Several years ago, I heard a pastor refer to an incident that occurred when he was attending a Christian youth rally. The speaker was addressing Christian high school students about purity. He handed the teens a rose he had brought with him and asked them to pass it around as he continued speaking. When the flower came back to him, petals and leaves were bent and missing. He told them it represented a female student who had engaged in sexual sins. He held it up and asked, “Who would want this?” The pastor said he wanted to stand up and shout, “Jesus does!”
Yes. Jesus does.
Laurie and I were watching a trial about the murders of four prostitutes. The homicides were committed by Juan David Ortiz, a United States federal intelligence agent with Border Security. He was found guilty. One of the key events that led to his conviction was when he had pointed his H&K semi-automatic handgun at a prostitute. She escaped from him and ran to a nearby gas station/convenience store where a police officer “just happened” to be getting gas for his patrol car. She told the officer the name of her assailant and details about what was inside his white Dodge pickup: Her pink purse, some tall-boys beer cans, and the handgun. Immediately, a BOLO was sent out: Be on the lookout for a white Dodge truck. To make a long story short, Mr. Ortiz was soon apprehended, hiding in the bed of a nearby pickup truck.
Although I once believed in luck and coincidences, I no longer do. The police officer didn’t “just happen” to be at that service station. The Lord is sovereign over all things and knows all things perfectly. He brought about the circumstances for the prostitute to find a police officer so soon after Ortiz attacked her. The Lord helped to save the life of this woman as well as any others Mr. Ortiz may have murdered in the future. He wanted to “clean up the streets,” he said when he was interrogated by police. God loved her and the other prostitutes who were working the streets of Laredo as well.
Jesus said to the self-righteous religious leaders of His day,
“Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes go into the kingdom of God before you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him. And even when you saw it, you did not afterward change your minds and believe him” (Matthew 21:31b–32).1
Jesus loves prostitutes. We are in error if we think otherwise. I know nothing about the spiritual condition of the murdered prostitutes, except they were actively sinning, of course, but something a daughter of one of Ortiz’s victims testified to in her victim’s statement caught my attention. She said that her mother told her, “No matter what you do, God will forgive you and love you.”
In the United States, prostitution is illegal in almost every state, and the profession is not held in high regard. Not only that, as this case bears out, it is a very dangerous occupation. Violence is commonplace. Deadly, addictive drugs are almost always involved. Nevertheless, Jesus loves such as these, and we should, too.
In addition to loving the prostitutes, the Lord loves Mr. Ortiz. In expressing that love, He caused him to be caught so he could do no more murderous acts. His apprehension was no coincidence. Yes, Mr. Ortiz will spend the rest of his life in prison as he should, but because he is there, he will have a lot of time for the Lord to speak to him about the gravity of his sins and the need for him to be forgiven in order to obtain eternal life. It may sound insensitive, perhaps, but decades in prison are but a blink of the eye compared to eternity in hell and thus may actually be a spiritual blessing to men and women who are incarcerated. So, the Lord is actually being gracious to Mr. Ortiz, a murderer.
God is always at work, doing His sovereign will. He loves both sinner and saint.
Father, there are no coincidences with You. Luck does not exist, only Your sovereign power and knowledge. Please comfort the families of the murder victims as well as the family of Juan David Ortiz. Please bring them to the knowledge of Yourself and the salvation that is only in Jesus, Your Son.
1All Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (2016). Crossway Bibles.
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