Here's a fun challenge; see if you can fill in the blanks of the following marketing messages:
1. Pepsi Cola (TM) hits the ________!
2. Timex (TM), it takes a ________ and keeps on _______.
3. Coca Cola (TM) is the ________thing.
For years, major corporations have used marketing messages or slogans if you will, to cause people to think of their product or service. Marketing messages provide us with a catchy, easy-to-recall phrase or jingle that focuses our attention on a certain brand.
From soft drinks to air travel, from jogging shoes to margarine, brands can be catapulted from lack luster losers to powerhouse winners with the aid of a well structured marketing message. Millions of dollars are spent each year on creating them because they effectively sway the buying decisions of a fickle public.
The concept that sin results in death is not hard to comprehend, but the thought that because of sin, every person has a death penalty hanging over his or her head is a little more difficult to swallow. Sin kills and we have all inherited a place on death row.
Heaven's slogan
Heaven's marketing message contains the reality that God longs for the human race to be restored. What's the message?
"But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:8 )
Throughout the Bible, this theme, this divine slogan of God's love and desperate desire to save us is repeated over and over again. God loves us so much that the thought of our being lost was unbearable. Plans were put in place and then carried out to bridge the gap between humanity's bankrupt condition and eternal life.
Heaven's marketing message to a dying planet is Christ's death on the cross. The cost was greater than any 5th Avenue campaign for the next big thing. Heaven's cost was immeasurable, but this marketing message of love was put into play without a guarantee that you or I would ever respond or even care.
Perhaps it's time that we re-examine who really has the Real Thing.
