Want to Know God?

First Baptist Church, McIntosh

It has been said if you have one really good friend, then you are truly a blessed person. I want to introduce to you my very best friend. His name is Jesus. He is spoken of throughout the Bible, and in Proverbs 18:24, it says, “There is a friend (a lover) who sticks closer than a brother.” F.G. Collier in The Biblical Illustrator says, “(Jesus) Christ alone has those elements of character which can make Him the clinging friend.”

May I suggest some reasons I think you’d enjoy having Jesus as your friend? First He can do so much for you such as enabling you to find purpose for your life that you can never know outside of Him. He also offers you spiritual gifts for use in His body, the church. Jesus offers you victory over the spiritual and even physical giants that trouble you. He warns you of danger and assists you in overcoming it. In short, there is nothing too hard for Him to do, for He is the Creator and Sustainer of everything that exists (see Colossians 1:16–17).

Another reason I’d like you to know Him is because the Bible says your greatest need is to be forgiven and cleansed of guilt because “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23) and Jesus was “a friend of tax collectors and sinners” (Matt. 11:19). The Bible says, “But God proves His own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8). The Bible also says, “He (God) made the One who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor. 5:21). Forgiveness and cleansing become ours as God’s gift that we receive by faith.

The Bible also says those who reject Jesus abide under God’s condemnation. John 3:18 says, “Anyone who believes in Him is not condemned, but anyone who does not believe is already condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God.”

Receive the forgiveness Jesus offers you simply by being willing to turn from your sin and trust Him to forgive and cleanse you of all your sins. He can be depended on to keep His promise to do it.