LESSON'S ON FORGIVENESS THROUGH A PIECE OF WOOD

Today our bible lesson was about a piece of wood. A piece of wood can be much like our heart. You may say, "my heart isn't anything like a piece of wood". As we take a moment to study this piece of wood you will see exactly how your heart is like wood.

There was a old man who lived all by himself at the corner of town. When everyone looked at this old man they thought of someone with love, respect and honor. He had done many bad things when he was a younger man but after many years he came to know Jesus as his Saviour.  He had asked the Lord to cleanse him of all those sins.  The Lord promised that he would remove the man's sins, so the man was clean in God's eyes.

As this old man would sit on his porch in the old rocking chair he would think back on all those bad things that he had done as a young man. He didn't like the sad feeling that it left in his heart. He knew the Lord had forgiven him but he still felt bad that he had allowed those things into his heart.

We are much like this man. We go through life and we might tell a lie and as we hammer this nail into the wood we see that it represents a lie. A few days later we say a really bad word, and another nail is hammered into the wood. A week later we steal something and a third nail goes into the wood. Before long we look at the piece of wood and it is full of nails. Some of them are old and rusty and some are new and shinny. It doesn't matter how pretty of a nail it is, we don't want it in our hearts.

One day we ask Jesus to forgive us of all those terrible things that we have done. One by one Jesus pulls the nails out of our heart. Do you know where he puts them? He said he will cast them into the sea. This is a place where we can't go and get them back. They are forever gone.

He will turn again, he will have compassion upon us;

he will subdue our iniquities; and thou wilt cast all their sins

into the depths of the sea.

Micah 7:19

When we pull all of those nails out of the wood we can throw them away but there is one thing that we can't throw away and that is the memory of the bad things. We look at the piece of wood and we see all those ugly holes left in it. We might say, why would we still have all those memories left in our mind if Jesus got rid of all the sins? The reason is because we need to look and see what it has done to us so we will never want to have to go through it again. We don't want to grow old like the little man in our story and be sorrowful for all the bad things we did in the past. We want to ask Jesus to help us not to ever put the nails into our hearts. We need to ask him to give us strength to say no to sin.

Psalms 34:13-17

Keep thy tongue from evil, and thy lips from speaking guile.

Depart from evil, and do good;
seek peace, and pursue it.

The eyes of the LORD are upon the righteous,
and his ears are open unto their cry.

The face of the LORD is against them that do evil,
to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth.

The righteous cry, and the LORD heareth,
and delivereth them out of all their troubles.

The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart;