Throughout the year we remember those who have served and are serving our country—men and women who have sacrificed for the sake of future generations to keep our freedoms. How thankful we are for their service! How blessed we are to live in a country that had forefathers with the foresight to write the Declaration of Independence and have men and women who continue to fight to keep those freedoms. It’s with heartfelt gratitude that we thank those who have served our country in such a self-sacrificing way.
In the last fifty years however, our freedoms have been diminished because God is being more and more dismissed as our Creator. In the early 1960s, both prayer and Bible reading were removed from practice in public school openings. During that same time, church attendance began to dwindle more and more. As a result, less and less of our men and women have knowledge of the Christian faith and the Bible in general. Many have become unaware of God’s greatest sacrifice for all.
God’s story of sacrifice began with the creation of our very first parents, Adam and Eve. They lived with God in a beautiful garden. But when temptation came, they wanted to be like God, causing them to disobey God’s one command. Thus, because the Lord is holy (morally perfect), He expelled them from the garden. They no longer could walk with Him.
Disobeying what God commands is called sin. The consequence for sin is death—eternal separation from God forever in a place the Bible calls the Lake of Fire. Because of Adam’s disobedience, no one is good enough to enter into God’s presence because all of us are born spiritually dead, separated from Him. God is holy and just and He must judge the sinner who rejects Jesus Christ. “He who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him” (John 3:36). That’s the BAD NEWS!
But since God loves us, He provided a way for us to be restored to fellowship with Him and to be delivered from the Lake of Fire. THAT’S GOOD NEWS! It would require a very important sacrifice. An innocent victim would have to die in man’s place to pay the penalty that we all deserve for our sin, so that our relationship with Him could be restored. That ultimate sacrifice would be the person, Jesus—the Son of God.
About two thousand years ago, Jesus was born. He lived a sinless life. As a human, He also claimed to be God. He was fully God and fully man. He voluntarily was put to death on a cross to die for the sins of the world. On the third day, He rose from the dead, conquering death and proving that His claims to be God were true.
The Scriptures are clear that you cannot work your way to heaven, nor can you be good enough. You can only get there by believing in what God did for you through the Savior Jesus Christ. He’s the only way to God the Father (John 14:6). His sacrifice paid the full price for our sins by His death on the cross! You can choose to trust your own works and perish, or you can choose to trust in Jesus Christ and His work alone and live with the Lord forever.
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son [Jesus], that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life”(John 3:16).
His sacrifice was the greatest sacrifice of all!
This is a gospel tract that I wrote two years ago. Tracts are an easy way to share the gospel. Simply by sharing this on facebook, together we could share the gospel with hundreds this 4th of July.
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