Tag: John 3:17

December 18th 2022: Gaius Douglas

Published on by Penuel Baptist RochLeave a comment

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“Seek the Lord while he may be found;
    call on him while he is near.”

Isaiah 55:6

Some say that this is no Christmas verse, but I tell you, every verse of the Bible is a Christmas verse. The true message of Christmas is to celebrate the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. We celebrate God’s gift to the world, God’s gift to you and me. We can never truly celebrate His birth unless we know Him as our Saviour and our Lord. He is the most wonderful gift.

“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. (John 3:16). God sent His most wonderful gift, the Lord Jesus Christ. Do you know the Lord Jesus Christ as your Saviour? Are you rejoicing in Him? If so, you have something so precious, so holy! He is precious to me. This gift is so precious, more precious than any earthly gift because it is eternal.

Some people say Christians need to lighten up, to lay off and let them celebrate with family and friends, especially as we are experiencing hard times – the cost of living, heating. Tesco says they’re the joy of Christmas! Others say, ‘You Christians say God has given us freedom of choice, so we can choose whether we celebrate Jesus or not! Some say, ‘If God’s gift is available 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year, we have 361 days to consider – leave us alone for the 4 days we celebrate Christmas. People haven’t got 361 days. We don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow. Today may be your last day on earth. Do you know Christ as your Saviour? What is important is knowing Him, receiving Him as your Saviour and Lord.

Christmas is all about love, “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. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” (John 3:16-17). Are you saved this morning? He came to seek and save those who are lost.

“And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Saviour of the world.” (1 John 4:14). ‘Of the world!’ Believe that and receive it. Every man, every woman, every boy and every girl are accountable to God this morning. God left the heavens, His eternal throne, and came down into this world. He became man, He became sin for us, and He went to Calvary’s cross and there He died. He humbled Himself. He became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. God now has exalted Him and given Him a name which is above every other name. At the name of Jesus, one day, every knee will bow.

Today is the accepted time. Today is the day of salvation. Today is the important day, not tomorrow. Today is the day you can receive the preciousness of the gift and receive Christ as your Saviour and Lord. Those of us who truly believe that the Lord Jesus Christ is our Saviour, love Christmas. I love Christmas! I look forward to it. It’s a time of giving and remembering God’s precious gift. It is the greatest gift you’re able to receive. When we’re giving gifts to each other, we are sharing of God’s bounty, remembering the greatest gift God has given us. ‘All good gifts around us’ He has given. The gift of God is God’s gift to us; He loves us and wants us to enjoy the gift of eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord.

We also have the gift of life. We are all breathing. That’s God’s good gift to you and me. You’re alive this morning. Are you thankful and appreciative? He has given you breath so you can sing His praises, so you can rejoice in Him and share His gladness with others. How ungrateful we are that we don’t always give Him thanks for it. How ungrateful we will be, even on Christmas Day – God willing, if our lives are spared – we have all these wonderful things around us, and we are not willing to give Him thanks for them.

He has invited mankind to, “Seek the Lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near.” (Isaiah 55:6). He will not always be there. God has appointed a time for each of us to receive Him as Saviour and Lord. He is coming again. There will come a time when it is too late. He calls, He pleads, He encourages us. He shares His gift with us. We celebrate Christmas after Christmas after Christmas – and we still say no to Him. We are still rejecting Him.

“Because I have called and you refused,
I have stretched out my hand and no one regarded,
25 Because you disdained all my counsel,
And would have none of my rebuke,
26 I also will laugh at your calamity.”
 (Proverbs 1:24-26a)

Christmas is a happy time but also a serious time. God is reminding us of the preciousness of His gift. He is asking you to seek Him, but if you refuse Him, “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6:23). My dear friends, there are two sides to the story: God has given us a gift, the Lord Jesus Christ, but if you refuse this gift, you have chosen death, you have rejected His Son. “The wages of sin is death.” We were born in sin, heading for a lost eternity. God came into this world through the person of His Son. He has shared His love with us. By rejecting Him He says, the same God who came to save is the same God who will judge. He will cast those who refuse Him into the lake of fire.

He has invited us. He wants us to come to Him. This Christmas, He wants you to appreciate His kindness, His truth, His love. But if your refuse Him, He will reject you. He knows everything you are experiencing in your life. As a man He lived in Nazareth. He had a family, went to a wedding, ate with Publicans and sinners, healed people, was homeless, rejected – even by his brothers. So don’t say He doesn’t know what we’re going through.

He loves us with such an everlasting love. God sent Him as our Saviour. You can enjoy the Christ of Christmas only if the Christ of Christmas is in your heart. You can enjoy Christmas! Many people don’t enjoy the Christ of Christmas. There is an opportunity this Christmas. God wants you to enjoy it, to enjoy His Son.

You can have a Christ-centred Christmas or a self-centred Christmas. Which will it be? One of the sad things is, for many people, this is their last Christmas. But if you know Christ as your Saviour you have an eternity to live with Him. You will be with Christ, which is far better. You can either receive Him this Christmas or reject Him. “The wages of sin is death.” Being separated from God. When He conquered sin, hell and death, we read that the Lord Jesus Christ say, ‘Because I live, you will also live forever.’ My dear friends, I’m rejoicing in the fact that I will never die. If you know Christ as your Saviour, you can rejoice. It is Christmas every day of my life because He is the Christ in Christmas. He is the Christ of Christmas. Regardless of what people may say, without Christ there is no Christmas. May God bless you.

October 9th 2016: Gaius Douglas

Published on by Penuel Baptist RochLeave a comment

Our service was led by Gaius Douglas who preached on John 3:17, ‘For God did not send His Son into the world to, condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.’

So often we hear things which are disappointing and we get upset. None of us like to hear we’re wrong, we’ve failed or it’s our fault. We may have received a letter after an interview telling us we have been unsuccessful. Criticism is hard.

When we read this verse we see a different approach; we see a God who does something different. He is different. He doesn’t write us off. The best example in scripture of this is the Lord Jesus Christ saying, ‘Have I not chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil.’ (John 6:70). Judas Iscariot had an important position, he was treasurer. He even set out on one occasion to preach and to heal. Jesus never wrote off Judas Iscariot until the Passover. Yet still He knew Judas was a devil. All the way along the Lord showed His grace and mercy to Judas, even though He knew he was a devil. This shows that our God and Father will never write us off.

When we come to this verse it comes out of a conversation with Nicodemus, who wasn’t quite sure who Jesus was. Jesus’ wants to remind us that He is the Lord. Isaiah writes, ‘I am the Lord, and there is none else, there is no God beside me: I girded thee, though thou hast not known me.’ (Isaiah 45:5).

He is the one who breathed the breath of life into man. We are sitting here today because He has given us the ability to sit here and listen. We can do what we do because of God, the Alpha and Omega.

God didn’t send His Son to condemn the world. In this life we see He came in the likeness of simple men, He came in the likeness of sinful flesh. Are we aware of the wonder of who God is? God made us. The God who came from heaven was like one of us, He went through the same problems we are going through. He bore our sins and sorrows, ‘He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from Him, He was despised, and we esteemed Him not. Surely He hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.’’ (Isaiah 53:3-4).

He is hearing the comments others are saying, which we may not like. Jesus was despised and rejected by men, even His brothers and sisters didn’t believe Him. The people called Him a Nazarene because He lived in the poorest area. He was hated without cause. He knows what each of us is going through. We see an expression of great love and compassion. He came to us, bore our sin. We were headed for death, separation from God, yet Christ came to save us and take us out of our boxes, from our preconceived ideas, and be put in His box.

God has a path for each one of us to follow. People will despise us but God came for us. We need to trust in Him alone, to follow in His footsteps. Don’t worry about what others are saying about you. ‘The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.’ (2 Peter 3:9).  He will never give up on us.

In John 8 we read of a lady caught in the act of adultery, brought to Jesus Christ by the scribes and Pharisees. She was condemned but the Lord said, ‘He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.’ (John 8:7) We have to be careful what we are saying about others. How many stones have we been guilty of throwing? Matthew 7:1 reminds us, ‘Judge not, that ye be not judged.’ We should judge ourselves before we judge others.

We are still in a time of grace and love but one day He will return and judge. He is the judge of all the earth. We are sinners saved by the grace of God. Jesus had every right to cast us out and destroy us but He has saved us. ‘Go, and sin no more.’  (John 8:11). He came to save that the world through Him might be saved. ‘The thief cometh not, but for to steal and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.’ (John 10:10)

Jesus came to reach the unloved, He came to heal. Trust in Him alone. God hears every prayer. One day He will deliver us all into His glory, into His kingdom.

‘Shew me thy ways, O Lord; teach me thy paths. Lead me in thy truth, and teach me: for thou art the God of my salvation; on thee do I wait all the day.’ (Psalm 25:4-5).