Tag: God loved
Day 2–Our Lord God Responds First!
Scripture for January 2nd: Genesis 1-3
Genesis 3:9 “But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” Genesis 3:21 “And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.”
As we begin our year’s devotions, we start out with basic truths of Scripture. My aim is to keep these daily readings as simple as possible, yet to let God’s Word bring hope and inspiration to those sent to help hurting people. God our Father is full of compassion and is loving towards all mankind.
In Genesis 1 through 3 we have the record of creation and man’s fall into sin. God created the world and everything in it. The last act of creation was man made in His image and likeness. Adam and Eve were given rulership and care of creation as their assignment. This was to be under God’s authority and direction. They were warned not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil or they would die. They walked and talked with God the Father regularly in His garden before temptation and disobedience.
Adam and Eve disobeyed God’s simple command, eating of the forbidden tree, and instantly felt guilt and shame, hiding from God and making coverings of fig leaves. God responded first–coming to the Garden and calling out, “Adam, where are you?” (Genesis 3:9) God loved Adam and Eve, but sin had caused separation and would bring death. God acted to intervene by seeking Adam’s confession and then Eve’s. Instead, they blamed others and God. He then killed an innocent animal and clothed them with the bloody skins. He sent them out of the garden under the curse they had brought upon their own lives through disobeying.
But God did not leave Adam and Eve and their children without a remedy. His response was a plan to show His love and mercy through sending His own Son as the second Adam, only without sin. He demonstrated that love by His Son laying down His life blood on behalf of sinners. The greatest love, God’s Son given, made available the greatest deliverance from death to eternal life by greatest number of people who would simply believe on Jesus Christ. John 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”
Prayer: Father God, Thank You for responding to my great need of deliverance from sin and death. I respond to Your great Love by believing Your Word and receiving Your Son. Teach me to respond to Jesus each day in humble obedience. Amen.
God so loved!
Scripture reading for April 9th: John 3
Jesus Christ came into our world to reveal the love of His Father for all mankind. He came first to His own people, the Jews. These Jews should have been able to recognized Him because of the Scriptures shared through God’s prophets. One of these studied Jews, Nicodemus, came to Jesus by night to inquire further of Jesus about God’s kingdom. Jesus told him that he must be ‘born again’ by the Spirit to even see the kingdom of God! (John 3:5-8)
Nicodemus struggled to understand this concept so Jesus used one of Moses’ stories to illustrate how God would do this for all mankind. “No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven–the Son of Man. Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life. 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. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.” (John 3:13-17)
Jesus had come down from heaven to heal mankind of the serpent’s bite. He was the ‘Son of Man’ and ‘Son of God’. He would be lifted up on a cross bearing the judgment of God on the serpent and sin’s bites on mankind. Anyone who would look to Him and believe would be saved from perishing and receive eternal life! God loved the whole world! This was the pathway to being ‘born again’! Have you believed on Jesus Christ?