I must confess, I never thought I'd live to see the day when it would happened, but it did - and the whole world saw it. It was that awful wall in Berlin that was there for so long, where so many East Berliners died trying to escape to freedom in West Berlin. No one tried to escape to Communist East Berlin. The Communists erected that ugly wall to keep their people in, covered it with barbed wire, and guarded it with vicious dogs and vicious guards. Most folks, I believe, thought that wall would always be there. But almost overnight, in those dramatic days in 1989, (you can probably picture it in your own mind), the people were allowed to demolish that wall. It was one of the most dramatic moments of the 20th Century. And in the streets of Berlin, 100,000 people chanted four words over and over again - "The wall is gone! The wall is gone!"
Well, I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Getting Rid of the Wall."
The wall in Berlin is gone. But for many people, the ugliest wall in the world is still there - the wall between them and the God who made them - the God they will meet the moment this life ends.
In Isaiah 59:2, our word for today from the Word of God, He talks about why we feel this distance, this separation between us and Him. The Bible says, "Your iniquities (or your wrongdoings) have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden His face from you." Those are troubling words. They tell us that our sins have built a wall between God and us. Now, maybe you didn't even need to hear this today to know that there's a wall between you and God. You can feel it.
These "sins" that have cut us off from God are the countless times that we have done it our way instead of God's way. The tragedy of the wall is that the only One who has the love we need to fill the hole in our heart is on the other side of that wall. It's no wonder you're so lonely so often. The only One who knows the reason you're on this planet is on the other side of that wall. It's no wonder nothing seems to give your life the meaning you want it to have. The One you meet when you die is on the other side of that wall - and if it's there when you die, it will be there forever. And that's hell.
You have nothing more important in your life than to somehow get the sin-wall down. But because God's standard is perfection, there's nothing you can do to tear it down. That has to come from God's side. And it has. Listen: "Christ died for sins...the righteous (that's Jesus) for the unrighteous (that's you and me), to bring you to God." That's it! Because of Jesus' death on the cross for your sins, that wall separating you from your Creator can come down today. If you'll trust Jesus to be your personal Savior from your personal sin, the wall can be gone - this very day and forever.
If you want it to be - if you want to begin this relationship with Jesus, would you tell Him that right now? This could be your day that you can finally say those incredible liberating words, "The wall is gone! The wall is gone!"