Acts 20:22-25
22 “And now, compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there. 23 I only know that in every city the Holy Spirit warns me that prison and hardships are facing me. 24 However, I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me - the task of testifying to the gospel of God’s grace. 25 “Now I know that none of you among whom I have gone about preaching the kingdom will ever see me again. God is the Creator who never sleeps. He is the source of all life, so apart from him there is no life. God created man and gave life to him. “The LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” Gen 2:7. God gave life to man in order for him to live with God forever. But the first man was tempted by the devil in the garden of Eden, and he sinned by eating the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil that God had commanded him not to eat of. This caused him to lose the eternal life that God had given him, and from that time he was subject to sin, curses, death and suffering forever in the never ending fire of hell with the devil. But God loved man and wanted to help him, but man’s sin had created a barrier between God and man (Isaiah 59:1), so God couldn’t help him. Therefore God sent his one and only Son to this world in the flesh in order for man to be reconciled with God and to restore his happiness again. God is holy and he hates sin, therefore he sent his Word to the world in order to convict man of sin, and to tell him to repent (Matthew 4:17, Luke 13:1-3 5). Sin is the cause of all of man’s suffering, so when we repent, all the negative results of our sins are cancelled out. The greatest blessing is to be set free from sin, curses, death and hell. Jesus died on the cross, bleeding to death. He gave his life as a ransom in exchange for those who repent from their sins (Mark 10:45, Matthew 20:28). Whoever repents from their sin by the blood that Jesus shed on the cross can recover their eternal life. As the evidence we receive the Holy Spirit. He confirms that our sins have been forgiven, that we have been saved, and he testifies (2 Corinthians 1:21-22, 1 Corinthians 3:16). How can we thank God for his grace? We should give thanks to him, praise him, and be loyal and obedient to him. Those who have been redeemed should have this conscience. We should not be arrogant and stingy before God, or complain and grumble against him. The Son of God loved us even to the point of death, so we should love him in return. We should show him how much we appreciate the grace he has given us. Dear brothers and sisters, in order to save us from hell, Jesus was crucified and bled to death. But there are still many who do not know about this. Like Jesus, the disciples and the early church members, we should have the blood of Jesus inside us. The Lord wants all mankind to be saved, so we should not let the Lord’s death be in vain. We should preach the Gospel, even if we only redeem just one more person from hell (Acts 20:22 - 24, Colossians 1:24).
