What Actually Makes You Unclean.
Matthew 15 — The outsider who out-argued everyone and the insiders who missed the point
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Matthew 15 — The outsider who out-argued everyone and the insiders who missed the point
9 min read
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The religious establishment had been watching for a while now, and they didn't like what they were seeing. So they sent a delegation — not from the local , but from . The head office. These weren't casual observers. They were there to catch him in something.
What followed cut straight to the heart of what Jesus was actually about. Jesus dismantled religious performance, had a conversation with a desperate outsider that still challenges people today, healed crowds, and fed thousands — again. Every scene asks the same question: what does God actually care about?
The and came with what they thought was a gotcha. Not about theology — about hand-washing. Specifically, a ritual tradition the had built up over centuries that had nothing to do with hygiene and everything to do with ceremonial purity. weren't following it, and the religious leaders wanted to know why.
Jesus didn't defend his disciples. He went on the offensive:
"Why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? God commanded, 'Honor your father and your mother,' and, 'Whoever speaks against father or mother must be put to death.' But you say that if someone tells their parents, 'The money I would have used to help you — I've dedicated it to God,' then they don't have to honor their parents anymore. You've taken the word of God and made it meaningless — for the sake of your own tradition."
Then he quoted right back at them:
"Hypocrites. Isaiah had you figured out centuries ago: 'These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship is empty — they teach human rules as if they were God's commands.'"
Here's what was happening: the religious leaders had invented a financial loophole called "Corban" — you could declare your money "devoted to God" and then use that as an excuse not to support your aging parents. On paper, it looked spiritual. In practice, it was a way to keep your money while looking holy. Jesus saw straight through it. The tradition designed to honor God was being used to dishonor the people God told you to take care of. That's the danger of religion without heart — you can follow every rule and still miss the entire point.
After confronting the , turned to the crowd. He had something he wanted everyone to hear — not just the religious insiders:
"Listen and understand this: it's not what goes into your mouth that makes you unclean. It's what comes out of your mouth — that's what contaminates you."
One sentence. And it turned their entire purity system upside down. For generations, the religious framework had been built around what you eat, what you touch, what you avoid. External contamination. Jesus relocated the whole problem. The contamination isn't coming from outside you. It's already inside.
The pulled aside afterward, and you can almost hear the nervousness in their voices:
"You know the Pharisees were offended by what you just said, right?"
They were basically asking: should you walk that back? Smooth it over? Jesus' response was the opposite of damage control:
"Every plant my heavenly Father hasn't planted will be pulled up by the roots. Leave them alone. They're blind guides. And when the blind lead the blind, both end up in a ditch."
No softening. No apology tour. Jesus wasn't being harsh for the sake of it — he was drawing a clear line. Some people's offense comes from conviction. Some comes from being exposed. He wasn't interested in managing the reaction of people whose authority was built on the very thing he came to replace. There's a difference between offending someone because you're wrong and offending someone because you've told them the truth they don't want to hear.
— honest as always — said what the of the were probably thinking:
"Can you explain what you meant?"
And , with what had to be a mix of patience and exasperation, responded:
"Are you still not getting this? Anything that goes into the mouth ends up in the stomach and passes through the body. That's just digestion. But what comes out of the mouth — that comes from the heart. And that's what makes a person unclean.
Because out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, lying, slander. Those are the things that contaminate a person. Eating with unwashed hands doesn't contaminate anyone."
This is one of those moments where Jesus made something incredibly simple that religion had made incredibly complicated. We spend enormous energy managing our image — curating what people see, controlling the external presentation. But Jesus says the diagnostic isn't your behavior checklist. It's your heart. What do you think about when no one's watching? What comes out when you're under pressure? That's the real you. And that's where the real work needs to happen.
left that confrontation and traveled north, withdrawing to the region of and — territory. And there, a woman found him. She was an outsider by every possible measure — wrong ethnicity, wrong religion, wrong side of every cultural line. And she was desperate:
"Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David! My daughter is tormented by a Demon."
Jesus didn't respond. Not a word. The , irritated by her persistence, urged him to send her away. Then Jesus said something that sounds jarring:
"I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."
She came closer, knelt in front of him, and simply said:
"Lord, help me."
His response is one of the most debated lines in :
"It's not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs."
And without missing a beat, she answered:
"True, Lord. But even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table."
Jesus' response changed everything:
"Woman, your Faith is incredible. What you've asked for is done."
And her daughter was healed in that moment.
This passage is uncomfortable, and it should be. Scholars have wrestled with it for centuries. But look at what happened: this woman wasn't deterred by silence, dismissal, or what sounded like rejection. She took Jesus' own metaphor and turned it into an argument for why she belonged at the table — even at its edges. And Jesus didn't just grant her request. He publicly praised her in a way he rarely did for anyone. In a chapter about insiders who missed the point, here's an outsider who got it completely. The had the right credentials and wrong hearts. She had no credentials and exactly the right heart.
From there, headed back toward the , went up on a mountainside, and sat down. And the crowds came — wave after wave of them. They brought everyone: people who couldn't walk, couldn't see, couldn't use their limbs, couldn't speak. They laid them at Jesus' feet, and he healed them. All of them.
The crowd watched in astonishment as the mute began speaking, the crippled were made whole, the lame walked, and the blind could see. And they glorified the God of Israel.
No long speeches here. No theological debates. Just a hillside full of broken people being made whole — and a crowd that couldn't do anything but . Sometimes the thing that stops everyone in their tracks is also the simplest: someone who couldn't walk, walks. Someone who couldn't see, sees. That's the breaking through, and it doesn't need commentary. It just needs witnesses.
The crowds had been with for three days. Three days without proper food, far from home, in a remote area. And Jesus noticed:
"I have compassion on these people. They've been here three days with nothing to eat, and I'm not going to send them away hungry — they might collapse on the way home."
The — who had already seen Jesus feed five thousand people — responded with what is honestly a baffling question:
"Where would we even find enough bread out here to feed this many people?"
Jesus asked them:
"How many loaves do you have?"
They answered:
"Seven. And a few small fish."
So Jesus told the crowd to sit down, took the seven loaves and the fish, gave thanks, broke them, and gave them to the disciples to distribute. Four thousand men ate — plus women and children. Everyone was satisfied. And they picked up seven baskets of leftovers.
Think about this: the disciples had watched Jesus do almost this exact thing before. And they still couldn't see it coming. Before you them too quickly — how many times has God come through for you, and the next time a problem shows up, your first reaction is still panic? The pattern of was right in front of them, and they still defaulted to scarcity. We all do. The question isn't whether God can provide. The question is whether we'll remember that he already has.
After sending the crowds home, Jesus got in a boat and headed to the region of Magadan. The debates, the , the meals — all of it pointing to the same thing. The isn't about rituals or credentials or having the right background. It's about the heart. And Jesus kept showing everyone — insiders and outsiders alike — exactly what that looks like.