“There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death” Proverbs 14:12 “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 6:23 -
BUILDING FIRES
When I was a young boy, I loved playing out in the woods by my parents house. My friends and I would go out in the woods to play all sorts of games but our favorite game was “Villages” — we would build a bunch of tree-houses and pretend that we were forest villagers. We had a whole primitive civilization with everything from water reservoirs, to food storehouses, to fire pits. We thought we really knew how to survive out in the wild. Even our parents were impressed by our villages! But one day we were trying to build a large fire at our village for part of the game we were playing and we lost control of the fire. We thought we knew what we were doing. We thought we put up all of the right precautions, but in the end our way of securing the fire was wrong and the fire grew out of control. Thankfully a neighbor saw the fire and ran out there with his garden hose to put the fire out. Our parents were so mad at us that they took away our fire building privileges; but thankfully, nobody got hurt.
THE WAY OF A MAN
In today’s reading, we see in the Book of Proverbs that “there is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.” My friends and I thought that we had our fire set up in the right way, but in the end someone could have gotten seriously hurt or even been killed. And even though our mistake might have lead to physical injury or physical death, this verse from Proverbs is talking about a much more serious death… spiritual death.
Mankind is looking for a way to get to heaven and has come up with many different options. In fact, there are approximately 4,200 religions on our planet and every single one of them thinks that their belief is the right one. Every adherent to a religion believes that their way will get them eternal life, but the truth is that they can’t all be right. “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.” Proverbs 14:12
THE WAY OF GOD
People try to come up with all sorts of different thoughts and beliefs to find hope in life after death, but Christians know that there is only one hope. And our hope has a name — Jesus. It is because of Jesus — God made flesh — coming to this world and dying a sinners death on a cross that we have hope of our sins being forgiven. It is because of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead that we have hope of eternal life with our loving and forgiving God. Without Jesus, there is no real hope for life after death; but with Jesus our hope for salvation is made real and is secured when we repent and believe in Him.
No matter how smart or how creative someone might be when coming up with a religion or spiritual belief, they are doomed without Jesus. Scripture tells us that we have all sinned (Romans 3:23) and then proceeds to tell us that the punishment for sin is death (Romans 6:23). This death that Romans 6:23 talks about is spiritual death; eternal separation from God. And this is what we all deserve! But thanks be to God for sending His son, Jesus to take the punishment for our sin! It is because of Jesus that we can escape spiritual death and have hope of eternal life with God in heaven!
PRAY
Pray today for others to turn from their own, sinful ways and instead accept the free gift of eternal life from Jesus!
This devotion originally appeared on Devotable written by Joe Pantaleo
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