A Dirty Secret – A Stinky Secret

 

Most Christians do not bathe regularly. They don’t take a shower or bath or even sponge down. Consequently, when they show up for church services they stink, but since most everyone stinks no one notices, except sometimes the pastor notices but he’s too polite to say anything. Sadly, some pastors give up trying to get their folks to practice Christian cleanliness and start to stink themselves.

 

But there’s hope, because there are all kinds of air fresheners on the market, plus perfumes and colognes.  After all, if you can’t smell then the stink the stink ain’t there…is it?

 

Paul writes of Jesus cleansing His People, His Church, “by the washing of water with the word” (Ephesians 5:26). Jesus says that we are clean through the word which He speaks to us (John 15:3) and He prays that we may be sanctified (made holy and consecrated to God) through the Word of God (John 17:17).

 

The Word of God cleanses us as we bathe in it, shower in it, and even take a sponge bath in it throughout the day (I’m thinking that meditation is a good sponge bath). God’s Word refreshes and renewals our minds, our hearts, our souls; it enlightens our eyes, and it continually unveils Jesus Christ to us, drawing us ever closer to Him and in Him.

 

But he who does not bathe stinks, no matter how often we may change our outward appearance, we will stink. No matter how we might change our programs, our music, our order of worship, our activities; no matter how much air freshener or perfume or cologne we may purchase or hype, we will still stink – for only God’s Word renews and cleanses a person or a people.

 

This is a challenge for preaching and teaching, because when people arrive for worship or teaching they do not come as people who have been bathing in God’s Word on a daily basis, but as people who have gone at least week without a bath – and they are stinky! They need to be washed up all over again, and by the time their hearts and minds are cleaned up a bit it is time to leave and get dirty and stinky all over again.

 

In other words, most people don’t arrive for corporate worship ready to worship and hear the Word of God because they don’t arrive having spent the week bathing in the Word of God, they arrive stinky. While many people look at going to church the way they look at filling up their vehicles with gasoline, the church isn’t meant to be a filling station, it is meant to be an overfilling station, a place where we come full so that we may leave fuller – fuller in order to share and give to others. As a rule, every Christian disciple who comes to church ought to arrive with a mentality of “giving” rather than “attending” and “consuming.” We ought to arrive with something to share with others, with praise and thanksgiving to God, with a song in our hearts.

 

We really ought to gather as a people who are cleansed daily in the Word of God. Have you taken a bath or shower today? Will you pass the sniff test this Sunday?

 

Now you know a dirty and stinky little secret.