August 11, 2020
Download MP3 (right click to save)
She's one of those ladies with an infectious laugh and a lot of mischief in her eyes. Recently, she painted a word picture of an incident from her childhood that left us all really laughing. She was three, her brother was four; the youngest of eleven children. One day the two youngsters were watching ice skaters on TV, and that inspired her brother to suggest that they try to ice skate in the kitchen by spreading butter across the entire kitchen floor. What a great idea! And that's what they did - laughing all the way. They were having a ball, sliding across that floor like future Olympians, until Mom walked in. They "skated" over to the corner farthest from the door as their mother headed toward them with fire in her eyes. Can you picture this? "Ain't Momma happy, ain't nobody happy!" Right? She didn't have her skates on. She fell to the floor. The kids laughed, and Mom couldn't get to them to punish them! Wrong. She went out and got a bucket of hot water and started cleaning the butter off the kitchen floor. She began at the kitchen door and steadily worked her way to the corner where two children cowered; their entire short lives were flashing before them. There was no escape.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "No Such Thing As Getting Away With It."
Two little kids believing they would get away with what they had done. Sure they would escape the consequences. Wrong on both counts. That is a mistaken calculation that a lot of us grown-up kids have made. We've done some things that go against how God told us to live, and it seems like we're getting away with it. We haven't been caught.
But make no mistake about it: you are heading for a serious day of reckoning. Judgment delayed is not judgment cancelled. And the longer you "get away with it," the worse the consequences are going to be. The reality about sin's consequence is laid out starkly in Galatians 6:7, our word for today from the Word of God. "Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows." The painful harvest of your sin may not come immediately, but it will come. There's no such thing as getting away with sin. God puts it this way, "Be sure that your sin will find you out" (Numbers 32:23).
There's really no such thing as "secret sin." If God knows, it's no secret. God knows, and you're caught. You can be sure He knows, and He loves you too much to let you ultimately get away with rebellion against Him; to get away with the things that eat away your soul that slowly destroy you. And the best time to turn around is right now, because the bill is getting higher every day. In God's words, "because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God's wrath" (Romans 2:5).
You don't want to die with your sin unforgiven. The Bible says, "Nothing impure will ever enter" God's heaven... "but only those," the Bible says, "whose names are written in the Lamb's book of life" (Revelation 21:27). Your name is actually entered in that book of life the moment you bring all the sin of your life to the man who died for that sin, and that's Jesus. He died on the cross to take all the punishment you deserve for that sin, so you would never have to.
When you keep your inevitable appointment with a holy God, all that's going to matter is if your sins have been forgiven. And they can only be forgiven if you've put your total trust in Jesus as your personal Savior from your personal sin. You need your name in that book of life, and only Jesus can write it there.
With eternity just one heartbeat away, Jesus is extending His nail-scarred hand to you today. You need to grab His hand. You can do that by telling Him with all your heart, "Jesus, I acknowledge my sin. I want to turn from my sin. My only hope is Your death for my sin. I'm all Yours, beginning today."
And you can do that because He's alive, since He walked out of his grave on Resurrection Day. You go to our website today and you will find a simple explanation of how to be sure you belong to Jesus. That website - ANewStory.com.
The day that He died, Jesus said, "Father, forgive them." Today He stands ready to say that for you. And your sins at that moment will be gone from God's book forever.