Mark 7:13-27

¹³In that way you take God’s word away from people so that they will just follow the rules that you made up. You do all sorts of things like that all the time.”

¹⁴Then Jesus called out to all the people to come and listen to him. He said, “Listen to me, everyone, and try to understand what I’m saying.

¹⁵Don’t worry about what goes into your mouth but worry about what comes out of it. If God hears bad things come out of your mouth he will say that you are no good inside.”

¹⁷After that Jesus stopped talking to all the people and went into his house to take a break. His followers went in with him, and they asked him what he meant by the words he just told the people.

¹⁸Jesus said, “What is wrong with you? Don’t you understand me? Listen. If you eat something, it goes into your stomach and some time later it goes out of your body into the toilet. It doesn’t go into your brains. So God will not say, ‘You ate the wrong food and made yourself no good.’ No, he will not say that.” (Jesus said this about food and made it clear for us that all kinds of food are all right.)

²⁰Jesus kept on teaching his followers, he said, “People think inside their heads about bad things, and they go wrong. They get up and do these bad things, and that makes them no good. These are the things they might do, – They might think about all sorts of bad things. – They might play around with anybody, and do what married people do together. – They might be greedy, wanting lots of money and things. – They might want to get something that other people have. – They might steal things. – They might murder somebody. – They might sleep with somebody else’s husband or wife, like they are married to them. – They might trick people. – They might rubbish other people. – They might think that they themselves are great. – They might only think about whatever they want for themselves. – They might do the first bad thing that comes into their mind. – They might do really stupid things. All these bad things come from people thinking the wrong way inside their heads, and these things make people no good.”

²⁴After that Jesus got up and left Galilee country and went north to a town called Tyre. This town was near the salt water sea. The people that lived in Tyre were not Jewish people. Jesus went into a house, so he could sit down by himself for a while, but his plan didn’t work. People heard that he was in that house and they came to visit him.

²⁵There was a Greek woman there. She came from a place called Phoenicia in Syria. Her daughter had a bad spirit inside her. So that woman went to Jesus to get help. She got down on her knees in front of Jesus, to show him respect, and she asked him to force the bad spirit out of her daughter.

²⁷Jesus said to her, “I belong to the Jewish tribe. I have to look after my own people first, not you people that are not Jewish. A man feeds his own kids first. He will not take their food and throw it to the dogs.”