Cleansing From the Inside Out
So Jacob wants his house to be a house of God, and I hope we do too. But in verse 2 of Genesis 35, Jacob says to his family and everybody in his household, “Get rid of the foreign gods you have with you, and purify yourselves and change your clothes.” And then they go off to build the altar once they've purified themselves.
Removing Idols
I think this is a good principle for us to always purify our hearts and our lives, if we want our homes and our lives to be God-focused. As he said, get rid of the foreign gods, get rid of the things that don't honour God in your home and purify yourself instead.
I remember listening to Craig Groeschel, an American pastor once talk about some mission work that he did in India and he said they went into some lady’s home there in India and she went off on them about Americans organizing their homes around their TV. The altar of the American house is the TV - everything, all the furniture points towards the TV, all the time is spent at the TV. The TV is like their God!
And he said she was probably right, but at the same time she was busy sacrificing all sorts of strange things to false gods in her home. He said “we had a blind spot that we didn't see, that she could see, and she had a blind spot that she couldn't see that we could see.”
Cleansing the Heart
And as I look around my own home and my own studio here, I wonder if there are idols that I've just not even realised are here. Maybe we need to purify our homes of certain things that don't bring out the glory.
But in the end, I want us to remember that all that sort of external cleansing is one thing, but what really matters is that we cleanse our hearts through the Holy Spirit.
Jesus warned the Pharisees in Matthew 23, he said to them “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites, you clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish and then the outside also will be clean.” Then he said to them, “You are like whitewashed tombs who look beautiful on the outside but in the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way on the outside you appear to people as righteous, but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.”
True Purification
And so when we talk about cleansing and purifying our homes and ourselves, it matters nothing if we remove external stuff so that it looks as if we are godly if we don't deal with our hearts. First and foremost, it's about being cleansed in our hearts from the inside.
Have you spent time with God in prayer asking Him to fill you with the Spirit and cleanse your heart? Have you spent time daily saying, cleanse me Lord? Asking God to get rid of the sinful tendencies in your heart? Are you the type of person who deep inside loves? Sees the best in people? Glories in God and puts him first? In the end, if that's who you are then the outside stuff will take care of itself because you'll just be living a God-focused life.
And so yes, purify your home and your life, but do it from the inside out, not from the outside in, so that you will truly honor the God who loves you.
