of no bounds or dams to pug a stop unto them. There are but two ways of relief from them; the one respecting their moral evil, the other their natural abundance. The first by throwing salt into the spring, as Elisha cured the waters of Jericho; that is, to get the heart and mind seasoned with grace; for the tree must be made good before the fruit will be so; the other is, to turn their streams into new channels, putting new aims and ends upon them, fixing them on new objects; so shall we abound in spiritual thoughts; for abound in thought we shall, whether we will or no. (Dr. John Owen.)
Evil thoughts not trifles
Notice this evil catalogue, this horrible list of words. It begins with what is very lightly regarded among men-evil thoughts. Instead of evil thoughts being less simple than evil acts, it may sometimes happen that in the thought the man may be worse than in the act. Thoughts are the heads of words and actions, and within the thoughts lie condensed all the villany and iniquity that can be seen in the words or in the acts. If men did more carefully watch their thoughts, they would not so readily fall into evil ways. Instead of fancying that evil thoughts are mere trifles, let us imitate the Saviour, and put them first in the catalogue of things to be condemned. Let us make a conscience of our thoughts. In the words of the text the first point mentioned is evil thoughts, but the last is foolishness. This is the way of sin, to begin with a proud conceit of our own thoughts, ending with folly and stupidity. What a range there is between these two points, what a variety of sin thus enumerated! Sin is a contradictory thing: it takes men this way and that, but never in the right way. Virtue is one, as truth is one; holiness is one, but sin is ten thousand things conglomerated into a dread confusion. When we look upon any man and only regard him with malignity, we sin in all that-it is the sin of envy. There stands pride. One would have thought that a man who commits these sins would not have been proud. When a man is filled with a proud conceit of himself he is justifying his own iniquity. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Human depravity seen in the thoughts of man
Consider the wild mixtures of thought displayed both in the waking life and the dreams of mankind. How grand! how mean! how sudden the leap from one to the other! how inscrutable the succession! how defiant of orderly control! It is as if the soul were a thinking ruin, which it very likely is. The angel and the demon life appear to be contending in it. The imagination revels in beauty exceeding all the beauty of things, wails in images dire and monstrous, wallows in murderous and base suggestions that shame our inward dignity. (H. Bushnell, D. D.)
Covetousness.
Covetousness-its spirit
The spirit of covetousness which leads to an over value and over love of money, is independent of amount. A poor man may make an idol of his little, just as much as the rich man makes an idol of his much. We know our Lord showed how the poorest person may exceed in charity and liberality the richest-by giving more than the wealthy in proportion to the whole amount of his possessions. So in like manner, a poor man may be more covetous than a wealthy man, because he may keep back from the treasury of God more in proportion to his all than the rich man keeps back from his all. If the Christian character is debased, and heaven is lost by such indulgence of covetousness as to make a man an idolater of mammon, it is of little consequence whether the heart be set on an idol of gold, or an idol of clay. (Dean Ramsay.)
Covetousness exchanges true riches for the false
As the dog in AEsop’s fable lost the real flesh for the shadow of it, so the covetous man casts away the true riches for the love of the shadowy. (T. Adams.)
Covetousness pines in plenty
The covetous man pines in plenty, like Tantalus up to the chin in water, and yet thirsty. (T. Adams.)
Degradation of the covetous
A young man once picked up a sovereign lying in the road. Ever afterwards, in walking along, he kept his eye fixed steadily upon the ground in the hope of finding another. And in the course of a long life he did pick up a good many gold and silver coins at different times. But all these years, while he was looking for them, he saw not that the heavens were bright above him, and nature beautiful around. He never once allowed his eyes to look up from the mud and filth in which he sought his treasure; and when he died-a rich old man-he only knew this fair earth as a dirty road to pick up money as you walk along. (Dr. Jeffers.)
Delusion of the covetous
Some of us may remember a fable of a covetous man, who chanced to find his way one moonlight night into a fairy’s palace. There he saw bars, apparently of solid gold, strewed on every side; and he was permitted to take away as many as he could carry. In the morning, when the sun rose on his imaginary treasure, borne home with so much toil, behold! there was only a bundle of sticks, and invisible beings filled the air around him with scornful laughter. Such will be the confusion of many a man who died in this world with his thousands, and woke up in the next world not only miserable, and poor, and naked, but in presence of a heap of fuel stored up against the great Day of burning. (Anon.)
Covetousness mental gluttony
Covetousness is a sort of mental gluttony, not confined to money, but craving honour and feeding on selfishness. (Chamfort.)
Covetousness manifested in insufficient expenditure
Whosoever, when a just occasion calls, either spends not at all, or not in some proportion to God’s blessing upon him, is covetous. The reason of the ground is manifest, because wealth is given to that end to supply our occasions. Now, if I do not give everything its end, I abuse the creature; I am false to my reason, which should guide me; I offend the Supreme Judge, in perverting that order which He hath set both to those things and to reason. The application of the ground would be infinite. But, in brief, a poor man is an occasion; nay friend is an occasion; my country; my table; my apparel. If in all these, and those more which concern me, I either do nothing, or pinch and scrape and squeeze blood, indecently to the station wherein God hath placed me, I am covetous. More particularly, and to give one instance of all: if God have given me servants, and I either provide too little for them, or that which is unwholesome, and so not competent nourishment, I am covetous. Men usually think that servants for their money are as other things that they buy, even as a piece of wood, which they may cut, or hack, or throw into the fire; and so that they pay them their wages, all is well. Nay, to descend yet more particularly: if a man hath wherewithal to buy a spade, and yet he chooseth rather to use his neighbour’s, and wear out that, he is covetous. Nevertheless, few bring covetousness thus low or consider it so narrowly, which yet ought to be done, since there is a justice in the least things, and for the least there shall be a judgment. (George Herbert.)
Pride.-
Pride
Diogenes being at Olympia, saw at the celebrated festival some young men of Rhodes, arrayed most magnificently. Smiling scornfully, he exclaimed, “This is pride.” Afterwards, meeting with some Lacedaemonians in a mean and sordid dress, he said, “This is also pride.” Pride is found at the same opposite extremes of dress at the present day.
The folly of pride
Of all sins, pride is such a one as we may well wonder how it should grow, for it hath no other root to sustain it, than what is found in man’s dreaming fancy. It grows, as sometimes we see a mushroom, or moss among stones, where there is little soil or none for its root to take hold of. (W. Gurnall.)
The test of purity
A gentleman was once extolling loudly the virtue of honesty, saying what a dignity it imparted to our nature, and how it recommended us to the favour of God. “Sir,” replied his friend, “however excellent the virtue of honesty may be, I fear there are very few men in the world who really possess it.” “You surprise me,” said a stranger. “Ignorant as I am of your character,” was the reply, “I fancy it would be no difficult matter to prove even you to be a dishonest man.” “I defy you.” “Will you give me leave, then, to ask you a question or two, and promise not to be offended?” “Certainly.” “Have you never met with an opportunity of getting gain by unfair means? I don’t say, have you taken advantage of it; but, have you ever met with such an opportunity? I, for my part, have; and I believe everybody else has.” “Very probably I may.” “How did you feel your mind affected on such an occasion? Had you no secret desire, not the least inclination, to seize the advantage which offered? Tell me without any evasion, and consistently with the character you admire.” “I must acknowledge, I have not always been absolutely free from every irregular inclination; but-.” “Hold! sir, none of your salvos; you have confessed enough. If you had the desire, though you never proceeded to the act, you were dishonest in heart. This is what the Scriptures call concupiscence. It defiles the soul; it is a breach of that law which requireth truth in the inward parts, and, unless you are pardoned through the Blood of Christ, it will be a just ground for your condemnation, when God shall judge the secrets of men.