Almost every day, I scan through the headlines, Latest News and Watch Now sections of foxnews.com. Here are some of what made yesterday afternoon’s news:
- An Execution: Hunt for criminal after sheriff’s deputy killed
- At least 2 dead after magnitude-7.8 earthquake hits New Zealand
- France remembers 130 killed in Paris attacks 1 year ago
- Georgia prepares to execute man who killed ex-girlfriend 15 years ago
- Pennsylvania inmate arrested in 2008 murder of New York teenager
- 18-year-old charged with murder in road-rage beating
- Father and son die in hiking accident near Northern California lake
- Rocker Leon Russell dies in Nashville at 74
- Four Americans killed by suicide bombing in Afghanistan
Wow! Deaths, killings, murders, . . . one tragedy after another. The Word of God addresses these scenarios and gives us the root cause of them all.
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; Who can know it? (Jeremiah 17:9)
For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. These are the things which defile a man. (Matthew 15:19-20a)
You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it. (John 8:44)
Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures. Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. (James 4:1-4)
The wages of sin is death. (Romans 6:23a)
And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment. (Hebrews 9:27).
How sad to see an innocent life snuffed out because of a selfish, wicked heart. How painful to see the effects of sin! How awful to watch men and women play out the defilement of their hearts. And we say, “How tragic!” My friend, none of things in the aforementioned news headlines rank as the greatest tragedy. And before I go any further, I am not heartless nor belittling the agony or pain described in those headlines. Nevertheless, the greatest tragedy occurs every day on earth when a man or woman dies in their sins, rejecting the person of the Lord Jesus Christ Who paid for their sins, and therefore slips into eternity never again having the opportunity to accept the free-pardon of sin through Christ. In short, the greatest tragedy today is when someone dies and goes to hell . . . and they do so by their own choosing. Jesus Christ came to earth, was born of a virgin, lived a sinless life, died on the cross for our sins as our substitute, and rose from the tomb to prove He is Who He said He was and is, and . . . He did it all for you. No one needs to die in his sins and go to hell, a place reserved for Satan and his demons, because God so loved you, my friend, that He gave His only Son, the only one like Him, to die in your place so you would not perish but have everlasting life (John 3:16).
The greatest tragedy . . . an eternity in hell.
The greatest triumph . . . eternity in heaven.
If this post today has piqued your interest, has created within you a desire to know more, would you take 17 minutes to consider just Five Questions and their answers.
17 minutes vs. eternity? Please take time to watch it now.
From A Pastor's Heart 
This reminded me of something I read the other day in my Bible study. Ezekiel 7:23 “Make a chain: for the land is full of bloody crimes, and the city is full of violence.”
Judah was a nation that was about to be punished by God for their sinful, unrepentant behavior. It is eerily familiar……