5. But you teach that if a person has something he could use to help his father or mother, but says, ‘This belongs to God,’
6. he does not need to honour his father. In this way you disregard God's command, in order to follow your own teaching.
7. You hypocrites! How right Isaiah was when he prophesied about you!
8. ‘These people, says God, honour me with their words, but their heart is really far away from me.
9. It is no use for them to worship me, because they teach human rules as though they were my laws!’ ”
10. Then Jesus called the crowd to him and said to them, “Listen and understand!
11. It is not what goes into a person's mouth that makes him ritually unclean; rather, what comes out of it makes him unclean.”
12. Then the disciples came to him and said, “Do you know that the Pharisees had their feelings hurt by what you said?”
13. “Every plant which my Father in heaven did not plant will be pulled up,” answered Jesus.
14. “Don't worry about them! They are blind leaders of the blind; and when one blind man leads another, both fall into a ditch.”
15. Peter spoke up, “Explain this saying to us.”
16. Jesus said to them, “You are still no more intelligent than the others.
17. Don't you understand? Anything that goes into a person's mouth goes into his stomach and then on out of his body.
18. But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these are the things that make a person ritually unclean.
19. For from his heart come the evil ideas which lead him to kill, commit adultery, and do other immoral things; to rob, lie, and slander others.
20. These are the things that make a person unclean. But to eat without washing your hands as they say you should — this doesn't make a person unclean.”
21. Jesus left that place and went off to the territory near the cities of Tyre and Sidon.