Turn to Mathew 15:10-11
Picture a room with sunlight shinning through the window.
What do you see in your mind, maybe a bright clear day, warm sun shining in on you?
What do we really see in our homes? Sun shining through the window showing us the dust in our homes, right?
This is how sin is in our lives, its everywhere in our culture like dust in the wind waiting to stick in our minds and to our hearts.
We are like the man who visited the Psychiatrist complaining, “I’ve been misbehaving doc and my conscience is troubling me. The doctor asked? So you want something that will strengthen your will power? Well no, the man replied, I was thinking of something that would weaken my conscience.
Mathew 15:10-11 Jesus called the crowd to him and said, "Listen and understand. 11What goes into a man’s mouth does not make him ’unclean,’ but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him ’unclean.’ "
What we have in our heart is what will come out of our mouths.
Pair of glasses-we must clean dust off or vision is blurred
Our soul is like a pair of glasses. Our eyes are the lenses to our soul. Pornography, sexual scenes on TV, even walking by we get a little dust on us.
Our ears hear things they shouldn’t-dirty joke, foul language-another piece of dust.
These stick to our hearts and mind and are in the background growing and waiting to become sin-we can’t stop them on our own-they continue to grow into lust, bad thoughts, foul language, and hatred.
Before long these become normal to us just like the world accepts living together before marriage, premarital sex, & abortion.
These bad things we see, hear, and think turn to sin and affect us and our family.
But as Christians we can’t allow these to turn to sin
Its hard not to get dusted by the World.
How do we control the dust in our homes?
We clean things up don’t we, you may close the windows in your house to keep dust and dirt from blowing in.
We need to protect our lives from sin.
Garbage in-Garbage out
Devil wants to live in our minds & hearts like the Lord does, and through sin he does it sometimes.
Ephesians 5:6-14 Don’t be fooled by those who try to excuse these sins, for the anger of God will fall on all who disobey him.7 Don’t participate in the things these people do.8 For once you were full of darkness, but now you have light from the Lord. So live as people of light!9 For this light within you produces only what is good and right and true.10 Carefully determine what pleases the Lord.11 Take no part in the worthless deeds of evil and darkness; instead, expose them.12 It is shameful even to talk about the things that ungodly people do in secret.13 But their evil intentions will be exposed when the light shines on them,14 for the light makes everything visible.
The light of the Lord makes everything visible in our lives, the good the bad and the ugly. Just like the sunlight-room
In verse 7 Paul tells us to not participate in the things these people do? Therefore do not be partners with them.
Of course we know that Jesus hung out with Murderers, thieves, prostitutes, every kind of sinner.
But He never participated in their evil ways.
How could He teach them if he didn’t-we have to show compassion to these people-lead them to Christ-don’t let their evil affect our lives
How do we keep the dust of the world from attaching itself to us?
I believe that it is a 5 step process
1. Pray-in all things pray-pray that God will show us the sin in our lives.
Luke 11:34-36 Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eyes are good, your whole body also is full of light. But when they are bad, your body also is full of darkness. 35See to it, then, that the light within you is not darkness. 36Therefore, if your whole body is full of light, and no part of it dark, it will be completely lighted, as when the light of a lamp shines on you."
Pray that God will turn his lamp on in our hearts and reveal our dusts.
2. Once we’ve figured out what the dust is-bring it before the Lord in prayer and ask him to help us remove it.
It’s up to us to remove these things from ourselves & homes. But we can only do it when God is on our side.
Psalm139:23-24 Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. 24 See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting
We can only remove the dusts with God’s help.
3. Expand our clean-up zone.
We need to not only clean up our lives, but also the lives of our families, the world is spilling it’s dust on our family and on our churches. We need to watch out for spouses our children and our fellow Christians.
We need to be accountable to each other.
4. Stop letting the dust sit on us for a while.
We need to be clean freaks in our lives.
Romans 12:2 Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
We can’t be like the rest of the world, we need to live out our Christian lives and show others that we are different in a loving way.
5. Remember God designed us to shine.
If we don’t do something about this sin it will become a barrier between us and our Lord.
The devil wants to get a stronghold on us, he wants to be able to come between us and God.
If we let him we will control our lives.
Jesus wants us to follow Him and His teachings, not the ways of the world.
As we prepare for our time of invitation I want to ask you what is my dust today?
What is covering the lens to my soul?
What do I need to remove from your life to break down that barrier between you and God?
