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Then some Pharisees and teachers of the Law came from Jerusalem to Jesus and asked him,
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"Why is it that your disciples disobey the teaching handed down by our ancestors? They don't wash their hands in the proper way before they eat!"
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Jesus answered, "And why do you disobey God's command and follow your own teaching?
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For God said, "Respect your father and your mother,' and "If you curse your father or your mother, you are to be put to death.'
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But you teach that if people have something they could use to help their father or mother, but say, "This belongs to God,'
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they do not need to honor their father. In this way you disregard God's command, in order to follow your own teaching.
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You hypocrites! How right Isaiah was when he prophesied about you!
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"These people, says God, honor me with their words,
2 but their heart is really far away from me.
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It is no use for them to worship me, because they teach human rules as though they were my laws!' "
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Then Jesus called the crowd to him and said to them, "Listen and understand!
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It is not what goes into your mouth that makes you ritually unclean; rather, what comes out of it makes you unclean."
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Then the disciples came to him and said, "Do you know that the Pharisees had their feelings hurt by what you said?"
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"Every plant which my Father in heaven did not plant will be pulled up," answered Jesus.
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"Don't worry about them! They are blind leaders of the blind; and when one blind man leads another, both fall into a ditch."
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Peter spoke up, "Explain this saying to us."
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Jesus said to them, "You are still no more intelligent than the others.
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Don't you understand? Anything that goes into your mouth goes into your stomach and then on out of your body.
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But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these are the things that make you ritually unclean.
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For from your heart come the evil ideas which lead you to kill, commit adultery, and do other immoral things; to rob, lie, and slander others.
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These are the things that make you unclean. But to eat without washing your hands as they say you should - this doesn't make you unclean."