Wednesday, March 2, 2016
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I'll sure never forget my Grandmother Irene. She was one funny lady. She laughed a lot, she gave me money a lot, and she was the life of the party. Some people in our family think she was a big influence on my personality. That's not a very nice thing to say about a woman who is no longer here to defend herself, right? But there's no doubt my grandmother did have a great impact on my life. I almost never got to meet her though, because she had a serious bout with cancer before I was even born. But she made it and I got an awesome grandma out of the deal. It took some radical action on the part of the doctor to save her though. He went in and totally removed the cancer and the areas around it. It was painful, it left some scars, but I'm sure thankful that he did what he had to do to keep her alive.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Operation You Can't Perform."
Removing the cancer – that was my grandmother's only hope for living longer. It's your only hope, too, of living forever.
Our word for today comes from John 1:29 where the prophet John has come to the wilderness of Israel, announcing that God's long-awaited Messiah was about to appear on the scene. Then one day John sees Jesus. And in one simple sentence he identifies Him and he announces the Savior's life-saving mission. "The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, ‘Look! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.'" John says, "Man, this is it! The Sin-Remover is here. It's Jesus!"
That's why Jesus came, to remove the sin of the world. Or to understand the personal significance of what Jesus did, put your name in there. "The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of (There's your name.) __________." Sin – that spiritual cancer that eats away at all our close relationships, that puts a wall between us and God, the God whose love we just need so desperately. It's a terminal spiritual cancer. The Bible says the wages of our sin is death – eternal banishment from the God who made us.
Somewhere deep in our soul, we're haunted by the sin of our lives. I know we are. I mean, there's shame, and there's guilt, and there's the fear of God's punishment. But how can you treat this cancer that poisons our life here and costs us heaven later? Removal – just like my grandmother's physical cancer. I'm glad the doctor didn't just give her a pain reliever to make her feel better. Some of us try one anesthetic after another to calm that sin-storm in our soul, and it never goes away.
Or we try to defend ourselves with all the good things we've done, "Hey, I'm not so bad after all." But talking about all the ways you're OK doesn't remove the cancer. God strikes down all our religiousness and goodness with these "straight talk" words from Ephesians 2:8-9, "By grace you are saved...not by works." There was nothing my grandmother could do to remove her own cancer except trust herself totally to the one who could remove it.
Isn't it time you did that with the deadly sin-cancer you've got? Isn't it time to trust yourself totally to the only One who can remove it? Not cover it, not compensate for it. Remove it so it never comes between you and God again; so it will not be there when you die, locking you out of heaven.
Jesus is your Sin-Remover because He became the Lamb of God. Like the Old Testament lambs slaughtered to pay sin's death penalty, God's own Son came to be put to death for your sin so you wouldn't have to pay that death penalty yourself. No one has ever loved you like Jesus.
If you've never trusted yourself to the only One who can remove your sin and its death penalty, if you've never begun a relationship with Jesus, this could be your day. Tell Him that you believe He's your only hope of being forgiven because He's the One who died to do that.
I would love to give you the information you need to begin your relationship with Jesus and be sure you belong to Him if you'd just go to our website. That's ANewStory.com.
The cancer is deadly, but it's not incurable. When you trust yourself to the Doctor – Dr. Jesus – you trade death for a life that will never end.