After a while I gave up trying to read those little blurbs that were next to the senior pictures in a high school yearbook. In our school, the seniors got to write their own, and it was usually in cryptic abbreviations so they could get in as many words as possible. Now, those abbreviations refer to something meaningful to the person who wrote it; some important people, some important memories, "Oh, yeah, sure." But most of those blurbs are like hopelessly cryptic. I guess you had to be there in order to understand what they're writing about, right?
But I understood Scott's when I read it. He was one of the top scholars in our recent graduating class; honored many times over. At the end of his blurb he had these words, "Miss U Mom." His Mom was a teacher at the high school. She died of cancer in his sophomore year, and it added a note of sadness to the joy of graduation to know that Scott's Mom wasn't there to see him on his night of high honor. She, with so many others, was taken by that monster we call cancer. You know what? In a way, I'm a cancer victim too. So are you.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Cancer That's Killing You."
Our word for today from the Word of God is in James 1, and I'll read verse 15 today. "After desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and sin when it is full grown gives birth to death." This is a description of a killer disease - a spiritual disease - called sin, and we all have it. Romans 3:23 in the Bible says, "Everyone has sinned and come short of the glory of God." So, it's a disease we all have, and frankly it does work very much like cancer.
All of our cells are kind of programmed to do a certain job within the body. They sort of answer to central intelligence, and there's a master plan built into our cells; the millions of cells in your body. It's built right into the control center in that cell, and that's why some of them know that it's time to rush to a certain spot in your body when you get injured, or they build a wall around an infection so it won't spread. That's their job.
But one day one cell says, "Forget the master plan; I'm going to do as I please." And it no longer takes orders from central intelligence, goes off on its own, begins to multiply, and ultimately attacks a vein or a vital organ, and then the young man writes in a yearbook, "Miss U Mom."
Inside you and me is the spiritual cancer called sin. It's really made up of that middle letter of the word - "I" - SIN. The master plan is that I live for God and I live for others. But I've chosen to go off on my own and pretty much like the song says, "I'll do it my way." That's true of me, too.
That disease kills the people that we cut with our temper, it kills closeness, it ruins the reality and the meaning of sex, love, and families. And we all have it! We have this disease. James 1:15 says, "When it's fully conceived it gives birth to death. There's a wall between God and us. I probably didn't have to tell you that wall was there. I mean, you can already feel it. If it's there when we die, it's there forever. Cancer uncontrolled will kill your body; sin uncontrolled sends you and me to hell.
Your biggest problem in your life isn't death or family or finances. It's sin. This is your deadly condition. But listen to Jesus saying, "I let it kill me so it doesn't have to kill you." See, Jesus took all the dying for this spiritual cancer of sin when He died on the cross. There is a cure for the killer in us.
I want to invite you today on behalf of Jesus to go to the place where you get the cure. It is at the cross of Jesus Christ, where the price was paid. A blood cure! His blood is the only cure. And he invites you today to go there and say, "Jesus, I'm Yours."
Join me today at our website, would you, because I've laid out there how you can begin your personal relationship with Jesus and know you are forgiven. It's ANewStory.com. You could open your life to the Savior today and be cured of the sin that otherwise is so deadly.