Tag: Truth

Categories
Devotions

Daily Devotion August 5th

WEDNESDAY 5th

John 8:31-59

NIV (vv31-32) – ‘To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’

ESV (vv31-32) – ‘So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’

We are told that we are living in a free world, and yet for the believer the freedoms that we have so long enjoyed are slowly being curtailed by those who are in civic and political authority and it isn’t always plainly obvious, but it is introduced through various means such as political correctness, where the rights of every individual are claimed to be upheld . . . unless you abide by the truth which is not only Jesus himself but also his words, including the Word of God, allowing it to governing your life with godly principles, upright morality and righteousness, then those who promote tolerance are reluctant to show tolerance toward you.

But the reality is that even when the world seeks to bind or gag the believer, and despise righteousness, we are the ones who are truly living in real freedom, for we have been set free from the snare of sin and the control of Satan and as we discovered yesterday we have been brought out of the kingdom of darkness and brought into the kingdom of light, a kingdom where we come under the authority of the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, and his name is Jesus, and there is no greater authority and rule than his, true freedom comes through the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and his Lordship, his rule in our lives and linked to this is our continuing to know or to live in freedom by living according to his word or his teaching.

There are many around the world today who are imprisoned because of their faith, or restricted in their celebration of and living out their faith because of the hostility toward Christianity in a Communist regime, or nations under the control of Islam etc. and yet in their imprisonment they the persecuted believers are living in true freedom because of the eternal hope that has been set within them. We in the western world need to be earnestly praying for our brothers and sisters who are found in such hostile environments and at the same time pray that the erosion of our freedom to celebrate our faith will not continue, but rather be turned around for the glory of God.

Linked in with this, over the last few days there has been much debate over the restrictions that have been put in place, forbidding gatherings which has and still affects the gathering of Churches. There are those who are to the one side seeing it as a political attempt to gag the Church and yet fail to realise or want to overlook that at the same time other forms of mass gatherings are forbidden, and to the other side those who see it has a necessary means for the Church to play its part in the efforts to minimise the spread of the virus. We need to be careful how we react and allow the virus pandemic to eventually reach a level where we can safely open and then ensure that any other means of Government interference or enforcement is not that which would be seen as a definite effort to silence the Christian witness. We are living in unprecedented times, but we can rest knowing who we are in Christ, living in his freedom and abiding by his Word, which is truth.

Categories
Devotions

Daily Devotion August 4th

TUESDAY 4th

John 8:12-30

NIV (v12) – ‘When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.’

ESV (v12) – ‘Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life.’

We come today to the second ‘I am’ statement of Jesus. (see devotion July 31st) where Jesus says that ‘I am the light of the world.’

Back at the beginning of the gospel, as we are introduced to Jesus as the Word, we are told ‘In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.’(1:4-5) It continues in verse 9 to say ‘The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world . . .’ In our text today, Jesus identifies himself as being the light that was coming, now, it had come and he as that light was declaring ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.’

This is an astounding declaration to make, for in making it, Jesus was stating that he was the ‘light of the world’, he was born in Bethlehem, born as a Jew, lived his entire life in Israel, less the period of time as a refugee in Egypt after his birth, and yet he was declaring himself as the ‘light of the world’, and as the light if we follow him, we will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. This corresponds with John’s statement in 1:4, ‘In him was life, and the life was the light of men.’ This means that Jesus is life and light and that in our believing him, we are receiving Jesus himself, his life and his light. In John 14 we learn that he is ‘the life’ and thank God he came into this world not just to Israel to impart his life into all who would believe, eternal and abundant life.

Life and light – we know that for anything to grow, to have life, light is essential, we know all about photosynthesis, where the light of the sun brings the process for life to happen, in the same way for us to have life we need the light of the Son, and as his light comes into our lives we have the abundant eternal life he grants.

I think in a general sense today we take light for granted, we live in the era of electricity and we can have all forms of light and we can actually overdo it – I don’t even want to remember how many times with our children growing up we have had to remind them to switch the light off, or comment that the house is  more like Blackpool illuminations with all the lights left on (my parents had the same problem too) but when it comes to the one who himself is the light, we can never over do it, we need him to shine in and though our lives, we need him to come and to dispel the darkness which is so widespread in our generation, we need him as the light to lead us and to guide us as we navigate through this world, as strangers and pilgrims bound for an heavenly kingdom.

Over the last month or so, there has been a comet called Neowise visible in the Northern Hemisphere, one of the complaints that has been sounded is that owing to the light pollution, it has been difficult to see the comet, and the best opportunity is to go out into the countryside away from the light pollution to get a better view. The reverse is the state of the world today, too much dark pollution and we as believers and collectively as the Church need to shine in the  midst of this darkness as representatives of the one who is the true light.

Back in the 1980’s Elaine and I were staying with one of her cousins in Mansfield, he was a pit manager and it was during the time of the long strikes. As a manager he had to go down into the pit and through the coal face every day to inspect it, to ensure its safety for when the miners returned to work. He invited me to go with him, this of course was a new experience for a farmer’s son, and I have to be honest I really didn’t know what to expect, but the deeper we went and then the further we crawled through the cutting face I began to understand what true darkness was really like and  how important the little light we had was. Christian friends, brothers and sisters in Christ, Church, those of us who have come out of the darkness and into the light, let us never forget how truly dark the kingdom of darkness really is, it is under the control of the prince of darkness, and my how this world needs the light. We really are living in dark days where the principalities and powers would love to snuff out the light of the Christian gospel, we need to be courageous and willing to let our light, as Christ who is the light shines through us, shine before men so that they will glorify God. (Matthew 5:14-16)

Categories
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)