Tag: John 3:16

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Devotion February 14th

TUESDAY 14th

 

1 Corinthians 13

 

‘If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant  or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.’

 

Happy Valentine’s day and there is no better place to turn to on this day than to the great chapter on love! After looking at what John said about hate in our previous devotion, we will deviate from his epistle, to the chapter today, but at the same time it is a good place to turn to as it fits in well with the devotional theme.

 

Of course the greatest demonstration of love is not that which is between a man and a woman, which is what Valentine’s day is all about, although that is special, but more importantly of that which God has shown to mankind. In the epistle of John which we are going through at this moment in our devotions, John writes ‘ In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins’ 1 John 4:10. In his earlier gospel he wrote ‘For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life’ John 3:16.

 

Yes the love that can and is expressed between a man and a woman is special, but God’s love is even more special, more wonderful and more precious because he loved us even when we didn’t love him, and he loved us enough to send his only Son into this world to die for us. His love is beyond comparison and yet we can know it and receive it.

 

Today with the sentimentality that will be expressed between individuals,  is a good day to just pause and to think of the wonder of the love of God, it beats all other expressions of love, it is eternal, strong and true. I will share a couple of verses of Scripture that you can think of as being the little note that God sends to you this Valentine’s day to remind you that he loves you to the heavens and back and then I will end the devotion with the words of a well-known song.

 

‘But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us’ Ephesians 2:4.

 

‘ . . . and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us’ Romans 5:5.

 

‘See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God . . .’ 1 John 3:1

 

The love of God is greater far

Than tongue or pen can ever tell;

It goes beyond the highest star,

And reaches to the lowest hell;

The guilty pair, bowed down with care,

God gave His Son to win;

His erring child He reconciled,

And pardoned from his sin.

 

O love of God, how rich and pure!

How measureless and strong!

It shall forevermore endure

The saints’ and angels’ song.

 

When years of time shall pass away,

And earthly thrones and kingdoms fall,

When men, who here refuse to pray,

On rocks and hills and mountains call,

God’s love so sure, shall still endure,

All measureless and strong;

Redeeming grace to Adam’s race

The saints’ and angels’ song.

 

Could we with ink the ocean fill,

And were the skies of parchment made,

Were every stalk on earth a quill,

And every man a scribe by trade,

To write the love of God above,

Would drain the ocean dry.

Nor could the scroll contain the whole,

Though stretched from sky to sky.

 

For those who listen to the audio devotion the song will be included.

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Devotions

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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Devotions

Daily Devotion July 25th

SATURDAY 25th

John 3:16-21

NIV (v16) ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.’

ESV (v16) ‘For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.’

I have already used this verse in the devotion on July 7th but want to include it again. It is one of the most well-known and well used verses of Scripture that clearly reminds us of God’s love for humanity, God’s sacrifice for humanity and God’s offer of life for humanity, his one and only plan of redemption which comes through his one and only Son, or for those who prefer the KJV, ‘. . . his only begotten Son.’

What we see from this verse regarding redemption is:

ai)  The Underlying force for the gospel – the love of God

       aii) The underlying need for the gospel – man’s sin

bi)   The Universal reach of the gospel – the world

        bii)  The Universal reach of sin – all have sinned

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

d) The Ultimate aim of the gospel – to have eternal life

e) The Unequivocal consequences of not believing the gospel – perish

We will consider the thoughts briefly over the next couple of days.

ai)  The Underlying force for the gospel – the love of God – 1 John 4:10 ‘In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.’

       aii) The underlying need for the gospel – man’s sin – Isaiah 64:6 ‘We have all

       become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a

       polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind,

       take us away.’

bi)   The Universal reach of the gospel – the world – Romans 8:32 ‘He who did not

spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?’

        bii)  The Universal reach of sin – all have sinned – Romans 3:23 ‘for all  

       have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.’ Romans 5:12 ‘Therefore, just

       as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so 

       death spread to all men because all sinned . . .’

The first four words of John 3:16 is a declaration that humanity does not deserve to hear because of its rebellion against God, ‘For God so loved’. The underlying need for the gospel is the depravity of humanity, his sinfulness, transgression and rebellion against God, and yet despite it all God still loves mankind, and his love for man whom he had created is such that it drives God to do something, to put a plan into action to deal with the sin, to save the sinner and reconcile him back into full relationship with himself again. Sometimes when you try to write something down in regard to these things it is difficult to put into words what you want to say, and even now as I consider the love of God toward the sinner, toward me, who deserves anything but his love, it is hard to comprehend, the lines of a couple of songs come to mind, ‘How deep the father’s love for us, how vast beyond all measure, that he should give his only Son, to make a wretch his treasure’ and ‘Here is love vast as the ocean, loving kindness as the flood.’ The first mentioned song goes on to say, ‘It was my sin that held him there’, my sin, his love, thank God that love won. And as a result, the sin that had separated us from God is gone!

Spend a few moments contemplating God’s love toward you, an ‘ex-wretch who he has made into a precious treasure.’ – 1 Peter 2:9 ‘But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.’

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Devotions

Daily Devotion July 7th

TUESDAY 7th

John 3:16

NIV – ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.’

ESV – ‘For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.’

I have chosen to go to this verse from John’s gospel today to link it with the verses we had yesterday in John 20:30-31. ‘‘Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written 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.’ Both references are linked to our need to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, which as we discovered yesterday was John’s reason for writing the gospel.

Believe(s) and believing are key words throughout this gospel. You may remember that when I came to Emmanuel Pentecostal Church to speak for the first weekend in September 2019, the theme that I shared was based upon the statement, ‘What we believe about the Lord Jesus Christ is important.’ This is the whole emphasis of John’s gospel, because what we believe, and how we act upon what we believe depends upon whether we receive the life that is offered. It is not just a case of believing in Jesus, it is believing that he is the Son of God, which will lead to life. Tomorrow we will consider the word ‘life’ in this gospel. For today we will consider the words believe and believing.

We have all been brought up in world in which we have been told a mixture of stories, some are factual, others are fiction or fable, known as fairy stories. It is amazing how the world of fiction, fantasy and fable has captured the worlds imagination, leading to multi-billion-pound enterprise especially in the world of film and theme parks. The world is fantasy mad and happy to live in cloud cuckoo land. What the world needs is a good dose of reality and truth, because the world of fantasy leads to a dead end, it may give temporal pleasure but offers nothing for eternity. Reality and truth as found in the gospel of John (as also in the entire word of God) leads to eternal life. And to receive the eternal life that is on offer we need to believe that what John has written is truth, for the one he has written about is truth himself. (John 14:6 ‘Jesus said, I am the way, and the truth, and the life. . .’)

There are at least four things we need regarding believing.

  1. We need to believe we are sinners – sadly the world is so utterly depraved that we are living in unprecedented times when wrong is now considered right, which is a massive stumbling block toward mankind recognising what sin is and that he is a sinner.
  2. We must believe that we need saving / salvation
  3. We must believe that Jesus is the only Saviour
  4. We must believe on Jesus, that is to put our faith and trust in him to be saved

Believing is so important, for not to believe leads to hell, eternal destruction, but to believe leads to eternal life. How we respond is the most important decision we will ever make.

The word believe appears in John’s gospel 48 times, believes 14 times and believing two times. If anyone wants to go through the various references, I will place them at the end of this devotion1, but this amount of usage in one Bible book alone is sufficient for us to understand the importance of believing in Jesus. Our text for today tells us that that is why Jesus was sent into the world, 1) because God loves us 2) he wants us to believe in his Son 3) and as a result we will not perish but will have eternal life. Later in his gospel John records the words of Jesus himself ‘My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.’ (John 10:27-28)

You tell me of any other book that reveals such wonderful and powerful news, there isn’t, for it is in this book alone (the Word of God) and in particular linked with our devotion from the book of John that we can discover the wonder of the truth of a God who loved us enough to come and to live in this world and to give his life as a propitiation for our sin. John wrote later in one of his letters ‘In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation2 for our sins.’ (1 John 4:10)

Dwell on this thought today, that God loved you so much that he sent his Son to die for you.

1 References for believe(s) believing – Jn 1:17,50 – Jn 3:12,15,16,18,36 – Jn 4:21,42,48 – Jn 5:24,38,44,46,47 – Jn 6:29,30,35,36,40,47,64 – Jn 7:38 Jn 8:24,45,46 – Jn 9:18,35,36,38 – Jn 10:25,26,37,38 – Jn 11:15,25,26,27,42,48 – Jn 12:11,36,37,39,44,46 – Jn 13:19 – Jn 14:1,10,11,12,29 – Jn 16:9,30,31 – Jn 17:20,21, –  Jn 19:35 – Jn 20:25,27,31

2The word propitiation carries the idea of appeasement or satisfaction, specifically toward God. Propitiation is a two-part act that involves appeasing the wrath of an offended person and being reconciled to him. This Christ has done through the means of his sacrificial death at Calvary. See also Romans 3:25, Hebrews 2:17 and 1 John 2:2 (ESV, NKJV, KJV) (The NIV uses the words atoning / atonement)

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Daily Devotion June 18th

THURSDAY 18th

John 3:1-16

We continue to look at our word study on ‘saved’.

To have been saved means that we must have been saved from something and today we will consider three aspects of our being saved and of what we have been saved from and saved to.

We will look at it in this way, we have been saved, we are being saved and we will be saved.

We have been saved. In John chapter three, we have the account of Nicodemus coming by night to have a chat with Jesus, it was an important conversation, for it came out from Nicodemus’ declaration that he believed that Jesus had come from God (v2) This means that Nicodemus must have understood something about the reality of the true and the living God and of there being a place where God existed for he accepted that Jesus had come from where God was. Jesus immediately responds by saying that no one can get to where God is unless they are born again.

Today we use the words ‘born again’ to describe our experience of being saved, the moment when we are ‘born again’ or ‘saved’ is also the moment when we have become a ‘new creation’ or ‘Christian’, a ‘follower of the Lord Jesus Christ’.

In Acts 16 the jailor asked Paul and Silas, ‘What must I do to be saved’ and they replied with ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved . . .’ (Acts 16:31) Earlier in Acts on the Day of Pentecost, the crowds asked ‘What shall we do?’ and Peter replied, ‘Repent and be baptised . . .’ (Acts 2:38)

When we are ‘saved’, as a result of the confession of our sin and our acceptance of our need of a Saviour and of our belief in Jesus as being the Saviour, we are forgiven – that is every sin that we have committed up to that point is forgiven, Scripture says it is blotted out. Acts 3:19 ‘Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out.’  God removes it from us as far away as the east is from the west. Psalm 103:12 ‘. . .as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.’ This can only happen because Jesus when he went to the cross took upon himself our sins and bore the punishment for them on our behalf and faced the wrath of God toward that sin for us and as a result we have a new clean start, we have become new creations (2 Corinthians 5:17). We have been saved from our past sin, the punishment for that sin and the wrath of God toward that sin (Romans 5:9) and we have been saved to become the children of God, part of the blood washed community who make up the Church, the family or the household of God.(Ephesians 2:19) We will have been brought from out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light, the kingdom of the Son of God.

Scripture says that at the moment of new birth, we have become justified (Romans 5:1) that is declared righteous before a holy God and the work of sanctification commences which makes us to become more like Christ as we proceed on our journey of faith. As we continue with the other letters in the word ‘Saviour’ we will learn more of the results of our being saved.

We will continue tomorrow.

There is power in the name of Jesus

We believe in His name

We have called on the name of Jesus

We are saved! We are saved!

At His name the demons flee

At His name captives are freed

For there is no other name that is higher

Than Jesus!

There is power in the name of Jesus

Like a sword in our hands

We declare in the name of Jesus

We shall stand! We shall stand!

At His name God’s enemies

Shall be crushed beneath our feet

For there is no other name that is higher

Than Jesus!

© 1989 Kingsway Thankyou Music CCLI788682