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THE PUNISHMENT OF THE GOLF ADDICT
Once there was a man who was such a golf addict that he was neglecting his job. Frequently he would call in sick as an excuse to play.
One morning, after making his usual call to the office, an angel up above spotted him on the way to the golf course and decided to teach him a lesson. "If you play golf today, you will be punished," the angel whispered in his ear.
Thinking it was only his conscience, which he had successfully whipped in the past, the fellow just smiled. "No," he said, "I've been doing this for years. No one will ever know. I won't be punished."
The angel said no more, and the fellow stepped up to the first tee where he promptly whacked the ball 300 yards straight down the middle of the fairway. Since he had never driven the ball more than 200 yards, he couldn't believe it. Yet, there it was.
And his luck continued. Long drives on every hole, perfect putting. By the ninth hole he was six under par and was playing near-perfect golf. The fellow was walking on air.
He wound up with an amazing 61, about 30 strokes under his usual game. Wait until he got back to the office and told them about this! But, suddenly, his face fell. He couldn't tell them. He could never tell anyone.
The angel smiled.
(Bits & Pieces, August 22, 1991 -- 10,000 Sermon Illustrations)
We can get ourselves in Trouble Fast
A burglar broke into a house one day. As he was stealing the valuables he heard a voice out of the darkness that said, "Jesus is watching you". He almost choked. He stoped and looked around and then he shook of his fear and went on stealing some more. Suddenly just as before the voice cam and said Jesus is watching you. He was trembling so bad he could hardly contain any composure. He finally approached the corner and there was a bird cage with the cover over it. The words came from the CAge, Jesus is watching you. The thief pulled off the cover and saw the parrot. He said with an angry voice, what is your name? The parrot replied, MOses. The thief replied, what kind of wierd person would name a parrot Moses? The parrot replied the same kind of wierd person that would name a Rocwieller "Jesus".
We can get ourselves in serious trouble by not paying attention.
On the TV show called the X-Files, they had a story about a family that used to keep an ugly looking creature in their basement. And what was even stranger was that people would bring their sick and dying family members over to see this creature and they would come back healthy. When Scully and Mulder went to see what was happening, they found out that this creature was able to take people’s infirmities on himself. So if they came to him and had cancer, he was able to take the cancer and his body, suffering a few days, and then vomit the cancer out. So as this creature lived on, it became uglier and uglier as it was contaminated with diseases, until it finally took on the disease of death and died. It was a strange story, but I thought it was a good illustration of what Jesus does with our sins. He doesn’t just heal us up our guilt and sin by giving us some medicine. When Jesus went to the cross, he had to take on our infirmities, our sins, our guilt, and our punishment.
[America’s Sin of Self-Sufficiency, Citation: Richard Halverson, "The Question Facing Us," Preaching Today, Tape 46.]
In 1863 President Lincoln designated April 30th as a day of national humiliation, fasting, and prayer. Let me read a portion of his proclamation on that occasion:
"It is the duty of nations, as well as of men, who owe their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon, and to recognize the sublime truth announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by a history that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord. The awful calamity of civil war which now desolates the land may be but a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as ...
Oneal Stover
Suppose a keg of gun powder has been placed under a man’s house right beneath the furnace where a fire is burning, but he is ignorant of its presence there. After awhile THE HEAT of the furnace causes the gun powder to burn its way through the top of the powder keg and there is a terrible explosion in which the man’s family is destroyed. Fearful as is the occurrence, no one condemns the man.
But suppose he had been told that the keg of powder was there, and saw for himself its proximity to the fire, and he went away without removing it. Then, when the explosion took place and his family were killed, everybody would condemn him and say that he was a guilty man.
So it is with sin.
Commenting on Barabbas, Donald Grey Barnhouse wrote, “He was the only man in the world who could say that Jesus Christ took his physical place. But I can say that Jesus Christ took my spiritual place. For it was I who deserved to die. It was I who deserved that the wrath of God should be poured on me. I deserved the eternal punishment of the lake of fire. He was delivered up for my offenses. He was handed over to judgment because of my sins…. Christ was my substitute. He was satisfying the debt of divine justice and holiness. That is why I say that Christianity can be expressed in the three phrases: I deserved hell; Jesus took my hell; there is nothing left for me but His heaven.” - D. C. E.
Our Daily Bread, Wednesday, March 30
“It is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God; to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations are blessed whose God is the Lord.
We know that by His divine law, nations, like individuals, are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world. May we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war which now desolates the land may be a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole people?
We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown.
But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.” Abraham Lincoln, Oct 1863
FREED FROM DEATH- COMMUNION MEDITATION
Paul Lee Tan writes about a horrible Roman practice:
"The Romans sometimes compelled a captive to be joined face-to-face with a dead body, and to bear it about until the horrible effluvia [vapors] destroyed the life of the living victim. Virgil describes this cruel punishment: 'The living and the dead at his command were coupled face to face, and hand to hand; Till choked with stench, in loathed embraces tied, The lingering wretches pined away and died.' Without Christ, we are shackled to a dead corpse--our sinfulness.
At Communion we celebrate being freed from death...
Bobby Hawk
Let me conclude with this brief story about Clay King Smith. Mr. Smith killed 5 innocent people, 2 women and 3 children, after tripping out one evening on drugs. In May of 2001, Clay King Smith was executed. A local news reporter in Arkansas had the chance to sit down and talk with Smith a year after the killings. While sitting in the Arkansas Department of Corrections, Tucker Maximum Security Unit, Smith was interviewed and asked why he had done this horrible crime. Even after a year Smith still had no explanation. This was a stark contrast to the man that Smith used to be. Clay King Smith was once so deeply religious that he attended Central Bible College to become a preacher.
How is that possible? I can’t understand what would cause a man to kill 5 innocent people. But I do know that Clay King Smith went from being a man in Bible college pursuing ministry, to a man on death row awaiting execution. Smith failed to live a life with no exceptions. Clay King Smith lived with regret until the day he faced eternity because of the decision that he made. Smith did repent for this horrific sin, but he would never stand behind a pulpit and proclaim the Word of God because he made an exception that ruined his future ministry.
INTRODUCTION... Ransom
Ransom, is an action packed drama thriller that came out in 1996 starring Mel Gibson and Rene Russo and directed by Ron Howard. The movie focuses on Mel Gibson’s character, Tom Mullen, a rich airline owner, is shocked when his son is kidnapped. He is willing to pay the two million dollar ransom, but the drop goeswrong. So Tom turns the ransom money into a bounty on the head of the kidnapper. The movie has a line in it that probably gave them the title: “Someone is going to pay.”
That is exactly what the word ’Ransom’ means. The word means that someone is going to pay. A ransom is the price paid to free someone from captivity or punishment. When we think of ransom in a religious sense, especially in Christianity, we think of ransom as a deliverance from sin or its penalty. And yet, someone has to pay for the sin, do they not?
