the basic message # E68
Mark 16:16
“Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.”
When did you realize you were condemned in the eyes of God, or have you realized it yet? From the day Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden, we have been condemned. Sadly, many of us were told the story of Adam and Eve as children but never really thought about it further as we became adults. So what? So now when we think about two people being thrown out of the Garden of Eden for eating some fruit, we wonder if it’s a true story. Could God get that mad about a handful of fruit?
Genesis 3:24
After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.
Yep, God was indeed mad enough to toss out Adam and Eve. Why? It ain’t about fruit, folks, it’s all about obedience. God told them very clearly not to eat from the “tree of knowledge of good and evil.” So what did they do? You know. They flunked the obedience test with flying colors. God got pretty upset shortly after that, and with the exception of Noah and his family, he destroyed the earth with the Great Flood. Since then, it’s been downhill for mankind if left to his own management.
When an alcoholic begins his therapy with Alcoholics Anonymous, he must begin by walking into a room of recovering alcoholics and say something like, “Hi, I’m Jim, and I’m an alcoholic.” Why is this ritual so critical in the process of recovery? Because Jim has to admit that booze is running his life. Jim has to admit to himself and his group that he is presently powerless to reclaim his life. Since he is in a room full of people like himself, he has no fear of being ridiculed.
Romans 7:15
I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.
The Apostle Paul says it all in these two little sentences. He’s talking about me. Is he talking about you too? I have to chuckle to keep from cussing when I hear my fellow Americans demanding that the 10 commandments be posted on the walls of our courtrooms. Why would they want that, since only a handful can even recite the 10 commandments? We demand that prayer be returned to our schools, yet few families engage in organized prayer at home. We are a nation that appears to crave discipline and direction, yet our actions prove otherwise.
It might seem that we serve a mean-spirited, vindictive God. If all we had to go on was the spat in the Garden of Eden and the Great Flood, that might well be. But God had Plan B firmly in place since the beginning. Plan B, more popularly know as Jesus Christ, was God’s ultimate way to tell us, “I love you.” Is the feeling mutual? In summation, the first step on the Path to Heaven is the realization that we, by nature are miserable sinners that don’t deserve anything. Once we can acknowledge that, God can put Plan B into action. “Hi, my name is John, and I’m a miserable sinner.”