The Hostage

A man breaks into your home and holds you and your family hostage at gun point. He looks at you and says I’m about to make you a judge. You are going to decide which one of your children lives or dies. (If you don’t have any children, think of someone you love dearly) First you ask…Why are you doing this? What are you trying to accomplish or prove? He gives you no response. Again he demands you to decide and the only mercy he shows is to give you 5 minutes to make up your mind.

You scream at him, “This is crazy! We’ve done nothing to you! I can’t decide which of my children lives or dies because I love them all.” Then he says, “Then I will kill all of them and you have 3 more minutes.”

Then the man tells you that you have been making judgments all your life about people, about life and about God. So this should be easy for you with your experience. How many people have you destroyed in your mind? How many people have you looked down on because they were different than you? How many times have you told your spouse you were right? How many times have you told God something wasn’t fair or that He messed up? You see, you have been a judge for a long time and now I’m asking you to judge your children and decide which one lives or dies. You have 2 minutes.

All of them can’t be good kids. They have had to disappoint and even make you angry when they brought bad grades home from school, caused trouble with the neighbors or maybe they even sassed you. Finally you get to do something about it.

One child stands up seeing the anguish you’re going through and says, “You don’t have to decide, I’ll sacrifice myself if he will go away.” The man says this will be acceptable.

You have probably already seen the analogy, but if you haven’t let me help you. The man is sin and Satan. The accuser of the people and it’s by sin we are judged. Not by what we do, but by what we are. It ripped God’s heart out to see his people suffer because of his love for us. He didn’t want to decide which one lives with Him and which one didn’t. Jesus came forward and said, “I’ll sacrifice myself for them and make sin go away.” Some have declared they are going to figure their own way out of this situation by trying to look good enough to be accepted and others have been grateful for the sacrifice and accepted the gift. Ephesians 2:8-9 If you were to try to clean yourself up enough to be accepted by God is like giving a skunk a bath. No matter how many times you wash it, it’s still going to smell like a skunk.