John,
Your reminder below about apologies vs repentance and just having an appearance of good but unclean inside goes along with a conversation I had with my neighbor Mr. Patterson. He told me about his peach tree that he grew in his yard. He nurtured it, gave it special attention, applied special fertilizer and after several years it began to bear fruit. And for the following two years he got beautiful delicious peaches. But the tree became infested with insects on the inside. Outwardly the tree looked normal but inwardly it was being eaten up by the insects. That year the tree still bore what looked like the same beautiful peaches as before. But when the beautiful looking peaches were cut open, they were rotten on the inside. He could not restore the tree after the infestation and eventually had to cut it down.
And there is a part two to the digging up roots lesson. Yesterday (Monday) we had the heavy rains. So today I went back to dig up another root. This root was bigger than the previous one and had more tentacle branches. But because the soil was damp and pliable after the rain, the bigger root came up much easier than the previous one when the soil was hard and dry. If our soil is well watered and we are pliable, it’s much easier for roots to be taken out of us. Or if we are hard, closed off, not willing to receive admonishment or be corrected, then it’s much harder to dig out what needs to be gotten out.
Richard French
==========
Thank you, Richard. This is a great lesson. I counseled the parents, some years back, not to train their children to think that an apology was repentance. Making an apology is like cutting off the sprigs that are above ground. It is a matter of the heart. We don’t want to become “whitewashed sepulchres”, as Jesus said, having a good appearance, but unclean inside.
Pastor John