Dirty Rags

Do you have chores to do at home, you know, jobs to help in the house? When I was busy at work in the office, I didn’t have too much spare time but when I retired my wife soon found me some jobs. I had to take a crash course in cleaning the silver. The trouble with silver is that it soon gets tarnished and loses its shine.

I was given a special cloth to polish the silver. The silver doesn’t look dirty but look at the cloth! (Lift it up) All these black marks just show the dirt in the air that causes the tarnishing.

The dirty cloth reminds me of a verse in the Bible, "All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags! (Isa 64:6).

We can pretend we’re good but if we’re honest we know very well that we say and do wrong things. Another Bible verse tells that that "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Rom 3:23). If our lives could be shown on a cloth, would they be like this dirty cloth? I think the answer would be ’yes’. But how can we change this?

Let me put it this way. The adverts for washing powders claim that they can do wonders in washing dirty clothes. You see the picture of the clothing before and after it’s been washed in Daz or Persil. They come out sparkling white, just like my clean handkerchief. (Lift it up).

I’m going to tell you something even more wonderful. The same book in the Bible that mentioned the "filthy rags" also has these words, "Though your sins are like scarlet they shall be as white as snow" (1:18). And how can this happen? It’s by believing in the Lord Jesus Christ and asking Him to forgive us all our sins. That’s why He went to the Cross and died and rose again to make this possible. We can’t save ourselves but He can and will if we ask Him to. And them we’ll be sure to go to heaven when this life on Earth is over.