Charles Spurgeon Commentary Matthew 15:19

"For out of the heart come forth evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, railings:" — Matthew 15:19 (ASV)

What a list! What must that heart be from which so many evils pour forth! These are the bees—what must the hive be! Evil thoughts, or reasonings, such as these Pharisees had been guilty of—modern thought is a specimen of these evils. It comes from the heart rather than from the head.

Murders begin not with the dagger, but with the malice of the soul. Adulteries and fornications are first gloated over in the heart before they are enacted by the body. The heart is the cage from which these unclean birds fly forth. Thefts also are born in the heart. A man would not wrongfully take with the hand if he had not wrongfully desired with the heart.

False witness, or lying and slander—this, too, first ferments in the heart and then its venom is spit out in the conversation. He who utters blasphemies against his Maker shows a very black heart. How could he fall into such a needless, useless vice, unless his inmost soul had been steeped in rebellion against the Lord? These dreadful evils all flow from one fountain, from the very nature and life of fallen man.

For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies:

What a horrible den the heart itself must be, then! If all these evils come out of it, what a nest of unclean things it must be! A dreadful sight to the all-seeing God must be an uncleansed human heart.

Let me read this verse again: for out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. All these evils come out of the heart of man, out of such a heart as yours until it is renewed by grace. Though you sit very attentively in the house of God, unless his grace has changed your heart, all these evil things are there, and they only want an opportunity to come out and reveal themselves.