Misguided Missiles Today's Three-minute Bible Study Print, Study and Apply Title: Misguided Missiles-------------------------------- Date: 10/24/2000 Keyword: "heart" "stomach" "unclean" Welcome to eXXit, the web site designed to help you stand strong in the face of sexual temptation. Passage: Matthew 15:10-20* 10. Jesus called the crowd to him and said, "Listen and understand. 11. What goes into a man's mouth does not make him 'unclean,' but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him 'unclean.'" 12. Then the disciples came to him and asked, "Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this?" 13. He replied, "Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots. 14. Leave them; they are blind guides. If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit." 15. Peter said, "Explain the parable to us." 16. "Are you still so dull?" Jesus asked them. 17. "Don't you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? 18. But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man 'unclean.' 19. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. 20. These are what make a man 'unclean'; but eating with unwashed hands does not make him 'unclean.'" Questions 1. What was the meaning of "unclean" to the Jews?   2. Where does uncleanness come from?   3. Is there a connection between the Jewish uncleanness that came from eating forbidden food or eating with unwashed hands and the dirtiness that you sense with pornography?   Practical help The Jewish system of fastidious cleanliness was originated by God at Mt. Ararat and 'perfected' by the Pharisees. From the broad law that God provided, it had mutated over many generations into a nit-picky system that focused on making sure you didn't even give yourself the opportunity to come into contact with unclean things — food, body fluids, certain animals, corpses, etc. We can develop the same sort of system when dealing with pornography. Namely, we can set up a bunch of rules for ourselves that keep the evil stuff away. Jesus wants us to know that the evil doesn't reside in the material; it resides in us. As long as we can focus on the magazines, adult bookstores, adult web sites, and the like as being the real evil, we can keep the penetrating power of God's word and God's Holy Spirit at arm's length and keep them from piercing our own hearts. Here Jesus is explicit, leaving no room for mistake: Don't spend too much time worrying about the "stuff" of evil; focus your attention on the source of evil, the heart. And, Jesus' words are not too kind for those people whose energies and ammunition are all spent on combating the "stuff." Their shots are all misguided missiles. eXXit homepage Index of three-minute studies Copyright 2000 by eXXit *Scriptures are from The Holy Bible: New International Version © Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. All rights reserved.