Sand Mountain Sermonette 58
Romans 6:23; Romans 3:23
A Horse Is a Horse!
“For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 6:23
In the latter half of the 1980’s, my wife and I were living in Wilmore, Kentucky while I attended Asbury Theological Seminary. While there, I was blessed to work part-time for a home-owned and operated office supply business in Nicholasville, Kentucky which was located several miles away. The road that connects Wilmore to Nicholasville is a picturesque road lined with big and beautiful horse farms in the heart of Kentucky’s horse-county.
One winter morning I was on my way to work before afternoon classes without a thought as to what was about to happen. There was snow on the ground, but the roads appeared to be clear until, after having traveled a few miles, I hydroplaned my AMC Concord to the left in an attempt to make at 90-degree right turn. I had encountered a patch of “black ice” which had sent my car through the fence of a large horse farm to my left; the car stopping short of a tree, and myself being thrown out the passenger front seat door onto my right arm on the snow. As I stood to my feet, I had remembered seeing a group of horses located on hill straight ahead run off in all directions before I crashed.
It wasn’t long until a young husband and wife who lived there were running up to help me. They took me to a big barn that was finer than most houses I had been in: complete with plush horse stalls and all. After I sat down, a ranch hand ran in and the husband asked him, “Is she alright?” To which the ranch hand responded, “I was able to stop her, but she’s cut pretty bad because she ran through another fence!” And then I thought to myself, “I have injured a multimillion-dollar racehorse!” After that, I asked the husband who had identified himself as the manager of the farm, if I could talk to the owner and tell him how sorry I was to have caused all these problems to which the husband said, “Oh no!” “You don’t want to do that!” And then he told me the owner wasn’t there to which I nervously asked, “Where is he?” To which the manager proceeded to tell me he was away in Chicago because he owned a big Chevrolet dealership there. He added that he would contact him and then he and his wife left me with a couple of other folks who were in the barn at that time.
Here’s the good news and the-bad news! The bad news is that I was scared to death because, when I heard about the boss I thought, “Mafia!” “This guy has connections to the Mafia!” The money, the expensive horses, the mansion, the car dealership; Mafia!” “And I’m just a poor seminary student living in a duplex and one day I’ll be watching TV and the doorbell will ring and—you know the rest!” But here’s the good news, short of my insurance company covering the $400.00 for horse X-rays, I never heard from anyone from that farm, ever! And, I only had a bruised shoulder!
Romans 6:23- part one: We can’t escape the bad news: sin has a wage attached to it and that payment is death. Paul tells us in Romans 3:23, “all of us have sinned (“missed the bulls-eye on the target) and fallen short of the glory of God.” But praise be to God for Romans 6:23, part two: “but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” How? When Jesus died on the cross, He took all the bad news of sin upon Himself so we could live, part two! Have you made a decision of the heart for Christ! Without Christ, the Bible says and individual faces “the second death” which is eternity spent without God! Jesus loves you and He died for you! Accept His free gift of salvation, today. What good news!
Pastor Louie