Matthew 15

15 ¹Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, ²"Why do your disciples break the elders' tradition? They don't wash their hands when they eat."

³He answered, "Why do you also break our Father's commandment for your tradition? ⁴For our Father said, 'Honor your father and your mother,' and, 'Whoever curses father or mother must surely be put to death.' ⁵But you say, 'Whoever tells his father or mother, "Whatever you gained from me is a gift devoted to our Father," ⁶he need not honor his father with it.' You've canceled our Father's word for your tradition's sake. ⁷You hypocrites! Isaiah prophesied rightly about you when he said: ⁸'This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; ⁹they worship me in vain, teaching the commandments of men as doctrine.'"

¹⁰Then he called the crowd to him and said, "Listen and understand: ¹¹Not what enters the mouth makes a person unclean, but what comes out of the mouth makes a person unclean."

¹²Then the disciples came to him and said, "Do you know the Pharisees were offended hearing this saying?"

¹³He replied, "Every plant my heavenly Father didn't plant will be uprooted. ¹⁴Leave them; they are blind guides. If a blind man guides a blind man, both fall into a pit."

¹⁵Peter said to him, "Explain this parable to us."

¹⁶"Are you still as dull as the others?" Jesus said. ¹⁷"Don't you understand that whatever enters the mouth passes into the stomach and is then expelled? ¹⁸But what comes out of the mouth comes from the heart, and that makes a person unclean. ¹⁹For the heart produces evil thoughts: murder, adultery, sexual sin, theft, false testimony, slander. ²⁰These make a person unclean, but eating with unwashed hands does not make anyone unclean."

A Woman's Persistent Faith

²¹Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. ²²A Canaanite woman from that region came, crying out, "Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David! My daughter is severely tormented by a demon."

²³He answered her nothing. His disciples came and urged him, "Send her away—she keeps shouting after us."

²⁴He answered, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."

²⁵But she came and knelt before him, saying, "Lord, help me!"

²⁶He replied, "It is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs."

²⁷"Yes, Lord," she said, "yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table."

²⁸Jesus replied, "Woman, your faith is great. Let it happen as you wish." And her daughter was healed from that hour.

The Father Feeds the Four Thousand

²⁹Leaving there, Jesus went along the Sea of Galilee, went up the mountain, and sat down there. ³⁰Large crowds came to him with the lame, blind, crippled, mute, and many others, laying them at his feet, and he healed them. ³¹So the crowd was amazed, seeing the mute speak, the crippled healed, the lame walk, and the blind see; they gave glory to the Father of Israel.

³²Jesus called his disciples to him and said, "I feel for this crowd—they've already been with me three days with nothing to eat. I don't want to send them away hungry; they might collapse on the road."

³³The disciples asked, "Where in this remote place could we find enough bread to feed such a crowd?"

³⁴"How many loaves do you have?" Jesus asked. "Seven," they said, "and a few small fish."

³⁵So he told the crowd to sit down on the ground. ³⁶And he took the seven loaves and fish, gave thanks, broke them, gave them to the disciples, and they gave them to the crowds. ³⁷They all ate and were satisfied, and they gathered up seven baskets full of the leftover pieces. ³⁸Those who ate were 4,000 men, besides women and children. ³⁹After sending the crowds away, he boarded the boat and went to the region of Magadan.