Thursday, November 20, 2008
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Having seen far too many traffic accidents in my travels over the years, I appreciated a story I heard Adrian Rogers tell a few years ago. A lady was driving down the highway when she came upon the scene of a terrible accident. She got out of the car, and she saw this driver who had been thrown from the car. He was seriously injured and he was bleeding profusely. Later the lady recounted her response to this heart-rending scene. She said, "Thank goodness, I remembered my First Aid just when it was needed the most, and then I immediately put my head between my knees to keep from passing out!"
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Missing Your Mission."
This lady is not about to be a hero! She's oblivious to the desperate need in front of her and instead she's just all focused on herself. The question is, "could that be us?" On the scene where there are people in front of us who are spiritually dying, without Christ, without any hope of heaven and we're just standing there, worrying about ourselves.
Our word for today from the Word of God in 2 Kings 7:9 is a shocking Old Testament picture of a modern spiritual tragedy. The city of Samaria is under siege, and the people of the city are facing such extreme starvation, some of them are even resorting to cannibalism. Every morning you can hear the screams of mothers who have awakened to find their child has starved to death during the night or the sobs of children who have just watched their mother die of starvation.
Meanwhile, four lepers, who are living as outcasts outside the city wall, are also on the edge of starvation. Of course, they're depending just on handouts from the city. So they choose a course that they consider their only hope for survival. They're going to surrender to the enemy and hope that they'll get fed by them. Well, during the night, the Lord has done a miracle that has caused the enemy to retreat, and they've left their camp and their supplies behind. The lepers find an empty camp and a mountain of food.
The Bible says that as they sat there gorging themselves, "They said to each other, 'We're not doing right. This is a day of good news and we are keeping it to ourselves. If we wait until daylight, punishment will overtake us. Let's go at once..." Question: how can you have what dying people need and not tell them about it?
Tragically, that's what many of us who belong to Jesus Christ do day after day. We keep feasting on the Jesus-banquet, filling up with more and more blessings while never telling the spiritually starving people we know about our Jesus. We can't imagine one day without Jesus, and they've never had one day with Him. And without Him, they have no chance of being in heaven with you.
God is trying to open your eyes to the life-or-death emergency that's right in front of you. He's put you on the scene where you could save some lives, where you could rescue some spiritually dying people. As inadequate as you may feel, you're the one that Jesus placed in their lives so you could help some of those folks be in heaven with you!
Is it risky to step out and try to rescue someone? Oh, it sure is. Just ask Jesus. But if He could die for those people we know, how can we not at least tell them that He died for them? Please don't let them die without a chance at Jesus. You are that chance.