City Sensation! "Street Sweeper Left a Fortune!"
So read the "Leaders" in the morning newspapers, and eager eyes scanned the columns to find who the lucky street-sweeper was. Half-a-dozen business men coming into town by a morning bus, were discussing the sensational news. One suggested that it was a "hoax"; he had seen and heard of such tricks before. Another "believed" the fortune was there, but that it was intended for another man having the same name; while a third "observed" from the way it was announced in the newspaper that the editor did not altogether accredit the "sensation" himself. At last an aged, respectable-looking man, a stranger, who had listened to the various opinions of his fellow-travelers regarding the street-sweeper and his fortune, quietly remarked,
"The news is perfectly correct, gentlemen. I have read the will and knew the testator. He left the money for the man whose name appears in the paper right enough, and it will be paid to him, in full, as sure as his name is in the will. I have just seen the man, and he knows and believes that he is the happy possessor of his uncle's estate."
There was no room for further question or debate. The man who had just spoken, knew firsthand the truth of that which he spoke, and they believed him.
"How did the lucky fellow receive the news?" asked one.
"I believe that belongs to me," he said, and threw his old broom across the street, and walked off in all the dignity of a millionaire, never to return to street-sweeping anymore," said the lawyer.
There was a laugh all round, for men of the world recognize and admire the wisdom of such a course as the street-sweeper pursued that day.
Yet strange to say, in things eternal, things pertaining to God and Salvation, men generally act otherwise. The Gospel of God proclaims that through the death of Jesus Christ on the Cross, the free gift of eternal life (Rom. 6:2323For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 6:23)), with an eternal inheritance in heaven (1 Peter 1:44To an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, (1 Peter 1:4)), has been procured and made sure to every sinner, of every clime and color, who is a believer in the Lord Jesus—that is who by faith claims the benefits of the great redemption, and becomes united to the glorious Person of Him who came on earth to save the lost. Some, who know their name and own it, humbling though it be (see Rom. 5:88But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8)), and accept the free gift without labor or merit on their part, pass immediately into the present possession of eternal life. They know it on good authority, for God has said it (see 1 John 5:1313These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God. (1 John 5:13)). They show that they believe God—as the street—sweeper believed his uncle's will—by confessing themselves saved, children of God, possessors of eternal life, and heirs of heaven, and manifest to others that their faith is genuine and their conversion true, by leaving for ever their former haunts and occupations as children of the devil and worldlings—as the sweeper left his broom—going forth among men in the consciousness and confession of being heirs of God and joint-heirs with Jesus Christ. And the men of the world who applaud and would have been proud to shake hands with the street-sweeper, count those who thus "lay hold on eternal life" as fanatics and fools, so little do "the riches of Christ," and the glories that are forever, count in the world's estimation. Yet these will shine forth as true gold, when all else has crumbled into dust; and when death has emptied the worldling's hands of all that he now grasps so proudly, Christ will shine forth in eternal excellence.
Reader, do you have Christ? Are you saved? Do you possess eternal life? Have you received it as God's free gift?