If I asked you to think of a time in your life when you felt morally corrupted dirty on the inside, you probably if you're like most people, you probably would have to think very hard. probably think of some events, something you did in the past just really made you feel dirt all about this issue of uncleanness. And if that's the topic, what would you expect? You would think that if he's going to talk about uncleanness, that his main point would be how to get rid of it, right? It's not It's not what he didn't actually say anything in this passage directly about the solution to moral uncleanness when he talks about instead is the source of moral uncleanness. That's what he wants us to know why because the solution won't work if you don't understand the source.

To deal with the problem of sin. Sin has to be severed at the root. It has to be severed to the root. Most people try to deal with their sin at the level of actions, they'll just they'll send them off. Now, I'm not going to do that anymore, I'm going to, I'm going to change my behavior to try to do this and stop doing that. Or maybe they'll even take it a step further.

And so I'm going to, I'm going to avoid influences that push me towards that sin. And that's about as far as most people go in dealing with their sin. That will never work fighting your sin problem. At the level of your behaviors, is like trying to kill an apple tree by picking the apples. It doesn't matter how many you pick, they'll just more and we'll just keep growing back after it. You can't if you want to kill it, you stop the growth of the apples, you're going to have to cut that thing at the root.

Or to put it another way, you can't fight a war if you don't know who the enemy is. You got to find the enemy first before you can engage no matter how many tactics of warfare you master. If you're in the wrong continent, fight in the wrong country, whatever it is, you're not gonna win the war. You got to know who your enemy is. And if you're wondering how important it is to know who the enemy is when you're fighting your own sin, to know what the source of uncleanness is, You'll know how important this issue is. Just look at Jesus response here in Mark seven.

Look how long it is. It's one of the longest speeches Jesus ever gives in the book of Mark, verse 15. Nothing outside of man can make him unclean by going into him. Rather, it's what comes out of a man that makes them unclean. Nothing You can eat, can make you unclean. In fact, the statement isn't even limited to just food in the context.

He's talking about food, but he just says nothing outside you can make you unclean. No influence. Now think about that. Because if we get back to our original question, what is the source of evil? Where does it come from? When Jesus says it doesn't come from anything outside of you.

That is a revolutionary idea, not just for Jews. That is a revolutionary idea for all people. We all naturally think that we're infected with uncleanness from some outside source, right? That's just the way that we think some influence. That's why we think that we can deal with our sin problem by just separating ourselves from certain influences. I'll stop doing that I'll stop hanging around that.

And I'll stop watching that don't get away from these influences and then also my sin problem. And different people have different ideas about what influences are causing the sin, where the evil comes from. Religious people tend to think in terms of religious defilement coming from religious taboos, breaking those secular people, it's cultural taboos. For conservatives that comes from TV and movies and the internet and gay, you know, video games and no ESA, for psychologists that is imposed on you by people who mistreated you. Or maybe it was toxic masculinity or bullying or trauma or whatever. The social justice crowd will say that evil comes from oppressive governments and people in power and rich people.

And then of course, the greatest evil of all evil corporations, right? Jesus, none none of that. None of that is the source of evil. So what is it? Where does the evil come from? Well, it's right here in verses 21 to 23.

And this is just devastating. Look at this. Verse 21. For from within, out of men's hearts, come evil thoughts sexual immorality that murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly, all these evils come from inside and make a man unclean. It all comes from inside you. He just doesn't hold back as he.

I mean, he just tells it like it is. What is the source of evil, your own heart, your own heart. All these things that make us filthy in God's sight originate inside us. Good luck. If you're trying if you're gonna try to avoid bad influences that make you evil, good luck, because The worst influence in your life is right inside your chest. And it's incurable is Jeremiah 17.

Nine, the heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure who can understand it? So this is Jesus answers the question about the source of uncleanness. And he says it comes from inside. It's revolutionary, and yet it really shouldn't be any big surprise, right? I mean, it's self evident, isn't it? This is odd.

I don't know of any passage in the whole Bible that's easier to prove than verses 21 to 23. Right here. How can you deny it? Even the people who tried to deny it, all they do is transfer the problem from their heart, somebody else's heart, but it still comes from a human heart, right? If you say it comes from TV and movies and internet novelists. How did all that evil get into that?

Evil programming? human beings? Right? It wasn't dolphins. It wasn't a Martians, right? It's human beings.

If it comes from evil corporations, what are evil corporations? What are corporations? They're people. No document. legal entity ever committed an evil act? only human beings can commit evil acts?

If it was your parents and they inflicted on what are there, they're human beings with human hearts, right? At some point it has come from the human heart. No matter how hard you try to push it off to another source, the origin of evil always ends up being the human heart. Who can possibly deny just look at this list of sins? adultery, murder, stealing, how can you possibly die that comes out of the heart? Right?

It comes out of the heart. Where else could it possibly come from? Even if somebody pushed you into it? Still? Why would you push a little? It's like oh, it's not my fault.

She is pushes all my buttons. Why do you have buttons? Did Jesus have buttons? God are all the same bad treatment from people that we get. He never flew off the handle. Why?

Because he even though Jesus face all the evil influence of the world that we face still there was no corresponding evil, it is hard to latched on to that stuff. And so if he didn't sin, but we do because we are evil in the beginning, I asked you to think of a time in your life when you felt really dirty on the inside. Most likely you thought of some act that you committed some sin, some physical action you did that was really bad. But we find out that's not what you made made you unclean. The really hard news is you were unclean. Long before that.

The reason you did that act is because of the unclean that was what was already in you. We tend to think we are what we do, but in reality, we do what we are