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Enjoy Life, Enjoy God


Dale Patterson

DULL?

May 30, 2011

Our perception of who Jesus is might be very different than the biblical reality.  Imagine Jesus asking his disciples, "Are you dumber than a box of rocks?"

 
"Are you so dull?" he asked.  "Don't you see that nothing that enters you from the outside can defile you?"
He went on: "What comes out of you is what defiles you."
                                                       - Mark 7:18,20 TNIV
 
I remember my dad disciplining me, "How many times do I have to tell you...when are you going to get it?"  Jesus throws up his hands at his disciples, "Are you so dull?"  I'm pretty sure he'd do it again today.  Because we continue to look at the externals as marks of faithfulness--what we eat, drink, the rituals we practice.  Yet over and over again Jesus says that we've got it backwards--it's the stuff that comes from within: anger, hatred, conceit, lust...this is the stuff of sin, of defiling.
  
And so he tells us one more time.  To quote my father, a professor of childhood development, "When are we going to get it through our thick heads?"  Thank God in Christ, his mercies are new every morning.
 
Joyfully,
 
Dale Patterson