There were once three men named Joe, Sam, Eric. Each day they went to their jobs, came home after the day was done to spend time with their families. Every day they filled their jars with what they did good and bad. At the end of each day they put their jars on a shelf. The next day they did the same thing with a new jar. For the rest of their lives they filled more and more jars. Each day brought new challenges, issues, and high and low points in their lives. However each of them filled their jars differently.
Joe loved to party it up every night. He loved going where he wanted, when he wanted. He loved his family his wife and he loved his kids. He never went to church and just turned down the offer from Sam all but one time he asked him. He would make up a reason to go not go since he saw no need for it. The one time he went he sat in the back row listened to the message and thought to himself that “I do not need this Jesus person, I am happy”.
Sam loved his family and friends. He was involved in of several parts of his local church. He gave 10% of his income to the church. He went on a few mission trips through out his life. He lead some of his friends to Christ, as well as people from his life group. He was living out a Christian style everyday of his life because it made him fell good about himself.
Eric was a bad person. When he was 35, he killed 3 people with a gun and got 30 years in prison. His wife and family left him behind and never went to see him again. Joe and Sam visited him in prison at least once a month to see how he was doing. Sam came to see him one cold winter night, he found his friend said. Sam asked him what was wrong and he said “I got in a fight today over a cookie, and got another 5 years added to my time here”. Sam told him about the unconditional love of Jesus and he accepted him into his life that night. The prison guards saw a difference in him and how he changed the lives of other inmates in the prison. The warden took off 10 years for good behavior.
Joe, Sam, and Eric were best of friends however one day they were driving along to a church service that Eric and a small role in and they got into a deadly accident. They all died in the accident that day, everyone who knew them were shocked that it happened and they prayed for their family and friends.
They got to the gates of heaven and God looked that their jars. He first looked at Joe’s jars and saw that they were all dirty so he threw him into the pit of Hell. Next he looked at Sam’s jars and saw the same thing. As he reached down to grab him he said “Lord my jars are clean, I was involved in my local church, lead a life group, lead my friends to you, and went on a mission trip” . God looked at him and opened his jars and showed him how dirty they were. Then he said “I saw you do those things in my name, however I never knew you”, he was thrown into Hell with Joe. God looked at Eric’s Jars and saw they were cleaned by the blood of Jesus even though he made several major mistakes in his life. God opened the gates of Heaven and said “Welcome Eric my good and faithful servant”.
Sam’s jars looked clean from the outside but only Jesus can see the inside of the jars. Like Joe, his jars were not clean on the inside because they did not have a personal relationship with Jesus. Eric’s Jars were clan because Jesus wiped all of this mistakes and sins away.
Each day we are given a jar to fill with whatever we do each day. You can not empty any of your jars once you put something in it. All of our jars are dirty unless we have Jesus to clean our jars for us, something that we can not do on our own. We sometimes fill our jars with junk and some of this junk we need to give to Jesus to take away for us, otherwise we will keep on putting that into more and more jars.
What are you putting into your jars?
