Pastor Stephen Plouffe
Special to The Guardian
Our floor had been slowly developing a tendency to groan and buckle when we walk on it and we knew it would need some work to get it back in shape.
We gathered a crew and got to work preparing to lay down a new one. We tore up the floorboards and were surprised to find another layer in even worse repair underneath. By the time we were done tearing up five separate layers of floor, we had come to realize that something was very wrong.
When the very first floor had developed a weak spot the owners, at the time, had simply laid a new floor down and covered over the problem. However, the lack of proper support caused the new floor to fail as well. So, a third, fourth and fifth floor had been laid as needed to cover up the rotting and buckling wood.
Tearing up the old floors revealed another, more fundamental problem. Instead of the floor joists holding up the floor, in one area the floor was holding up the joists. As a homeowner, this was pretty discouraging knowledge.
As a Christian, I was immediately struck by how my home renovations were turning into an apt illustration of sin.
Jeremiah 17:9 states: “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick; who can understand it?”
We think that we understand our sin and we set about making plans to renovate our lives. All too often, however, we don’t realize just how rotten we are. We are deceived and lay down another floor right on top of one that is crumbling away, not recognizing that we need some work on the foundation before we get to the floor.
As a homeowner I could take heart in the fact that with some know-how and hard work our foundation and floor could be set right. The even better news is that the Bible proclaims that there is an answer for our deceitful and sick hearts as well.
The Psalms describe the foundation of God’s throne as righteousness and justice and if we going to get anywhere with our lives we need to sort out our state before God. In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, C.S. Lewis illustrates this in an interaction between Eustace and Aslan.
Having learned about his own heart by being turned into a dragon by his greedy, dragonish thoughts, Eustace is met by Aslan and led to a pool. He is told to undress out of his dragon skin, but a strange thing happens.
Eustace tears and peels it away, only to find another dragon skin underneath. He tears that one off and finds yet another dragon skin. A third attempt ends with the same result. Then Aslan tell him, “You will have to let me undress you.”
The lion’s claws feel like they are tearing into his heart, they cut so deep. But after it is over, Eustace is a boy once again, restored by a work he couldn’t do himself. We can’t change our hearts, God alone can.
And knowing even a little of the sinfulness of our own hearts should make us rejoice to know that we can call out to God to renew and restore us. He made his own sinless son, Jesus, to be sin and punished him so that his justice would be satisfied and we could know his mercy.
And once we put our trust in Jesus, then we have him as our foundation and we are able to start the work of building on that foundation in earnest, glorifying God and enjoying him forever.
Pastor Stephen Plouffe is with Birch Hill Free Church. A guest sermon runs regularly in Saturday’s Guardian and is provided through Christian Communications.
