THE MYSTERIES OF THE FOUR GOSPELS
Lesson Three. Matthew 15:12-20.
Unity Interpretation of
Things That Defile
CHARLES and CORA FILLMORE
10/09/1941
CHARLES FILLMORE: Opening Songs
God will take care of you. No 115 true song of healing. Everything you do should be looked at in the light of Spirit; some peace, some form of spiritual manifestation. If so, we can sing as imbued with our spiritual unfoldment.
We hear a good deal about safety, especially safety in driving automobiles. Safety statements we paste on our windshields. I read the other day a minister proposes every driver of an automobile should, as he is speeding along, keep thinking about different songs he is familiar with in the orthodox church.
In other words, at 25 mph thinking about the song, “I Am a Stranger Here, Heaven is My Home.” (laughter) The speeding up to 40mph, keep thinking about “Nearer My God to Thee.” Up to 55 think about that dear old song, “I Am Nearing the Port, I Will Soon Be Home.” And 65 mph think, “When the Roll is Called Up Yonder.” When he reaches 75mph, he thinks about that song, “Lord, I'm Coming Home” (Laughter)
I am not giving you a suggestion or a way to follow, because it is really negative. But we should always whenever we are within a hundred miles an hour driving at that rate, “The Lord is Here, Taking Care of You.” I should suggest cutting it down to 35 or 40, trust in the Lord, watch your car, watch your highway, watch the other car, but most of all, TRUST IN THE LORD. And at 115 mph, God will take care of you. (Laughter as they sing God Will Take Care of You)
1. Be not dismayed whate’er betide,
God will take care of you;
Beneath his wings of love abide,
God will take care of you.
Chorus:
God will take care of you;
Through every day, o’er all the way;
He will take care of you;
God will take care of you.
2. Through days of toil when heart doth fail,
God will take care of you;
When dangers fierce your path assail,
God will take care of you.
3. All you need He will provide,
God will take care of you;
Nothing you ask will be denied
God will take care of you.
4. No matter what may be the test
God will take care of us;
Lean trusting ones, upon his breast
God will take care of us.
The Lord is taking care of us always. Let us repeat The Lord’s Prayer….Amen.
CORA FILLMORE: Meditation:
As you know this course of lessons is based on the Mysteries of the Four Gospels. This is our third lesson and our particular scripture today is Matthew 15:12-20
From the ASV:
15:12Then came the disciples, and said unto him, Knowest thou that the Pharisees were offended, when they heard this saying? 15:13But he answered and said, Every plant which my heavenly Father planted not, shall be rooted up. 15:14Let them alone: they are blind guides. And if the blind guide the blind, both shall fall into a pit. 15:15And Peter answered and said unto him, Declare unto us the parable. 15:16And he said, Are ye also even yet without understanding? 15:17Perceive ye not, that whatsoever goeth into the mouth passeth into the belly, and is cast out into the draught? 15:18But the things which proceed out of the mouth come forth out of the heart; and they defile the man. 15:19For out of the heart come forth evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, railings: 15:20these are the things which defile the man; but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not the man.
From the transcript of this talk:
We read: “Jesus called the multitude and said unto them, ‘Hear and understand: Not that which entereth into the mouth defileth a man, but that which procedeth out of the man, this defileth a man. Then came his disciples, and said unto Jesus, knowest thou that the Pharisees were offended, when they heard that saying! But he answered and said, every plant which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up. Let them alone; they are blind men. And if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into the ditch. Then answered Peter and said unto him, ‘Declare unto us this parable.’ And Jesus said, ‘Are ye also yet without understanding? Do not ye yet understand, that whatever entereth into the mouth goeth into the belly, and is cast out into the draught; but those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornicatopms, thefts, false witness, blasphemies: Where are the things that defile a man: but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man.’”
In considering this lesson, of course, we know that the Pharisees followed the letter of the law; that they [unreadable] lot of outer forms and ceremonies that must be complied with very thoroughly, one of which was to eat without washing the hands first was a grave mistake in their estimation and was approaching unforgiveness. Jesus came teaching and demonstrating a different doctrine. “Not that which entreth into the mouth, defileth the man but that which proceedeth from the mouth, that defileth the man.”
We have learned many truths, have we not? One of the greatest is only that which is based on Principle. He expressed them in sound words and all down the ages Jesus’ teachings have been pointed to with pride, and today they are standing more than any other time.
Now we know that the Pharisaical mind is within everyone to a greater or less degree, it is in everyone. Watch the garden of the soul, within your soul and within mine, there are plants growing profusely—good thoughts and bad thoughts, and each is is master of both. All kinds of thoughts, perhaps, growing in the garden of the soul, of the mind, of man however, which the Father hath not planted, must be rooted up. This is the law. Let's always remember that.
And how does God set strong and true mind plants to growing within the soul? How well we know this law here at Unity. We have been taught it all through the years. We know the WORD is the Seed. We take a word of Truth, such as "God is faith." A simple statement. We realize it. We get the kernel of truth out of it. It is established in the soul. We see all error is eliminated, — wipe the slate clean. We take such a statement as
"I love the Lord with all my mind, with all my heart, with all my strength and with all my power."
Or,
"I willingly let the strength, honesty and purity which is the creature of God-Mind, express in and through me and all error is eliminated."
Hold this thought until we get a glow in the heart — until we get growing in the heart and the soul the strong and beautiful fact. We affirm continually:
"In my consciousness all that is not of God must be eliminated."
Thus we see strong and constructive thought plants are set growing in the garden of the soul. Through the working power of the word, joyous and constructive thinking, joyous and constructive living, is the path that leads to Truth's house where all is luminous with Light, and where the adversary cannot make his appearance.
Never yet have we truly exercised faith in God's word but what that faith expanded this soul and cleansed the soul. It also cleanses the spiritualized intellect. It purged and makes wholesome the heart. If there issue from the heart impure thoughts, thoughts of false witness, murderous thoughts, revenge and so forth, it is because erroneous thinking has established these in our consciousness at some time and must eventually all be wiped out.
But is this not true, in the struggle of the soul for spiritual freedom, has it not in its every effort great gems of working truth, gems of thought? In the soul's struggle for freedom we say that we unfold wonderful gems of truth which are ours eternally. Let us press on toward the goal. We cannot work persistently, continuously without being crowned.
Now do we have growing in the garden of our soul parasites? We know what a parasite is: a plant that has no root nor soil of its own. It is always nourished on other plants. Do we have those in our [soul] poison mind-plants that rob the soul and make us sick, weak, lifeless? This is not of the Father and we know they must wither, die and pass away. Let us learn to work the law. Let us be diligent in our leaning to the truth all of the time. Lost opportunity is a loss of power. We all agree to that, do we not! Lost opportunity is a loss of power. So let us always take advantage of every opportunity that comes to us and our great moment comes, does it not? When the portals of heaven are open to us so that we can see into the Kingdom and we know for ourselves what the reality is, what really is the Kingdom of the Heavens, what the real Garden of Eden really is. Do you knew these opportunities are really open to us?
Another point: as we proceed, we find we have within us one of the great Twelve Powers of Man that will work for us continually along this line, that is, this faculty of Divine Renunciation. And Jesus said in the Scripture, whatever goeth in the mouth passeth into the belly (Matt 15:17). That is that this same faculty, when spiritualized, has also a grander purpose. It eliminates old, worn-out ideas, wornout ideas from ths mind and if poison ideas try to creep in, they are at once eliminated. But at the same time, this wonderful faculty always expands and glorifies the good. As we unfold spiritually, this mighty faculty expands and glorifies the good.
Now this is our time for the silence. Let us realize and go into the stillness. With one accord, with our whole heart on God: "THS KINGDOM OF MIND IS WITHIN ME." Now together please: (Repeat).
"MY INSPIRATION IS FROM GOD AND THS HOLY SPIRIT DIRECTS ALL MY BEING."
Together: (repeat). Father, we thank Thee.
CHARLES FILLMORE: LESSON
These lessons that we are studying, the "Mysteries of the Four Gospels", are somewhat difficult to reconcile with everyday, modern occurrences, because they deal nearly always with something that had to do with the Jewish religion. We are trying to get away from the old rituals, the old ideas of outer observances as being religion. The fact is that religion has to do with Spiritual Principles. And all the books and all the teachers in the world can never give you the real understanding of what the spiritual man is like. The Spiritual Man is a Man that lives and moves and has his being on the Invisible Plane of Consciousness. And if you look to things, to observances, to find the Spirit, you are looking right away from the Source.
In this lesson today, it corroborates with the teachings of the same type and character, and tells about this kingdom that is within. All comes forth from the heart. And whatever is good, whatever is evil, is conceived in the man. For instance, in some form of outside function, washing the hands before going to eat. Whatever we do in these outer relations, Jesus settles the question on that. And all those things that have smothered Christian souls in the past, Jesus didn't teach those things. They are strictly physical.
We are not altogether free from this physical side of religion. We have our mechanical religion and our heaven with streets of gold, and so forth, and our hells of fire and brimstone. An that sort of thing. But they are fading away fast — fading away because the minds of man, our minds are beginning to see the real side of man that exists eternally. We don't want a chemical (or mechanical) heaven. We are not so much interested in a temporal hell. Those things are being cast out. As we have in our lesson today, they are rooted up and cast away because they are not of God.
What is of God? Why the truth about Spirit and Man's Spiritual Origin, and his enduring spiritual nature. So when we see this material side of religion springing uneven in our schools, we are taught we must have the facts. We can't theorise about things, we can't theorise about anything — even our children are examples of how the facts of life are impressed upon them, and are in spiritual danger.
This brings me to an illustration I saw not long ago of a little girl who was naughty and the presence of her grandmother. And the grandmother said very seriously, "When I was naughty I asked the Lord to take it away, to take my naughtiness away." The little sophisticate replied, "There is nothing interesting in doing it absurdly orabsolved (?)" (I didn't quite catch the two words C.F. used hence the point seems lost.) That's the kernel of a whole lot of our present day thinking. We are talking about operations, how all things can be healed by performing operations on the body ... and it is as true in religion. We are studying these types of religious material, we are trying to get at the real spiritual truth.
Jesus Christ came to teach the truth, and these Pharisees were questioning him all the time about the real spiritual truth, that he was the son of God. They couldn't understand it because they took the external. They believed the Sabbath was observed by refraining from doing all kinds of work. They had 139 observations ef refraining from work on Sunday. You couldn't make a batch of bread and put a little yeast in and let it work overnight, because the Sabbath began Saturday night and they couldn't let that yeast work in the bread because it would break the law. So even to this day we find Jews on our Saturday observe the Sabbath, eat unleavened bread, showing how these ideas are carried down from generation to generation.
What will change all that? What will give them a new viewpoint? So there are some things that are going to be enduring in this world. But the understanding of the truth, as I say, the understanding Jesus taught in this lesson, comes from spiritual man, the development of spiritual man, the development of that man we can't put our fingers on; we can't see him, taste him, smell him, but we know that that Man exists. Each one must know this for himself. We can't have an intellectual Kingdom of God, nor can the intellectual concept of God, it must be replaced by the Real God.
Henry Ward Beecher declared that there were many philosophers and many theologians who had concepts of God dynamically inferior to that grasped by children and alien persons. He says:
"I talked with an old colored man who had come to God because he had nowhere else to go and who had a rich and wonderful fund of experience. But I had no parallel in myself although I was a preacher and my business was to study God. So I said the God you have studied out can never be the God you have worked out. Our knowledge of God does not depend on our power of identification but upon our inward and spiritual lives."
Here is a confession by a great minister that he had studied God, thought he knew a great deal about God, but hadn't found God, the God of this poor old colored man. He had to admit it. He hadn't had that rich experienoe that comes not from the study of God, but from working out God. We find in our experience, we have to go baok to the original Source, to get Spirit and that comes to us through our inner spiritual mind. But without that inner spiritual expression of the Divine Mind, we are still searching for God in the outside. We are trying through our activity in ritualiem to bring out the God Mind. Now God-Mind doesn't come in that way. We must forget ourselves and key ourselves up to God-Mind as the first, last and only SOURCE of everything ... EVERYTHING.
I think this lesson we have today is paralleled by the one in which Jesus taught activity of man in order to realize what belonged to him; that is in the parable of the talents. Remember, he gave a talent to one man, to another two, and another five. He went away and when he came back the man who had two talents came and he said, "I have increased my talents." The man with five increased his. The man who had one said he buried it because he was afraid God would be displeased if he did not return it.
In this lesson today, this understanding of God within us must be developed. "God has given me something." You hear that saying often. God hasn't given you anything at all. If you should say God has given you something, it is a wrong idea. The garden was given to Adam to be cultivated. So we find today we don't get anything good given to us. "He that works eats" and if you don't work you don't eat. So bring forth your talent. What is your talent? It may be very miraculous. Or it may be very minor.
You read the other day of the gas explosion that flamed up in the kitchen and the women and children ran out. A little boy on the place went into the house down through that flame and turned off the gas. It was that boy's training. Where did he get the thought of how to use the monkey wrench, how to use it to turn off the gas? He used his intelligence. That is a lesson to everyone of us to use our talents. Don't bury them.
JUMP at your opportunities. Senator Glass was once asked by a young man not to take advantage of your opportunities. "Jump at it." The young man said, "How do I know when opportunity comes?" he says, "You won't know. Just keep JUMPING!" That's the way with us, we must watch every opportunity and JUMP AT IT.
Where do they [opportunities] come from? An outside Source? We do get opportunities sometimes from outside. But CULTIVATE this God Principle. God gave us everyone these faculties and we take advantage of that then of course we will have all opportunities and there will be a thousand of them come into our lives. Make a specialty of success of that which you never thought of before. It was during the '29 depression that a certain book concern got more income, more prosperity than before. How did they do it? They took advantage of opportunities they had overlooked , they watched the little things.
It doesn't make any difference what the world says. Man has this union within, with God, the Kingdom of God within you. Make this union within with God, the Kingdom of God within you and you will be a success. Have a stand. Be something. Take a stand. Don't be on either side. They say, it isn't necessary that I be religious. I don't know anything about God. I am successful in my business. I am happy. That's all my aim.
Dante' in his Inferno reserves the lower depths of hell for thoee neither for nor against God. Before God or against Him. Have some kind of a stand on your religion. Stick to it. Find out how it works for you. Find the real source of existence — that is what we call God and everyone has access and it will do for us what we ask it to do. "Ask in my name and it shall be done unto you." How we will have our offering, please.
CORA: Offering Meditation:
This is our opportunity to give our offering to the Lord. We will repeat together our usual word of blessing:
DIVINE LOVE THROUGH ME BLESSES AND MULTIPLIES THIS OFFERING.
Together: (Repeat three times) ... Blessing: Father we do thank Thee for this generous outpouring of Thy substance. In his name, we do give thanks.
CHARLES: Let's realize for a few moments that God is the health of His people. God prospers us more when we acknowledge Him as the Source of our good. In the words of Jesus: "Lo, I am with you always, and whatever you will, ask in my name, it shall be done unto you." Realize that the Kingdom of God as within you and that all good comes forth from within. Especially when giving ourselves up to this Infinite Spirit of God, when it comes to the surface, it will always help to restore you and gives all good. Every good thing comes from within. We are thankful today, Our Father, for this ourpouring of Thy Spirit. We are thankful for this happiness of Spirit that infinite health, the healer that has been implanted in us by Thy Divine Will.
Infinite God-Love is new being outpoured and making us whole within and without. We are healed now, Our Father, and we give thanks. Whatever your need is that Mind springs up and eliminates, roots up all evil thoughts, all thoughts God has not implanted in you. It will epen in you those elements of Spirit and those destructive elements will disappear.
CORA: May we repeat the healing word together for these dear ones:
CHARLES: "JESUS CHRIST IS NOW HERE FULFILLING HIS WORD AND RESTORING YOU TO HEALTH."
Together: Let'e all realize it. Let's all speak it.
"JESUS CHRIST IS NOW HERE RESTORING YOU TO PERFECT HEALTH."
Let's hold that for ourselves — for ourselves,
"JESUS CHRIST IS NOW HERE RESTORING ME TO PERFECT HEALTH."
If you have absent friends, think of them and now as we apeak the word for them say:
JESUS CHRIST IS NOW WITH YOU RESTORING YOU TO PERFECT HEALTH."
CORA: Prosperity —
"JESUS CHRIST IS NOW HERE PROSPERING YOU IN ALL YOUR WAYS.
CHARLES. (Together,repeat): Realise that. Get it within. FEEL that prospering MIND. FEEL RICH. If you see worry, talk about lack ... cast it out. Any plants God has not planted in your mind have been planted by man. YOU ARE PROSPERED. God's will is that YOU SHALL HAVE PROSPERITY.
CORA: "JESUS CHRIST IS NOW HERE GIVING YOU LIGHT AMD YOU ARE FREE FROM ALL FALSE DESIRES."
CHARLES: BENEDICTION:
Let's all stand please — we will close with the Doxology. "PRAISE GOD THAT GOOD IS EVERYWHERE. Amen
Transcribed by Jill Andrews on September 13, 2017.
