(1 minute, 48 seconds)

From the outside, our vehicle looked like she had miles to go before it was her turn for the metal graveyard. However, according to the auto body guy who specializes in undercarriage rust, the frame was so thoroughly rusted above one tire that it could break apart at any mile. He said he had never seen anything like it, and he told my husband with sober caution, “It would be very dangerous to drive this anymore.”

I liked this vehicle a lot: it had roomy leather seats that could transport our whole family, a double sunroof, and two extra-large glove boxes that doubled as portable purses for me. But our barely 10-year-old Explorer is toast. Kaput. Game over. She now resides in a junkyard where I imagine her leather seats are being harvested.
Turns out, I’ve been driving a whitewashed tomb.

Jesus told the religious leaders: “You are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness” (Matthew 23:27, ESV).

Jesus didn’t mince words when He addressed the scribes and Pharisees in Matthew 23. He called them hypocrites, and in verse 25 He said, “You clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.”

Jesus called them blind! He instructed them to first clean the inside of the cup and the plate so that the outside would be clean too.

I was recently shocked and grieved to read in the local news about a former teacher and athletic director at a Christian school near me. This man has been charged with sexual abuse involving two students. He has a wife and children, attended church, and was respected in the community. Outwardly he had the appearance of godliness, but if the charges prove true, then inside, under the frame where he thought no one would see, he hid decay, corruption, and rot. I write with trembling fingers and say aloud, “But for the grace of God, there go I.”

Let’s seek to pray often and regularly with the Psalmist, “Search me, O God, and know my heart!” (Psalm 139:23). The Hebrew word for “search” is chaqar, and it means to dig deep and explore thoroughly. Invite the Lord to look under the hood of your heart and the frame of your life. Then pray with the Psalmist, “Cleanse me from secret faults… Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in your sight” (Psalm 19:12–14).

Take a deep look inside. By the Lord’s enabling, “clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean” (Matthew 23:26). Invest time before the Lord in humility as He works to sanctify your heart.

Nothing is hidden from God. He knows our sitting and rising, and even darkness is not dark to Him (Psalm 139:1–4, 7–12). Man looks at the outside, but God knows the heart (1 Samuel 16:7), and He desires and delights in “truth in the inward being” (Psalm 51:6).

Create in us clean hearts, O God!