Sermon by Jaikar
The Gospel, the good news is that there is a Lord, there is a Saviour who has died on behalf of us (the entire mankind) on the cross for our sins and has given each one of us a way to eternal life. That Saviour is Jesus Christ. It wasn’t easy for Him to do all of that for us, yet He chose to do it. Have you ever thought why Jesus did this for us? Because He loves us all so much.
Romans 3:23 says “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
God created us (mankind) to have a relationship with Him, but He is so holy that He cannot have a relationship with a sinner and hence He sent His one and only Son Jesus Christ to restore us from our sins to a relationship with God.
Many times, we feel we have a pretty good life, good moral values but we never realise that we are all sinners. And the truth is that we are all born sinners and we cannot have eternal life without Jesus.
What is eternal life? Eternal life is a life after death. Once we are dead, we will either go to heaven or hell. Being close to heaven does not take us to heaven. All our good deeds can only take us to the gate but there is only one gate to heaven and that is Jesus. You can never get into heaven if you haven’t believed and accepted Jesus as your personal saviour. We always think that I can probably go to heaven but with Christ we always have an assurance that we will surely go to heaven.
When we believed in Jesus, we have received the gate pass to heaven. Are we so selfish not to share this good news of Jesus with our relatives, friends, colleagues and others? We need to find opportunities to introduce Christ to people around us.
One of my friends feels that we Christians try to push people towards Jesus, so he is never willing to listen to what I have to say. I was praying for him and asking God to help me explain my perspective to him. He is a person who usually tries out different restaurants for food. Whenever he finds a good place, he forces us to go there and try it out ourselves. And one day it struck me that just as he wants me to taste and not miss the good taste of a good food, I too don’t want him to miss out his eternity in heaven and hence I or rather we Christians always share about Jesus who is the only gate pass to heaven.
Gospel doesn’t work when we try to push it. When we read the story of the rich man and the Lazarus narrated by Jesus, we understand that the rich man is begging Abraham to send Lazarus down with a drop of water as he was struggling with third in the burning hell. Tomorrow when we are in heaven and our loved ones are in the hell, they may probably not ask for water but surely a question as to why we never told them about Jesus and heaven. Will we be able to live with that regret in heaven? That helpless look from your friend asking us why we never told them about Jesus is going to kill us forever.
In Mark 16:17 Jesus says, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creature.”
The good news of having an everlasting life with your Maker in heaven needs to be shared with everyone you meet. It is our utmost responsibility to share this good news with everybody we meet because God has given us this command. How many of us are sharing this good news with every people we meet?
I love this concept of eternity where there is no pain, no tears, no diseases, no waking up early, no responsibilities, etc. When we think about eternal life, we are all the more encouraged and strengthened to go through every pain and suffering of this life. Why can’t we come out of our comfort zones and share this good news with everybody who is alive right now.
Let us all make this commitment today with God that we are going to share this good news with everybody we meet and whom we love. Its not our responsibility to save that person but the sharing of the good news part is always ours. We are just messengers of this good news of eternity. Salvation belongs to the Lord but let’s do our part of sharing the good news. Prayer is the key to everything that we do. Pray for your loved ones and share the good news with them. Only the Spirit of God will bring conviction in the hearts of people so that at the name of Jesus every knew shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord. May God use us mightily for His glory. God bless you all.