In certain parts of the country taking out the garbage is no brainer. Not where we live in the Metropolitan New York area! We are talking pages of trash regulations including what to do with plastics, different colors of glass, aluminum cans, leaves, branches, tires. Well, my friend Craig isn't used to all these regulations because he just moved here. So he let his garbage pile up for the first few weeks in the area, with odoriferous results, shall we say? Eventually he had his own little land-fill developing by his back door. Finally he found the instructions on handling trash and Craig told me, "It wasn't that I didn't want to get rid of that garbage, I just didn't know how to."
Well, I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "What To Do With The Garbage."
Some of us face a quandary similar to my friend's, only with the emotional and spiritual garbage of our lives. Things we've done that we wish we could undo. Things we hope no one ever finds out about. The guilty memories that keep coming back on the VCR in our brain. Not to mention the pain we carry inside. We want to get rid of our garbage, we just don't know how to - and it continues to pile up in our soul, and it's starting to deteriorate.
Well, there is a designated dumping ground for our lifetime of garbage. It's on a skull shaped hill with a rugged cross on the top.
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from 1 Peter 2:24. Speaking of Jesus, it says, "He bore our sins in His own body on the tree so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness." You see, all the guilt of all the sins that you and I have ever done, God's Son absorbed when He was dying on that cross paying our death penalty for our sin. In Isaiah 53, God graphically describes this dumping of all of our sin garbage on His Son. It says, "He carried our sorrows, He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities, the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him." Every lie we've ever told, every angry, hurting word we've ever spoken, Jesus was absorbing on that cross. Every lustful thought, every immoral, every adulterous act, every act of violence, every act of selfishness, Jesus the sinless Son of God absorbed into His soul on that cross.
Why? In the words of the Bible, "God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son." And today Jesus invites you to bring the accumulated garbage of your life to the cross where he died to forgive it. Jesus said of those who nailed Him to that tree, "Father forgive them." If He could forgive that, there's nothing you've done that He cannot and will not forgive! But, you have to come to Jesus willing to admit that you're a sinner, willing to tell Him that you are putting all your trust in Him to erase your sin from God's book and to give you life forever. You can trade in guilt for forgiveness, you can trade in pain for healing, you can trade in death for Eternal Life when you ask the One who died for you to be your own Savior.
There is no reason to deal with the garbage of your life again. Not when Jesus Christ has shown you what to do with it. Bring all of that garbage up Skull Hill where it was already dealt with by Jesus, and leave it there.