“These are the statutes and rules that you shall be careful to do in the land that the LORD, the God of your fathers, has given you to possess, all the days that you live on the earth. You shall surely destroy all the places where the nations whom you shall dispossess served their gods, on the high mountains and on the hills and under every green tree. You shall tear down their altars and dash in pieces their pillars and burn their Asherim with fire. You shall chop down the carved images of their gods and destroy their name out of that place. You shall not worship the LORD your God in that way. But you shall seek the place that the LORD your God will choose out of all your tribes to put his name and make his habitation there. There you shall go, and there you shall bring your burnt offerings and your sacrifices, your tithes and the contribution that you present, your vow offerings, your freewill offerings, and the firstborn of your herd and of your flock. And there you shall eat before the LORD your God, and you shall rejoice, you and your households, in all that you undertake, in which the LORD your God has blessed you.
“You shall not do according to all that we are doing here today, everyone doing whatever is right in his own eyes, for you have not as yet come to the rest and to the inheritance that the LORD your God is giving you. But when you go over the Jordan and live in the land that the LORD your God is giving you to inherit, and when he gives you rest from all your enemies around, so that you live in safety, then to the place that the LORD your God will choose, to make his name dwell there, there you shall bring all that I command you: your burnt offerings and your sacrifices, your tithes and the contribution that you present, and all your finest vow offerings that you vow to the LORD. And you shall rejoice before the LORD your God, you and your sons and your daughters, your male servants and your female servants, and the Levite that is within your towns, since he has no portion or inheritance with you. Take care that you do not offer your burnt offerings at any place that you see, but at the place that the LORD will choose in one of your tribes, there you shall offer your burnt offerings, and there you shall do all that I am commanding you.” [1]
It is a fallacious idea that one may worship the Living God in whatever manner one chooses. Nevertheless, the errant concept has become so ingrained contemporary thought as to reign virtually unchallenged in the deepest thoughts of current social thinkers. Indeed, this concept that one may worship God however one may wish reigns as prevalent in almost every society since the days of Cain and Abel.
I am reminded of an incident which occurred while visiting during a period when I was overseeing a church restart in the Lower Mainland of this province. While conducting visits to people who were recommended by members of the congregation, I encountered a woman who expressed in a rather humorous fashion the thought she could worship God in her own way. When I inquired whether she had a church connection, she replied that she was a member of the United Church of Canada. “Oh, your husband previously informed me that you didn’t go to church,” I responded.
“That’s right,” she replied, “we don’t go to church, but we are members. I just couldn’t go to any church other than our United Church.”
She went on to relate that the family was heavily involved with their beach property in Birch Bay, and that precluded attending the services of a church.
The church I pastored was contemplating initiating a Friday evening service, so I invited her to consider joining us in worship during an upcoming evening. To my invitation she replied, “I am not interested. I worship God in my own way. I believe, ‘Do unto others as you want them do unto you,’ and I want to be left alone.”
Though she likely had not given the matter much thought; she was voicing the concept that God is a luxury—a convenience. She was restating in modern tongue an ancient fallacy. You cannot serve God as you choose! You cannot be “master of your own fate” and have a viable and vital relationship to God. You must serve God THERE.
“THERE” IS A SPECIFIC PLACE — “You shall seek the place that LORD your God will choose” [DEUTERONOMY 12:5a]. You are possessed by an error if you think you can restrict the place of worship to physical parameters. Perhaps you recall the dialogue between Jesus and the woman of Samaria whom he encountered at the well of Sychar? After the Master had confronted this woman with the knowledge that Messiah was coming and that He was to be worshipped, she responded with a sense of awe.
John tells us, “The woman said to [Jesus], ‘Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth’” [JOHN 4:19-24].
These words which Jesus spoke have become the definitive statement on worship. Every heart may be a sanctuary. Every body may be a temple. Every home may be an altar. Every workbench may be a pulpit. All that is required is the presence of the Lord in that place. All that is required is that the Lord be present. The true believer knows the promise, but the experience of worship will yet be dependent upon each individual’s response to life.
Listen to the words of the Living Christ as He promises repeatedly to be with us. “I am with you always, to the end of the age” [MATTHEW 28:20b].
Again, we have received Jesus’ promise to us as His followers: “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live” [JOHN 14:18-19].
The individual who knows the Saviour, or perhaps more appropriately, the one who is known by the Risen Saviour, knows that she or he is never deserted by the Lord. Jesus is always with His redeemed saint, even when that one has sinned and given into the temptations that are ever present. Isn’t this the promise we receive as recorded by an unknown writer? In the Letter to Hebrew Christians we read, “[The Lord] has said, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you’” [HEBREWS 13:5b]. Our Risen Saviour is ever with us, His eye watching over us for our good and for His Glory. Therefore, we are not constrained to worship in one place since we are always in the presence of our God.
On Patmos, the Revelator wrote of what he experienced when the Risen Saviour confronted him. We read of what he experienced, as he writes, “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet saying, ‘Write what you see in a book and send it to the seven churches, to Ephesus and to Smyrna and to Pergamum and to Thyatira and to Sardis and to Philadelphia and to Laodicea.’
“Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me, and on turning I saw seven golden lampstands, and in the midst of the lampstands one like a son of man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash around his chest. The hairs of his head were white, like white wool, like snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze, refined in a furnace, and his voice was like the roar of many waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, from his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in full strength.
“When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he laid his right hand on me, saying, ‘Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades. Write therefore the things that you have seen, those that are and those that are to take place after this. As for the mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand, and the seven golden lampstands, the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches’” [REVELATION 1:10-20].
Though he was in the Spirit, the exiled Revelator had not realised that the Risen Lord of Glory was right there with him. Don’t imagine that we are superior to John in this matter of our failure to recognise the presence of the Saviour. How often do we come together into the house of the Lord, gathering with the saints of God, and yet failing to realise that we are in the presence of the Conquering Saviour! Gathered with the saints of God to do the will of the Saviour, we may be certain that the Master is with us. Did not Jesus promise His disciples—and that must surely include us, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them” [MATTHEW 18:20]. And just as He is always present with His people when they are gathered to worship, we may be certain that He is with us wherever we may be if we are His redeemed child. Jesus is ever with us who believe! The impact of this truth is that we may worship wherever we may be.
We Christians have a glaring need to cultivate the attitude that allows us to perceive the presence of the Lord wherever we may be. And we must so live that our Lord Christ is welcome regardless of where we may find ourselves.
I read of a priest who was incarcerated during the dark days of Communist rule in Romania. He bemoaned the fact that he could not worship. He didn’t have available a scapula, an alb, a chasuble, or even a cincture; he had neither cassock nor surplice. He had neither chalice nor paten, denying him opportunity to worship. In his mind, without the accoutrements with which he was familiar, he was unable to worship. Dear people, I would not have a religion that demanded worship only in a specific place, or that required specific utensils in order to worship.
A SPECIFIC PEOPLE ARE TO BE “THERE” — “There you shall eat before the LORD your God, and you shall rejoice, you and your households” [DEUTERONOMY 12:7a]. These words were addressed to the children of Israel. The people were divinely purchased out of their slavery in Egypt. They were and are the chosen people of God. To this day, Israel is precious to God. This nation was chosen based on divine love.
“You are a people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the LORD loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the LORD has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt” [DEUTERONOMY 7:6-8].
The basis for selection by the True and Living GOD has ever been divine love. One of the truly comforting verses found in whole of the Word of God is found in John’s Gospel when Jesus said, “The Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God” [JOHN 16:27]. And that is a glorious revelation: God is a loving Father Who loves us dearly. Truly we hear the voice of God declaring to His people, “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].
People seem often to imagine a cruel old man sitting up yonder, always looking for an opportunity to take away peoples’ fun or seeking only to injure innocent people. That is not the God I serve, nor is that an accurate picture of God. Here is a more accurate picture still that is provided by the Apostle to the Gentiles as he opens the encyclical we know as the Letter to the Ephesians. In EPHESIANS 1:3-12, Paul writes, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.
“In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory.”
The Apostle to the Jews observed of us who follow the Risen Saviour, “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of his own, so that you may proclaim the virtues of the one who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. You once were not a people, but now you are God’s people. You were shown no mercy, but now you have received mercy” [1 PETER 2:9-10].
Thus, we may be certain that THERE demands a specific people, people who are born from above and into the Family of God. Moses identified that “there” was to include “you and your households.” It is not the responsibility of the church nor of the preacher, nor of the Sunday School to bring my family to the knowledge of the love of God. I am responsible for the spiritual training of my own family! Each man and each woman bears the awesome responsibility to teach the children God entrusts to their care. The church, the preached Word, the Sunday School—each are given by God to assist in bringing our families to the Faith, but we must assume responsibility for our own families.
The Philippian jailer believed the promise of the Lord; and acting on that promise, he introduced his entire family to the Good News of Christ. Paul and Silas urged this pagan jailer to believe the message of life, promising that he would be instrumental in bringing his entire family into this divine fellowship. We read that the missionaries said to the man when he asked what he was to do in order to be saved, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household” [ACTS 16:31]. They did not merely stop after commanding the jailer to believe, but they seized the opportunity to tell all who were in his household the message of Christ the Lord. Thus, we read, “They spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. And he took them the same hour of the night and washed their wounds; and he was baptized at once, he and all his family. Then he brought them up into his house and set food before them. And he rejoiced along with his entire household that he had believed in God” [ACTS 16:32-34].
What a tragic thing should one who follows Christ the Lord stand in that great throng that will witness the day when the lost are haled before that great, white throne, and see among those condemned at that time a child that had grown to adulthood in her own home. Yes, the child will bear responsibility for her, or for his, choice to turn from God and His grace. Surely, knowing her child’s neglected responsibility could never take away the sorrow that her beloved child is forever lost, forever turned away from eternal life. I understand the joy of knowing that our own sin is forgiven, but we are necessarily concerned for our own household! Surely the words penned by the Apostle Paul apply in this instance! “If someone does not provide for his own, especially his own family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever” [1 TIMOTHY 5:8 NET BIBLE 2nd].
God has always been concerned that His grace should reach the families of those who call upon His Name. Early in the history of Israel, you may recall how God spoke through Moses to command the people, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates” [DEUTERONOMY 6:4-9].
Again, listen to God’s instructions to the people of Israel instructing them to assume responsibility for their own children. The LORD instructed fathers and mothers, “‘You shall observe this rite as a statute for you and for your sons forever. And when you come to the land that the LORD will give you, as he has promised, you shall keep this service. And when your children say to you, “What do you mean by this service?” you shall say, “It is the sacrifice of the LORD’s Passover, for he passed over the houses of the people of Israel in Egypt, when he struck the Egyptians but spared our houses”’ And the people bowed their heads and worshiped” [EXODUS 12:24-27].
As a husband and as a father, I am responsible to ensure that my family receives opportunity to be raised in the presence of the Living God. I bear responsibility for those who are in my family, to bring them into the presence of the Lord God. Mothers are responsible to introduce their children to the Faith of Christ the Lord. Fathers are responsible to pray for their children, keeping his beloved children in prayers always offered up to God. What a formidable responsibility! What a precious privilege!
WE HAVE A SPECIFIC PROCEDURE WHICH IS TO BE PRACTISED “THERE” — We may imagine that worship must be restricted to our time in a church building; and the building to which we escape must be a particular building bearing the proper name. The text says, “You shall eat before the LORD your God, and you shall rejoice, you and your households, in all that you undertake, in which the LORD your God has blessed you” [VERSE 7].
Do you ever imagine that God is uninterested in your activities or your daily walk? Are you ever tempted to believe that the Master is unconcerned about what you consider the minutiae of life? God is very much concerned about the smallest details of your life. God desires that your every action prospers and thus glorifies His Name.
Every aspect of our life has received the rich blessing of the Lord. Not one portion of life has failed to receive God’s rich blessing. It is the will of God that each of us so live that the whole of our life glorifies Him. Listen to the Word spoken by the Saviour and which has been recorded in Matthew’s Gospel. Our Lord has taught us, “Why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
“Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble” [MATTHEW 6:28-34].
According to Jesus’ own Word, my first priority is to seek God’s glory. Almost habitually, we turn this around, wondering why the Lord has not honoured His Word. The reason God does not honour His word is that there is no promise that He will care for our daily needs and only after having done this free us to honour Him. Honour Him first!
Jesus exalted and honoured work. I say this because we are told that He was the carpenter’s son. Jesus Himself worked at that profession. He chose men busy in the everyday affairs of life to follow Him. Peter and Andrew, John and James were busy at their nets when called to follow the Master. Levi was busy at the collection of customs. All were busy at the rhythm of life when the Master called. God will not use, nor will He prosper that individual, who is content to rest upon the promises of the government. Neither will God call to a position of prominence that individual willing to let another do the work. In everything I do, I am responsible to glorify the Name of the Lord.
Did we never hear the Apostle when he said, “Whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” [COLOSSIANS 3:17]. God, in His Word, anticipates and expects that those whom He calls will be workers and not drones. And He expects those who follow Him to glorify His Name by transforming the labour they perform into an act of praise. The housewife doesn’t just clean floors and prepare meals, she prepares a home where God is glorified. The rancher doesn’t just feed cattle and bale hay, he raises beef to feed a nation, doing so as a demonstration of God’s mercy and kindness. By that same token, the preacher doesn’t just prepare sermons, he seeks to build Christians who know the will of God. In every task, the Christian seeks to honour God presenting his or her labour as worship.
Again, in support of this concept that our work is an act of worship, the Apostle would write, “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men” [COLOSSIANS 3:23]. My daily work is either a drudgery, or it is an opportunity to reveal the power of Christ working through me. My labours are either a necessary evil, or they are an opportunity to honour the Master.
THOSE WHO ARE “THERE” HAVE A SPECIFIC MOTIVE — “…because the LORD your God has blessed you” [VERSE 7]. Those who were blessed were to be “there.” The people of God were to go to the place of worship because the LORD had blessed them. The ongoing motive to be “there,” was because those gathered had been blessed. More than simply claiming to have been blessed, the people were to recognise that it was the LORD God Who had blessed them. Knowing that we are blessed and knowing Who it is that has blessed us is a powerful motive to worship the Lord our God.
This implies, of course, that those who had been blessed knew that they had been blessed. And that raises the question you alone can answer—are you blessed? Do you recognise the blessings that fill your life? And if you know that you are blessed, and you can enumerate the rich blessings that mark your life, do you recognise that it is the LORD your God Who has blessed you? Are you able to say whether you have received the rich blessings given by our Lord? It is to be regretted that much of modern Christendom does not know what it is to be blessed of God; many professing Christians are so focused on their own comfort that they are unaware of the blessings marking their lives. I should know if the Living God has blessed me and how those blessings touch my life.
Even the lost are blessed by our God. They may not know that God blesses them, but He does! Remember how Jesus has taught us, “[Your Father who is in heaven] makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” [MATTHEW 5:45]. Why do you live in Canada, a land at peace, rather than living in Ukraine? Is that not God’s blessing? Even our impoverished have smart phones and big screen televisions. Food banks and welfare ensures that people need not starve here in Canada. Is that not God’s blessing? We take for granted that automobiles are available to any requiring transportation. And there are multiple fuelling stations throughout the nation. Is that not God’s blessing? Surely, all of us, saved or lost, are richly blessed.
One major reason that most people are incapable of saying whether they have received a rich blessing from God is that most people do not know what a blessing is. In the passage before us, the word which is employed is a quite common word in the Hebrew language. There are two words which may be translated “bless.” This word used in this place is the more common of the two. The word originally meant “to kneel” as when in receipt of a bountiful gift. The meaning conveyed to those first readers spoke of the receipt of a bountiful gift. The blessed of the Lord are blessed with all solid and permanent felicity of every kind.
“The LORD has remembered us; he will bless us;
he will bless the house of Israel;
he will bless the house of Aaron;
he will bless those who fear the LORD,
both the small and the great.
May the LORD give you increase,
you and your children!
May you be blessed by the LORD,
who made heaven and earth!
The heavens are the LORD’s heavens,
but the earth he has given to the children of man.
The dead do not praise the LORD,
nor do any who go down into silence.
But we will bless the LORD
from this time forth and forevermore.
Praise the LORD!”
[PSALM 115:12-18]
This same word was translated in the Greek translation of the Old Testament by the word eulogia, which is composed of two concepts meaning “well spoken.” Thus, the original intent of the word meant that to bless another was to speak well of them. Later, in the development of the Greek language, the word eulogia came to describe a generous gift. So, if we are blessed of God, we have received a generous gift. Note, however, that the term was not necessarily restricted to material gifts. I understand that we live in a materialistic time, and we are conditioned to think in materialistic terms. Though we would perhaps demur from speaking of our lives as materialistic, it is almost impossible for us to deny that we are materialistic in far too many ways.
Should we free ourselves from our materialistic bent, we understand that to be blessed of God is to receive His commendation—and that is indeed a precious gift! Understood in this light, the terms “bless,” “blessing,” or “blessed” have reference to receipt of a generous gift or gifts. The term was elevated to a new level of meaning through its employment by the Holy Spirit to speak of a state of joy, peace, power, or happiness resulting from spiritual union with God. Underscore this great, felicitous truth in your mind, for it reminds us that if we belong to the Father, having been born from above and into His Family, we are blessed in ways the world can never know. When we are blessed by God, we have received from Him a state of joy, of peace, of power, or of happiness because we have entered into spiritual union with Him.
Don’t overlook the fact that God does not pour out His blessing on the unrighteous. As mentioned earlier, we understand that the Lord God causes the sun to rise on the just and the unjust, and we know that He causes His rain to fall on the righteous and the unrighteous. Of course, we are assuredly aware that the atheist profits from the morality of the godly, whether the atheist acknowledges that benefit or whether the atheist is willfully ignorant of the benefits of righteousness about the one who denies God’s providence.
Years ago, the story is told of a man who established a town in the American west. Upon establishing the town, the man insisted there could be no church built in the confines of the town. That man was adamant that he would not allow a preacher into his town or a church to be built in the town. However, soon after the town had been in existence for less than a couple of years, the man placed an ad in newspapers throughout the nation asking for a preacher to settle in his town.
In the ad, he stated that though he didn’t believe in God and he didn’t believe anything the churches taught, he had concluded that gambling dens and saloons had so corrupted his town that no one wanted to live there except criminals and scoundrels. Therefore, to attract families to settle in his town, to be able to fill the schools he had built with students from the families he hoped to attract to the town, and to draw businesses to be established in the town, he realised that he must set a moral tone for the town. And the only way he could establish that moral tone would be to attract godly people. Thus, he admitted he needed churches to attract and to establish godly people.
Surely, we each understand that unbelievers living here in Canada have benefited from the goodness of God; godless people have benefitted from the righteousness of God’s people. Nevertheless, we may be certain that God does not bless—that is, God does not give joy, give peace, or give happiness to the unbelieving individual. One must be a child of God if they hope to receive any such good from the Living God.
In support of this commonsense contention, listen to the testimony of our Lord Christ. “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.’ They answered him, ‘We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, “You will become free?”’
“Jesus answered them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. I know that you are offspring of Abraham; yet you seek to kill me because my word finds no place in you. I speak of what I have seen with my Father, and you do what you have heard from your father.’
“They answered him, ‘Abraham is our father.’ Jesus said to them, ‘If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing the works Abraham did, but now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham did. You are doing the works your father did.’ They said to him, ‘We were not born of sexual immorality. We have one Father—even God.’ Jesus said to them, ‘If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me. Which one of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God’” [JOHN 8:31-47].
Those who are outside of God are incapable of hearing God. And if they are unable to hear God, they cannot know anything of the rich blessings God gives to those who receive Him.
The testimony of the Master’s Apostle is similar. “In Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith” [GALATIANS 3:26]. Be very clear in your mind: outside of Christ the Lord, it is impossible to be a child of God. Muslims and Hindus, atheists and agnostics, may be nice people—but they can never be sons of God. They neither know God, nor are they able to please God.
It remains true, “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God” [JOHN 3:16-21].
John’s Gospel emphasises this truth when John writes, “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him” [JOHN 3:36]. In saying this, I judge no one. What I say is not judgement, but a call to life for those who accept what I say. Forgiveness of sin and freedom from condemnation is offered to all people in Christ Jesus as Master over life.
Surely, this offer is extended to each one that hears the message I am delivering this day. The Lord God promises, “If you declare with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For one believes with his heart and is justified, and declares with his mouth and is saved. The Scripture says, ‘Everyone who believes in him will never be ashamed.’ There is no difference between Jew and Greek, because they all have the same Lord, who gives richly to all who call on him. ‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved’” [ROMANS 10:9-13 ISV]. Receive the promise of God now. Then, you will know that you are included in the divine invitation to meet and worship God “THERE.” Amen.
[1] Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. Wheaton: Standard Bible Society, 2016. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
