When I was a little fellow, my mother took Mc to a Sunday school where I was taught to learn verses from the Bible, and was told over and over about the love of Jesus. My teacher’s name was Mr. Hyland, and he never tired of telling us boys each week about Jesus, and His wondrous love in dying for sinful boys and girls. I do not know if all the boys in the class were truly saved or not, for many of them have moved away from that city, and so have I. And I know that at least one of the boys in the class is already in eternity.
One Sunday we had a special visitor, and so all the classes wore gathered together, and this visitor stood up in front of us and put a nice rosy apple, like the ones Mr. Smith is picking in our picture, on a table. Then he put his Bible down beside the apple, and we sang a hymn. But all the time we sang the hymn we kept wondering what that apple was for. Was he going to eat it while he talked to us, or was he going to give it to someone for answering, a hard question?
Soon he opetted his Bible of Jeremiah, chapter 17 and verse 9, and read these words, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.” Then he picked up the apple, and what a beauty it was! He took out his handkerchief and polished it while we watched him it while we watched him, and asked us what we thought of it. We told him that we were sure it was just one of the finest apples that had even seen. So red and shiny—we could just about taste its lovely juice as we looked at it.
coat pocket, and opened up the blade. Whatever did all this have to do with his text? Slowly he cut the apple in half, and then held it up for us in see. We all gasped with disappointment, for the apple was terribly rotten on the inside that we could hardly believe it—yet we could even see worms busily crawling around, for they didn’t like being disturbed.
“I was pretty sure this apple would be bad on the inside,” said the speaker, “for I saw a little hole through the skin and I thought there must be busy worms in there.”
“Is that hole where the worm got in?” asked Freddie.
“No, that’s where he gets out!”
“I don’t understand. Then how did he get in?”
“I am afraid Mr. Worm was right in there when the apple grew on the tree! You see, bugs and insects are often to be found on the beautiful pink, apple blossoms, and them when the apple forms, there is the busy destroyer right inside, and he works his way our from the inside.”
“Now boys and girls, let me read the text again.” So he read the text to us, and then he went on to tell us that boys and girls are born in sin. That we all had within us a sinful and deceitful heart, and although we all looked clean and well-behaved to him, yet as he was speaking to us, God was looking right inside us and timid see our hearts. No amount of polishing could turn that rotten apple into a good one, and so no amount of improving and doing good could change a sinful heart into a clean heart. How could it be done?
He went on to tell us the familiar story of God seeing our sinful hearts, and sending the Lord Jesus, who shed His precious blood to wash those sins away. We all had to repeat after him the seventh verse of Psalm 51, “Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” He told us that only the blood of Jesus could wash away those stains and then God would give us a new life.
Dear reader, you may be just about the finest boy or girl on your street, or in your school. But when God looks right through those clothes and into your heart, how does His eye see it? Is your heart washed clean in the blood of Jesus?
ML 03/01/1953