Malcolm Potts May 31st 2015 ~ Clean Inside Out

I used to love cleaning cars. As a kid I was always out there cleaning my car. It’s understandable on one level. My first car was a 1963 Mini Cooper. It was very similar to the first ever car to win the Bathurst 500. I was very lucky to have it. It was an original classic car…… and I worshipped it. So when I became a Christian, it had to go. The blooming thing owned me.Anyway… as I have gotten older I have become far less interested in cleaning cars. I use those flailing machines for the outside and vacuum the inside once or twice a year.Something I have noticed is that I have tended to look after the outside, via the flailing machine, while having this internal conversation about the inside: “It’s not too bad,” I tell myself. “I’ll do it next time,” and so on. Basically my cars are clean on the outside but pretty filthy on the inside. How is it for you? Are you a person who presents as clean on the outside but pretty filthy on the inside? Are you a person who is all over the place externally but seeking God’s power and mercy to keep transforming the inside? Or, in your eyes anyway, are you just a mess inside and out?The new thing, the unique thing, about Jesus was that he put the inside ahead of the outside. You may not know that the Jewish faith was and still is all about externals. A Jew has the law; the Jewish people have all manner of wonderful predictable patterns and practices to appear to keep it. The observant Jew ticks the external boxes and is, therefore, righteous. The New Testament is full of stories of Jewish leaders defining righteousness by external things but Jesus challenged this by insisting that the internal is what matters to God. This was a first!I am extremely glad that you can’t see my inside self. There is only one thing that I am even happier about - that I cannot see your inside self. My inside self is a seething mass of unrighteousness mixed with starbursts of miraculous generosity and grace that can only be attributed to the work of the Holy Spirit. (A book has been circulating at our place called Inside Out by Dr Larry Crabb. It’s an oldie but it’s a ripper.)James Duff may have something to say about righteousness in his talk this week. I am just so thankful that I get to share with you, not in some fake, artificial ‘self’ righteousness but in the righteousness granted to me through Jesus. He vacuums the inside of the car every time. He is at work by his word and Holy Spirit on the inside of my life. It’s a slow work, a true work, a painful work at times. I love the fact that together we plod away at building and sharing a culture of thankfulness - thankfulness that Jesus is at work in us all. He is loving us, convicting us, revealing himself to us, changing us to be more like him. Thanks for loving me as he does his necessary but messy work.Blessings,Malcolm