September 24, 2006

Series – What I Learned on Vacation This Summer – 2

I learned many things on vacation this summer.  I learned that when you go camping, it might be a good idea to set up tarps, even if there is no rain in the forecast.  I learned that it is more fun taking down your campsite on a sunny day than it is in the middle of a downpour.  And I learned that when you go camping with a toddler, dirt is omnipresent!  No matter how hard you try, there is no way to keep your children from becoming part of the dirt.  Playing in it.  Dressing with it.  Eating it.

I learned how conditioned we are to being clean.  The first day camping, you are not yet used to the fact that you and your children are going to be caked with dirt from the time you come to the time you leave.  Since we’re used to being so clean, camping requires a readjustment of comfort levels.  At first, you try keeping the kids clean, and keeping the dirt to a minimum.  But by the middle of the trip, you give up.  By the end, you don’t even care any more.  You eat a bit of dirt yourself.  It isn’t until you get home, and look into the mirror before taking that glorious shower, that you realize just how disgusting you’ve become!

We don’t like being dirty, do we?  Take a walk down the store aisle for cleaning products.  Take a gander through the gallery of all the different soaps and shampoos.  We like to be CLEAN!  One or two showers a day.  Rooms deodorized.  Hands sanitized.  Floors anti-bacterialized.  No germs.  No dirt. We want to be clean.  We don’t like that “dirty” feeling. 

That includes that dirty feeling inside.  We don’t like feeling dirty because of our deeds.  There is nothing as awful as that dirty feeling, is there?  I would take a campsite full of dirt on my body over a dirty feeling inside.  A dirty feeling inside makes us want to scrub clean, doesn’t it?  Did you see the “Passion” movie?  Do you remember Judas scrubbing his lips?  Scraping his mouth?  Rubbing it against rocks?  Doing anything he could do to try to get the awful dirty feeling off of the lips that betrayed his Saviour with a kiss?  But it didn’t work, did it?  We can clean the outside, but we can’t clean the inside.

Or how about David?  Everything was going great for King David.  He had a loving God.  A loving family.  Loving subjects.  A prosperous kingdom.  A loving wife.  But then he began looking at images he shouldn’t.  The woman bathing next door.  Thoughts entered his heart.  Thoughts he acted on.  And then, he felt dirty.  So he tried to get rid of the dirty feeling by covering it up.  By killing the husband.  Deleting the files.  Covering his tracks.  But he fared no better than Judas.  The dirty feeling was still there.

He speaks about it in Psalm 51:  “Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin…Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean.”  David didn’t feel clean anymore.  He asked God to cleanse him with hyssop.  Hyssop was a spongy plant that was used for purification, to cleanse a person who had defiled himself by touching a dead body, or to cleanse a person with the disease of leprosy.  David felt he needed some scrubbing.  His sins made him feel so dirty.

Have you ever felt dirty inside?  The night you allowed your boyfriend to touch you in a way he shouldn’t?  The morning you woke up with a hangover the first time you got drunk?  After going online to see pictures that you shouldn’t have?  When you attended that Friday night party that went a little too far?  When you put a few office things in your briefcase to take home?  When you realized that you weren’t charged for one of the items in your grocery bag, but walked out of the store anyway?  Or when your actions with your colleague went beyond friendship to flirting?  Are you still committing sins that make you feel so dirty?

Then there’s a good chance you’re trying to cover them up.  You must be trying something to make yourself feel clean.  Long before Pontius Pilate washed his hands to “cleanse himself” of the guilt of going against good judgment and allowing Jesus to be executed, people have been trying to wash their hands of their own guilt.  I just heard a radio piece on 680 News relating the discovery of the MacBeth Effect. People who feel guilty about lying, cheating, or other immoral behaviour, like Lady MacBeth, feel better if they physically scrub themselves a bit.  A good washing the morning after apparently rinses away some of the guilt.  Hmmm.

Reminds me of an amazing discovery I made on vacation this summer.  When we were in Seattle, we went down to Pike Place Market.  A world-famous fish market where they sell everything!  Seafood, flowers, veggies, exotic foods, chocolate, gourmet coffee, spices, teas, clothes, furniture, trinkets…  You name it.  They sell it.  Look what I even found!  (Show image)  “WASH AWAY YOUR SINS Bubble Bath!”  No kidding!  This product claims to be “Baptism in a Bottle.”  “The Sanctified Soak.” Bishop tested and Cardinal approved.  Removes stubborn guilt.  Intended for liars, cheaters, and wrong-doers.  Fresh “born-again” scent.  It says it “Helps Redeem Sinners the Easy Way” and the consumer is told: “Use it daily: no rinsing, no scrubbing, no harsh fumes, no visible sin scum.”

Well, isn’t that just what we all need?  Isn’t that what David needed, when he was pleading with God to wash him clean?  Isn’t that what Judas and Pilate needed, when their sins made them feel so dirty?  Isn’t this exactly what you need in the medicine cabinet, so that when you cross the line of temptation, you can give yourself a daily cleansing that will make you right with God?  Should I just give you the ordering information now and end this sermon??

Or, do you think that you might just be a little disappointed with this product?  Your skin scrubbed clean but your soul still feeling dirty?  I hope we are all 100% skeptical about this bubble bath!  There is no product like this that can take away our guilt.  There is nothing in this world, nothing that money can buy, which can make us right with God!  No amount of scrubbing.  No number of good deeds.  So what will cleanse us from sin?  God tells us…

1 Peter 1:18-19: “For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.”  Hebrews 9:14: “How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!” And 1 John 1:7 “The blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.”

Christ has washed our sins away!  The only thing that could make our souls clean again before God was the blood that Jesus, God’s Son, would spill on our behalf.  His sacrifice for us.  Our sins have been washed away by Jesus’ death on the cross.  You are clean before God because of Jesus.  There’s nothing you have to buy.  No cleansing rituals you must perform.  It is a gift.  When you understand that God has made you clean through Jesus, it will restore to you the joy of salvation!  The grime of guilt is behind you! You’re no longer dirty because of your past!  So then, you ask, why do I still feel dirty sometimes?

People cannot cope with guilt alone.  When Adam was created, he was not created with the ability to cope with guilt.  Why?  Because he was made not to make mistakes.  But when he did, he had no way to deal with it.  We can’t deal with our own guilt.  We must have help from the outside.  In order to forgive ourselves, we must have forgiveness from the One we’ve offended.  But we aren’t worthy to ask God for forgiveness!  That, then, is the whole reason for the cross!  The cross did what sacrificed lambs could not do.  What “Wash Away Your Sins Bubble Bath” could never do!  It erased our sins, not for a year, but for eternity.  The cross did what man could not do.  It granted us the right to talk with, love, and even live with God!

You can’t do that by yourself.  It doesn’t matter how many worship services you attend or good deeds you do, your goodness is insufficient.  You can’t be good enough to deserve forgiveness.  No one bats 1.000.  No one bowls 300.  No one.  Not you, not me, not anyone.  That’s why we have guilt in the world.  And that’s why we need a Saviour.  You can’t forgive me for my sins nor can I forgive you for yours.  Two kids in a mud puddle can’t clean each other.  They need someone clean.  Someone spotless.  We need someone clean too.  That’s why we need a Saviour!  That’s why we need Jesus.  (Lucado, No Wonder…)

Let your showers take care of your B.O.  Leave your scrubbing for dirt and grass stains. But stop trying to cleanse your own guilt.  You can’t do it.  There’s no way.  Not with a bottle of whiskey or perfect Sunday attendance.  Not with hyssop or soap.  You need a Saviour.

Just as much as a frightened woman did early one morning in Jerusalem.  One who had been grabbed by a mob of angry men, still half undressed, dragged through town, and thrust in front of a man quietly teaching a group of people.  Only moments before, she had been in bed with a man who was not her husband.  Was this how she made her living?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  Maybe her husband was gone, her heart was lonely, the stranger’s touch was warm, and before she knew it, she had done it.  We don’t know.  But we do know she was yanked out of her bed and dragged through the streets for all to see her shame and guilt.  And most likely, to see her stoned to death.  “Teacher,” her captors, who were picking up rocks, demanded, “This woman has committed adultery!  The law says she must die.  What do you say?”

But for the first time that morning, the woman hears gentleness.  “If any of you have never made a mistake, go ahead, be the first one to throw your stone.”  One by one, the rocks fell to the ground.  The woman looks at Jesus for the first time, sees kindness in his eyes, and then hears: “Is there no one to condemn you anymore?”  She saw no one – just rocks on the ground.  But thought, there is still one who can.  She looked at Him.  She expected the worst.  But instead, she heard: “Then neither do I condemn you.  Go and sin no more.”

That was the first time this woman felt more joy than guilt!  The joy of salvation that returned to David after the Lord assured him he was forgiven.  We never hear about this woman again.  But I wonder if she went to Calvary the day Jesus was crucified.  I wonder if she stood under the cross.  It’s doubtful anyone would have recognized her.  But I bet she would have recognized Him.  She would have recognized his hands.  The only hands that held no stones that day.  They still didn’t.  She would have recognized his voice.  It might have been weaker, but the words were the same: “Father, forgive them.”  And she would recognize the eyes.  How could she forget them?  Eyes that saw her not as she was, but as she was intended to be.  (Lucado, Six Hours)

The same eyes that see you and me, not dirty, as we’ve been, but clean, as He has made us.  That is what God’s grace is all about!  And that’s why we need it!  That’s why we need a Saviour.  A preschool teacher once asked her students what their mom’s favorite thing to do with them was. One 3-year old boy answered, “Mommy’s favorite thing is to clean me up!”  In truth, that isn’t his mother’s favorite thing to do with her son.  Cleaning him up is an excuse to hold him.  Absorbing the mess is just part of the process of getting close.  And it’s the same way with God! He cleaned us up so that we could be close with Him again.  That’s grace!   Amen.

 

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