I like to play a game called "Sermonize this",
where I take some event or some thing and try to come up with an analogy that
relates to the Gospel or the Bible.
Here's one I recently came up with...
Last weekend, my wife and I went for a drive over to the
Issaquah area, and on the way back home, we went through Duvall and had to
cross over the Snohomish river and across the Redmond Watershed. Because of all the rain we'd had the night
before, the valley floor was completely flooded. Water was flowing pretty swiftly under the
trestle as we drove across, and cars were lined up bumper-to-bumper on the
roadway. I was thinking to myself,
"I sure hope this trestle holds, if this came crashing down and we fell
into the water, we wouldn't be found till spring."
So much rain had fallen, the land couldn't absorb it.
When I think of rain, it reminds me of how God's grace comes
down like rain. God's grace falls from
heaven like the rain falls from the sky.
If our hearts are hard, and we don't absorb God's grace, it
just flows away. If we don't receive
God's grace, we lose out. If we don't
receive it, we miss out on the benefit of it.
In fact, just like that flood could have been very dangerous, it's
dangerous not to receive God's grace for those who've never believed and
received Jesus Christ, they miss out on life itself. It says, "In him (that's Jesus) is
life, and the life was the light of men".
One more curious thing happened because of the rain...
On Monday morning, I went out to my car to go to work, and it
looked like a sheet of ice covered the windows. I went into the garage and got a bottle of
window de-icer and sprayed it on the windows, and scraped the windows, but nothing
happened. I was a little
perplexed. I got into my car, and because of the sheer amount of rain we'd had, there was so
much moisture inside my car, that it had condensed on the inside of my windows
in big droplets. I had to turn the
defroster on full power and dry the inside of the windows with a towel.
Continuing with the theme of God's grace being like rain,
and in this case, so much rain had fallen, and there was so much moisture in
the air that it completely covered the inside of my car windows, I couldn't see out. It reminded me
how some who call themselves Christians actually take God's grace for
granted. They say something like,
"it's OK to sin, because God forgives everything anyways." How warped, perverse and non-biblical is
that. Just like the rain blinded me
from being able to see out the windows of my car, if people take God's grace
for granted, their spiritual vision will be blinded, which is also a very
dangerous place to be.
Romans 6:1-12 (kjv)
1 What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin,
that grace may abound? 2 God
forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein? 3 Know ye not, that so many of us as
were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? 4 Therefore we are buried with him by
baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the
glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.
5 For if we have been planted together
in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his
resurrection: 6:6 Knowing
this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be
destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.
7 For he that is dead is freed from
sin.
8 Now if we be dead with Christ, we
believe that we shall also live with him: 9 Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth
no more; death hath no more dominion over him.
10 For in that he died, he died unto
sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God.
11 Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed
unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should
obey it in the lusts thereof.
