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Making up Rules as They Go

¹ Now some of the head honchos of the church, and some religious experts who were from Jerusalem, gathered around Jesus. ² They saw that some of the cowboys were eating before they had washed their hands ³ (it was a religious rule they had made up). ^4 5 All these uppity religious fellows asked him, "Why aren't your cowboys keeping the sacred traditions of old? They are eating without washing their hands."

⁶ Jesus calmly replied, "Isaiah foretold the future about you when he said, 'These people will say they ride for me, but it's just all talk. ⁷ What they call church is just teaching a bunch of rules and stuff that they came up with. It's not about me.' ⁸ Y'all don't ride for God. You just make up stuff and say it came from him."

⁹ Jesus kept it up and said, "Y'all conveniently shun the commands from God in order to make up your own sorry rules. ¹⁰ Even the great cowboy, Moses, said, 'Respect your mom and dad,' and, 'Whoever insults his mom or dad must be killed.' ¹¹ But you all tell people that they can get away from helping their parents if they ¹² just say that the money or food is a gift to God. ¹³ You teach people to disobey God's command of honoring your mother and father in the name of greed and tradition. But y'all sure enough don't stop there."

¹⁴ Then Jesus turned away from the religious people and hollered out to the crowd around them, "Listen to me, all of you! ¹⁵ What goes in a person don't make him wrong. It's what comes out of him that does."

¹⁷ Jesus rode off and after a long trot, he got to the house he and the cowboys were staying at. As they settled in, some of the cowboys asked him what he meant by his little story about what makes a man wrong in God's eyes. ¹⁸ He asked them, "Are y'all that ignorant? Don't you understand that what goes into a person doesn't defile him? ¹⁹ Whatever goes into a man goes into his stomach, not his heart. And what goes in the stomach, will end up at the bottom of the outhouse eventually. ²⁰ What comes out of a man's heart is what defiles him. ²¹ From the heart comes evil desires, all sorts of gross sexual ideas, theft, killing, cheating on your spouse, ²² greed, deceit, perversion, envy, talking bad about others, gossip, pride, and utter foolishness. ²³ All these evil things don't come from the outside, they come from a person's heart. That is what defiles them."

An Outsider's Faith

²⁴ After Jesus finished everything he was going to do there, he rode off toward the country around Tyre. He tried to keep his presence there a secret, but that was to no avail. ²⁵ A particular woman who had a daughter who was possessed, heard Jesus had come to town and she went and fell at his feet. ²⁶ This lady wasn't a Jew, but a Greek. She asked Jesus to grab the demon and jerk it out of her daughter. ²⁷ Jesus said to her, "A father will feed his own children first. He won't take away their meal and give it to the dogs."

²⁸ She answered, "Yes, my Lord, but even the dogs eat the scraps and crumbs that fall from the father's table."

²⁹ Jesus smiled at that and said, "That's the kind of faith I'm looking for. You go check on your daughter and see that she has been freed from that scoundrel that's been controlling her."

³⁰ When the lady got home, it was just as he'd said. The demon was gone.

The Deaf Hear

³¹ Jesus saddled up again and rode away from the country around Tyre and headed through the area of Sidon on his way to the Sea of Galilee. ³² Some fellows found him and brought along a guy who was deaf and couldn't speak. They asked Jesus to put his hands on him and heal him.

³³ Jesus took him off to the side and put his fingers in the man's ears. Then he spit on his own fingers and touched the mute man's tongue. ³⁴ Jesus looked up to heaven and said quietly, "Open 'em up."

³⁵ Immediately, the man's ears were opened and his tongue was loosened. ³⁶ Jesus asked everyone around not to say anything about this to anyone, but the more he told 'em to keep quiet, the more they told everyone of the great things he was doing.

³⁷ They went around saying, "He ain't no counterfeit. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak."