Focal Passages: Isaiah
5:20-23; 6:1-8; Romans 3:21-26
Bob sat writing a contract
for the cost of painting our house. As he prepared to leave, I said, “Bob, have
you made a contract with God about where you’ll spend eternity?”
He
answered, “I never gave it a thought.”
“Suppose you die tonight,
and God asks, ‘Why should I let you into my heaven?’ What will you say?”
He paused. “I suppose I’ll say,
‘Because of my good life.’ Every year I send a check to my former high school.
It makes me feel so good.”
I said, “Bob, I have good
news for you. May I share why living a good life isn’t good enough to earn
heaven?”
He agreed. I explained that
the Bible says, “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God” (Rom.
3:23). Then I shared how he might be saved.
Today’s tolerant society
labels everything relative. Unfortunately, society often absorbs Satan’s ways.
As Joni Eareckson Tada said, “We live today in a world in which the thing that
was once unthinkable becomes tolerable. And then acceptable. And then legal.
And then applaudable.”
Today, sin is labeled a
natural or socially inherited tendency, but God calls sin an act of asserting
one’s will above the will of God. In our Scripture (Isa. 6:1-8), the prophet
described three aspects of his vision of God in the Temple.
When Isaiah saw God high and
lifted up; he saw himself defiled; and, once forgiven, he saw a world in need.
Comparing his holiness to God’s, Isaiah cried, “Woe is me, for I am a man of
unclean lips” (v. 7).
God heard, cleansed Isaiah’s
lips, and forgave his sin. Immediately, Isaiah saw a sinful world. When God
asked, “Who should I send? Who will go for Us?” Isaiah answered, “Here I am.
Send me” (v. 8).
Isaiah’s vision rebukes our
generation for its easygoing attitude toward sin, from pulpit to pew. Edmund
Fuller has suggested that our advice to the woman taken in adultery and brought
to Christ would be, “Neither do I condemn you; go and sin some more.”
After Bob prayed to receive
Christ, he said, “For the first time, I realize that my girl is lost … but
she won’t be anymore.”
You and I may never cross
the ocean to lead someone to Christ. But God is asking, “Will you cross the
street?”