Rescued At Last

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CrossPointe Community Church
P O Box 126
Chippewa Lake, OH 44215

SCRIPTURE

I waited patiently for the Lord to help me,
and he turned to me and heard my cry.
2 He lifted me out of the pit of despair,
out of the mud and the mire.
He set my feet on solid ground
and steadied me as I walked along.
3 He has given me a new song to sing,
a hymn of praise to our God.
Many will see what he has done and be amazed.
They will put their trust in the Lord.
Psalm 40:1-3

For no one can ever be made right with God by doing what the law commands. The law simply shows us how sinful we are. But now God has shown us a way to be made right with Him without keeping the requirements of the law, as was promised in the writings of Moses and the prophets long ago. We are made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ. And this is true for everyone who believes, no matter who we are. For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard. Yet God, in His grace, freely makes us right in His sight. He did this through Christ Jesus when He freed us from the penalty for our sins. For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed His life, shedding His blood. This sacrifice shows that God was being fair when He held back and did not punish those who sinned in times past, for He was looking ahead and including them in what He would do in this present time. God did this to demonstrate His righteousness, for He himself is fair and just, and He makes sinners right in His sight when they believe in Jesus.

Can we boast, then, that we have done anything to be accepted by God? No, because our acquittal is not based on obeying the law. It is based on faith. So we are made right with God through faith and not by obeying the law.
Romans 3:20-28

SERMON

Rescued At Last

Randy K’Meyer

October 1993, Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Three construction workers and their boss in a bar after work. Topic of conversation: Bad odors. You know the ones: rotten eggs, skunk scent, what’s your favorite? And the boss says, “The worst odor has got to be an outhouse.” He was so convinced he was right that offered $10,000 to anyone who would spend an entire night in an outhouse.

How many of you would have done it?

By the way, did I mention that in order to collect the 10 g’s you would have to spend the entire night lowered into the pit of the outhouse? Now how many of you would have done it? One of those construction workers said that he would gladly dive head-first into that stuff for the $10,000.

And so it was that at sundown on October 16, 1993, his two co-workers and his boss lowered their adventurous friend into the slimy, smelly, stench of a well-used outhouse. After about two hours, in which he said he was tempted to toss his cookies many times, the guy said, “The smell sort of grew on him.” Sunrise the next morning, the same three who took turns staying awake all night to ensure that the prisoner remained such, threw their perfumed buddy a rope and hauled him out. As the boss handed over a $10,000 check, he noted his employee just couldn’t wipe . . . the smile off his face.

STOP RIGHT THERE and think about this. If that would have been you who had just spent an entire night in an outhouse what would you have done with that rope? You don’t really need to imagine what you’d do in similar circumstances. You would have immediately grabbed the rope and said, “Pull me up . . . now!”

That story is an excellent illustration of what Psalm 40 and Romans 3 are both talking about.

Paul, for his part, was going to great lengths in the first three chapters of his letter to the Romans to say that without Christ the entire human race is in the pit of a smelly old outhouse; that we are wallowing in our own sewage; and it’s called SIN!

Sin is a perpetual state of being into which we are born, whereby, we insist on our right to sit on the throne (no pun intended). “Don’t tell me what to do, I know what’s best for me. I’ll live life my way, it’s my way or the highway.” This I’ll live my life as I choose manifests itself in many different behaviors that run contrary to God’s perfect will for our lives.

I know, we don’t like to think about our sinfulness. Who wants to take the time to think about all the ways we sin against God? For when we do take the time to reflect upon our own sinfulness, we feel bad ourselves, we wonder how we could have done what we did. We know that most people think of us as reasonably kind, well-meaning, and helpful people. However; when we stop to think about ourselves, we know what we have done in the past, and further, we know what we are capable of.

Just imagine how we would feel if the Chippewa Lake Times came out with an article tomorrow exposing all the things we have done that have caused hurt to other people, and just as importantly, hurt to ourselves. We would feel guilty and ashamed.

And we should! The Bible says we are guilty before a holy and just God. I say holy because God is free of filth and sin; and will not put Himself in the position of being contaminated by our stuff. I say just because God is just in exacting a penalty upon human beings for breaking His law; and the just penalty is eternal separation from God. For as Paul writes the Romans, “The wages of sin is death” (6:23).

The bad news in this passage is there is a stench in the nostrils of God and there is absolutely nothing we can do to remove it!

But the good news is that what we couldn’t do, God did!

For the Bible also says that God loves those same filthy, sinful human beings so much that He paid the penalty for us when His only Son, Jesus, humbly allowed those same human beings to nail Him to a cross where He suffered and died for our sins! Though He was clean, He died a sinner’s death by taking upon Himself the combined pollution of all humanity in one fell swoop.

That is how God came to our rescue! He threw us a rope that landed at the foot of a bloodstained cross and He invites us to tie it around our waist and ask Him to pull us out of the muck and the mire.

And when we decide to do so, He will pull us out of the foul-smelling darkness of our own filth into the sweet-smelling aroma of His mercy!

In an old Humphrey Bogart movie, he is shot down over Europe during WWII. In order to escape the Germans, Bogart disguises himself as a Priest. As he slowly makes his way from village to village in an attempt to make it back, a Catholic altar boy asks him to celebrate the mass. Bogart has this profound line as he answers, “I’m sorry kid, their sins will have to wait.”
“No! the boy replies, “Their sins can’t wait; their sin is heavy, the people are tired. But God can lift their burden, then the people will be free!” The kid was right.

So was the Psalmist:

I waited patiently for the Lord to help me, and He turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the pit of despair, out of the mud and the mire. He set my feet on solid ground and steadied me as I walked along. He has given me a new song to sing, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see what He has done and be amazed. They will put their trust in the Lord.
Psalm 40:1-3

My question then today is a simple one: “Have you taken hold of the rope?”

Please know, and know for sure, that He is the only way out of the mud and the mire. “There is salvation in no other name than the name of Jesus” (Acts 4:12). If I might say it respectfully, it’s going to be His way or the highway.

Yet there are many who are attempting to extract themselves from the mess they are in. Trying to claw and climb their way out of the pit by doing this, trying to refrain from doing that; being a good, kind, thoughtful person, hoping that in the end, when the bell tolls up yonder, they will have enough brownie points stored up that God will welcome them with open arms. But Paul says, “No one can ever be made right in God’s sight by doing what the Law commands” (Romans 3:20).

Rather, “People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed His life, shedding His blood” (Romans 3:25).

Christ has thrown us a rope! Have you grabbed the rope, tied it around your waist and hollered, “Pull me up!”?

You see, Paul is saying that there is a difference between believing in something and trusting in the same thing. I believe that Jesus died so that my sins could be forgiven, I can see it says it right there in the Bible. But do you trust Him enough to tie that rope around you so He can haul you up out of the pit of your own sewage?

Once we do, He’ll pull us right out and put our feet on solid ground and we’ll never have to worry about falling in there again.

Am I saying that once Christ pulls us out of the miry clay that we’ll never sin again? By no means; we are never going to get away from it; sin, that is. It is part of the human condition and will follow us around until the day we die. Like the Peanuts character who always had the dark cloud following him around, so Paul says, “We all fall short of the glory of God and continue to sin.” That’s our human condition till the day we die.

However; Christ has taken care of our position with respect to God. He has rescued us from the law of sin and death. We are His children forever. That position never changes. We are forgiven forever.

Wouldn’t you like to go to bed tonight and know that all your sins are forgiven? My guess is that there are some here who if you’ll accept Christ will sleep better because you will know that all of your sins are forgiven in Christ.

But I am asking you, ‘Have you ever reached the point in your life when made a decision to admit to God that you need His help; that you can’t save yourself?’

When it comes to making decisions, Columbia researcher Sheena Iyengar has found that the average person makes about 70 decisions every day. That’s 25,500 decisions a year, or 1,788,500 decisions in 70 years.

A noted philosopher once said, “Life is a sum of all your choices.” You put all of those 1,788,500 choices together, and that’s who you are. ¹

Oh I know making a decision can sometimes be difficult. One psychotherapist recently noted that about 90% of her clients suffer from an inability to make decisions because there are so many choices in today’s world. She says, the mantra she hears over and over again is, “I have too many choices and I can’t decide what to do. And I am afraid I am going to make the wrong decision.” ²

But I am begging you, don’t delay or get this decision wrong because this is the most important decision a human being could ever make! For a decision for Christ will lead to positive outcomes, in this life and the next.

There can only be two responses to this kind of message:

First, if you haven’t taken the rope that landed at the foot of the cross, then take the rope.

And if you already have, rededicate living your life to the One who rescued your soul from the pit.

Arthur Gordon, who before he died was an editor of Guidepost Magazine, writes, This morning, our big cat, Oreo, (so-named because he is a handsome black and white) goes through a familiar ritual at the back door. Oreo has been outside for a while and he really wants to come in. So I open the door a little and wait. But will he come in? No, he won’t. He stops and lowers his head suspiciously as if I were some deadly enemy.

“Come on, Oreo,” I say impatiently. He sits down thoughtfully and begins to wash his face with one paw; maddening. “Oreo,” I say, “I give you all your food, I supply all your needs. If you do anything in return, I don’t know what it is. Now I am personally inviting you into my house, so come on in!” Oreo puts one foot across the threshold, then draws it back; he looks out across the yard with some remote, unfathomable expression. He still doesn’t come in.

“Oreo, I’m not going to stand here forever. If you don’t come in, I’m going to close this door, this is your last chance.” I start to close the door slowly. Does he come in? No, he sits there exercising his free will or something. He’ll come when it suits him, not before. He figures I’ll be patient; so far he’s right.

God made cats; He also made people. I wonder how He feels when he stands at the door and waits and waits. I think I know. ³

1 John Ortberg, All the Places to Go (Tyndale House, 2015), page 8
https://www.preachingtoday.com/illustrations/2015/april/7042015.html

2 Tess Brigham, I’ve been a ‘millennial therapist’ for more than 5 years—and this is their No. 1 complaint, CNBC.com (7-2-19) https://www.preachingtoday.com/illustrations/2019/august/biggest-millennial-struggle-decision-fatigue.html