The Source of the Stain: A Sermon on Mark 7:14-23
Introduction: The Sanitation Department
We live in an age that is obsessed with sanitation. We sanitize our hands, we filter our water, we scrub our vegetables, we read the labels on everything. We are terrified of external contaminants. And in a parallel spiritual movement, our culture is equally obsessed with a kind of moral sanitation that works the same way. The problem, they say, is always external. The problem is your upbringing, your environment, your lack of education, your socio-economic status, your privilege or lack thereof. The problem is always something "out there" that got "in here." Man is born a noble savage, a clean slate, and then the dirty world comes along and defiles him.
This is the central lie of all humanistic religion, from the garden to the present day. It is the lie that says the problem is not in you, but rather on you. And if the problem is merely on you, then the solution is simply to wash. This was the error of the Pharisees. They were the spiritual sanitation department of their day. Their whole system was an elaborate, man-made attempt to scrub away defilement through external rituals, traditions, and dietary regulations. They majored in soap and water, while their hearts were black with mold.
Jesus, in this passage, takes a wrecking ball to their entire project. He does not come to offer a better brand of soap. He comes to perform a heart transplant. He redirects the entire conversation about defilement away from the hands and the stomach, and He drives it straight into the dark, hidden chambers of the human heart. What Jesus teaches here is not just a correction of a first-century Jewish sect; it is a direct assault on the foundational assumptions of every fallen man. It is a declaration that you cannot fix your problem by washing your hands, because the filth is pumping through your veins.
The Text
And after He called the crowd to Him again, He began saying to them, "Listen to Me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside the man which can defile him if it goes into him; but the things which proceed out of the man are what defile the man. [And if anyone has ears to hear, let him hear."] And when He had left the crowd and entered the house, His disciples were asking Him about the parable. And He said to them, "Are you lacking understanding in this way as well? Do you not understand that whatever goes into the man from outside cannot defile him, because it does not go into his heart, but into his stomach, and goes to the sewer?" (Thus He declared all foods clean.) And He was saying, "That which proceeds out of the man, that is what defiles the man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed the evil thoughts, sexual immoralities, thefts, murders, adulteries, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness. All these evil things proceed from within and defile the man."
(Mark 7:14-23 LSB)
The Public Parable (vv. 14-16)
First, Jesus turns from the Pharisees to the general population.
"And after He called the crowd to Him again, He began saying to them, 'Listen to Me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside the man which can defile him if it goes into him; but the things which proceed out of the man are what defile the man. [And if anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.']" (Mark 7:14-16)
Jesus calls the crowd over. He has just finished rebuking the religious leaders for elevating their traditions above the Word of God, and now He wants to teach the common man the foundational principle that the Pharisees had missed entirely. He says, "Listen to Me, all of you, and understand." This is a summons to pay close attention. What He is about to say is a radical, worldview-shattering truth.
The principle is stated as a sharp, memorable contrast. Nothing that goes into a man from the outside can defile him. It is what comes out of a man that defiles him. This is a direct shot across the bow of the entire Pharisaical system, which was built on the premise that holiness was a matter of careful intake management. Don't eat this, don't touch that, wash this way, purify that vessel. Jesus says that's the wrong diagnostic chart entirely. You are looking at the wrong flow. You are worried about what you eat, but God is concerned with what you are.
He frames this as a parable, a riddle. Parables are interesting things. They are not just folksy stories to make things simple. A parable is a tool that both reveals and conceals. To the humble heart, the one with "ears to hear," a parable is a window that lets the light in. But to the proud and hard-hearted, that same parable is a mirror that reflects their own confusion back at them. Jesus is sorting His listeners. He is putting out a truth that will either hook into a soft heart or bounce off a hard one.
The Private Explanation (vv. 17-19)
As is often the case, the disciples are left scratching their heads. They get Him alone and ask for an explanation.
"And when He had left the crowd and entered the house, His disciples were asking Him about the parable. And He said to them, 'Are you lacking understanding in this way as well? Do you not understand that whatever goes into the man from outside cannot defile him, because it does not go into his heart, but into his stomach, and goes to the sewer?' (Thus He declared all foods clean.)" (Mark 7:17-19)
We should take some comfort in the disciples' density. They walked with God incarnate, and they still frequently missed the point. The gospel advances through a cloud of misunderstanding. Jesus's response is a mild rebuke: "Are you lacking understanding in this way as well?" It's as if He's saying, "I expect the Pharisees to be blind, but you too?" He expects more from them, but He is patient. He doesn't dismiss them; He explains.
His explanation is one of simple biology and profound theology. Food goes in the mouth, into the stomach, and then out through the sewer. It's a physical process that affects the plumbing, not the soul. The food doesn't touch the "heart," which in biblical terms is the command center of the person, the seat of the will, the intellect, and the desires. The Pharisees had confused the digestive tract with the moral center of man. They thought a piece of unblessed pork could stain the soul. Jesus says it just stains the colon.
And then Mark, under the inspiration of the Spirit, gives us a stunning parenthetical comment: "(Thus He declared all foods clean.)" With this one principle, Jesus fulfills and sets aside the entire Old Testament ceremonial dietary code. Those laws were never about intrinsic evil in certain animals. They were object lessons, symbolic boundaries set up by God to distinguish Israel from the Gentile nations. The unclean animals represented the Gentiles. But now, in Christ, the wall of separation is being torn down (Eph. 2:14). The fulfillment has come, so the symbols are retired. Bacon is now clean. Shrimp is now clean. The sin is never in the food; the sin is always in the sinner. We can sin with our food, through gluttony or ingratitude or making it an idol, but we cannot sin by our food.
The Divine Diagnosis (vv. 20-23)
Having dealt with the external, Jesus now turns His divine X-ray on the internal. This is the heart of the matter.
"And He was saying, 'That which proceeds out of the man, that is what defiles the man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed the evil thoughts, sexual immoralities, thefts, murders, adulteries, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness. All these evil things proceed from within and defile the man.'" (Mark 7:20-23)
Here is the unflattering truth. The problem is not the environment; the problem is the heart. The heart of man is not a neutral space waiting for input. It is not a clean well that gets polluted from the outside. It is a brackish spring. It is a factory that, in its natural, fallen state, produces a steady stream of filth. Jesus says this is where the real defilement comes from. It bubbles up from within.
And then He provides a partial inventory of what this factory produces. It is a vile and comprehensive list. He begins with "evil thoughts," which are the seeds of all the rest. Sin begins in the imagination, in the desires. Then He lists the actions that grow from those seeds: sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery. These are violations of God's law in deed. Then He moves to the corrupt attitudes that fuel the deeds: coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. This list covers the waterfront of human depravity.
Where do these things come from? Jesus is emphatic. They "proceed from within, out of the heart of men." This is the doctrine of total depravity in street clothes. We are not sinners because we sin; we sin because we are sinners. The actions are just the fruit that reveals the nature of the tree. An apple tree doesn't have to be coerced to produce apples. It is its nature. And a fallen human heart, left to itself, will produce this toxic fruit. This is what defiles a man. This is the stain that no amount of ritual washing can remove.
Conclusion: The Only True Cleansing
If this is the diagnosis, and it is, then the situation is utterly hopeless if we are left to our own devices. If the pump is poisoned, then everything it produces will be poisoned. You cannot solve this problem with New Year's resolutions, or self-help books, or a better environment. You can no more fix this on your own than you can perform surgery on your own eyeball. The problem is the heart, and you cannot get outside of yourself to fix it.
This is why the gospel is such glorious news. The gospel is not a self-improvement plan. The gospel is the announcement of a divine invasion and a radical cure. The prophet Ezekiel promised it centuries before: "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh" (Ezekiel 36:26).
This is what God does in the new birth. He does not sanitize the old heart; He rips it out and replaces it. He performs a spiritual transplant. And how is this possible? It is possible because the one man with a truly clean heart, the Lord Jesus Christ, went to the cross. On that cross, He took all the filth that proceeds from our hearts, all the lust, pride, envy, and murder, and He took it upon Himself. He was made sin for us, He who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor. 5:21).
The only cleansing that matters is not the washing of hands but the washing of the soul in the blood of the Lamb. When you, by faith, lay hold of Christ, God credits His perfect righteousness to your account. He gives you a new heart, a new nature, that desires to please Him. This does not mean the old factory is completely demolished overnight. The remnants of it are still there, and we are called to a lifelong battle of putting its evil produce to death. But the fundamental reality has changed. The old spring has been capped, and a new, clean spring has been opened by the Spirit of God.
Therefore, stop looking at external solutions for your internal corruption. Stop blaming your circumstances. Look to the cross. Confess that the diagnosis Jesus gives here is true of you. And then look to the only physician who can cure a desperately sick heart. Flee to Christ, and be made clean from the inside out.