Wednesday Bible Blurb Take out your garbage 5 27 2026
It started in my childhood and likely in your childhood too. We all knew it was coming. It was that night of the week. We could not hide from what was about to happen. Finally, mom or dad would say, “It’s garbage night.” This was the signal to get up and take the garbage can to the road for pickup the next morning. Sadly, as we got older and more mature, married and had little kids of our own we still must take out the garbage. In my case it is a huge 90-gallon green wheeled garbage can which I have nick named the “green monster” because it eats just about everything. For the last 35 years on every Sunday evening, I haul the “green monster” the 50 yards down my driveway to the road where it waits for the big blue truck to swallow its smelly contents. It is not so difficult in the summer when it is lovely out to take the garbage 50 yards to the road. But, in February when it is minus 29 below zero Fahrenheit it is a tough chore. It must be done or the garbage will just fill up and spill over and make life miserable. Garbage is just old refuse made up of rotting household vegetables, paper products, dead things and sometimes the dog feces one has picked up and bagged from the yard. If we don’t get the garbage out each week the smell can become intolerable.
We see spiritual garbage scattered throughout the entire Bible. Cain killed Able and Noah had a few too many beers. Abraham said his wife was his sister and David committed adultery and murder. The Pharisees and Sadducees (The keepers of the law) should have known who Jesus was, instead they had him killed. Saul had Stephen the deacon killed and went on to Damascus to try to cause more mayhem against the church.
God often takes the spiritual garbage out and deposits it into the 90-gallon green monster garbage can. For all of us folks who weekly haul the garbage can to the side of the road let’s look at what we should be throwing away.
Paul after being called and converted by God while on the road to Damascus eventually had to have some spiritual garbage taken out. I Cor. 5:9-11[NKJV] “I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people. Yet I certainly did not mean with the sexually immoral people of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother, who is sexually immoral, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner—not even to eat with such a person.” Wow, Paul told the Corinthian church to throw the garbage out. Not to even having a meal with him.
Sometimes you must throw the garbage out. God in His mercy will judge all in the world and some people will be thrown into the lake of fire. (Rev. 20:13-15). While this may seem harsh to us, God is the ultimate judge.
Since Adam and Eve man has been filled with spiritual garbage. The prophet Jeremiah reminds us of this, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; Who can know it?” (Jere. 17:9). Your heart and mine were in this category of spiritual garbage filled with deceitfulness. We need to throw our spiritual garbage of sin out. All of us have sinned and will sin again (Rom. 3:23). We are fortunate that God so loved the world that He gave us His Son to cleanse us of our personal spiritual garbage. 9(John 3:16).
Jesus while giving His sermon on the mount gave us a way to throw our spiritual garbage away. It is called forgiveness. “And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” (Matt. 6:12). This is hard. As humans we tend to want to throw other people’s garbage out without seeing our own. We can be righteous in our own eyes and forget to look into a mirror. Continuing in His sermon Jesus said, “And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove the speck from your eye’; and look, a plank is in your own eye? Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” (Matt. 7:3-5). Forgiving others is the first step to removing our spiritual garbage from our lives.
Paul was gracious and merciful. He practiced what Jesus said and told the Corinthain church to allow the disciplined man back into church because the man had apparently repented. (II Cor. 5:2-8). While sinful, the man was to remain outside in the garbage. Once repentant, we are all welcome to come back to Jesus.
The next time we take the garbage out, look at ourselves and see what spiritual trash we need to throw away into the big green monster of spiritual garbage. Uh oh, it’s garbage night…
Mike Wallace
