JESUS SAVES.
Underneath it some wag had written:
GREEN STAMPS.
At first I thought to myself, "How crude and disrespectful! Why would anybody be so irreverent as to put that kind of graffiti on a billboard that obviously was expressing someone's faith?
Then I got to thinking about it.
Do you remember Green Stamps?
When you went to the grocery store or bought gasoline, the clerk would present you with a certain number of little stamps that you could lick and stick into little books. After you had collected so many books of stamps, you could take them to the S & H Green Stamp store and trade them in for merchandise.
How could those little books of stamps get you merchandise?
It turns out that participating stores placed a small "surcharge" on each product. They kept a small percentage of that "surcharge" and gave the rest to the S & H Green Stamp company, the redemption store.
In other words, you were able to obtain the merchandise because the price for the product had already been paid. You had the S & H Green Stamp book to prove it.
When I thought of that, it suddenly occurred to me, "That is exactly what Jesus has done for us. We can live eternally in the presence of God because the price for our sin had already been paid by Jesus at the cross of Calvary!"
Jesus is the source of our redemption! He saves us!
Saves us from what?
Jesus saves us from our fear of death. To a Christian, death is not a period at the end of the sentence of our life. Death is a transition to our home! When we sing "This world is not my home, I'm just a-passin' through. My home has been laid up, somewhere beyond the blue..." we are not just saying pretty rhyming words. We are expressing one of the major meanings of our salvation! When we die, we are called to our real home.
Jesus saves us from the penalty of our sins. What we earn when we sin is eternal death. That's the paycheck for sin. It means we have offended God. He cannot so much as look at sin. When Jesus became sin for us on the cross, God turned His back on His Son! Every single person who has ever lived, who lives now or whoever will live is under the curse of sin and has no hope of salvation apart from the grace of God manifested in Christ. We deserve eternal death, but in Christ we receive eternal life as a gift from God!
Jesus saves us from becoming enamored with the trappings of this life. He delivers us from putting family ahead of Him. He delivers us from putting work ahead of Him. He delivers us from putting entertainment ahead of Him. He delivers us from vain philosophies, from pagan mysticism, from arrogance, pride, hatred and anger. When Jesus saves us, He becomes the center of our lives. (If Jesus is not the center of your life, maybe you should determine whether or not you have really been saved)
Jesus saves us to a real, powerful, meaningful purpose to our lives. He becomes the hub around which the rest of the spokes and the rim of our lives revolve. He becomes the in-all, of all, by-all and through-all of everything we are, think and do.
When we stand before God with Jesus by our side, He sees us through Jesus' eyes. Before Him we then stand redeemed. The price for our sin has already been paid. We have the Holy Spirit to prove it!
That should be exciting enough to make even a Baptist shout, "Hallelujah!"
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