About one Sunday per month, our family, along with another family or two, goes down to Grace Christian Home for an afternoon of edification and exhortation for the residents of the home. It is always encouraging to serve people whom you know will appreciate what you bring them. We are also grateful to the senior Godfreys, who organize everything, and for their encouragement to keep working for the Lord by ministering to these people.
Last Sunday, we decided to do something slightly different. Rather than a normal type of message, we did a sort of play, which we hoped would help people remember the message a little better. It was based on the IBLP Children’s Institute watermelon story, with a slightly different twist to it.
In our story, we wanted to eat watermelon because it was so hot. But every time I was about to cut it open, someone would stop me and suggest that we test it in some way or other. It was incredible how many people wanted to test the watermelon before opening it. It was tested for smell, for how it felt, for stem strength, and stripiness; it was inspected for bad spots, shaken, and knocked on.
When we had finally done all these tests (surely we didn’t need to do that many) and deemed that it should be a good watermelon, I sliced it open. Unfortunately it was not edible on the inside.
But, although the watermelon was not good to eat, we did get some good spiritual lessons out of this watermelon. Just like the dirt in the watermelon totally ruined it, so sin in our lives totally ruins us. It doesn’t take much sin – even one sin makes us a sinner and every one of us has sinned. God’s Word says that the wages of sin is death, so we all deserve to die.
Also, we can’t make this watermelon better. We need a new watermelon. In the same way, we can’t “make our sin better.” We need a totally new life; we need to be a new creation. “The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Romans 6:23) The Bible says in II Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” Jesus is God’s own Son and never committed any sin. But He died on the cross in our place, the Righteous for the unrighteous, to bring us to God. We can have new, eternal life through Him.
There is one more thing we need to notice, too. Sometimes sin is obvious, just as a watermelon can be obviously bad. But this watermelon seemed good on the outside. It can be the same way with people: on the outside they may be doing all kinds of “good” things, but the inside has not been made new. In I Samuel 16:7, the Bible says, “The LORD seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart.” In order to be righteous before God, we need to be clean on the inside, not just look good on the outside. If you have not asked God to make you a new creation by what Jesus did on the cross for you, I urge you to ask Christ to forgive your sins and give you a new life.
Thanks for the updates, David!
I think the residents will remember that watermelon lesson for a while!
We’re up to 4 posts in the month of July. One more post will pass our record (December 2009). Do you suppose anyone has had time to read them all? š