Monday, May 15, 2017
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My son bought an old Mustang when he was in high school. No, not the kind with four legs. The kind with four wheels. He actually used money he got from selling some of his valuable baseball card collection. Some years later, he wanted to sell it and put the proceeds into the work he was going to be doing with Native Americans. He was home for a little while and that's where the Mustang was, so he put an ad in the paper about it. First day – no calls. Second day – no calls. He wasn't expecting a line at the door exactly, but he thought he'd get a little more response than that. Then he found out why the phone was silent. He checked the ad and found that the newspaper had goofed and published a phone number that was a wrong number. But what a difference that one little number made! When we dialed the number in the paper, there never was any answer. And since it takes a couple of days to change the error, the wrong number made more encore appearances in the newspaper. You gotta feel bad for some guy who's looking in the paper, sees a car he wants at a price he likes, and dials the magic number that cannot possibly reach the person who has what he's interested in.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Wrong Number Breakdown."
There's someone you want to reach; someone you need to reach. They have what you're interested in, but maybe you've got the wrong number. It doesn't matter how many times you try, you just can't get through to them.
For many people, the One they want to reach, the One they believe has what they're looking for is God himself – the One who made them. In fact, in this age of growing interest in spirituality, there are more and more people who are realizing that the answer for their soul and their life has got to be a spiritual one. What we've accomplished, what we've owned, who we've known – none of those has filled the hole in our heart. So we want to reach our Creator – the One who has the peace and the meaning we need now, and the eternal life that we'd like to have when this life is over.
But just as people may have sincerely tried to reach my son about his car, many spiritual seekers never get through because they're sincerely dialing the wrong number. But God has published His number – very clearly, in bold print – actually in Bible print. Anyone who tries to reach the Creator this way is going to get through. Remember, in the midst of a thousand theories about how to reach God, the only One who can really tell us how is God himself – and He has.
Our word for today from the Word of God is John 14:6, "Jesus answered, 'I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me." In a world of listings with God's name on them, there's only one that reaches Him – the one marked Jesus. Jesus doesn't say, "I will show you the way." He says, "I am the way." Whether or not we reach our Creator is all wrapped up in what we do with Jesus – not with His teachings, not the religion named after Him, but with Jesus himself.
The reason He is the way is explained in 1 Timothy 2:5-6. The Bible says, "There is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all men." We can't understand what it takes to reach God until we understand what it is that keeps us from being able to reach Him. We have this wall between God and us called sin – which means we've made ourselves our own god by choosing to do it our way instead of God's way. And we've earned an eternal death penalty, which only one person even claimed to pay; only one person could pay. God's Son, Jesus, who loved you enough to do the dying for your sin on the cross. All our religious and moral efforts to reach Him are all wrong numbers and they're deadly.
You may be a very decent person, a sincere seeker, an accepted member of the Christian community, and still not reach the God who has what you need. Because you can only reach Him by putting your total trust in Jesus to rescue you from the penalty of your sins against God. Have you ever done that? Would you like to?
Tell Him that now. This is between you and him. "Jesus, I'm yours." I want you to have the information that helped me begin this relationship and know that I belong to Him, and that's at our website - ANewStory.com. I urge you to go there as soon as you can today.
He's been waiting for your call a long time, but you've got to come the way that He's provided, the only way. Through His Son, who loved you enough to die for you. When it comes to eternity, a wrong number can cost you everything.