A few months ago we had the interior of our home painted. When we built our home in 1999 I used a lovely yellow color called Butter Pecan on the walls. It was light and cheery, and provided a great neutral base for decorating.
After 15 years with Butter Pecan, I was ready for a change. I chose three colors that were side-by-side on the paint chart for our new color scheme. As the new paint colors went on, room-by-room, my excitement grew. No more yellow! It was gone forever, and the new colors gave my home a fresh look. I am so pleased with my new look.
Last week I walked into my laundry room to toss a few dirty towels into the laundry basket. One of the towels landed on the floor, and I bent down to pick it up. When I did, my eyes were drawn to something yellow…..Butter Pecan yellow, to be exact.
Whaaat????!!!! There is NOT supposed to be any Butter Pecan anywhere in the house, except in the Mayfield’s ice cream container in my freezer! But there it was. A small streak of yellow glaring out from beneath the Nomadic Desert on that wall! The wall had been scuffed, chipping off the new paint and leaving behind the evidence of my former paint color. Now, of course, I knew the yellow was underneath the Nomadic Desert, but it was a shock, nonetheless, to have it showing once again.
Street Photo by Death to Stock – London.
There is a lesson for us all in my great paint cover-up. Let’s suppose that my Butter Pecan paint represents sin and disobedience in my life. It is there and it needs to be dealt with. There are four things that we can do with that Butter Pecan sin. Only one of them is the right thing to do with it. Let’s think it through:
Work Hard to Cover-Up
Let’s suppose there is a sin that is eating my lunch. I know it is a sin, and I know it needs to be dealt with, but for a whole host of reasons, I’m not willing to deal with it. It is truly the elephant in the room between God and me. So, I simply work harder to cover it up. I work longer hours at my job. I throw myself in to volunteering at church. I say ‘yes’ to every invitation. All so I do not have to address the issue. It is easier to do a cover-up job on it with all my busy-ness than to do the hard work of dealing with it.
Jesus railed against the Pharisees for the cover-up job they had done in their own lives in Matthew 23:25-28. They had worked hard to appear religious on the outside, but the inside was rotten and ugly.
Ignore It
Some people simply choose to ignore their sin, pushing it into a dark corner of their heart, hoping it will go away. The truth is, for a Christian, you cannot ignore sin forever. Eventually, you will have to deal with it. King David said in Psalm 51:3 that ‘his sin was ever before him.’
Embrace It
As we have seen in recent days, this tactic for dealing with sin is one that we are perfecting. It’s the old ‘if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em’ routine. Satan has figured out that this one is pretty effective with humans. He devises a way to slowly incorporate little bits of sin into our lives over time, and, eventually that sin begins to seem ‘normal’ and ‘accepted’. Soon, we are embracing it, and justifying it.
It is kinda like the story about the frog in the pot of boiling water. If a frog is tossed into a pot of boiling water, it is killed almost instantly. But if you put a frog into a pot of tepid water, and slowly increase the heat over time, the frog’s body adjusts to the heat changes. He never realizes he is being boiled to death until it is too late.
When we embrace sin, rather than turn from it, we are being boiled to death.
Let Jesus Have It
Finally, the thing we must do with sin is to let Jesus have it. There is no cover-up for sin. We can delude ourselves into thinking there is, but sin must be washed away, otherwise it is always there, just like my Butter Pecan paint is always one scuff away from being evident. Only through confessing sin to Jesus, and walking away from it, can we find true forgiveness, freedom, and peace.
Which tactic are you choosing?
