PLUNGE THE MORAL FILTH
James Series 9: The Elimination of Evil
INTRO: A couple of year’s ago, I attended the National Youth Worker’s Convention with one of my best friends in the world, a man named Jeff Easterwood. While getting out of the van with our driver, Jeff exclaimed, “wait a minute,” then ran back to the van to get something. I was thinking it was a Bible, a notebook, you know, that kind of stuff. But he proceeded to grab a plunger.
THE PLUNGER: Jeff proceeded to explain to me that he had used the plunger in a lesson he had made about “plunging the moral filth,” and that the plunger was a memory device—or something. Anyhoo, Jeff carried that plunger with him the entire weekend and told everyone who wanted to hear the message or not that we need to plunge the moral filth of our lives, which is an awesome message for all to hear (the funniest moment of them all is when he was able to sneak himself up to the front of the 3rd Day Concert using the plunger as a dividing stick, some people even called him the honorable title: Plunger Boy).
TRANSITION: So now we are in that infamous book of James where the term is used, so let us look at this passage that gives us the phrase “moral filth.”
BIBLE VERSE: James 1:21
21Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you.
1. Get Rid of Moral Filth:
BIBLE VERSE:
BED BUGS EXAMPLE: “Good night, sleep tight, and don’t let the bed bugs bite” has been spoken by loving mothers to their children for decades as they gently tucked their little ones to sleep and wished them a good night. The phrase itself carries within it the gentle reminder of a younger age and the loving ritual of our youthful mothers. Little did we know that there actually are millions of tiny little bed bugs just waiting for their chance to attack, and it appears that they are once again on the prowl.
The bed bug phenomenon began in United States during our early years when immigrants from Europe carried the little numskulls aboard their ships and right into the linen closets and bed sheets of America. After World War II, with the advent of DDT and the spraying of other insect killers, the bedbug population went quiet, almost like it had fallen asleep. It seems that our nation’s decision to take such a strong stance at killing cockroaches worked wonders at ending the bed bug infestation as well.
But the creepy critters are back. Some estimates have the increase at over 5000% per year over the last decade though it is hard for this mind to imagine an accurate statistic on the matter. Hotels, bed & breakfasts, and every bedroom in USA are under attack from this almost microscopic intruder. War has been declared as some people have gone to some extremes to stop them. These often times include putting poisons out to be ingested, buying bug eating pets, or even throwing away the infested item which means saying goodbye to mattresses, sheets, coaches, and the like. To stop the little buggers, Congress has proposed H.R. 2248, or better known as the “Don’t Let the Bed Bugs Bite Act of 2009” to attempt to halt them. Whether it will work or not, we do not know.
On the spiritual side, I believe there is help for any person’s life that is riddled with a bug problem that does not seem to go away. If the spiritual bug problem that is happening reflects a reoccurring sin that seems to be rampant in a person’s life, the cure is not some laboratory chemical created by man, nor the addition of some larger predator into the house, nor is it the complete tossing away of someone’s life in order to start again. The answer is Jesus.
In the book of Jeremiah, the author is confronted with the question of why God’s hand has seemed to be lifted off of his chosen people, why were bad times among the people. The answer was sin. Chapter 5 verses 24-25 state, “They do not say to themselves ‘let us revere the LORD our God. It is he who gives us the autumn rains and the spring rains at the same time. It is he who assures us of the regular weeks of the harvest.’ Your misdeeds have stopped these things from coming. Your sins have deprived you of my bounty.”
Christian friends, we do fight a battle against an almost invisible enemy that wishes to feed on our lives like a block-sucking insect. This adversary wishes to lead our lives into a state of immorality, of misdeeds. Satan, like bed bugs, can live for a brief period of time in a clean environment, but enjoys his longest stays in areas that are dirty, abandoned, and left to decay. So let’s stand up and fight these small battles against the sins that drag us down, the sins that leave us scratching ourselves rather than serving God. Let’s clean up our lives today, and let us start this battle right where Congress is beginning the battle against bed bugs--in our bedrooms.
REMEMBER, IF WE CLEAN OUT THE BED BUGS, THERE WON’T BE ANY BED BUGS: I know this is a duh, but how often do we allow small things like bed bugs to fester in our lives? A lot don’t we?
2. Get Rid of the Evil:
BIBLE VERSE:
ROOFTOP EVANGELISM: “Rooftop Evangelism” at sermonspice.com. In this video, this guy does a fantastic job of teaching people how to get rid of evil, he really gets to the heart of the matter (essentially, in the video clip, this guy shouts cliché evangelism terms off of his rooftop towards people doing bad things down below, its pretty unbelievable).
I WILL SAY THIS GUY DOESN’T HAVE THE RIGHT IDEA HERE, GETTING RID OF EVIL STARTS FROM WITHIN…
3. Accept the Word:
BIBLE VERSE:
WHAT ABOUT THOSE THAT DON’T “LIKE” THE WORD? Not to be to rude, but what is their problem? Seriously, the Bible can be a lot to digest, the following example will illustrate this. But, what would cause spiritual food to be upchucked from it?
A LOT TO DIGEST:
The digestive system is the body’s way of cutting down the food our bodies consume by breaking down chemicals into smaller parts that then can be absorbed and put to good work through the blood stream. It starts in the mouth where teeth and saliva work first, then later the chemicals in the stomach work to do their job as well. Next, the gastrointestinal systems take over as the small and large intestines complete the task and finally the unnecessary remains are eliminated. It is an absolutely remarkable system in that every different food item taken in is used and then later eliminated in different ways—its almost as if the body at times knows exactly what it needs and how to use it.
But there can be problems. Blockages, bloating, gall stones, diabetes, and dozens of more problems can occur inside the friendly confines of the body, and often times these problems have taken place despite the person doing everything right and eating the correct amount of food quantity and quality.
During the end of the Nazi Holocaust, when the brave American soldiers arrived at what was left of the work camps, they experienced sights of death that had never been seen before in all of history. And for some of those newly freed captives who were still alive, there was an amazing discovery. Some of those close to death actually had lost the ability to intake food. As soldiers fed bread to those near death, the bread was actually spit out of their mouths because the body had already cannibalized itself from all remaining muscles and fat mass making food consumption impossible. Though stories like that were rare, they were well told from one soldier to another.
The Bible has a lot to say about food and food consumption. In fact, there are many scriptural references detailing the similarities between what we read from the Bible and how we take in spiritual food for the purpose of growing closer to the Lord. Hebrews 5 states “On this topic we have much to say and it is difficult to explain, since you have become sluggish in hearing. For though you should in fact be teachers at this time, you need someone to teach you the beginning elements of God’s utterances. You have gone back to needing milk, not solid food. For everyone who lives on milk is inexperienced in the message of righteousness, because he is an infant. But solid food is good for the mature, whose perceptions are trained by practice to discern both good and evil.”
What the scripture is essentially telling us is that there is at some point a spiritual expectation that a person can consume strong Biblical messages because their soul has accepted them through a regular diet. But, the honest truth was that the people who should already been strong enough in their faith to be preparing their own spiritual feasts for other people: in reality they were only able to drink the simplest of all foods, like milk. How sad. One can only wonder if some of those people, or even the people around us, have gone without spiritual food for so long that their intake towards God’s Word is closer to that of a Holocaust survivor’s digestive system than that of the Biblical giant that God created them to be.