Tag: John 14:6

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Daily Devotion August 18th

TUESDAY 18th

John 14:1-7

NIV (vv2-3) – ‘My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.’

ESV (vv2-3) – ‘In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.’

We remain in the first few verses of this chapter again today, to look again at the wonderful promise that Jesus made in verse 3, ‘I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.’ As I am preparing this it is a wet and miserable looking morning, it is raining, and the mist has come down over the town so that I cannot see very far. This would perhaps be a good way of describing how it felt for the disciples in the upper room with Jesus, not so much wet but a miserable day, the mist of gloom had descended upon them and they couldn’t see much further than beyond the next hour or two. But Jesus detected the gloom in their hearts and not only did he encourage the disciples that as they trusted in God, so they could also trust in him, (as we saw on 16th) but he makes them an incredible promise, ‘Yes, I am going, but I will come again and fetch you so that you can be with me in the place I am going to prepare for you, don’t be troubled, trust me in the same way as you trust God’. (my paraphrase)

We may look around us at this time and feel that the outlook looks gloomy and hopeless, but we as the family of God have this wonderful promise to cling onto, ‘Jesus is coming again’, we realise that what we see all around us is only temporal and will one day pass away, but what we are and who we are ‘in Christ’ is eternal, and we wait with eager anticipation to receive our eternal inheritance. ‘In this world’, Jesus said, ‘you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.’ When you see the gloom, remind yourself, there is a place being prepared for you, and one day Jesus is coming to fetch you and he will lift you from out of the gloom and into his glorious presence so that you will forever be with him.

It was January the 3rd when we reserved our house, here in Stanley, and all the delays made it seem like it was never going to happen, but finally we have moved in. Jesus made the promise two thousand years ago about a home he is preparing and it may sometimes seem like it is never going to happen, but it will, one day and it will be suddenly and at an unexpected moment we will move in, and what an incredible moving in experience it will be as the dead in Christ will rise first and we who are alive and remain will be caught up with them to meet the Lord in the air. Therefore, during this gloomy time in the world in which we find ourselves at this moment, be of good cheer, and keep looking up, for your redemption is drawing near.

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Devotions

Daily Devotion August 17th

MONDAY 17th

John 14:1-7

NIV (v6) – ‘Jesus answered, I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’

ESV (v6) – ‘Jesus said to him, I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’

We come to the last but one of the ‘I am’ statements of Jesus in these first few verses in this fourteenth chapter. Jesus says four things about himself:

I am the way

I am the truth

I am the life

No one can come to the Father except through me

You may remember in a previous devotion I talked about the uniqueness of the Lord Jesus Christ and of the gospel message which we proclaim. The uniqueness of Jesus and the gospel message is not something the Christian faith has mustered up to try to proclaim and propagate its message, it is something which has come from the mouth of the Lord Jesus himself. He himself made the declaration that he is the only way to the Father, therefore the only way to heaven. When Peter and the disciples declared in Acts 4:12 that there is no other name given under heaven by which we can be saved, they were not making up some new idea, or some fanciful plan or scheme they were declaring the truth of the message which Jesus himself declared.

Earlier in John’s gospel we are reminded of the uniqueness of Jesus in that we are reminded that 1) God loved the world 2) That he sent his Son into the world 3) So that WHOEVER believes IN HIM will not perish but will have eternal life (3:16)

This ‘I am’ statement in John 14:6, sums up everything about what this gospel is all about. It is about pointing men and women to the one who is the only source of eternal life, the only means of eternal life and the only giver of eternal life. All other ‘faiths’, ‘religions’, ‘isms’, are dead ends, there is only one door, only one Saviour, only one way and it is through the Lord Jesus Christ, the only one who has loved us and given himself for us. (1 John 4:10)

This statement in v6 came out of the inquisitiveness of Thomas who wanted to know where Jesus was going and how we can know the way to where he is going (v5)

The world has always been searching for answers, for the meaning of life, about the afterlife etc. The answers to all the questions can be found in the Lord Jesus Christ, for in knowing him we find real purpose and we have real hope.

May we continually rejoice in the hope that we have as we have come to know the one who is the way, and the truth and the life, and may we continue to pray that many more will come to find him and know him, and may we individually be used in some way to point others to the one who is the way, the truth and the life.

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Daily Devotion July 26th

SUNDAY 26th

Acts 4:4:5-12

NIV (v12) – ‘Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.’

ESV (v12) – ‘And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.’

We continue from yesterday and our brief look at John 3:16 ‘For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.’

c) The Uniqueness of the message of the gospel – whoever believes in HIM

John 3:16 is crystal clear that God loved and therefore he sent, and it is also crystal clear as to who he sent, his only Son, and God has only one Son and his name is Jesus. And it was Jesus who he sent into the world to be the Saviour of the world, and it is only by believing on his Son that we can have life that is abundant and eternal, therefore the message of the gospel is a unique message, it is the only message that brings hope to this dying world.

For God did not send **** (insert every other prophet or religious leader, or god of this world here) to save the world, he sent Jesus. So, when we claim that Jesus is the only way to God as Jesus himself declared in John 14:6, ‘No one comes to the Father except through me’ we are not bigots or blinkered individuals, we are declaring the whole truth and nothing but the truth! And we know it to be so because God himself has said it. We need to be vocal in this multi-faith world in which we live by declaring the words of Peter in our text above, ‘And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.’

d) The Ultimate aim of the gospel – to have eternal life – this takes us back to the whole reason why John said he had written the gospel ‘so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.’ Our problem is that we are dead in our trespasses and sin, spiritually dead, cut off from God and we need to be made alive again. And Jesus was the one who God sent into the world to make it possible. Galatians 2:20-21 ‘I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.’ Ephesians 2:4-5 ‘But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved . . .’

e) The Unequivocal consequences of not believing the gospel – perish – When the Bible speaks of perish as here in John 3:16, it is speaking about being eternally cut off from God’s presence, in a place which is described as a lake of fire, when we think of something perishing, we perhaps think of something like a piece of fruit which as it perishes, goes into a state of decay until eventually it is no longer existing, nothing left in any shape or form, but when the Bible speaks of perish here it is not to eventually no longer exist in any shape or form but to remain in an eternal state of being spiritually dead, but the extremely sad thing is that although spiritually dead, not without consciousness and feeling.* It will be eternity spent with regret for not believing, eternity spent without any reprieve, eternity spent without any comfort or any further hope of redemption, eternity spent in the very presence of the devil himself, for that is also where he will be, eternally alienated from God.

Heaven is real – but so is Hell. If you are reading this devotion today and you have never come to accept the offer of salvation which God has made available to the whosover, then as Scripture says, ‘Today if you hear his voice, do not harden your heart . . .’ Hebrews 3:7, ‘Behold, now is the favourable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.’ 2 Corinthians 6:2, ‘How shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard . . .’ Hebrews 2:3.

*  Jesus himself spoke of the reality of what Hell will be like in Luke 16:19-31 and the reality of future judgement is in Revelation 20:11-15

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Daily Devotion June 22nd

MONDAY 22nd

Acts 4:8-12

Our next letter in SAVIOUR for us to consider is U and Unique.

This will be considered in two ways, first Jesus is UNIQUE as Saviour, and secondly because of God’s concern for each one of us we are individually unique.

In the Scripture above, Peter and John are defending their involvement in the healing of the lame man and they make an important statement (Acts 4:11-12) ‘This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.’

This is an affirmation of what Jesus had said while talking to his disciples in John 14:6 ‘. . . I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’

The gospel that we have believed and accepted is the only gospel, the only good news. The Lord Jesus Christ whom we have come to believe on and accept is the only Saviour. There is no other way, there is no other name, there is no other Saviour. He is unique, the gospel is unique, any other effort or endeavour to seek to placate God and reconcile mankind into his presence is to no avail.

In John 10 in which we read of Jesus as being the good Shepherd, we also read that he says that he is the door or the gate. The hymn writer puts it like this, ‘There was no other good enough to pay the price of sin, he only could unlock the gate of heaven and let us in’. Jesus not only unlocked the gate of heaven with his atoning work but he himself is the gate. ‘One door and only one, yet its sides are two, I’m on the inside, which side are you?’

Jesus is unique in that he is the only Son of the true and living God, who through his obedience in coming to earth and going to Calvary became the unique Saviour.

In regard to our own personal uniqueness, when God created man in his own image, the first thing we need to understand, God was not creating a man that would be cloned in every person that would be born, like a mass production of robots from an assembly line, yes, every person would be recognisable as a person, but not one of us is exactly the same, we have our own personality, our own consciousness, our own preferences, we are physically different but even more important we all have our own individual soul, spirit. We are individuals made in the image of God, with our own uniqueness stamped upon us. This should help us to understand that each one of us is special, we are all unique in our own way. But there is something special about our uniqueness in the unique Saviour. We have a new identity, we have a new name and its written down in glory. I am who I am and what I am by the grace of God, and you have become who you are by the grace of God. God looks at us en-masse, and sees us as the Church, the body of Christ and the bride to be of Christ, yet at the same time he looks at us as unique individuals, he sees each one of us separately as his workmanship in Christ, he sees us uniquely as new creations, he sees us as individual sons and daughters who have been adopted into his family.

Today if you are struggling with who you are, with identity, remember that God has called you and saved you, he sees you as unique and special, he sent his Son to redeem you and to save you, he has a plan and a purpose for your life which only you can fulfil.

This thought leads us to the next letter in Saviour O – Ordered

This is a simple thought and it is this. God has a plan for each one of us, in redeeming us he has firstly brought order into our lives, one song says that ‘my life was full of so much confusion, my life was full of sin and shame, but Jesus came along and he touched me, I have never been the same.’ And the reason why we have never been the same is because Jesus the Saviour has tidied up our sin filled lives, he has thrown out the rubbish and brought order in the place of confusion, chaos and mess. And as he works in our lives, he causes us to live ordered lives, lives that are lived fulfilling his plan and his purpose. He has prepared good works for us so that we can walk in them. (Ephesians 2:10)

Psalm 37:23 ‘The steps of a man are established by the LORD, when he delights in his way . . .’

Proverbs 3:5-6 ‘Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.’

If anyone is reading this and you are finding that things seem to be in a mess at this moment, your life is all confused and you don’t know which way you are heading, turn to the Saviour, refocus your attention towards him, centre your desires and your will around what he desires and wills and allow him to bring order and direction back into your life. Allow the one who says we are his workmanship to do the work that he needs to do to keep us in that place, which is the safest place, the centre of his will.

I’m special because God has loved me

For He gave the best thing that He had to save me

His own Son Jesus, crucified to take the blame

For all the bad things I have done

Thank You Jesus, thank You Lord

For loving me so much

I know I don’t deserve anything

Help me feel Your love right now

To know deep in my heart

That I’m Your special friend

Graham Kendrick CCLI788682