What’s on the Inside Matters

I’m not sure how it happened so fast … Where did the time go? It seems like just yesterday we brought our baby girls home from the hospital. In like a half-a-second, one girl went from slowly crawling around the house to moving out of state! How did we de get from kindergarten to college so quickly? Parents, do you ever think about how hurriedly those years pass by? I do. Of course, I’m still a dad even if our daughters are out of the house. You never really stop parenting your children. Along with that, I am still learning what it means to be a parent. I think most moms and dads would admit, part of parenting is figuring it out as you go … and asking for forgiveness along the way.

Children teach us a lot about life. About love, innocence and forgiveness. And as odd as it sounds, there is one thing in particular I remember about having young children in the home: babies need lots of stuff. Diapers, wet wipes, onesies and baby bottles. I remember once looking at the dish drainer and noticing it was filled almost entirely with baby bottles. Not plates, bowls or even sippy cups (yet) … just bottles. One shelf in the cabinet was reserved for just bottles. It’s amazing how many of those things you buy, use and lose.

Once while moving furniture, we found a used baby bottle beneath the crib. There was still a little bit of this milky white substance in the bottom. Thinking the bottle might be salvageable, we made the mistake of taking the lid off, only to discover the contents were completely rancid! Wow did it stink to high heaven! Who knows how long that bottle had been back there? We ended up putting the lid back on, and trashing the bottle along with its rancid contents.

But what if … instead of throwing that bottle away, we just wiped down the outside, filled it up with milk and handed it to one of the girls? What would you think of that? Would that be the right thing to do? But what if I adamantly assert, we cleaned the outside of the bottle, isn’t that enough? The answer of course, is no. It’s not nearly enough to clean up the outside, while the contents inside are still rotten.

This is exactly what Jesus addresses throughout His public ministry. It is indeed possible that someone may look righteous on the outside, while rancid on the inside. The very ones who were considered to be the religious elite (the scribes and Pharisees) were the ones who cleaned the exterior, while the interior was still corrupt. Read the sharp words of Jesus from Matthew 23:25-26, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cleanse the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of extortion and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee, first cleanse the inside of the cup and dish, that the outside of them may be clean also.” This pointed rebuke by Jesus bitterly stung the religious elders of His day. Yet it was still a necessary effort to reveal the putrid nature of their hearts before God.

Friends, pleasing God requires more than an outward show, it requires inner submission. Whether speaking to a Jewish audience in the 1st century or to a Gentile audience in the 21st century, this truth remains unchanged. Before God, what’s on the inside matters!

We may fool others into thinking we are super saints by what they can see, but God looks on the heart. Humanity needs to learn the all-important lesson that Jesus declared again and again, God judges our actions and our attitudes. Take notice of these words, outward obedience without inner submission is just spiritual hypocrisy. And God sees right through it.

Throughout His public ministry, Jesus often taught the perfect standard of the law was given to reveal our sinful hearts. Not that we might try to work our way into heaven by good deeds. For too many years, God’s law had wrongly been reduced by the religious crowd to a vain effort to appease God by the works of human hands, which never works. The 10 Commandments given at Mount Sinai declare repeatedly, “thou shalt not …” but they each extend far beyond what we do with our bodies, but also what goes on in our mind.

You may think you are right with God, because you have never committed the physical act of adultery or murder, but what about your thought life? Is it perfectly pure before God? Have you ever looked upon someone with lust in your heart? Have you ever murdered someone in your mind? Maybe, that selfish jerk that cut you off in traffic?! Have you ever coveted what someone else has?

If so, you are guilty before God, just like all the rest of us. All of humanity, in our natural state, stands condemned by our sinful deeds and thoughts.

However, I have good news! In Christ, God forgives not only the sins of the body, but of the mind. Jesus lived a perfect and holy life in every way, thereby fulfilling the law’s demands in the sinner’s behalf. He submitted, from the heart, to every righteous demand of God, inwardly and outwardly. If you will stop trusting in our own righteousness, and trust in the finished work of the Risen Messiah, you too can have a right standing before God. By grace through faith, you can receive a new heart that yearns to obey a loving Father.

What’s on the inside matters!

HHJ News