Better Is Coming ! Clean UP
Clean UP!
Lesson of the Goldfish
Richard L. Dunagin of Denton, Texas, writing in Leadership Journal, said that his children won four free goldfish at the school carnival, necessitating a Saturday morning family outing to find an aquarium. The first several they found were too expensive, but then he spotted a used one right in the middle of the aisle: A discarded ten-gallon tank complete with gravel and filter. It was five dollars.
“Of course, it was nasty dirty, but the savings made the two hours of cleanup a breeze. Those four new fish looked great in their new home, at least for the first day. But by Sunday one had died. Too bad, but three remained. Monday morning revealed a second casualty, and by Monday night a third goldfish had gone belly up.
“We called in an expert, a member of our church who had a 30-gallon tank. It didn’t take him long to discover the problem: I had washed the tank with soap, an absolute no-no. My uninformed efforts had destroyed the very lives I was trying to protect.
“Sometimes in our zeal to clean up our own lives or the lives of others, we unfortunately use “killer soaps”—condemnation, criticism, nagging, fits of temper. We think we’re doing right, but our harsh, self-righteous treatment is more than they can bear.”
Trying to make yourself acceptable with God through ceremonies and all of that sort of thing is like pouring a gallon of Chanel No. 5 on a pile of fertilizer out in the barnyard in an effort to make it clean and fragrant. My friend, it won’t work. The apostle Peter said to Simon the sorcerer, “…thy heart is not right in the sight of God” (Acts 8:21). God demands a clean heart. In Ephesians 6:6 God speaks of “…doing the will of God from the heart.” And in Hebrews 10:22, “Let us draw near with a true heart….” How can a man’s heart be made clean when his heart by nature is unclean? Is there something man can do to make his heart clean? No! This is rather like the sign I saw in a dry cleaner’s shop in a certain city back East which read: “We clean everything but the reputation.” Believe me, that is something you can’t get cleaned on earth. The writer of the Book of Proverbs asks the question, “Who can say, I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin?” (Prov. 20:9).
Well, God has the prescription: “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool” (Isa. 1:18). Peter wrote, “Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot” (1 Pet. 1:18–19). One song asks the question, “What can wash away my sin?” That same song answers the question—“Nothing but the blood of Jesus.” That is one of the greatest principles ever stated.