FROM THE INSIDE OUT

Matthew 15:11 “What goes into a man’s mouth does not make him unclean, but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him unclean.”


Commissioned in 1936, the RMS Queen Mary was the most awe-inspiring ocean-going vessel in the world. She was over 1,000 feet long, and weighted over 81,000 tons, which was twice the weight of the Titanic. The ship carried about 2,000 passengers and housed a crew of about 1,200. Transformed from a luxury liner to a troop transport in World War II she carried almost 800,000 members of the military to and from the European war zones. The Queen Mary was retired from regular passenger service in 1967 after making 1,001 Atlantic Ocean crossings, and is presently harbored in the port of Long Beach, California. Even today the ship’s magnificence is like none other. But when the Queen Mary was retired from active passenger service, it was discovered that part of her gleaming exterior was hiding something far less attractive.

The Queen Mary’s three oval shaped smoke stacks, which were 36 feel long, 23 feet wide, and ranging from 70 down to 62 feet in height, were made of sheets of steel over an inch thick. During her decades of service, at least 30 coats of paint had been applied to the massive smokestacks, forming a shell around the steel interior. But when the smokestacks were removed for maintenance after her decommissioning, it was discovered that they were nothing but shells. When lifted off the liner and placed on the docks, they crumbled! Over the years, the thick steel of which they had been made had turned to rust from long exposure to heat and moisture. The beautiful exteriors of the smokestacks revealed a rusty, crumbly interior that spoke not of beauty and elegance but of deterioration and decay. The ships beautiful external appearance was hiding the internal reality that it had deteriorated to nothing.

In Bible times, the Pharisees (in the spiritual sense) had a lot in common with the RMS Queen Mary. They appeared one way, but were, in reality, something very different from what people perceived them to be. Jesus called them hypocrites. You see, they had built a fence around God’s word. It was a fence that placed their outward appearance above their inner purity. Jesus came to raise the bar for the question, “what makes a man clean?” He turned the tables on their philosophy of ceremonial cleanness. The truth is that moral purity is not experienced from the outside in.

The Pharisees offer us the greatest example of how to miss our moment. They missed the Messiah because they were so caught up in what they were, or were not doing. Let us be sure to guard our hearts today. Everything that we observe and take part in is filtered through the heart. Keep the condition of your heart towards God your first priority. Purity begins with the intimate knowledge of Jesus Christ, it grows by allowing Him to live and dwell within us, and it increases with the ever-working power of the Holy Spirit leading and guiding us. Not from the outside in – but from the inside out.