The Bridge To Life

The Bridge to Life

John 10:10, Romans 6:23

August 2, 2009

NOTE: THE ME/WE/GOD/YOU/WE FORMAT IS FROM ANDY STANLEY’S BOOK, "COMMUNICATING FOR A CHANGE."

Me: I grew up in a church that didn’t have Vacation Bible School.

My earliest memories of VBS were while I was living in Pine Ridge, SD, and going to VBS at a little church in Whiteclay, Nebraska, right across the border from Pine Ridge.

We: How many went to Vacation Bible School when they were younger?

When you were going, did you really understand the reason they sent you?

Maybe because your parents, grandparents, or whatever wanted you to hear about Jesus.

For others of us, it was a good excuse to get us out of the house for a while. Am I right?

I don’t know why you went, but let me tell you why we offer VBS:

The reason we do VBS here is because we want children and their families to hear the good news that everyone can have forgiveness of sins and a home in heaven because of Jesus and what He did for us on the cross.

And since many of you weren’t here during the week, I want to take this time to explain to you as clearly as possible how you can have that forgiveness and that home in heaven.

That is the cornerstone of everything we do around here. Everything else we do is built on that foundation.

We believe that Jesus came to give us hope, because on our own, we have none – at least not as far as eternity is concerned.

God: We’re going to look at one verse of Scripture that really lays out what I want to communicate today.

I want everyone in here today to know exactly what it takes to know for sure you’re on your way to heaven when it’s your name we read in the obituary column.

The basis of what I want to share with you is the cross.

The cross is a universal presence, especially here in the US. And different people look at the cross differently.

Let’s look very briefly at four ways people can view the cross:

Some people see the cross as a symbol. They see the cross they automatically think Christ, Christianity, or church.

And for many people, that’s all it is – a symbol.

Others look at a cross and they see a memorial, usually at a place like a cemetery, where this picture was taken.

A third way people see a cross is simply as a fashion statement. Here’s Paris Hilton hawking her line of designer crosses.

I think it’s safe to say she doesn’t put much stock into what the cross is really all about, and that’s the fourth way we can look the cross, and that is as a…

Bridge

Here’s where we bring in the Scripture passage, which is printed on that little diagram in your bulletin.

Romans 6:23 –

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.

We’re going to be filling in that diagram as we examine this verse.

You’ll see that on the right we have God, on the left we have us, and we see that we’re separated from God on this side of the diagram.

That separation is caused by our…

Sin.

All of us have sinned. There’s no one in here who hasn’t sinned. I’ve sinned, you’ve sinned, Billy Graham has sinned, the pope has sinned, even my mother-in-law has sinned, and she’s a pretty swell lady, I gotta tell you.

You and everybody you know has sinned.

A sin, by the way, is basically anything we do, say, or think that goes against God’s Word. The Bible says do it, and we don’t do it, or the Bible says don’t do and we do it anyway.

Let’s look at the left side of the diagram first, because it describes our condition without God.

The word that goes into the first blank is…

“Wages.”

I think most everybody here knows what wages are, right? It’s what you get paid for work.

Have any of you ever gotten ripped off in your wages? Let’s say you’ve worked 40 hours but only got paid for 30.

Or you worked a bunch of overtime but the boss either didn’t pay you the overtime rate of time and a half or didn’t pay you at all.

When we don’t get what we’ve earned, we get a bit upset.

Well, we earn a spiritual wage with our…

sins. And what is that wage, according to this verse?

Death. Not just physical death. It’s spiritual death as well.

And if we’re spiritually dead when we’re physically dead, then we don’t spend eternity in heaven, we spend eternity in hell.