It was raining and the cars just ahead of us on the expressway suddenly began to slow down and swerve to the left. Then I realized there had been an accident. Since no one had stopped to help, my friend, Don, who was driving just ahead of us pulled over. I stopped behind him and turned on my warning flashers.
As we climbed out of our car, we could see that the car was resting on top of the guard rail. Cliff Galliday, the driver, had lost control of the car when he swerved to avoid hitting another car. He ran off the road onto the shoulder and ran up on top of the guard rail. There he sat with the tail end of his car jacked up in the air, his engine racing, and his back wheels spinning free at 40 or 50 m.p.h. The muffler had been knocked off and the car was making a terrible racket.
As I ran forward toward the accident, suddenly the car became completely blocked from view by a cloud of smoke. Fearfully I entered the smoke cloud knowing that there could be an explosion. I expected to see fire and could smell the raw gas. I found the front door on the driver’s side, jerked it open and shouted, “Turn off the engine!” The man seemed to hardly hear me, but he slowly reached for the key. The car back-fired as it stopped, and, sure enough, the gasoline caught on fire.
“Get out!” I shouted and ran back 10 or 15 feet. “Get out!” I shouted frantically! The flames came up around the base of his door. I ran forward and slammed his door to protect him temporarily from the flames while I figured out what to do.
Cliff was yelling something, but both Don and I were so scared that we couldn’t understand him. Later I realized that he was shouting, “Get me out of here!!”
But why didn’t Cliff just climb out? What I was too excited to notice when I opened Cliff’s door was that he was lame on both feet. He was helplessly trapped in a burning car! He was crying so frantically he could hardly be understood, “Get me out of here!”
How this reminds me of my own condition before I was saved! It is like your condition, too, if you have not yet been saved from your sins. You are trapped by your sins like Cliff in the burning car, and you are in danger of the punishment of the Lake of Fire (Rev. 20) with no way to free yourself. You are helplessly caught and in need of a Deliverer—someone else capable of rescuing you from the danger.
As I stood there trying to decide what to do, Don ran up. “What should we do?” he asked urgently.
“We had better get him out and fast!” I exclaimed.
The fire seemed to be more on the other side of the car, so we ran up and opened his door again. “There is the problem,” said Don, pointing to the braces on Cliff’s legs. We each took a shoulder and carefully pulled him out of the burning car. At a safe distance Cliff sat with a blanket wrapped around him and watched his car burn up.
Cliff was saved from an almost certain and terrible death. But how much more wonderful it is that the Lord Jesus Christ has saved me from an otherwise certain and much more terrible fate. He has saved me from the punishment of Hell for my sins by dying for me. “He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed.” Isaiah 53:55But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. (Isaiah 53:5).
But what about you? Have you been delivered from your sins and the punishment for them through trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ? If not, why not trust Him now?
ML-07/20/1980