1. Illus: David Seamands in his book, Healing Grace, shares one of those good news- bad news stories--this one about a farmer who had experienced several bad years on his farm.
   1. Finally, the farmer went into town one day to see the manager of his bank.
      1. "I've got some good news and some bad news to tell you," the farmer began. "Which would you like to hear first?"
      2. "Why don't you give me the bad news first and get it over with," the banker replied.
      3. "OK. With the bad drought we've experienced and the inflation in farm prices that's resulted, I won't be able to pay anything on my mortgage this year--nothing on the principle, nothing on the interest."
      4. "Well, that is pretty bad," the banker grimaced.
      5. "Oh, it gets worse," the farmer replied. "I also won't be able to pay anything on the loan I got from you for the machinery I bought-- nothing on the principle, nothing on the interest."
      6. "Wow, that is bad news!" the banker groaned.
      7. "Oh," the farmer replied, "it's even worse than that. You remember I also borrowed from you to buy seeds and fertilizer and other supplies. Well, I can't pay anything on that loan either--principle or interest."
      8. "That's awful!" the banker exclaimed. "Enough of the bad news. Tell me what the good news is!"
      9. To which the farmer replied with a smile, "The good news is that I intend to keep on doing business with you!"
   2. With friends like that, who needs enemies!
   3. Ah, but if we can turn the tables on this good news-bad news story for a moment, in the midst of the bad news of our fallen and messed up world there is some very good news tonight--I like the way Seamans puts it: "The good news is . . . that in spite of our total moral bankruptcy, God keeps on doing business with us." (p 108)
   4. I like that!
      1. Because for the last three evenings we have heard God declare, "In spite of the bad news, I am not Someone to be afraid of--I am Someone to be a friend of."
      2. "In the midst of all the bad news, you don't have to run from Me," He cries out over and over again in this Book, "you can run to Me."
      3. Illus: A few years ago when I was a teenager, a popular singing group from Australia called the BeeGees composed and recorded a smash hit entitled, "Run to Me..." ("Run to me whenever you're lonely, run to me..." I can't even remember the words but the run to me I cannot forget!)
      4. Well, long before that composition caught the ear and the fancy of the young, Someone else--Someone with a capital S--stepped into the midst of earth's young and old with THE VERY GOOD NEWS of the very same message: "Run to ME."
      5. Illus: In fact read how He puts it in Matthew 11:28 (p 945 )--
         1. Who's speaking here? Jesus Christ.
         2. Well, what right does He have to say that on behalf of God? Read v. 27!
         3. I.e., I am speaking on behalf of God the Father of all humanity.
      6. "RUN to Me, COME to Me, and I will give you what you long for most."
      7. In any culture, in any nation--rest and peace are what human hearts want most.
   5. REVIEW
      1. "Run to Me, come to Me"--the good news invitation of God offers a FOREVER FRIENDSHIP to every man and woman on earth tonight- -that's what we discovered in our OPENING NIGHT together in the NeXt Millennium Seminar.
      2. Then the second evening we discovered that in order for relationships to mean anything and for Love to be Love--it must not only give us the right to say YES, but it must also give us the right to say NO. And because of that freedom, the universe was plunged into war and pain when the closest angel friend God had revolted against His great Law of Love and duped the human race to join him in that rebellion. We did. But good news--God Himself came down to live with us and die for us--incontrovertible proof that in spite of our moral bankruptcy--like the farmer--God intends to keep on doing business with us!
      3. The third evening we noted that not only is God our friend, but in fact His great Law of Love (the Ten Commandments) was designed from the beginning to protect every friendship and relationship that we value! A God of Love provides the very protection we need for our relationships.
   6. But the story isn't over--and unfortunately, tonight's chapter is truly a good news-bad news story.
      1. Because after three lectures of predominantly good news here in our NeXt Millennium Seminar, we must now inject some bad news.
      2. Nobody is trying to spoil the party.
      3. But as our news media like to say, as they do in this nation, it's time we take a "reality check."
      4. And the reality that faces us tonight is VERY BAD NEWS indeed!
   
   
2. One line from the book of Ezekiel is all it takes to spell out that BAD, BAD NEWS.
   1. Ezekiel 18:20 (p 817 )
      1. No sense beating around the bush, Ezekiel--and he doesn't!--"The soul who sins shall die!"
      2. Period.
      3. Illus: The little proverb is absolutely right: "The two things in life you can count on are death and taxes."
      4. In that order! Because some people may have been able to cheat their way out of paying their fare share of taxes, but they'll never be able to cheat death.
      5. It is the ultimate bad news, and in this terse, single line it is guaranteed to every human being who sins.
      6. Illus: My brother Greg is also a pastor (Union College, Lincoln, Neb) and has a warped sense of humor and has passed it on to me--but I still love him anyway!
         1. He taught me to enjoy the work of a cartoonist who used to be very popular in this nation--a young man named Gary Larson, who through his one-frame cartoons called The Far Side had the uncanny ability of capturing the zaniness and craziness of human life through the eyes and lips of cows and deer and other such domestic creatures.
         2. Greg and I enjoy dropping in at card shops in malls and laughing our way through the Far Side greeting card rack.
         3. Our favorite is a picture of two deer standing on their hind legs and talking together like two human beings in the forest.
         4. One of them is staring down at his furry chest upon which is emblazoned a giant circular target with smaller and smaller rings ending in a bulls-eye right over the deer's heart.
         5. The other deer takes one look at it all and then quips, "Bummer of a [for translators, "what a terrible"] birthmark, Hal."
         6. Of all the luck, to be a deer named Hal, born with a birthmark in the shape of a bulls-eye right over your heart--you'll be the delight of every hunter in the forest! "Shoot me right here!"
         7. "Bummer of a birthmark, Hal."
      7. Ezekiel couldn't be clearer--every soul that sins is marked with a bright red circular bulls-eye right over the heart--a sitting duck or deer for the hunter named Death.
      8. "The soul who sins shall die"--not might, not maybe, but WILL.
      
   2. But after the bad news once again some GOOD NEWS--if you don't sin, you won't die!
      1. Romans 6:23 (p 1089)
      2. Sin pays a wage, and that wage is death, eternal death.
      3. But good news in the midst of this bad news--because if death is the wage you get for sinning, then it follows that if you don't sin, you shouldn't earn the wage of death, and you shouldn't die! Right?
      4. No bummer of a birthmark for you!
      5. If....... you haven't sinned.
   3. So how many of us are off the hook tonight and live without the bulls-eye birthmark?
      1. I wished you hadn't asked.
      2. Because now we're back to some more BAD NEWS again!
      3. Romans 3:23 (p 1087)
      4. Do you realize how many are included in "ALL"?
      5. It's actually easier to ask the question, how many are excluded in the word "ALL"? ANS: Zero, nada, nema, none, no one is left out!
      6. Which being interpreted means that every single one of us here tonight gathered around this world beneath the electronic eye of these global satellites--ALL of us--no matter our language or our culture or our age or our gender or our education or our income or our address or our lineage or our religion or our philosophy--ALL of us have sinned.
      7. Which also means that ALL of us, just like poor Hal the deer, have a giant red circular bulls-eye straight over our hearts--sitting ducks and deer are we ALL for the stalking hunter named Death.
      8. "The soul who sins shall die. For the wages of sin is death. And all have sinned."
   4. So what is it--this one word that is common to those three verses--what is sin?
      1. There is a very simple definition of "sin" in this Book that opens the window on a breath-taking portrait, and I must share it with you!
      2. I John 3:4 (p 1169)
      3. You couldn't write a more succinct and cogent definition of sin than that-- "sin is lawlessness."
      4. Illus: By the way, as we saw in our last lecture, that was the very word Sir Arnold Joseph Toynbee used in predicting when a civilization is about to collapse and be destroyed from the inside out! Indicator number six that we noted carefully was the presence of a state of lawlessness.
      5. I.e., the state of life tonight on this planet is in fact a state of sin, for "sin is lawlessness."
      6. And what is that?
      7. Illus: Let's go back again to our last lecture for a moment: We discovered that at the heart of God's great Law of Love--remember this?--at their heart the Ten Commandments really are all about relationship--
         1. They are a portrait and protection of every relationship possible to a human being--our relationship with God and our relationship with our neighbors and even our relationship with ourselves--
         2. Every human interpersonal relationship is promoted and protected in God's Ten Commandments.
      8. Now, that being the case, it then follows, does it not, that sin (or lawLESSness) becomes anything that damages or breaks the relationships portrayed in the heart of the Law.
      9. "Sin is lawlessness"--and Law is about relationships--all relationships--but ultimately our relationship with God Himself.
   5. Which is why sin isn't only about the heartaches we cause ourselves--sin is also about the heartache we cause God.
      1. Look at Isaiah 59:1-3 (p 715) and another very relational portrait of sin.
      2. Sin (notice that the listing in v. 3 is from the Ten Commandments) is anything that cuts off my relationship with God.
      3. PLEASE NOTE IT CAREFULLY When we sin, God doesn't reject us and cut Himself off from us. Sin by it's very nature is our rejection of God, out cutting ourselves off from Him!
      4. When you sin, you cut God off from you.
      5. Because WE're the ones who hang up the phone on GOD, WE're the ones who slam the door on HIM, WE're the ones who run away from HIM, WE'RE the ones that trample HIS portrait.
   
   
3. And what does God do? Dust off His hands and mutter, "Good riddance to bad rubbish"? Not on your life!
   1. Here's SOME MORE VERY GOOD NEWS for our very bad news!
   2. Want to see what God does? Look what He did the very first time His first two human friends sinned and cut Him off! Genesis 3 (p 3)
      1. We read the tragic story last time--the story of Adam and Eve, the first parents of the human race, being duped by that fallen angel into joining him in his rebellion against God and His Law.
      2. And having broken His command, Adam and Eve rejected His friendship, severing their relationship with Him by running away!
      3. I.e., they took the portrait of a loving and trustworthy God and threw it to the ground and then ran for all they were worth.
      4. But note carefully the response of their Creator Friend and God.
         1. Read vv 8-9.
         2. GOD COMES IN SEARCH OF THE RUNAWAYS.
      5. And what we hear at the beginning can be heard all the way through the corridors of this long and tortured history of earth that follows Genesis 3.
      6. "Where are you? Where are you? Where are you?"
      7. Over and over and over again throughout the pages of this Book echoes the repetitious cry of God in search of His rebel, runaway children.
      8. Turn to the message of any prophet, read the story of any hero or any villain in the Bible, and in between the lines you will hear the call of the God who comes down in the cool of the evening or in the dark of the night or in the blaze of the noonday--always, always, always in search of us runaway, rebel sinners.
      9. We incurred a great debt with God, but He continued to do business with us.
   3. But it is not enough for God to come running after us, as He did that evening the primeval Garden of Eden.
      1. Because once He catches up to us, what's He going to do?
      2. We've broken His great Law of Love--Adam and Eve and you and me.
      3. We've thrown down His portrait and put our own up instead.
      4. We've jumped ship, we've switched sides.
      5. And now mimicking the arch-enemy we even worship ourselves.
      6. Which puts God in between the horns of a most terrible dilemma!
         1. He cannot abrogate or set aside the ten commandments, His own eternal Law of Love, any more than He could set aside Himself, because His commandments are an expression of His own character of love and why would Love want to get rid of Love?
         2. Impossible--that would be like God trying to destroy His own portrait.
         3. But then shall He destroy His earth children who've fallen for the enemy's deception?
         4. Such a choice is untenable for Love.
         5. Then how shall He save us and still uphold His Law which is an expression of His own character? How shall the penalty for human sin, how shall the wages for human sinners be paid?
         6. In short, how can God be true to Himself as a God of Law and yet be true to His children as a God of Love?
   4. In the cool of that Garden evening Love announces a decision.
   5. And the "BADDEST" NEWS IN ALL THE WORLD IS MET BY THE "GOODEST" NEWS IN ALL THE UNIVERSE!
      1. Read Genesis 3:8-10.
      2. But on our way to the very good news, there it is--the BAD NEWS of the tragic truth about the end result all sin--SIN CREATES IN US A FEAR OF GOD.
         1. Sin reverses the great truth about God--sin deceives us into believing that God is NOT Someone to be a friend of, He is Somebody to be AFRAID of! He is NOT Someone to run TO, He is Someone to run FROM.
         2. And so Adam and Eve fell for sin's lie and they ran from God in fear.
         3. And ever since their fall and flight, sin has told that lie about God a billion times over and over.
         4. Illus: I have stood in the holy shrines of every major world religion--and categorically I can tell you that all religion worships in the shadows of that fear and dread--even Christianity.
         5. Because no matter how hard we try, sin keeps injecting its poisonous guilty fear of God into the human psyche.
         6. And for all of those who brashly, flippantly ignore God and declare their freedom from His fear--if the truth were known-- and it is--such boasting nearly always cloaks a heart that is in denial over its own guilt and fears.
         7. Whistling in the dark may momentarily lift the spirits, but it never banishes the dark!
      3. Reread v. 10.
      4. The words must have broken the heart of God--what blow could be more bitter than when His two newly created children fell for the hissing lie of the deceiver and actually cast their vote and allegiance for Satan--and now so quickly reflect their new master.
      5. Rejecting God they ran from Him.
   6. What is a heartbroken God to do?
      1. Read Genesis 3:9-13.
      2. (v. 11--gone their robes of innocence and light--now they stand in the nakedness of guilt!)
      3. Illus: Have you noticed how very human it is for us these days to play the BLAME GAME?
         1. Nothing's ever our fault anymore.
         2. Illus: It's the government's fault, it's our public education's fault, it's my parents' fault, it's my boss's fault, it's my kids' fault, it's my wife's fault, it's the wealthy's faulty, it's the poor's fault....ad nauseam.
         3. It's always somebody else's fault, have you noticed?
         4. And we're always the self-pitying victim, aren't we?
      4. Well, Genesis 3 makes it embarrassingly clear that we come by it naturally and honestly.
      5. Because sin always results in SELF-JUSTIFICATION!
      6. Sin shatters the portrait of someone else and then quickly rears its ugly head to justify itself for damaging that relationship.
      7. And it all began with Lucifer--who hissed to Eve, "It's all God's fault!"
      8. And once poisoned by his original sin, Adam and Eve can only ape their new master!
      9. And so God comes to Adam--and Adam's instant self-protecting response: Well, God, the WOMAN....YOU gave to me--she made me do it. (How creative, Adam, to nail both God and Eve in one breath! As if you had no self-control in the first place! I never believe a man who tries to tell me that it was the woman who led him into sin. Rubbish!)
      10. But God plays along with Adam's new sin-prompted self-centeredness and turns to the woman--and just like man, she's instantly ready to play the blame game: Who me? not me? then who? "The devil made me do it!"
      11. And so God now plays along with Eve's new sin-prompted self- centeredness and turns to the Serpent--who needs no introduction to God--and so God now asks no questions of the devil!
          1. That Adam and Eve might be duped by the brilliant mind of the fallen rebel--God allows for that.
          2. But both He and Lucifer already know that Lucifer has no one to blame but himself for his own deluded fall.
          3. So God asks no questions--He quietly makes a pronouncement.
          4. And when God speaks to the Serpent, He brands the symbol Satan usurped to deceive Eve, and then announces for the first time on earth a divine strategy to meet the human emergency-- read vv. 14,15.
          5. "I'm going to create an inbred dissonance between you, Satan, and My fallen human children--enmity--a conscience that will resist you, that will flash within them a numinous reminder that they were never created to be your subjects--enmity--a deep inner sense that they were born children of the King, not slaves of the devil!"
          6. "And what is more--you will sow your seeds of evil and rebellion on this planet, but I will send a Seed--a capital S Seed--that one day will be planted in the womb of woman--and when He is grown up, you will bruise His heel--you will wound Him--but He will crush your head--He will destroy your reign forever and ever!"
   7. And when God is through speaking, the story of Genesis 3 ends with a most cryptic line that offers a crimson hint to what the coming Seed must do--read v. 21.
      1. How, I ask you, could there be "tunics of skin" in a perfect Garden, where there is no death? Where would God find animal skins to cover the nakedness of Adam and Eve?
      2. The answer is obvious--the first death on earth came when the life of an innocent creature had to be sacrificed in order to cover the guilty nakedness of man and woman.
      3. It is the first cryptic hint of the infinite crimson price God Himself would one day pay in order to save this fallen human race.
   8. H. In fact, millennia later the divine prediction of Genesis 3 is illuminated by the prophecy of Isaiah 53 (p 710), 700 years B.C.
      1. Of whom does this ancient prophecy speak?
      2. Read vv. 4-7.
      3. Who is this Sufferer? This Victim? This Sacrificial Lamb?
      4. Who is this for Whom verse 6 became true? "And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all."
         1. "Iniquity"--another English word for "sin."
         2. "Sin"--another word for "lawlessness."
         3. "And the Lord has laid on Him the lawlessness of us all."
         4. And what is the penalty or wage of sin and lawlessness?
         5. Death, eternal death.
         6. "And the Lord has laid on Him the lawlessness of us all."
         7. How many have sinned, how many human beings in the history of this planet have had the bulls-eye of death right over their hearts?
         8. "All have sinned."
         9. Which means "the Lord has laid on Him the sinful lawlessness of the entire human race."
      5. Who is this Sufferer, this Victim, this sacrificial Lamb?
      6. The New Testament leaves not the shadow of a doubt as to whom this prophecy pointed! I Peter 2:21-25 (p 1163)
   
   
4. Illus: Come with me now to that moment of sheer and naked terror, the moment Christ died upon the cross.
   1. It is recorded in all four gospels, but read it with me from the most dramatic of the four accounts--Mark 15 (p 987).
      1. It cannot be embellished by poet's pen or speaker's tongue--the story of the crucifixion of Christ must simply be read--read vv. 22-34.
      2. Illus: I have heard human screams in my lifetime.
         1. I have heard my children scream on occasion.
         2. And I've heard the muffled scream of human pain behind closed doors as I have traversed down the sceptic hallways of a hospital.
         3. But never in my life have I ever been witness to a scream of such naked terror: "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?"
      3. Illus: Oh, I have heard those words before, "My God!"
         1. Whenever another airline tragedy occurs and the ill-fated plane with its passengers crashes to earth, government investigators immediately begin searching the wreckage and debris for the "black box" (which incidently is orange).
         2. For in that box are the protected recordings of the final transmissions between the pilot and cockpit and the control tower.
         3. And as voyeuristic as we the public are, the news media cater to our taste for disaster and replay the final transmissions during the evening news.
         4. And there on the screen we will read the transcribed words, the final words between the pilot and the tower...words that often end with the cry, "My God...."....and the click of termination of transmission at the fatal moment of impact.
      4. "My God, My God"--is that what we have here, simply the anguished scream of imminent death?
      5. Illus: Or is it the cry of human pain? I have here in my hands a copy of the Journal of the American Medical Association, sent to me with a note from my friend Dr. Loren Hamel, university physician: "Dwight, I thought you'd be interested in the cover story."
         1. I was indeed--since on the cover was a picture of Jesus surrounded by Roman soldiers, and inside the article, "On the Physical Death of Jesus Christ."
         2. Collaborated by three authors--a physician, a minister and an anatomical artist--the article meticulously researches the final 24 hours of Christ's life and death.
         3. Illus: Show on screen artist's portrayals from the article, while I quote conclusions as to the physiological causes of death: "The actual cause of death by crucifixion was multifactorial and varied somewhat with each case, but the two most prominent causes probably were hypovolemic shock and exhaustion asphyxia. Other possible contributing factors included dehydration, stress-induced arrhythmias, and congestive heart failure with the rapid accumulation of pericardial and perhaps leural effusions ....The actual cause of Jesus' death...may have been...a fatal cardia arrhythmia [which] may have accounted for the apparent catastrophic terminal event." (Which I think is medicalese for saying He died!)
      6. But as well-researched as this article is, the gospel accounts make it painfully clear that the death of Jesus Christ was far more than a physiological and anatomical event!
      7. The terror of that anguished cry from the middle cross cannot be muted.
      8. For something desperate and dreadful is happening to the heart of Jesus.
      9. "My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?"
      10. "And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all."
   2. My friends, the horror of Calvary's abandonment is the matchless story of God Himself paying the crimson price for the lawless rebellion of an entire race of sinners, including you and me--and He did it all to save us all!
      1. "Sin is lawlessness."--we learned it.
      2. "And all have sinned and are lawless."--we know it.
      3. "And the wages of sin is death, eternal death."--the Bible declares it.
      4. "So the Lord laid on Him the sins of us all."
      5. "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?"
      6. That scream is evidence enough that Jesus on the cross EXPERIENCED the terror and horror of sin's ultimate consequence-- which is to be eternally cut off from God.
      7. IN HIS MIND, the separation was total and eternal.
      8. And it wrung from HIS LIPS the anguished sob we just read--"My God, My God, why have You cut Me off?"
      9. Listen to the penetrating words from this classic on the life of Christ: "All His life Christ had been publishing to a fallen world the good news of the Father's mercy and pardoning love. Salvation for the chief of sinners was His theme. But now [on the cross] with the terrible weight of guilt He bears, He cannot see the Father's reconciling face. The withdrawal of the divine countenance from the Saviour in this hour of supreme anguish pierced His heart with a sorrow that can never be fully understood by man....He feared that sin was so offensive to God that Their separation was to be eternal." (Desire of Ages p 753)
      10. "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?"
      11. Jesus hung on that cross believing that because of His choice to pay the penalty for sin, He would be cut off forever from His Father!
   3. Which, by the way, does not mean that it was Jesus only who paid the penalty for the sins of this world.
      1. "For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son."
      2. In the naked scream from the center cross we hear the crimson mystery of two hearts being broken at that one cross!
      3. Illus: Listen to how the great German thinker, Jurgen Moltman, described this profound truth: "The Son suffers dying, the Father suffers the death of the Son. The grief of the Father here is just as important as the death of the Son. The Fatherlessness of the Son is matched by the Sonlessness of the Father." (Crucified God, p 72)
      4. It is the shining truth of four words found in II Corinthians 5:19--[on screen only]
         1. "God was in Christ."
         2. Just four words, but what a penetrating portrait!
         3. Never forget that two hearts were broken on that one cross.
         4. Because in this Book you do not have an angry Father placated by a pleading Son.
         5. Oh no, their portraits are identical!
         6. "God was in Christ"--the Father was in the Son.
      5. WHY? Notice the rest of the sentence [on screen]--"To reconcile the world to Himself."
         1. Which is formal language for simply saying, "God was in Christ to woo His runaway children back into His wide open embrace!"
         2. God was in Christ to win us runaway, rebel children back into His FOREVER FRIENDSHIP."
      6. For that reason God comes to earth in Christ, that He might voluntarily submit His own life as payment for the penalty of His own broken Law, broken by His own runaway children.
      7. He came in Christ, so that in spite of our terrible sin indebtedness to Him, He might continue and continue and continue to do business with us!
      8. In Jesus God Himself descends into the dark, dark abyss of eternal death!
   4. But you say, "Hey, wait a minute--Jesus didn't die the forever death which is the wages of sin!....After all, didn't He cry out at the end--"It is finished"? And weren't His last words, "Father into Your hands I commit My spirit"? So how can you possibly conclude that He paid the penalty of forever death for our sins?"
   5. Illus: It's a fair question to raise, and I wish to answer it, here in closing, with a story I heard as a boy:
      1. The story about a young lad who was terribly sick, so sick in fact that the doctors said he was going to die if they couldn't rare type of blood.
      2. They tested the entire family and discovered that his sister was the only who had his rare genetic match.
      3. And so they would need her bone marrow to save his life.
      4. And so the doctors and her parents explained the nature of the emergency to the little sister and asked her if she would be willing to give some of her marrow for her very sick brother.
      5. She didn't answer them right away--her child's mind seemed lost in ponderous thought.
      6. But finally, she faced them again and nodded her curls....she would give her marrow to her brother.
      7. And so it was that they wheeled her into that hospital room where the medical specialists prepared her for the removal of some of her bone marrow:
         1. They carefully explained to her the procedure, identifying the point of pain through the process of incision and then removal.
         2. But it was for so worthy a cause, and the little sister bravely smiled her agreement.
      8. After what seemed likes hours, the life-giving marrow had been removed from the little girl, and bandaged and dressed she was taken from the hospital to waiting family.
      9. As they wheeled her out, she looked up into her daddy's face and with a quivering lip and tear-brimmed eyes, she asked: "DADDY, WHEN WILL I DIE NOW?"
      10. For a split second her father looked puzzled.
      11. And then like a bolt of lightning it hit him: His little girl has just gone through the entire ordeal of donating her marrow, believing that when it was over, she would die!
      12. She thought that by going through that procedure she would die.
      13. When she had said YES...for her it had meant, YES I WILL GIVE MY LIFE FOR MY BROTHER.
      14. Ladies and gentlemen, I ask you: Did that little girl die?
      15. Oh yes she did--not physically--but she died mentally--FOR IN HER MIND SHE HAD ALREADY MADE UP HER MIND TO GIVE HER LIFE TO SAVE HER BROTHER.
   6. In between the lines of her story, I hear His story, the story of a God- forsaken God on an old rugged cross...and a scream in the dark...and a love so deep and so full that it had already made the decision...IN ORDER TO SAVE THEM ALL, I WILL DIE FOREVER.
   7. That is why it is at the cross, my friends, that our sin and God's salvation are summed up by the profound truth that God loved us more than He loved Himself. [show the following on screen]
      1. For He took our penalty that we might have His pardon.
      2. He suffered our death that we might have His life.
      3. He bore our sins that we might have His salvation.
      4. Which simply means....that at the cross God was in Christ, taking our BAD NEWS that we might have His GOOD NEWS, and that is the BEST NEWS you will ever hear!
   8. "For God so loved the world that He gave us His only Son, that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life."
   9. How can the news get any better than that?
   10. Would you like to join me tonight in a quiet expression of gratitude to the God who has loved us this deeply and with a raised hand reach out to Him with the prayer: Thank you, God, for the gift of Your friendship in Jesus Christ I accept Your gift with gratitude. (Raise hands)
   11. But there's one more critical piece to put in place--Tomorrow evening's lecture: "The Truth of the Spotted Leopard" and how with this final piece, you can live forever . . . beyond the next millennium! I'll see you then.

Further Study:

Bridge To A Satisfying Life     (Lecture Study Guide from Discover Bible School)