Getting the Stain Out

This is one of my very favorite shirts. My wife gave me this shirt and the first time I wore it I received so many compliments on how pretty it was and how nice I looked that it immediately became one of my favorites. Even though it is one of my favorites, I don't wear it anymore. Do you know why? Well, the second time I wore this shirt, I looked down and saw that I had spilled something on my shirt. I don't know what it was. Maybe it was spaghetti sauce, or chocolate ice cream, or coffee. I don't know, all I know is that there was this ugly stain on my new shirt.

Well, I used everything I could think of to get that stain out. I used new, intensified Tide. Their commercial says, "Dirt can't hide from intensified Tide." I tried Spray and Wash, New Blue Cheer, and Clorox II. I even tried to Shout it out, but nothing worked. I took my shirt to the cleaners. They are stain specialists and I thought, "Surely they can get that stain out." No luck. When I picked it up from the cleaners, the stain was still there.

We are a lot like this shirt. Our lives become stained and dirty by sin and we aren't very pretty to look at. Some people try a lot of things to clean up their lives. Some think that if they will just go to church, they will get clean, but the stain is still there. Some think that if they get baptized, they will be clean, but getting baptized won't get the stain out either.

I may never get the stain out of my favorite shirt. Perhaps it is hopeless, but it is not hopeless to get the stain out of our lives. You see, the blood of Jesus can wash away even the worst stains in our life. The Bible says, "Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow." Perhaps some of us here this morning have tried everything to get the stain out of our lives, but have we tried the only thing that will? Have we tried Jesus?

Dear Lord, our lives are dirty and stained by sin. We come to you this morning and ask you to take away the stain. Wash us in the blood of Jesus. Wash us so that we can be whiter than snow. Amen.