| A Message "How sweet are Your words to my taste, Sweeter than honey to my mouth! Through Your precepts I get understanding; Therefore I hate every false way. Your word is a lamp unto my feet and a light to my path." Psalm 119:103 -105 |
Whited Sepulchres and Bronzed Muscle by Timothy Artus Parris Island, South Carolina, Marine Corps Recruit Depot. For reasons known only to the mind-twisting masters we recruits spoke reverently of as “Drill Instructors” I was assigned, for a short period of time, to clean the squad bay’s office. So, there I was, training to be a hard-charging Devil Dog, only to be a cammie-clad maid service. Clean the Drill Instructor’s office! Well, we did do a lot of cleaning. You’ve heard the tales about making the toliets clean enough to drink out of, haven’t you? Marine recruits are a tidy brotherhood when properly motivated. Another thing about the training was the rather sugarless diet. The “no sweets” rule was one drilled in early. We ate well (unless late for our spot in the chow line). But we didn’t get cake or brownies or candy or Coke. Milk. We got a lot of milk. But oh, how I wanted a Coke. I did get some cookies in the mail once. That was a no no. I had almost enough to give away one to every man in my platoon. I got none. Good training for later, huh? I was cleaning the office when I saw it. It was beside a chair leg next to the Senior Drill Instructor’s desk. I thought I had noticed one of the junior Drill Instructors with it earlier in the day. But now, everyone was gone to chow and I was with a few other bald, wrinkled recruits, policing up the area. Another recruit was in the head (the Drill Instructor’s private bathroom). No one was around but me and that can of Coke. I had a trash bag with me. I could very easily grab a secret sip and drop the can into the trash. It was my job to clean the office. The can had to go. I picked it. It was cool to the touch. Pleasant to the eye. It felt like more than half the can was still left. I had been warned that I could NOT have such things. Why, we couldn’t even drink out of the scuttlebut, the water fountain near the front hatch (door). We weren’t good enough to drink out of it. I held that can a little too long. I could already feel it reaching my lips, grabbing a cold sweet taste of forbidden cola. Nope. Not a good idea. A Drill Instructor could be watching. I could get caught. He could come back from chow and ask where the can went. If I said I threw it away I knew the next question: “Did you drink it you nasty recruit?” I wouldn’t be able to lie. They can tell. They can see right through your skin into your heart and soul! I would be doing situps for a year and a half (they hadn’t yet discovered crunches). I dropped the can into the trash. They knew I was a professing Christian, I had to try to keep myself in the “rules” even if that particular rule seemed stoopid. I’d burn off whatever calories that delicious Coke could possibly provide in any of our three-mile runs! No, it would be wrong. I continued cleaning up. A few minutes later the other “house mouse” recruit finished up in the head. I mentioned the Coke and how much I missed them. “Yeah, the Drill Instructor was using that as a spit can,” the other recruit said as we finished up. “Spit can?” I asked, my northern upbringing not providing the necessary cultural background. “Yeah. He was chewing and he spits into the can.” “Chewing?” “Tobacco you idiot! He chews tobacco and spit the juice into the can,” the recruit explained as if to a child. My stomach flipped over completely and my eyes watered. I almost downed tobacco juice and another man’s saliva. Okay, I’m done for the day! Just under two thousand years before that fateful day, Jesus Christ was ripping into the religious hypocrites of the day. In calling down the Pharisees, the Lord listed their faults, including worrying over the tithe on a grain of spice while forgetting the scriptural decrees on love and mercy in total. And how they were very good at looking good, but not being good. He called them “whited sepulchres.” Now we have to go back in time a bit--an expensive grave in that day would be stone blocks covering the body, plastered in decorative white. Jesus said, in Matthew 23:27: “Woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like white sepulchres, which are indeed beautiful on the outside but inside are just dead bones and uncleaness.” Let’s just say the Pharisees were not really happy with that accurate description. They were full of showy rules and traditions and lacking in things like charity and kindness. They were dressed perfectly on the outside, but dead souls within. Much like that can of Coke--which I can also say was much like the temptations of the day. Oh sure, on the outside was the iconic red can. White text. Familiar brand of cool sweet goodness. But inside this particular temptation was uncleaness and corruption. It would have been a rather interesting surprise after the first gulp. Oh that sin was more like that! If only the first gulp showed itself true. But sin does the same pretending without the same immediate pay off. Sin feels good for a long time. The first guilt fades--especially if friends are there to ease the way. But months or years or decades later, then the corruption kicks in. Then the “just try it” is a habit, an obsession, a destroying disease. The Devil is clever in his endeavor. If you don’t do it, you’re incapable of judging it (and others). If you do do it, then you are a hypocrite for telling others not to do it also (learning from your mistakes). Before you do it, you can always “quit” and “gain forgiveness.” Once you’ve done it, you might as well “do it forever” because God will never forgive such an evil thing performed by such an evil one. Sin is so sticky in this regard. But there is hope and help! If you’ve fallen to a sin, confess it to the One who paid for it on Calvary! He loved you enough to die just for you. Don’t refuse His forgiveness! He wants to forgive you and help you to do better next time! The sin that you allowed into your life and heart doesn’t have to stay there. Whatever power it has over you the Lord has more power! (II Timothy 1:7.) Without the saving forgiving grace of God, we are no better than the dead men’s bones of long ago. Living, whited sepulchres. We might say beautifully bronzed, muscled scuptures today--but just as dead inside. But Jesus Christ revives the dead! He conquered the one thing everyone of us will have to endure (should His Coming be not today)--death. Spiritually and physically we have this hope in Him. (Back to II Timothy 4:1 we see that the Lord Jesus is the judge of both “the quick and the dead.” This is not some lame movie title, be fast or get killed. “Quick” in the King James English means alive, living, able to move. Christ is able to judge the living and those whom have died. Death is no escape route from judgement. Don’t fall for that lie!) “If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above.”--Colossians 3:1. If we are to claim Christ as our Savior, then we truly must look for higher things than this physical world. Verses two through the twenty-five goes on to list the differences between just looking good and actually being good. It is not an easy chapter to look into and still be able to look in the mirror and say, “Yup, done it, got the T-shirt. I’m good to go.” No the list is a challenge. A daily battle to be better Christians (literally, “Little Christs”) as opposed to being moral-ish men with sparkling gold crosses lying betwixt our well worked pectorals. May those around us know we are Christians by our actions and attitudes long before they notice token jewelry. May our faith mark us inside rather than just outside. |