Come To Make Us Pure

I) When I lived in Ottawa, KS there was a salvage yard especially for trucks -- big trucks, mid-size trucks, cabs of all sizes and trailers, too -- the truck salvage yard had it all. In reality it looked like a cemetery for old, broken down trucks. This salvage yard spanned a half mile location along the interstate -- making an eye sore in a lot of people’s minds. People even tried to get the county commission to make the salvage yard to put up some kind of fence to block the view of the "junky" trucks. The owner of the truck salvage yard claimed his inventory of old broken down trucks was valuable merchandise.

One person once said that it would be great if the trucks in his salvage yard could somehow be transformed and changed into new trucks. The person went on to say that it would be great if all the junky trucks could somehow be skimmed away and miraculously replaced by new, shiny trucks. Rather than the eye sore that people saw as they drove by the salvage yard they would instead see something beautiful -- or at least something more appealing than salvage and junk.

II) A long, long time ago there was a country evangelist who set up his tent and preached right there by the riverside. That way the evangelist was able to baptize the converts right there on the spot. This country evangelist would tell those who gathered under his tent that they needed a life change ... He told them that they needed to turn their hearts and lives back toward God. That’s what it means to repent.

This country evangelist got the town stirred up and excited about God again. Men and women were coming from all corners of the town to hear the evangelist preach and be baptized by the evangelist in the river.

One day ... a group of religious hypocrites came down to the tent to hear him ... to see what the stir was about. That’s when the country evangelist looked in their eyes and gave them a stern warning ...

"If you really want to change your life ... then start living a life that points other people to God. Don’t merely repent ... show the fruit of God in your life."

And then he told everyone there at the tent ... "If you think I’M turning heads & hearts back to God ... you haven’t seen anything yet. There’s another preacher & teacher coming that’s really going to get your attention. The guy that’s coming after me is going to be a Master Teacher ... and instead of cleaning you up with river water ... he’s going to cleanse you with the fire of the Word of God and with the Holy Spirit."

III) Can you imagine the looks on the faces of those who gathered by the banks of the Jordan River to hear John the Baptist preach? He didn’t wear the tailored made suits or robes that the other evangelists wore. Instead ... he wore camel hair rags ... something like an old pair of overalls.

The religious leaders of the day were really caught off guard ....in fact they were probably repulsed by this crude country evangelist. And then when he talked about this Master Teacher who would be purifying people with fire ... WHOA!!

It was ironic. Here was this dirty, rough-around-the-edges evangelist challenging these religious people about being cleaned up.

But that’s what Jesus did the first time he came. ... Jesus came to cleanse us and make us pure. He came to make us holy and to set us aside for God.

IV) Jim always thought he was a pretty good guy. Oh ... he made some mistakes once in a while ... but overall he thought he was OK. He knew that he wasn’t a BAD person.

Oh, he fudged on his income tax a little bit .. not really cheated he said .. just fudged a little bit. He would stay out on Friday nights and party once in while ... not really much ... just a little bit.

And in his work as a used car salesman ... he said he didn’t lie ... he would just stretch the truth a little bit about the cars he sold.

And then ... one day in a Bible study Jim had a spiritual awakening. He read the passage that told him that "all had sinned & fallen short of the glory of God. No one was completely pure ... except for Jesus." WOW!!! That really hit Jim hard. Really hard.

He was looking in the spiritual mirror and decided that he wasn’t as good as he thought himself to be. So he began to read the Word of God more ... and God’s Word burned a hole within his heart & soul. And the more it burned ... the better he began to feel.