Riding down the freeway with Grandma, six-year-old Larry held tightly to a cold, wet can of soda pop. Larry, his grandma, mother, brother and sister had been berry picking. It had been a hot day, and because they were all tired and thirsty, they had stopped to visit Aunt Margaret on the way home. She treated them to a cold drink of soda pop, a special new kind to Larry. He liked it so much that Aunt Margaret had given him an extra can just as they were leaving. He was bouncing happy! But when his mother heard him shaking his can of pop as hard as he could, she turned to tell him more about soda pop.
“Soda pop is not to be shaken. If you do, the fizzy bubbles will keep making more and more until they are all crowding to get out all at once. If you were to open it now, POP! they would explode all over you and the inside of the car. Now you will have to wait a long while so the bubbles can calm down.”
Larry seemed to understand. He began to complain if someone bumped his arm, and he even asked Grandma to try to “drive smoother” and not to hit so many bumps since it jiggled his pop.
Minutes later everyone jumped out of the car at Grandma’s house. No one noticed that Larry had slipped behind the car. Suddenly a loud POP! was heard. Whirling around they all saw a foamy fountain of soda pop spraying over Larry’s head and shoulders. It was so funny to see his look of surprise and shock! They all forgot their manners as they laughed and laughed. Poor Larry wanted to cry. He had not obeyed the warning, and now he knew, too late, that what his mother had said was true.
How many children, and grown-ups too, are disobeying the warnings from the Bible of hell and punishment for their sins? Jesus Himself tells us more about hell than anyone else in the Bible. Someday these people will know that they, like Larry, should have listened.
His mother tried to clean up Larry a little before they started home. “I’m so embarrassed, Mommy,” he whispered. “Please don’t tell Daddy!”
Sin is like a stain too, but it is a stain on the heart rather than the soda pop stain on Larry’s clothes. It can never be hid from God and must be punished by Him as well. But God, who knew all our sins, laid them on the Lord Jesus and punished Him so that those who believe in Him will not be punished. “Christ . . . who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree” (1 Peter 2:2124). There is a heart cleansing for you that will make you so clean and pure that even God cannot find one spot. But you must tell the Lord Jesus that you need and want His cleansing. A gift is not yours until you take it. “The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:2323For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 6:23)).
Larry went home smelling like the vanilla in the creme soda, but God’s sin cleansing is complete!
ML-11/13/2005