While in Manila a brother pointed out to me a large mountain of garbage called Smoky Mountain. Tens of thousands of squatters live there. From the garbage they find materials to build their shanty homes, food to feed their families, and recyclable material that they can sell for a few pesos. They get up before the light of dawn and lie down well after the sun is set and do nothing all day but pick through garbage. Some are born and then die there without ever seeing anything but the filth of this mountain.
The Bible describes this world as a spiritual garbage dump. It speaks of the “filth of the nations,” of the “pollutions of the world,” and of the “corruption that is in the world through lust” (Ezra 6:21; 2 Peter 2:20; 1:4). Even the righteousness of this world is called “filthy rags” (Isaiah 64:6). Isaiah, who was a good man, described himself as having “unclean lips” (Isaiah 6:5).
What does God think of this world? One of the choice words used to describe His reaction to our filth is the word abomination. Different words are translated from the Hebrew as abomination: ba’ ash means “stink,” shiqquts means “a detested thing,” shaqats means “to be filthy,” piggul means “stinking, rotten,” and to’ ebah means “offensive, detestable.” Considering that this word is used 68 times in the Old Testament alone, it’s clear how filthy we are to God.
Yet, the Word who was with God in the beginning and who was God, “became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:1-2, 14). Jesus left the glories of heaven where there is never “anything that defiles, or causes an abomination,” (Revelation 21:27) to live in this junk heap called earth where everything His pure eyes saw was abominable. Can you imagine how disgusting that was for the “Holy One of God?” (Luke 4:34)
Obviously, Jesus did not to this earth for pleasure. He came on a mission. Jesus read this passage about Himself from Isaiah while in a synagogue:
The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me,
Because He has anointed Me
To preach the gospel to the poor;
He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,
To proclaim liberty to the captives
And recovery of sight to the blind,
To set at liberty those who are oppressed;
To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD.
Luke 4:18-19
Jesus didn’t merely go to the “clean” people of his generation in the synagogues. He went to those throw away people among the tax collectors and sinners who had for a long time been discarded by the “righteous” of His day.
Jesus endured the stench and the smell of the world as He picked through the garbage to find those precious souls that God sent Him to earth to find. Jesus died on the cross, shedding His precious blood, that He might cleanse and sanctify them, so they might not have “spot or wrinkle or any such thing,” but that they might be “holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 5:27).
That is why my brothers in Manila go and teach the squatters on Smoky Mountain about the love of Jesus. That’s why they go to the prisons and to the leper colony. You see, they too were found by Jesus lying hopelessly on the trash heap of this world. They were filthy, defiled, and polluted before being sanctified by Him to be a part of God’s “chosen generation,” “royal priesthood,” “holy nation,” and “special people” (1 Peter 2:9).
So, the next time you are confronted by the “stench” of a sinner, remember that you once smelled that way. Tell him about our Savior who has been tirelessly picking through the garbage to find him.