Jesus Gave His Life For You

By Rev. Ernest O'Neill

Jesus has given his whole life for you, his whole life for you. Jesus has died his death for you. Now, it is no answer to him even to give a tithe. I mean it's good to give a tithe, but big deal you know it's no answer just to give a tithe. The Lord Jesus, the Son of the God who made you and me, has given his life for you. He died for you and me. He went to hell for you and me. He took the worst of your sin unto himself and he allowed his Father to burn it out of existence and to give him a sense that he was utterly forsaken.

In other words, if Jesus hadn't died for you there'd come a moment after death when there'd be absolute darkness and desolation around you. And because of the sin that you have in your life, because of the selfishness, the uncleanness over the years, the lying or the deception, even if you are very good now compared with what you were, still some of the selfishness that is in you, if you had at that moment after death, that all inside you, then there would be such a sense of desolation and loneliness and outer darkness and coldness that you would absolutely collapse into hell, hopelessly in despair.

Now, Jesus did that for you. He went through that moment of death with your sin in his own heart and he bore that terrible moment of God's forsakenness when he cried out, "My God, my God, why hast Thou, (of all people, my Father) forsaken me (your only begotten Son, the one who is without sin?)." And the answer was always because God made him to be sin who knew no sin. Now Jesus bore that for you and me. See, he died for you and me. He gave up his whole life for you and me. Loved ones, you know you cannot sit there, you cannot sit there and see him trailing down that Calvary road bleeding to death and then going to hell for you and then quietly and complacently get up from here at the end of the service and go on and get on with your own life and then come back and give him an hour and give him a tithe. You know what it means.

It means you owe your whole life to him. You know me too. I'm in the same boat. We owe our whole life to Jesus. We don't owe just a little bit of suffering, or a little bit of hardship or a little bit of popularity or unpopularity or a little bit of unhappiness. We owe everything to Jesus. I mean I am saying to you I am with you, we have to look to him here and we have to say, "We owe you everything, there's nothing we don't owe you. We owe you our whole lives. Anything less than our whole lives is bargain hunting." Anything less than our whole lives is the Daisy sale at Dayton's, it's an attempt to get a good deal. It's not honesty and of course, you know what the Lord is saying to you today, "Are you really forsaking your nets?"