July 18, 2023
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When you use our kitchen sink, you notice this little contraption attached to the faucet. It's one of those sophisticated water filters. Before the water arrives in your glass or container, it passes through that filter. Now, I don't know about you, but I hate surprises in my water. How about you? I mean, I was amazed the first time that we took that filter off to clean it. Oh, it needed lots of cleaning! It had screened out of our drinking water this layer of dirty stuff. I didn't even want to think about that going into my body. Let's hear it for the filter!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Soul Dirt."
That's actually what a lot of people are doing - drinking dirt. Mentally, that is, just getting a lot of things that are spiritually and morally impure poured right into your soul - unfiltered input. And if you belong to Jesus Christ, the dirt is rushing into what the Bible describes as the "temple of the Holy Spirit." (1 Corinthians 6:19-20) God literally lives in you through His Holy Spirit. That's Holy Spirit. Dirty stuff should never defile His temple.
In fact, in our word for today from the Word of God, God clearly commands us to filter what's coming in. 2 Corinthians 7:1 says, "Let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God." A lot of times we don't have a spiritual filter for what we see and what we hear. Or we have a pretty wide screen on that filter - one porous enough to let in a lot that has no place in a heart or a mind that's owned by Jesus and inhabited by the Holy Spirit of God.
Sometimes it takes a child to show us "sophisticated" adults how we should be living. The teacher was a five-year-old, our grandson, who was watching a new crop of kids' shows some years ago. Captain Kangaroo and Mister Rogers (some of you are going, "What?") are long gone, and yes, I think Big Bird might still be flying around Sesame Street. But then there was Dora the Explorer, Bob the Builder, a tomato named Bob. Our grandson, well, he had a few favorites he liked to watch. But then one day he walked over to the television and did something he did not do with this program that he liked a lot. He turned it off in the middle of the show. The story was starting to involve some ghost and witch stuff. When Daddy asked our grandson why he had turned off one of his favorites, he just said, "It was a bad one, Daddy."
The radar of a five-year-old boy in whom Jesus lives. He knew that no matter how much he liked the show, no matter how many shows they have where there's nothing bad, when it is bad, it isn't for him. You know what? That's a model for a Jesus-follower of any age. But all too often, we watch portrayed, or we read about, or we listen to something that is part of the very sin that Jesus died for.
The Bible says He carried our sins in His body on the tree, "that we might die to sins" (1 Peter 2:24). So what business do we have letting in things that portray premarital sex, or nudity, or adultery, or occult practices that the Bible calls an "abomination." You can't turn on the TV or radio or go to a website and then turn off being a temple of the Holy Spirit. We're most likely to let in the garbage when it's wrapped in a package that's funny, or entertaining, or has a great beat, or is clever, or popular. Satan's no dummy! He comes in under the radar, like a Stealth Bomber, when your guard's down.
It's not to be taken lightly when God gives a command that says, "Above all else..." And He does that in Proverbs 4:23. "Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life." Guard your heart as the spiritual reservoir from which you drink all day long. If it's a "bad one," you've got to turn it off if you're serious about really being His man or woman. If you don't want to let dirt into the Holy Spirit's house, filter what you let come in. You wouldn't knowingly let your mouth drink dirt. Well, then, don't let your soul do it!