“Spring Cleaning” By Tom Hanson May 20th,
2012 Reason and Restoration: Isaiah 1:18-19 …let us
reason together, said the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be
as white as snow… He says He’s going to clean our
lives; but we need to be willing to come to Him. Psalms 51:10-12 Create in me a clean heart, O God;
and renew a right spirit within me. Spring
cleaning is a tradition round the world.
You open the windows, let the rugs air out, etc. You always need some kind of a cleaning
agent: 409, Mr. Clean, something. If we’re looking for cleaning in our lives,
though, we need a spiritual cleaning agent; we have to be baptized in Jesus’
name. Spiritual cleansing is not a seasonal
thing, (although for every thing there is a season—Ecclesiastes 3:1) it’s
something that we have to do on a regular basis, like washing a car. A Garden, a Field, and a Little River Eden
was a region. It wasn’t just a little
garden. Genesis 2:7-8 …
in
Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. In
the same way, God’s Spirit gives us life, and then God brings the garden to us. Genesis 2:21-23 …made
He a woman, and brought her unto the man... The
only one ever created in the Garden of Eden was the woman. They had a perfect relationship with Jesus,
but then Eve ate the forbidden fruit, and then Adam did. They were driven out of the Garden of
Eden. Genesis 3:23-24 …
God
sent him forth from the Garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was
taken… So
now they’re in a different setting; there is less of what they had before. You know, the Bible doesn’t talk about it,
but I wonder about what they told their children. “We used to live in a perfect place, but…” maybe
talking about why they had to leave. Of
course, the greatness of God didn’t change. Then
Cain killed Abel (Genesis 4:8). This is
the conflict of righteousness versus unrighteousness, because the Bible says
that Abel was righteous (Hebrews 11:4). Sin
is now on the table, and from that point it increases. 2 Samuel 15:22-23 …
the
brook Kidron, and all the people passed over, toward the way of the wilderness.
Kidron
will play a part in this message. In
this passage, King David’s son had risen up against him, and Kidron became a
dividing point between God’s people and the enemies of God’s people;
righteousness and unrighteousness. 1 Kings 2:37 …passest
over the brook Kidron, thou shalt know for certain that thou shalt surely die… Shimei
had cursed David, but David left it up to his son Solomon, when he became king,
to decide what to do with Shimei.
Solomon told him to build a house in Jerusalem, and to stay there; that
the day he passed over Kidron, he would surely die. So, Kidron was a boundary to this man. There are boundaries for us, too. These stories aren’t in the Bible just
because they are nice stories; they have to make sense to us, spiritually,
today. Here, King Solomon is using this
river to establish a boundary between Holy and Unholy. 1 Kings 15:13 …
Asa
destroyed her idol, and burnt it
by the brook Kidron. King
Asa was cleansing the House of the Lord, and he destroyed an idol that his
mother had made, and used the brook Kidron as a cleansing agent. 2 Chronicles 15:16 Asa
cut down her idol, and stamped it,
and burnt it at the brook
Kidron. King
Josiah saw a need and got to it. 2 Kings 23:4 …
he
burned them without Jerusalem in the fields of Kidron… It
is established that this is the place where evil will go. 2 Chronicles 29:16 …
And
the Levites took it, to carry it out abroad into the brook Kidron. King
Hezekiah had the Levites remove all the uncleanness from the Temple. This has become a landmark. 2 Chronicles 30:14 …all
the altars for incense took they away, and cast them into the brook Kidron. They
took away all the altars to the false gods.
Sin
plagued us until we became the Temple of the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost is the Comforter (John 14:26),
and Jesus is the Good Shepherd (John 10:11). So
we started with the Garden of Eden, and we’re going to go to a different
garden. Matthew
26:36 Then cometh Jesus with
them unto a place called Gethsemane… The
disciples followed Him loyally. John 18:1 …he
went forth with his disciples over the brook Cedron, where was a garden… Cedron
and Kidron are the same brook; it’s just that the Old Testament was translated
from Hebrew, and the New Testament from the Greek, so sometimes words get spelled
differently. But when Jesus crossed over
Kidron, He obtained a victory over sin. John 19:41-42 …where
he was crucified there was a garden; and in the garden a new sepulcher… I
started to call this message ‘Two Gardens,’ then I saw that it was three
gardens, then I saw that there was a river, and then I realized it was message title
out of control… Joel 2:2-3 …the
garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness… His
presence is the Garden of Eden in us.
Where’s our Kidron? We go to
Jesus. He is exactly the replacement for
this place. He cleans us up. Sermon notes by Pete Shepherd |
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