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All Can Be Saved

All Can Be Saved

What is your story? Have you come to believe in Jesus? We all must be born again. Don’t let words that sound different to you keep you from knowing Jesus. Don’t let anyone keep you from Jesus. Our intellect can be a stumbling block. Our culture can be, too. But Jesus makes a way. All can be saved. His salvation reaches to everyone – there is no difference between male or female or in race. God is calling us all – will we answer?

Bible Reading of the Day: John 3-4   

We are reading in the Gospel of John today, chapters 3-4. We open with one of my favorite stories, when Nicodemus – we will call him Nick, comes to Jesus at night and tells him that He knows Jesus is from God because of the signs He was doing.

Then Jesus tells him he needs to be born again. Nick asks Jesus how.

All Can Be Saved—Must I Be Born Again?

I remember when I was 18 years old, people came to the clothing store I worked at in Freestate Mall in Bowie, Maryland. It was one of several jobs I had back then – not much has changed, lol.

Two men were walking through the mall talking about the need to be born again. I had never heard that phrase before. It sounded weird to me then. When the store owner asked me if I believed in that, I said I didn’t.

Thank God for His mercy! Fast forward a few months and another person was witnessing on the need to be saved while I was sitting in a room at the University of Maryland. I called the person a fanatic and left the room.

But God. Fast forward to about a year later when I was 19 years old and God reached me in my bedroom through my alarm clock radio. And then I understood what it meant to be born again. Saved. All those terms I did not get before. The dialogue between Nick and Jesus is such a sweet example of honest questions from a seeker.

All Can Be Saved—Through Jesus

Jesus shared how salvation comes through the son. Reading from John 3:14-17,

“14 Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, 15 that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him. 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. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.”

Jesus was referencing Numbers 21:9 and sharing how this was a foreshadowing of what Christ would do for the people. “So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, they lived.”

All Can Be Saved—If We Believe

Friends, we just have to believe. This is the work that remains. And if we really believe, our life will be changed. And as we abide, Christ accomplishes the work in us.

From Nick to the Samaritan woman in John 4, Jesus reveals that the love of God does not look at the outside, but the inside. The condition of our heart.

I have a podcast episode dropping this Wednesday continuing the topic of prejudice that I thought I would share an excerpt since it is from the same pages of Scripture we happen to be reading today.

All Can Be Saved—All Races, All People

The Samaritans occupied the country formerly belonging to the tribe of Ephraim and the half-tribe of Manasseh. When the ten tribes were carried away into captivity to Assyria, the king of Assyria sent people to inhabit Samaria (2 Kings 17:24; Ezra 4:2-11). These foreigners intermarried with the Israelite population that was still in and around Samaria. Because the Israelite inhabitants of Samaria had intermarried with the foreigners and adopted their idolatrous religion, Samaritans were generally considered “half-breeds” and were universally despised by the Jews.

In John 4:9, it says, “The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.)

All Can Be Saved—Outcasts Are Not Excluded in the Kingdom of God

The Samaritan woman was an outcast and looked down upon by her own people. She came alone to draw water from the community well when, during biblical times, drawing water and chatting at the well was the social highpoint of a woman’s day. However, this woman was ostracized and marked as immoral, an unmarried woman living openly with the sixth in a series of men.

She was shamed by others, but not shamed by Jesus. Jesus was the only one who could in fact truly judge her and He chose not to. Jesus’ disciples even thought it was odd that Jesus would be talking to a woman, and that woman a Samaritan. As it says in John 4:27, “Just then his disciples came back. They marveled that he was talking with a woman. . .”  It was not just where she was from. It was the fact that she was also a woman that caused the disciples to shame her in their own mind.

Jesus patiently shared about what true worship is in John 4:22-24

“22 You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”

Scripture of the Day: John 3:18-21 (NLT)

“18 “There is no judgment against anyone who believes in him. But anyone who does not believe in him has already been judged for not believing in God’s one and only Son. 19 And the judgment is based on this fact: God’s light came into the world, but people loved the darkness more than the light, for their actions were evil. 20 All who do evil hate the light and refuse to go near it for fear their sins will be exposed. 21 But those who do what is right come to the light so others can see that they are doing what God wants.”

Friends, we encounter many different people coming to know Jesus in our reading today.

There was Nicodemus the Pharisee – who had believed that righteousness was by works. Jesus invited him to trust in Jesus, not himself for salvation.

Then there was the Samaritan woman – who had believed in the religion handed down to her. Jesus invited her into a relationship so she could know the One she believed in.

And there was an official who Jesus performed the second sign and healed his son. He believed because of the sign Jesus did.

All Can Be Saved—What will it take to make us believe?

For me, God revealed Himself through His word. I could not see until He opened my eyes. People get offended by the Gospel. They want to save themselves. But they can’t. All can be saved if we accept the free gift of Jesus Christ.                                                                              

7-Fold One-Year Bible Reading Plan

Day 202: John 3-4

Scripture of the Day: John 3:18-21

Listen: https://www.biblegateway.com/audio/mclean/niv/John.3

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