There are always jobs that are messy, and when the job is finished, there may be debris, clutter, parts, plain old dirt, fuzz, etc. that must be cleaned up. The job may have required a lot of elbow grease and have been messy itself, but the cleanup job is always the worst of the dirty work. It’s a strange thing that no one wants to do that job! I taught vocational agriculture in high school, and you can believe that, after completing an assignment, teenage boys (no girls in Vo-Ag back then) can turn out a lot of dirty work that has to be cleaned up. There were never volunteers to do that job. I had to say “you” and “you” take care of that.
In our homes, there are dirty-work jobs for which no one volunteers. From household repairs that require cleanup, to commodes failing and overflowing, to picking up trash or a house pet having an “accident,” there is dirty work to be done. Again, there may be no volunteers to rush forward and get the unpleasant task done. Sometimes people who can afford to do so have hired helpers to take care of their dirty work. Many times people just don’t want to get their hands dirty. We are seeing more and more of this in our young folks as they see the older ones not wanting to do unpleasant tasks and passing them on to the next generation. When I was growing up, everyone had to help take care of the unpleasant chores. We had a dairy farm, and when the cows went through the milk barn, there was a lot of “dirty work”! We had a large garden and raised most of our own food, and we butchered our own meat. We had farm equipment to be repaired, hay to mow and bale, and to be put into the hayloft. We lived on a farm that couldn’t exist without dirty work.
There is another place that “dirty work” occurs in our lives, and it is called sin. Sin is the worst kind of dirty work because it’s the work of Satan. We read in Deuteronomy 25:16, “All who do unrighteousness are an abomination to God.” We read further in Proverbs 6:16ff, “Seven things are an abomination to God: a proud look, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked imaginations, feet that are swift in running to mischief, a false witness that speaks lies and he who sows discord among the brethren.” First, we see that God hates the works of the unrighteous person, and then the things that God hates are listed one by one. What is an abomination? It is a something that God detests because of the evil. These are the true “dirty works” of Satan.
Satan tempts us to sin, and then he does what is necessary to try to keep us in his clutches. Early in the Old Testament in Genesis 4:7, we read what God said to Cain about the intent of his heart: “If you do well, you will be accepted. If you don’t do well, sin lies at the door.” Because of his dirty work of killing his brother, Cain was cursed forevermore. Likewise, each of us will be cursed for our dirty work unless we honestly and fervently make amends with God.
Unlike the examples above of someone else having the honor of cleaning up the dirty work, each one of us must clean up our own sinful dirty work. First, we must admit to the sin we’ve done. The apostle Paul said, “Sin does so easily beset us” (Hebrews 12:1), but we read in 1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Then, we must make amends to God for our sin by serving Him faithfully. When one fails to do this, 2 Peter 2:22 speaks of “the true proverb, the dog is turned to his own vomit and the sow that was cleaned to her wallowing in the mire.” That means Satan will continue to enlist you to do his “dirty work.”
