Thursday, August 19, 2004
Now here's an example of a bad day. You're driving 83 miles an hour. Suddenly you become aware of someone coming up behind you who would like to meet you. He's got a uniform; he's got a blinking light. Oh, and you left your driver's license at home. Now this is a very bad day, and you are about to have the book thrown at you. This really happened to my friend Allison. She was driving and her friend Leslie was with her. Now Leslie had her license with her. Don't ask me how they did this, but before that officer reached the car, Leslie traded places with Allison, the driver - the licenseless one. The integrity here leaves something to be desired, I know that, but the love is pretty strong. Yep, Leslie took the violation and the penalty for her friend.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Innocent Rescuer."
As Allison told me about her friend who took her rap, I couldn't help but think of the person who did that for me - and for you, only on a much purer, much higher, much more expensive level. Our word for today from the Word of God comes from 2 Corinthians 5:20-21. It says, "We implore you on Christ's behalf be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." Now this is begging us to get right with God. And then it tells what it took to make this ultimate relationship possible. He made His Son sin for us. In other words he is saying, do you know what God did so that you could know Him; so you could go to heaven instead of hell? He sent His one and only Son to die in your place. See, you and I did the sinning, and Jesus did the dying. This sinless Son of God takes on Himself all the hell for all the sinning for all of us as He's dying on the cross.
The real issue isn't the nails as awful as they were, or the spear in His side, it's "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" Abandoned by God? Why? Because this Holy One was absorbing every sin of every adulterer, every liar, every murderer, every abuser, every hypocrite and slanderer and back stabber. He was made sin for us. All the moral garbage and filth of all of us - of you, of me - was dumped on Jesus on that cross. He's our innocent rescuer. Jesus had no sin of His own to pay for, but He went to the cross and said, "Take me instead, Father, let..." - and you can put your name in there - "...let _____ live."
That's why Paul here begs you to be reconciled - to make a personal commitment to Jesus. Don't make the eternal mistake of rejecting this love. My friend Tony is a junior high teacher, and he was in a gang when he was a kid. And he told me with tears in his eyes, "Five of my good friends were killed in a year. Two of them are in the penitentiary." I said, "Tony, how did you end up being a great teacher?" He said, "Because one night when the gang came, they were aiming a knife at my back and my best friend jumped between me and my knife." And he said, "My friend took my knife, and my life has never been the same." I said, "Tony, Jesus took my knife from God on a cross 2,000 years ago, and my life has never been the same."
Isn't it time you offered to Jesus the life He died for? He took your knife. If it's time, if you're ready for Jesus, ready to belong to your Creator, would you contact us? And let me send you my booklet about beginning this relationship called Yours For Life. You want to be sure you belong to Him, because no one ever loved you like this.