How do you clean up a big mess?
Spilled milk? A paper towel will do. Dirty diaper? You need a baby cleaning system (wipes or wash cloth) and plenty of soap and water. If it’s a major oil spill coming ashore you need workers with Haz-mat suits and plenty of equipment and detergent. Oh--and lots of money, too.
In each case, it’s helpful if the source of the mess has stopped making the mess!
But what if the source keeps making a mess that doesn’t end? You have a messy disaster.
A worst-case scenario, right? Well, no. The worst-case scenario is the human condition.
“Now hold on just a minute! How can the human condition be worse than a major oil spill?”
The Bible tells us, “God made mankind upright, but men have gone in search of many schemes.” It adds, “Every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood.” Furthermore, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”
The two major competing worldviews are that mankind is inherently good and the opposite, than mankind is inherently evil. The first seeks perfection through education and ends up with smart criminals and self-deceived do-gooders. The second seeks redemption through moralistic religion and ends up with legalists and spiritual abusers.
Which worldview is right? Neither. Confused? You needn’t be if you believe the Bible.
According to the Bible, God created a man and a woman that were innocently good. But because they chose to disobey God, and sought to become like God, they and their descendents became sinners and enemies of God.
The resulting penalty was that death entered the world.
But God created a plan to be reconciled with us. In an amazing display of love, God himself, in the person of Jesus Christ, came and died in our place. He took our penalty.
Now, through faith in Christ--by personally accepting what he did—we’re not only forgiven but become children of God and receive a new nature that changes us from the inside out!
The amazing truth of the Bible is that, if you will come to God and say, “Father, accept me—not for what I have done but because of what Jesus Christ did for me on the cross,” you will receive what the Bible calls a “new heart.”
God predicted, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you.” Then, after Jesus came, the Bible says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”
Through education modern societies attempt to rehabilitate people. But if that could solve the problem of the human condition, wouldn’t most lawyers be out of work and most jails empty? Instead we have greed-gone-wild, power-hungry politicians and overcrowded jails.
God doesn’t rehabilitate people he re-creates them. Instead of enemies of God, we can become friends of God. Instead of God’s punishment we can receive his mercy, grace and love.
Many think of God as a grumpy old man who keeps us from having fun. But nothing could be further from the truth. Instead, he is a loving father that wants to restore us to his family.
When he saw the messy disaster we made (and kept making), his love caused him to send a Savior to do for us what we couldn’t do for ourselves. As the Bible says, “God demonstrates his love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Only God can clean up our messy disaster and give us new hearts.
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