Sermonize This

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.