Jesus said, on more than one occasion…to “go and sin no more.” (John 5:14; 8:11).

He was just kidding, right? I mean…seriously…Jesus had to know how impossible that would be for flawed humans like us, right? Something must have been lost in the language translations over time.

News Flash: If you study this out in the Greek…’no more’…actually means…’no more’.

I’m pretty sure God meant that, regardless of what we have been taught. (Romans 3:4)

As we discussed yesterday, we are feeling ‘led’ to begin our house cleaning by going through the house and picking up all the opened/unopened mail, junk mail, miscellaneous papers laying around, newspapers, receipts, etc. So grab a paper sack or wastebasket and let’s just deal with this one aspect of all the house clutter, once and for all. You can start with whichever room you want, but let’s make sure to go through the whole house; then we can cross that chore off the list.

Now for the sake of our lesson here, let’s presume this particular ‘paper clutter’… represents the sin of grumbling and complaining and whining, which the Bible sure addresses… saying it should not even be named among us. I know…it’s so easy to do day in and day out. Whether it’s the way people drive, or the slow line in the grocery store…or the weather…most of us seem to have a ‘whine gene’ within us that just wants to complain when things don’t go our way. Friends…that is sin, and needs to be confronted, confessed, and then ‘turned away from’, which is what we call repentance. And that part about ‘doing it no more’…was put in our Bibles for a reason. It should not be named among us since we’ve been called to live ‘holy’ lives and to ‘walk as Jesus walked’ (1 John 2:6; 1 Peter 1:15-16).

Now we can choose to argue with God and make excuses and be dismissive of this particular sin…saying it’s ‘it’s not that serious’, or ‘everyone does it to some degree’. That is your prerogative, but for those who are serious about ‘cleaning house’…make things easy on yourself and just start agreeing with God. When was the last time you had a better idea than Him?

For the sake of our lesson here today, I’m going to jump back and forth from using our metaphor (house cleaning) and the spiritual application of dealing with sins of the flesh; in other words…dealing with all the paper clutter represents grumbling and complaining.

As I pointed out the other day, I think many of us can identify with this tendency we have over time, when it comes to house cleaning at least…to start out focused where we do take on one particular chore on the list, but before you know it, on your way to another room to gather up loose papers you find a house slipper in the corner and pick that up to return to its proper place. But on your way to the bedroom you pass the laundry room and notice the first load is finished so you stop and transfer the wet load to the dryer and want to get the next load started in the wash. That’s when you notice a button fell off your prized blouse so you go hunting some needle and thread before accidentally knocking over a glass of tea you had forgotten about… and now you are hunting up carpet stain solution. I think you get the idea here.

I have a hunch this might describe the ‘sanctification process’ we go through as believers where instead of following God’s leading…we just go from one thing to the next with good intentions …hoping and trusting that ‘everything will simply take care of itself over time and we’ll be just ‘cleaned up’ by the time Jesus returns for His bride who we are told will be ‘spotless, holy, and blameless…with no stain or wrinkle’ (Eph. 5:27). But what if there really is a ‘better way’, like as in ‘God’s way’?

So once you have acknowledged, confessed, and then hopefully repented in your heart of the sin of grumbling and complaining…resolving to put this area of sin to ‘death’ once and for all…you do know you will be ‘tested’, yes? (Deut. 8:2; 1 Thess. 2:4). Testing is not a bad thing either. If the brakes on your car fail and you have it taken to the shop to have them repaired or replaced, don’t you want the mechanic to ‘test’ them to make sure they are working properly before you start driving down the freeway again?

Do you remember what the devil did after he tried tempting Jesus in the wilderness over those 40 days? We are told that he “departed from Him until an opportune time” (Luke 4:13). In the famous words of Arnold…’he’ll be back!’. But now this time you will be ready for him since you will no longer ‘give him place’…and know to ‘resist him’ (Eph. 4:27; James 4:7).

So while you are house cleaning, one of the kids comes in the house to grab something and brings the mail in with them and dumps it all on the table you just cleaned off. Stop right there and confront the clutter, not the person who brought it in. Sort what you need and don’t need right then and put it in its proper place and continue on with the next item on the list that needs to be addressed.

Let me share something I have come to learn over the past few years. I tend to get impatient with other drivers on the road, and I have my fill of them out here where I live these days. I remember when God first began dealing with me in this area, I had this funny thought that confessing and repenting was a ‘one and done deal’, meaning after I acknowledged it…(sin of impatience)…that I would no longer have to deal with irritating drivers. Ha. But what I have come to find out over time is not only do I continue to be ‘tested’, (since the enemy knew this was always an easy area of access into my life before) …it is also part of the ‘pruning process’ that Jesus talks about in John 15:1-8. So maybe I developed a bit of patience in my life in recent years; good for me. Patience is, after all…one of the ‘fruits of the spirit’. But God likes ‘much fruit’, and ‘pruning’ is just one of the ways we grown and increase…so be prepared for it.

We all know that the best way to not have to do a major overhaul house cleaning every six months…is to learn to ‘maintain’ a house that is clean and clutter free. I know, easier said than done. But while letting clutter build up in our homes again may not hold ‘eternal consequences’ for us…letting sin creep back into our lives can…and will (Heb. 3:12-13; 2:1). Yes, God is that serious about it since He paid a heavy price to set us free from sin…once and for all (John 8:32-36; 3:16).