October 22, 2019
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Twenty-three seconds. It takes you longer than that to eat a slice of pizza, or at least it should. It takes me about that long just to say three or four sentences. Now, a short TV commercial is longer than that. But every 23 seconds, something absolutely amazing happens inside you. Your blood pumps through your body during that time, delivers oxygen and nutrients to all your cells, and carries away the impurities from your cells and starts back through again in 23 seconds. Mind-blowing! That's what it takes to keep you going. You've got to have that oxygen delivered regularly. You've got to have your cell garbage taken out regularly, and your blood gets it done.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Trash Removal That Saves Your Life."
In the amazing ways of the God who made us, it's the blood that cleanses our body from the garbage that could kill us. And it is the blood that is our only hope of our soul being cleansed of that poison in there that could cost us our life forever; except my blood can't clean my soul. It takes blood that has never been poisoned by human sin. It takes the blood of Jesus Christ.
Our word for today from the Word of God makes it absolutely clear what it takes for you and me to get rid of that guilt and that penalty of our sin that will one day keep us out of heaven. 1 John 1:7 says: "The blood of Jesus, God's Son, purifies us from all sin." There's something about that blood that Jesus Christ shed on that horrific cross that has the power, actually the only power, to remove your sin and mine. The way God made for our body to get clean inside is also the way God made for our soul to get clean inside - blood. For our soul - Jesus' blood.
From the first sin in the Garden of Eden to the lie you told or the person you hurt today, God has minced no words telling us the penalty, "You will surely die" He said to Adam and Eve (Genesis 2:17). And the devil's lie to Adam and Eve went like this: "You will not surely die" (Genesis 3:4). He's been trying to get people to believe that lie ever since. He wants you to think that somehow you can escape the death penalty for your sin when God said that penalty is irrevocable.
But in His love, He set in motion a way that the death penalty that you and I deserve (the Bible calls that hell) could be paid without us being away from Him forever. A blood sacrifice - someone with no sin of His own to pay for, dying in your place. And there's only one someone who meets that qualification. That is the very Son of God. He came, as the Bible says, "to do away with sin by the sacrifice of Himself" (Hebrews 9:26). Is it any wonder God said then, "Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness" (Hebrews 9:22).
You can't get rid of your sin by earning it and doing good things. You can't inherit God's forgiveness from a Christian family or pick it up by osmosis from just being around Christian things your whole life. Your only hope of getting clean and getting to heaven is the cleansing power of the shed blood of Jesus Christ. Not Christianity, but Jesus.
The question is, have you ever thrown yourself on His mercy and said, "Jesus, only by the blood You shed for me can I be clean before God. Please, Lord, this day, carry away the garbage of my life in Your precious blood." And He will do it if you ask.
And why wouldn't you? Why would you risk one more day carrying in your soul the guilt of your sin and its penalty? Why, when Jesus carried it for you on the cross so you would never have to carry it again! Aren't you ready to be forgiven? You ready to be clean? Let Jesus do that for you today. Tell Him, "Jesus, I'm Yours."
I'd love to have you go to our website, because I've loaded it with the information you need to make sure this forgiving, saving transaction happens in your life today. That site is ANewStory.com.
Picture yourself carrying all the sins of your life up that hill where Jesus' cross stands and leave it all there, never to carry it again. That could happen today.