Clean

 

When Kathy and I were first married (1971), I worked at a seat belt company in Michigan.  We moved back to Chattanooga for me to finish college.  I worked for a warehousing company, an insurance company (printing), and then an iron foundry.  Each job was a move up (or so I thought), but I had to work afternoons and nights so that I could go to school during the daytime.  When I worked nights, I would shower at work and go straight to college in the mornings.  When I worked in the afternoons, I would come home at midnight and shower at home.  But the foundry grime was hard to wash off.  I used plenty of soap and used a dark colored washcloth because that was the color it would turn out to be anyway.  I shampooed my hair three times just to get it clean.  My dear wife had to wash my work clothes separately, often putting them through two cycles in the washing machine.  The difficulty getting my clothes and hair clean is a picture of how difficult our sins are to clean.  The only way to remove sin-stains is to wash them with the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ!  And Jesus told his disciples that His Words do the work.  Jesus said in John 15:3, “Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you.”  Hey, 2,000 years later, we can read the precious Word of Godin the Bible, trust in the substitutional death of Jesus Christ on the cross, and be cleansed of our sins!  Praise the Lord!