Welcome back to all of our listeners to our 100th episode! I’m BJ Sipe, and you’re listening to the Set Your Mind Above podcast – where everyday ordinary events teach us extraordinary eternal truths. I’m so glad that you’ve tuned in today, I am excited to share my life and my faith with you, and I sure hope that you’ll do the same with me along the way.
Well, I hope that all of you had a wonderful holiday weekend as you celebrated Thanksgiving together with your friends and family. I know that we certainly did. Getting to be in the mountains of North Carolina was such a wonderful get away for our family, and it is always a blessing to spend time with my mother & father-in-law. After saying goodbye and a long 6 hour car ride, we pulled back into Danville around 4 pm on Saturday night. As we pulled into the garage, everything looked just as we had left it (well, most everything, but that’s tomorrow’s podcast). We unloaded the car, headed inside, and got some rest before worship the next day. Now, fast forward to Monday morning. We were all getting ready for the day and getting breakfast going when I decided that some waffles sounded good. I checked our freezer inside that is on the base of our fridge but had no luck. So, I decided to run out to our big deep freeze that is in our garage to see if we had any more in there. To give you some context, we were gifted this deep freeze about 7 years ago as a wedding gift. One of our dear friends in Salem, the late Hulan Miller, knew that we would be just scrapping by when we first got married. So, he bought us a deep freeze and filled it with a full side of beef as wedding gift. It was so thoughtful, and it kept food on our table throughout the first year of our marriage. In fact, he kept us stocked for the first three years of our marriage, as every anniversary he gave us another side of beef. It was incredibly generous, and every time I have walked out to use our freezer I’ve never ceased to think of him. While we don’t have a side of beef in our freezer anymore, we keep it fairly well stocked with different kinds of meat from Boone’s Butcher Shop out in Bardstown. When we left for North Carolina, we still had quite a bit of ground beef, chicken, sausage, bacon, and some other things tucked away to use through the rest of the year. Well, I ran out to freezer in search of my waffles, but when I opened the lid…immediate horror met my nose. I was not met with a cool rush of air as I normally would feel when I open the lid. Instead, I was met with the warm rush of rancid and rotting meat. It was all ruined…there was about 2 inches of meat juices that were just circulating at the bottom. The ground beef had turned an awful color, the chicken was unrecognizable, and there was even mold growing in one spot. To cap it all off, my poor waffles were floppy and soggy as they had become meat juice sponges. Needless to say, my stomach was turned. Cleaning out the freezer was just straight up nasty. As I cleaned it out, I tried to figure out what had happened. The freezer was still on – there was no evidence of a power outage while we were gone or anything. But while we were out of town for a week, it must have broken early on and started thawing out long before we had gotten home. Since the lid was still locked tight, we had no inclination that anything was wrong when we got home Saturday since all of the smell was still contained inside. For days we walked right past that freezer and assumed that nothing was wrong, that everything was fine on the inside. Obviously, we were so wrong, and it wasn’t until we looked inside that we discovered the rotting reality that had been living with us. I’m grateful that we didn’t lose a whole side of beef, but I’ll be ready to get another deep freeze and restock it again perhaps early on next year.
As I drug the freezer outside to dump the juices and air it out, I couldn’t help but think of the parallel that this had to the way in which we often are perceived by others verses reality. You see frequently in our lives we can fool others into thinking that everything is perfectly fine, because from an outside perspective everything appears to be normal. However, if they were able to peer inside and see the condition of our heart, they would be met with a horrifying realization. Jesus condemns the Jewish leaders of his day for this very thing in Matthew 23:25-28, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup, so that the outside of it may also become clean. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which appear beautiful on the outside, but inside are full of the bones of the dead and every kind of impurity. In the same way, on the outside you seem righteous to people, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.” What a terrifying thing to have said to you from Jesus, maybe you found yourself thinking as this was read, “Boy, I’m sure glad Jesus wasn’t talking to me.” Well…was he? Only we can answer that question, but each of us as we lay our head down at night upon our pillow know with certainty who we really are. It is easy for us to keep up with appearances, isn’t it? We put on a facade as though we have all of our stuff together, when really we’re falling apart on the inside. And here is the thing: everyone struggles, the difference is whether or not we chose to be honest about it and do our best to change. I am not suggesting that anyone is perfect, or that the problem Jesus had with these leaders was that they weren’t perfect. The problem Jesus had with these men is they deceived others into thinking that they were. They spoke out in judgment against others who were unrighteous, and yet they themselves were even worse – but they kept it hidden. My friends, it doesn’t matter if the whole world looks at you with great admiration if God looks at you with great sadness and disappointment. We cannot hide our thoughts or our actions from God, nothing is hidden from him. What we sow is also what we will reap (see Galatians 6:7-8). One day we will stand in up in judgment not before our peers or admirers, but we will stand in judgment before God who judges the heart. If internally we are rotting, full of decaying flesh so to speak, and yet carried on as though we were righteous and good…we too will be thrown out. Today we are called to examine ourselves, and to stop living in such a way that seeks the glory of man more than the glory of God. Are we aiming to please others, or please God? If we really seek to please God, then we will clean out that which is rotten within us, and not worry about what others think of us in that process. Let’s conclude with the following words of Paul in 2 Timothy 2:20-21, “Now in a large house there are not only gold and silver vessels, but also those of wood and clay; some for honorable use and some for dishonorable. So if anyone purifies himself from anything dishonorable, he will be a special instrument, set apart, useful to the Master, prepared for every good work.”
Thank you so much for listening to today’s episode. Tune in, Tuesday-Fridays, as a new podcast episode will be uploaded each day. Also, be sure to follow the Facebook page for the Set Your Mind Above podcast for future announcements and video sessions. As you have the opportunity, share these thoughts with your friends and family, and share with me what important lessons you are learning from every day, ordinary events. Until next time know that I love you, that God loves you, and may we all each and every day set our minds above.