Discover the Name

Do you like your name?  And if you do now did you always like your name?   As a teenager how did you feel about it?   I heard two Jr. High girls talking in a mall once and one asked “Do you like your name?”  To which the other replied, “No I hate my name” and the first girl said, “Yeah I hate mine too.”  I think it's a fact of life that most of us hate our name at some point in our lives, probably because of the way our parents abuse it, “Dennison Vance you get in here right now you have some explaining to do” 

Yep my first name is indeed Dennison, I was named after my father’s uncle.  But I have never gone by Dennison and other than times when we had a supply teacher in class or when my parents thought I had misbehaved I have never been called Dennison.  That’s not a hundred percent true, Austin White called me Dennison when he was little.

Had I been born 32 days later my name probably would have been Stephen because a month and a day after I was born my Grandfather Stephen was killed in an industrial accident. 

But my name hasn’t been static, for the first 18 years of my life I went by Denny, when I went away to college I thought it was time to grow up so I started going by Den.  D.e.n.  just one “n”. 

I had an interesting conversation with a person in Australia just before we moved home in 1994, they asked what Den was short for and I told them, they asked me how Dennison was spelled and I told them.  And then they asked “well shouldn’t Den have two ‘Ns’?”  To be truthful I had never thought about it before.  So when we arrived in Bedford to start Cornerstone in August of 1994 I became Denn with 2  “ns”. 

When I went to work at my first church in 1981 I discovered for some people my name was simply “Pastor”  in 1984 we added an addition to our home and the name he called me was “daddy”  a year and a half ago I got a new name and it was “grampy” as opposed to the times Angela simply refers to me as “grumpy”.  A pastor friend of mine was asked if he ever woke up grumpy and he replied “sometimes and sometimes I let her sleep in.”   But that is a different story.

But I am really not defined by my name, I like it now, it’s different, kind of like me.  But I think that the Bard was right when he said William Shakespeare   “What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”    Which might be why Gertrude Stein wrote “A rose is a rose is a rose.”

Some people are very proud of their names, in particular their surname, I have a friend in Truro by the last name of Wallace who lays claim to a relationship with William Wallace of Brave Heart fame.  But that is really outside of our control isn’t it.    It was the Czech author Milan Kundera who wrote “We don't know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don't understand our name at all, we don't know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”

And that was all said to lead into our message this morning.  Our scripture begins with an interesting story.   Jesus and his apostles have come to Capernaum and Jesus is teaching them a lesson about the Kingdom when John suddenly bursts into the room let’s pick up the story there.  Mark 9:38 John said to Jesus, “Teacher, we saw someone using your name to cast out demons, but we told him to stop because he wasn’t in our group.”   Remember a couple of weeks ago I spoke about the 12 Apostles and mentioned how Jesus had nicknamed John and his brother James “The Sons of Thunder”?   It was John who wanted to call down fire from heaven to burn up a village in Samaria that didn’t welcome Jesus and his followers and now he is forbidding someone from doing good in Jesus name. 

And we really don’t know what the issue was.  Maybe John thought he was doing the right thing, he might very well of thought that the guy was out of line, he didn’t know him so he assumed that Jesus didn’t know him and that he didn’t know Jesus.  John may have thought that when Jesus said “Follow me” that he was only talking in the physical sense, that you could only follow Jesus if you could see him and be with him in the here and now.  If that was the case then Jesus’ followers would never have been able to expand past that a few hundred people isolated in a particular point in history.

And really we don’t know who the guy was.  Some have suggested that he might have been one of John the Baptist’s followers who heard John talk about Jesus and call him the “Lamb of God” and took John’s words to heart.  Others have speculated that he may have been one of the seventy-two that Jesus sent out in  Luke 10:1 The Lord now chose seventy-two other disciples and sent them ahead in pairs to all the towns and places he planned to visit.   Because apparently the Demon thing fell in the job description because when they came and reported back to Jesus we read Luke 10:17 When the seventy-two disciples returned, they joyfully reported to him, “Lord, even the demons obey us when we use your name!”   So maybe John just didn’t recognize the guy, or maybe he was just some fellow who had heard Jesus speak bought into his message and laid claim to it. 

Or maybe there was a darker side to John’s comments because it was only a couple of dozen verses before that we read Mark 9:17-18 One of the men in the crowd spoke up and said, “Teacher, I brought my son so you could heal him. He is possessed by an evil spirit that won’t let him talk. And whenever this spirit seizes him, it throws him violently to the ground. Then he foams at the mouth and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid. So I asked your disciples to cast out the evil spirit, but they couldn’t do it.”

So maybe John was stinging a bit,  that this guy was doing what he hadn’t been able to do.   Just saying.   Or maybe John was like a some churches today, he had drawn a circle around his group and assumed that anyone outside the circle was wrong. 

We don’t do that do we?  I hope not, I hope our circle is big enough without being too big.    It was Edwin Markham who wrote  “He drew a circle that shut me out--  Rebel, heretic, thing to flout.  But love and I had the wit to win-- We drew a circle that took him in.”  And if you are older than dirt you might remember the song called “Circles” by the Captain and Tennille which had the opening line “He drew a circle that shut me out He was afraid of what life was all about.”   Toni Tennille said the song was inspired by Markham’s poem.  There don’t say you didn’t learn anything today.

So maybe whoever the stranger was he was outside the circle that John had drawn.

Now if anyone had the right to be cranky that someone had been using his name it should have been Jesus.  But listen to his reply in Mark 9:39-40 “Don’t stop him!” Jesus said. “No one who performs a miracle in my name will soon be able to speak evil of me. Anyone who is not against us is for us.

And if we just had that one scripture we would have to understand it to mean that anyone, that is anyone who lays claim or has ever laid claim to the name of Jesus should be considered a Christian or a Christian church.

Recently in the news in the US a prominent Pastor made a statement that caused an absolute furor in the media, he said that the Mormon Church, or Latter Day Saints as they prefer to be called weren’t Christian.  The secular media was aghast, how could that be, the Latter Day Saints profess to follow Jesus so how could another Christian say they were a cult. 

Actually the context of why the discussion was even happening was outside the scope of Canadian thinking, it was in relation to Mitt Romney possibly running as President and whether or not Americans would vote for a Mormon.    I can’t even imagine that would be a consideration about who would be President.  Oh well, different strokes for different folks I guess.

But there were a lot of people who condemned the Pastor who said the Mormons weren’t Christians.    And I’m sure that at least a few of those were thinking of this passage.

But like any other scripture it can’t be taken in isolation.  Because there are other scriptures that come into play as well, like when Jesus warned people in  Matthew 7:22-23 On judgment day many will say to me, ‘Lord! Lord! We prophesied in your name and cast out demons in your name and performed many miracles in your name.’ But I will reply, ‘I never knew you. Get away from me, you who break God’s laws.’

Or his warning in Mark 13:6 for many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Messiah.’ They will deceive many.

So it appears that on one hand you have Jesus saying “if they use my name they are one of mine.”  And on the other hand he is saying “Be careful not everyone who uses my name is one of mine.”

So how do we balance this dichotomy?

We Need to Realize that His Name is Descriptive  Shakespeare said that if you called a rose by a different name it didn’t make it a different thing.  But by the same token calling something a rose will not make it a rose.

When the Gospel Writers talk about the name of Jesus they were talking about a very specific Jesus.  Jesus who always was and always is.  Jesus who is not only the son of God but is God.  Jesus who was born of a virgin, Jesus who lived a sinless life, Jesus who died on the cross, Jesus was raised from the dead and Jesus who will someday return.  That is the Jesus that is named in the Bible.  And churches around the world embrace that Jesus. 

If someone handed you a tulip and said it was a rose, you would know right away it was not a rose.  But only if you knew what a rose looked like.  However if you had never seen a rose it is conceivable you would think the flower you had been handed was indeed a rose and you might even tell other people it was a rose.

But would that make it a rose?

And so we have churches and those who are part of those churches who say “Here is Jesus, but he’s not the Jesus who was born of a virgin, because we don’t believe that.  And he’s not the Jesus who was the Son of God because we don’t believe that.  And he’s not the Jesus who was raised from the dead or who will return again.”   Then I would tell you that you are looking at a tulip and not a rose.

And so when Robert Jeffress, senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas, called Mormonism a “theological cult” he was correct.  Because the Jesus of the Latter Day Saints is not the Jesus of the Bible.  On the other hand I think Jeffress was over the line when he went on to declare “Evangelicals ought to give preference to a Christian instead of someone who doesn’t embrace historical Christianity.”   

I think history has shown that you just because you are a good Christian doesn’t mean that you will make a good national leader.  And vice versa.

Lifeway Research a Christian research firm in the states did a survey and found that among Protestant pastors 75 % disagreed with the statement that Mormons were Christians.    But hopefully most of us would agree with the president of Lifeway Ed Stezer who stated “Though pastors believe overwhelmingly that Mormonism is not Christianity, their opinions should not be confused with personal scorn for Mormons, A person can respect a religious group and even appreciate their commitment to traditional moral values without equating their beliefs with Christian orthodoxy.”

But understand that it’s not enough to claim the name of Jesus without claiming the Jesus of the name.

His Name Is Holy  This goes back to what we believe about Jesus, if we truly believe that he is God then his name deserves the same respect as the name of God.  And that takes us back to Exodus 20:7 "Do not misuse the name of the LORD your God. The LORD will not let you go unpunished if you misuse his name.   and we’ve talked about this before.  To misuse God’s name is to use it in a frivolous manner, to misuse Jesus’ name is to use it in a frivolous manner.  It’s not an exclamation, or a statement of surprise or anger.  It is a holy name and deserves to be treated as such. 

It’s not just a command about the way we speak, it’s also a commandment concerning the way we live.  When you call yourself a Christian then you are calling yourself a follower of Christ, you are in effect taking his name his name and attaching it to yourself and to your behaviour.   And when your life does not reflect your commitment as a Christian then you are misusing his name.  So, when you call yourself a Christian then live like the devil what does that say?  What are you doing to the name of Christ with the way you are living?

Not only is his name descriptive his name is holy, but more than that:

His Name Is Powerful  If you read through the book of Acts you discover that the early church depended on the name of Jesus.  It was in the name of Jesus that the message of the Gospel was preached, it was in the name of Jesus that people were healed, it was in the name of Jesus that tyrants were rebuked and it was in the name of Jesus that people found the strength to be martyred for their faith.

And there are great scriptures that we claim and hold unto to, scriptures like John 14:14 You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.   How often have we heard that promise, and how often have we claimed that promise?  You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it. Wow!  But did Jesus actually mean that you could ask for anything in his name and it would be yours?  That you and yours would never be in want, that you would never be sick that you could ask for anything in Jesus’ name and it would be yours?

That’s how it is preached sometimes and that is a heresy and a mockery of the words of Jesus.  Seriously you can’t just cherry pick verses like this and let them stand on their own.  You can’t just take a sentence out of the bible and look at it in isolation.  The very least that you can do is look at the verses that immediately surround that verse.   In this case we need to look at John 14:12-13 I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father.   What is it talking about here?  It is talking about doing what Jesus did.  That your prayers and your life would bring glory to God.  And you are thinking “Well sure Denn, but if I won the lottery that would bring glory to God.”  Do you really believe that? 

This goes back to the line in the Lord’s prayer that says “your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”  There is power in Jesus name and that power is living in Jesus name and means that we live in such a way that our requests are requests that Jesus would honour.  John 15:16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit--fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name.   We like the last part.  Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name.   But you can’t isolate that from the first part of Jesus statement and that is that you will bear fruit that will last, because that is what your requests are supposed to lead to.  When you pray for the power and desire to live the life that Jesus would have you to live, that power is there.   When you pray for the strength to resist temptation, that strength is there.  When you pray that you will be better able to bear the name of Jesus and that your life will produce the fruit that Jesus wants you to produce, that request will be answered.

As a young Pastor I thought that praying “Your will be done” was a cop out, that if we were truly to pray in faith, believing that whatever we asked for in Jesus name would happen that we were just given ourselves an out by praying “your will be done” because if our prayers weren’t answered then we could just say “well I guess that it wasn’t in God’s will” 

But what if we truly believed that God is smarter than us, and ultimately that God wants the very best for our lives, even if at this point in our lives it doesn’t seem that way? 

Sometimes we are like children who feel that we need every shiny new toy that captures our imagination and every cone of ice cream or candy bar that tickles our fancy and that doesn’t bring glory to God. 

But have you ever wondered what would happen if every prayer you ever uttered had been answered in just the way you wanted it to be answered? 

The power that is in the name of Jesus is the power to live as a new creation, the power to be a witness to his name, the power to bear the fruit that he would have us to bear. 

Paul wrote these words to the believers in the Colossian church, Colossians 3:17 And whatever you do or say, let it be as a representative of the Lord Jesus, all the while giving thanks through him to God the Father.   Now listen to how it is said in the New International Version,   NIV Colossians 3:17 And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

Discover Purity

Things were beginning to escalate.  Up to this point Jesus had been criticized locally for some of his teaching but now they were bringing out the big guns.  The news of Jesus and his preaching was spreading throughout Palestine; remember last week I mentioned that the news had reached Herod in his palace and Herod thought Jesus was John the Baptist coming back from the dead. 

And apparently the religious leaders in Jerusalem had gotten wind of the one some were calling the Messiah.  And remember there was no television, no radio no internet.  Social networking 2000 years ago simply meant that people were talking to one another.  And the news of Jesus and his preaching had made its way to Jerusalem the spiritual capital of the region.  And there was a lot to tell. 

At one point before John was executed he sent his disciples to ask Jesus if he was the Messiah and Jesus gave them this response.   Matthew 11:4-5 Jesus replied, "Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor.”  Well apparently they weren’t the only ones spreading the news because word had gotten back to the religious leaders in Jerusalem and now they had come to find out what all the excitement was for themselves.  This could have a major impact on who they were and what they believed.  For hundreds of years there had been talk of a Messiah, it was the hope of the Jewish religion and now there was talk that this carpenter’s son from Nazareth was the one.

Now when they found him I’m not sure if they felt disappointed or vindicated, because the one that people were touting as “The next big thing” wasn’t exactly what they were expecting.  To start with they arrived at meal time and instead of being able to observe whether or not Jesus and his disciples followed all of the prescribed rituals for hand washing they didn’t wash their hands at all.  

Now we have to understand this was not a health issue or a hygiene issue, the hand washing that is spoken of here is completely ceremonial and it was not rooted in Old Testament law but in tradition.  Since the time of Moses the Jews had taken their direction from the Ten Commandments and the Pentateuch, which were the first five books of our Old Testament.  But bit by bit the religious leaders began defining what those laws meant and adding to them.  

The entire hand washing thing was a part of that.  The principle was that you shouldn’t touch anything deemed unclean.  And there was value in that.  But the principle was added to and modified, the thought was that you might have touched someone who was unclean without knowing about it or accidently touched something that you shouldn’t have.  And so an entire process was set up to take care of that.   So you would hold your hands up and a small amount of water would be poured over them and allowed to run down to your wrists.  Then you would take the fist of one hand and rub the palm of the other hand and then do the other hand.  The problem now was that your clean hands had touched the water that had touched your dirty hands, so now you would hold your hands downward and another small amount of water would be poured over them and allowed to drip off.   Those in the know tell us that this wasn’t just to be done before every meal but between every course of every meal.  You gotta think that had to get old after a while.

But apparently some of Jesus disciples didn’t follow the tradition in exactly the prescribed manner.  Mark 7:2 They noticed that some of his disciples failed to follow the Jewish ritual of hand washing before eating.   A couple of things worth noting here.  It wasn’t all of the disciples it was just some of them and it doesn’t say they didn’t wash their hands, wouldn’t want you to think they were complete slobs, it just says they didn’t follow the ritual.  And the religious leaders were all over this like white on rice demanding to know why Jesus’ disciples weren’t  following tradition.  Sometimes you gotta figure that we aren’t hearing all the story or if we are we aren’t hearing the tone the words were spoken in.

Their question could have been one of mere curiosity.  Mark 7:5 So the Pharisees and teachers of religious law asked him, “Why don’t your disciples follow our age-old tradition? They eat without first performing the hand-washing ceremony.”   They might have simply been inquiring trying to understand better. 

But we have to assume that there was something condemning in their tone because of Jesus’ response to them.    Mark 7:6-7 Jesus replied, “You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you, for he wrote, ‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship is a farce, for they teach man-made ideas as commands from God.’”

I wouldn’t think Jesus was have gone down that road if they question had been asked just because they were curious and wanted to learn more.  But instead he refers to them as hypocrites and spends the next seventeen verses speaking about the dangers of focusing on being clean on the outside while ignoring what is happening on the inside. 

It seems this is a common theme whenever Jesus comes into contact with these religious leaders.  He refers to them as Hypocrites which of course is from the same root in Greek as the word for actor and literally means “one who wears a mask”  and to a certain degree we all wear masks at various points in our lives, and you are thinking “Not me Denn I am always completely honest and above board.”  Now you are not only a hypocrite but also a liar.  We are required by society and necessity to wear masks from time to time.  There are days that you aren’t on your game, you’re just a little off, not feeling the best and so you put on your good employee mask, or good spouse mask or good child or parent mask, and that’s fine.  And if you don’t you might incredibly rude, you would probably just define it as outspoken and honest but rude is probably closer to the truth.  

Have you ever had to deal with a bureaucrat or customer service rep who was not only a complete idiot but rude as well, seeming to relish in the little bit of power they have been granted in this life?  Sure, but you don’t say “Excuse me sir, you are a complete idiot and rude as well.”  No, you put on your smiley mask and carry on.  There are times that we need to put on a mask, that’s reality, that’s life.  But these men were defined by their masks their lives were a role they played they were experts on religious law and they could quote it verbatim but Jesus said that wasn’t evidenced in the way they lived.   And that probably wasn’t unique to them, Charles Haddon Spurgeon  once wrote   “When you see a great deal of religion displayed in his shop window, you may depend on it, that he keeps a very small stock of it within.”

And Jesus didn’t take this lightly listen to what else he had to say to these people

Matthew 23:25 “What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you are so careful to clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside you are filthy—full of greed and self-indulgence!    And Matthew 23:27 “What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs—beautiful on the outside but filled on the inside with dead people’s bones and all sorts of impurity.   And again in Matthew 23:28 Outwardly you look like righteous people, but inwardly your hearts are filled with hypocrisy and lawlessness.

Ouch, that’s gotta hurt.   And it wasn’t that the Pharisees were simply concerned with outward appearances, they were only concerned with outward appearances.  And it actually went beyond that, they were only concerned with certain outward appearances.  They could be cranky and rude and nasty but they felt as long as they kept the traditional rules they were alright. 

They were much more concerned with doing what they perceived to be the right thing then actually doing the right thing.  Jesus summed it up in the scripture that was read earlier Mark 7:8 “For you ignore God’s law and substitute your own tradition.”   And it can be so easy to fall into that trap.  Because tradition can be summed up as what we do, but following God is who we are.    And if it’s just a matter of washing your hands and not touching clean things and giving a certain amount of money and avoiding specific things and places then all we need is a list and not a relationship.  And the Pharisees were very good at keeping the list and insisting that everyone else keep the same list they kept.

But the religious leaders weren’t fooling Jesus and it was very doubtful that they were fooling anyone else.  At first glance they seemed to have it all together but once you were around them for a while it became painfully apparent they weren’t

Have you ever grabbed an apple that looked really good, taken a bite and got a nasty surprise, maybe it was bad inside or it was really sour, or too hard or too soft.  It wasn’t what you thought it would be, or maybe you see this flower from a distance (corpse flower)  and it looks really cool so you meander over for a better look, when you get closer you discover it is an Amorphophallus titanum and when you get within sniffing distance you realize why it’s called a “Corpse flower”.

Charles Horton Cooley an American sociologist from the late 1800’s wrote   “If we divine a discrepancy between a man's words and his character, the whole impression of him becomes broken and painful; he revolts the imagination by his lack of unity, and even the good in him is hardly accepted.”

So what was the lesson Jesus was teaching that day? 

Being Clean On The Outside Is Not The Only Thing  This is what Jesus was trying to get through.  It’s not enough to just be clean on the outside.  The Pharisee’s life was governed by a list of rules, you can do this but you can’t do that, but it was obsessed with externals to the detriment of internals.

And if that was only a problem with the Pharisee’s then it wouldn’t be an issue today and this would just be a history lesson.  But for a lot of people their concept of Christianity is “thou shalt do this and thou shalt do that, but thou had better not do that over there.”

 And so some folks decree that if you are a good person and a righteous person then you do this whole list of things and at the same time you don’t do this whole list of things.  But there are problems with that type of thinking.    

a) It limits What Being a Christ Follower Means.   If we can narrow our relationship with God down to a set of rules or guidelines then any area of our life those rules don’t touch are outside the Lordship of Jesus Christ.  Following Christ must affect every area of our lives and not just those covered by the rule book.  

b) We Spend More Time Obeying The Rules Than Obeying God.  And anytime we begin to serve anything, no matter how good and no matter how noble that thing might be then it is idolatry.  Now we might as well set up our list of rules and regulations on an altar and bow down and worship them.  At that point we will have become so engrossed in following the letter of the law that we completely forget the spirit of the law.  The scary thing is that originally all those rules were put into place to point people toward God.  But then they took on a life of their own and people became so caught up in the rules that they didn’t have time for God.      

c) It Fools Us Into Thinking We Can Do It On Our Own. Listen up, you can’t do it yourself.  If you could then Jesus didn’t have to come to earth, didn’t have to die on a cross didn’t have to rise from the dead.  The Bible doesn’t tell us John 3:16 For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only rule book, so that everyone who follows those rules will not perish but have eternal life.

John 3:16 “For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.  And that is why we are told in Ephesians 2:8-9 God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it.

d) It Becomes A Matter Of Pride.    You know what I mean “Look at me, see how holy I am.”  “I don’t smoke, cuss, cheat, drink or fool around.  I read a hundred pages of the bible a day, give forty percent of my income to the church, pray five times a day and attend church six times a week.  Sunday School, Morning Worship, Evening Worship, midweek service and then twice a week I just come and hang around the foyer to round things out.”  But such self-centred spirituality leads to self-righteousness which in turn is just the opposite of holiness.  That was what Jesus was talking about here.  The Pharisees made an immediate judgement that Jesus and his disciple weren’t as good as they were.  Why?  Because they didn’t wash their hands the right way. 

But here is where it gets difficult because Being Clean On The Outside may not be the only thing but it Is An Important Thing.  You see Jesus wasn’t critical of the Pharisees because they kept the rules he was critical because it didn’t go any deeper than that.  They were content with the outside appearance.

Remember when Jesus compared them to cups and bowls that were clean on the outside but filthy inside?  Listen to Jesus’ instruction on how to fix that.  Matthew 23:26 You blind Pharisee! First wash the inside of the cup and the dish, and then the outside will become clean, too.

You need to let God take care of cleansing the inside, and as a result you will want to clean up the outside.   Sometimes people will tell you that “It’s what’s on the inside that counts.”  Sure but it’s not the only thing that counts, what’s on the outside counts too and regardless of what people say we often judge a book by its cover.  Really you have to; you don’t have time to read every book.  And we do that every day in all kinds of situations, we choose which food we are going to eat based on how it looks, if you list your house for sale the agent should talk to you about curb appeal and staging your home for the best results.  If you want top dollar out of your car you wash it and wax it and vacuum it out before you put it up for sale.

It would be shame if some people never got to see the inside of you as a Christ Follower  because the outside turned them off.

And sometimes our behaviour does.  If you call yourself a Christ follower than people expect you to follow Christ.  And I hear it all the time when you talk about people’s behaviour, even if they don’t say it out loud they are thinking it.  “Don’t judge me, Jesus wouldn’t judge me.”  Sure he would, if your behaviour didn’t match your words.  That’s exactly what Jesus was doing with the Pharisees when he called them hypocrites, and snakes and whitened tombs, he was judging them.  It was Jesus who said Matthew 7:17-20 A good tree produces good fruit, and a bad tree produces bad fruit. A good tree can’t produce bad fruit, and a bad tree can’t produce good fruit. So every tree that does not produce good fruit is chopped down and thrown into the fire. Yes, just as you can identify a tree by its fruit, so you can identify people by their actions.

So what are we to do?

Let God Do His Thing So We Can Do Our Thing.   We can’t clean the inside, no matter how hard we try we just can’t do it.  And if you’ve tried then you know the reality of that.  Paul summed it up in Romans 7:18-20 And I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. I want to do what is right, but I can’t. I want to do what is good, but I don’t. I don’t want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway. But if I do what I don’t want to do, I am not really the one doing wrong; it is sin living in me that does it.

  I’ve told the story before about the old man who would stand up and testify in church that he was caught up in the web of sin yet again.  Finally another old guy couldn’t take it anymore and he jumped up and yelled, “For crying out loud, kill the spider.”  So how do we kill the spider? 

Paul tells us in Romans 12:2 Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.  Which seems to echo David’s words from Psalm 51:10 Create in me a clean heart, O God. Renew a loyal spirit within me.

It is God’s work, but it is your choice.  You have to invite him to do the work in your heart.  And when He cleans the inside you will want to display the new you by taking care of the outside.