Thursday, September 18, 2003
My wife and I had gone to a friend's house by the New Jersey Shore to start writing a book. For breaks, I wanted to go for walks on the beach, but my wife said she was feeling so fatigued she couldn't find the energy. As we returned home, that fatigue got worse. Then came the severe stomach upset and finally the fever that climbed to 105 degrees. We had no idea that one of mankind's most virulent diseases was taking over her body. It turned out she had hepatitis. We knew she had some terrible symptoms. We didn't know what was causing them, what ultimately almost cost my wife her life.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Something's Wrong."
Thankfully, my wife got to the doctor, got treatment, and made a full recovery. But we had no idea the medical monster that was behind her suffering. We could see the symptoms. We knew something was wrong - very wrong, but we didn't know the disease that was causing it all.
Increasingly, a lot of us watch the news and think something like this, "Boy, something's wrong. Something's very wrong!" We hear about violent murders in a top-ranked high school, people doing things to other people that are unspeakable, families ripped apart, just an awful lot of garbage. It just feels like something's wrong in our world. But even closer to home - with the people we love most - sometimes it feels like something's wrong in our family, in our friends. In fact, we look at how we act ourselves all too often and think, "Something's wrong in me."
The anger, the selfishness, the unfaithfulness, the cutting words, the depression, the hurting - terrible symptoms of something very wrong inside each of us. If we can face the disease that causes so much of this darkness, we can start to fix what's wrong.
Our seemingly incurable spiritual disease can be traced all the way back to the first family, the first man and woman. Our word for today from the Word of God, from Genesis 2:16. It describes that scene in the Garden of Eden when God tells Adam, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die." Now, nothing was wrong until Adam and Eve decided to go against God and do it their way. You know, we're all Adam and Eve. We've all made the same choice about who will run our life.
And that's what God calls sin. For which God says there is an eternal death penalty. The greatest problem of all in your life is that you're away from your Creator.
The "something's wrong" is sin, and it twists everything. It twists your sense of worth, the relationship between a man and a woman, between a parent and a child, the way we treat others, the addictions and the darkness we can't shake. And religion and spirituality can't cure this terminal disease or the symptoms that poison our life. Our only hope of curing what's wrong is the same as it was for Adam and Eve; the Bible says God came looking for them to bring them back to Him.
And God came looking for you when Jesus died for your sin on the cross. And He's come looking for you today, right where you are. Jesus becomes the Savior from your sin, the Healer of its awful symptoms when you commit yourself to Him. And as your spiritual fever is climbing and the symptoms more damaging, it is becoming critical that you let the healing begin.
If you want to belong to Jesus Christ, tell Him that right where you are. And, if you would, let me send you the booklet I wrote about it called "Yours For Life." Just let me know you want it.
Until your deadly disease of sin is treated by Jesus, the "something wrong" will continue to darken and threaten your life. But Jesus bought your cure with His life, and He's ready today to heal what no one else has, and what no one else can.