The Dead Horse

   You may have heard the expression, “You can't beat a dead horse.” The expression is, “is an idiom that means a particular effort is a waste of time as there will be no outcome, such as in the example of flogging a dead horse, which will not cause it to do any useful work.” The idea is pretty clear. I was at a funeral and standing near the open casket at the close of the service when the son came by to express his feelings. He was talking to his deceased father in a rather loud voice and was shaking the casket so hard that I thought the lid was going to come down on his fingers. He expressed his feelings during that time but his father made no reply. No matter how hard you try, you can't get a dead man to rise up out of the coffin. We sometimes also have expressions or comments or even preaching that seems to be like a proverbial dead horse. We go on however, and give the message one more time. Perhaps someone will listen and be saved. For the believer, the preaching of the Gospel is not a dead horse. First Corinthians 15:1-4 says, “Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures:”

          There were perhaps thirteen years that I had heard the message of the gospel. Every service I had attended during those thirteen years in the church, was ended with an invitation to receive the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior, but I refused to answer in the affirmative but instead rejected it by saying it applied to everyone else, but not to me. I recall one preacher coming down from the pulpit and looking people in the eye and asking them if they were saved. He did it for 5 rows and then stopped and resumed his spot behind the pulpit. I was in the sixth row and felt relieved that he had not confronted me with that question. During those thirteen years, I had been a church member and held many offices and positions in the church and I knew the words to say such as redeemed, justified by the blood of the Lamb, saved, baptized, sanctified and a lot of other “Christian expressions.” After a while, you just look at all of the expressions as someone beating a dead horse. This case, however, is different because the Lord Jesus Christ did raise from the dead. That is the main point of the Gospel. Every man, woman, boy and girl have a soul and are going to spend eternity in one of two places. There are no more choices than that. It will either be heaven or hell. It will either be with God or without God. There is no third choice. It will make no difference if a person is an atheist or a religious person. It amount to the fact that each person is either Christian or pagan. A non believer may look art this devotion and say, “Well, there he goes again, beating that dead horse.” In John, chapter three, Nicodemus was a religious person and the teacher of such things in Israel yet Jesus said to him, “Ye must be born again.” Praise God for the message of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now we can have life also.