Friday, April 15, 2005

On a foreboding day last spring, the tornado warnings were out for a small town in Illinois. Knowing they needed to find a safe place, some folks ran for shelter into the basement of a restaurant that was housed in a hundred-year-old stone building. What they didn't factor into their choice was the old sandstone foundation on which that building rested. A tornado roared right through the middle of the town, and it made a direct hit on that building. It destroyed everything - the building, the foundation, and the basement. And eight people died there that day.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Illusion of Safety."

It's a sad story. The people didn't ignore the danger. They knew they had to seek safety, but they looked for safety in a place that looked like it could save them but was built on a foundation that could not stand in the storm. That was a fatal mistake. A mistake made by countless people over the years when it comes to the safety of their soul, and a mistake with eternally deadly consequences.

Whether you look at a highly civilized culture or one considered a primitive culture, mankind seems to know that we've got trouble with the One who created us. Every culture has its means of trying to deal with the things our God is unhappy with; of trying to get on His good side before we die.

Many of us know that we've got a sin problem. We've done wrong things that could keep us out of heaven someday. And we're right. The Bible says that "nothing impure will ever enter" heaven (Revelation 21:27 ). We need to do something to escape the storm of the judgment of Almighty God for our rebellion against Him. So we run into a religion for spiritual safety. Our answer to the bad things we've done is to do good things to make up for them. Whatever good things our particular faith prescribes - the meetings, the creeds, the rituals, the ceremonies, the good works. Is that all bad? No. It's just not enough. It's not a matter of which religion is right. The issue is that no religion is enough to please a perfect God or to pay the death penalty for our sin. Like those people in that vulnerable old building, we're depending on something that, in the end, cannot save us.

In Romans 3 , beginning with verse 10, our word for today from the Word of God, He says, "There is no one righteous, not even one ... No one will be declared righteous in His sight by observing the law." That's the highest form of doing good works. It couldn't be clearer. The God you will face one day has told us bluntly that all our goodness will not make us right with Him. Then He explains what will. "Righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe ... all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus."

Translation: there's no hope in what you can do for God. Your only hope is what God has done for you when His Son paid for your sin on the cross. The moment you abandon your trust in anything else and you put your total trust in Him, every sin of your life is erased from God's book and your eternal address is changed from hell to heaven. That could happen to you today if you'll give yourself, by faith, to the Man who gave His life for you. If that's what you want, then I want to send you my little booklet about beginning with Jesus. It's called Yours For Life, and you've got it if you'll just ask for it.

Please, do not risk another day seeking eternal safety in something that looks strong but that cannot save you. If it could, Jesus would not have gone to the cross. Run to Him today. He took the storm of God's judgment for you, and He is your only safe place.