February 21, 2023
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We'll never forget the horror we felt when we saw nearly 3,000 people die on that single day. But on the day after Christmas 2004, a monster tsunami hit several countries in South Asia and Africa. You might remember that, and 150,000 people died in one day! That's 50 September 11ths! How do you begin to grasp a toll like that? But, believe it or not, it's a sobering reminder of an even greater tragedy!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "A Tsunami Every Day."
Every day in this world 150,000 people are swept into eternity. Every 24 hours we lose as many of our fellow humans as were lost on the day of that tsunami. The daily tsunami of death happens quietly, and invisibly for most of us. Eternity begins every day for 150,000 people in our world - many of them, if not most of them, totally unready to meet God.
Tragically, many of the people who died in the surging waters of the tsunami didn't have to die - if only there had been a warning system in place where people did get a warning.. See. where people did get a warning, they headed for high ground and they survived. Well, you know, God has established a worldwide warning system to help people escape the tsunami of His judgment, to help them spend eternity with Him. That warning system is His people. People like us.
In Acts 1:8, our word for today from the Word of God, Jesus said to His followers, "You will be My witnesses..." That hasn't changed. He's counting on us to represent Him - to, in a sense, stand in for Him and give the warning to a dying world. The warning tells us that "the wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23) and that only Jesus could, only Jesus did die so we don't have to.
Sin's death penalty can't be paid by doing good. Somebody has to die and somebody did - the only Son of God. This isn't about Christianity being the only true religion. It's about Jesus being the only Savior, because no one else even claimed to die for our sin. If there was any other way to God, believe me, Jesus would not have suffered that horrible death on the cross.
When you consider that 150,000 people go into eternity every day and that they have no hope without Jesus, shouldn't that make us look at what we're spending our time on, what we're spending our money on, what we're spending our life on? How can the warning system be silent when the tsunami is coming for more people every day? 2 Corinthians 5:20 rests the responsibility squarely on those who belong to Jesus. It calls us "Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making His appeal through us. We implore you, on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God.'"
We've had a wakeup call where we watched so many people at one time be swept into eternity, reminding us that for 150,000 people every day, it's heaven or hell. Think about your life in light of that reality. How can we be content to live lives that revolve only around us and our little world? How can we be content for our church to be so caught up just keeping all the programs going and just surviving when we lose so many every day without them ever having a chance at our Jesus? And don't we need to broaden the scope of our sometimes myopic prayers and pray as Jesus did "that the world may know" (John 17:23)? God so loved the world. How can we do less?
You have nothing more important you can do with the rest of your life than to invest it in getting the life-saving news about Jesus to as many people as possible while there's still time. Because we are God's warning system. To know the wave is coming and remain silent is to let people die who otherwise could have lived.