Give Me Your Sin - Matthew 1:21

Country Comedian, Jerry Clower, once told about a lady he knew down in Amite County.  She lived near a construction site, and workers were putting a tar roof on the building near her house.  This lady had sixteen children - or young’uns, as Jerry would call them.  One day she lost one of her children.  She got to hunting him and discovered he had fallen into a fifty-gallon drum of black roofing tar at the construction site.  She reached down, hauled him up, took a look at him and shoved him back down in the drum of tar.  She said “Boy, it’d be a lot easier to have another one than to clean you up.”

God must feel that way about some of us sometimes.  It would be easier to have another one than to clean us up; but He does clean us up.  He gives us what we need to make a new start.  That is the good news.   Because of Christ each of us can make a new beginning.

Jerome translated the Bible from Greek to Latin.  Near the end of his life, Jerome was living near Bethlehem translating some of the Bible when he had a dream.  In the dream, the Christ child appeared to him.  He was so overwhelmed by the appearance of the Christ child that he felt he had to give him something.  So he got some money and offered it, saying, “Here!  This is yours.”  The Christ child said, “I don’t want it.”  Jerome brought some more possessions.  The Christ child said, “I don’t want them either.”  Jerome said, “If there is anything in the world that I can give you, tell me what it is.  Tell me!  What do you want?  What do you want me to give you?  He said he dreamed that the Christ child looked at him and said this:  “Give me your sin!  That’s what I came for.”  That is what Christ came for---to take away our sin.