Have you ever been to a baseball game? I was raised and still live in Southern Illinois. So Ill people are, by and large, St. Louis Cardinal fans. St. Louis is only a couple hours from my home, so I have been to a countless number of games at Busch Stadium. If you don’t know, being a Cardinal fan requires me to dislike the Chicago Cubs. Now, for the sake of this post I need you to use your imagination. You are a Cardinal fan, you scored tickets to a Cards vs Cubs game, and you are on your way.
Imagine, and I do mean imagine. Wait…. You’re really going to have to expand that imagination for this. The Cubs are beating up on the Cardinals for the first 7 innings;) The score is 10 to 0. Things are looking really bad for your beloved Cards. The news is so bad that you have been brought to a moment of decision. Do you stay and watch your team lose, or do you leave so you can beat the traffic? How will you respond to the really bad news?
Let’s say you leave. You are bummed and wish your Cardinals would have played better. As you walk to your car you hear the crack of the bat and the light roar of the remaining crowd. Then, fireworks. Matt Holliday hit a solo shot over the left field wall. You missed it. Still, a comeback is not likely and you continue to the car. As you pull out your keys you hear another roar. This time, a little louder. Fireworks again. You turn on the radio to find out it’s the bottom of the 9th inning and the score is now 10 to 8 Cubs. At that very moment excitement and anger unite, “Why did we leave?!” you shout. Sure enough, Mike Shannon tells you the winning run is stepping up to the plate! It happens. A walk off 3 run bomb over the left field wall. You? In the car on the other side of the river! If you had only stayed?!
What if you had? Stayed I mean? If it was a close game you would have stayed. The “news” in the bottom of the 7th down 4 to 3 is not all that bad. You stay for that game. Say the Cardinal’s come back and win that game 5 to 4. You would be excited, and it would have been a good measure of “good news.” But you know what? That is a somewhat forgettable game. The bad news would not be that bad and therefore the good news would not be all that good. Point?
When we minimize the bad news of human sinfulness, the Good News will never seem all that good. Small view of sin “BAD NEWS” leads to a small view of the gospel “GOOD NEWS.” Consider the depth of the bad news in Eph 2:1-3 “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.” It’s the bottom of the 9th with two out and you are down infinity to nothin! Do you leave. Do you run? Do you minimize? How bout make excuses? If you do, you can never understand how incredible Good News is. You leave before the victory. Eph 2:4-10 “4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
Christian, do you see your sin as small? Well then, you will never see the Gospel as BIG!
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