Spring Cleaning

Text: The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.  Psalm 51:17

Move1: The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit.  Every Spring, we clean out the dust and grime that has collected over the last few months.  We empty out every room, we dust, we sweep, we clean, and then put everything that has just been cleaned back into the clean room.  In the course of cleaning, we find the things that we had lost under the couch, the toy that fell under the refrigerator.  We find the papers we were looking for behind the desk.  We always seem to find that missing sock under the bed.  But the biggest thing we always seem to find in the nooks and crannies of our houses is dirt.  Dust bunnies, clumps of pet fur, crumbs of food, we find all these things in places where they should not be.  During our annual spring cleaning, we remove the unwanted dirt and dredge, and then place all of our furniture back into a clean room.

Move2: In the Gospel of John this morning, we read about Jesus doing a little Spring cleaning of his own.  He found the temple of God not filled with worship and prayer, he found it full of people selling sacrificial animals and people changing money from the Roman coin to the coin used in Jerusalem at that time.  Instead of finding penitent and pious people confessing their sins, he finds greedy and idolatrous people making money.  Jesus doesn’t find people worshiping God, he finds people worshiping money.  So Jesus does a little Spring cleaning.  He fashions a whip out of cords of cloth, runs the animals out by cracking the whip.  He overturns the moneychanger’s tables and disciplines the merchants by telling them Take these things out of here, stop making my Father’s house a marketplace.  We clean out the dust and dirt from our house making it clean.  Jesus cleans out the sinful and wicked from his house making it clean.  Jesus removes from the house of God the sacrifices that upset God and instead replaces them with the one sacrifice that please God.  As the Psalmist writes, If I were to give a burnt offering, you would not be pleased.  The sacrifice that is acceptable is a broken spirit. 

Move3: Jesus removes the bulls, goats, doves and sheep, the sacrifices that do not please God and instead offer the sacrifice that is pleasing to God, his broken body and spirit.  Jesus does a little spring cleaning in his house.  He removes the false worship centered around the slaughter and burning of animals which can only dirty and contaminate his house and he replaces it with the true worship centered around the slaughter and offering of his own body and blood.  Jesus removes the dirt from his house and replaces it new and clean, the way it should have always been.  The sacrifice that is acceptable to God is a broken spirit.

Move4: I wonder what Jesus would think if he visited this temple of the Holy Spirit.  Would he find the true worship of God here amongst us?  Or would he want to do a little Spring cleaning of us?  Would he find us offering ourselves to God in faith, or would he find us offering something else entirely to God?  The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit but is that the sacrifice we give to God in faith?  The worship that God wants from us is the complete surrender of ourselves to him in faith.  But is that what we give to him.  Or do we offer something else, do we think that the sacrifice pleasing to God is our weekly attendance at church?  Do we think that the sacrifice pleasing to God, is the money we put in the plate?  Do we think that the sacrifice pleasing to God is time volunteered at the food pantry?  Do we offer to God the right sacrifice or the wrong sacrifice?  Speaking only for myself, if Jesus were to visit this temple of the Holy Spirit, he would find he needed to do a more than a little Spring cleaning in me.  The sacrifice God wants is a total and complete surrender of us to him.  The bad news is that we cannot give ourselves totally to him.

Move5:  The good news is that Jesus gave himself totally can completely to God in our place.  The one sacrifice pleasing to God is a broken spirit, is this not what the cross is?  The place of complete brokenness.  God wants a contrite heart.  Is there any place of more contrition than the cross of Calvary?  God demands a perfect sacrifice not of bulls or goats, but a perfect confession of guilt.  We can’t do that, but Jesus has already has.  Jesus removed the animal sacrifices from the house of God and replaced it with the sacrifice of himself.  He did for us what we could not do for ourselves.  The sacrifice acceptable to God is the broken spirit of Christ. 

Move6:  And through the work of the Holy Spirit we now come to share in that sacrifice of Christ.  What he did for us in our place now comes to us, freely, generously and undeservedly, out of the sheer pleasure of Christ to give it.  Everything he did, he now gives to us as a free act of his Grace.  His sacrifice through the Holy Spirit now becomes our sacrifice.  Being united to Christ, thus means that we now have access to the one sacrifice which pleases God. 

Move7: So what does this mean for us?  It means that our temples of the Holy Spirit need a little Spring cleaning.  The Holy Spirit wants to remove the false sacrifices which do not please God and in their place he wants to place a true sacrifice, a broken spirit.  Our worship needs to become less about the physical things of worship and more about the spiritual things of worship.  In other words, less about attendance records, and more about confessions of guilt.  Less about the offerings given and more about our need for cleansing.  Less about getting something out of worship and more about giving to God, what God deserves.  Less about the style of music, the order of worship, the length of the service and more about the one sacrifice acceptable to God and that is the total and complete surrender of ourselves in faith.  Our worship needs a little transformation, our worship needs a little spring cleaning.

Move8: My brothers and sisters in Christ, the Gospel message is that Jesus already has offered the perfect act of worship as our substitute, as our redeemer, and through the work of the Holy spirit, we now share in that worship and he is now involved in ours.  But that means, that through the workings of his grace and power, our worship here on earth needs to look like his worship there in heaven.  We need to get away from the things of worship that are pleasing to us and to other human beings and begin to come to worship God in what pleases God, not our presence in the pew, not our gift in the plate, not our clothes, not the quality of our singing, but the one thing that pleases our heavenly Father the most, an offering of a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart, God will not despise.  Let us come to share in the worship which Jesus gave to his Father, let us offer the one sacrifice pleasing to him, let us offer our broken, sinful and contrite hearts to God in complete and total surrender.  Through the grace and power of Christ, let us offer ourselves to God our Father in faith.  And we might just find, that Christ can will do more than a little Spring cleaning in us.  To God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, be the majesty and glory and gratitude of his people now and for all time.  Amen!