August 20, 2006

Pentecost 11

(Get them out of here!)

The first few minutes of this sermon may be a bit disgusting, so if you are weak of stomach, please beware.  There are some things in life that really stink.  One of them is the locker room during football camp.  I have many fond memories of early football camp.  You’re in grade 9.  You, and the rest of the boys, are away from home for the first time, living in a dormitory.  You put on your football gear for that first practice and head out into the muggy heat.  For over two hours you practice hard, and come back with your gear drenched with sweat.  Then what do you do?  You take it off and hang it up in your locker.  You head back to the dorm to try to rest for a couple hours, then return for afternoon practice, when it’s even hotter.  The problem is that your gear hasn’t dried out yet in all the humidity.  Not even close.  So beginning with a wet shirt, you put on all your wet and sweaty gear and head out there and do it all over again.

Now, the cycle gets repeated.  Over and over.  Practice after practice.  Your gear never dries.  You are in grade nine and your mom isn’t in the dorm.  In other words, there isn’t any laundry getting done.  So what just starts out as wet and sweaty clothes starts becoming severely stinky wet and sweaty clothes.  And oh, by the way, you aren’t the only one on the team.  There are about 60 guys on the football team, all using the same muggy locker room with little air movement.  Now, I just want you to imagine what that locker room would start to smell like after two weeks.  To be quite honest, the smell haunts me still today.  And you didn’t have to get to the locker room for the privilege a whif.  You could smell it half a block away.

But not all of you have been to early football camp.  So let’s bring it closer to home.  To the kitchen sink.  You know that dishcloth hanging over your kitchen sink?  The one you have been wiping up food from the counter tops and tables with?  The one you have been washing dirty dishes with?  Cleaning up spilled milk with?  You know, the one you have been using there about 4 or 5 days, because you forgot to change it out?  You pick it up, wet it down, wipe something with it, and then smell your hand?  Isn’t that the worst smell?  Rotten dish rag?

Well, there is something worse.  After all the traffic around our house at soccer camp week, we had 14 bags of garbage, no less than 11 over the 3 bag limit.  It was already beginning to stink, even in the bags, on the Saturday after the camp, after we got everything cleaned up.  I knew I couldn’t keep them in there over the weekend, so I threw them all into our van, keeping the windows open, and sped over to the dump that afternoon.  I got there at 4pm.  Wouldn’t you know, the dump closes at 4pm!  I saw the gates closing shut!  Van full of stinky garbage, I had to drive it back home and unload it, all 14 bags, back into our garage.  What could I do?

Being under the mistaken impression that the Dump was closed on Sunday (it isn’t, by the way), I left everything until Monday morning.  By then it was nearly unbearable in our garage.  Flies were plentiful and buzzing loudly.  Now, most of the bags had some sort of liquid underneath them and I had to re-bag most of them before putting them into the van.  And you guessed it, maggots were spilling out by the hundreds.  Maybe thousands.  The smell was disgusting.  The sight, almost worse.  Off to the dump I went.  After chucking all the bags into the proper bin, I had to battle to get all of the white living creatures out of my van.  And the guy working there at the dump was just kind of looking over my shoulder, saying, “there’s another one… there’s two more…”  You know, helping me out.  I am not a fan of maggoty garbage.

But there’s a smell that’s even worse.  Have you ever had your lawn clippings around too long, that they began to rot?  Before vacation, I had a couple large bins filled with lawn clippings, ready to be picked up by the Yard Waste truck.  However, they come every two weeks and that week wasn’t the right week.  The right week came while we were gone, and the clippings stayed in the bin.  Added to this, rain showers filled the bins with water just to make things a bit more soupy.  And then we had that 40-plus degree heat baking them day after day.  We got home, and of course, that week wasn’t yard waste week, so it went two more lawn mowings and one more week.  So this past Tuesday, they were finally taken.  But afterward, the smell from the bottom of the bins encircled our house and yard, and probably half of Beacham Street.  Just from putting the empty bins away, I got the smell on my hands that our strongest soap would not get off.  And of all the smells mentioned so far, I think this one is the worst.

OK, now that everyone is sufficiently grossed out, let me ask you something:  Would you want to put on wet, stinky football gear that has been rotting for a couple weeks?  Would you purposefully leave all your dish rags in the kitchen, never washing them, allowing them to smell like they do?  Would you just let your garbage sit and bake in your garage all summer, letting the maggots have their way with it?  And when you get rid of that stinky rotten yard waste that is turning into silage, would you bring those bins back inside your house and let them stink it up?

OF COURSE NOT!  Then why, after Christ has made us clean and new and righteous before God, would we go back to living like we were before?  Our text says, “You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires…and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.”  Our old self, our sinful nature, is something that is being corrupted day by day.  It is a continual constant thing, growing ever more corrupt.  Every trait of our old self’s behaviour is putrid, crumbling, and rotting like waste, like a dead body, stinking and ripe to be disposed of and forgotten.  WHY in all the world would we want to embrace that former way of life??

Do you know what we used to be?  What we used to be before Christ was a part of our life was something completely different than we are now.  Without Christ, there is no life.  There is only emptiness.  The word futility in our text means vanity, emptiness, aimlessness.  Without Jesus, there is no real purpose in life.  No meaning.  It is an empty, aimless wandering around.  People want “happiness.”  Our minds are filled with countless thoughts of how to obtain that goal.  But if Christ is not in those thoughts, they will never lead to happiness.

People who don’t have God in their lives live in darkness.  They are completely missing out on how wonderful life with God is, and they don’t even know it.  And whose fault is it?  Theirs!  Because they have hardened their hearts against God!  And so, they pursue sensuality, or better put, unrestrained living.  People who have no sense of right or wrong go from one sin to another in an attempt to satisfy their insatiable cravings.  No matter what the cost.  Like drug addicts, they cannot get enough of the sinful pleasure that manages to bring only fleeting satisfaction.  Sooner or later, this darkened sense of happiness leads to stinky, rotten, misery!

Already in this life, unbelievers suffer the consequences of living apart from God.  They live without the comforting peace that comes from being right with God through faith in Jesus.  They are cut off from God.  And if a person remains without this peace throughout their life here, then physical death will seal that separation for eternity.
What We Are Now
This isn’t what you want, is it?  Because God is so loving, because He is so gracious, this isn’t something you have to fear.  God sent his Son to take away the old and give you the new.  Jesus went to the cross to take away the garbage that filled our life.  And instead, He has given you a robe of righteousness.  He has covered you with his perfection.  You have come to know Christ.  You have been created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.  Through Christ, God sees you as perfect and righteous as He sees his Son.  You have life with God!

So now that you are wearing this perfectly clean robe of perfection God has given you, do you want to go sloshing back through the dirty, rotting filth with it?  Do you want to live like you were before?  Like the dead end you were rescued from?  To again have no aim or purpose? 

Consider how you have been spending the summer.  Summer is a time for rest and relaxation.  People who don’t care about God have all sorts of ways to pursue that.  Are you pursuing it the same way?  Or do you see we can’t find true rest and pleasure in what unbelievers are pursuing?  Would your neighbours be able to tell you’re different? Does the language you use and the attitude you display show you are wearing the robe of perfection Christ has put on you?  Or do you get hostile?  Lose your temper?  Get carried away with material pursuits?  Look for relaxation everywhere but in the Word of God?  Get comfortable with your pet sins?

Former Secretary General of the United Nations, Dag Hammarskjold once said: “You cannot play with the animal in you without becoming wholly animal, play with falsehood without forfeiting your right to truth, play with cruelty without losing your sensitivity of mind.  He who wants to keep his garden tidy doesn’t reserve a plot for weeds.”  If you have a garden at home, with a spot for the tomatoes, a place for the lettuce, one for peppers, one for carrots, one for beans, etc, you don’t also make a nice place for the weeds, do you?  No!  What do you do with the weeds?  You get rid of them!  Paul’s reminder and warning concerning the old nature will lead each Christian to ask, “Am I reserving a plot for the weeds?”

As we are led by God to see our “weed beds” of sin, let’s bring them to God in confession, and plead for his forgiveness.  Let’s get rid of them! And then, friends, be assured that because of Jesus, we have forgiveness.  And finally, let’s ask for God’s strength to put off the old and put on the new!  Galatians 2:20 says: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.  The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.”  The old has gone!  The new has come!

Friends, are you reserving a plot for the weeds in your garden?  Of course not!  What are you doing with them?  Getting them out of there!  Are you bringing your stinky trash bins back in the house to stink it up?  No!  Get them out of here!  Are you keeping your rotten dish rags around because you enjoy the smell?  Can’t imagine!  Get them out of here!  And if you had a choice, would you want to climb back into wet, decaying football gear?  Not if you’re in your right mind.  Well, you have been given a clean house and clean clothes to wear.  So what are you going to do with the old stuff?  Get it out of here!

Let’s challenge each other to no longer live like unbelievers, but instead to live like the forgiven children of God that He has made us.  To take off your “old clothes” and put on your “new clothes.”  Actually the Apostle Paul “insists on it in the Lord.”  So here’s the challenge.  The next time you come to the point you have to make a moral decision: “Should I do this or not?  Say this or not?  Have this kind of attitude or not?  Help this person or not?”  I want you to remember how awful and rotten smelly football gear, rancid dish rags, decaying yard waste, and maggoty garbage is.  And to realize that making the choice an unbeliever would make is worse than that!  Then I want you to remember how clean you are, how clean Christ has made you, and put those clothes on instead, and do the thing that would tell God:  “Thank you.”   Amen.

 

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