Mark 7:14-16 Unclean
Format for Your Devotions
Instructions: Do not read my example devotion until you have completed your own devotional time in the scriptures. Reading my thoughts first may limit your own understanding. Let the Holy Spirit speak to you alone before looking to see what anyone else has to say, whether it is me, a Bible commentary, or a friend. Let God speak to you before you let another person speak to you. I have provided a format, but modify it to fit your needs. For example, I usually combine my application and prayer together talking to God about the application to my own life. You can go through this devotion process mentally, speaking out loud, or in writing as you wish. Don’t worry if you are not following this process exactly. Sometimes, I add extra information and sometimes I emphasize one part more than others. However, you should always think about what you learn about God from this passage.
Step 1: Pray–Ask for the Holy Spirit’s guidance first of all and that God may reveal the lessons that He wants you to have that day. Request that God protect you from Satan’s distractions (and the devil will try to distract you whether it is pinching the baby or putting you to sleep). Ask to see God more clearly as you read and think about the passage.
Step 2: Read the passage–Read to get an overview of the information first. Then start looking at specific parts after the first reading. You may read a larger or smaller section than I have here because you do not have to follow my organization at all.
Step 3: Understand the passage–You can summarize, ask and answer your own questions about the passage, visualize the story, analyze the characters, and relate this passage to other scriptures and personal experiences.
Step 4: What does this reveal about God?–What do you learn about the Father, Son, and/or Holy Spirit from this passage?
Step 5: Apply this to your own life.
Step 6: Prayer
My Example Devotion: February 5, 2018, Mark 7:14-16
Note: In the devotion examples, I leave my questions and thought processes in the text because I am trying to demonstrate that a devotional time is a dialogue with God about what you are reading from His word. As such, any questions or ideas that you have should be explored by talking it out with God. These example devotions are not my attempts to teach you what the meaning of a particular scripture is. They are an attempt to teach you the process of devotions, which is a combination of prayer and Bible study where you explore ideas with God as you read His word.
Then he called to the crowd again and told them, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand! Nothing that goes into a person from the outside can make him unclean. It’s what comes out of a person that makes a person unclean. If anyone has ears to hear, let him listen!”
(Understanding the Text) Jesus tells us here that we cannot judge a person as defiled or bad because of what he eats. We judge a person by what comes out of his mouth. The Jews judgement of Gentiles was that they were unclean. They would not eat with them or even enter their houses. Partly, this was because of the Gentiles habit of having unclean foods at the dinner table and by extension in the house. Thus, the Jews were using dietary habits to justify not associating with Gentiles. By extending the label of unclean from food to people, the Jews were misrepresenting God. It may be significant that this parable comes right after Jesus’ criticism of the Pharisees for the way they had changed God’s commands to guidelines while establishing human rules as superior commands. Jesus is addressing one of the biggest issues-hypocrisy. Jesus was telling people to look to what was in their hearts. If their hearts were corrupt, they were unclean. If a Gentile’s heart was good, then he/she should not be condemned as defiled. Jesus repeats this lesson again to Peter in his vision in Acts 10 when Peter is told that what God has made clean is clean.
This chapter of Acts also shows that Peter still followed the dietary rules of the Jews. Mark 7:19 bothers me. I need to study more since the Bible translations that I usually trust say that this meant that Jesus declared all meats clean. (I did study more and I feel confident in disagreeing with the translators. Although the Greek word translated as clean can mean what was translated. It has another meaning which simply means purged as in the KJV–“because it does not enter into his heart, but into the belly, and goes out into the waste-bowl, purifying all food?” (Mar 7:19). On the other hand, there is nothing in the original text that indicates that a narrator was interjecting his own explanation here. This word seems to be part of Jesus’ original words and in that context, “purged” is a more logical translation.) Acts 10 shows that Peter did not believe Jesus had changed the dietary rules since he emphatically states 3 times that he has never eaten anything unclean. (Since Peter is Mark’s source for the gospel, this is a strong point against the narrator comment interpretation.) Jesus still followed the guidelines. Otherwise, He would have been ridiculed. I believe the early Jewish Christians maintained the diet since they were never accused of speaking against eating pork while they were accused of a lot of other stuff like wanting to tear down the temple. Jesus’ disciples were criticized for breaking many sanitary laws, but never for eating unclean foods. However, I need to study more before I accuse the translators of these Bible versions of letting their biases determine their translation. (The above parenthetical comments were after more study. I believe the translators’ own beliefs determined how they would interpret a verse. The original Greek word may have been ambiguous, but they stretched the meaning in a way that does not fit the original context as there is no indication that the word was not part of Jesus’ original words rather than a comment on it by the narrator. Even the flow in English indicates this as Mark does not insert comments in his gospel in this way anywhere else, so the translation is not consistent with the style of the author. It makes more sense to interpret the word as belonging to Jesus’ original statements and translate it as “purge” as the King James Version does.)
(Revelation of God / Application) Jesus was very concerned that people were being rejected and kept away from the Father’s love because of what they ate. He was concerned that people were justifying this cruelty to others based on superficial actions. Even today, I see that there are people who focus on the health message but ignore Jesus himself. What I hear coming from their hearts is unclean while I know others who eat unhealthily but have clean hearts.
(Prayer) Cleanse my heart so that I will give others Your love. Take away my selfishness and fear. Make me clean and pure as You are.