Are You Ready?

“Therefore be on the alert, for you do not know which day your Lord is coming... For this reason you also must be ready; for the Son of Man is coming at an hour when you do not think He will."

-- Matthew 24:42, 44 --

You heard the old saying (well, some of us heard it) - there are two things we can be sure about: death and taxes.

There are a two more things you can be sure about:

• The coming of the Son of Man at any moment to rescue His saints (1 Thessalonians 1:10) from the coming wrath of God during the seven year tribulation period (the rapture).

• Where you will spend eternity when you die.

What Is Sin?

Sin is rebellion against the eternal and holy God who created you. "Sin is lawlessness" (1 John 3:4). Sin began when the first man and woman (Adam and Eve) intentionally disobeyed a simple command from God in the garden of Eden: "The LORD God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die” (Genesis 2:16-17). All they had to do was obey this very simple command. But you might say, "I would never disobey God!" Have you ever cursed using the name of God? Have you ever been jealous of something that someone else has and you don't (a new car, a very pretty girl friend, etc.)? Have you ever taken something small, like a pen off your boss's desk, thinking that no one will miss it? Have you ever looked at someone with lustful eyes thinking, if only I could get him or her in bed with me? Have you ever lied? Have you ever wished someone was dead? Have you ever treated your father or mother with disrespect? If you honestly answered yes to one or more of these questions, then you broke one or more of God's ten commandments (Exodus 20:3-17) - you sinned against God and you sinned against others!

The Wages Of Sin

If you ever held a job, you earned wages for the work you did. These wages come in the form of monetary income, health insurance, and paid vacation time off. Romans 6:23 declares, "the wages of sin is death" - eternal separation from God and eternity in the lake of fire (Luke 16:22-31; Revelation 20:14-15). Romans 5:12 tells us that "just as through one man (Adam) sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned." We all sin because we are conceived with the sin nature. It is through this nature that we are children of wrath (Ephesians 2:3), not children of God. We deserve nothing less than to have the full wrath of God poured out on us for all eternity! Romans 3:23 says "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." Imagine two very high cliffs separated fifty feet from each other. You are standing on one cliff but need to get to the other cliff. But all you have is a board that is forty-five feet long. Even if it was sturdy enough to walk on, there is still a five foot gap between the end of this board and the cliff you need to get to. Do you attempt to jump that five feet knowing you will die in the fall to the bottom if you don't make it? You have fallen short and need to turn back to prevent from getting killed. No matter how good we think we are, that goodness is not enough to put us in the presence of God for all eternity. Regardless of how hard we try, we "fall short of the glory of God."

Only One Way

Yogi Berra once said, "When you come to a fork in the road, take it." The question is, which direction do you go when you get to the fork in the road. Typically, if you were headed north when you got to the fork, you have to make a decision: do I head east or do I head west? This becomes a very tough decision if you lost your GPS signal and you don't have a road map. If you turn the wrong way, you will head further away from your destination and eventually run out of gas or charge on your EV battery. Likewise, there is only one way, not several ways, to get to heaven. This one way is Jesus Christ - God in the flesh. Thomas asked Jesus this question - “Lord, we do not know where You are going, how do we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me" (John 14:5-6). Mary, religious observances, church attendance, water baptism, good works, and so forth cannot get you into heaven. Jesus said, “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it" (Matthew 7:13-14). Jesus is the only narrow gate that leads to eternal life. Everything else, no matter how well intentioned they are, leads to eternal destruction!

The Free Gift

Have you ever received a very expensive gift? It was free to you but it cost the purchaser of this gift a good amount of money. Earlier I mentioned the first half of Romans 6:23 - "the wages of sin is death." Fortunately there is a second half to this verse - "but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." Eternal life is a free gift. You cannot do anything to earn it. It was paid for in full by Jesus. John 3:16 proclaims, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life." Those who believe in the Son have eternal life. This same apostle later wrote in 1 John 5:12-13, "He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life. These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life." Note the two words 'has' and 'have' - both are in the present tense. You have eternal life the moment you believe in the Son. Jesus told Martha, "I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies" (John 11:25). Believers do not go into judgment - they pass "out of death into life" (John 5:24). Only those who believe in the Son become children of God (John 1:12). Conversely, "he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him” (John 3:36).

Jesus Paid It All

God is Holy - He is infinitely blameless, faultless, majestic, morally pure, and completely separated from sin. God cannot and does not sin! Our sin separates us from God. The unsaved heart is full of evil and insanity (Ecclesiastes 8:11; 9:3), deceitful and desperately sick (Jeremiah 17:9). It is perverse (Psalm 101:4), it devises evil (Proverbs 6:14) and wicked plans (Proverbs 6:18). The evil heart is stubborn (Jeremiah 18:12), adulterous (Ezekiel 6:9), and falls away from the living God in its unbelief (Hebrews 3:12). “From within, out of the heart of men, proceed the evil thoughts, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, deeds of coveting and wickedness, as well as deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride and foolishness. All these evil things proceed from within and defile the man” (Mark 7:21–23). The mouth of an evil man speaks from the evil that fills his heart (Luke 6:45).

"But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life" (Romans 5:8-10).

Jesus, the second person of the eternal triune God, stepped out of eternity and took on human flesh (John 1:1, 14; 1 John 4:2). He is fully God and fully man (Colossians 2:9). He was tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15). God required a perfect, sinless, human sacrifice to pay for our sins. The only way He could do this was to become that perfect, sinless sacrifice! He didn't do this for Himself - He did this out of His infinite love for us. "He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him" (2 Corinthians 5:21). "He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed" (1 Peter 2:24). Jesus was arrested, falsely accused, beaten, and had a crown of very sharp and long thorns thrust upon His head. He was tried yet no guilt was found in Him by Pilate. He was scourged to near death and nails were driven through His hands and feet on a cruel Roman cross. He bore our sins on that cross then drank the full cup of God's wrath as He paid the price for those sins, satisfying God's infinite justice. It was on that cross where infinite love and infinite justice kissed. When it was finished, He committed His spirit to the Father and died. He was buried before sunset that Friday evening.

He gloriously rose from the grave on the third day!

A Personal Call

Friend, now is the time for salvation. The Lord can come to take His believers home in the rapture at any moment? I know first hand how fast death can happen. Forty-nine shipmates suddenly lost their lives in a tragic accident early in the morning of January 17, 1977 - a day I will never forget. One of them was my nineteen year old friend Charlie who slept across from me on the USS Guam (LPH-9). My first wife suddenly and unexpectedly died from cardiac arrest early in the morning of March 18, 2014. She was 59 and is in the presence of the Lord for all eternity! She really loved Him.

The apostle Paul penned the following words - "Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures" (1 Corinthians 15:1-4). "If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved" (Romans 10:9).

Would you, with a sincere heart, humbly pray this prayer.

Lord Jesus, I am a lost and condemned sinner. I acknowledge that you are God and that you stepped out of eternity to become a man. Thank you for taking my sins upon yourself and paying for them on that Roman cross over 2000 years ago. Please forgive me for every sin I ever committed against you. Lord, I believe in my heart that you came to die for my sins, that you were buried, and that you were raised from the dead on the third day. Please come into my life and be my Lord and Savior. I ask this in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Amen