WHERE ALL THE DIRT WENT

WHERE ALL THE DIRT WENT Ephesians 1:7-8 June 4, 2006 Given by: Pastor Rich Bersett [Index of Past Messages] Introduction We’ve had a project going in our yard for a couple weeks that involves a lot of digging and a lot of dirt. Part of the project had to do with digging a trench—some sixty feet of it to bury some electrical line. When it was finished and inspected by the city engineers I set about refilling the trench. Have you ever noticed that there is never enough dirt to quite refill the hole? I replaced virtually every crumb of dirt into that trench, mounding it so carefully; then it rained, packing the loose soil; now I have a depression about four inches deep running the length of the trench. All the dirt I removed was neatly piled right alongside the ditch. I didn’t cart it away; the neighbors didn’t take it when I wasn’t looking; but it’s not there! I stood there early Friday morning, just looking at the project and wondering, Where did all that dirt go? Then it struck me: that’s something about which Christians should be continually amazed—where all the dirt went! And I thought, you know, that’ll preach! So I set about putting my devotional thoughts together and studying the theme of forgiveness in the Word. Wow! Is there a lot on forgiveness! When God forgave our sins, it was a lot like getting the dirt out of our souls, wasn’t it? Where did all that junk go? What did God do with it? He turned white as snow the heart that was dark like scarlet, according to Isaiah 1. And Micah 7:19 promises he would tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea. Isaiah 38:17 tells us He put all our sins behind His back. The Bible says that God forgives the sins of the repentant, remembers them no more, covers them, hides His face from them, wipes them out, cancels them, takes them away; delivers, frees and saves us from them. It should be a constant source of inspiration for us, driving us to worship the Lord for His goodness toward us. “Wow! Where’d all that dirt go?!” The sin rising from our corrupt nature, the godless thoughts and behaviors, the ugly denial and rebellion we continued in for so long, the heart turned against God, and our stubborn resistance to His gestures of love and forgiveness. Every thought, word and deed that offended the Lord, as well as the guilt and judgment we earned for ourselves—He took it all away! From among many in the Bible I chose Ephesians 1:7-8 for our text. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. And there is more depth to His mercy and grace! Not only does God remove the dirt from our hearts at the moment He forgives us through Christ. But He continues to provide cleansing through the atonement of His Son. 1 John 1:9 says to believers, If we confess our sins he is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. As we grow in our Christian walk, we are in the process of learning not to play in the dirt anymore. Gradually, but persistently, the Holy Spirit sanctifies, purifies and cleans up our thinking and our behavior. The process is expedited the more we cooperate with Him, walk in His Spirit and commit ourselves to obedience. But when we misstep in this process, when we fail to walk in His Spirit and fall victim again to temptation and sin, He is faithful and just, and will forgive and purify, just as quickly as we repent. His forgiveness and cleansing are as near as our desire to be restored to fellowship with Him. And—listen to this—His forgiveness never runs out! As long as we are truly repentant there is endless forgiveness for us faltering Christians. His wonderful promise is whenever we ask Him He will haul away the dirt. But whether we are believers, living in God’s grace and indwelt by His Spirit or unbelievers who are just coming to faith in Christ, the process of enjoying God’s forgiveness is the same. The Bible says we are all sinners and our big need is to get the dirt out. A little boy came crying to his mother that his pet cat was sick and he was afraid it was his fault. He said he was just giving him a bath to get him clean, and he used a little Tide detergent. “Oh, honey,” he mother said, “It’s okay, I’m sure he’ll be fine, but next time remember Tide is much too strong for kitty cats!” The boy sobbed and said, “I don’t think it was the Tide. I think it was the rinse cycle that really bothered him.” Sin has entered the life of every man, woman and child. The filth of all that stands opposed to God has built up in our hearts, and it will take more than detergent to get it out. I’d like for us to consider three very basic steps to getting the dirt out of your heart. The first step: Honestly admit your sin to God Brennan Manning quite courageously admits that 25 years ago, he had a drinking problem. He voluntarily entered a 28-day treatment program. Early on in the treatment program they had to sit in a circle with a leader and tell the truth to themselves, and to the other people in the group, about the extent of their drinking. So they went around the circle and they all told the truth, except for one business guy named Max. When it came time for him to reveal the extent of his drinking, he said, "I never really drank that much." They said, "Max, you're in an alcoholic treatment center for a month. You weren't sipping cokes. Tell the truth to yourself. Admit it." He said, "I'm being honest with you. I've never had all that much to drink." They had signed affidavits to be able to get information. Max had signed one, too. They could glean information in any way they wanted to. So they had a speaker phone in the center of the circle, and the leader said, "I'm going to call the bartender close to your office and we'll just find out." So they called the bartender and the leader says to the person on the phone, "Do you know Max So-and-So?" The guy says, "Oh, like a brother! He stops in every day after work and has a minimum of six martinis. Man, this guy drinks like a fish! He's the best customer we have—a prolific consumer of alcohol." The rest of the people in the group all looked at Max. And now here's a moment of truth. Max tells the truth. He says, "Yes, I've had a lot to drink." A little later on in the group, they asked everyone, "Have you ever hurt anybody, a friend or family member, while you were drunk?" Some people said, yes, and they described it. Other people said, no. They tried to get at the truth, and if that was the truth, that was the truth. They get all the way around to Max, who says, "I would never, ever hurt anybody. Not when I'm sober, not when I'm drunk. I have four lovely children. I'd never hurt my wife, I'd never hurt my kids." The leader says, "You know, Max, we don't believe you. We're going to call your wife." As soon as Max's wife starts talking on the speaker phone, Max starts breathing heavily. He knows something's coming that he has been unwilling to face. The leader says, "Mrs. So-and-So, has Max ever mistreated you or anyone in the family when he was drunk?" And she said, "Well, yes he has. It happened just this last Christmas Eve. He took our 9-year-old daughter shopping on Christmas Eve, bought her a new pair of shoes; he's a generous man. On the way home, our little girl was sitting in the front seat enjoying her new shoes, and Max passed the bar and saw the cars of some of his buddies. He pulled in. It was a cold, wintry day, 12 degrees, with a high wind chill. He rolled up all the windows snugly. He left the car running so that the heater was blowing, and he said to our 9-year-old daughter, 'I'll be right back. You just play with your shoes; I'll be right back.' "He went in the bar and started drinking with his buddies. He didn't come out of the bar until midnight. In that time, the vehicle had shut off and the windows had become all frosted over and locked up tight so she couldn't get herself out of the car. When the authorities opened up the car and rushed her to the hospital, she was so badly frostbitten that her thumb and forefinger had to be amputated. And her ears were so damaged by the cold that she'll be deaf for the rest of her life." The wife describes this to the group, and Max falls off his chair and starts convulsing on the ground. He just couldn't bear telling himself the truth about what he had done. He couldn't face it. He was going to live the rest of his life in some fantasy world of denial about what he had done. Here’s why I shared this illustration: If I had the time, I could pass a microphone down the aisle and I could say, "What is that one sin that you feel so desperately bad about that you can't even bring yourself to acknowledge that you actually did it? The one that you haven’t brought out of the darkness into the light to let God forgive it?" What is that one sin that keeps you under a cloud of guilt day in and day out? That’s the one you need to deal with. That’s the one keeping you from full fellowship with God and the peace He died for you to have. First, admit your need. The second step: Get really sorry I want to stress all three of those words: Get - Really – Sorry, especially the word “really”. If you’re going to deal honestly with the holy and omniscient God who knows you inside and out, who is acquainted with your deepest thoughts, a half-hearted, feckless I’m sorry will never do. Being really sorry involves first of all the emotion of fear. You’ve heard the expression it put the fear of God in me? That’s precisely the first ingredient of getting really sorry. This fear goes way beyond I’m sorry I got caught or I’m sorry I’m going to be punished. This godly fear means you are stabbed with guilt and remorse for offending the God who made you and loves you. When I’ve hurt someone I feel bad, but when that someone is my precious wife, Charlotte, I really feel bad. I can remember saying something very hurtful to her, and how my thoughtlessness and careless words cut her, and I felt so horrible. She’s the one I love more than anyone in this world, and knowing that she loves me deeply makes my sorrow run deep. It’s a fear, actually. A fear that I have fractured a relationship very dear to me, that I’ve brought something divisive and wounding into our one-ness. Multiply that a thousand times and you begin to understand what it means to sin against God whose expectations and hope for you are so high, whose love for you cost Him the suffering and death of His only Son. Being really sorry must also include a deep sense of regret. It is not enough to say to yourself, Oh well, she’ll get over it, or No problem, I’m sure God can overlook that. No. I must get absolutely convinced that I have willfully and wrongfully sinned against the holy and loving God in the first degree. I have broken the law of the God of the universe and He is so serious about such sin that He said, the soul that sins must die. The trouble with short-changing repentance by leaving out fear and regret is that repentance has no substance without them. Garrison Keillor is one of the greatest humorists ever. He writes about “Larry”, a resident of the fictional town of Lake Wobegon. Larry, he said, was saved 12 times at the Lutheran Church, an all-time record for a church that never gave altar calls. There wasn't even an organ playing "Just As I Am Without One Plea" in the background. Regardless of that, between 1953 and 1961, Larry Sorenson came forward 12 times, weeping buckets and crumpled up at the communion rail, to the shock of the minister, who had just delivered a dry sermon on stewardship. But now he needed to put his arm around this person, pray with him and be certain he had a way to get home. "Even we fundamentalists got tired of him," Keillor writes. God didn't mean for you to feel guilty all your life. There comes a time when you should dry your tears and join the building committee and grapple with the problems of the church furnace and the church roof. But Larry just kept repenting and repenting. Real repentance is not washing the same sin over and over again in the tepid bathwater of our superficial sorrow. Being really sorry must move me past fear and regret to the point of renunciation. That is, when I realize the seriousness of my sin and stop winking at it, and when I feel genuine, deep regret, then I have to loathe it enough to renounce it. This is not self-loathing, but sin-loathing. I am disappointed with me, but I hate the sin. The apostle Paul captured the idea with these words: …in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. [webmasters note: Romans 7:22-23] This law of sin, this capitulation to the flesh must be renounced before it can die. I must want more than anything else both that I would not have done it and that I want to never do it again. Indeed, that I never want to commit any sin again. Once I hate the sin desperately, then, and only then, am I “real” sorry. Before we consider the last step, let me say a word to those who take issue with the notion of getting really sorry, because you say How can I get really sorry if I don’t feel really sorry? Good question. Two kinds of people ask this question. The first kind ask it because it’s a great cop-out for them, because they don’t want to be really sorry. No one can help you—they can only pray for you. The second group ask the question because they honestly want to get really sorry for their sin, but they honestly aren’t. To you I say this: get face to face with God’s Word. That’s right. You need to encounter His Truth so that it will bring you the necessary conviction. Only the Spirit of God can give you the conviction you need to get really sorry, and the Bible says that the Word of God is the Spirit’s sword. It is sharp enough to penetrate your heart and your resistant will. In fact, the scriptures are powerful enough to convict even that first group, but since they don’t want to be really sorry, they won’t read the Book either. But if you want to get really sorry as part of genuine repentance before God, get into His Word and invite His Spirit to convict you of your sin. Here is the prayer of the “willing but not yet repentant”: Psalm 139:23-24 – Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. I promise you this—if you will get into Bible study with this attitude of heart, you will find out your sin, sense deep conviction concerning that sin and you will find godly repentance that leads to life. Again, that word is for those who are not yet converted to Christ, and for those who are in his grace, but walking in unconfessed sin. The third step – Come to Christ The third step is critically important. You can name your sins all day long and cry your eyes dry in sorrow and repentance, but if you don’t have Christ, you won’t have forgiveness. If you are not yet a believer in Christ—that is, you have not received Him as your Savior—you must do so in order to be forgiven. The Bible says at Acts 4:12 Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved. The Bible is clear: no one comes to the Father except by Christ. (John 14:6) The reason is simple: He is the Father’s provision of payment for your sins. By His death and resurrection alone our sins are expiated. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. (1 Peter 2:24) In the movie The Last Emperor, the young child anointed as the last emperor of China lives a life of luxury with 1,000 servants at his command. "What happens when you do wrong?" his brother asks. "When I do wrong, someone else is punished," the boy emperor replies. To demonstrate, he breaks a jar, and one of the servants is beaten. In Christianity, Jesus gloriously reverses that ancient pattern: when the servants erred, the King was punished. Grace is free only because the giver himself has borne the cost. That’s why He alone can take the dirt from your life. Conclusion Gordon MacDonald has been a highly admired preacher, author and Christian leader for most of the past 35 years of his life. He nearly lost it all, including his family when, 15 years ago, he fell into adultery. He subsequently repented, he and his wife got counseling, he submitted to spiritual oversight who directed him to voluntarily remove himself from Christian ministry for what turned out to be several years. He and his wife went through the very difficult task of full restoration, and he is now ministering on the east coast. He wrote an article a couple years ago, and in it he tells this fictionalized story of what might have happened at the River Jordan when Jesus was baptized. Would you allow me a couple of minutes of silliness? Let me give you a vision of what could have happened that day. It expresses, as I see it, the implications of what is going on here. We're standing around there, and we understand that big things like this have to be organized. We make a plan. One of us says, "When you decide to come and repent, folks, we want you to register. We'll get your name down on a mailing list, and we'll give you a nametag so that the baptizers can be more personal with you. Just step forward, and tell us your first name and your most awful sin." Up to this table steps Bob. "Name?" "Bob." "What's your most awful sin, Bob?" "I stole some money from my boss once." The person takes a marker and writes, BOB: EMBEZZLER. Next person: "Name?" "Mary." "Mary, what's your most awful sin?" "I slandered some people. I said things that weren't true. I just didn't like them. So the person writes, MARY: SLANDERER. "Name?" "George." "What's your most awful sin?" "I've been coveting my neighbor's Corvette." GEORGE: COVETER. "Name?" "Gordon. " "Gordon, your most awful sin?" Adultery. GORDON: ADULTERER. And the person writing, with some degree of gloating, slaps the name tag on the chest of each person. Then all these people, with their name tags and their most awful sins, line up by the river, waiting to be baptized in repentance. Up to the table comes Jesus. Jesus' most awful sin? Well, there aren't any. So Jesus starts walking down the line. He steps up to Bob and says, "Bob, give me your name tag," and he puts it on himself. "Mary, give me your name tag." He puts it on himself. "George, give me your name tag." It goes on himself. "Gordon, give me your name tag." Soon the Son of God is covered with name tags and awful sins. In my vision, Jesus goes to the water to present himself to John. The Savior is baptized. This was no indelible ink, but when Jesus comes up, all of the ink has been washed away and is going down the river. I recall the words, "As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us." That's what Jesus has done for you. The only one who did not deserve to die for His sins (because He had none) died for all the others, who did deserve to die. Now, Jesus, the Lamb of God, will apply the blood of His sacrifice to your life, if you will let Him.   [Back to Top]