Lili walked along gracefully with a gourd full of milk balanced on her head. Mi-Mi, who lived on the other side of the village, gave her pennies for milk delivery every morning. Lili’s head was full of ideas of what she would like to buy with those pennies. But somehow, there were never enough. If only she had a few more pennies....
She stopped by the pond and lifted the gourd down for a peek inside. No, it was not quite full, and more milk would mean more pennies. Mi-Mi always measured the milk carefully and paid a fair price. Lili knew what she could do to get a few more pennies for her milk.
Lili had probably never heard of the Ten Commandments. Have you? Can you remember the tenth one? It says, “Thou shalt not covet” (Exodus 20:1717Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor's. (Exodus 20:17)). Covet means to really, really want something you don’t need or that belongs to someone else. As Lili stood there doing nothing but thinking about what more pennies could buy, she was breaking the tenth commandment. If you have had the same kind of thoughts as she had, you have broken God’s commandment, and that is sin. You are guilty before God, and He says the penalty is death.
Lili soon arrived at Mi-Mi’s door and carefully lifted her gourd down, full to the brim. Mi-Mi came to the door with her jug and a cloth to strain the milk.
“Lili,” she said, “the children complained yesterday that the milk was watery. Did you add water?”
Lili remembered perfectly how she had scooped up handfuls of pond water into the gourd, but she answered, “Oh no, Mi-Mi, I wouldn’t do that!”
But as Mi-Mi strained the milk into her jug, she jumped in surprise. “Polliwogs!” she cried. “There are polliwogs in the milk! How did these get in?”
Both Mi-Mi and Lili knew exactly how those polliwogs got into the milk, and Lili didn’t get very many pennies that day. She had lost and not gained by her trick of adding pond water to the milk and then breaking another commandment by lying. But that is not the end of Lili’s story. It could have one of two endings.
If those sins remain on Lili’s heart and in God’s record of her life until she stands guilty before God, she will have to pay for her sins forever in the awful place God calls hell.
But if Lili comes to the Saviour of sinners, the Lord Jesus Christ who shed His precious blood to make her clean and remove every stain of sin from God’s record of her life, her eternity will be joyfully spent in heaven.
One of the same two endings will be true of your life. Either you will keep your own sins unforgiven forever, or you will be one of those who will thank Jesus forever for washing your sins away. He is ready to forgive you. Are you ready to come to Him? Right now?
ML-04/05/2009