17
Then Jesus went into a house to get away from the crowd, and his disciples asked him what he meant by the parable he had just used.
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“Don’t you understand either?” he asked. “Can’t you see that the food you put into your body cannot defile you?
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Food doesn’t go into your heart, but only passes through the stomach and then goes into the sewer.” (By saying this, he declared that every kind of food is acceptable in God’s eyes.)
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And then he added, “It is what comes from inside that defiles you.
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For from within, out of a person’s heart, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder,
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All these vile things come from within; they are what defile you.”
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Then Jesus left Galilee and went north to the region of Tyre. He didn’t want anyone to know which house he was staying in, but he couldn’t keep it a secret.
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Right away a woman who had heard about him came and fell at his feet. Her little girl was possessed by an evil spirit,
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and she begged him to cast out the demon from her daughter. Since she was a Gentile, born in Syrian Phoenicia,