Matthew 15:16-18

What Defiles a Person

¹⁶ And he said, _y "Are you also still without understanding? ¹⁷ Do you not see that _z whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is expelled? ₁ ¹⁸ But _a what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person.

1. Cross References
   Matthew 16:9
   Do you not yet perceive? Do you not remember the five loaves for the five thousand, and how many baskets you gathered?
   
2. Cross References
   1 Corinthians 6:13
   Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food" - and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.
   
3. Cross References
   Matthew 12:34
   You brood of vipers! How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.
   James 3:6
   And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell.