Wed Night Invitation - May 16, 2012

It's hard to focus on what someone is saying when they have a stain on their shirt. 

I had a professor in college who was pretty absent-minded about the stains he got on his shirt. The class I had with him was right after lunch too, so sometimes he'd come in with a big stain on his tie or shirt. It became somewhat of a joke in the class, and we couldn't really focus on what he was trying to teach us because we were focused on the stain. 

We've all worn a stain before. We've all had a food mishap and gotten stains on our shirt, pants, and what not. Stains stick out, and they're ugly. You always think Murphy's Law with stains: whatever stain you happen to get will not match what you're wearing at all. That's just how it goes. 

Ephesians 1.7 talks about how to get rid of our sin stains, those stains which people can't necessarily see, but they are there nevertheless. Ephesians 1.7: "In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace."

Redemption is when something is made right when something goes wrong. Redemption is when we have a stain, a sin stain, that needs cleansing. 

Zechariah is a book we don't often read from, but in chapter 3 we read an interesting account of a vision of Joshua. [Read Zechariah 3.1-5]

Three Things about Sin Stains:

1) Disgusting and filthy
2) Distracting - we lose the focal point
3) Can disappear 

The entire book of Hebrews gives us a picture of God taking our sins and cleansing them. Our sins are inscribed and etched into a stone, and God wipes the stone clean and removes the etching. God then takes the stone and throws it behind him, to forget it all together. 

When we've sinned, Jesus is the solution.

The only that can remove a sin stain is a blood stain. And that's the blood of Jesus Christ.