One of the great gifts that our most Holy God has given us is the ability to know for certain that we have eternal life. When God created all things, it was a perfect creation. When HE created man, man was also perfect. From the beginning God wanted to commune with man and woman. The first people were Adam and Eve, and because they were created without sin and in the image of God, God walked with them on earth and communed with them daily. In the Bible, we are told that God would walk with them in the cool of the evening. God had only one rule for them. They were not to eat from one particular tree that was in the middle of the garden that God made for them to live in. The tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. God told them that the day that they ate from it, they would surely die.
For a long time things were good between God and his creation. Unfortunately, a great angel that had rebelled against God by trying to become like God and wanted to be worshipped, had been kicked out of heaven along with a great number of angels that followed him . That angel is known as Satan. Satan could not stand that God and man could commune. So, Satan came to Eve, the wife of Adam and told her that if she would eat from the tree that they were forbidden to eat from, she could become like God Himself. This was similar to the sin that Satan committed to get himself removed from heaven. Eve wanted to be like God and so she took the fruit that God had forbidden her to eat and ate from it. She also gave some to Adam to eat. At once they realized that they had done wrong and broke the only rule that God had given them. They also realized that they were naked in the garden as a result of their sin. They did something interesting. They made cloths for themselves out of fig leaves. Later, Adam and Eve could hear God coming, so they hid themselves from Him. Now God knew what had happened already, he called to them asking where they were. Adam replied that when they heard God coming they hid themselves because they realized that they were naked. God asked them what had happened and they had to confess the whole thing to God.
There were grave consequences for Adam and Eve. They had sinned against God and had brought death to all of the once perfect creation. From that moment on, mankind and all creation, was cursed by that one sin. God did an interesting thing at that point. He did not strike Adam and eve down dead. He created man in his own image so that he could commune with him, so, God took an animal and killed it. He then fashioned clothing for Adam and Eve from the skins. When you skin an animal, blood is shed. When God shed the blood of this animal, He did a couple of things. He temporarily covered up the result of sin. He also symbolically and literally covered their nakedness, with the clothing he made from the skins. He also pronounced a curse on both the man and the woman. The man would have to toil from now on to provide for himself and his family and face physical death. The woman would suffer increased pain in child birth and physical death. HE also made a promise to the woman. He would provide a Redeemer though her "seed". In other words a Savior for mankind would be provided. The Savior would be born of a virgin. He would not be a descendant of man where he would inherit a sin nature, but would be born from a virgin woman from which he would be sinless. Every person, because we are descendants of Adam has a sin nature even before we have committed any sin. This separates us from God because He is Holy and cannot associate with us. This is our curse. No matter how much good you may do. You are commanded to be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect. With a sin nature, you can't ever meet God's expectations. God is Holy. Because He is Holy, He can have nothing to do with a sinful imperfect man. "For the wages of sin is Death..."
All through the Old Testament of the Bible we read where God required that an animal be sacrificed as payment or atonement for sin. When God gave the law to his chosen people, the Jews, blood was required as atonement for the sins of the nation. Each family was required to offer a sacrifice for the family. In most cases the sacrifice was a lamb that was without fault or mark. The lamb was chosen, inspected for defect, and kept with the family for a time where it was fed and most likely played with by the children. At the appointed time, the lamb, known as the lamb of God, was slaughtered, and the blood offered as payment for sin for 1 year. It was repeated year after year.
Finally, after thousands of years of sacrifices, at the very time that God said it would be(through the prophet Daniel), God sent the final and perfect sacrifice. Hundreds of years before, In the book of Daniel of the Bible, God told his servant Daniel exactly when to expect the Messiah. God was so exact that the people who read, understood and took the word of God seriously and literally, were expecting the Messiah. Just before the Messiah came on the scene there was the greatest prophet of all the prophets, who came to prepare the way for the expected Messiah. You may have heard of him. He is known as John the Baptist. John was the ultimate "Survivor Man". He wore clothing made from camel hair, ate locust and wild honey as his food, and lived full time in the wilderness next to the Jordan river in what is now modern day Israel. John preached that men needed to turn way from there sinful ways and back to God. He would dunk people under the water of the Jordan river who wanted to change their ways, as a symbol of their repentance. As John was preaching one day, the predicted Messiah came walking through the crowd. John looked and saw him. He said in a loud voice to the crowd that was assembled, "Behold the Lamb of God, that takes away the sind of the world". That doesn't mean much to the people of today, but to the Jewish audience, they knew exactly what the Lamb of God ment. He was to be the blood sacrifice for the atonement of sin.
Jesus is the Messiah. He was walking through the crowd. He was predicted from the very beginning right after Adam and Eve sinned against God. He was born of the seed of woman, from a virgin. Because of this he had no sin nature inherited from a sinful father. He was perfect, sinless, and is God Himself, sent by God the Father to reconcile God and Man. He was intended to be the only person that could be sacrificed for the sins of the world. Jesus was sacrificed on the cross for the sins of the world. He was buried and then was raised from the dead by God the Father. When Jesus was put to death on the cross, there was a vail that separated the Holy of Holies from the Holy place in the Jewish Temple. Only the High Priest could enter the Holy of Holies. That was once a year with the blood sacrifice to offer to God. At the very moment that Jesus died on the cross it is recorded that that the vail separating God and man in the temple, tore from top to bottom. No longer did God have to separate himself from man. The final payment for sin was made. It was perfect, final, and has never been required by God since.
So how do you receive this FREE GIFT that I spoke of? How do you receive any gift that is free? You must simply reach out and take it. If you try to pay for it, It is not free. If you try to earn it, it's not free. If fact, if you try to pay for it or try to earn it, you can' have it. It must be free. It is free, but as you have read, it was not cheap. It cost Jesus, The Lamb Of God, The Son of God, the Messiah, his blood. Your sin is paid for by his blood.
You can not clean your life up before you receive it. If you try, you are trying to pay for it or deserve it. It has to be FREE. If you want it, confess to God that you are a sinner and want to take the payment that Jesus paid for you on the cross with His blood.
Pray this prayer and receive the FREE GIFT.
Dear God,
I know that I am a sinner and cannot save myself. I know that Jesus is Your Son and that he died for my sins so we could be reunited. I believe that You raised Him from the dead. I accept Jesus as my Savior and want to receive the free gift of eternal life.
If you have a comment or question feel free to send me a message on the form located on the Home page.
BIBLE REFERENCES
Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
John 3:16 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.
Ephesians 2:8-9 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-- 9 not by works, so that no one can boast.
Romans 10:9 If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved
John 1:1-8 1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. 6 There was a man sent from God whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe.8 He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.
John 1:29 29 The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
Leviticus 23:11-13 11 He is to wave the sheaf before the Lord so it will be accepted on your behalf; the priest is to wave it on the day after the Sabbath. 12 On the day you wave the sheaf, you must sacrifice as a burnt offering to the Lord a lamb a year old
The Fall
Genesis 3:1- 22 Now the serpent(Satan) was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”
4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?"
10 He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”11 And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from? ”12 The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”
13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”
The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
14 So the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,
“Cursed are you above all livestock
and all wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust
all the days of your life.
15 And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel.”
16 To the woman he said,
“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
with painful labor you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.
17 To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’
“Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.”
20 Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.
21 The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. 22 And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.”
For a long time things were good between God and his creation. Unfortunately, a great angel that had rebelled against God by trying to become like God and wanted to be worshipped, had been kicked out of heaven along with a great number of angels that followed him . That angel is known as Satan. Satan could not stand that God and man could commune. So, Satan came to Eve, the wife of Adam and told her that if she would eat from the tree that they were forbidden to eat from, she could become like God Himself. This was similar to the sin that Satan committed to get himself removed from heaven. Eve wanted to be like God and so she took the fruit that God had forbidden her to eat and ate from it. She also gave some to Adam to eat. At once they realized that they had done wrong and broke the only rule that God had given them. They also realized that they were naked in the garden as a result of their sin. They did something interesting. They made cloths for themselves out of fig leaves. Later, Adam and Eve could hear God coming, so they hid themselves from Him. Now God knew what had happened already, he called to them asking where they were. Adam replied that when they heard God coming they hid themselves because they realized that they were naked. God asked them what had happened and they had to confess the whole thing to God.
There were grave consequences for Adam and Eve. They had sinned against God and had brought death to all of the once perfect creation. From that moment on, mankind and all creation, was cursed by that one sin. God did an interesting thing at that point. He did not strike Adam and eve down dead. He created man in his own image so that he could commune with him, so, God took an animal and killed it. He then fashioned clothing for Adam and Eve from the skins. When you skin an animal, blood is shed. When God shed the blood of this animal, He did a couple of things. He temporarily covered up the result of sin. He also symbolically and literally covered their nakedness, with the clothing he made from the skins. He also pronounced a curse on both the man and the woman. The man would have to toil from now on to provide for himself and his family and face physical death. The woman would suffer increased pain in child birth and physical death. HE also made a promise to the woman. He would provide a Redeemer though her "seed". In other words a Savior for mankind would be provided. The Savior would be born of a virgin. He would not be a descendant of man where he would inherit a sin nature, but would be born from a virgin woman from which he would be sinless. Every person, because we are descendants of Adam has a sin nature even before we have committed any sin. This separates us from God because He is Holy and cannot associate with us. This is our curse. No matter how much good you may do. You are commanded to be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect. With a sin nature, you can't ever meet God's expectations. God is Holy. Because He is Holy, He can have nothing to do with a sinful imperfect man. "For the wages of sin is Death..."
All through the Old Testament of the Bible we read where God required that an animal be sacrificed as payment or atonement for sin. When God gave the law to his chosen people, the Jews, blood was required as atonement for the sins of the nation. Each family was required to offer a sacrifice for the family. In most cases the sacrifice was a lamb that was without fault or mark. The lamb was chosen, inspected for defect, and kept with the family for a time where it was fed and most likely played with by the children. At the appointed time, the lamb, known as the lamb of God, was slaughtered, and the blood offered as payment for sin for 1 year. It was repeated year after year.
Finally, after thousands of years of sacrifices, at the very time that God said it would be(through the prophet Daniel), God sent the final and perfect sacrifice. Hundreds of years before, In the book of Daniel of the Bible, God told his servant Daniel exactly when to expect the Messiah. God was so exact that the people who read, understood and took the word of God seriously and literally, were expecting the Messiah. Just before the Messiah came on the scene there was the greatest prophet of all the prophets, who came to prepare the way for the expected Messiah. You may have heard of him. He is known as John the Baptist. John was the ultimate "Survivor Man". He wore clothing made from camel hair, ate locust and wild honey as his food, and lived full time in the wilderness next to the Jordan river in what is now modern day Israel. John preached that men needed to turn way from there sinful ways and back to God. He would dunk people under the water of the Jordan river who wanted to change their ways, as a symbol of their repentance. As John was preaching one day, the predicted Messiah came walking through the crowd. John looked and saw him. He said in a loud voice to the crowd that was assembled, "Behold the Lamb of God, that takes away the sind of the world". That doesn't mean much to the people of today, but to the Jewish audience, they knew exactly what the Lamb of God ment. He was to be the blood sacrifice for the atonement of sin.
Jesus is the Messiah. He was walking through the crowd. He was predicted from the very beginning right after Adam and Eve sinned against God. He was born of the seed of woman, from a virgin. Because of this he had no sin nature inherited from a sinful father. He was perfect, sinless, and is God Himself, sent by God the Father to reconcile God and Man. He was intended to be the only person that could be sacrificed for the sins of the world. Jesus was sacrificed on the cross for the sins of the world. He was buried and then was raised from the dead by God the Father. When Jesus was put to death on the cross, there was a vail that separated the Holy of Holies from the Holy place in the Jewish Temple. Only the High Priest could enter the Holy of Holies. That was once a year with the blood sacrifice to offer to God. At the very moment that Jesus died on the cross it is recorded that that the vail separating God and man in the temple, tore from top to bottom. No longer did God have to separate himself from man. The final payment for sin was made. It was perfect, final, and has never been required by God since.
So how do you receive this FREE GIFT that I spoke of? How do you receive any gift that is free? You must simply reach out and take it. If you try to pay for it, It is not free. If you try to earn it, it's not free. If fact, if you try to pay for it or try to earn it, you can' have it. It must be free. It is free, but as you have read, it was not cheap. It cost Jesus, The Lamb Of God, The Son of God, the Messiah, his blood. Your sin is paid for by his blood.
You can not clean your life up before you receive it. If you try, you are trying to pay for it or deserve it. It has to be FREE. If you want it, confess to God that you are a sinner and want to take the payment that Jesus paid for you on the cross with His blood.
Pray this prayer and receive the FREE GIFT.
Dear God,
I know that I am a sinner and cannot save myself. I know that Jesus is Your Son and that he died for my sins so we could be reunited. I believe that You raised Him from the dead. I accept Jesus as my Savior and want to receive the free gift of eternal life.
If you have a comment or question feel free to send me a message on the form located on the Home page.
BIBLE REFERENCES
Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
John 3:16 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.
Ephesians 2:8-9 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-- 9 not by works, so that no one can boast.
Romans 10:9 If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved
John 1:1-8 1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. 6 There was a man sent from God whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe.8 He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.
John 1:29 29 The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
Leviticus 23:11-13 11 He is to wave the sheaf before the Lord so it will be accepted on your behalf; the priest is to wave it on the day after the Sabbath. 12 On the day you wave the sheaf, you must sacrifice as a burnt offering to the Lord a lamb a year old
The Fall
Genesis 3:1- 22 Now the serpent(Satan) was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”
4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?"
10 He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”11 And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from? ”12 The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”
13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”
The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
14 So the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,
“Cursed are you above all livestock
and all wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust
all the days of your life.
15 And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel.”
16 To the woman he said,
“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
with painful labor you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.
17 To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’
“Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.”
20 Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.
21 The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. 22 And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.”
