How to get rid of our sin! This has been the question of the ages.
The answer can be given in a second. "They must be taken away."
Jesus, the Sin-bearer, must take them away if they are to be taken
away to stay.
When the Standard Oil Company was trying to refine petroleum there
was a substance they could not dispose of. It was black and sticky.
They could not burn it, it would not burn; it made a mighty stench.
They could not run it into the river, because it would kill the fish.
So they offered a big reward to any chemist who could solve the
problem.
Chemists took it and worked day and night on the problem. One day, a
chemist walked into the office of John D. Rockefeller and laid down a
pure white substance which we now know as paraffin.
Your heart is like that black substance. You cannot make it white,
but Jesus can make is as white as snow. Look and listen. I will show
you the good news. Prepare a piece of cardboard twelve inches square,
have on it the outline of a heart with a big black dot in the center
of it, and write over and under it "My Sins."
Hold this up before the audience as a gospel X-ray photograph of the
heart. Sin is an affair of the heart. It is a bad heart condition.
The gospel offers the only cure. It comes down from heaven, Jesus
brought it with him and gave it to the world.
Prepare also another card of the same size containing the words, "The
blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin."
One night Martin Luther had a dream, and he thought he saw himself
standing before the judgment-bar. Looking into the open book he saw
opposite his name a fearful lot of sins. Some were sins of
commission, others sins of omission. Some were deliberate sins,
others sins of thoughtlessness.
Satan, standing at his side, said: "Behold your record [Hold up the
heart]. There is no hope for you." But just then he saw to his great
joy, written above the crimson stain, the words, "The blood of Jesus
Christ cleanseth from all sin." Now place the second card over the
first, and the sins have all disappeared, and are under the blood
forever. This is the way to take away sin, so it is taken away
forever.
In old Scotland, in the lake district, they tell a quaint little
story about a lonely little pool of water on the mountainside of Lock
Lomond called the Fairy Loch. If you look into it you will see a
great many colors on the surface of the water due to the varied
nature of the minerals which form the bottom. There is a legend which
says that fairies used to dye things from these waters for the
people.
One day a shepherd brought a black sheep to the Fairy Loch and asked
the fairies to dye it white. This the fairies could not do. They
could dye white any color, but not the black. This was an
impossibility, so in their despair they threw all their colors into
the Loch at one time. This gives the Loch the colorful appearance
now. No fairy or any human power can change the black of sin into the
white of righteousness.
The pool of life is full of these fancy colors that declare that they
have the power to change black to white, but they are only bubbles on
the surface. Don't trust them. This is a matter for eternity. God
alone can change black into white. The blood of Jesus Christ takes
all sin away.
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