How Believers Defile Themselves
All Scripture is from my new ULB-SNV e-Sword module, the Unlocked Literal Bible-Sacred Name Version.
Christians have been stumbling over Mark 7:14-23 for hundreds of years, so I’m going to attempt to explain it to you like Yeshua showed it to me when I was editing this portion of Scripture for my new e-Sword module, the ULB-SNV.
First, let’s swallow Yeshua’s statement in Matthew 5:17, “Do not think that I have come to destroy the Torah or the prophets. I have come not to destroy them, but to fulfill them.” We are not even to think that Yeshua came to do away with the Torah. Paul said Yeshua is the end goal, the culmination, the summit, the ultimate fulfillment of the Torah. Yeshua is at the summit of the Torah, waiting for us to catch up!! Got it? Good.
So, when Yeshua talks about eating food, He is talking about eating clean animal food. Unclean animals are not food by definition in Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14. Study those chapters until you understand it!! So here’s the equation for you logical people: Food = clean animals, Non-food = unclean animals. For more on the clean and unclean animal thing, read Isaiah 65-66, especially Isa 65:4 and 66:17. Got it? Good. Maybe sometime we can go through Leviticus 11, Deuteronomy 14, and Isaiah 65 and 66.
Let’s read the Mark 7 passage now, then we’ll unpack it a little for further understanding.
Mark 7:14-23, “He (Yeshua) called the crowd again and said to them, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand. 15 There is nothing from outside of a person that can defile him when it enters into him. It is what comes out of the person that defiles him.” 16 If any man has ears to hear, let him hear. 17 Now when Yeshua left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about the parable. 18 Yeshua said, “Are you also still without understanding? Do you not see that whatever enters into a person from outside cannot defile him, 19 because it cannot go into his heart, but it goes into his stomach and then passes out into the latrine, thus cleansing all food from his bowel?” 20 He said, “It is that which comes out of the person that defiles him. 21 For from within a person, out of the heart, proceed evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, 22 adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, folly. 23 All these evils come from within, and they are what defile a person.””
Yeshua is talking to a crowd of people and states that no food from outside a person can go into him and defile him. That word for nothing means nothing, not even one thing!! Yeshua immediately turns the conversation to a spiritual teaching and states in verse 15 that it is what comes out of a person that defiles him. He is not speaking of human excrement here in verse 15. When a Hebrew such as Yeshua is speaking of defilement, he’s speaking of Levitical, or ceremonial, defilement, but notice that Yeshua took this teaching to a higher moral or spiritual message. So, get it in your brain right now that Yeshua is not giving a teaching on clean or unclean foods. He is speaking to Hebrew people who know Leviticus 11, Deuteronomy 14, and Isaiah 65+66. Yeshua knows these people only eat FOOD, which is clean animals only food, NOT unclean non-food animals. So, eating FOOD, or what we would call clean animal FOOD, cannot defile you religiously or ceremonially. So, I hope you now understand what Yeshua has just stated in verse 15.
Now, let’s move to Yeshua’s explanation of the parable to his disciples while in the house. He tells them why FOOD cannot defile a person in verse 19; it’s because food does not enter into a person’s heart, mind, or spirit. Food is simply digested by the body and excreted into the toilet. The word Yeshua used for stomach is koilia, which means hollow, cavity, the abdomen. Yeshua is simply explaining that food travels through the alimentary canal, is digested, and is eliminated with a bowel movement that cleans all the food out of your colon, basically a colon cleanse!! That word Yeshua used for cleanse is the word katharizo, from which we get our word catheter, which is used medically to drain matter out of a human. Nowhere in this passage does Yeshua state, or even insinuate, that unclean, non-food animals are now magically made into clean edible food animals. That was not his discussion or intention. He would never say that anyway, because that would be against Torah. So, please don’t make Yeshua into a Torah-breaker, or lawless worker of iniquity. Yeshua would never mock His Father, or His Father’s word in such a way.
So, what does defile a person? How do we defile ourselves? Out of our spirit, out of our spiritual mind, we think evil thoughts, speak evil words, look at evil things, and do evil deeds, this is what defiles us, as Yeshua explains in verses 20-23. It’s what comes out of our heart, mind, or soul that defiles us, by causing us to sin against Yahweh, our fellow man, and against ourselves. We are no different than the people in Yeshua’s day, our generation is just as degenerate as they were. We all need to repent of our evil sin and turn our lives over to Yeshua for salvation of our soul. Study the Word of Yahweh and let it wash your mind clean and receive the Holy Spirit to help you learn to live by the Spirit in Yahweh’s Kingdom. We all need His regeneration today!!
Yeshua stated this theme again, only a little differently, in Luke 6:45, “The good man from the good treasure of his heart produces what is good, and the evil man from the evil treasure of his heart produces what is evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.” It’s alimentary, really.
Gene Benjamin II
June 15, 2017
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