’Way down South, where frost is rare and roads never freeze, pavement is often very thin-and rainfall heavy. So there is one firm rule for drivers: Never drive into water of an unknown depth!
It is tempting, particularly to younger drivers, to put on speed and charge right through the puddles and see the water crest and spray out from the car. It just seems irresistible to some.
Probably the driver we are talking about didn’t really “floor it” at the sight of the mammoth puddle across the road, but he did say to himself confidently, “My Jeep can handle that! No problem!” And he drove ahead.
Two men saw a crack in the asphalt pavement and water gushing up. They ran to warn motorists, but as they waved their arms and shouted for our driver to stop, he thought they wanted a ride. “I don’t pick up hitchhikers,” he said.
So into the “puddle” he went-and down. Down into sudden darkness, down into cold water. Ten feet deep, and sixteen feet long and wide, the hole just swallowed the Jeep.
And who ran to the rescue? The two who had been spurned as hitchhikers! Plunging into the cold, dark water, one man was able to open a door and pull the driver out. Then, forming a human chain, the two were able to lift the driver to safety.
Lots of us travel the road of life just as the Jeep driver did. Whatever comes, we are confident that we can handle it-no problem! But there are problems-great, black, deep holes ahead, and sooner or later we find ourselves “in over our heads” and facing that last terrible darkness of eternity.
Who can lift us out of darkness into light? Why, only the Lord Jesus Christ, the One who has told us about the danger, the One who warned us that “the soul that sinneth, it shall die,” and the certainty that “the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:2323For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 6:23)).
And after all the warnings were ignored and people still rushed on into destruction, He did not turn His back and say, “They refused Me—let them go!”
No, the one thing left to do was to go down Himself-down into cold, dark death and the tomb, to accomplish rescue for sinners and to be able to offer life eternal to all who would receive it.
It was “while we were yet sinners” that “Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:88But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8)). He didn’t wait for us to pull ourselves up from the hole; He knew we could never, never succeed.