Stinking to High Heaven

I wanted to write a disgusting article today--so disgusting that you would see life in a different light.  Therefore, brace yourself and come with me on a journey that can take you to where only a few brave and unwavering people choose to go.

I keep my dogs on a leash.  They are well fed and shampooed. But the slightest chance they get to run away from home they head down to the bay side and scavenge for the smelliest fish guts washed up between the rocks.  The next round is to roll in the neighbour’s fowl manure.  With the taste of freedom, they roam the neighbourhood searching for their street pals, picking up a few ticks and fleas in the process.

I love my dogs but they cannot come home and lick me with their tongues that only moments ago were lapping up the remainder of rotting fish guts on the bayside.  Nor will I open my arms wide and swoop them up in a loving embrace, with all that greenish foul-smelling stuff on their backs.  No Poochi-poochi or Puppy-puppy! 

Imagine--soft, smelly dog poop, heavily soiled feminine napkins, rotten maggot-filled rubbish, a bloated dead dog swarming with blue flies, cat vomit…

To us humans, these are nauseating and repulsive.  Naturally, you would not want them inside your house.  How about going to visit someone else’s house and dragging this filth along with you to your host’s home?  You wouldn’t.  But it is possible for human beings to get so accustomed to living or working among filth or obnoxious smells, that it doesn’t even bother them anymore. 

 

Sin, spiritually, is like that.  Detestable! God cannot and will not get accustomed to sin.  As in the natural, there are some things that are more disgusting than others (for which you can simply look away or walk away, while others might bring your stomach to your mouth), in the spiritual I believe that some things are equally abominable to confront than others.

God is holy.  His house is immaculately clean, and if we want to visit his house or want him to visit ours we must allow him to clean us up.  That is the purpose of Jesus’ blood.  It is the bleach or the cleaning agent that takes away our sins.  How dare we think that we can go traipsing into heaven covered in filth, stinking to high heaven and demanding that God let us in?

Imagine your house rule is, 

“Everyone Please Check In At the Fountain.  Leave all shoes, clothes and other belongings with the door attendant. Bathe and change into the fresh new garments provided.  Then come in”. 

What would you do to anyone caught illegally trying to enter your white-carpeted house, dripping with sweat mingled with mud and bits of leaves? On their feet smeared with black sticky tar are shoes that are already yawning their tired goodbyes to the good old days, while the smell of “cat piss” and decaying onions give warning of an accident on the way to a comfort station. Would you give him a great big hug and offer him a seat on your spotless sofa?

Our sin, however small, is detestable, and God does not want a trace of it whether he travels to earth or lives in the heavens.  His provision for cleaning up is His Son.  You’ve got to pass through his Son.  I repeat:  you’ve got to pass through His Son.  That’s the entry requirement.  It doesn’t matter who else tells you, “You are not too dirty.  Come enter through my door.  You don’t have to go through all that hassle to clean up.” 

Everyone has to check in at the fountain, and that includes you.

Go through any other door that promises safe passage, and I am certain you would not be happy with where you end up.  Many would take the easier way in but which really is the way leading out, far away from where they thought they were heading.  What a laugh the misleading door keepers are having as they try to keep a straight face, diverting the seemingly intelligent and sophisticated through what God’s Son calls the “wide gate and broad way”.   Wow! Lovely street names—Widegate and Broadway.  But it leads to destruction and many go through it.  Matthew 7: 13-14

The ignorant, gullible, unsophisticated, by worldly standards, choose to enter on “Straightgate and Narrow-way.  God’s very own son, when he was down here in human form, left the instructions for getting on the way to Life.  He gave clear directions on how to get to the grand reconciliation with God after our severed relationship with him.  Once we get there we are welcome to live in a harmonious relationship with the Creator and creation, forever.

Now if that isn’t the way to go, I put a reader's discretion warning here:  GTH.  You figure it out.