Last summer several of us from Valley Church ran in a “Spartan” race in southern California. It was 14 miles of mud, hills, dirt, mud, lake, obstacles, and more mud all at a sizzling 100 degrees! Sounds fun, huh? By the time we were done, all we wanted was Tylenol, a shower, and In and Out burgers! As the sun was going down, to our great surprise, there were warm showers awaiting us at the end! We scrubbed and scrubbed to get the mud, sweat, and tears off… Unfortunately, we were still finding dirt in our hair two days later!
Along the journey toward our final destination of heaven, we trip and fall. We’re clean in Christ, but easily get tripped up in thought, word, or deed, landing in the mud, covered head to toe with muck. We are guilty and we know it. What do we do then?
Some will try to scrub clean by using all kinds of “self-effort” guilty stain removers. If they succeed, they might get proud of how shiny they appear and look down on the rest. It’s easy to think that self-effort is the answer. “Religious” people have been trying it for centuries, and if the truth were told, we all have. We try external remedies to fix an internal problem and it fails every time.
On the other hand, some will just give up, despairing that they’ll ever really be right with God again. They wake up in the morning ready to put on the same old stained and stinking clothes, too discouraged to think they can ever smell good again, too comfortable in their filthy rags to believe they can be clean from the guilt and grime they carry. So they medicate the guilt with painkillers of all kinds: drugs, sex, alcohol, anger, resentment, frantic activity, and good deeds. All of these are temporary “feel good” activities that don’t address the real problem.
This Sunday we’re coming to the end of the description of Jesus as our High Priest in the book of Hebrews and the author directly addresses the issue of a guilty conscience in Chapter 9. He’s working us toward the summary in chapter 10:
Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Hebrew 10:19-22.
There’s a wonderful hymn we’ll sing this Sunday that asks the question, “What can wash away my sin?” The answer? “Nothing but the blood of Jesus!”
It’s good to be clean!
Kurt