“There’s always that one stupid mistake that changes
everything.”
Apparently, Britain is very serious about special delivery mail. One Kent,
England postman was fired after being just one minute late with a special
delivery. The mail carrier, Robert Lockyer, had worked for the Royal Mail for
28 years. In October of this past year, he was sacked after management accused
him of “gross misconduct.” What did he do? Lockyer was making a special
delivery at a bank on September 12th. Special delivery items are guaranteed
to arrive by 9am or 1pm the following day. Incidentally, Lockyer had already made
around 1,500 of these in his career. Lockyer claims that he was made to wait in
the queue with other customers at the bank, so it was 1:01 pm by the time he
was able to obtain a signature to confirm delivery. Because he was one minute
late in making the delivery, he was terminated. One small failure to meet the
standard after nearly three decades of faithful work and it cost him his job.
Wow!
Can I share a tougher one? You can’t get into heaven unless you’re
perfect. Adam and Eve lost Paradise and were kicked out of the Garden for
disobeying God by eating one piece of fruit. They weren’t murderers or child
molesters. They disobeyed God on one point. It cost them everything.
Heaven
is only for perfect people. It’s why Jesus could leave Heaven and return to
Heaven. The Bible is very clear that, unlike us, Jesus was perfect. In other
words, He was sinless (2 Cor. 5:21; Hebrews 4:15). But if Heaven is perfect and
God lets someone imperfect in (like me or you), then Heaven is no longer perfect.
It’d be contaminated. If you must be perfect (or sinless) to get into Heaven, for
most of us it’s an insurmountable problem.
I
don’t have a little sin problem. It’s huge! Sin is like having a credit card
for the first time. It’s easy to lose track of how much you’ve spent and get
surprised by a gargantuan bill. It’s a lot like our sin “bill.”
Let me illustrate. Most would admit to sinning at least three times a
day (the truth is that it’s lots lot more than that but let’s use that). Multiply
three times by a year and round it off. That’s 1,000 sins a year. Now multiply 1,000
by your age. Even for the youngest of us, it’s a big debt.
Some
hope that maybe God grades on a curve. He doesn’t. God doesn’t compare Ralph to
George and decide, “Well, George isn’t as bad as Ralph, so he gets into heaven.”
Most of us think that we’re not so bad because we compare ourselves to someone
who is worse, often a lot worse. God’s standard according to His Word is
perfection. None of us meet it (Romans 3:23). We’re all a huge mess when it
comes to sin.
It
gets worse! The penalty for sin is death (Romans 6:23). Death invaded this
world when Adam and Eve sinned. As soon as they disobeyed God, they began to
die. It’s not only physical death, it’s eternal death – separation from God. Because
of sin, we’re not perfect and can’t go to Heaven where only perfection is
allowed…and we’re dying.
Back
though to our credit card analogy. What if someone paid off that huge credit
card bill? Would the person who owned the credit card and ran up the bill still
have to pay it? No. The debt is completely paid.
That’s why Christians love the cross! They know
that on the cross Jesus paid their sin debt completely: “For God so
loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever
believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). God
gave His Son on the cross to pay the sin debt for all humanity. It’s why Jesus
said, “I am THE way” (John 14:6).
If there was any other way, God wouldn’t have
sacrificed His only Son, Jesus, on the cross. The Bible says that there is just
one way – Jesus. His death paid for all of our sin. A gift isn’t yours until
you accept it (whoever believes in Him). Each of us must personally accept
God’s gift of salvation.
Recently, I read an old story about a man and
his boy who were walking through the jungle and came upon another man who’d
fallen into a pit dug to trap lions. He had been trying in vain for hours to
climb out of the pit and had accomplished nothing except to exhaust himself. Nighttime
was about to fall and both he and the man with the boy knew that if they didn’t
get him out, he would die before morning.
Seeing nothing readily available to make a
ladder with, the man looked up and high in a tree just over the pit he could see
a vine, that with one end cut would reach down to the pit and give the man
something to hold on to and climb out. The problem was the tree was not very strong-looking
and the branches couldn’t bear a lot of weight. But the man’s son, the little boy,
volunteered to climb up in the tree and cut the vine, pointing out that his
light weight could be borne by the slight branches.
This father finally agreed. The boy climbed
with his father’s knife up to the high branches, where he cut one end of the
vine and it snaked down into the hole in which the man was trapped. But as he
did so, the branch on which he was perched snapped under his weight and the boy
came crashing to the ground where he instantly died.
As this Dad held the broken and lifeless body
of his precious son to his breast and wept, he heard the voice of the man trapped
in the pit calling out to him. He stepped to the edge of the hole and looked
down, and the man said, “Look, I’m very sorry about your son. But that vine
doesn’t look strong and the branches of the tree look brittle. I think you
should provide another way – a safer way out of the pit for me.” The Dad looked
down into the pit for a moment, then in controlled anger he quietly said, “My
son died providing a way for you to be saved; and the only way you are going to
get out of that pit is if you take advantage of it.”
The
Bible says two things: First, Jesus paid the sin debt with His own life and
blood because He was the only one who could. Second, salvation and all that it
includes - forgiveness, freedom from guilt, a personal relationship with Jesus
Christ - is a free gift (Eph. 2:8-9). It can’t be earned. How could anyone “pay”
God back for the gift of His Son? You must personally accept God’s gift. Have you?
Can
we help you spiritually? Can we help you know Jesus better? Please check out
more resources on our church's web page, Gracechurchwi.org. Or, call us at
262.763.3021. If you'd like to know more about how Jesus can change your life,
I'd love to mail you a copy of how Jesus changed my life in "My
Story." E-mail me at Carson@gracechurchwi.org to request a free copy.
Please include your mailing address.
