Jesus’ Final Instructions to His Apostles (June 5)

The Resurrection of Condemnation (June 30)

THE RESURRECTION OF CONDEMNATION (JUNE 30) View on Website -- https://wordpoints.com/resurrection-condemnation-june-30/ "Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice and come forth -- those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation" (John 5:28,29 NKJV). RESURRECTION! The very word stirs the soul — it is the very essence of the gospel. It was Jesus who said, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live” (John 11:25). So Paul wrote these unforgettable lines, speaking for all who have obeyed the gospel and live in hope: “Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed” (1 Corinthians 15:51,52). But resurrection is a double-edged sword. Go back and read our text in John 5:28,29. There, Jesus said that “the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice and come forth — those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation.” For some, the resurrection will be one of “life,” but to others it will be one of “condemnation.” Human beings have eternal souls — souls that will spend eternity, if not with God, then away from Him. In Revelation 21:8, the eternal destiny of those who have refused God’s salvation is called “the second death.” Jesus said that to suffer that death is far worse than to die physically: “I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing more that they can do. But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him!” (Luke 12:4,5). And when He taught on hell, He used graphic language. At the judgment, the ungodly will hear the words, “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41). These, Jesus said, “will go away into eternal punishment” (v.46). Our human freedom entails accountability to our Creator. And if, in the end, we have rejected Him, it will be useless to deny the choices we made. While there is time, let’s make the right choice. "Hell is paved with great granite blocks hewn from the hearts of those who said, 'I can do no other'" (Heywood Broun). Gary Henry - WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com For more information, visit http://AreYouaChristian.com

Away from the Presence of the Lord (June 29)

AWAY FROM THE PRESENCE OF THE LORD (JUNE 29) View on Website -- https://wordpoints.com/away-from-presence-lord-june-29/ "They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might, when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at among all who have believed, because our testimony to you was believed" (2 Thessalonians 1:9,10). THE STARK TRUTH IS THAT OUR CHOICES WITH REGARD TO GOD WILL HAVE ETERNAL CONSEQUENCES. Having been created in the image of an eternal God, we also are eternal. Whether we accept Him or reject Him, we will live eternally. And as Paul taught in the text above, those who reject God will have an eternity “away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might.” The doctrine of eternal punishment is not acceptable to the modern mind. The current trend, even among conservative Christians, is toward “universalism,” the belief that all human beings are going to be saved (or at least that the unsaved will simply be annihilated rather than punished eternally). Francis Chan worded it well: “Does everyone go to heaven? Based on what I hear at funerals, the answer is an overwhelming ‘Yes!’ How many funerals have you attended where this was even in question?” Yet, as Chan has forcefully argued, the Bible simply cannot be taken seriously if the reality of eternal punishment is not accepted. Unfortunately, many people do not take the Bible seriously. Universalism is fueled not by biblical exegesis but by emotional preferences. Hell is simply incongruent with the way people want to feel about God. As Arthur Climenhaga has said, “The issue of the new universalism is no longer ‘God hath spoken’ but ‘Man hath reasoned.’” So this debate presents a challenge. Will we let Jesus be our Teacher in texts like Matthew 10:28 or will we not? The knowledge that those who are lost right now will, if they fail to receive salvation in the gospel of Christ, be lost in eternity is the reason our evangelism should be so urgent. So let me ask you: is the reason why we Christians are not any more urgent in our evangelism the fact that we don’t really believe the lost will be lost? Why is there so little passion to rescue the lost? Concerning hell, non-Christians need to accept what the Scriptures teach — and the evidence suggests that many Christians need to believe it too. "The true universalism of the Bible is the call to universal evangelism in obedience to Christ’s universal commission. It is the conviction not that all men will be saved in the end, but that all men must hear the gospel" (John Stott). Gary Henry - WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com For more information, visit http://AreYouaChristian.com

Learning About Love from God (June 28)

LEARNING ABOUT LOVE FROM GOD (JUNE 28) View on Website -- https://wordpoints.com/learning-love-from-god-june-28/ "Jesus said to him, 'Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, "Show us the Father"?'" (John 14:9). NOTHING IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN OUR CONCEPT OF GOD. What we think of our Creator — both His character and His will — is the principal force that shapes our lives. Since ideas have consequences, the bigger the subject, the more our ideas need to be true. There being no bigger subject than God, we should be extremely careful. In the end, the way we have lived will have been the outworking of our real (not our pretended) beliefs about God. When Jesus said that “the truth will set you free” (John 8:32), He had more in mind than just the truth about God’s plan of salvation. I believe He meant, first and foremost, the truth about God Himself. The path that He has designed for our redemption must be accepted (untruths about God’s plan are deadly), but out of all the errors that must be corrected, none are more crucial than wrong ideas about God. The problem of sin arose when we started acting on the basis of falsehoods about Him, and if the problem is to be fixed, those falsehoods must be rooted out of our thinking. So let me ask you a practical question: what do you think about the “love of God”? And more importantly, where did you get those ideas? Most of us have some concept of what love is and how it behaves, but unfortunately those notions have often been picked up from pop psychology, pop theology, and even pop culture. Rather than letting our definition of love be formed by God, we imagine love as the world has taught us to see it, and we then transfer that shallow, sentimental view to God. Even when we flatter ourselves that we’ve gone beyond the worldly view to an understanding of “unconditional” love, we are still limited by the world’s concept of what love would actually do in specific situations. Clearly, our minds are still fettered by a good bit of untruth. Nothing about Jesus was more revolutionary than His exemplification of love. If we take all of what He did (and not just our favorite parts), even our most “advanced” ideas about love will be disrupted. It will be a disturbing, and truly liberating, experience. "The Christian does not understand God in terms of love; he understands love in terms of God as seen in Christ" (Joseph Fletcher). Gary Henry - WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com For more information, visit http://AreYouaChristian.com

Jesus’ Mission: He Came to Save Sinners (June 27)

JESUS' MISSION: HE CAME TO SAVE SINNERS (JUNE 27) View on Website -- https://wordpoints.com/jesus-mission-save-sinners-june-27/ "The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost" (1 Timothy 1:15). EVEN BEFORE JESUS DIED, PEOPLE DISAGREED AS TO WHAT HIS PURPOSE WAS. And those disagreements continue today. Whatever He may have done or not done, what was it that He intended to do? What was His mission (and His apostles’ mission) in this world? What is the main point of the gospel of Christ? In other words, if the gospel is the solution, what is the problem that it was meant to solve? Writing to his young coworker Timothy, Paul left no doubt about the object of Jesus’ work: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” (1 Timothy 1:15). This echoes Jesus’ own words, “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10). Many secondary benefits flow from the forgiveness of our sins, but we must never forget the message Christ commanded to be preached in His name. Paul never forgot it, because many years later he recalled that Christ had sent him to the Gentiles “to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me” (Acts 26:18). Christ ordered Paul to preach a specific message — and that message was about the forgiveness of sins. But going back to 1 Timothy 1:15, did you notice what Paul said about himself? Christ came into the world to save sinners, “of whom I am the foremost.” If we see the gospel as providing what others need most, the forgiveness of their sins, each of us should see our own need for the gospel very personally. And when forgiven, we must not suppose it took any less of God’s grace to forgive us than might have been required for a really “sinful” person. So let’s not misunderstand what Jesus came to do, and in our preaching, let’s not misrepresent what the gospel offers. Tempted to get lost in details and side issues, let’s come back to the center. The cancer the gospel proposes to cure is this: our sins against God. "We shall never understand anything of our Lord's preaching and ministry unless we continually keep in mind what exactly and exclusively his errand was in this world. Sin was his errand in this world, and it was his only errand. He would never have been in this world, either preaching or doing anything else, but for sin. He could have done everything else for us without coming down into this world at all; everything else but take away our sin" (Alexander White). Gary Henry - WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com For more information, visit http://AreYouaChristian.com

Learning About the Father From the Son (June 26)

LEARNING ABOUT THE FATHER FROM THE SON (JUNE 26) View on Website -- https://wordpoints.com/learning-about-father-from-son-june-26/ "No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you" (John 15:15). IF YOU HAD DOUBTS ABOUT THE EXISTENCE OF GOD, WHAT IF SOMEONE TOLD YOU THAT HE HAD COME FROM THE PRESENCE OF GOD AND COULD PERSONALLY VOUCH FOR GOD’S EXISTENCE? And suppose that person gave compelling evidence that he was telling the truth? Well, that is exactly what we have in the case of Jesus. If (1) Jesus of Nazareth lived in the world as a real person, we need to pay attention to the historical data that can be known about Him. And if (2) a historical case can be made for the fact that His resurrection actually occurred, then He was not just a man but the Son of God. This crucial fact means that (3) of all the people who have ever lived, Jesus is the one who had the most direct information about God: everything Jesus said about God should inform our thinking on this, the most important issue in our lives. Jesus is described as “the faithful witness” (Revelation 1:5), which means He told the truth in everything He reported to mankind about God. He claimed He came from God, had direct knowledge of Him, and bore accurate testimony about Him. To one audience, He said, “I speak of what I have seen with my Father” (John 8:38). And He said to His disciples, “All that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you” (John 15:15). These are bold claims, but the resurrection proved them to be true. If Jesus said God is real, His testimony should supersede any doubts we may have, since we’ve never been where God is. If Jesus, by His teaching and example, contradicts our opinions about the nature of God, He was in a better position to know what God is like than we are. If Jesus gave commandments for our obedience, these must be seen as having the authority of God. And finally, if Jesus taught that God’s plan for our salvation was based on His death, we can stake our lives on that. It simply can’t be emphasized too much: Jesus is the ultimate proof of God — and of God’s true nature. "Jesus' claim to speak the things which he had 'seen' in the Father's presence (John 8:38) echoes his language in John 6:46: 'he who comes from God, he has seen the Father' . . . But no one can speak of heavenly realities except one who has come down from heaven and imparts to his hearers on earth what he has seen and heard in that transcendent realm" (F. F. Bruce). Gary Henry - WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com For more information, visit http://AreYouaChristian.com