Not long ago in one of the smaller towns of California, Jim Hines, a retired Navy man set out to go fishing. The heavy-set man of sixty-five was surefooted from spending forty years on the rolling decks of many ships.
But this morning as he crossed the little catwalk over the muddy channel, he slipped and fell on his face in the thick mud and couldn’t get out. The more he struggled, the deeper he sank in the mud.
Carlo Clerisci, a track crew foreman, was working on railroad tracks nearby. He saw Jim fall and rushed to the spot with five workers. They managed to turn him over on his back by using a crowbar. “He’d have been dead in a couple of minutes!” exclaimed Carlo. Then they waited until firemen and rescuers arrived with special equipment to lift him out of the sticky mud. He was taken to the hospital and released the next day.
A sinner without Christ is just like Jim was-helpless and sinking further down in the mire of sin “where there is no standing.” All Jim’s struggling only sank him (deeper in the mud, and it took many strong men with special equipment to save him and lift him out of the mud. But David in Psalms 40 tells of One in heaven who saved him from the mire, put his feet on a rock, and then gave him a song of praise. “He brought me up also out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet on a rock, and established my goings. And He hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God.” Psalms 40:2,32He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings. 3And he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God: many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in the Lord. (Psalm 40:2‑3).
That same One David writes of is still in heaven waiting to save you from your sinful condition. Trying to save yourself is hopeless and will end in death in the mire of sin. Won’t you trust in the living Saviour?
ML-10/05/1980