Writer Joe Stowell shares this in a story, “To this day I can still hear my mother telling me to go and clean up my room. Dutifully, I would go to my room to start the process, only to get distracted by reading the comic book that I was supposed to put neatly in the stack. But soon the distraction was interrupted by my mother warning that she would be up in 5 minutes to inspect the room. Unable to effectively clean the room in that time, I would proceed to hide everything I didn’t know what to do with in the closet.”

He said, “This reminds me of what many of us will do with our lives. We clean up the outside of our lives hoping that no one will look into the “closet” where we have hidden our sins by excuses and by blaming others for our own faults.”

Community, what if we spent as much time cleaning up the inside as we do prepping up the outside? What a Christian we would be… The problem — as Joe Stowell said — is that while looking good on the outside, we remain well aware of the mess on the inside.

And that’s a problem. A lot of believers believe that we are good about outside appearances — Fake it just to impress people. We are pretending and playing the role to appear what we profess to be while our closet is full of dirty clothes and for the most part we are able to pull it off. But, being a pretender is not a good thing. Trying to fool people is not a good thing. Trying to present a false image is not a good thing, especially when that image is a mirage and not the real thing.

God doesn’t want us cleaning up the outside when there is garbage on the inside; besides that, it is stressful when we are pretending. It takes work, pretending tires you out and there is no joy in pretending. Your conscience is not clear. The devil has a foothold in our lives. It diminishes our spiritual power when we know that our closet is not clean. If we would spend as much time keeping the closet clean as we do trying to hide the mess, then we would not be worried about somebody looking in it.

There is a word closely associated with the word pretender, and that is the word “hypocrite.” These are those who pretend to be one thing while they are living another thing. Jesus himself did not have a high tolerance for hypocrites. He didn’t like the ways of a hypocrite and he spoke out against them. He said “Woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within you are full of extortion and excess.” He said “THOU BLIND HYPOCRITE, first CLEAN that which is within the cup and the platter, that the outside of them may be clean also,” (Matthew 22:25,26).

Somebody defined a hypocrite like this: “A hypocrite is a person who is not himself on Sunday!” Sinners know those who are for real and those who are not, because they are watching. They know those who sing the loudest on Sunday; those who carry Bibles; and they have a problem with people who profess to be Christlike, but they don’t see any Christ in them!

My friends, we need to come to grips with the fact that Jesus sees us from the inside out. He sees the real deal. Folk can only see what we show them, but God sees the hidden stuff. Job said “For his eyes are upon the ways of man, and he sees all his goings,” (Job 34:21). “Therefore, he KNOWS their works,” verse 25 continues.

Solomon said “For the ways of man is before the Lord, and he ponders all his goings” in Proverbs 5:21. God said in Jeremiah 16:17, “For mine eyes are upon all their ways: they are not hid from my face, neither is their iniquity hid from my eyes.”

Nothing is hidden from God! His word to us this morning is “clean up the closet!” All of us have our messes! Some character flaws, some hidden stuff, some secret sins that we don’t want anybody to know about so we act like we have it going on.

Hear me when I say God doesn’t have a problem with us having issues because that is a part of our fallen humanity. On our best day we can slip. Right after church on Sunday morning, we can slip. Things and people can get under your skin if you be honest. We’re not in heaven yet! I know that temptation is everywhere. On any given day we could fall if we don’t stay in the word. God doesn’t have a problem with us having issues as long as we confess our sins and be honest (1 John 1:9). His problem is when we try to HIDE our sins in the closet!

Clean the closet!

Because if we don’t clean our closet sooner or later God will open the door and let everybody see our dirty laundry! Y’all know that God has opened the door on some folk and all their dirty laundry fell out all over the floor; and before we say amen too quick, I wonder, if the Lord was to open up some of our closets what would fall out? If he was to come right now, what would he see? Let’s all of us clean the closet.

The Rev. George Ellis is the pastor of Union Grove Missionary Baptist Church and can be reached at georgeellis1956@yahoo.com.