Now we turn to another subject—the condition of man. We are first shown that religion without Christ is but hypocrisy, and that man's interference in divine things ends in setting God's word aside to keep his own tradition. The next thing we see is what man really is, religious or not. “When he had called all the people unto him, he said unto them, Hearken unto me every one of you and understand.” The Lord here brings to light the broad principle which of itself would account for his sentence on all tradition. Does it come from man? It is enough. How is it that which springs from such a source is bad and untrustworthy? It concerns every soul; for it is no question of controversial strife. Protestant and Papist, beware of slighting the admonition of the Judge of quick and dead. “There is nothing from without a man that, entering into him, can defile him; but the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man.” This, if we apply the principle in all its extent, involves the character of tradition; for tradition comes out from man—not a word to man with the authority of God, but a human word that beggarly pride would fain invest with purple and gold to cover its nakedness. This may show the connection; for undoubtedly the Lord here judges the moral issues of the heart and all the ways of man. “If any man have ears to hear, let him hear.” The disciples could not understand Him. What a lesson for us! Christ's servants could not understand Him. The very apostles were slow to believe that man was utterly corrupt. Is there any one here that doubts the thorough evil, not merely to be found among men, but of man? Does any one think that human nature can be trusted? Listen to the Savior—the Savior of the lost. “If any man have ears to hear, let him hear.”
“When he was entered into the house from the people, his disciples asked him concerning the parable. And he saith unto them, Are ye so without understanding also? Do ye not perceive that whatsoever thing from without entereth into the man, it cannot defile; because it entereth not into his heart, but into the belly, and goeth out into the draft, purging all meats? And he said, That which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: all these evil things come from within and defile the man.” There is nothing in the heart of man that so hinders his intelligence as the influence of religious tradition; not only this, but tradition darkens a disciple wherever it works; and one effect and invariable accompaniment of it is, specially, insubjection to the humbling truth that there is no good thing in man. I do not deny that God can bring everything that is good into the heart. For He gives His Son, and in Him eternal life; He washes the believer in the precious blood of Christ and gives the Holy Ghost to dwell in him. Neither do I speak of what is the fruit of divine grace working in man; but I maintain that what comes out of man as such is invariably bad. As to this the disciples were dull of understanding; yet there was not one obscure word in what Christ uttered. Why is it that divine truth seems and is so difficult to apprehend? Our obstacle chiefly lies not in the head, but in the heart and conscience. It is not the bright or the powerful intellect that understands the word of God best; it is the man whose purpose of heart is to serve the Lord. Wherever there is a simple-hearted desire to do His will, “he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God.” “If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.” It is not, If thine eye be keen or farseeing; but, “If thine eye be single.” What a comfort to a poor soul that is consciously weak, ignorant, foolish, it may be! Such an one, nevertheless, may have a single eye, and consequently see farther, spiritually, than the brightest of men, whose heart is not unreservedly toward the Lord. What in this case hindered singleness of eye? Why were the disciples so undiscerning? Because they did not like to receive such a tremendous sentence on man. They had been accustomed to make conventional differences.
The Pharisees and scribes, the great men of Jerusalem, were still of a certain value in their eyes, just as you find the vulgar crowd gaping after the sounding titles of the religious world. How little are the mass of God's children emancipated from the delusion, that there is something in these names that guarantees or presupposes real intelligence! Never was it so, and never less than now. Can you point out a time, since Christendom began, when there was such a complete giving up of the mind of God in the places of highest pretension? There have been seasons when the world was more hostile and the form of hatred more formidable, as far as persecution goes; but never was there an hour, when Christendom, aye, Protestant Christendom, had so many swamps of indifference to God's authority, with here and there a standard of rebellion against the truth of Christ. This may seem strong, no doubt; but I have made the assertion according to God's word, and, as far as that may go, with a closer study of Christendom in its various phases than many persons. I am not afraid, then, to re-assert my conviction, that there never has been a display of man's evil heart of unbelief in the shape of indifference, on one side, and, on the other, of enmity against the truth, equal to the present aspect of the age. Even when Christendom mumbled over their devotions, saturated with religious fable, and thoroughly subject to a crafty and ignorant priesthood, the word of God was less known and less slighted than now. The dungeon-wall of superstition is partially fallen, the light of God's testimony has been seen enough to provoke the malice of men. People are energetic enough in these days, but their energy is against the gospel. It is not so with all, thank God; but the peculiar feature of the present age is that the active aggression is against Scripture, an organized rebellion proceeding from professors in the high seats of human learning. Not only daring individuals here and there attack Scripture, but the nominal teachers and heads of the clergy combine to do it with comparative impunity, as if they were determined to concentrate the whole weight of their personal and official influence. This has a voice for us; if we have understanding of the times, let us take care that we stand firmly, conscientiously, and uncompromisingly, though humbly, on the foundation of Divine truth, caring for nothing else. We shall he counted harsh: this is always the portion of faithfulness. But the name of the Lord is our tower of strength for the last days, as from the beginning. So Paul warns Timothy in his last epistle, as he looked at the perils of these days (which are still more emphatically true now than they were then); and what is the resource for them? Not tradition, but the written word of God. “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable,” &c. It is not teachers, nor godly men raised up, however precious both may be: nothing but Scripture can be a permanent standard of truth.
As to things that defile, they come out of the man. This is true in all things, and of all acts of evil; they invariably spring from within, from the corrupt will of man. Thus, for instance, it is plain that if the law execute the capital sentence on a criminal, it is not murder, but, contrariwise, the vindication of God's authority in the earth. It is not a question of evil feeling against the culprit, and there is nothing defiling in it. But if you were so much as to injure a man in deed, word, or thought, there you have what defiles. The moment there is that which is a part of your selfwill, without God, which comes out of you, and you yielding to it, there is the taint of defilement. “Murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: all these evil things come from within and defile the man.” In a word, we have the doctrine most plainly laid down here, that man, i.e., man in his present state, is only the source of that which is evil. I require another absolutely perfect One, who is outside me, to be my life; and such an one I have in Christ. If I am a Christian at all, Christ is my life; and the business for me thenceforth is to live on and according to that good which I have found in Christ. Therefore, the happy man is he who is always thinking of and delighting himself in Christ. The man, on the contrary, who is striving to find some good in himself, is under the error of the disciples before they learned to bow to the word of the Lord. His light was too bright, too searching, too severe, too unsparing for the will of the disciples; they did not accept the truth with simplicity, and therefore they found it a hard saying.
Verses 24-30. We have seen that which cometh out of man, and how defiling it all is. We are now to learn what comes from God, and how full of mercy and goodness this is, delivering those oppressed by the devil. But there was, I am persuaded, a significant previous act in our Lord's going from the scene where He had rebuked the traditions of earthly religion, and the universal sink of corruption in the heart and its issues, which they but conceal. The only real remedy is the deliverance of sovereign grace in Christ who arose from thence and “went into the borders of Tire and Sidon, [those world-renowned monuments of God's sure judgment,] and entered into an house and would have no man know it; but he could not be hid. For a certain woman, whose young daughter had an unclean spirit, heard of him, and came and fell at his feet.” What claim had she? Not the smallest” the woman was a Greek, [or Gentile,] a Syrophenician by nation.” She was from the fertile stock of Israel's enemies, the corrupt and idolatrous despisers of the true God. But if Jesus desired an opportunity to show the grace of God, above all question of right, desert, or any conceivable plea, save that of utter misery cast on divine mercy in Him, never was there a more needy suitor. “And she besought him that he would cast forth the devil out of her daughter.”
Yet if the faith of the woman was to triumph, none the less was it tried. And I consider that it is morally instructive to observe that the richest grace on the part of Christ does not make the trial of faith less but more. The soul that is little exercised never eats the kernel of the blessing, never proves the depths that are in God and His grace.
Mark, precise as his gospel usually is in details, does not give us the particulars of her first appeal to the Savior as “Son of David,” the propriety of which in Matthew is evident. Neither does our gospel bring out His unwonted silence, and the disciples' entreaty, and the firm statement of His mission as minister of the circumcision, for which also we must turn to Matthew.
Nevertheless, even here, our Lord does maintain the principle of “the Jew first;” as the simplicity of faith (what is so genuinely intelligent?) in her urges “and also the Gentile.” But there is more. Grace speaks out the whole truth and strengthens its object to bear it, confess it, and delight in it. So here the Lord adds in verse 27, “it is not meet to take the children's bread and to cast it to dogs.” “And she answered and said unto him, Yea, Lord: yet the dogs under the table eat of the children's crumbs.” She is taught of the Lord to take her true place; but she cleaves with undoubting assurance to the certainty that He will not deny His. She was no better than a dog; but is not God full of bounty and goodness even to the dogs? “And He said unto her, For this saying go thy way: the devil is gone out of thy daughter.” It was the blessed and holy ministry of grace to desperate need.
The scene that follows illustrates still farther the Savior's grace; only it is in the ordinary domain of His labors. “And again, departing from the coasts of Tire and Sidon, he came unto the sea of Galilee, through the midst of the coasts of Decapolis. And they bring unto him one that was deaf, and had an impediment in speech; and they beseech him to put his hand upon him.” What a picture of the impotence to which sin has reduced man—inability to hear the Lord's voice, incapacity to tell Him his need! Such are those whom the Savior heals among the despised Galileans, or anywhere else. “And he took him aside from the multitude, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spit and touched his tongue; and looking up to heaven, he sighed, and saith unto him, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened. And straightway his ears were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spoke plain. And he charged them that they should tell no man: but the more he charged them, so much the more a great deal they published it; and were beyond measure astonished, saying, He hath done all things well: he maketh both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak.” It is still the service of love, the heart and the hand of the only perfect Servant. “He hath done all things well,” was their astonished testimony. May we ever and for all confide in Him! His right hand has not forgotten; His heart is unchanged; He Himself is the “same yesterday, and to-day, and forever.” May we treasure up the look to heaven, the sigh over the earth, the gracious, interested handling of the sufferer, the word of delivering power, the manner and the measure of the cure. Truly, “He hath done all things well.”