The Biggest Mistake You Can Make

The biggest mistake you can make.

Matthew 27:3-5

* I readily admit that I am a gleaner. Many of my illustrations come from outside sources and from this website. - KMK

Introduction

To Err is human ---wrote Alexander Pope in the 18th century

In 1982 – humorist Russel Baker expressed the same idea in more specific terms: I make the average number of mistakes. Maybe 150 a day or so on a busy day. Most of them aren’t terribly serious. Putting too much sugar in the coffee cup. Picking up the phone and dialing the number of the phone I just picked up. Yes humans make mistakes; we goof up and create mess. We miss-hear, misinterpret, miss- judge, misread, misspeak, misspell, misunderstand, and yes, MAKE THE MISTAKE OF SINNING.

Romans 7:14 –25

Struggling with Sin

14The law is good, then. The trouble is not with the law but with me, because I am sold into slavery, with sin as my master. 15I don’t understand myself at all, for I really want to do what is right, but I don’t do it. Instead, I do the very thing I hate. 16I know perfectly well that what I am doing is wrong, and my bad conscience shows that I agree that the law is good. 17But I can’t help myself, because it is sin inside me that makes me do these evil things.

18I know I am rotten through and through so far as my old sinful nature is concerned. No matter which way I turn, I can’t make myself do right. I want to, but I can’t. 19When I want to do good, I don’t. And when I try not to do wrong, I do it anyway. 20But if I am doing what I don’t want to do, I am not really the one doing it; the sin within me is doing it.

21It seems to be a fact of life that when I want to do what is right, I inevitably do what is wrong. 22I love God’s law with all my heart. 23But there is another law at work within me that is at war with my mind. This law wins the fight and makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me. 24Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin? £ 25Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord. So you see how it is: In my mind I really want to obey God’s law, but because of my sinful nature I am a slave to sin.

I had a friend once who bought an entire set of furniture, without asking his new wife, what she liked…MISTAKE!

1986 World Series Bill Buckner – Mookie Wilson - Mistake!

Owner of the Red Sox traded a pitcher for cash…. The pitchers name was George Herman “Babe” Ruth – Mistake!

- A newspaper in Kansas, trying to correct a mistake that had occurred in a previous issue,

carried the following item: “We wish to apologize for an error in the wedding story in last week’s paper.

Due to a typesetter’s mistake we said, ‘THE ROSES WERE PUNK.’ What we intended to say, ‘THE

NOSES WERE PINK.’”

- Here’s another.

When the janitor of the First Security Bank, Boise, Idaho, accidentally put a box of 8,000 checks

worth $840,000 on a trash table, a nightmare occurred.

The operator of the paper shredder dumped all the contents into his machine, cutting them into

quarter-inch shreds and dumping them into a garbage can outside the bank. The bank supervisor said,

“I want to cry!” (I’ll bet he wanted to do more than that!)

WE ALL MAKE MISTAKES… Romans 3:23 – All have sinned….

The truth of the matter is man has been making mistakes since creation.

a. Great mistakes of the past:

1). The ancient Babylonians believed that the earth was flat in 8th Century B.C. The sad fact is there are still people today who believe that the earth is flat. Their claims are based on their literal interpretation of the Bible, which, for example refers to "the four, corners of the Earth." They call themselves the "Flat Earth Society." Their base is in Utah.

.

2). Pliny a Roman administrator who lived in 1st Century A.D. wrote an encyclopedia called "Natural History". It was published in the middle ages, which at that point became a reference book for 1,500 years. Here are some of his facts published in this work:

* He told of women giving birth to elephants in Africa.

* He stated that cats were one of the causes for driving people into insanity. He concluded that a cat did this by licking a human’s skin with their tongue.

* Having trouble with tooth decay? He stated eat a mouse or inhale smoke from burning onion seeds.