DISCUSSION
Have you ever had one of your appliances go bad? Don’t you just hate it? Now your entire day will be spent shopping around to find the right product for the right price. Then you have to take off another day so you can meet the delivery guys when they deliver it to your home. Meanwhile, you have to make sure you remove the old appliance to make room for the new one. It isn’t until then that you see it. How could you not have noticed it before? You have never considered yourself a slob, but the evidence you see before you is very compiling. It looks as though the city dump threw up behind your appliance. You see those pictures that went missing from the refrigerator, along with a few of those alphabet letter magnets, some old noodles, a dead roach, mouse poop, and some yellow looking goo that had solidified to your floor. You cannot allow the delivery man to see this mess, so you have to clean it up quickly. Why is that? It’s because you are embarrassed by what others will think about you when they see your mess. You know that even though the whole kitchen is clean, this one spot that has been hidden for so long will be what those delivery boys remember. I mean, who cleans behind there anyway? I bet that every person you know has the same type of mess behind their appliances as well. Can’t the same be said for our hearts as when Jesus is criticizing the Scribes and Pharisees in Matthew 23. 25-26? All of us have some of those deep dark secret sins hiding behind our squeaky- clean façade. It doesn’t matter how good the outside looks if the inside is nasty. Every once in a while it may be a good idea to clean out from behind those appliances. That way by being constantly aware of how filthy it has been in the past, we will be motivated to keep it clean in the future. Maybe it is time that we look deep into our hearts and clean up the mess that lurks inside.
PRAYER REQUESTS____________________________________________________