The Golden Chapter. Make a choice for life and not death!

One of the first verses in the Bible I learned by heart was John 3:16. All there is to know about how man is saved and how God has decided to do it, is summarized in that verse.

John 3:16-18 (New International Version (NIV)

¹⁶ 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.

 

Question: What is the name of God’s one and only Son?

Answer: Jesus.

 

Does it say here that anything else goes as a “saving tool” for me?

Can anyone/anything besides Jesus be the Savior?

Who’s idea was this?

Why?

 

Yesterday I was reading Max Lucado’s book “Grace for the moment” and appropriately for this post the title for 30^th of October was “Love is all that you will find”

(“Alla dagar nära in Swedish; the title translated from Swedish)

 

This is Mr. Lucado’s view of God’s love. (from Swedish)

“Water has to be wet.  Fire needs to be warm. You cannot take the wet out of the water if it is going to remain as water. You cannot take the warmth out of the fire if it is going to remain as fire.

In the same way you cannot take away love from God if he is going to remain as God. Because he was and is love. Look deep into him. Explore every corner. Search through every angle. Love is everywhere. Go to the beginning of every decision he has made and you will find love. Go to the end of every story he has told and you will find love.

Love.

No bitterness. Nothing evil. No cruelty. Just love. Spotless love. Glowing love.  Immense and pure love. He is Love.”

 

So the answer the previous questions is that God decided how to save mankind and he chose to do it through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ; and he did it out of Love. But then there is the following verses. After you have read those verses ask yourself: Is God still a loving God?

 

¹⁷ For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

¹⁸ Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.

 

First of all; we cannot compare God’s love with human love because human love has been contaminated by the way of the world, a world that is opposed to God.

Through the fall of man; through uproar and disobedience of man the relationship between man and God was ruined. Death entered into the creation and death is a reality for all of us. One day is our last and then comes eternity. In the presence of God or forever separated from him.

But after the fall of man God directed man into a new plan where the sacrifices and shedding of blood would atone for sins. Man could approach God again but still on arm’s length. It was never enough. It had to be repeated over and over again because the ultimate Sin that stood between man and God was still there; man’s distrust and selfishness as in wanting to be independent of God and making himself a god to be worshipped instead of God.

 

So when God found that the time was right, the place was right he put his decision in action; he sent himself; transformed  into a child; his only begotten Son, Jesus, to make the last and ultimate sacrifice to save mankind once and for all. His plan was ingenious because man would not have a chance to boost about it and call it his own.

So when verse 18 says that a person who doesn’t believe in Jesus as his savior is already condemned it merely says that the decision to accept or deny is up to you and me. God has already made his choice: to save you!

It isn’t about ignorance, it is about finding the knowledge about who Jesus is and making a decision about how to relate to him. Not to Buddha, Mohammed, Krishna, or any other self-appointed god but to say yes or no to Jesus. If I say Yes to Jesus I am what the Bible call “born again”. The spirit in me has come alive and I am now in Jesus one with God my creator. I no longer stand afar from him but can as his child cast myself into his arms and he will certainly open up his arms to me. That is worth a big “Yippee!”

I said yes to salvation through Jesus Christ when I was 10 years old. So if my physical birth took place in 1950 my spiritual birth was 1960 or maybe years before that because it seems to me that I have always since my first day of Sunday school said yes to Jesus.

 It is a most patient question: how to relate to Jesus, because as long as we live and breathe we have the opportunity to decide; but once this life is ended there is no more choice to be done.

Acts 4:12 Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.” Acts 4:11-13 (in Context) Acts 4 (Whole Chapter)

John 5

²² Moreover, the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son, ²³ that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father, who sent him.

 

This weekend we celebrate All Saints Day in Sweden and remember those who have departed from this world. The God-less and atheistic Sweden likes to convert this weekend into the American celebration of Halloween and is doing its best to promote it. Death is celebrated but not the resurrected Jesus who won his victory over death and is now alive; sitting on the Father’s right side praying for you and me.

Why do people like to celebrate darkness and death instead of the Light? Doesn’t that sound ridiculous? Man is mostly afraid of death so why lift it up as if it was a god.

^{Verse 19} This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. ²⁰ Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. ²¹ But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.

^{verse 35} The Father loves the Son and has placed everything in his hands. ³⁶ Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on them.

Now how does this fit with the Loving God?

God’s wrath?

Verse 16 says that God loves the world and wants to save it. From what?

From the death that mankind brought upon itself by turning away from God. From the separation from God that The Sin brought upon mankind because sin and God never match together. The Sin has to be judged and a penalty has to be paid because the Righteousness of God demands it. There is no darkness in God. There is no evil in God. And as impossible it is for you to touch a high-voltage line and stay alive that is how impossible is it for you to enter into the presence of God without the saving death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. You are spiritual dead without Jesus because the Holy Spirit is only given to the one who has accepted Jesus as their personal savior and the Holy Spirit’s only task is to exalt the name of Jesus, confront man with Sin and persuade man to finally give up his/her own pitiful construction of self-righteousness and accept the perfect way to God: JESUS. You may think you are alive in your spirit and has a communication with a spiritual world but without God they are spirits from the evil one!

On Halloween people like to put on costumes of skeletons’ tell horror stories on TV and act as if death is a friend; but it isn’t. Sculls, skeletons, spiritual rituals; all man’s deception to think there is a way to outsmart death. Not even the thought that there is no eternal life can change the fact that mankind is always seeking a way to avoid death; always looking for meaning of life and searching for answers by asking fortune tellers who can’t even predict their own future. Man is destined to be in relationship with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit and is utterly lost without that relationship; both in this world and the next.

Now close your eyes and say after me in this prayer:

I now give up my own fighting and give my life to you Lord God.

I confess my sins before you Lord and I surrender to your decision to give your only Son, Jesus Christ; his death and resurrection, as an atonement for my sins. I confess him as my Savior. I pray that you will give me the Holy Spirit as the Helper you promised in my new life as your child and that you will one day greet me in your heaven when my days here are over.
In the name of Jesus
Amen.

As a child of God you need a spiritual home. It is hard to be alone as a child of God so you need your sisters and brothers in the Lord. Ask the Holy Spirit to guide you into the church where you can feel at home and be useful for him as you mature as a Christian. You start as a baby but you will end like an adult when you put your life into the hands of God.

Dear Reader, take care and finally make this wise decision to follow Jesus.

PS.

I have no idea how the green arrows got into this post. I have tried to delete them but ended up with no post at all so I guess they stay. But I'm not the one who have put them there! That also uncover my poor knowledge of computing but as long as you can read the text  I'm content. DS

How dare you turn my Father’s house into a market?”

The picture is "Jesus cleanses the temple", a banner by the Benedictine Sisters of Turvey Abbey.

 Yet another transformation follows in John chapter 2.

From a happy event in Cana, Jesus turns his steps towards Jerusalem to participate in the festival of Pesach/Passover. A feast of celebration and remembrance of the end of slavery in Egypt and the passing through the Red Sea to freedom. A freedom that didn’t work out exactly as was intended.

For 40 years the children of Israel moved around in the desert until they were allowed to enter the Promised Land. During these 40 years they learned how to worship God, perform the various sacrifices in the Tabernacle and how to live by the Law as God’s own people; set apart from other nations and tribes and most of all apart from their gods. 

But time after time they lapsed into idolatry by compromising and abandoning the living God who had rescued them.  They were meant to be worshippers of the Most High, the one and true living God; the Creator of heaven and earth because he had chosen them to be his own people. The purpose for their existence was to show the rest of the world the way to the one and only Living God, different from the foreign gods of wood and stone.

So when Jesus comes to the Temple he knows the whole story from the beginning of time. And what does he find now? A marketplace right in front of the face of God

First the Tabernacle and then the Temple with the altar of sacrifices in the center were through the time of the Old Testament a sign of God’s presence. It was the place where God met man and where God’s holiness, grace and protection were found.

What took place in the Temple that made Jesus so angry? The animals were required to be sacrificed there. There were rules and many regulations to make everything work both in the holy services and the many different offerings. It had to run like clockwork. What had happened?

Might I suggest; it was a change of attitude?  When you sense the presence of God the immediate response would be to humble yourself and bow down before the Most High. A “broken heart God will not resist” and in James 4:6 it says “God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.”

From a humble approach to an attitude of indifference and making the holy place into a business; how did that happen? 

I think one major cause  then and today is pride and next, as I see it “cold love” where the love of Jesus is replaces by a worldly attitude that has very little to do with faith or the word of God. You have a knowledge about God but not the heart of God. The compassion and mercy for your fellow man is gone and everything turns into “business”.

Then comes something that can creep up on every believer; carelessness. Compromising and neglecting what God has decided and making new rules for the sake of selfishness and pride.

Remember the Seven Woes on the Teachers of the Law and the Pharisees in Matthew 23? Jesus unmasked selfishness and self-serving traditions that  turned the focus to man and what man could profit from and it became the model for righteousness; that is self-righteousness.

A transformation from the love of God and putting him in the center, to a routine that is performed with no heart can also happen in our time and is not a rare occasion for the time of the Temple.

I think what Jesus found in the Temple can also be found  in my own heart as well as in churches and congregations. To grow a cold heart and cold love isn’t that difficult to become trapped in, and sometimes it takes the “fury of the Lord” and a very hands-on intervention from him to bring things back in order in the spiritual temple I'm supposed to be.

I think Jesus wasn’t just angry that day but also very sad for his children. For what they missed out.

He really want us to draw near him and we can do that without hesitation because the ultimate sacrifice was made on Golgotha so that there would be no more enmity between man and God and there would never be a  need for an animal sacrifice ever again to atone for sin. 

I’m grateful that “the blood of Jesus covers a multitude of mistakes and transgressions”. Without him I would be lost forever.