Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Download MP3 (right click to save)
Twenty-three seconds. It takes you longer than that to eat a slice of pizza, or at least it should. It takes me about that long to just say three or four sentences. Now, a short TV commercial is longer than that. But every 23 seconds, something absolutely amazing happens inside you. Your blood pumps through your body, delivers oxygen and nutrients to all your cells, and carries away the impurities from your cells and starts back through again in 23 seconds. Mind-blowing! That's what it takes to keep you going. You've got to have that oxygen delivered regularly. You've got to have your cell garbage taken out regularly, and your blood gets it done.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Trash Removal That Saves Your Life."
In the amazing ways of the God who made us, it's the blood that cleanses our body from the garbage that could kill us. And it is the blood that is our only hope of our soul being cleansed of the poison in there that could cost us our life forever; except my blood can't clean my soul. It takes blood that has never been poisoned by human sin. It takes the blood of Jesus Christ.
Our word for today from the Word of God makes it absolutely clear what it takes for you and me to get rid of the guilt and the penalty of the sin that will keep us out of heaven. 1 John 1:7 says: "The blood of Jesus, God's Son, purifies us from all sin." There's something about that blood Jesus Christ shed on that horrific cross that has the power, actually the only power, to remove your sin and to remove my sin. The way God made for our body to get clean inside is the way God made for our soul to get clean inside - blood. For our soul - Jesus' blood.
From the first sin in the Garden of Eden to the lie you told or the person you hurt today, God has minced no words telling us the penalty, "You will surely die" (Genesis 2:17). And the devil's lie to Adam and Eve went like this: "You will not surely die" (Genesis 3:4). He's been trying to get people to believe that lie ever since. He wants you to think that somehow you can escape the death penalty for your sin when God said that penalty is irrevocable.
But in His love, He set in motion a way that the death penalty you and I deserve (the Bible calls that hell) could be paid without us being away from Him forever. A blood sacrifice - someone with no sin of His own to pay for, dying in your place. And there's only one someone who meets that qualification. That is the Son of God. He came, as the Bible says, "to do away with sin by the sacrifice of Himself" (Hebrews 9:26). Is it any wonder God says then, "Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness" (Hebrews 9:22).
You can't get rid of your sin by earning it, by doing good things. You can't inherit God's forgiveness from a Christian family or pick it up by osmosis from just being around Christian things your whole life. Your only hope of getting clean, of getting to heaven, is the cleansing power of the shed blood of Jesus Christ. Not Christianity. Jesus. The question is, have you ever thrown yourself on His mercy and said, "Jesus, only by the blood You shed for me can I be clean before God. Please, Lord, this day, carry away the garbage of my life in Your precious blood." And He will do it if you ask.
And why wouldn't you? Why would you risk one more day carrying in your soul the guilt of your sin and its awful death penalty? Why, when Jesus carried it for you on the cross so you would never have to carry it again! If you're ready to be forgiven, if you're ready to be clean through what Jesus has done for you, tell Him that today, "Jesus, I'm Yours."
And let me encourage you to go to our website. So many people at a point of considering Jesus in their life have found the help they needed there to make sure that they had gotten it done. Our website is YoursForLife.net. Or you can call for my little booklet Yours For Life toll free if you like it, at 877-741-1200.
Picture yourself carrying all the sins of your life up that hill where Jesus' cross stands and leaving it all there, never to carry it again. That could happen today.